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ix75ey
|
Why do humans need to filter the water of the earth, while any other kind of earth creature can drink the water of the earth directly?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Humans can drink water unfiltered. We might get parasites, diseases, or be exposed to poison or radiation, but all of this applies to all other animals as well. Other animals, generally, don't have the technology to filter water, so they have to either take their chances or die of dehydration.",
"1. We can drink raw water, we did it for millennia, we just don't because sometimes you get sick and die. 2. That applies to other animals as well, you just don't see them die because they're sick and not out in your view. 3. Human society made water borne diseases worse because of the population density, which made water filtration absolutely essential when close to population centers.",
"Water Distribution Tech here. Could you drink \"raw\" water and be fine? Yes. Would you be fine every time? No. The main reason we filter water is to avoid illness. There are bacteria in naturally occurring waters that can be harmful to humans, mainly coliform bacteria like E.Coli; as a side note here not all coliform bacteria will make you sick, but if coliforms can be found in the water it means that conditions are right for the ones that can make you sick to grow. There could also be pollutants and chemicals in the water that are harmful in the long term to humans, like lead, copper, mercury, nitrates, and more. Humans have a tendency to take legal action against entities that \"cause\" them to get sick. By treating water, we remove one area from which you may have gotten sick and protect the utility/city that provides water from certain legal actions (law suits.) Most places have a regulatory body that oversees how water is treated for human consumption, check with them to see what threats or concerns they may have for water in your area.",
"We don't need to filter water. We might get parasites or what have you, and it might taste bad, but we sure can drink natural water. Animals can either drink this somewhat iffy water, or they can die of dehydration. We have a third option."
],
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8,
6,
4
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ix78ty
|
How does an electric eel make electricity?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6500t6"
],
"text": [
"They have special organs called [electrocytes]( URL_0 ) that build an electrical potential by pushing ions against a gradient outside the cell membrane. By chaining these cells together, they form an organic battery that can release all of that electrical potential at once as a high voltage pulse."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_organ_(biology)\\"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ix7n6b
|
What is the purpose git, git clone, and what are repositories? I know they have to do with code but what are they, what are they for, why do you need them?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g65568k",
"g6530z8"
],
"text": [
"Problem #1: You are working on a coding project. You make some changes to your code, then after a while it turns out that your changes broke something. You want to revert your changes, but you can't, since you don't have the old code anymore. Problem #2: You and your friend Lisa are working on a project together. Each of you has a copy of the code, and each one is working on a different feature. How do you make sure your code is in sync with each other? Lisa could send you the files she changed whenever she makes any changes, but how do you make sure she didn't forget any files? What if you're both making changes to the same file? The solution is a Version Control system, also known as Source Code Management. Git is such a system. An SCM system does two main things: 1. It keeps track of all the changes in the code. Whenever you make a change and decide to \"commit\" it, the system will remember the state of the code before and after the change, so you can easily check the history or revert any changes. 2. It allows users to synchronize their code. The code is hosted on a shared server, and whenever someone wants to make a change, they \"push\" their change to the server. Then, other users can \"pull\" the change down to their computer. If there is a conflict (two users were working on the same file), they are forced to fix the conflict (\"merge\" the changes). A repository is the location where all the files, their histories and other metadata are stored. Normally, there is one shared repository stored on a server somewhere. In Git, every user working on a project has their own copy of the repository on their own computer. Whenever you make any changes to the code, you first make them in your local repository, and then push them to the shared repository, and every other user pulls the changes down to their own repository. Git Clone is a command that copies a repository between two locations - usually, from the shared server to your local computer. In order to work on a project and be able to contribute to it, you first need to clone it to your local computer. By default, `git clone < url > ` creates a directory under your current directory with the cloned repository. If all you want is access to the code, and you don't want to contribute to it or look at its history, then downloading the latest code is enough, without the need to clone the repository.",
"At its core GIT is for version control. The repository is all the code for whatever project you're dealing with. If you want to make a change you copy it to your machine, thats cloning. You make your changes, then update the repository with the changes by uploading those changes. Thats the basic gist without diving into how branches work. This allows your changes to be reviewed, allows others to work on the same code base without having to wait for your changes to be added, and keeps track of all changes in case something needs to be reverted (version control) The command line GIT CLONE whatecerURL is copying the repo to your machine"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ix7t72
|
How are Search Engines like Google and Bing made? How would you make one yourself?
|
How are search engines like google made and what technologies does one use to make one?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g655umb"
],
"text": [
"In the simplest sense they work similar to card catalogs did in the libraries back in the days of old. You send out a small program commonly called a web crawler or a spider. That program will visit websites, figure out what they are about, find tags to describe them, follow all the links it finds, and repeat. As the crawler goes across the internet your database of tags and what websites the tags apply to them grows more and more complete. Now you can open the actual search engine. When someone goes to your website and looks for \"funny cat videos\" you go to your database and find all the websites your crawler tagged with \"funny\", \"cat\", and \"videos\". The website will try to rank the results based on how relevant it think they are, and returns that to the user."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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ix7u0e
|
What causes spaghettification, rather than just tearing apart?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6573xs"
],
"text": [
"You are right in that most objects will probably break up, but for other reasons as they get closer to the black hole and before spaghettification kicks in. Intense radiation, heat, spinning, collision with other bodies and plasma, are forces a real object could encounter as it gets near a black hole. But I am assuming you are talking about a theoretical normal sized black hole, without these extra forces. Most black holes are very large relative to the objects they pull in (i'm assuming you aren't talking about something big like a star). This means that the object should reach spaghettification range before it breaks up. Gravity is not linear, it is based on the square of the distance between the object and the black hole. So the object would start in essentially in free fall, accelerating to a good part of the speed of light, until suddenly it isn't in free fall any more. Once it gets in spaghetti range, the forces on the near side of the object very quickly far exceed the forces on the furthest end. So quickly, the object has no time to break up in the normal sense of what we would experience on earth. Gravity at spaghettification range is so intense, it strips the particles off the object and disassembles them into a stream, faster than the physical force wave vibration can travel through the material of the object (the speed of sound inside the object). Is it a continuous stream with no breaks in it? It doesn't really matter. Spaghettification is the theoretical 'end' of the structure (and information) in the object. If the object were really large, and the black hole really small, breaking up before you reach spaghetti may be possible. But black holes that small only exist in theory."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
ix7x56
|
How do large-scale bank robberies affect the economy and the public in general?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g657eqh",
"g6570dw"
],
"text": [
"The average bank robbery only nets a few thousand dollars so it doesn't affect much. When is the last time you heard of some huge bank robbery at the point of a gun?",
"These days banks have very little cash sitting physically in their vaults, as most money is stored digitally. From a bank’s perspective, physical robberies are a non-issue in terms of security"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ix84wc
|
when and more importantly why did bedrooms become a thing?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g656zer",
"g65ehxc",
"g65cy8o",
"g65fkta"
],
"text": [
"Biologist here! I can give you some information, but not a lot. Its more a western idea than anything. It started with the wealthy, as a way to show they could afford extra rooms JUST for a bed, or a chamber pot. During the late 19th century, it became commonplace, due to the spread of cholera, we found it best to quarantine the sick, giving them special rooms to sleep in And eventually, that became the standard during the 1920s and 1930s in the states, meaning new house builds factored in bedrooms, kitchens and closets, as opposed to one or two room homes. The explosion of the middle class eventually made private bedrooms the standards in America and Europe",
"To add to what others have said, the history of it in the West has a funny bit: Originally, most people lived in one room buildings. If you were poor, a hut, if you are rich, a Hall. Gradually the really rich added rooms, with the Grand Hall remaining the center of the home but with rooms attached for sleeping, cooking, etc. Over time the other rooms got bigger and more important until the hall did nothing but get you from one to the other... And so it shrunk to the diminutive thing we call a hall(way) today.",
"As people became more affluent and more able to afford larger and more elaborate homes dwellings evolved from single room shelters to having rooms set aside for specific uses. It is still common for poorer people not to have enough bedrooms for everyone or for someone who sleeps in a not bedroom. When I first moved out of my parents house I slept in the living room of a two bedroom apartment that was shared with 3 other guys. But really bedrooms are an affluence thing. Once people were able to afford to have a room just for sleeping they went and got one.",
"What I was told it was the invention of the fireplace/chimney. Everyone used to sleep in one big room with a fire in the middle, the smoke would rise up and escape a hole in the center of the roof. With the evolution of a fireplace and a better chimney system, it was possible to have a smaller fire at the edge of a room and therefore could build separate rooms with their own fireplaces."
],
"score": [
32,
18,
5,
3
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"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ix8tb5
|
How does stress, anxiety, prescription medication, alcohol, etc. effect a man's ability to climax and orgasm during sex?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g65a5aw"
],
"text": [
"Many prescription meds, like Prozac, act to block certain chemical receptors and chemical processes in your brain. This is helpful if that chemistry is contributing to mental illnesses like depression and anxiety. But some of that same chemistry is also responsible for feeling pleasure and orgasms. It's an unfortunate side effect, but there are many, many other types of medications that limit the side effects. People being treated for these conditions will often try several different medications before landing on one that works well for them."
],
"score": [
4
],
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[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
ix9u5i
|
Why do funny bones give you a weird buzzing sensation when they get hit.
|
I bumped my elbow, and rather than being in pain, it just buzzed. I’ve always wondering why it’s like that.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g65gqkj",
"g65gxm1"
],
"text": [
"It's actually not a bone. You're hitting/ pinching the nerve in that region, which results in said feeling.",
"Your funny bone isn't really a bone, it's just a collection nerves around your elbow. And hitting all those nerves at once is basically like hitting your arm 100 times at once which confuses the hell out of your body. & #x200B; (The second half of that is complete bs but the first part's right)."
],
"score": [
11,
5
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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ixafx6
|
If our skin is porous why do we not fill up with water while swimming?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g65lppu"
],
"text": [
"A few reasons. Firstly is that your body is already full of water and organs that ar denser than water. So there isn't room to fill. Secondly is that skin is porous, but the holes don't go all the way through to the muscle etc. Pores only go through the first part of skin. Lastly, pores expand and contract due to outside stimulus. Hot and cold etc. When submerged the body recognizes the external pressure and keeps them closed. That's why you don't sweat while swimming in the way you do while running."
],
"score": [
10
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixalgo
|
Why is it called the 'missionary' position?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g65oiye"
],
"text": [
"It is commonly believed that the term *missionary position* arose in connection with English-speaking Christian missionaries, who supposedly encouraged the sexual position in new converts in the colonial era. However, the term probably originated from Alfred Kinsey's *Sexual Behavior in the Human Male* through a confluence of misunderstandings and misinterpretations of historical documents."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixaps1
|
When new graphics cards get released for computers, what is different about them from older graphics cards? What gets upgraded to make them more powerful?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g65nnnk"
],
"text": [
"Generally, this boils down to smaller transistors. For example, the RTX 20 series cards from Nvidia were produced using 12 nm lithography, which means that each transistor was 12 nm wide. For their RTX 30 series cards, 8 nm lithography was used. This allowed Nvidia to pack more transistors into their cards, which means more compute power. There may also be some architectural differences,, which may be more efficient than previous generations."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixar7u
|
How can a computer estimate how long a process will take (like a render, copying files, installing software, etc.) and why is it almost always wrong?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g65mzkx",
"g65nq33"
],
"text": [
"The computer knows how large the task is, and it estimates how long it'll take based off the current progress Vs time taken, that number is changed everytime you do something on the computer, pulling processing power away from the task, that's when the estimation becomes erratic",
"Typically when the process is not comprised of a bunch of very similar tasks there isn't really a reliable way to produce an estimate. With files or installation, you could either use the number of files copied so far divided by the total number files, or the size of files copied so far divided by the total size. The problem is that the files are all of different sizes, and copying a hundred of 10 KB files is usually much, much slower than copying one 1MB file, so whichever metric you choose to use it's not a good estimate. When rendering, the rendering software typically divides the scene into tiles or \"buckets\" and uses the number of complete tiles divided by the total number of tiles as an estimate, but it runs into a similar problem: some tiles contain nothing but plain colours but some tiles have super complex transparent highly refractive objects that require a bajillion of ray casts to render correctly and it's difficult to predict accurately without making the estimation process waste way more time than it's worth."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixb6da
|
How does our brain merge the two “images” we see from our eyes?
|
I tried looking at my hand, and I alternated between looking with only left eye to looking with only right eye. Each eye sees a distinct image of the hand, different from each other. When I alternate, my hand appears to be in different “positions”. But when I look with both eyes, the hand I see doesn’t resemble any of the two individual perspectives and appears to be in a completely different “position”. Where does that image come from? Am I really looking at my hand or is it a complete illusion made by my brain?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g65vl3l",
"g65uvu9",
"g65uuk3"
],
"text": [
"I have something to contribute! I have strabismus- so it doesn’t work on me, actually. I can only look out one eye at a time! The other eye works fine, but I use my right eye for focus and to talk to people with. My left eye tends to act as peripheral, but I can switch eyes. It’s basically cuz I have a lazy eye. Or had, I got surgery that made it look fixed- but the brain still believes one eye is lazy. So because the idea of a lazy eye requires that the eyes are looking down two different paths at the same time, and the brain can only focus on one task at a time, it mutes the focus of one of my eyes. So while my brain combines both images of my eyes, I can only focus with one of them, while the other acts as peripheral vision. I know this doesn’t answer your question exactly and I know others have answered it better, but I just wanted to give you some neat information. I didn’t know my eyes were weird until a couple years ago- I thought everyone had a dominant eye they looked out of.",
"What gets sent from the eyes to the brain are electrochemical signals, not light. It's not like a camera where the light image itself gets reflected all the way to the sensor. So what the brain has to do is to form a mental image of the world based on a stream of electrochemical signals, or in the case of two eyed people, two streams of electrochemical signals. During the process of learning to perform that decoding trick, you also learn to extract depth and motion information from a variety of cues, not least of which is the slightly different perspective each eye has. You also learn to not see your blind spots (yes, you and all other humans have predictable blind spots in your eyes). So that's where the image comes from, the image is what the decoded signals from the eyes feel like. As to whether or not you're really looking at your hand, that's mostly a question of semantics, trying to tease apart what the question even means... but, we can say for sure that the part happening in your brain isn't manipulating light, so in that sense it is clearly not the same thing as what your eyes focus on.",
"It's not so much an illusion, but a combination of the images, processed by your brain after the first two images (left and right eye) are perceived. Basically, each eye sees it's own image, triggering the part of your brain which processes visuals. Then, your brain works to combine the two images into a single image, in order to give you more complete information. In this case the more complete information is where in three-dimensional space the object actually is, instead of where it seems like it is. TL;DR- Each eye sees a single image from a fixed position, and the brain combines the two images, giving you as much information as it can. EDIT: I realized this was more about the actual optics of the eye rather than *how* your brain merges the two images, but it's almost the same explanation. I could add that the neurons responsible for the initial images are not all of the same neurons which process and combine them. Some neurons retain the right image, some neurons retain the left image, and then at the next layer of neurons the images are processed into a single picture. This is my understanding of it, if anyone has some insight without getting into too much detail (this *is* ELI5, right?) I'd be curious if this could be worded better."
],
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16,
3,
3
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixbcvn
|
Why does being obese make you so much more susceptible to other diseases/disorders?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g65qzsk",
"g65usur",
"g65wq9u"
],
"text": [
"To extremely oversimplify - It’s more taxing. Like imagine you’re the heart, if there’s extra person then you must work extra hard to ensure circulation is happening. You can apply that to any body system, essentially, right? And the more we over work the parts, the faster they wear out.",
"Obesity puts a lot of stress on the body's systems, especially the cardiovascular system. With all that extra body mass to perfuse ,the heart has to work extremely hard to pump blood all the way through the body, causing high blood pressure and cardiac hypertrophy as the heart struggles to adapt, or eventually fails. When blood fails to reach some parts of the body, like the toes, those tissues die and become prone to infection. Diabetes, often comorbid with obesity, brings damaging uncontrolled blood sugar with a whole host if inimical effects on the human body, which have an overall suppressive effect on the immune system leaving the person more open to infection.",
"To add to what others have said here, if said obesity is a result of poor diet and not enough exercise, these things themselves are hard on the body which compounds the inherent issues with weighing more. If obesity is due in part to some underlying medical issue, that underlying issue itself is likely to have other side effects."
],
"score": [
15,
8,
5
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"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixbdxp
|
How do pirates crack video games without access to the source code? Why does the method they use get rid of multiplayer capability?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g65r9pa"
],
"text": [
"it depends on the method the publisher uses to authenticate a valid vs a invalid copy. these days games mostly connect to the publishers server and checks if the game is valid. so then the hacker can just block that connection or modify the game to connect to a dummy server that always returns a positive response, so in this method, multiplayer is by nature, not possible."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixcica
|
Why can’t our bodies digest corn? We always find it in our feces, is there any benefit to eating corn? Do we digest the nutrients and not the skin?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g660txd",
"g65z3bp"
],
"text": [
"The corn kernels you see in your poop are just the outer part of the kernel. The inside is filled with poop, not corn.",
"The human body cannot digest cellulose, which is what the outer husk of a corn kernel is made of."
],
"score": [
16,
10
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixctko
|
How a 12oz drink can have 0 calories but a 30oz of the same beverage have 15 calories?
|
Asking for a friend.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g660c9o"
],
"text": [
"The same way tic tacs can be considered sugar free even though they are almost entirely made of sugar, its about the ratio in proportion to its size."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixcy4t
|
how does my walmart account know what I bought in-store if I never uploaded the receipt?
|
I went to my account to look at an online order I made and realized the items I purchased over the weekend were there. I did not scan and submit the receipts, and my information is never put into any system when I am checking out in-store. Is it linked by my debit card?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g662ue9",
"g663k8x"
],
"text": [
"If your debit card is the sole piece of identification that links you to the purchase, then yes - Walmart is able to track the purchases you make using that card. You probably agreed to let them do that in the T & C of the online account when you signed up.",
"Only one person has your card, which is you. Only one account is linked to your card, which is yours. Therefore, any purchase made by your card is obviously you, and therefore can safely be associated to your account."
],
"score": [
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixdmj1
|
Can someone clearly explain the relationship between the moon and the tides and exactly how it links to the moon’s gravity?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g667k9m"
],
"text": [
"I'm not the best explainer, but I'll give it a shot. The moon's gravity affects the earth's water more than it affects the rock in the earth, because water is more easily displaced than rock. This creates a \"bulge\" of water at the side of the earth that faces the moon, as well as a bulge on the opposite end. Now, these bulges maintain their position relative to the moon (mostly) while the earth's land masses keep rotating with the rest of the earth. The tides are the result of the earth rotating such that a coastline passes \"under\" the bulge where water is being pulled away from the earth's surface, giving the appearance of the water level rising."
],
"score": [
13
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixe7dk
|
Being the first Blacksmith would have been hard. How did they get things from their forge before they made their first pair on tongs?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g669mvv",
"g66a1x8"
],
"text": [
"Forging techniques came long after casting techniques, and a forge is just a modified smelter. So by the time there were blacksmiths forging iron, they had access to tools made via bronzesmithing. Bronze can be forged, but it has to be done cold and annealed. Bronzesmiths and blacksmiths also had access to sticks. Source: I worked as a blacksmith and did some bronzework as well after college. r/primitivetechnology may also be of help.",
"There was a progression from cast bronze and copper tools and weapons that people like the Egyptians used to carve the stones for the pyramids and temples. The iron age didn't just start from scratch."
],
"score": [
11,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixeb36
|
How do network televisions and radio stations know how many people watched or listened their show/station? Does it work differently for satellite and over the air TV/Radio using an antenna and such?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66habd"
],
"text": [
"Surveys.....because, yes, there is no way to know. Facebook and Reddit have both had minor scandals when it was revealed what portion of their traffic is bots (Reddit mostly.....this website has a surprising quantity of fake traffic). Everyone was like \"wow, that's a lot of bots\" until their advertisers, who pay huge fees for what they are told are targeted ads to real people realized that these sites actually know what portion of their traffic are not unique, real people but had been selling their click numbers as such. The advertiser might get charged per click but if Reddit knows 30% of their traffic is bots then as an ad-buyer, you would want that 30% back, right? As of right now the market kinda accepts it in a bit of an equilibrium but there is really no way for an online advertiser to know how much of the click traffic they are paying for is real, but the platform does. In theory, a platform can inflate this. I think right now the advertising world is just like \"We just don't want to know.\" This is one reason why big default subs sound like they have a lot of tedious, repetitive content because its not very hard to farm thousands or millions of alt bots by having them post regurgitated \"meta\" in these subs to build karma before being sold in bundles for way more money than new accounts."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixekqk
|
Do we actually waste water if any water used ultimately goes back into the water cycle one way or another?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66byq0",
"g66d9nx",
"g66cbtj",
"g66bxed"
],
"text": [
"The water coming out of your tap has been cleaned and generally safe to drink. A lot of technology and effort went into making it that way. You are effectively wasting a lot of effort when you \"waste water\" even if it ends up in the same place in the long run.",
"We waste \"Fresh\" water. All water eventually ends up in the ocean (over simplification) where it gets salty and you can't use it for drinking or growing crops. Ocean water gets evaporated by heat from the sun. This makes clouds that drift over land and then release the water as rain (oversimplification again) and in this way water is recycled. This is all well and good if you live somewhere where it rains a lot. I live in Pennsylvania. Fresh water seeps up out of the ground. I have to pump fresh water out of my basement fairly regularly. I sometimes can't get to work because fresh water is flooding the road. But if you live somewhere like nevada, your water likely doesn't come from rain. Your water likely comes from deep wells drilled to underground aquifers that may be a mile underground. These large underground reservoirs of fresh water might have filled up slowly over many years and if used frivolously can be depleted at a much faster rate than they can refill. The same goes for anywhere with little rainfall. Fresh Water is precious because the supply is replenished slowly. Globally, all water reenters the cycle, but locally, once water is used, it may be a long time before you see it again.",
"Yes. The key is where we get the water. Much of the water we get for drinking, bathing, watering grass, etc. is all ground water, because there's no large living things, it's protected from human made pollution, and ground water sourced are pretty consistent sources of water. When we use this ground water, it does not go back into the ground. It either flows as runoff, evaporates into the clouds, or soaks into the soil (this might seem like the ground, but it's not deep enough to be ground water). As human society uses this water, there's less in the ground water, which is not easily replaceable, so we eventually run out. Edit: Yes, everything the other comments are saying is also true, but [this is a literal case of you wasting water that will not come back.]( URL_0 ) and should be treated much more carefully than just saying \"it's just an issue of cost\"",
"I think the idea is it's not potable water. Water wasted needs to be filtered or cleaned before it can be used again. Nature filters water but it can only do it so fast."
],
"score": [
37,
36,
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/groundwater-decline-and-depletion?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixenpz
|
How does a heart attack cause a "feeling of impending doom" and how does this differ from normal anxiety?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66fnia"
],
"text": [
"I believe it triggers it by stimulating the vagus nerve, which directly connects the heart, gut, and brain. The vagus nerve runs extensively on serotonin, and a lack of serotonin can cause negative mood and feelings. The second part of the question I am much more qualified to answer, though it’s a lot harder. Essentially, anxiety is a feeling that too much is happening, your thoughts are moving too fast, the lights are too bright, it’s all too much, etc. etc. You mostly feel like you’re going to die in the sense that you’re going to fly apart at any moment. It’s like missing the last step of the staircase for hours or weeks on end. But a foreboding feeling is more like knowing someone is watching you, but you can’t see them. It’s knowing you’re going to die any moment, but not how. You’re not anxious in the above sense—but you know something is sneaking up on you, waiting, watching. I had this once when a drug completely blocked my serotonin receptors, and it was... not fun. I would compare it more to depressive symptoms than anxiety."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixevz8
|
what is the reason for being ‘jumpy’ ie being startled?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66fadb",
"g66ficu"
],
"text": [
"Similar to why most animals jump when startled, it is our primal animal behaviour where we react to potential danger and want to escape.",
"It is a defensive response. It is accompanied by a rapid adrenaline release and muscle tensing. Combined with intuition, it just may save you during a moment of inattentiveness."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixf5oc
|
Why do you suddenly feel like "falling" when trying to sleep?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66hehh"
],
"text": [
"It is a reflex response to you body shutting down for sleep too quickly. When you go to sleep, things like your heart rate and breathing naturally slow down. Typically this is at a slow steady pace. Sometimes tho, you heart rate and breathing rate slows down much more quickly that normal. Which on its own isn’t a bad thing, except that your brain that’s responsible for keeping you alive misinterprets that really quickly slowing down as something being wrong. Basically your brain goes “holy fuck why is our heart stopping what’s wrong” So you brain sends that jolt through your body, to jumpstart your slowing heart, and make things “better” again."
],
"score": [
30
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixf9rt
|
How does a global temperature average increase of just a degree or two cause such wild weather phenomena?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66jvar",
"g66h0zc",
"g66hhmn",
"g66h06y",
"g66hins"
],
"text": [
"Because this is an average. The temperature of the whole planet won't go up by 1 or 2 degree, some region will be affected then other, the average of will be around 1 or 2. It's mathematical, here an example. Let say 5, 5, 5, 5 and 5. The average is 5. Now let say 5, 5, 5, 5 and 11. The average is 6. The increase on the average is just 1, but the impact on a specific number is massive. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) Here you can see the distribution of that increase in temperature for 1.5 and 2 degree. You can see that the increase is mostly felt in the pole. One big reason is that as temperature increase, the ice which is white and reflect more of the light melt, leaving a darker colour which absorb more heat. This is a feedback loop, that keep melting more ice. It's hard to predict exactly, but an increase of 2 celcius would increase the sea level of around 0.2 meters. Which mean during storm, flood will be a bigger issues in low elevation are, which is where most people live. By displacing the average, it also displace the extreme. So let say that the temperature on average is 20 and it can vary from 5 to 35. Maybe you have 10 days during the year at 30-35 celcius which is pretty hot and cause issues, like heat stroke and draught. Well if you increase the average maybe now instead of 10 days per year it's gonna be 12. This increase the risk of draught. There is also the energy needed to do that. To increase the average global temperature by 2 celcius, this would need around 10 x 10\\^21 joules of energy or 2.4 tera tonnes of TNT or 47,801 Tsar Bomba (the biggest nuclear weapon ever tested). Of course this energy is spread out over the entire earth, but that's additional energy available to power storm.",
"Because, when you consider the amount of mass in the environment, a single degree bump in average temperature is a huge amount of energy being retained by the system. Also remember that it is an average increase and that weather systems are the product of the sun's energy balancing across the globe. This increases the amplitude of weather events proportionally as the energy balances.",
"Global Temperature Average is the average temperature everywhere and all times over the year. Certain places might see a tiny increase or even a decrease, while other places get a hellish increase. When you add the changes together it evens out to a small increase. So if the area that gets a hellish increase is where a lot of people live or where a lot of food is grown, then you have a big problem. It's also not all the time. It could be that the winter actually get slightly colder, the summer gets slightly hotter, except for a couple of weeks where it's a crop destroying, people killing heat wave once every couple of years. It evens out to a small increase.",
"The plant life already struggling from a drought now has a worse drought because 5% more of their moisture is getting taken by evaporation. These plants die. There is no rain to keep fires at bay. Fires rage harder. We already had hurricanes before climate change. A 1 degree increase now makes those more common, and more dangerous, because you have more warm moist air hanging above the sea. Etc. Basically, it's because these natural disasters already exist, so giving them more energy to fuel themselves is a recipe for disaster.",
"I don't know the weather side. But I like the \"small temperature change = big problems\" by using the body as an example. Your natural body temperature sits at about 36-37degrees celsius normally. Think of how you feel and what happens to your body when you get a fever. Chills, sweating, cognitive issues, muscle weakness - you can't really function without help. And a fever is only about one to two degrees higher than your natural temperature. The world has millions of little systems and mechanisms working in sync across a massive area. By messing with one small part, it influences how that part reacts with something else, and so on, and so on. A million or so times over. Eventually that one small difference, multiplies to have a massive catastrophic change to the overall system. But that's my understanding, if a meteorologist is here - I'll defer to them."
],
"score": [
35,
14,
5,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2865/a-degree-of-concern-why-global-temperatures-matter/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixfq63
|
What are cast iron pots/pans and why are they favoured by many if they are apparently harder to maintain?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66k3g9",
"g66jm8d",
"g66k93u",
"g66jvwk"
],
"text": [
"Thick iron pans which are cast to a form that for some reason most companies follow. Unlike a non stick coating, the beauty in a cast iron pan is that you use oil to leave a plastic like coating which happens when it gets to smoking temp. It’s called seasoning and can be pretty non stick. The benefits when cooking are due to its weight and thickness. Being so thick it can put a lot more energy for longer into something like a steak than a thin walled pan can. It takes longer to heat up but it holds that heat far better. That plastic coating (seasoning) is sensitive to being soaked in water for too long, and if you scrub too hard with soap you can remove it, so you hear lots of horror stories and wives tales about them. Usually once you get past the hipsters and trendy people trying to pretend like it’s somehow superior technology, most can agree cast iron pans are always good for cooking a few things like meats, and with enough care and attention can be good for a lot of things, but they aren’t life changing by any means. They have their pros and cons as most everything in life does.",
"They're actually easier to maintain and will last a lifetime (or several) with just a little bit of care and attention. They retain and distribute heat way better than regular cooking pans. And they get seasoned after repeated use so they actually impart subtle flavor to the food. That seasoning is why you can't just treat them like a normal pan. It's easy to ruin the seasoning, but it's rather difficult to actually ruin the pan itself. They're sturdy and solid pieces of metal.",
"When you season a cast iron pan by heating it with a thin coat of oil, the oil polymerizes (becomes plastic-like) This leaves a non-stick coating. The difference between this coating and a Teflon pan is that you can reapply it. They last lifetimes. They're also very dense and great for searing meat. The seasoning can be lost by cooking acidic food for too long, over-aggressive scrubbing, and some say dish soap. I've heard others say the dish soap thing stems from when soap had lye in it. With all that said, they're not all that hard to take care of and will outlast 5 Teflon pans easily.",
"They’re relatively inexpensive and if you properly maintain them (clean and season) they’ll have a great nonstick surface and literally last generations. I don’t think washing in cold water is bad, but washing with soap removes the non stick surface and you’ll have to season the pan. To season a pan you simply wash with soap, coat the entire pan in vegetable oil, and put in an oven for about an hour. That’s it. A properly seasoned pan just needs to be cleaned with water and scrubbing. Teflon nonstick pans are ok but the nonstick surface degrades over time (probably not great for your health). Stainless steel ones cook well but food sticks very easily so you have to use oil/fat."
],
"score": [
22,
12,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixg978
|
How does smartphones screen touch work?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66ndc2",
"g66ut80"
],
"text": [
"There is a layer in the screen assembly called the digitizer. It basically has an electric current running through it. When you touch the phone screen, your finger slightly changes the charge of that current. The phone recognizes that change and knows your finger is there. That’s why only some materials will work on a touchscreen, they all don’t affect the current the way skin does.",
"I stumbled on this video a few weeks back. Definitely will answer every question you may have, in an easy to understand video. You’re welcome URL_0 Added note; Time to get off reddit, had to wait 4 minutes before I could post this video."
],
"score": [
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yU5kPoc7sL4"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixgpkd
|
How is it that when multiple animators are making something, they all have the same style?
|
The clone wars for example, all the episodes have the same style, with the only change being effort/time spent going up.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66pvkm",
"g66s9dz",
"g6789yb"
],
"text": [
"The same way classical musicians can play the same Beethoven piece in the same style—they’re pros who are good enough at their craft that they can form their art into whatever is necessary. Computer animation is another step away, as there are literal computer animation algorithms that perform actions for characters. The “animators” in this sense are quite literally programmers who are assigning commands to the animation software. Even still, “Style” and “form” are constantly monitored during the animation process, and always double-checked to conform to creative standards.",
"The creators make a [model]( URL_0 ) for the artist to copy.",
"There are internal style guide documents. e.g URL_0"
],
"score": [
25,
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcdna.artstation.com%2Fp%2Fassets%2Fcovers%2Fimages%2F004%2F215%2F828%2Flarge%2Fjowayne-mcfarlane-jowhimsy-fiwi-kids-character-turnarounds-joey.jpg%3F1481426768&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.artstation.com%2Fartwork%2FbbZwG&docid=CqzNV50vv33kqM&tbnid=yfBv62YpMlfzZM&vet=1&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim"
],
[
"https://editorial.designtaxi.com/editorial-images/news-animatedstyleguide11012016/2.jpg"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixgxcp
|
Why does having your legs crossed effect blood pressure readings?
|
I’ve always been told to uncross your legs in order to get a more accurate blood pressure reading. It sounds legit but I don’t understand why.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66tzln"
],
"text": [
"Crossing your legs raises one of your legs and also compresses leg tissues, forcing blood towards the heart and allowing it to pump blood more effectively. However, unlike when your heart pumps more blood in response to physiological conditions, where your vessels dilate to allow the increased blood flow to move, no change in the vessels occurs when you cross your legs. Better pumping + no change in blood vessels = increased blood pressure"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixhyu7
|
How come people have to sleep on a super comfy mattress to avoid crippling pain when our ancestors slept on unsupportive materials up until recently?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66xemd",
"g66y2en"
],
"text": [
"Our ancestors suffered more pain. Sometimes crippling amounts. And many died of it much younger than the modern life expectancy. Most probably got used to it. Life was nasty, brutish, and short.",
"The answer is two-fold: First, the lifestyles of our ancestors were different so that factors during the day didn't contribute as much to back pain - e.g., they were very active and developed a lot of muscle, whereas most lifestyles today are quite sedentary (which leads to lack of muscles) and bad posture while sitting at the computer etc. causes back pain, which is made worse at night if you're not sleeping on something comfy. Our ancestors' beds probably weren't great for their back, but since they didn't have these other factors, they probably didn't have pain. Second, a lot of people today sleep on good mattresses to take care of their body and avoid aches when they're older. Our ancestors died fairly young so they didn't have to worry about that. Today, a 20-year-old would be fine on any bed, but will probably pay for it when they're 50."
],
"score": [
31,
18
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixi5db
|
space slingshot
|
We have struggled with limitations with regard to travel speeds in the vastness of space. Why wouldn’t we be able to use the slingshot method around multiple celestial bodies to build the speed multiple times? I understand that these planets, or the sun are not even remotely close to each other and it would take a long time to perform such a maneuver, but is it possible? And would it be a practical solution to launch spacecraft into deep space at higher speed?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g672wpg",
"g66wvq8"
],
"text": [
"You can repeat a slingshot maneuver multiple times and cause a meaningful change of velocity to your craft each time. This helps with actually braking down probes realtive to the sun in order to get to the inner planets, where they slingshot around earth, Venus and mercury multiple times until a certain velocity is reached. This also works in the opposite direction and can throw a probe out of the solar system, such as Voyager 1 and 2. But outwards we can't just repeat this forever, because as soon as the probe hits about 70km/s it is fast enough to leave the solar system forever (cosmic speed), independent on the direction of travel btw., and thus can't reorbit another solar planet. This limits the maximum slingshot-assisted speed to somewhere in this order of magnitude. Even if we could somehow double that speed and do 140 km/s, it'd still take thousands of years to reach the nearest star \"proxima centauri / alpha centauri\"",
"We do. Practically every single probe we sent into the outer solar system has slingshotted around multiple planets. The Voyager probes took advantage of a rare once in centuries alignment of gas giants to get tossed out of the solar system. Probes like the [Rosetta probe]( URL_0 ) even slingshotted around Earth multiple times. Thing is it takes a long time for it travel between the planets, and the planets have to be aligned in order to do so. Meaning the probe has to be launched at a certain time or they'll have to find a different alignment to sling shot around."
],
"score": [
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist#/media/File:Animation_of_Rosetta_trajectory.gif"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixi814
|
Why does DTH (Satellite TV) and internet stop working or slows down AFTER heavy rainfall?
|
I've observed whenever it rains heavily, with or without thunderstorms, the internet slows down or just stops working. Similarly, DTH TV connections either completely stop working or produce choppy images. Why does it happen ONLY AFTER heavy rainfalls? How do they fix it?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g66xmnp"
],
"text": [
"Internet via telephone cables or internet via satellite? If via telephone cables, then you have places where the cable to your property have drowned, for example in telecom pits. There are two steps to solve this: Replace the affected part of the cable, and make the pits waterproof. If via satellite, then it might be that the dish isn't calibrated properly to the satellite or that it's just too much signal loss due to the rain for the signal to get through. All kind of transport mediums have their problems: rain affects radio, fog/air pollution affects laser links, pits full of water affect telephone cables. Fiber is generally unaffected, just keep the yellow diggers or men in orange vests with spades away from them."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixiij1
|
How do keyboard matrixes work?
|
I'm reading [this]( URL_0 ) article on how they work but I can't make heads or tails of it.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6719ue"
],
"text": [
"All the keys on the keyboard need to be connected to the controller chip somehow so they can be read, but normally there are many more keys on a keyboard than there are pins on the controller to connect to. The matrix allows you to use far fewer pins for the same number of keys by organising them into 'rows' and 'columns'. If you think about a chessboard, a single square can be identified by its row and column; there is only one g5 square on a chessboard. Similarly, a keyboard can find out which keys are being pressed by giving a voltage to each of the 'rows' one by one and seeing which 'columns' it gets a voltage back on. If you give voltage to the 1st row and read voltage back on columns 3 and 5, you know that keys (1, 3) and (1, 5) were pressed down."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixis2b
|
—How does a thermal camera work?
|
How does a thermal camera is able to detect that a object is hot or cold? It got me puzzled.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6714kn"
],
"text": [
"Every object radiates electromagnetic waves which wavelength is directly dependent on the surface's temperature. Thus the wavelength of the (for humans invisible) light an object radiates can be mathematically translated to a temperature. The hotter the surface, the higher the frequency, e.g. the shorter the wavelength. Think of a camera but instead of recording light in the visible frequency range, we look below that, in the IR (infra-red / below red light) spectrum and map this information to a colormap humans can see on the screen."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixj1ud
|
when a domain is bought through a site like URL_0 or GoDaddy, who is selling it? And if it is a name that has not been registered before, on what basis are they allowed to to charge for it?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6725f8",
"g67bfl1",
"g69wlzn",
"g671zdy"
],
"text": [
"You may notice that domains end in stuff like .com or .uk or something like that. Each different way of ending is called a top-level domain (TLD). TLDs are usually run by an organization. Often it's run by a government or a government owned corporation for something like a .uk domain. Or a company that manages internet stuff like Verisign (they own .com and .net and a whole lot of other very common internet things) These companies almost always made a deal with several companies like GoDaddy so they do a lot of the grunt work with managing who gets what name, while they act as the authority to confirm that there isn't any conflict and do the work to get it online. So you pay GoDaddy, GoDaddy does a lot of the work sorting it out and pays that TLD, TLD does a lot of other work behind the scene. All of them made an agreement that if there was a real big dispute, they would let the courts handle it.",
"Think of domains like like phone numbers. You rent your phone number from your phone company, usually by way of a yearly contract. If you stop paying your bill, your number will get disconnected and after a while the phone company can issue that number to someone else. The same is true of domain names, you just rent these for as long as you keep paying the bill. Like phone numbers, governments usually set up the system and then let others manage the day to day running of that system. In this analogy, the government say that there can be telephone numbers beginning with 01, 0800, 07 etc. but then telephone companies are responsible for leasing these numbers to customers. With domains, Nominet are in charge of all .uk domain names but generally companies like Godaddy sit between you, the customer, and Nominet. If you want to register URL_0 you go to Godaddy, they tell you how to much to pay to lease the domain for a year, you pay and then they register the domain, in your name, with Nominet. Domain providers can, as far as I am aware, charge what they like to register and renew domains. If a domain has already been registered, it can not be leased to someone else unless the original registrar does not renew it after the lease expires. After the domain expires, it is usually locked for 90 days so that it does not work (any web site or email addresses attached to it will not function properly) and can only be renewed by the person who originally leased it. After 90 days the domain goes back on the open market for anyone to register. Time lines vary for different domain extensions e.g. .com, . URL_1 etc but that’s essentially how the system works.",
"A fundamental concept about the Domain Name System (DNS) is that the *protocol* is not owned by *anyone*. Same way the concept of the entire English language isn't owned by anyone, etc. DNS *as a protocol* is, in a thick nutshell, just a big fancy list that pair human-readable names (web domain addresses) to machine-usable names (IP addresses), and a bunch of rules that dictate the chain of command of whose list you can trust when you have multiple machines. To break that down a a bit... when you type \" URL_0 \" into the browser of a computer that has never been to that website before, it doesn't know where the server with that webpage is at. It needs an IP address, not a wordy name. So it asks a computer it trusts if it knows where to find it. If that computer doesn't know, it can ask a computer it trusts to know. And so on, and so forth, until you get to the computer that literally wrote the rule for it. This chain of command and the way computers ask each other like this is the DNS. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is, at this time, the entity that gets to decide who owns what website, as they are also the overseers of the world's largest DNS network via their subsidiary, the (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). If you want a website to point to the IP address for your server for everyone who looks up that address with ICANN's DNS system (which is almost everyone), you basically need to ask them permission. They need to voluntarily update their system so that everyone who comes knocking asking for the IP address to \"yourcooldomainwebsite.whatever\" will be told to go to your server's IP address. How do you do that? You pay them. Costs a lot of money to basically run the public Internet, gotta fund it somehow. Except, you probably won't pay them directly. You will likely be going through a domain registrar like GoDaddy, who acts as a middleman wholesaler. Why do these places exist? Because ICANN can't reasonably handle listening to every little request to buy a web domain around the entire planet, so they delegate that job to wholesalers. A big key word in that description of ICANN is that they own the *largest* DNS network. They don't \"own\" DNS any more than Merriam Webster \"owns\" English. You can actually choose to trust whoever you want to feed you DNS information. It's merely that basically every device, operating system, and piece of software that has the ability to choose who it trusts tends to come pre-assumed to trust ICANN for this information. You don't *have* to trust ICANN. I mean, there's a huge laundry list of reason why you probably *should*, but you don't *have* to. You can trust whoever you want. And whoever is the root of the system you end up trusting is effectively in charge of that big list of who owns what website. The point in me bringing this up is that the question was asked in the context of \"What gives whoever is on top *the right* to charge for owning a web domain?\" The simple answer to that, is that the system we live and work in is bathed in a general assumption that ICANN (or anyone who preceded them) was in control from the beginning. When you buy a new Windows PC, for example, it comes preinstalled with a list of certificates it trusts, signed through some chain of command back up to ICANN. Whenever you connect to a network, and you ask the local DNS authority to tell you what's what, you basically assume that authority has some chain of command back to ICANN. And if you don't trust them, you can verify it for yourself, and it will pretty much always be the case. So, ICANN has the authority to charge because... well, we let them do it. Nothing is stopping anyone from throwing their hands up in the air and starting their own root DNS authority. There are already [a few relatively notable alternatives]( URL_1 ). But good luck getting anyone to use (and more importantly, *trust*) you to keep it running, and keep it running better than ICANN. You either play by ICANN's rules to get into their system, or you toss away your access to the overwhelming majority of people who trust ICANN to tell them where websites are.",
"There is an agency that oversees the naming and records if names for the internet (icons or iana). When you initially pay, you are paying to establish your domain. If someone else owns the name, you need to work out the sale with them, then the database can be updated to show you as the owner, like registering your motor vehicle. Beyond that, when you pay your host, you are paying them for the space your sites takes on their servers (like cloud storage) there are fees that also cover the annual or bi annual fee to maintain your ownership, again like registering your motor vehicle. The agencies that oversees the naming are nonprofit so there are no crazy fees for it. If you want to start a website, shop for your host or registar."
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[
"url"
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[
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|
ixj3ir
|
Why do waves always face the beach/shore, and not any other direction?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g672ffj"
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"text": [
"A wave only breaks (rolls over on itself) when the depth of the water is 1.3 times the height of the wave. For example, a swell that is 3 feet high will break over when the bottom is 4 feet deep. So in the open ocean, waves just go up and down in swells. Gently sloshing water around in a flat-bottomed tub creates swells without waves. But if you put a ramp in to simulate a beach, then you’d get waves. But near shorelines where the water gets much shallower, those swells encounter resistance from the bottom and became unstable and fall over. It’s a mound of water, and the bottom encounters a lot of drag that slows it down while the top keeps moving at the same speed. Beaches where the sand slopes very gradually get those gentle waves since they begin breaking farther out, but if there’s a steep drop off at the edge of the beach, that causes the very abrupt big waves that surfers like. In case it’s not clear enough, waves only break in the direction from which they encountered underwater resistance."
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11
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
ixj6gp
|
Why does rubbing your head when you hit it make it feel better?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Nerves feel stretch (baro) temperature, pain, pressure. You can only feel one at a time. Pressure beats all in this game of rock, paper, scissors. When you cut yourself and squeeze the cut finger hard you feel the pressure but not the cut. Rubbing hard is a form of pressure, beating out pain.",
"Ortho nurse here with postgrad masters in pain management. It’s actually a proven phenomenon which can easily explained as if you are 5, called ‘gate control theory’. Basically two types of nerves: pain and touch, which merge into one and transmit the signal to your brain. By rubbing the area, the touch nerve is overstimulated and ‘shuts the gate’ to the pain nerve so you therefore get preference to the touch sensation felt.",
"The reason is that the nerves leading to the brain only have a limited \"bandwidth\". So if the \"cables\" have more than just pain data coming in, it can only pay so much attention to it if there is other signals coming in. This is why when you have a headache, a massage or masturbation can make it lessen. The sensory data coming in has to compete with the pain data coming in, and the brain makes the choice which data to prioritize.",
"Rubbing a sore knee or arm after a bump really does help make the pain go away, say scientists. Researchers have discovered that gentle stroking activates \"pleasure\" nerves beneath the skin, which then reduce the sensation of pain from other nerves",
"A pressure on a nerve on the skin creates a signal to the brain, and inhibits the signals from nearby nerves. This is mainly aimed to increase the presicion of locating the stimulus. When rubbing, many nerves are activated at the same time, which send signals and inhibit other nerves. So rubbing also inhibits the nerves that transmit the pain of a recent accident.",
"The nerve fibres that are stimulated by rubbing inhibit the nerve fires that are stimulated by pain, so touching, rubbing, etc Inhibit pain. This is called gate control theory of pain.",
"Gate theory. Touch signals actually reduce the transmission of pain signals at the spinal cord.",
"I'm not an expert but I think it has to do with confusing the nerves. You have the pain but rubbing your head gives the nerves a lot of other stimulation to focus on as well. Every hip injection I had I got a shot of lidocaine to numb my skin first. One day I went to a hip expert that wanted to give me a hip injection right at the ball and socket connection. The needle was 5times bigger than the other needles I got injections with. Instead of lidocaine this specialist took a pen cap and pressed it hard on the outside of my hip for a minute. He took the pen cap away and put the needle in the center of the circle indent the cap made. I didn't feel anything. It was way better than the lidocaine. It was because he tricked my nerves. I think rubbing your head when you bump it is the same concept.",
"You sense two different ways in your body (not just your head). One is a deep pain that tells you you're hurt so you can protect it/not exert yourself. Another is a touch sensation that tells you you are being hurt so you stop. The touch sensation sends signals to your brain fast so it's effective - the stove is hot, take your hand away now! So when that signal is going to your brain it overrides the deep pain signal because it's more important. That's why people grab their wound when hurt. Stub your toe? You instantly grab it. The grabbing sensation sends touch signals to the brain overriding the deep sensation. The touching is mild (unlike a hot stove) so it doesn't fully cancel the pain, but it does lessen it.",
"You can research pain gate theory if the explanations here don't cut it. Basically it gives your receptors something else to pay attention to.",
"It is because stimulation of pressure receptors and other tactile receptors can depress the transmission of pain signals from the same area. This effect is due to something called local lateral inhibition in the spinal cord. Due to lateral inhibition the pressure-excited neuron reduces the activity of its neighboring neurons(pain ones).",
"Pain receptors are activated by pressure. If you activate more receptors in the area surrounding the pain by applying pressure, you trick your brain into only knowing that many pressure receptors are activated and it dilutes the pain. Tou can do a fun trick with pressure receptors, a buddy, and two pens. Use the pens to touch buddy's back in 2 spots and ask if they feel 1 or 2 pens. The closer together the pens are, the more likely they will only feel 1 pen. Thats because they activated the same pressure receptor. This is why some areas do not feel better being rubbed, not enough receptors to trick your brain.",
"Nerves work by sending electric messages from around our body up to our brain. We have different types of nerves that send different messages at different speeds. The “pressure” message reaches our brain faster than the “pain” message because the nerve type it travels through is more insulated. More insulation = faster message speed (to a point). The thing is, our brain has a bit of trouble understanding multiple messages coming from the same place at the same time. Kind of like trying to listen to two different songs playing at once. And these messages don’t just come through once, they keep coming as lots of very short messages one after the other. Since the “pressure” messages come through faster our brain tends to hear that more clearly. This happens because the receiving end of the message is already full of “pressure” information, so there’s not enough space for the “pain” information to come through clearly. It’s very similar to the way painkillers work (they block pain receptors, taking up the information space that the “pain” message would usually go to)."
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
ixjchg
|
Why do cold temperatures make pain such as slaps/whips to the skin more painful, yet pain such as joint aches less painful?
|
• Cold temperatures such as ice packs, etc. for aches and sprains help reduce pain. • yet cold temperatures such as ambient temperature can makes aches more painful? • cold ambient temperatures make slaps to the skin hyper-sensitive
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"> yet pain such as joint aches less painful? I've never heard anyone say it makes this less painful",
"I'm not an expert or anything but I know that inflammation is the primary cause of joint pain. It reduces the flow of your joint fluid which causes your bones to grind. Applying ice to an area reduces inflammation and thus allows more lubricant to reach the area. As for why cold ambiance makes your skin more sensitive, I believe it's related to your nerves activating when exposed to the cold, much like how your fingers hurt when you trim the nails too much cause they're not used to the air. The awakened nerves are more sensitive since they all active now and thus speak louder. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong someone.",
"For your first point, ice packs can reduce pain by numbing the entire area the pack is applied to. This is basically a secondary effect because they are primarily used to combat the inflammation.Just like you feel movement is restricted in the area the ice pack is applied to, sensory neurons are also inhibited by the cold. In fact, in general neurons are numbed by extreme cold so that's why you generally feel less and feel restricted in your movements when you are in a snowstorm for example. However it is found that some cells that register pain (called nociceptors) still function when it's cold. In fact, mechanical pain receptors (the ones that react when you are slapped or squeezed) are more sensitive when it's cold! This may even cause a thing called thermal allodynia : this is when an action that normally is not painful, suddenly becomes painful because of the temperature - in this case the cold. In short this is because in general it becomes harder to relay signals and excite neuronal membranes when it's cold. But mechanical pain receptors become more easily activated with the cold. I could share an article that goes more in depth about why this is exactly but that would no longer make it suitable for ELI5."
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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ixjedr
|
What is the difference between Metadata and Data?
|
Particularly in regard to Australia's laws on data/metadata retention by Australia's National Security organisations.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Metadata is data about the data. For example, you make a phone call. The phone call and conversation itself is data but who you called, from where you called, how long you talked etc is the metadata.",
"If you had a breakfast this morning and you wanted to share it with someone . You would tell them what you had right? Toast, bacon, eggs, maybe some baked beans. This would be the 'data'. The information you wish to share. The metadata is all the information behind the scene. How did you have it? The plate size, the colour of the plate. With a knife and fork? You hands? This is the metadata. A common example in computer science is a photo. The data is the actual imagine you wish to share. The meta data is the size, lenses type, date, location",
"You have a text file with some notes. The content of that file - the text - is your data. The information about that file - the size, the location, the creation date, the date of its last modification - is your metadata."
],
"score": [
28,
6,
3
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixjg85
|
Keeping a laptop/phone always plugged to the power outlet kills the battery?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g673mv2"
],
"text": [
"No, it does not, for a couple of reaons. Firstly, battery charging circuits in your devices are smart enough to protect the battery from overcharging, including limiting the maximum capacity to \\~70%. When you plug in your device, power from the outlet is directly used for powering the device and for charging the battery. And hence, you don't \"discharge and recharge\" the battery at the same time, which is not possible. So, **it's a myth that charging and using your phone at the same time destroys your battery**. It doesn't. Secondly, it just doesn't work that way. Batteries have a specific voltage curve and a specific voltage where it's fully charged. For lithium-ion batteries, it's 4.2V. This voltage is referred to as the nominal cell voltage. When plugged into a power adapter, the circuitry of your device steps down or up the power into the required voltage, for example 4.2V. When batteries reach that voltage, load and supply voltage will both be equal to 4.2V, and no current will flow into the batteries. **In simple terms, batteries will stop charging on its own** provided a constant voltage source. This is what's referred as trickle charging. This basically means that overcharging (charging over the capacity of the battery) is not a thing, unless you're doing things completely wrong (like using a wrong charger for an unprotected battery). If you charge a 12.6V battery with a 15V power supply, the battery will pull current even after the battery reaches above 12.6V. That is overcharging. **A simple analogue:** Voltage is like balloons and air pressure. Let's say a balloon with 10 PSI of pressure is full (and putting more pressure will burst (overcharge) it. You can fill balloons with an air compressor (charger), but if the air compressor can only put out 10 PSI, then the pressure will equalize and the balloon won't pop no matter how long you're running the compressor."
],
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11
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixjnlg
|
What tax “loophole” allows rich people to pay less in taxes than middle class people?
|
Edit: I put loophole in quotations since I know they aren’t loopholes in the traditional sense but instead tax write offs, deductions etc.
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"the big one is the capital gains tax vs paycheck income taxes. Rich people make a lot of money from the sale of stock, but that sale is taxed at a much lower rate than income taxes. Another is that they can afford accountants who can spend the time to look for deductions, write-offs and other ways to reduce their tax liability.",
"Being able to pay for an accountant whose job it is to know the tax laws and what you can offset the tax you pay to the government, with what you're allowed to claim back, but the government dont tell you clearly what you can claim back and how.",
"Trusts, companies are another one. These effectively allow you to minimise tax by attributing income to a tax structure, where there are more options to write off income or disperse it among different people or entities, as opposed to being a normal employee.",
"The main difference is the taxation of income is very release to do, and you, as taxpayer, don’t choose when to receive income. But the way truly rich people make money is not from income. It’s from other ways: inheritances, capital appreciation, dividends and other stuff. Because those other things are not taxed as income, rich people generally pay lower tax.",
"The real question is how does someone lower their *taxable* income. The answer there is a combination of deductions, reducing the number of taxable sales of investments, and to earn *tax-exempt* income. A lot of people here are suggesting that capital gains tax is a loophole, but it isn't. Short term capital gains are taxed as ordinary income, long term capital gains are taxed using a separate grid according to your income. 0% for $0-$40,000, 15% for $40,001-$441,450, and 20% for incomes above $441,451. Again, this is not a loophole - it's a set grid based on your income and determined by the length of your holding period. You can avoid having your short term investment gains taxed at the ordinary income level by not selling the securities. You can avoid long term capital gains by not selling the securities. Many people who have large unrealized gains on these types of investments choose to borrow against the position instead of selling (and thus triggering a tax event). If you have a large enough investment portfolio it could be wise to take out a loan using the portfolio as collateral, as the interest rates charged by the bank/brokerage are typically lower than tax brackets. States and Municipalities offer debt that anyone can purchase. These bonds often pay out interest that is exempt from state, local, and federal taxes. Your income for those investments is tax-exempt. In order for it to make it worth your while though, since interest rates are so low, you would need a large amount of capital in order to live off the interest from those investments. Deductions and pre-tax expenses also allow someone to reduce their *taxable* income. Donations to charity, mortgage interest, medical insurance premiums, contributions to retirement accounts, etc. The point is that the tax brackets are the same for everyone - if someone has a lower effective tax rate it means they had a lower *taxable* income. The problem with our system is that we tax income, not wealth. If you have a large amount of wealth you can afford to invest in securities that pay tax-exempt income, borrow against your investment portfolio without actually selling the securities, and hire the best accountants to maximize your deductions which all result in having a low *taxable* income."
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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ixjw2y
|
Why do photos of mushroom clouds from atomic weapons often include strange bars and odd shapes inside? The image at the top of the 'Operation Plumbbob' wiki contains a prime example.
|
I've seen these regularly in my research on early-Atomic-era weapons and I've never found a satisfactory explanation!
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g6776kr"
],
"text": [
"I think that the effect in the top image on the wiki page from *Plumbbob Priscilla* is a vortex ring (like a smoke ring) in the rising superheated gas that the explosion created. The vortex contains warmer gas the background and is brighter, If you look at a video of the same explosion what happens is a lot clearer [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )"
],
"score": [
6
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[
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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ixktgs
|
What is the problem people have with SBMM (Skill Based Matchmaking)?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"Point 1. The biggest issue I think is it's so open to abuse. Say someone is really really good at the game. They get bored of fighting people that give them a challenge. Play like shit for a week and the matchmaking will put you in lower tier games, or even make a new account. Wipe the floor with everyone and boom, you just ruined that game for a whole lot of people. They will figure out how it makes the matches and will go sealclubbing as often as they want. Making the experience terrible for most new players, making them not continue playing, killing the game slowly from a dying playerbase. Essentially, the problem isn't so much the system, but the few players that openly abuse it. Point 2. How does it track your skill? Win/loss in team games? Well have fun if you got a random team of Rambo's that die alone. K/D? Well that just opens up for more abuse. Playing the objectives? Again, relies on a team non potato players.",
"The idea is good but the implementation of it might not be. People complain that it takes too long to find matches or that the games are not balanced enough, or both at the same time. This is all issues with the specific implementation used and not the concept itself. Part of the issue is that the players often set unreasonably high expectiations on the matchmaking. In addition most players prefer winning and often attribute losing to bad matchmaking rather then their lack of skills. And as people remember their own losses more then their own wins, especially the losses that were unavoidable due to a lack of skills on their teammates part, players tend to conclude that the matchmaking algorithm is bad.",
"Let's put it this way. You want to play football with your friends but one of your friends plays on a professional level. So now because of that you can't play casually and you are forced to play against other pros even though it could be your first time playing football.",
"People like to win games. Without SBMM, if you are better than average you'll win most of your games, because you'll mostly be playing against worse players. With SBMM, you'll win closer to half your games, as you'll be matched with players like yourself. On the other hand, if you are worse than average, SBMM will make you win more games as you get put with worse players. However, these below-average players are probably more casual in how much they play and care about the game, so they don't post online about it, while the above-average players are more invested in the game and more likely to be vocal with their complaints. So, you have a vocal minority of people complaining about SBMM. There are some other concerns, especially for games that struggle to matchmake well. If a game has a small playerbase, or requires a lot of players per match, it can be difficult to find enough players of the same skill level who are all searching for a match at the same time. This isn't too bad for average players, as there will probably be a lot of average players so they can all be grouped together well. But when making a match for super-skilled players, there just might not be enough super-skilled players online and searching for a match at the same time to make a match consisting of only super-skilled players. So, the matchmaking system might throw some above-average (but not super skilled) players in with them. Now this can result in a really bad experience for these above-average players, as the matchmaking system will frequently put them in games against super-skilled players, so they will lose a lot. This is mostly a problem for niche games with small populations, or battle royal games with very many players per match. There are some other issues, like people gaming the system to intentionally get put into lower-skilled matches so they can stomp, but mostly, people just prefer winning matches against weak players over having close matches against equally skilled players."
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|
[
"url"
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[
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|
ixl7do
|
Is there a way to learn which sirens 🚔 🚑 🚒 are which? Like a general guide?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g67d866"
],
"text": [
"It really depends on if your local or state governments decided to make siren use standardized. If you want to learn about sirens I suggest looking up police suppliers online and learn about the different manufacturers of sirens, Whelen, Federal Signal, Code 3, etc... Then look them up on YouTube and listen to what they sound like."
],
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3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
ixlhf1
|
How does the body knows when to go into puberty?
|
I understand how periodic processes like the menstrual cycle works, but how does the body know that it needs to go into puberty when it gets 12,13, 14 year old?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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],
"text": [
"Doctors do not completely understand the timing of the onset of puberty; a number of factors likely determine its onset. One theory proposes that reaching a critical weight or body composition may play a role in the onset of puberty. The increase in childhood obesity may be related to the overall earlier onset of puberty in the general population in recent years. Leptin, a hormone produced by fat cells (adipocytes) in the body, has been suggested as one possible mediator of the timing of puberty. In research studies, animals deficient in leptin did not undergo puberty, but puberty began when leptin was administered to the animals. Further, girls with higher concentrations of the hormone leptin are known to have an increased percentage of body fat and an earlier onset of puberty than girls with lower levels of leptin. The concentration of leptin in the blood is known to increase just before puberty in both boys and girls. Leptin, however, is likely only one of multiple influences on the hypothalamus, an area of the brain that releases a hormone known as gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), which in turn signals the pituitary gland to release luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). LH and FSH secretion by the pituitary is responsible for sexual development through regulation of the production of estrogen and testosterone. Genetic factors are likely involved in the timing of puberty, and the timing of puberty tends to \"run in families.\" Additionally, a gene has been identified that appears to be critical for the normal development of puberty. The gene, known as GPR54, encodes a protein that appears to have an effect on the secretion of GnRH by the hypothalamus. Individuals who do not have a functioning copy of this gene are not able to enter puberty normally."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixlt5e
|
Why do flies hang around us, and continue to land on us even after being swatted away multiple times?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g67gujy",
"g68wz3g"
],
"text": [
"Because we are very nutritious. Our sweat contains salt that flies need, and while they are lapping that up they are also lapping up some dead skin cells and some of the protein and other things in sweat that have even more nutrients in them.",
"We are tasty and don't move fast enough to be much of a threat to them. Its a risk they. Are prepared to take."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixmhmq
|
Why do so many customer support lines say "We're experiencing higher than normal call volume" when it they say it every time I call?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g67icg2",
"g67j6lt",
"g67tiej",
"g67ji3w",
"g67ivo5",
"g67iyk4",
"g68age3"
],
"text": [
"Because there are QUITE A FEW less people working those call centers than you might imagine. It's easier to tell you they're busy as opposed to only having like 3 people on the phone",
"Yes its new norm just because they dont want to hire more support. When i was working as customer supp we had approx. 4 sec waiting time between calls on normal day in team of 30 people. When some shit hits the fan i remember 40 min waiting queue for incoming calls. Its insane job and im glad af i quit.",
"Customer service is lying 'oh I'm so sorry that happened' means 'oh another one' 'oh that's strange we've not had that complaint before' means 'ah the damn sparkomatic's are sparking again, 50th time today, can't believe these suckers keep buying them and I have to pretend this problem is new for the 49th time' Oh sorry we don't have a bathroom means 'we do, but not you for you' 'we're expieriencing higher than normal call volume' means 'by reducing staff numbers to a well below adequate amount and overworking them we ensure that we wring every last penny out of these staff, they never have any 'dead time', dead time is dead profits. Sure it screws folks trying to call us, but they're the problem customers anyway so screw em' Which makes you feel better?",
"It serves as a psychological strategy. Its kind of like when you go to a busy restaurant and put your name in for a table. You usually ask “what is the wait?” The host/hostess is instructed to give you an estimate that is usually about 10 minutes longer than what they think. Lets say they tell you its about a 20 minute wait. Then when your name gets called 10 minutes later, you are in a good mood. Lets imagine that wait actually took 30 minutes. You are more likely to be upset by that point, shading your entire experience in a haze of dissatisfaction. Now, had you been originally told it would actually be a 35-40 minute wait, that true 30 min wait would have been a good experience. Our expectations play a big part in the level of satisfaction in our experience. Usually people calling a customer support line are already in a state of frustration, so anything that can be done to psychologically ease the mood of those callers is worth it.",
"The system is set up to play that message anytime the \"Average Wait Time\" is higher than a certain threshold. Let's say it's 5 minutes, but it can be any number they pick. Staffing is very hard for phone centers, as you have to schedule enough people to man the phones, but not too many, as you are wasting money at that point. So you do the best you can, but the difference between 1000 and 1200 calls an hour is substantial, but hard to predict. And all it takes is a newspaper article or a YouTube video or something you didn't anticipate to turn that 1200 calls per hour into 3000 calls per hour because people are freaking out about something. And the other issue is that the phone center may be purposely trying to save payroll costs and deliberately understaffing, but they do get measured by how long the average wait time is, how long the average call time is, and how happy the callers are with the resolution they were provided, and how polite and friendly the call center rep was. That's why you'll often get asked to do a survey after calling. But sometimes management doesn't care as someone is screaming about budgets in their staff meeting and so they have to take the hit on that and keep payroll down.",
"To set caller expectations. If someone knows it's going to be a long wait they'll somewhat less likely to either hang up or be as agitated when their call is finally picked up. Additionally with more companies shifting towards online support, trying to scare them with a potentially long wait may convince them to pursue that online support. Customer reps are able to respond to a much higher volume of inquiries via email/online support than they are taking calls, so it's a money saver.",
"The ELI5: They are lying. The LPT: To avoid companies that do this, before you buy their product or sign up for their service call their support line and see how long the wait is."
],
"score": [
28,
20,
13,
10,
6,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixmuym
|
Why is there such a small window in which astronauts can re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g67kc5j",
"g67ko9u"
],
"text": [
"If you go too steep down, you get into the thicker part of the atmosphere without time to slow down much, so your spacecraft experiences vastly more heating and you burn to ash. If you go too shallow, you kinda skip off of the thicker atmosphere like a flat stone on a pond. The trick is going in just right that you get slowed down by the thin part of the atmosphere and only gradually sink into the denser part when your speed is slow enough that you don't generate unsurvivable compression heating. Also, the paper thickness thing is *somewhat* misleading. Compared to the diameter of the planet, the atmosphere itself is also less thick than a finger in the basketball analogy. Still needs precision to do it well, but not a \"2 meters off and you die\" sorta deal.",
"If they come in to steeply they will still be moving to fast when they reach the thicker part of the atmosphere which will result in more heat than the craft can deal with and the destruction of the space craft. However because they are also using the earths atmosphere to slow the craft enough to deorbit if they come in too shallow they won't pass through enough atmosphere to lose sufficient speed to fall back to earth and will pass through the earths atmosphere and out the other side."
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixn0gu
|
What is the difference between teeth and bones?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g67m5sr"
],
"text": [
"They're entirely different things. Bones are living and constantly being remodelled during your life, which is why you can break a bone and it will heal over time. Teeth (apart from the pulpy bit in the middle) are essentially dead, which is why they \\*don't\\* heal themselves if you break one or it gets a hole in it. The material they're made of is pretty different as well."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixnkwh
|
How exactly do companies buy companies?
|
With the recent buyout of Bethesda for 7.5 Billion. How exactly do companies buy companies for such high values? Do they legit get 7.5 billion in cash or through some other method?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g67nu66",
"g67xg5a"
],
"text": [
"Ownership deals, financial loans, patent trades, cash, stocks, its a mix. Some companies have the cash to offer 7.5 Billion in cash, it really is different every time. There is no one size fits all for buying a company.",
"In this specific case, it is an all cash deal. Microsoft had $130bn of cash and equivalents as of June. They basically have a bunch of bank accounts with a lot of very high quality debt instruments (like US treasury bonds) parked all over the world. They called up their banks, sold 7.5bn of these bonds, and sent the money over to ZeniMax. This is not how these deals are typically done though. Microsoft just has a ton of cash on hand. If you have questions about how these things get done, I’m happy to answer them. I’m an investment banker, this kind of stuff is quite literally my job!"
],
"score": [
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixnnjg
|
Why do humans like soft things?
|
Soft bedding, animal fur, babies skin, cashmere sweaters... there seems to be a large list of things that make people exclaim, “oh, that’s so soft”, but not many instances of people tending towards hard objects.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g688mib",
"g6891or"
],
"text": [
"When's the last time you've worn a metal sweatshirt?",
"Why would we want to touch/like things that could hurt us?"
],
"score": [
12,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixojc2
|
Why does crying tire you out physically?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g67ug9s",
"g69fpv0"
],
"text": [
"The tears leaving your body causes you to get dehydrated which causes your body to work harder and uses energy. Crying is also often accompanied with heavy breathing which causes stress on your body and requires energy to ensure the oxygen level is maintained. Finally, the strong emotions can cause your body to go into panic mode or fight or flight which tires out your nervous system causing your body and mind to require time for recovery.",
"Tears act as a safety valve by releasing excess stress hormones such as cortisol. If left unchecked, chronic elevated levels of these hormones can cause physical ailments and play havoc with mood. As stress often precedes a good cry, the sense of calm often felt afterward is at least in part due to hormonal release."
],
"score": [
36,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixp9jg
|
how is comic sans design murder?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g67zsya",
"g680w99"
],
"text": [
"It isn't - it is all about context. If you want to have comic sans on the packaging of a child's toy, it is completely acceptable. Having comic sans as your font at your gradma's funeral is not acceptable. Most of the times people make fun of comic sans, they are actually making fun of comic sans being used in situations where an other font would be more appropriate.",
"\"comic sans\" is supposed to be comical. That's why \"comic\" is in the name. That makes it great if you want to use it on a child's lemonade stand. That makes it awful if you want to use it on the letterhead of a law firm. Making fun of comic sans is about making fun of the absurd places that people use it."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixpit8
|
When a big company buys another big company for let says $10bn, where the money come from, and goes? For the receiving company, to which the money goes? Shareholders? CEO? Both? And Who exactly pays, from what wallet does the money come from?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6802u6"
],
"text": [
"It goes to whoever owns the company. In the case of a private company, ownership is private, and either an individual or a business. With a public company, ownership means all outstanding shares, which have to be purchased back at the agreed upon rate (essentially, the purchase price divided evenly amongst all shares)."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixqgva
|
What is Neo-Liberalism?
|
I still sometimes have a hard time understanding this and would love a little help.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68bue7",
"g6866mj"
],
"text": [
"It's a poorly defined term but the general consensus (in the UK at least) seems to be that neoliberalism is associated with the following traits: 1) Generalised preference for private ownership & provision of utilities / infrastructure etc rather than public 2) Emphasis on private intervention for public problems 3) Deference to NGOs and think-tanks rather than domestic lawmakers and grassroots organisation 4) Strong affiliation to an imagined 'rules based international order' and other such intangible concepts Neoliberalism in practice is arguably nothing more than a marginally more progressive cousin of neoconservatism. On economic issues there's barely a hair's width between the two camps, though they tend to differ on social issues.",
"You can think of it as an intellectual backlash to the ideas about economics that were common in the immediate post-WWII period. The governments in many wealthy countries took a hands-on approach to the economy, often with a lot of state-owned industry. The period from the end of WWII until the early 70s were a time of great prosperity for the Western world, so nobody really questioned whether so much government intervention was a good idea. When growth slowed and crises happened in the 70s, many people were looking for explanations, and one theory that was put forth was that governments were meddling too much in the economy. & #x200B; Also, confusingly, the subreddit /r/neoliberal doesn't really push the common definition of neoliberalism that I described above. It's basically a US-centric, center-left subreddit."
],
"score": [
12,
10
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixqjmm
|
Why do some injuries leave permanent scars while others heal without a mark?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68lsgw"
],
"text": [
"It depends on the injury and genetics. Your skin is made up of different layers, the top layers get replaced regularly to heal damage and prevent skin cancer. The lower skin layers do the replacing of skin cells and house nerves and hair roots. If an injury only damages the top skin layers, the lower skin layers can replace the lost cells. If the lower skin layers are damaged, they can't replace themselves and expose your insides to potential harm, so they get patched up with scar tissue. But the body does work on replacing or at least softening up scar tissue you whole life. Scars do fade. Tl;dr shallow injuries only damage skin cells that are meant to be replaced anyways. Deeper cuts actually hurt the permanent skin cells and leave scars."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixqkxx
|
when it comes to environmental impact, does "net-zero" mean there is no impact? Or doesn't mean that there is still negative impacts, but there are also positive impacts?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g688psw"
],
"text": [
"It means that while the negative is there and has an impact, the positive is at least equal to the negative. For instance, a factory could be producing a fuck ton to CO2, but planting so many trees that yearly, those trees offset that easily."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixqm87
|
What makes early techno like The Prodigy so technically difficult or impressive?
|
The discussion in this video's comments are difficult to understand for anyone who is not technically versed in music production: [ URL_1 ]( URL_0 ) What made tracks like this so impressive to create back in the 90s beyond just a lack of plugins and better software? How is it any different from the decades of music production before it by other bands?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g688hqr"
],
"text": [
"It’s the creativity and ingenuity needed to make these songs in the 90’s that makes them technically impressive. Most (if not all) electronic music back then was made on hardware that were both expensive and had very limited possibilities (when compared to what you get with today’s hardware or software). IMO this what makes it so impressive."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixqmbp
|
If Amazon doesn’t turn a profit, how is Jeff Bezos so wealthy?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g686k7h",
"g687ici"
],
"text": [
"Amazon spends all the money it earns on expanding its buisiness currently, which does mean no actual profit on the recordbooks, thus no profit going to the owners of the company (bezos and shareholders). But this does have the habit of boosting up stock price because this action boosts potential future profits. Bezos owns a lot of stock as the original owner of the company, so thats how all this works.",
"Firstly, Amazon does make a profit, and has for many years. But let's expand your question to \"why are unprofitable tech companies valued so highly and have such rich owners?\" This happens because people see these unprofitable companies as having the potential to be super-profitable in the future. Companies will often be ok with being unprofitable early on, as long as the company is growing. Imagine you are a new hot dog company, and you earned $1 million dollars making hot dogs in your first year. You could keep the $1 million dollars, and say you made $1 million dollars in profit, or you could spend the $1 million dollars to open up a second hot dog factory. If you spend all the money, that means you didn't make a profit that year, but now you have twice as many factories and can hopefully earn twice as much money next year. Investors who want to buy into your company will often prefer the \"unprofitable-but-growing\" strategy over the \"profitable-but-not-growing\" strategy, so they value growing companies highly."
],
"score": [
16,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixqraj
|
how does insurance deductibles work?
|
And what’s the difference between meeting a deductible and a copay? I asked HR at work and they didn’t explain it clearly enough. Can anyone explain and give me an example?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g687r5j"
],
"text": [
"A copay is your portion of the cost of a doctors visit, procedure, test. For example, if you go see your doctor, and have a $20 copay, then you need to pay the doctor $20 every time you see them. Copays can apply to almost anything, like ER visits, X-rays, etc, depending on how your policy is written. A deductible is the amount of money you have to spend out of pocket each year before insurance kicks in. You could have a low deductible of a couple hundred dollars, or a high deductible of a couple thousand dollars. So going back to my doctor's office visit. If you have not met your deductible yet, you would pay your $20 copay, and the doctor would bill your insurance for the rest, lets say $180. If you have a $300 deductible and have not met it yet, the insurance company will pay the doctor zero, and you will owe the doctor $180. But then the next visit in the same year, since $180 of your deductible is met, they will apply $120 to your deductible, then pay the doctor $60. So you would owe your doctor $120 on top of the $20. Then the next time in the same year, you would only owe the $20 copay, and the insurance would pay for the rest. Hopefully this helps."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixqs3v
|
how does an old television cause an entire village to lose its WiFi signal?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g688acy"
],
"text": [
"It is explained in the article, \"After carrying out a plethora of tests, engineers had a theory that the problem could be caused by a phenomenon called single high-level impulse noise (SHINE), in which an appliance emits electrical interference that impacts broadband connectivity.\" Older CRT TV's were not shielded to prevent EMI (electromagnetic interference) very well or at all. There was no need back then because we didn't have the plethora of high-frequency devices we have today (wifi, cell phones, bluetooth, even 80's-90's cordless phones). Basically, the TV's interference was acting as a jammer, unintentionally of course."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixqtmn
|
why does it cost so much to put people into space?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g687nvr",
"g687u3a"
],
"text": [
"1. Escape velocity is a thing 2. It requires a lot of fuel to accelerate a stationary object to the escape velocity needed to get into space 3. It requires even more fuel for every pound of material you want to send into space (because it will take more fuel to create the higher energy to push the larger mass to that same escape velocity) 4. Rocket fuel is fucking expensive",
"Putting people in to space really isn't the expensive part. It's the getting them back down safely that really adds to the cost."
],
"score": [
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixr1ds
|
Why do newscasters always speak with the same specific inflections?
|
I’ve noticed no matter where the newscast is from, all news reporters speak in the same cadence that you would never use in real life. Why do they do this?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g689m3x",
"g68dhay"
],
"text": [
"They’re trained to. Not all journalism schools have a formal voice class as a requirement for graduation, but many do, and even if they don't a certain amount of coaching about speech and delivery is a part of the curriculum. This is done this because having a clear, consistent delivery makes the news easier to listen to and digest for a viewer. Most news anchors speak slightly slower than a normal cadence, fully annunciate every word, change tone throughout the sentence and have a fairly neutral, flat accent. That leads to a consistent \"broadcaster voice.\" Contrast that to, say, an anchor who speaks in a fast monotone, runs words into each other, and has a thick Boston accent. Who would you rather listen to reading the news?",
"What is funny is that UK newspeople have a different way of sounding like a newscaster than US newspeople do. & nbsp; And there are different generations of it. Think of the old newsreels with that high-pitched almost whiny shouting. Then the RP which sounds not-too different than Prince Charles. And then the 'northern' inflections which some people parody by saying that newscasters accentuate the wrong syllable. \"And why, according to police superintendent Nelson, the suspect DID reach FOR the gun.\""
],
"score": [
29,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixrtcz
|
Why do games look choppy at 24fps but movies look fine?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68dtfk",
"g68dtzo"
],
"text": [
"Movies are recorded at 24 FPS and played back at 24 FPS. Any motion that happens in that 1/24th of a second when recording results in blurs on the recording, so when we play it back, we get motion blur like we expect. With computer graphics, you draw 100% pristine frames every time with no motion blur, so when it's played back at a low FPS, you can see the choppiness.",
"Motion blur. A videogame creates a series of static photos, without motion between them. Meanwhile, a movie captures real life motion, so the motion in each frame is slightly blurred. This blur makes the motion feel less choppy."
],
"score": [
14,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixs439
|
Why are tongue-twisters difficult to say even in our heads?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68wb6o"
],
"text": [
"When we read silently or \"speak\" silently in our heads, we do something called subvocalization. Basically, our brain acts as if we're speaking and processes the words as if they're being spoken (the muscles in our larynx even move slightly as if we're speaking). In other words, our brain doesn't draw that big of a distinction between when we speak out loud and when we think silently to ourselves. A tongue-twister isn't difficult to say because it's hard on the tongue; it's difficult because it's hard on the brain. Similar sounds produce similar neural patterns, and so a tongue-twister with a lot of similar sounds produced at a really fast rate basically overwhelms the brain a little bit."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixs93t
|
How can dropping a gun make it discharge?
|
I’ve read a whole bunch of stories about people accidentally dropping guns and them going off but AFAIK the trigger has to be pulled in order for it to shoot so how can dropping one make it shoot?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68gxwl",
"g68hr6m",
"g68h27z",
"g68i4vx",
"g68ktcw"
],
"text": [
"Guns are simple, precision machines. If the parts in them are made correctly, they will work the way that they're supposed to. If certain components are out of spec (too big, too small, the wrong shape, too thick or too thin, etc.) that can cause things to work improperly. Generally, only poorly made guns will fire when you drop them. Famously, Taurus was forced to issue a recall several years ago when several of their guns either went bang when they shouldn't or wouldn't go bang when they should. There's a very famous (in the gun world) video where someone is able to run a mag through a Taurus just by shaking it.",
"It is not pulling the trigger which makes the cartridge detonate, it is the impact of the firing pin on the firing cap that does this. And in a safely designed and maintained gun this will only happen by pulling the trigger. However when you add energy to the gun through an impact there are a lot of internal components that can move in ways that was not intended that can cause the gun to fire even without anyone pulling the trigger. A simple case is with the old classic western revolvers that you have seen in movies. If you load up the cylinder full of bullets the best way to carry it is by resting the hammer on one of the cartridges. But this means that any force that pushes on the rear of the hammer is pushing the firing pin into the firing cap and possibly detonating it. However if you were carrying it with the hammer back there is only a tiny lip of metal keeping the hammer back so any sharp movement can cause it to slip and the hammer drops even without anyone pulling the trigger. Modern revolvers do have safety mechanisms to prevent the force of the hammer striking the cartridge unless the trigger is pulled. However if this is not maintained or designed correctly it could fail. The gunslingers in the wild west usually did not load the cylinder all the way in order to leave an empty chamber to safely rest the hammer on. And there were revolvers that allowed you to drop the hammer between two chambers so it rested on the cylinder wall instead of on a cartridge.",
"Older guns were especially prone to this. In older guns the firing pin would rest against the primer. The forces from dropping the gun were enough to cause the firing pin to strike the primer and cause it ti fire.",
"Depends on the gun. Older revolvers had the hammer resting on the firing pin. Dropping the revolver could cause the hammer to press against the firing pin, discharging the gun. This is why people only loaded five shots in old six shooters, with the hammer resting on an empty chamber. With a modern semi-automatic, there are plenty of reasons. There are various moving parts within the gun that move to release the spring-loaded striker, and dropping it can make those parts move, discharging the gun. What you are talking about are those guns that have trigger safeties which disconnect these moving parts from the striker, only connecting them when the trigger is pulled. Alternatively, pulling the trigger may push up a pin to disengage a safety built into the firing pin or striker. Obviously, a flawed design in any of these can still result in discharge. Sig Sauer had a different problem with its P320. It passed all the normal drop safety tests, but failed a higher drop at a specific angle. It turns out the inertia of the trigger could keep it moving when the gun hit the ground, effectively letting gravity pull the trigger enough to disengage the drop safety. To fix it they lightened the trigger and a couple other components so that it no longer had enough inertia.",
"There are a couple ways this can happen. One is simply that the trigger may catch on something as it falls. There's an old saying that \"a falling knife has no handle.\" A similar philosophy applies to guns, except instead of accidentally stabbing whatever they hit they can discharge and shoot someone/something far away. Trigger guards and safeties help mitigate this risk a lot, as does keeping the area clear of clutter. Another occurs in guns that have a hammer resting against the back of a bullet. To fire this spring-loaded hammer is pulled back and then released when the trigger is pulled. In this setup if the hammer has enough mass then it can be knocked away from the bullet, then pulled back into the bullet by the spring. In an extreme case this could set off the bullet. A variant of that setup occurs in guns that have a floating firing pin. Typically in rifles the hammer strikes a firing pin which is allowed to slide forward into the bullet. In some guns this firing pin is held in the back position by a spring, but in others the firing pin is freely allowed to slide forward and back within its groove. If you cause enough of an impact then this firing pin can slide forward into a bullet with enough force to set it off. The SKS is a rifle that is notable for commonly being equipped with a floating firing pin."
],
"score": [
29,
11,
5,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixs9lo
|
How does the liquid in hand soap become foamy when you squeeze it out?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68hll4"
],
"text": [
"I’m pretty sure that foaming liquid hand soap is different than regular hand soap in that it contains more water and the pump head expands from a narrow tube to a wide one in order to drop pressure and suck air in creating turbulence which foams up the soap as it exits."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixsdvh
|
How do children interpret death?
|
For context, my family has suffered a loss, and my (autistic) child is struggling to grasp the finality of it. All help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68lat2",
"g69gjir"
],
"text": [
"It unfortunately isn't that simple to do, children have to learn what death is the same way they have to learn everything else. A lot of kids shows/movies try to teach it in a way kids can understand. The example that comes to mind is from disneys The Lion King, with the circle of life as well as Simba's dad dying. with regards to your child having autism, maybe try asking for suggestions from r/autism, or r/Autism_Parenting, or other autism focused subreddits, where people who have personal experience might be able to give you some suggestions. I wish I could give you some clear steps to follow, Sorry for your loss.",
"I feel like it's easier now that children are being raised in a more technological environment. They now understand phones and computers and electronics, many times before they can walk or speak. They can understand that these devices need power to work, and without power (energy) they turn off. They \"die.\" So once a pet or a person doesn't have any more energy left, they can't function anymore. People don't have batteries or cables like those devices do, so once they run out, they run out for good. If your child can continue the line of reasoning, you can explain that's why sleep and eating healthy is important. We can permanently run out of life energy, but doing those things can stretch our lifespan and make sure that the energy we do have lasts as long as possible."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixtjpf
|
Why do download speeds always seem to drop-off towards the end of a download?
|
It seems like any time I download a file, it always slows to a complete crawl for the last few percent of the download. When downloading a game through Steam for example, I can get speeds of up to 30MB/s, but the last 5ish percent of the download seems to take as long as the preceding 95 percent. Why is this? I have a couple basic PC repair certifications, but this is one thing I've never understood.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68t062",
"g695meg",
"g692v81"
],
"text": [
"Next time this is happening in Steam, open the downloads page and check if it’s actually showing high usage for Disk instead of Network. Generally once the actual downloading is finished, it can still have to decompress some files or move them around to different places, so it doesn’t show the download as complete (implying the game is playable) until that last step is done too.",
"Often downloads gets split into multiple connections. So at the start you would get 10 times 1MB/s but at the end only 1 isn't done yet causing the speed to drop.",
"When you still need the whole file, the computer can download any part of the file at the highest speed it can. But towards the end, it only needs the files it doesn't have. Think if you were taking handfuls of rice from one container to the next without being able to pour it. Once you got to the bottom, you are having to pick up individual pieces of rice if you want it all (which you do)"
],
"score": [
7,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixtr2d
|
what is a tv license?
|
I keep hearing some British Youtubers complain about paying for a tv license. What is it? How is it different than paying for cable?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68puwk",
"g68pyvh",
"g68t80z"
],
"text": [
"In the UK, Brits pay a tax for having a TV. This was a way of making people who had a TV pay for the BBC. It was a way of creating a taxpayer funded TV station without having people who didn't own TV's bitching about funding other peoples things.",
"It's a licence in the UK which you should be paying to watch terrestrial TV and live services such as iPlayer. It's what funds the BBC, however there is many debates going on around whether the fee should be abolished in favour of a subscription model for the BBC, which it should. If you do not watch TV, and only stream Netflix and such, you do not need a TV licence. Many of the younger generation these days do not bother getting one once they move out their parents. It's around £120 a year \"roughly\"",
"Its basically a tax that pays for the bbc. However you don't need to pay it if you don't watch any live TV, I.e. you only watch Netflix. Of course this is hard to prove. There was a case where someone in Scotland didn't have to pay, and could prove they didn't watch live TV by the fact they couldn't get a signal. That being said, its about £120 a year, and for that you get all the bbc TV channels, all the bbc radio stations, including regional ones. Bbc iPlayer. A their websites with content, many of them educational and probably much more I don't know about. For 120 quid a year, I think its a bargain. Also - no adverts on bbc TV channels - their money comes from the licence fee not advertising."
],
"score": [
14,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixu2zr
|
How come humans can eat really hot or cold stuff and be fine but if a certain animal eats something too hot or too cold they puke?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68rp2u"
],
"text": [
"* Animals don't cook. * The food they would eat in the wild doesn't vary too much in temperature. * And so they haven't evolved to eat things that a very hot or very cold (relative to their environment.) * Humans have had fire for a long time and so we have evolved to eat hot things."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixu3ax
|
Why do balloons make such a loud sound when they pop?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68uag4"
],
"text": [
"Just in case you don't know yet, let's talk about what sound is: sound is differences in air pressure. When air hits your ear and it alternates between different pressures like high, low, high, low, high, we experience that as sound. When a balloon pops, the stretched elastic retracts and gets out of the way of the air inside and outside of the balloon very, very fast. Suddenly you have all the high pressure air from inside the balloon mixing with the lower pressure air outside of where the balloon was. So that high pressure air suddenly spreads out from where the balloon was. When that high pressure air smacks into your ears you hear a loud sound. The loudness largely has to do with the pressure difference. For a fully inflated latex balloon that's around 14-15 PSI. A 14 PSI difference in air pressure is about 117 decibels, which is the loudness of an ambulance siren."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixur09
|
Why does food and drink have a different flavour at different temperatures?
|
Specifically why do a lot of drinks taste better cold?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g68wkki",
"g68xuik"
],
"text": [
"Two of the major components of taste are texture and aroma. Warmer foods have different texture than cooler foods - think of things like butter, which is solid at room temperature but melts at hotter temperatures. Or how pizza gets hard when it cools. And aroma is dependent on temperature too. Warmer things give off more gas, which makes them smell stronger (that's why you can smell a pie being baked all over the house, but a room temperature pie doesn't have that strong of a smell.) Some foods have different compounds in them that become gases at different temperatures, and sometimes you need to eat them cold so that those compounds don't become gases! For example lavender is a pretty nice aroma at room temperature, and you can bake or make iced tea with lavender buds and it'll taste pretty good... but when you put lavender buds in boiling water they pretty much smell like Vick's Vaborub.",
"Shorter answer, chemical reactions and matter state changes caused by temperature differences make noise and mouth happy"
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixvkoi
|
If big bang happened 13.8 Billion years ago and observable universe is 46 Billion light years vast, so do we have any clue on what happened before the big bang if we can see past that?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g691hfd",
"g692is6",
"g691nuw"
],
"text": [
"Hubble’s Law states that the space expands because of the big bang, and this expansion pushes light further away than it’d travel by its own, just like a wave pushing a surfboard over itself, and this is why the light travelled more than it should by the time the universe exists. (english isn’t my first language tho, sorry)",
"We can't see past the Big Bang (we actually can't even see quite *to* the Big Bang). The radius of the visible universe is longer than 13.8 billion lightyears because space itself is expanding. The spot from which that light was emitted is much further away from us now than it was when the light was emitted.",
"No. The current models of physics break down as they try to predict what happens near that event. The consensus is that there needs to be a theory that combines gravitation and quantum mechanics before we could make sense of the exact moment of the beginning of the universe. Even that theory might not guarantee that there would be good predictions of what (if anything) preceded it. (Talking about it in the language of \"time\" like before and after starts to make less sense because we understand time exists within this universe but there is no certainty of such a property before/outside/beyond this universe)"
],
"score": [
6,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixvo9k
|
Why checking your credit score lowers it if you need to know it's good to get loans and such.
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g691rwy"
],
"text": [
"Checking your own credit history just to see what's on there generally doesn't leave a note on the credit history and thus lenders can't see that it happened. A lender checking your credit history to make a lending decision does, however, leave such a note. Generally speaking, someone seeking to open new lines of credit might be more likely to have problems paying back loans, hence the negative impact."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixvzr3
|
Why do rape victims have rape fantasies?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g695tev",
"g693jk3",
"g693k1c",
"g693kt5"
],
"text": [
"I wholeheartedly agree with the other answers but wanted to expand a little more. As noted, a lot of women have “rape” fantasies. But, based on those I’ve heard from friends, they aren’t REALLY rape fantasies. They are fantasies where someone else makes all the decisions, exercises all the control, and the woman gets to enjoy being the object of overt, unequivocal lustful pursuit by someone she finds attractive without having to deal with the social or moral implications attached to deciding whether or not to sleep with someone. Even (especially?) if you’ve experienced trauma, the desire to feel attractive, pursued, and to just be passive and accept pleasure makes total sense. In reality, rape is nothing like that. In reality, rape is having sex with someone you don’t want to, when you don’t want to. Genuine powerlessness is terrifying and diminishing. (And if you think there’s emotional conflict and guilt after consensual sex, it’s NOTHING compared to the shit you experience with non-consensual sex!) So far, no one has shared any rape fantasies that involve the dynamic of being forced to have sex when they truly don’t want to have sex with someone they truly aren’t attracted to. If I do hear one of those from a trauma survivor, I’ll ascribe it to the aforementioned explanation - an attempt to own the trauma and process the experience. Seriously, it’s a good question and thank you for putting it out there. Anticipation of judgment had to have been scary.",
"It's a coping mechanism for a lot of rape survivors. Rape fantasies in general are extremely common for women, with somewhere from 37-51% of women reporting that they have them. So it's certainly nothing to be ashamed about. Developing a rape fantasy as a rape survivor can help you recontextualize your trauma in a setting where you actually have all the power, rather than having power taken from you without your consent. It's a powerful tool that really does help a lot of rape survivors, including myself. You seriously have nothing to be ashamed about.",
"In a fantasy you have some element of control. It's that control that you lost in the attack.",
"No psychology major here, but I would wager that building a scenario one has control over would help with the trauma."
],
"score": [
41,
27,
15,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixw4vb
|
Why do people blame government for failing economy?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g694po1"
],
"text": [
"The government regulates the economy. The government is literally the only reason that money is able to exist and retain its value. The government dictates how much money exists, how it flows, how it is taxes, what it can be spent on, and so on. The economy is the response of people in aggregate to their world and productivity. The only factors that should influence it are the physical environment (in large part controlled by the government, as infrastructure), the law (duh, govt), and culture (also largely in control of the government)."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixws9f
|
Why are most older music videos on YouTube uploaded all around the same time?
|
I’ve noticed there is a whole host of music videos uploaded in late 2009. These were all music videos released prior to this day. Did the music rights on YouTube change on this day? Why was everything uploaded then and not earlier?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g698tuj"
],
"text": [
"Most of them are under VEVO so my educated guess would be that VEVO was created around this time, and acquired the rights to upload the videos then. Don't forget that YouTube wasn't the behemoth that is today before the 2010. Right at the 2010-mark was when YouTube exploded. Music videos were still played in music tv-channels like MTV, VH1, and random local channels with the live-chat bar on the bottom. TL;DR: 2009-2010 was probably when music videos made the jump from TV to Internet thanks to VEVO. It was an outstanding move on their part."
],
"score": [
12
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixwtv5
|
How are bots utilized by scalpers able to avoid failsafes most websites have in place today, such as captchas & active fingerprinting?
|
Given all the news about bots snatching up the PS5 & Xbox preorders that recently went on sale, I think it would be very beneficial for more of us to understand these kinds of things. I’d like to think I have a more technical background than most (code in a few languages, Linux user, etc), and yet I’m still perplexed by how this is done.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69i0xf"
],
"text": [
"Some CAPTCHAs are simply out of date and can be solved with pretty good reliability by AI now. The development of tasks to foil AI which a) can be reliably solved by humans and b) new tasks can be *generated* mechanically, is a bit of an arms race with the development of AI itself. CAPTCHAs which can't be solved mechanically, can be outsourced to humans in a lot of ways, often through systems which work roughly the same way as Mechanical Turk. Someone could be just sitting there solving hundreds of CAPTCHAs in a row for a few bucks an hour. Or a hundred such people. One clever approach which some people have used, if they can operate some other high-traffic website like a free porn or piracy site, is they will \"re-gift\" a CAPTCHA from one site to the other. You receive a CAPTCHA from the Ticketmaster site, you take that image and, real quick, re-display it as a CAPTCHA on your own shady site, someone solves it, and then your bot inputs that solution at Ticketmaster. If your shady site gets frequent enough traffic, this can all happen before the original CAPTCHA expires. Other things like active fingerprinting are sometimes approached by using stolen or fake social media accounts. Some botnet operators farm hundreds or thousands of fake social media accounts, making them friends with each other, posting fake comments on each other's fake pictures, so that they aren't easily identified as fake - at least, not by automated means."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixx603
|
why is radiation a treatment plan for cancer but if you go to radiated places it can cause cancer?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69b9kx",
"g69fetj"
],
"text": [
"Radiation kills and mutates cells. If you are exposed to a bunch of radiation spread throughout your body, it will kill and mutate cells in many ways, one way is to cause cancer. But radiation therapy isn't exposing your whole body to radiation. Radiation therapists use a bunch of math to figure out the best way to target the radiation to hit the tumor without exposing the surrounding tissues as much as possible. Obviously any tissues between the tumor and the radiation \"gun\" get exposed, but this limits how much radiation the rest of the body gets. So if they are treating a tumor in your lung, your head and tummy and legs etc won't get exposed. I believe they also use leg blankets to provide extra protection to the areas that aren't being treated. My Ex-Brother-in-Law is a radiation therapist. It's actually a pretty interesting job. You know how people always say in school how they'll never use a bunch of the stuff they learned? well, when it comes to math, a radiation therapist uses a ton of what they learned in school. The better the math and the better the therapist the better the outcome of the treatment.",
"If you slip and fall on a knife, it can kill you. When a doctor uses a knife, it can heal you. It's all able where and how it's applied. Same for radiation."
],
"score": [
17,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixx838
|
Why are there dust allergies if all dust is different?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69carc"
],
"text": [
"Its not the dust people are allergic to, its the feces of the dust mites that live in the dust."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixxece
|
how are new mental disorders discovered, categorized, and added to the DSM?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69ekwz"
],
"text": [
"The same way as all other diseases: 1) see a bunch of “sick” patients 2) notice a pattern in some sick patients 3) publish “hey I noticed this pattern. Could it be significant?” 4) other people see the pattern (if they don’t, nothing usually happens). They publish stuff corroborating your pattern. 5) a professional society (like APA) tries to decide if your pattern is different enough to be its own thing 6) people keep doing research on it. Sometimes they find a cause or treatment 7) occasionally, your disorder is merged into another one later And that’s pretty much how you get in the book."
],
"score": [
14
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixxhs3
|
Why do paper straws make soda go INSANE
|
Now, this was a previous post, but it never got any answers, so I wanted to try and see if anyone knew now. Anyway, when I put my paper straw even just into the pop, it makes it fuzz. Then, when I try to drink it, it just starts spraying everywhere. I really want to know by because it's interesting and because it would be useful to try and avoid from this happening.
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69f59l"
],
"text": [
"Same reason why mentos candies makes pop explode. Gases dissolve more in liquids under pressure. CO2 is forced into the water under high pressure, and kept that way in the pressurized bottle or can. When you open it, there is now way more CO2 than naturally wants to be there at air pressure. However, it can't just rapidly form gas, it needs a trigger. This is called nucleation, and starts from \"weak\" points if you will, where the gas can more easily form. Shaking it and mixing air in is obviously is a trigger. As is another material, even the smooth side of the a glass will cause bubbles to form. A rough surface, more surface area along the jagged surface, is even better. This would be paper straw over plastic. Mentos has a very rough surface with a lot of holes for for the gas to from, so violently explodes."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixxvpe
|
What is a "Best Boy"?
|
Whenever I watch a film, every time without fail there will be something called a "Best Boy" in the End Credits. What is it and what does it do?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69otyf",
"g69fhip",
"g69fjcm",
"g6aasdl"
],
"text": [
"On Reddit, this is any photo of and ostensibly male dog or cat. In film and theater, a Best Boy is equivalent to a Foreman or crew lead. In the electrical department the chief/head electrician is called the \"Gaffer\" and chief of the lighting and rigging department is called the \"Key Grip.\" Sometimes the two departments are combined. The titles Best Boy Gaffer and Best Boy Grip are also used, respectively. The best boy is the most senior worker beneath the department chief. This term may have originated from electricians. The best boy would be the most senior apprentice working under a master electrician. The term Gaffer or \"Godfather\" may occasionally be used outside of film for a master or lead electrician.",
"Best boys are responsible for the day-to-day operation of the lighting or grip department. Their many responsibilities include the hiring, scheduling, and management of crew; the renting, ordering, inventory, and returning of equipment; workplace safety and maintaining discipline within their department; completing timecards and other paperwork; stocking of expendables; loading and unloading production trucks; planning and implementing the lighting or rigging of locations and/or sound stages; coordinating with rigging crews and additional photography units (if applicable); handling relations with the other production departments; overseeing the application of union rules (where relevant); and serving as the day-to-day representative of the department with the unit production manager and coordinator of their department.",
"They're like a foreman of a plant or the XO of a ship. They handle specific day-to-day responsibilities. They are normally highly experienced and have many people under them. They schedule and maintain everything in their domain.",
"Finally one I could answer but I'm too late. I can however tell you WHY he's called the best boy. Early on, lighting and electrical work was very dangerous and could lead to burning down the whole set so when the crew arrived it was common for the director or whoever to say, \"Give me your best boy.\""
],
"score": [
119,
83,
11,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixy9tw
|
Do big corporations like Google have thier own in house lawyers or outsource to law firms?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69j8ty"
],
"text": [
"It’s likely both. Most corporations have at least general counsel, they may also have other legal staff. They could also outsource some work to a firm maybe if it had to do with something needing specialists (I.e real estate, taxes, etc)"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixyscc
|
when someone is worth billions of dollars, where is that money?
|
Is it tied up in stocks? How much liquid cash can one person safely keep in a bank? Do you have multiple accounts on retainer who just figure out how to pay for whatever you feel like buying? It seems like being worth billions involves a ton of finance know-how.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69kwph"
],
"text": [
"A lot of it would be in investments. But also, a lot of the dollar value in net worth is tied up in the companies people own themselves (think amazon and Tesla). They don’t have billions in cash. It’s calculated in assets and many more things. They certainly have multiple accountants managing their money."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ixzeji
|
Why does a cold always feel worse in the morning and evening?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6a8ia1",
"g6ave10",
"g6b4qpb"
],
"text": [
"Edit: I read the question wrong. Here's a better answer You've been up all day. Staying awake drains much of your body. You use more energy, your brain acquires more toxins that need to be flushed, your immune system takes a toll, you have a higher heart rate, your body uses more chemical reactions for ATP production and transport and DNA repair. All that. All that on top of being sick. It's no wonder you're tired by nighttime.",
"i have 2 points to make, 1) In general, a cold feels shit, because of mucus, inflamed throat and bacteria/virus causing damage there in the morning, you slept, and you usually have more dry throat than normal, something that resolves as the day goes on. same with mucus, etc that accumulates during night: you flush it with food, drinks, swallowing. 2) In general, i am always BETTER in the morning, and WORSE in the night. Now this is interesting; Cortisol is a stress hormone that inhibits your immune system, which is acually for the.most part, the sole CAUSE of your symptoms. An active immune system in your airways will release mediators such as leukotrienes, prostaglandins, which stimulates nerve endings to cause - Pain - Swelling - Hot sensation So, cortisol as a hormone will prevent this from happening. this is why you can get cortisol injection in joints to reduce arthritis. now: Cortisol as a stress hormone, reaches its highest levels in the morning, thus inhibiting your immune system in a bigger fashion, leading to fewer symptoms. Cortisol levels go down throughout the day and is lowest in the night, which gives your immune systen more room to play and cause inflammation.",
"As others have said, mornings are due to mucus shifting about when you sleep. During the day, you blow your nose or sniff to move stuff. And night, gravity does what it does best! This can cause your nasal cavities to fill up and become blocked. This forces you to breathe through your mouth, which dries out your throat and makes it irritated.* Another thing that can happen is that the nasal dripping can lead to mucus, or phlegm, settling on your vocal folds, giving you a horribly gravelly voice! As for night time, I suspect it's just because you're worn out by that point. You usually feel tired, and the cold just makes it worse. Plus, your diaphragm has been working all day to cough, sneeze, sniff and blow. It needs a rest! I say this, speaking from both past and present experience. I'm about to go take a nasal spray, then drink some honey and lemon. It's a bit early here for me to add whisky! *This is one of the main reasons we breathe through our noses. They help to moisten the air, which is better for our throats and lungs."
],
"score": [
27,
24,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ixzh6q
|
What happens when two different animals mate?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69q0o8",
"g69q2om"
],
"text": [
"Depends on if their DNA is compatible for life or not, for example: A Donkey and a Horse can mate, and produce a mule. But mules are typically sterile so no more mules can be born from that union. That's because a Donkey and a Horse's DNA is compatible enough for the egg to survive once fertilized and life to continue. However, a Cat cannot mate with a Dog. Their DNA is too different, and even if the Egg/Sperm were to come in contact with each other, the DNA differences make it so that life would not be able to continue, and eventually the egg(s) would just be discarded and die. Some animals in the cat family can mate with each other. That's how you end up with some of the odd crossbreeds that are around. However, it's not common \"in the wild\" as those two types of cats would never think about mating normally, they would attack. So sometimes it's done artificially.",
"It depends on the animals. Most animals cannot interbreed, because their reproductive \"units\" (gametes, like sperm and eggs) are too different to create a functioning organism. However, some animals can cross breed. Here are a few examples: A mule or hinny is the offspring of a donkey and a horse. The two animals are pretty similar (genetically), allowing them to breed living offspring. However, they are different enough that the resulting mule/hinny cannot reproduce at all. A liger or tigon is the offspring of a lion and a tiger. Again, the two animals are pretty similar (genetically). However, unlike the mule/hinny, ligers and tigons are capable of reproducing because their parents are more genetically compatible. There have been cases where a female liger/tigon successfully bred with a male lion, producing a liliger (lion/liger) or a litigon (lion/tigon)."
],
"score": [
13,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iy0d1u
|
I’ve read that the death sentence is costs the state more than a life imprisonment. Why is this so? How?
|
Title edit: death sentence costs more
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6a4wp3",
"g6cdrgu",
"g6b08oq"
],
"text": [
"As u/vxngn noted, a large part of the higher cost comes from the appeals. The appeals costs include the attorneys’ time, judges’ and clerks’ times, even juries for retrials after successful appeals. The death row aspect itself also raises costs however; the prisoners on death row are housed separately as well, with increased security. That increases administrative costs to house them to about double a regular prisoner.",
"I just want to point out that, while the cost differences between a death row inmate and one with a life sentence may be worth discussing in some contexts, it shouldn't be relied upon too much in the debate over capital punishment. Do we really want to make the ethical dilemma of whether or not the government should kill a citizen be contingent primarily on how much money each option costs?",
"> - Legal costs: Almost all people who face the death penalty cannot afford their own attorney. The state must assign public defenders or court-appointed lawyers to represent them (the accepted practice is to assign two lawyers), and pay for the costs of the prosecution as well. > - Pre-trial costs: Capital cases are far more complicated than non-capital cases and take longer to go to trial. Experts will probably be needed on forensic evidence, mental health, and the background and life history of the defendant. County taxpayers pick up the costs of added security and longer pre-trial detention. > - Jury selection: Because of the need to question jurors thoroughly on their views about the death penalty, jury selection in capital cases is much more time consuming and expensive. > - Trial: Death-penalty trials can last more than four times longer than non-capital trials, requiring juror and attorney compensation, in addition to court personnel and other related costs. > - Incarceration: Most death rows involve solitary confinement in a special facility. These require more security and other accommodations as the prisoners are kept for 23 hours a day in their cells. > - Appeals: To minimize mistakes, every prisoner is entitled to a series of appeals. The costs are borne at taxpayers’ expense. These appeals are essential because some inmates have come within hours of execution before evidence was uncovered proving their innocence."
],
"score": [
9,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iy0ddc
|
What are the “butterflies” people feel in their stomach when they’re nervous or excited?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69way1",
"g6adqo1",
"g6ac0xn",
"g6afq13",
"g6an3xr"
],
"text": [
"First of all, this is adorable. Congratulations! This feeling that we get comes from the reduction in blood flow to the large intestine. Your body doesn’t necessarily know the difference between good exciting and bad exciting. When you become anxious, you have a nervous system response. This releases adrenaline into your body. All kinds of things happen, but most importantly, the nutrient and oxygen rich blood is shunted towards more important areas, digestion slows. When you lose blood flow to your large intestine, you feel “butterflies”. It’s like your stomach knows it’s being shorted, and throws out nerve signals in a fit.",
"This is an excerpt from the book How To Survive by John Hudson. Just thought it'd be better not to paraphrase it. So here it is: \"It’s also worth keeping in mind that it’s not just your brain that is affected. The nerves that radiate out from your spinal cord go all over your body, transmitting information about you and the world around you to and from your brain and organs. When we are in dangerous situations, like being too close to a predator (or a bathrobe that looks like one), part of this network, the catchily titled ‘sympathetic autonomic nervous system’, kicks in. You’ve probably heard of it before as the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ reaction. It prepares your body for immediate action by dilating your pupils to capture more information visually, and dilating the bronchia in your lungs, which increases your intake of oxygen. It accelerates your heart rate to push more oxygen-rich blood to your muscles, makes you sweat to prevent overheating, and ups the secretion of adrenaline. It also stops your body wasting energy on functions that won’t be needed in an emergency –it inhibits digestion, reduces saliva production, and stops other ‘secondary’muscle functions, notably in the bladder and bowels. It’s also the reason behind the dry mouth and butterflies that you feel when you’re confronting something stressful, like a job interview or giving an important presentation.\"",
"I’ve never gotten butterflies but I do get diarrhea when I’m nervous. Are these the same?",
"Oh. I know this one! The brainstem is the part of the body that detects danger. You have a nerve that runs from the brainstem to the gut called the Vagus nerve. If you are in trouble the brainstem starts the alarm for your body fast, faster than the rest of the brain can think. When the rest of the brain figures out that there actually isn't any danger, it turns off the alarm for your body. But, when you are really excited the brain stem starts thinking that there is danger again, so it will flip the switch back on. The rest of the brain will try to stop the signal, but it is fast. It might get to the throat and you may have trouble speaking. It might get to the heart and increase your heart rate. It might get to the stomach and it will tighten to get ready to run or fight. But, there is no real danger, so the body feels the response, but not the brain. So, in the mind we dismiss the sensation as butterflies.",
"Is this the same thing that’s happening when you’re riding a roller coaster and go down a steep drop and you feel that tickly sensation in your stomach?"
],
"score": [
6921,
192,
92,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iy0lrv
|
why can whiskey disinfect unlike other alcoholic beverages?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69wlub",
"g6a5q7b",
"g69x8b6"
],
"text": [
"A solution ought to be 70% alcohol to be considered a disinfectant. Most spirits (whiskey, rum, vodka, gin, etc) are sold around 40% alcohol.",
"Update; I come from a mechanical world and I knew that you needed that 70 percent mix, I just heard before that whiskey in general can be used to disinfect for whatever reason, from the internets we can conclude that this is misinformation and no matter what alcohol it needs that percentage, thank yous.",
"Rubbing (Isopropyl) alcohol is typically 70-90% alcohol, and is ineffective as a disinfectant below 50%. Alcoholic beverages vary on the proof scale (200 proof = 100% alcohol). So to be a decent disinfectant, the beverage would need to be over 100 proof. I can’t imagine all the other ingredients or smell would be good for cleaning, but speaking strictly to its effectiveness as a disinfectant: any alcoholic beverage could work if it is of sufficient proof. There are probably more high proof whiskeys available than other spirits (vodka, rum, tequila, etc) though."
],
"score": [
8,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iy0owc
|
what is positive electricity
|
I've been studying physics for school and now I confused myself. If an electric current is electrons moving through a medium, what is a positive current? can there be one? or is it just the charge of the protons left over? & #x200B; Thank you
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69x4pq",
"g6a1q64"
],
"text": [
"So as long as the method of measurement is consistent, it doesn't really matter how you view it. Electrons traveling from the negative terminal to the positive terminal and doing work along the way is *fundamentally* identical to a positron (a positive charged electron) traveling from the positive terminal to the negative terminal and doing work along the way. You can do this trick too to create false positive charges by removing an electron. The result is an electron hole, which can move around like an electron and behaves just like a positively charged electron (a positron) and all of the math is identical between the two.",
"When electricity was discovered they got the idea of moving the particle correctly but got the direction is moved incorrectly. Is likely simples to look at the first battery the [Voltaic\\_pile]( URL_0 ) in 1799. Stack of alternating copper and zinc disk with cardboard dipped in saltwater in between. The zone disc was the negative pole and copper the positive pole. That can be used as a definition of what is the positive and negative side. They had the idea that the charged particle was positive so the moved from the positive to the negative pole. This is the direction of electrical current from positive to negative and is still used today So you had a lot of development if electricity and all use the same definition of positive and negative. This includes coal, hydroelectric power plants and mass-produce batteries. The problem occurs when in 1897 J. J. Thomson discovers the election and that it moves from the negative pole to the positive pole. So now it is known what the electricity really is, a moment of electrons. You could change everything so the election has a positive charge and move with the electricity but then you need to change a lot of other stuff like all science books. How do you know is what you read/use is updated? You likey need new symbols instead of + and - It will be a confusing time and cost lost of money and frustration, but is there a reason to do that? The answer is not. All calculation and ideas of how electronic works is identical if look at it as positive electrical charges move the opposite direction of the elections. So nothing changed. You can look at a positive change as an Electron hole or just a hole. Is it simply a remove electron. It often used especially in a semiconductor were to have both passive holes and negative changes in the semiconductor. It is a simpler way to explain it even if you could explain it as removed electrons and extra elections. So electrical current moves in the opposite direction of electrons. It is not real but a way to explain what the electrons do. It is that way because science in the 18th century had an idea of the direction of electricity but was wrong and we have not changed after that."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaic_pile"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iy141t
|
Why is their never a "view current password" option whenever you forgot your password?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g69zmnx",
"g69zxn3",
"g6a4xdc",
"g69zydp"
],
"text": [
"Because passwords are stored using a hash, or at least they're supposed to be if programmed correctly. Hashes are strings of letters and numbers that are produced with an algorithm that processes your password but can't be reversed. Think of a has as the number 10 and your password is a combination of two numbers. There's no way to know if your password is 1+9 or 5+5. When you log in, the password you entered is hashed the same way and compared to the hash that's stored.",
"Even the company who owns the place you’re trying to sign into doesn’t have your password. It’s protected. It cannot be reverse engineered like that. Also, if anyone could just “view” your password, what would be the point of having a password? This also offers a fix if your account gets hacked.",
"I have used websites where when I used the forgot password option they emailed me my password. If this happens to you DELETE THAT ACCOUNT. Plenty of people have already covered the whole 'they don't actually know your password' thing.",
"It is bad form for a website to store your password. In the event that anyone ever looks at the database, they could just get passwords out of it. You could never trust every employee that much. So instead, what is good practice is to use a Hash Function. This is a one-way function. You can easily hash a password and get the same value from it, but you can't take that value and turn it back into the password. They store the hashed value in the database, and when you enter your password to compare, they put whatever you enter in the password field through the same function and just compare the hashed values."
],
"score": [
26,
11,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iy1x2r
|
Why are so many mentally ill people who suffer from schizophrenia convinced the FBI and or government are watching them?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6a4w64",
"g6a64zv",
"g6a705j"
],
"text": [
"They latch onto the biggest authority they can think of. For many, it will be the NSA. In the past it was once FEMA, the Russians, these trends change as the collective psyche changes.",
"I believe that to be a stereotype of schizophrenia. Broadly speaking the aural hallucinations they hear typically tend to be in context with bizarre or persecutory delusions that someone or something is going to inflict harm onto them",
"People with dissociative disorders KNOW something is wrong, but they are unable to see that the problem is internal. As such they will point to some outside influence which is the cause of their current situation. Oftentimes this is the parent/partner/caregiver, as this person is usually actively trying to help. When these disorders go unnoticed and untreated, there are usually not people \"oppressing\" the unwell, and so they will look for something larger causing the problem. Inevitably, they point to the authorities, especially clandestine organizations."
],
"score": [
14,
7,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iy1x79
|
Why does a jumbo mortgage have a amount limit? Can’t you get a mortgage loan at any price?
|
If I were to buy a 3 million dollar house (assuming I could pay for it) but the jumbo loans in my county only go up to $600,000 how would that work? Are there ways to get a mortgage loan for 3 million? Or is $600,000 the most since that’s the max loan amount for the county? Am I thinking about this all wrong? Let me know if I am!
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6a7uor"
],
"text": [
"You’ve got it backwards. There are conforming loans, and jumbo loans. The 600,000 in your example would be the limit for a conforming loan. Anything above that amount would be considered a jumbo loan. A conforming loan is eligible for insurance/resale through FHA/Fannie/Freddie. That means a bank can issue you the loan, sell it to one of the aforementioned agencies, and continue issuing more mortgages. Fannie/Freddie then package a bunch of these mortgages together and sell them to investors. It’s relatively low risk for the bank, so it’s much easier to qualify. You can’t do this with a jumbo loan. They’re considered much higher risk, and so the qualification requirements are much more strict. A bank is taking a massive gamble loaning you $3M when they have to keep that loan on their books. So it’s likely rates will be less favorable, and qualification much harder. Edit: Thank you for the award!"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iy1ys6
|
what is DDoS
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6a5bjo"
],
"text": [
"Distributed Denial of Service Attack. Basically, you use a shit load of computers you have control of to bombard a server with traffic to the point it doesn’t have the resources to deal with legitimate traffic. The equivalent of hiring 100 people to yell at the person trying to listen to one other person."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iy2273
|
How does sleep talking work ?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ac0g0"
],
"text": [
"Well, I don’t know if anyone knows the exact detailed answer, but the general answer is that when you sleep, your brain paralyzes you. When you sleep your brain stem releases a bunch of signals that relax your bodies muscles, effectively paralyzing most of your body (besides crucial things like breathing and you heart beat). And the theory is that sleep talking, sleep walking, and other such sleep actions come from your brain stem not fully shutting down your body parts, and your brain that’s dreaming and processing information accidentally sending out signals to those muscles used to walk, or to speak, when they normally get blocked up by the brain stem."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iy31qr
|
why animals didn’t redevelop to Dino-size post-extinction
|
Why are most living animals relatively small when compared to the huge animals that lived on the same planet during the Dino-eras?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6acht0",
"g6ad1yu"
],
"text": [
"You could argue that they’re working on it. For one, the largest animal to ever love, the blue whale, is alive today. And it’s a mammal. And all giant land mammals, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, evolved from the tiny rodent-like animals that survived the last great extinction that killed the Dinos 65~ million years ago. So animals have evolved to be thousands of times larger than their ancestors 65 million years in the past. And some even larger mammals (like say giant sloth or wooly mammoth) also existed and died out after the last ice age ended (and humans really took over the world). So it’s possible that, if the climate leads to big animals being more likely to survive, we could have more giants in another couple million years. Mammals just had to start from scratch from the smallest rodents, and the current climate doesn’t really benefit large land animals. And remember, dinosaurs had over 100 million years to evolve to the giant size they were.",
"It's kind of an incorrect assumption you're starting with. On land we don't have any dinosaur-sized behemoths, this is true, but the largest animal alive today is also the largest animal that has ever existed--the blue whale."
],
"score": [
13,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
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