q_id
stringlengths 6
6
| title
stringlengths 3
299
| selftext
stringlengths 0
4.44k
| category
stringclasses 12
values | subreddit
stringclasses 1
value | answers
dict | title_urls
listlengths 1
1
| selftext_urls
listlengths 1
1
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
izrlsb
|
What happens when a country can no longer pay off its national debt?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ko8gg",
"g6kl3lu"
],
"text": [
"It depends on how the country borrowed. A large country like the US or Japan only borrows money in it's own currency. US borrows in USD and Japan in Yen. Smaller and riskier countries like Argentina usually have to borrow in a foreign currency like the USD or Euro. For a large country, there is virtually no issue of paying off the debt. Because it borrows in a currency that it has full control over, it can issue as much as needed to pay of the debt. The debt for these countries isn't \"one lump sum\" but is a series of debt (usually through regular bond sales) so any single payment is never really a problem for a government to pay back. For smaller countries, though, this is far from simple. Although the debt is likely not \"one lump sum\", nonetheless it can come in large chunks. The problem is these governments cannot just print money because it needs foreign currency not local currency. When a country has a debt repayment problem, few institutions will exchange local currency for foreign currency. In this case, the country will \"threaten\" default and essentially force their lenders to negotiate new terms - a combination of debt forgiveness and extended repayment terms. Lenders have not much legal recourse because, of course, it is dealing with a sovereign nation who can just refuse to pay. If there is default, though, very bad things happen. The country is locked out of the foreign currency market which essentially means it is hard to import and trade. This is destructive because most countries are not fully self sufficient - they might need oil or food or medical supplies. This is where the IMF usually is called in to help. The IMF will make temporary loans (or arrange them) and help negotiate a restructuring but only on some conditions - usually austerity or privatization. But ordinary citizens will probably suffer. Exchange rates will be in the toilet. Imported goods prices skyrocket. Inflation destroys the value of assets including savings and pension funds. Businesses close because they cannot get supplies and inflation increases risks. Capital flight also takes place, where citizens try to exchange their assets for foreign currency/assets which cause local asset prices to fall even further. Due to the chaos, people might also flee the country to look for better jobs etc. In the short to medium term - there is nothing good that happens if a country defaults on their loans.",
"It goes into what is known as a default it has happened to quite a large number of countries some even have done it multiple times URL_0"
],
"score": [
50,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_default"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izrtgi
|
How does a lightning strike find the shortest path?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6kovm8"
],
"text": [
"Lightning follows all available paths until one of them makes a connection. Imagine a bunch of people walking around on an old floor. The weakest part is going to be the first to give out. Once a path makes a connection, the air along this path becomes a plasma, and suddenly becomes billions of times as 'short', at which point all of that electricity is allowed to flow out like water down a drain, although technically some of it will still take all other available paths."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izske3
|
Why does it feel so weird when you push your finger into your navel?
|
Is this even a thing, does it happen to people with innies and outside. So many questions, one weird sensation.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6kw4t3",
"g6kvt8j"
],
"text": [
"No idea but I'd love to know. I do know that our belly button has a strink like thing that is attached in the inside... maybe its connected to something else that makes it feel wierd? When i poke my belly button I can also feel it in my lady bits. Not in a fun sexy way. In an uncomfortable \"I never want to feel that again\" way.",
"I found the best answer to this question, of all places, on Buzzfeed. Enjoy your knowledge diluted by stupid gifs. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )"
],
"score": [
14,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/why-it-feels-weird-when-you-poke-your-belly-button"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
izsstl
|
; Why is it, that adrenaline only pumps on dangerous situations? Can't we use it at will on our everyday life?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ksxis",
"g6ks2eg",
"g6ks34s",
"g6ky0nl",
"g6l1118"
],
"text": [
"Having spikes of adrenaline when it's not needed is called an anxiety disorder, and it's not fun, and bad for your health.",
"It over stresses major bodily organs and can shorten life expectancy if over produced basically like driving your car at 100 MPH is not the same as cruising along at 55 MPH.",
"Things like pain and physical limits exist to protect us from ourselves. Pain makes us be careful to avoid harming ourselves, for instance. Adrenaline allows us to ignore these things when immediate survival is more important than the long-term consequences of our actions, but obviously we should normally adhere to things like pain and fear and sleepiness because these things take care of us.",
"Adrenaline forces your body to remove limiters in order to survive; What use is it storing energy to make it through the night if you’re likely to die in 10s, burn it all now! What point is there preventing muscles from hurting yourself when you’re about to get injured anyway, unleash the strength! Why do we need to reserve brain function for higher order thinking just so we can think more in depth about dying? Divert it to senses and reactions! Overall not a good state to live permanently in, as your body will exhaust itself quickly, you’ll injure yourself through tension of muscles being ready and have trouble using your brain for most everything we do in this age",
"Adrenaline is reserved for dangerous situations because it is dangerous itself Under normal conditions your body has a whole bunch of limiters set on it, this helps keep things running well for a long time. If you're not in a stressful situation your heart will only pump so hard, your muscles will only generate so much force and move up to a certain speed. When you're in a dangerous situation and adrenaline kicks in it turns off all the safety limiters. It doesn't matter if you get a bleeding ulcer from stress and tear your rotator cuff, if you don't pull of this herculean feat to escape that Sabertooth *RIGHT NOW* you're dead. Since being crippled is evolutionarily better than being dead its worth any damage you may take from doing stupid stuff with no safeties just to make it out alive"
],
"score": [
29,
10,
6,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iztdv0
|
In programming, what are Compliers, Interpreters, Assemblers, and Linkers?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6kwi8m",
"g6ky8c2"
],
"text": [
"Computer codes are written in \"people\" language. If I'm writing a code in Python and I want it to display \"Hello World,\" I write print('Hello World') That means something to me and it means something to you, but it doesn't mean a thing to a computer. Compilers are programs that take your code and \"translate\" it into something that your computer understands. Some languages have to go through a compiler before you can run them. An interpreted language (like Python) comes with a file that tells your computer how to handle its commands. So unlike a compiled language, you can script an interpreted language directly in a command prompt if you want to. Assemblers are very low-level code compilers. They correspond much more directly to the computer's machine code. Linkers are programs that combine multiple files from assemblers and compilers, and put them together into a single file like a .exe",
"Compilers : Translate human readable (and usually written by human) instructions (source code) into machine runnable instructions. The same source code can usually be compiled for several type of CPU (this is why a Unity game written once can be compiled for Windows PC, Android phone, Xbox, all which use different CPU) Interpreters : Immediately translate and run the human readable instructions without having to translate the whole files or saving them first. If you press F12 on your desktop browser, you can usually see the Javascript used by the current page. Assemblers : Translate assembly instructions (instructions that closely resemble the actual machine instructions, except written in letters instead of binaries) into machine instructions. A single line of instructions written for compilers or interpreters might translate into multiple lines of assembly instructions. Assembly instructions don't work across CPU type, but can utilize more features and squeeze more performance/memory. Linkers : The output of a compiler can be several files, linkers combine them into a single file ready to be run/used by the OS. The purpose of separating them is so only changed source code need to be recompiled (into object file), while object file from the rest (library, file that doesn't change yet) can be reused."
],
"score": [
7,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iztk8z
|
Why are films shot in 24 FPS/ 23.97 fps, but video games are in 60 Frames-Per Second.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6kxmti"
],
"text": [
"Films were originally shot at 24 frames per second because it was a good balance of cost and fluidity. 24 still looks fine to the human eye, but it is a lot cheaper, especially in the days where every frame was precious storage space. Even today, with special effects and CGI, 24 frames per second is cheaper, as it requires less renders. Because of the origins of film, much of the equipment in theaters (like projectors) are not made to handle 60 frames per second. So basically, a movie would have to end up making two versions anyway, a 60 fps version, and an edited one with about 60% of the frames removed. And most places would only be able to display the 24fps one anyway. Video games are built in order to render quickly and responsively. Not only is a high rate important for the player's reaction time, but a lot of physics engines will use the same concept for collisions. Games require the engine to check on the objects all the time, so that it feels natural when the world is changing rapidly and in response to the player's actions."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izu7wk
|
Why does your skin get itchy/tingly in the heat?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6l1xh6"
],
"text": [
"Do you mean like prickly heat? Prickly heat happens when sweat glands get blocked and don’t work properly. That causes sweat to stay trapped under the skin instead of emerging and evaporating, and the trapped sweat causes itching and sometimes bumpy, red and inflamed skin."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izu83h
|
Differences between chopping, dicing, and mincing?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6l1mpx",
"g6l27xr"
],
"text": [
"Generally the difference is in the size of the pieces you wind up with after cutting. Chopping typically leaves you with fairly large pieces, dicing leaves you with smaller, and mincing leaves you with very small pieces. Additionally, dicing often means the pieces should be at least roughly cube-shaped. Chopping and mincing don't generally mean that specifically.",
"I believe you've listed them in perfect order. If you're chopping, you're separating the substance in a parallel manner. If you're dicing, you're separating it by two dimensions, making *squares* or *dice* out of it. Mincing means that you're making porridge out of it - that you slice or force the compound into a fine paste, so you can't differentiate between the components."
],
"score": [
11,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izu9of
|
Why are energy drinks bad for you?
|
as far as I am aware they are just a lot of caffeine and sugar, but they get treated as if they were some type of poison, is there truth to that? or do they just have a bad rep?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6l2i9h",
"g6l37ee"
],
"text": [
"The excessive caffeine is bad for your heart and nervous system and can even sleep loss. The sugar is bad for your teeth and will cause weight gain. There is almost Zero nutritional value. Even the citric acid in the water can erode your teeth over time. Not to mention the laundry list of ingredients that seems like synthetic chemicals of one type or another.",
"So before most jurisdictions threatened to regulate them, there was a race to add more sugar, caffeine and niacin. In America, soda is regulated to 70 mg caffeine per 12 oz beverage. Energy drinks aren't soda, their regulated as food suppliments, and thus don't have that limit. Around 2012 drinks like NOS, redline and others were getting close to 300mg. And people were drinking multiple cans, there was an increase of people having to go the hospital due to early stages of caffeine toxicity. The niacin flush also increased the effects. Like most things, one can a day probably not great, the sugars plus sugars from everything else you eat increases health risks like becoming overweight, and diabetes. But occasionally it's not bad. Consuming multiple beverages, plus poor lifestyle and diet, yes it's bad for you."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
izudmw
|
What are the ridges on the roof of our mouths for?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6l6h00",
"g6l5szw"
],
"text": [
"The ridges are a component of your \"hard palate\". Your palate works with your tongue to form words, along with creating a vacuum to help you eat. The ridge in the middle of your palette is known as a \"palatine raphe\". Raphes often don't serve an explicit function, they're simply seams \"left over\" from your development as an embryo. A classic example of another raphe is the seam found on a male's scrotum. The other ridges make up your \"alveolar ridge\", which the forward-most part of the hard palate. These little ridges probably don't do much, it's more about the overall shape of the palate. I'm gonna shoot in the dark, and say these little ridges could be considered vestigial, a kind-of useless holdover from our evolution.",
"In short they help with mashing up food and getting it ready to be swallowed. Most animals have some form of ridges or, in many cases, pointy barb things pointing down to the throat to help mash up and move food along, and prevent it from going the other way. Here's a [great roundup of horrible, terrible ones]( URL_0 )."
],
"score": [
24,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/animal-mouths-are-terrifying"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izujqf
|
Why some animals lay eggs and some don't, and why us humans don't give birth by laying eggs ?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6l4x5g"
],
"text": [
"Through evolution, offspring are a primary concern. Originally (when it was all aquatic creatures) eggs were soft and meant to stay in water. Once they went on land, reproductive organs changed. Soft eggs would not survive, but eggs with hard shells would. As creatures became more mamilian, instead of laying eggs it was \"safer\" or \"easier\" to have a single offspring that is carried through terms. This is a trait almost solely found in mamals. Humans are mamals. So basically evolution and how to best assure the production and growth of offspring. Eggs are laid in batches and not every egg will make it. Live birth is single or smaller numbers, but more guaranteed due to being carried instead of left behind."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izujuh
|
what different hole does a woman have “down there”?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6l3ynd",
"g6l57s9",
"g6l4cv6"
],
"text": [
"Actually, it's not really important to differentiate the two, since the peeing hole cannot be seen most of the time, or if it can be seen, it's too small to fit anything in there. So there is no chance of mixing up the two of those by accident. Don't worry man, you'll get a nice caring girl one day as well!",
"Three functions need to happen in that general region for all humans: release liquid waste (pee), release solid waste (poop), and reproduction (sex). Women have the additional function of providing a place for the baby to grow and a way to get it out again. There are lots of potential ways you can combine all that stuff, and most conceivable combinations exist somewhere in the animal kingdom. E.g. birds run poo and pee through the same hole. Poo is very often it's own separate thing because that is, by far, the most likely to be carrying nasty pathogens. Connecting that with other things is likely to cause all kinds of illness problems. In males, combining pee and sex in one hole is pretty simple, since you never need both at the same time and they're basically the same physical function (send liquid out of the body). That is \\*not\\* the same physical function in women. They need to to take fluid \\*in\\*, and provide a much larger way to let the baby \\*out\\*. Neither of these apparatuses is similar to letting pee out, so separate. But, like /u/SethPDA said, in most cases you don't need to worry about the female urethra (pee hole). You're probably not going to interact with it and it's relatively hidden. Do make sure you can figure out the difference between the vagina (sex/baby hole) and anus (poop hole). Mixing those two up, without your partner's permission, is bad.",
"Women have a total of 3 holes \"down there.\" They have a urethra which is above the vaginal opening. This is where they pee from. Then there is the vaginal opening, which is where sex happens, babies come out, and menstrual blood comes out. Then they have the anus/butt hole. Why? I dunno, just the way they were created. However, it wouldn't be good to have a woman's pee come out through their vagina. Since they are an \"innie\" it would probably create a really disgusting place for men to want to visit. By keeping it separate the vagina stays cleaner and doesn't smell of urine."
],
"score": [
7,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izukmy
|
What’s the psychological reason people’s urge to go to the bathroom gets more intense the closer we get to actually going?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6l4d0n"
],
"text": [
"I actually know this one. So your body works by having conscious and unconscious muscle contractions. Conscious, of course, being your biceps and things like that which you actively move. Unconscious is muscles like your heart that beats on its own (usually). So your intestines are the same, they move on their own pushing excrement further and further down the track! Since this is all done unconsciously, when you're getting ready to go potty your brain goes \"potty time?\" And those unconscious muscles start working harder and faster. As you get closer to going to the bathroom, the muscles contract and move more and more. Basically your brain does everything, as you get closer (or think you're getting closer) it's preparing your body to evacuate the excrement."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izukuh
|
What about salt and pepper as seasonings makes it such a good combination to season our food?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6l6okb",
"g6m21f2"
],
"text": [
"Salt pulls water out of plant and animal cells. Many of the flavor compounds that *make the food taste like the food* are water-soluble. It doesn't change the flavor so much as pull more of the flavor out of the food to where you can taste it.",
"They work extremely different, salt primarily works to enhance existing flavor as well as enhance sweetness/reduce bitterness. Sodium ions help to neutralize bitter flavors. It also brings out sour and umami flavors, pure umami alone is fairly unappetizing, but paired with salt it's delicious. Essentially, it reduces bitterness and makes other flavors more present/palatable. Black pepper is less of a worldwide pairing with salt so much as one that's common in the US and Europe, commonly used for a completely different reason. For one, it contains piperine which makes food slightly more pungent and adds a relatively subtle background flavor. It works differently than capsaicin (like in hot sauces and hot peppers) and generally is just more common in western cooking, likely due to availability and culture. That's not saying that many other cultures don't use peppercorns or black pepper, it's just very common as a \"basic seasoning\" in western cooking. Essentially though, black pepper adds pungency, making food slightly more interesting. & #x200B; Also, some people are particularly sensitive to sodium or piperine, so it's common for them to be at the table to allow people to adjust their own levels. Less common at high end restaurants when adjusting seasoning could be seen more as an insult."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izuvty
|
Why do people get “hangry”?
|
Even when I don’t feel consciously hungry, I get really bitchy when I haven’t eaten. Why?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6l80st"
],
"text": [
"When you haven't eaten lately, your blood sugar level falls. When your blood sugar is low, your body wants something to replace its usual fuel. Adrenalin is that substitute -- your body incentivizes anger which produces adrenaline which keeps you going until you can get some food. That's why those candy bar commercials center on \"you're not yourself when you're hangry\" -- a state instantly fixable with sugar."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
izv2cz
|
Why do you sound like a better singer when you are in the shower?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6lah8j",
"g6l8d3v"
],
"text": [
"In addition to better acoustics, the warm humid air in the shower opens and lubricates the respiratory passages and the throat, providing for optimal vocal quality.",
"Showers provide a solid surface to bounce sound off of so that it reverberates or persists with echo. You can hear when your voice bounces off \"right\" and makes the sound fuller. You adjust your voice to make that effect even better. (Also parts of the sound are drown out by water falling.)"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izvb92
|
How did they price very cheap things in the old days when a penny was worth much more?
|
Adjusted to inflation $1 in 1914 would be worth $25 now. So a penny would roughly be a quarter. There are some things that cost less than a quarter nowadays - I am thinking small bits and bobs, and things that are sold wholesale. How did they price these things back then?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6l8qgy"
],
"text": [
"Need some nails? A one pound bag might have cost five cents or some such. Simply put, if an individual item’s value was less than a penny, they sold those items in lots. Also, in the very olden days, there were such things as half-pennies and other tiny denominations to account for this sort of thing."
],
"score": [
15
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
izvjx9
|
How people are able to cut their grass in a way that there are "lines of different colour"?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6l9r8x",
"g6l9vcq"
],
"text": [
"The different color lines are from the blades of grass being bent in opposite directions. Light reflects off of grass blades bent toward you vs away from you. The bending of the grass from the mower itself as you go back and forth over the lawn. To make the lines more pronounced, people will use a roller, sometimes attached to their mower, sometimes on its own, to push the grass blades in the direction they want.",
"The shade of green that you see is caused by the way the grass is \"pointing\" or the grain of the grass. Grass pointing towards you will look one shade while grass pointing away from you will look a different shade. You can use a roller attached to the mower that rolls the grass to amplify this effect."
],
"score": [
10,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izvo0b
|
How do people get away with robbing banks nowadays? There is so much technology and security now that I feel like it would be so hard to get away with robbing one.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6lo2wq",
"g6laoci",
"g6lnpgb"
],
"text": [
"It is easy to rob a bank. It is harder to get away with it. And you don't get much. Most bank robbers just get the money from a few tills. About $1,000 up to $10,000. The banks are insured and would rather hand over the money then have someone get injured. But about 60% of bank robbers are caught. Which sounds low, but only 25% of most robbers are caught. So robbing a bank doubles your chance of getting caught.",
"i mean, the days where people walk into a bank, point a gun at the teller, and demand money, are looooooong over. these days, robbing a bank is more along the lines of cyber attacks/fraud such as hacking the bank's network/phishing/malware/etc to transfer money to offshore accounts/zombie accounts, basically funnel the money around enough so that it's effectively untraceable.",
"Physically robbing a bank nowadays is not much of a thing that many do with great success. Most banks don't really keep much cash on hand and the cash they do have is not easily accessible. What can work for criminals is blowing up ATMs at night when there is nobody there to get in the way. Also robbing armoured cars that transport cash might seem an attractive option to some. However all in all the decline in the use of cash means that the rewards have gotten lower over time while the risk of getting caught has increased. Robbing banks is not a smart choice, but criminals often aren't smart either so it still happens."
],
"score": [
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izw1t2
|
Why does hot water soothe tension on your body?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6lcsqy"
],
"text": [
"The heat causes your blood vessels to dilate which temporarily lowers your blood pressure and increases blood flow to your muscles. Also, water is a supportive medium so a hot bath has the added benefit of taking pressure off your joints."
],
"score": [
33
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izwirj
|
When a person is a physician or doctor in a foreign country, and they want to come to the United States, what is the process like?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6lgk73"
],
"text": [
"Foreign Doctors have to go through a certification process where they have to pass a series of tests to confirm they have the skills and knowledge needed to practice medicine in that country. Since medical training varies so wildly in different nations foreign Doctors have to go through different levels of education and tests to certify in a new nation. Some Doctors essentially need to go back to school from scratch to train up, while others have a much easier process that only requires a handful of classes, study, and tests. Doctors crossing the border from the UK or Canada for example will have a much easier time re-certifying than a Doctor from India or the Philippines for example. But it's important to note that Doctor's in such nations are often foreign educated (ie they went to school in the US) so it's a lot easier for them to re-certify in the US when they have a US medical degree. In the meanwhile their skills an experience can deteriorate. So foreign Doctors will often find jobs that help them practice their skills such as foreign surgeons working in tissue harvesting. Since the person you are harvesting from is diseased the certification process isn't nearly as strict, and the surgeon can keep up his/her skills while re-certifying."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izwo3e
|
What is the difference between Department of Defense, Department of Justice and Department of State
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6lgthw"
],
"text": [
"Defense: army, navy, airforce, coast guard. The ones charged with protecting the country from outside forces Justice: FBI, NSA, treasury, DEA - enforcing the laws of the land IN the land; secure against enemies within State department: official branch to negotiate and discuss with other countries. i.e. the peaceful counterpart to the Department of Defense."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izwwl3
|
What's the difference between a novel and a book?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6lkn5i"
],
"text": [
"A novel is a subset. Novels are a type of book. All novels are books, but not all books are novels. A novel is a work of fiction, and is usually written in a prose (rather than poetic) form. It is interesting to know that people aren't sure of the difference because it bugs the bananas out of me when I assign nonfiction autobiographies to my students and they refer to them as \"novels\". But maybe they really don't know. (but you know, first world problems.)"
],
"score": [
12
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izx7bw
|
how did accents originate? Will we eventually have no accents?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6lrn7v",
"g6lryp4",
"g6mxkj7"
],
"text": [
"Accents develop historically and flourish in isolation and separation. Linguists have researched for years and built up a kind of family tree of where and how languages have developed as groups of humans spread out of Africa. The further back you go, the words for certain things become more similar to each other. Mother. Mater. Maman. Mutter. Mamma. Most European languages as well as Sanskrit are descended from an ancient language called Proto-Indo-European. But, you say, I’m talking about accents and dialects. Languages evolve from accents. All it takes is groups of people moving apart from the main group of speakers. They encounter other groups of people and exchange words, they encounter new objects and experiences and invent new words to describe them, they develop new slang words, and you wind up with Acadian French, Haitian French, Cajun French, and all the different dialects of French in former French colonies, plus original French. Will accents eventually disappear? I doubt it. Even with mass migrations of people, the globalization of media and a mainstream Midwestern accent dominating the news (in American English), there is still a strong tendency for accents to emerge, because of divisions of geography, race, class, education, and income. Linguists have documented even microaccents that emerge from one end of a city to another. You’ll probably enjoy this Reddit thread. URL_0",
"Accents are more an association thing than natural. I'm Indian and been living in the US for my entire life. I didn't have much of an Indian accent until my college years when my roommate had an extremely thick indian accent. Took me a long time to get rid of the accent and sometimes I'll still use it if I'm not careful with some words. By the way, a person with an accent doesn't think they have an accent until someone points out that they are saying something differently from others.",
"If you speak, you have an accent! Thinking someone “doesn’t have an accent” is assuming their accent is neutral. Not so. I might say I speak English without an accent because I’m a native English speaker, but I have an American accent and a California accent. Accents will be around as long as there is speech!"
],
"score": [
15,
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://amp.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/2vs085/microaccents/"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izx930
|
If splitting an atom creates a large explosion then what would happen if you hypothetically split a quark?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ml1wy",
"g6mpav4",
"g6ls245"
],
"text": [
"I should caution against the other answers here saying that splitting a quark \"cannot be done\". It only can't be done *given what we currently accept about physics*. Our smartest scientists at a time didn't think we could split atoms in the first place, and that turned out to be false. Who knows if quarks actually have underlying levels of structure, and whether they can be split to yield free energy? All we can say is there's currently no significant evidence right now to suggest there could be. Going with the assumption that quarks truly cannot be broken down further, though, that basically renders this a moot question. You can't split a quark. Or if you could, we have no idea how we would be able to do that. And even if we did, it might not even release energy. Not all atom-splitting releases energy, either. Splitting up light elements like carbon doesn't yield energy, that *takes* energy to do. Generally, small atoms release energy when *fused*, and only heavy elements like uranium release energy when split. Iron is the element that happens to sit in the middle, neither releasing energy when fused or split. This is represented in [this chart]( URL_0 ), which measures nuclear binding energy. That is, the amount of energy needed to rip an atom apart completely. *In a very thick nutshell*, hopping from an element lower on the chart to one higher on the chart, in theory, will release energy. Hopping from the left to the right is fusing, and hopping from the right to the left is splitting. You can see that you have nowhere to hop to from iron without spending more energy than you get out.",
"You don't get a hunge explosion from splitting a single atom. Some atoms when split into smaller atoms may release a tiny amount of energy in the process. The trick is that you can get a chain reaction where one split causes other nearby atoms to also split and that very quickly builds up until a terrifyingly huge number of atoms split and release energy at nearly the same time. The amount of energy thus releases is far larger than you could get by a chemical reaction of the same number of atoms simply because the energies involved in binding molecules together are much lower than those involved in binding atoms together. Quarks as far as we know don't really split like atoms do. You can destroy quarks by having them meet their antiparticle counterpart, but that works for everything.",
"You cannot split a quark. You also cannot even isolate a quark at all. If you put enough energy into the system to pull two quarks apart, you also have put enough energy to create two entirely new quarks that form pairs with the first two. What you can do, is annihilate them by introducing them to an anti-version of themselves, releasing the rest mass energy of both pairs, this would be a very powerful energy release, unfortunately (or fortunately), there is no large source of antimatter in the known universe."
],
"score": [
26,
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Binding_energy_curve_-_common_isotopes.svg/1280px-Binding_energy_curve_-_common_isotopes.svg.png"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izxikp
|
When riding a bike, why do we only "hear" wind when looking forward and not sideways?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6m73c8"
],
"text": [
"I think I've understood the question so I'm gonna guess what we actually hear is the wind hitting our ears in different places when we look forwards - hitting all the nooks and crannys and bouncing back. But when we turn our head its going directly in our ear so we can't actually hear it hitting anything else? Thats how i understand it, like a literal 5 year old haha"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izxsrq
|
What's So Special About The Three Body Problem?
|
As in, if we solve the Three Body problem isn't the 4, 5, 6 body problems magnitudes harder to solve? Or is there something more to gleam from solving the Three Body Problem? [ URL_0 ]( URL_1 )
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6luxt6",
"g6lx2vd",
"g6mgnlm"
],
"text": [
"If you could come up with a way to solve the 3-body problem, it is possible that you might then have a way to solve n-body problems. Of course, we can deal with the 3-body problem, and n-body problems, using iterative techniques. But that's not what is meant by 'solving' them.",
"You misunderstand, there doesn't seem to be any real \"solving\" the three body problem. In a 2-body system, you can analytically solve for all states given one of the states. This falls apart as soon as you add a third particle. Motion becomes chaotic, highly dependent on precise starting conditions, and can generally only be solved numerically, by taking forces at each moment, and solving only for the next moment. If you can find a general analytical solution to the 3 body problem, you've just made a massive leap forward in the field of chaos-theory, and will probably win a Nobel Prize, and Fields Medal at once. It's that big of a deal. All signs thus far point to it being impossible, and as it is the simplest case of n-body problems, is often used as a demonstration for the concept of chaotic motion.",
"Let me draw an analogy to circles. Say you had a circle with some radius, *r*. You want to know its perimeter. The distance around it. How would you go about figuring that out? You could try to find out clever ways to measure it directly. Maybe chop it up into tiny little squares, and count them? Slice it up into countless tiny pizza slices, and approximate them as triangles? Pretty much any direct measurement solution you could possibly think of has a fatal flaw -- you have to accept some limit of accuracy of your measurement. You might be able to get *reeeeeally* close, but at some level of accuracy you just have to throw your hands up and say you don't know. And after all of this effort, you've only solved the case for that one particular circle. What about every other circle out there? We can't do this for every circle imaginable. Luckily, the case for a circle's perimeter has a much easier solution. There's a simple, closed equation that allows you to input just one parameter of the circle and the perimeter just falls out. You probably already know it, it's `P = 2πr`. This will work for *every* circle, ever. Therefore, it's \"solved\". \\*\\* Now what about, say, an ellipse? There ought to be some well-defined formula to get a perimeter for that. I mean, a circle is just a fancy ellipse... how hard could it be? Well, you may be surprised to hear, [*we don't have one*]( URL_0 ). Even something as simple as the perimeter of a basic ellipse is not a \"solved\" problem. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely techniques to home in *really* close to the true answer for any given ellipse, but those are all analytical methods, solving for each ellipse case-by-case. What we want is some magical formula that will work for *every* ellipse. That is what we don't have. This is similar to the story of two-body versus three-body problems. Two-body problems are relatively simple and, in an idealized world, obey very simple rules. But three-body problems? We just don't have any. We have methods to make astonishingly accurate predictions for any specific case we decide to analyze, and a few true solutions for *very specific cases*, but no generic set of equations that will perfectly predict motion at every point in time for every possible case. That is what we mean when we say it's \"unsolved\". The implications of solving something like the three-body problem are that every other chaotic system related to it may be hiding finite solutions, and we just haven't found them yet. Or, the problem remaining unsolved may imply that there may be a limit to what we can ever possibly model about the physical world despite it being completely deterministic. That is, even with all the info in the universe, it's just not enough to perfectly predict the future. This is the mathematical definition of chaos, and its study is known as [chaos theory]( URL_1 ). ^(** NOTE: The fact that the perimeter equation for a circle contains the value pi [π] technically means the actual measurement is not \"solved\" either. Because pi itself is a value that we have to derive analytically. You can get exact answers about a circle's perimeter in terms of pi, but converting it to an actual number will only be as accurate as your approximation for pi is.)"
],
"score": [
6,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nW3nJhBHL0",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
izynqp
|
What is being queer
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6m5xm5"
],
"text": [
"Queer is a general term that is sometimes used to blanket describe someone who is part of the LGBT+ community. I would use with caution. In my experience, some people are cool with that word, others find it offensive. So I would either not use it (unless you yourself identify as queer then you can use it all you want) or make sure the person you're talking to is all good with it. E.g. I have a queer colleague. And I use that word because she uses it for herself, and has told me she's happy for me to use it when referring to her. But others might not like it. It used to just be a colloquial term for someone who was gay, but it has now expanded to often mean someone who isn't cishet."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
izyvep
|
What are financial bubbles and what does it mean for it to pop?
|
The title says it all
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6m7gro"
],
"text": [
"An item’s price continually rises, to the point where people are paying more than what it’s worth under the assumption that the price will continue to rise - allowing them to make a profit. A bubble “popping” refers to the point at which the price stops rising and even plummets - causing all those who invested earlier to “lose their shirts”. When the bubble is big enough, the effects of it’s popping can ripple into other sectors of the economy, e.g. the housing bubble pop back in 2007."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
izz6ft
|
How/Why did people become white?
|
Why did white skin become a thing and how?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6m8wyg",
"g6mcz0t"
],
"text": [
"Lighter skin allows more sunlight through which in turn increases vitamin D. This trait is especially useful in areas away from the equator which have shorter days in the winter.",
"The three most common explanations: 1. Vitamin D vs. sun exposure. If you get limited exposure to the sun, you'll suffer a Vitamin D deficiency. For dark-skinned individuals living outdoors in equatorial Africa, this isn't a problem. For dark-skinned individuals primarily living indoors or in non-equatorial regions, it is. 2. Interbreeding. A significant component of our skin pigmentation comes from Neanderthals and Denisovans. Equatorial, tribal natives from the Americas don't have the dark skin of Africans but the lighter skin of East Asians and Polynesians. On the other hand, Australian aboriginals do have dark skin and they split off from the rest of humanity long before Europeans and East Asians did. 3. Social selection. Throughout the history of civilization, pale skin - especially in women - has been a status signifier. This is likely because those of high status didn't need to work outdoors. As a result, pale skin is likely to have correlated with success at passing your genes onto a future generation."
],
"score": [
15,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
izz7hj
|
What exactly is the meaning of DNA data storage?
|
What does it mean to store data in DNA and how is it done
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6mk1yf",
"g6mgt4u"
],
"text": [
"In a computer, data is storage in a binary format. Each bit of data is literally just a high voltage or a low voltage, a 1 or 0. A byte is ~~4~~ 8 bits, then a kilobyte is 2^10 bits, and megabyte is 2^10 kilobytes, etc. DNA is made up of 4 different nucleotides (A-G-C-T). These can be thought of as data storage units in the same way that voltages are. For example, you can map A = 00, G = 01, C = 10, T= 11 to convert a binary string into DNA and back. This means that we can count nucleotides in a DNA string and determine how many bits it would take to store the same string in binary. You can do the same basic process with system of symbols, which is a lot of stuff on computers work. Now, the reason that DNA is interesting as a storage medium is that it's also executable. When an organism grows, the DNA \"executes\" to create the proteins required to make new cells. Unfortunately, in order to encoder data into DNA, you would need to create a system generate the nucleotides in the right order. I'm not person aware of any currently existing system to do that, but I believe that it is something that people are working on. Edit: Half asleep when I wrote this, but the other response I had seen had address the bio-side, but not the information theory side.",
"So basically the human body is composed of billions of cells. At the centre of each cell lies something called as a nucleus of a cell. The nucleus is like the brain of a cell. Within the nucleus lies nucleolus. Nucleolus is the major part of the nucleus. In a normal human being (a person without congenital anomalies), there are 23 pairs of wriggly worm like structures called chromosomes present in them. These chromosomes are made up of DNA. When you zoom into the DNA structure, they're made up of very small building blocks called as nucleotides (A-G-C-T). A gene is a particular chunk of the long long DNA which can code a particular protein. The A-G-C-T are arranged in a particular order so that that particular gene sequence can be converted into certain proteins which can do the normal physiological process that's going on inside the human body. When there is a genetic defect, the sequence is altered which causes a different protein to be produced which alters the normal physiology. This is what the phrase means that \"the DNA is the storage unit of data\" I hope I answered your question (sorry if it sounded like eli13)"
],
"score": [
8,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
izzo6x
|
Should we be using percentage of GDP or percentage of discretionary spending to conceptualize how much the United States' spends on it's military?
|
My friend and I had a debate whether it was correct to say the United States doesn't actually spend that much on its military because it's only like 3% of its massive GDP. But I said that still makes it spend more than the next 10 countries, and that half of discretionary spending is on defense. So who is right here?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6mh9hy"
],
"text": [
"Neither. In terms of total dollars, we spend more than other countries, but that's not a straight comparison. It's like if you barely make ends meet, and your neighbor has several nice cars. He's spending more in absolute and relative terms than you on cars, but it is also easier for him to afford those cars than it would be for you. So in that sense, his cars are \"cheaper\" than yours. In the same way, we spend more, but it is also \"cheaper\" for us to spend more. E.g., the UK, Germany, and France each spend ~50 billion and have a population of ~70 million each. So on average, the per-person contribution is $714. For the US, it's ~730 billion and ~330 million, the per-person contribution is $2200. 3 times as much! BUT, the GDP per capita of the UK is $41k, which ranks behind every state except Mississippi ($40k). The overall US GDP per capita is $67k. So the US is \"better off\" than those other countries in the same way that your hypothetical neighbor is better off than you, and consequently can more easily afford the relatively more expensive military. Another way of seeing this is to look at the percent of total federal spending on the military. It's something like 15% of total spending. That is pretty small, especially if you add in state and local spending and look at overall government spending, then total military spending would only be a few percent. I.e., the tax burdeon supporting the military is very small compared to everything else the government does."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
izzy9f
|
Why do most devices get fixed more than half the times by simply switching it off and on?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6mhnqb",
"g6mw29q"
],
"text": [
"Sometimes all a device needs is to have all of it's RAM reset to 0. This is easiest to get from just restarting, since that *usually* clears the on-board memory and gives it a fresh start from a cleared state. It's the equivalent of giving your computer a nap - it rests just long enough to clear it's \"head\" and start over. ;; Just sometimes programs get a bit confused, and if you give them a \"clean slate\" to start up from, they behave as they should. The alternate state of the memory is that there are already values stored in it - that weren't appropriately cleared out by previous programs using that memory. Imagine it kind of like you're trying to move in to a new apartment or house, except it already has furniture in it. You need room for your own furniture, so you have to go through the extra step of moving that old furniture out to make room for your own. The programs are doing the same thing; except with data instead of furniture. And with how complex programs are, they might be running checks on whether or not the data is a certain value *before* it clears it out. And then they're trying to move furniture into an already furnished room, which causes issues.",
"Many reasons let’s say there is to much RAM usage turning it off clears the RAM and makes it fresh to use again. Maybe the code or algorithm just had a glitch and restarting the program can make it run again."
],
"score": [
12,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j00faq
|
Why is it so rare to fall in love? What makes our brain decide that someone is worthy of that chemical reaction?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6mwtk5"
],
"text": [
"To echo u/The_GhostCat I think it's reductive to say love is entirely chemical. I see the idea we are all essentially meat robots operating off Darwinian programming gets chucked around a lot, often by people who've seen the person they like kissing someone else at a party. Not saying this is you, OP! In my opinion, we are not 100% nature and not 100% nurture, but a complex and ever-changing mixture of both. People and environment cause each individual to react in different ways, depending not just on our biological and emotional predisposition, but through past experience. Like imagine a person who was bitten by a dog in the past vs someone who grew up with lots of dogs - when a dog runs up to them in the park in the present, those two people will have different reactions. One person's brain pumps happy chemicals, the other fear...but at one point they may have both been neutral on the subject. But then there is a third person who was bitten by a dog, but managed to rationalize that not all dogs are bad - and besides it was her fault for putting her hand through the fence - and now loves them more than ever. A fourth person who has never had a dog, and just has a weird irrational hatred. Etc. I think it's the same with meeting someone and falling in love. The reason why its so rare to find it reciprocated is that there are so many unquantifiable biological, emotional, experiential factors that have to align and, more importantly, *connect with all the other person's stuff*. Chance of success is slim. It's a cliche when people say finding someone you love is like winning the lottery, but there's a reason they use the imagery of betting and low-odds."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j00uiu
|
If in the near future Sony decided to stop providing the Playstation Network service for PS3 and PS4, what would happen to the digital video games that we have purchased?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6mvr4s",
"g6mxqe5",
"g6mqfsy"
],
"text": [
"Gone. Reduced to atoms. But seriously that’s the downside of digital games. If they are gone they are gone forever. You don’t own the game you just kind of lease it forever.",
"You don't purchase them, you license the copyright. It's different than when your purchase a disk or cartridge that contains a copyright license while physically owning the medium. So ya, when they stop supporting it, you can't reaccess it. It's in all that fine print no one reads. There's a lot of strings behind digital games.",
"As far as I know this has already happens with the PSP and being able to download games, so it would work the same way. It's digital media, they're not legally required to still host the games/movies/etc. If they choose to move on to the next service/console and so on. The best thing to do would be to download all the games prior to that happening. Fortunately I doubt that will be anytime soon they remove access for the PS4 especially."
],
"score": [
8,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j01w4g
|
Why is roadkill always on the side of road instead of where it was hit?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6n2y4c",
"g6n2g3n",
"g6o7gqw",
"g6n74xu",
"g6noep1"
],
"text": [
"It *isn't* always on the side of the road. There are plenty of times where the carcass is run over and smashed to bits in the middle of the road. Have you ever seen vultures or other birds picking on roadkill in the middle of the road? Past that, debris will get flung by vehicles until it's at a spot where it's not being flung by vehicles, whether it's trash or an animal's remains. Also, some animals are not instantaneously killed and fixed to the spot, and are bumped out of the way and/or have enough life in them to try to escape, only to die on the side of the road.",
"Most of the time someone (sometimes the person who hit it and other times a random driver) will move it off the road, especially if it is a larger animal that will obstruct traffic",
"[Confirmation bias.]( URL_0 ) * Some roadkills dies on the road, and a ground to a pulp pretty fast, you don't see these for long before they are just a spot. Or if its a big animal, someone comes along and drags it to the side of the road. * Some roadkills makes it a bit into the forest and dies out of sight. You don't see these. * Some only makes it to the side of the road. There you can see them for a long time, and they are not ground to a pulp. I would venture a guess that most roadkills are in category 1 or 2.",
"I always wonder: did they just start crossing the road? Or did they almost make it?",
"Sometimes they don't. Sometimes their inertia carries them across the road anyway. And sometimes they're not killed instantly and crawl to the side of the road and die there."
],
"score": [
121,
13,
8,
5,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j02bho
|
Can you hallucinate when you’re tired?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6n9kow",
"g6n7icq"
],
"text": [
"If you're a nurse I'm surprised then as you would have learned this in med school. Especially since med school is hard and they insist on self care. I'm going to assume we're from different countries. It is called ‘hypnogogic hallucinations”, most people have them when falling asleep and waking up - this is theta brain waves popping up while you are still awake, and it causes dreamlike imagery in front of open or closed eyes. If you are very tired and trying not to fall asleep - you might indeed start seeing dream imagery, or hallucinations as you put it. These are usually transparent and overlapping the real scenery, if you close eyes - it becomes very vivid, like you are in a lucid dream. A lucid dream is when you are awake and asleep at the same time. Working in addictions, I see my clients hallucinating and going into psychosis around the 72 hour mark of no or lack of sleep. This can be the 48 hour mark in already mentally unwell individuals. Methamphetamine is commonly found to be the culprit.",
"I cant give you an explanation but I can confirm this is a thing. And it can get worse than what you describe. I’ve had some moments that are best described as being wasted on drugs or alcohol. Please be careful though. I have learned how important sleep is since friend of mine had a psychotic episode from sleep deprivation. Believe me you don’t want that."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j02g02
|
Is honey bee a miracle food or is just marketing
|
Does honey causes diabetes as well as regular sugar.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6nlif1",
"g6ncycd"
],
"text": [
"It is fructose, just like high fructose corn syrup and any other sugar (most fruits, high carb vegetables, cereal, bread, etc), just fast absorbing carbs. Your body doesn't know where the sugar comes from, to your body sugar is sugar no matter how much money sugar corporations spend in marketing, and all fast carbs end being processed in the same way, albeit fructose takes an extra step in the liver, which is one of the causes of fatty liver disease. So unhealthy marketing is not exclusive to honey. Google \"insulin resistance\", it is the type 2 diabetes precursor, there's been a lot of groundbreaking high-quality research in the last 20 years about that which hasn't reached the general public health sector just yet.",
"Foods don’t cause diabetes directly; generally unhealthy living (which a poor diet can be a part of, of course) can cause type 2 diabetes but it’s not as simple as “eat lots of sugar - become diabetic”."
],
"score": [
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j02gok
|
Why do we hear our voices differently normally and on recordings?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ned87",
"g6n8qsd",
"g6nfp3c",
"g6nn3oe",
"g6nbyl5",
"g6nq6b7",
"g6noiqc",
"g6nnjkh",
"g6nn7aj"
],
"text": [
"Other people (and recording devices) just hear your voice. YOU hear your voice plus some extra \"oomph\" from the sound vibrating up from your throat to your ear through your bones.",
"From how I understand it, it’s because when we speak, most of what we hear of our voice is actually coming through our skull/facial bones as opposed through the air. I think. This is what I heard a long time ago 🤣",
"I don’t know how actors or politicians can bear to see and hear themselves on TV. Hearing a recording of yourself is just awful",
"Everyone else is pretty much correct, but left out the part about how we have multiple “voices”. Basically, as everyone has said, we hear our voice through our skull because of vibrations (making it sound deeper), but we also hear it straight from our mouth to our ears though the air and from the space we’re in when it bounces off objects, walls, etc. Microphones can’t capture all that and they basically only get the direct sound from our mouths depending on distance to the mic, etc., which isn’t what we hear normally, thus making microphone-captured voices sound off.",
"Not a complete answer, but bone conducts sound. Considering that your inner ear is located inside your skull, it will sound different from a speaker that may or may not accurately represent the way your voice sounds to everyone else.",
"Another version of this, why is it when we look in a mirror and get ready for work, or go out on the town, do we think we look “good”, yet seconds later someone takes a picture of us we can’t stand how we look in photos or video?",
"I just watched a pretty interesting TED talk on this very topic - 13 min video: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )",
"My guess would be that it's because of bone conduction. Part of the sound travels throughout your skull, and bypasses the bones in your ear and your eardrum which normally conduct the sound. So the frequency that you hear when you speak yourself might be a bit changed",
"The way you hear yourself on recordings is actually how you sound in real life, to other people. You hear yourself differently because the sound travels through your skull instead of the air"
],
"score": [
1102,
256,
156,
32,
22,
12,
10,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3vSYbT1Aco"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j02jl0
|
what's the use of the placebo effect?
|
why does your body wait to fight a disease untill you think it's not that bad? shouldn't your body just always do its best to not get sick?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6nm6el",
"g6nm87g",
"g6o56wo",
"g6nrax2"
],
"text": [
"In many cases, a big part of the symptoms is caused by anxiety exacerbating the issue. A placebo works by convincing you that the symptoms will improve, and because you anticipate the improvement, the increased sensitivity you're getting from being anxious goes away. It's not that the symptoms are any better, it's just that you're not as subconsciously laser-focused on them.",
"The question is slightly malformed. **The Placebo Effect** doesn't appear to be an intentional design, but an unintended consequence of an extremely sophisticated brain that can *sometimes* trigger symptoms that are psychosomatic - created in the mind and triggered by things like stress. Meaning that with the rise of the scientific-method, it's demonstrably possible (and recordable) to have patients respond well to pretend treatments, if they think it's real. By that I mean, we can recognise that it does have a measurable effect, even though logically it shouldn't. Therefore it becomes a tool in the medical arsenal. Also your body is never waiting to fight a disease. It's always fighting. It's just these *ghost* illnesses appear to be unintentional consequences of extremely advanced hardware in the head. False positives. Therefore your body has nothing to really fight. There's no foreign bodies to eliminate or viruses to target. Lastly, there's the factor of the ritual. In that patients who take placebos are often sticking to a medical ritual that they wouldn't otherwise, such as waking up at sensible hours to take medicine, watching what they eat with it (\"do not take with alcohol\", printed on the label). Perhaps even going for walks because they feel more proactive and positive, now that they're fighting their problems. Getting a bit of fresh air and exercise. So they may be improving their health incidentally by the simple act of keeping a more stable sleep schedule/diet.",
"Placebo effects don’t quite work that way. Placebos affect how patients experience certain (usually self-reported) symptoms, such as pain, but they don’t actually have an effect on the disease itself. In studies of cancer treatments, for example, placebos have no effect on the size of a tumour. It may affect how the patient experiences symptoms from the tumour, though. The idea that the body has unexplained healing powers that can be triggered by a placebo is a misconception of what placebos can and cannot do.",
"Because there are 2 aspects of the problem. 1 is fixing what is wrong with you and 2 is saving you from what caused the problem in the first place. Your body can focus on fixing you more efficiently if it believes that you are safe and the problem has passed/won't repeat itself. Imagine this your body thinks you will continue to be exposed to harm. Then it will probably will just try to prevent vital damage. If it knew that the problem has passed and all it needs to do is fixing previous damage, it will just do that. In short, the placebo makes your body change how it approaches the problem."
],
"score": [
44,
30,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j02o7h
|
how do robot amputee parts connect and listen to the brain?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6nbuzl",
"g6nbdvf",
"g6nn23c",
"g6nr4gx"
],
"text": [
"They have electrodes connected to the muscles in the stump. They sense the tiniest movements, and are programmed to move the hand in response to specific movements.",
"Usually they connect to muscles into the arm or hand and when your arm muscles move it moves the fingers",
"Your hand has many tiny muscles. They move when you try to move your fingers. Roboarm uses this. But this is 100× more complicated than this",
"They use the electrical impulses coming from the brain in the muscle tissue to control the movement. It is almost impossible to detect the smallest ones, so most of the time, they use the big muscle close by (like the biceps if the forearm is missing) to control a claw like prosthetic that closes when you contract. For more complex ones with individual finger control, it's case by case, but a few that I've seen use a morse-like code to control each finger (2 long contraction is the index, 1 short 1 long the thumb, ...). As you can guess, it's incredibly unnatural and requires lots of training by the person, and in the end, slower and less finely tuned than a real hand. It looks fancier, but in the end, most people compromise and use the more practical one, that still allows them to grab things but not individual finger control."
],
"score": [
115,
13,
7,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j02xa4
|
Why do we form an instant connection with/immediately love our pets? I understand how hormones work human to human, but how does it happen so immediately with animals?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6nn35j",
"g6ogole",
"g6o26v0",
"g6o9go5",
"g6ow6sb",
"g6om4vk",
"g6ob4kb",
"g6od9ug",
"g6o7toq",
"g6owhqm",
"g6oxzhn",
"g6p0bm1"
],
"text": [
"We've been breeding our go-to pet species for thousands of years. Over time, pets that seemed cuter to us were bred more often, creating cuter and cuter generations of pets (amongst other, more useful characteristics) After, let's say, fifty thousand years of breeding, you can imagine there are some pretty cute pets. Couple that with the breeding of animals in the last 800 years or so with the exclusive goal of creating the cutest breeds possible, these days you're basically helpless against the powers of cuteness that some pets have over you. They're basically genetically engineered to be adorable. Edit: I'll add that in modern times I believe our propensity to think animals as cute has probably increased, due to less pests and threats from other animals. So we may think a lion is cute because we're not very likely to be killed by one, or have it eat our cattle. But many farmers in Africa absolutely hate lions and frequently poison them. So we're likely conditioned to see more animals as cute if they're not a nuisance or threat to us.",
"Most of these answers are begging the question (repeating the question as if it is an answer). Basically, people are just saying, \"we form bonds with our pets because we form bonds with our pets\" by saying \"because they are cute and bring us joy!\" The actual answer is that most domesticated animals trigger our innate responses to tiny humans. The biological mechanisms in our brains that evolved to encourage us to protect and take care of babies and toddlers are triggered in the presence of certain cues, and over time we have selectively bred some animals to exhibit those cues for their entire lifetimes, and even moreso when they are a few weeks to a few months old. Domestication is, in essense, breeding animals to remain in their infantile state. SOURCE: URL_0",
"It's a financial and emotional investment to decide to get or take in a pet. You have already started forming the bond before you even see it by deciding you want to have a pet.",
"I don’t think we do. Lots of people don’t have pets and despise other people’s pets. I think their is a bias in that the people who seek out a pet are already ready to take care of and want the animal. That said, if you get something, anything, not just pets, and take care of it, you are investing youR time and energy in it and our going to want to protect that investment. As others have said, I think there is a nurture instinct built into humans that makes us want to take care of the things we find important.",
"Because deep down we desperately desire being unconditionally loved, and we project that upon our pets. We do the same with people, but saying \"I'll love you forever if you love me forever\" is much easier with a dog than it is with humans.",
"Oxytocin is a love hormone that is released by mother and baby to create a bond and it is also released by dogs and owners when playing or showing affection towards each other. Through domestication most dogs and cats have been bred to retain their young appearance and behaviours (neoteny) which makes humans more likely to want to nurture and cuddle them.",
"I'm only going by the things I've read in the past 40 years. So don't expect sources. Researchers speculate that the same hormonal mechanisms that lead us into wanting to protect our own offspring are also at play with small, cute and cuddly animals. Certain larger animals, like dogs, incite more of a loyalty reaction - more similar to the loyalty you feel towards a trusted friend or ally. Yet other animals earn our affection by their utility - like the family cow, camel, llama or goat. In all three cases, the affection is entirely different. Yet the affection itself results in similar behavior in us - we become more protective of the animal.",
"Animals are dependable, they have their nature and they stick to it. What you see is what you get, and trust can be easily formed. Humans are unpredictable and capricious so you can never really let your guard down. Even after years in a relationship things can all of a sudden take a nasty turn. Plus the blinding force of infatuation plays a major role at the beginning of relationships, and one doesn't really know who the other person is until its spell wears off. Trust is a hard earned accomplishment among humans.",
"It happens with humans too but after you've been betrayed enough, you learn to ignore connection",
"we're accustomed to thinking of ourselves as so very different from other critters but we are all animals and there is a LOT of overlap and shared space between us. true, with dogs and cats there's been thousands of years of interaction that (i suppose) has lead to some genetic sorting favorable to human/dog relationships, but humans have relationships with gorillas, ferrets, etc etc heck, my next door neighbor has an amazing relationship with a pet bird.",
"I have had pets that I don't immeditaely love. I have two dogs right now that are a pain in the butt. I still feed excercise and protect them though. They are happy and living their best life as most dogs are if you treat them good. But sort just waiting for them to grow old and pass away. I have had a bunch of pets over the years these two make noise each night and poop all over the place. Labour of love maybe. But not sure if i have any instant connection or immediate love.",
"I think it's also because of the fact that we know that pets are simpler than humans? Might be just a suspicion of mine but I think that we are somewhat (for lack of a better term) conditioned to have always a stronger sense of mistrust against other humans because of their ability to cause much greater harm to us? A cat/dog will either love/like you or not, whereas humans are much more nuanced. An innate (as subtle as it might be) consideration of the possibility of betrayal, emotional hurt, physical hurt, etc. makes initial contact with other people more inhibited. I'm no expert on this field though; just a \"theory\" I have."
],
"score": [
2879,
2756,
51,
19,
5,
5,
5,
4,
3,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mans-new-best-friend-a-forgotten-russian-experiment-in-fox-domestication/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j034m3
|
A 4-D cube
|
I'm unable to visualise the geometry of a 4-D cube. I have seen quite a few videos of 4-d cube and they all say it's like a cube in a cube but I'm not able to actually visualise it like how would it be if I ever saw one in reality.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ntm7k",
"g6ni31y"
],
"text": [
"Well, it's literally impossible to visualise 4D shapes properly, such is the limitations of our 3D monkey brains. [This short video]( URL_0 ) does an excellent job at explaining what a 4th dimension 'looks' like.",
"The hard part is to imagine the fourth dimension at 90 degrees on all other three dimensions (which are also at 90). In fact it’s a cube that you can turn inside out without ‘opening’ it. I’m pretty sure this doesn’t help but that doesn’t make it less true."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t4aKJuKP0Q"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j035kj
|
How do biologists/archeologists determine the age of fossils/artifacts?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6nhiu5",
"g6nni0m"
],
"text": [
"The level they are buried at the surrounding rocks date the fossil that they are found in which is why it important to note the exact location where they are found.",
"[Carbon dating]( URL_0 ) is a very accurate method. It relies on the half-life of a radioactive form of carbon, carbon-14. Basically, you can compare the radiation given off by the fossil with what should be given off by that much carbon-14 and work backwards to determine how much radioactive decay has taken place."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0382o
|
Why do loading screens always stop at 99%
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6not6c",
"g6ninmy",
"g6nyz6b",
"g6o6fss",
"g6nkcz9"
],
"text": [
"To simply the complexities involved behind the scenes. Imagine a roadtrip between point A and B in a car where the kid in the back keeps asking \"Are we there yet?\". The best answer any driver could possibly do is base their answer of an estimation such as \"We have traveled 40km out of 200km\" or phrase it as going 20% of the distance. Now I choose this metaphor since there can occur just as many interruptions when travelling in traffic, such as accidents or unexpected traffic jams. Or that the distance itself might not be the thing that can take the most time. If 90% of your distance is done on the German Autobahn at 200+ km/h speeds, but the last 10% is done on tiny off-road animal trails in the mountains, then the kid in the back wondering why \"we aren't there yet\" won't really understand since they had travelled 90% of the way two hours ago.",
"Sometimes to give the appearance of steady progress the bar is set to increase at regular intervals. Leading the bar to be done before the program. However it's possible the final task, which is usually some sort of compiling task for all the data it processed, it takes a lot more time so 99% of the tasks are done but the last one takes a bit.",
"It's sometimes a trick that developers does to allow the machine to process something. The loading progress is calculated from the amount of data copied over the total data to copy (from hard drive to ram for exemple). But once all the data are copied, the machine must process all that, which takes time but we can't know how long it'll take. So developers cap the loading at 99% so that easier for users to understand that \"it's not ready yet\"",
"If I told you to eat a bowl of fruit as fast as you can, while giving me updates on how close you are to finishing it - you wouldn’t be able to do it very well. If there are 4 pieces of fruit in the bowl, you might tell me that you have completed 50% of the work after eating 2 of the 4 fruit. But, some fruit might take you longer to eat than other fruit. If that’s true, then eating half the fruit can’t mean you’ve completed half your task. Maybe you have a good idea of how long it takes to eat an apple; but not all apples are the same, so your estimate is going to be a little off every time. Maybe the banana isn’t ripe. Maybe the orange was a bit harder to peel today. Maybe you weren’t expecting seeds in your grapes. Also, you’re just trying to concentrate on eating! It’s a bit rude of me to expect you to eat this fruit as quickly as possible, while also wasting your energy working out how fast you’re doing it at the same time. You’ve decided you’re not an expert at calculating the time to eat fruit, and you never wanted to be. Instead, you’re just going to say: “I’m 99% done, I just have to finish eating this last apple”.",
"Reviewing what has been downloaded and checking that it is all there and in the right place takes extra time."
],
"score": [
54,
12,
5,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j03bo1
|
why do 4x400m sprinting teams always puts their fastest runner as the first or last runner?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6nn9e8",
"g6o323r",
"g6njxb6"
],
"text": [
"If you're in the second or third runner you'll have two transition points where you have to pass the baton. You aren't at 100% for both the start and the end of your 100m sprint. But if you're the first or last runner you only have one transition. This translates to a longer segment of the race being ran at 100% for the first and last runners. A team with their best runners running with less transitions will be faster because those faster runners can be utilized to their strength - running fast.",
"The first leg is run entirely in lanes and for most of this lap the runners will be separated by the stagger so there aren't interactions between athletes. The second leg runs 100m in lanes then breaks for the inside - this means there's an advantage to being clear of the other athletes at 100m into leg 2, which is mostly a factor of whatever leg 1 did. Otherwise it's possible for a faster runner to get boxed in and end up having to expend energy getting around other runners, while a slower runner will force others to go around. The next important point is at 200m in leg 2 - the order here is the order that the leg 3 runners line up on the track. Again, this is mostly a factor of the first runner's performance (they did 400m, leg 2 has only done 200m). There's an advantage to being in front at the exchange because it's easier just to run straight down the inside of the track than to look out for someone standing in the middle of the finish line. Sometimes runners miss the exchange or have to go out of their way. By leg 4, the field has usually stretched out so overtaking isn't as hard and you're unlikely to be boxed in. Psychologically, it's easier to have a faster runner chasing down the others and/or able to extend the lead at this point. If you put the fastest runner on leg 3 and they're in the lead, they won't have the same target to aim for - they could finish that leg first, but you never know if they'd have found something else if they'd been up against the other faster runners in the last leg.",
"Extra energy is required overtaking people as you have to get in an outer lane which means you run further so it is best to get a lead and hang on to it. However 400m is also an endurance race and people under pressure can start off too quickly so a fast runner at the end can pick off those who are faltering towards the finish."
],
"score": [
294,
30,
13
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j03j40
|
how is the actual temperature measured for weather forecasts?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6nny4m",
"g6nogau"
],
"text": [
"I would like to add that it's not just surface temperature observation that is recorded. In the US, the National Weather Service launch weather balloons twice daily (in inclement weather, more) and gather wind speed/direction, temperature, and dew point. This information is not only fed into weather models but it is also used in analysis forecasting by plotting the data on a skew t diagram. These diagrams also enable forecasters to get a quick snapshot of the atmosphere and combined with other information help determine risk especially during severe weather events. The oceans also play a key role in forecasting so data from ships, planes, buoys, and satellite data help the model fill in gaps so to speak. Edit: spelling",
"As this is ELI5 it might be hard to cover the complexity without over reaching the vocab. Weather people use hundreds of different measurements to predict weather forecasts. Temperature at ground level (google Stevenson Screen), in the air, in the water, the pressure of the atmosphere, direction of wind, humidity .. and hundreds more. More data in = more accurate forecast out The actual process of measuring temperature is just as varied. It could be old school Mercury bulb, but is way more likely to be digital. Satellites use various ways (eg. measuring heat given off by oxygen molecules) too. Very complex area, and hard to know exactly which part your question related to. Perhaps think of a more specific phrasing, and re-ask in another thread?"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j04pwr
|
how much oxygen is there in the air pockets in underwater caves, and is it replenished somehow?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6oa9wt",
"g6o8rao",
"g6ocv54",
"g6onf5n",
"g6o9kc1"
],
"text": [
"I know it's tempting with the current state of the world but no, you can't go live with the fishes.",
"It all depends on whether the air does get refreshed by changes in water level, and if there's anything else there that can consume O2 so it varies depending on the specific air pocket",
"One thing to keep in mind is that said air pocket would be pressurized by the weight of the water above it. Our atmosphere is made up mostly of nitrogen, and at high pressures like what you might experience 100ft underwater your lungs will actually absorb more nitrogen than oxygen leading to something called nitrogen narcosis. So even if there is oxygen in an air pocket you might not even be able to breathe it.",
"Often times, absolutely zero. That's one of the biggest dangers of exploring underwater caves, it is totally possible that you emerge into a large air pocket that hasn't been exposed to the outside in years and contains zero oxygen so your first breath is your last. You could also emerge into a pocket full of hydrogen sulfide from decaying organic matter, again first breath is the last. Unless the water recedes far enough that there's a direct air connection between the air pocket and the entrance of the cave, the only way to replenish the oxygen in the air pocket is by diffusion through the water, but this is going to be a slow process.",
"Depends, but generally not much if there's no way for it to replenish. If you breathe out from a scuba set while in a completely flooded cave, air bubbles will form at the top, and will generally leech through the rock if it's porous enough."
],
"score": [
44,
26,
16,
16,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j04sp5
|
What is light?
|
Let's say I rub two stones together, and eventually manage to make a spark and even a fire, this fire is a energy and I can see it, and I know light travels from particles to particles in the space but what is this light that travels? Is it very simply energy? Is it transfer of energy? Is light nothing but energy?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6o3odw"
],
"text": [
"Excellent question. Light is both a *particle* (a photon) and a *wave*. This duality of light has caused enormous problems and melted some of the finest brains in history. Where do photons come from? They are created by energetic events, for example electrons changing their orbits around an atom nucleus. They don't accelerate to light speed, they are created traveling at light speed."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j04w7s
|
Can someone explain "The Medium is the message"?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ohubn",
"g6o5e5m",
"g6o55b6",
"g6o5smf"
],
"text": [
"The fact that a note is written in blood on a napkin can be more important that what it says.",
"Actions are louder than words. The medium you choose to deliver a message by is a message in itself. message = content Medium = meta deta",
"Sometimes, the way you tell someone something is a better way to help them understand than what you actually say. An ELI5 example would be like in the movies when someone sends a kidnapping message with letters cut out from magazines, it conveys that the person is crafty and maybe a little crazy more than if the kidnapper had simply called the on the phone. An ELI18 version would be if the kidnapper sent a finger instead of the letter.",
"It's a school of thought by Marshall McLuhan of Canada that supposed that the medium of communication (TV, radio, internet, art) is more important to the consumption of a message than the message itself, and that the study of interpersonal communication should be focused on the medium and not the message itself. For example, it matters less whether or not Fox News is supporting QAnon conspiracy theories, and more that they are generally supportive of President Trump. They can attack QAnon as baseless claims all they want, but it really isn't changing the minds of the viewers any. But if Fox News were to fully split from Trump and embrace a liberal package, then the viewers would either switch to a different medium (OANN for example) or they would change their minds. It should be noted that the phrase, the medium is the message, is itself a clickbait headline, with an intent to get people thinking about the non-neutrality of their chosen media."
],
"score": [
3,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j05beo
|
Why do (most?) insects die belly up?
|
I.e. with the legs towards the sky. Eg. Cockroaches, flies, spiders
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6oi6ts",
"g6oaj3g",
"g6oi8r3"
],
"text": [
"So with spiders there is a pretty simple explanation. So, humans have blood. Spiders also have a body fluid. Let's call it bug juice (hemolymph). When the spider is alive and has had enough water, the bug juice fills their legs and body. When they die, this bug juice dries up, and no longer provides enough pressure to keep the legs stretched out. The legs curl under the body, and many times the spider is rolled over with the curled legs sticking up.",
"They don't necessarily die that way, they just tend to end of that way. They fall from plants or get blown around by wind, and since they have legs sticking out the bottom of they end of upside down it's hard for them to get right side up again by chance. So arguably the same reason 'so many people die lying down', I guess?",
"The legs of bug corpses typically seize up and pull inward into a ball shape, allowing the corpse to roll somewhat easily. If the corpse is ever knocked around (presumably by light wind), chances are it will come to rest with the heavy side down. That usually means flipped on its back. A bug could also become flipped on its back late in life and be too old/weak to right itself and eventually die in that position. But most flipped over bug corpses you find likely fell into that position long after the actual time of death."
],
"score": [
14,
11,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j06ana
|
What is the problem that marketing professionals have with the number 9?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6okjdy",
"g6om05b"
],
"text": [
"Windows 9 was skipped because Microsoft had done Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 98SE. Windows changed a lot over the next 15 years and a lot of programmers wrote code that checked for the version where they took a shortcut in only checking for \"Windows 9\" since that would catch all those versions but also version 9. It was decided that it was better to skip it than to have to make everyone track down the code. iPhone 10 is the 10th anniversary version of the iPhone. Just like they skipped iPhone 2 to have iPhone 3g For the others, I think it's just exciting to get to 10.",
"The explanation I heard for Windows 9 was a technical one rather than marketing. Some older programs would check the Windows version, and they might do this by looking for the string \"Windows 9\\*\"; the star being a wildcard, so the check would return true for both Windows 95 and Windows 98. But Windows 9 would have also matched, potentially breaking old programs. Not sure if any of this was verified, so take it with a pinch of salt. As for iPhone, iPhone X was released around the 10th anniversary of the original iPhone, so they built their marketing heavily on the number 10. Mortal Kombat was following a common trend of dropping/resetting the ordinal numbers or subtitles when releasing a new video game sequel, same as happened with Tomb Raider, God of War and Hitman. Probably nothing to do with avoiding a specific number. So all in all, the fact that the number 9 was skipped in each of these cases would appear to be coincidental."
],
"score": [
15,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j06l0h
|
why are bongs as popular if not more popular as just smoking a joint?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ompwf",
"g6oms7r"
],
"text": [
"Less waste from my experience. Burn through a lot more bud and catch less high from a joint. I will say though that I have a friend who uses a pinch hitter and that works even better in my opinion.",
"A bong is easier. You have to learn to roll. To pack a bowl you just put weed in the bowl. Really though it's just user preference."
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j06xof
|
How are people able to form strings of complex words and phrases instantaneously while speaking or even in free style rap.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ou03w"
],
"text": [
"Because your brain doesn't think in words, it thinks in ideas. It thinks what it wants to talk about, inserts that concept into a grammar framework it already knows (also, side note - there's evidence to suggest that grammar is partially evolved and inherent, as in babies understand grammar long before they figure out what words are). Then it sends that completed sentence to the bit of the brain that runs actual speech production as it prepares the next sentence. It's not sending one word after another, it's sending assembled sentences - and using a lot of \"ums\" and \"uhs\" and other behavioural tics you don't even notice to fill in the gaps. And if it happens to finish making the next sentence before the current sentence has finished being said, it can often lead to you stumbling over your words and having to slow down and think about each word you say actively."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j06xs4
|
Why does a towel get stiff when it hangs to dry but soft when it gets in the dryer?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6pj94i",
"g6pjmra",
"g6py8ma"
],
"text": [
"Take that stiff towel and roll it back and forth a few times. Notice how it's no longer as stiff? Now imagine rolling it continuously for 20-40 minutes. Any tightness caused from the drying process and the material shrinking is broken up.",
"The stiffness after line drying is mostly due to the water that doesn't evaporate quickly \"gluing\" the fibers of the towel together. It has to do with the ability of the cellulose in the cotton fibers to retain water. This website breaks it down really simply and even has diagrams! URL_0",
"Electrical forces between water molecules make them kinda sticky to each other, in a way which causes things like surface tension, meniscus, and capillary action. When cloth fibers are wet and the water is evaporating, the capillary action of the water remaining can produce a kind of sticky sucking-force between neighbouring fibers, which pulls them together and gets their rough edges tangled and clumped up with each other. And when they're closely tangled and clumped with their neighbours like this, they're more rigid. When the fabric air dries, there's a lot of time for this to happen, and there's no movement to disrupt the process. In a tumble dryer, the fabric is constantly bending and flexing, and this breaks up those tangles and clumps in the microscopic fiber."
],
"score": [
44,
18,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.insidescience.org/news/why-towels-get-so-stiff-when-you-dry-them-line"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j07g4c
|
why is energy produced from both nuclear fission and fusion even though they are fundamentally opposite processes?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6oulnd",
"g6oyodr"
],
"text": [
"Energy is released when something moves from a less stable state to a more stable state. For example, if you have something very high up, it is *unstable* because gravity is pulling it down. When it falls, it releases energy until it hits the ground and becomes stable, because at the ground it can't fall any more. On the other hand, you have to put energy into something to move it out of a stable state. When something is sitting on the ground, you have to add energy into it to raise it up. Atoms that are lighter than iron are in a less stable state than they would be with a larger nucleus. The strong nuclear force is, well...strong and like gravity it can pull *really* hard on protons and neutrons, much harder than the electromagnetic force is repelling the protons. When you fuse small atomic nuclei, they are becoming more stable, which releases energy. Atoms that are heavier than iron are also in a less stable state. Although the strong nuclear force is much stronger than electromagnetism, it has a much smaller range. If the nucleus gets too big, the strong force isn't affecting all of the protons and neutrons in the nucleus, but the electromagnetic force *is*. The electromagnetic repulsion between protons is pushing them apart and the strong nuclear force is just barely holding them together. When the nucleus splits, it becomes small enough for the strong force to hold on better, so it becomes more stable and energy is released. The opposite is true for fissioning small nuclei lighter than iron and fusing big nuclei heavier than iron. Fissioining small nuclei absorbs energy and fusing heavy nuclei absorbs energy. The lighter the atom is, the more energy you get from fusing it and the heavier the atom is the more energy you get from fission. You can't get lighter than hydrogen, and getting atoms heavier than uranium and plutonium is usually difficult because 1) they may not exist naturally and 2) they decay so fast that they don't last long enough to be useful. Iron is right in the middle and is in the most stable state.",
"Fission releases energy that was holding together the atoms component particles. Fusion releases excess energy that was being used to hold together two atoms that are made into one atom."
],
"score": [
17,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j07kld
|
Why do certain sounds, like rainfall, relax us?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ovibq"
],
"text": [
"There's many possible reasons, one is that humans hate silence. True silence is so unnerving because with nothing else to focus on we start to hear the blood rushing in our ears and the sounds of our bodily functions working. And there is something white noise which is when there's a sound that fills the entire frequency spectrum with equal energy. And rain, water falls, vinyl crackle, fireplace, even electrical static are the closest to true white noise that exists in nature."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j08lzx
|
What is the explicit difference between being addicted to something and just having no logical reason to stop doing an action?
|
Who is to say whether something is an addiction or just a lifestyle choice? I watch TV every day. I'll probably never stop, because why would I? Does that make me addicted because I'm choosing to not stop something? Is a part of addiction not being able to stop, or just not wanting to? Are there hard and fast rules to this?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6p1384",
"g6p1oxc",
"g6p1ev2",
"g6p1x0e"
],
"text": [
"Addiction is generally where you start to neglect things such as personal hygiene or human interaction or spend all your money on whatever it is you’re addicted to",
"Answer: I would define an addiction as being unable to stop doing something *despite* the knowledge it’s causing you significant harm (eg smoking) or significantly and negatively disrupting your quality of life (eg gambling) or both (eg alcohol). I’m sure TV addiction is rare, but possible. In that case you would probably be watching so much TV that you were missing work, study deadlines, or pushing away family and friends, which would come under disruption of life.",
"A simple way to see if you're addicted is try to control it. Change your habits for a time. For example dont watch tv for 30 days. If you can do it you weren't addicted. If you find yourself making excuses to do it anyway or saying \"fuck it, I'll watch if I want\" then you are showing signs of addiction.",
"A key characteristic of addiction is being unable to stop doing something even when you want to stop. Certain addictions produce physical pain and other symptoms when you stop doing them (withdrawal), and some also produce psychological symptoms as well. If you woke up one day and realized that you watch too much TV (for whatever reasons) and decided to stop but found that you continue to watch to the same extent despite really wanting to stop and really trying to stop, you'd be addicted to watching to TV."
],
"score": [
7,
6,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j08ozi
|
why is it ok to wash dishes for a second but I should wash my hands for a minimum of 20 secs?
|
I mean I wash my hands all the time so no big deal on my part; this is something taught to you as a kid. Dishes on the other hand were “just soap up a sponge/rag lather up the dish, make sure all the foods off, and BAM your good!” No time requirements just get the job done. Is there just not an issue with cross contamination with eating utensils or dishes? I mean this is everyone that I know does this with dishes and couldn’t imagine washing each dish for 20secs
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6p2r8z",
"g6p52g6",
"g6p1fnq",
"g6p79lj"
],
"text": [
"A few reasons: - hands have lots of little nooks and crannies for critters to hide in - in addition to bugs, your hands encounter food for bugs, and then you leave those two things together for them to grow for a while - your hand has more sides to wash - water temp is lower for washing hands - your hands are covered in a thin film of oil, which you need to break down - after you wash dishes, you don’t tend to immediately stick the dish in your eye and/or mouth Edit to add: Also, people left uncoached will generally do a satisfactory job of washing dishes, as there is some pretty good feedback that the job is done (no food/oil remaining on plate, plate makes that “clean” noise when you rub it). People are, conversely, absolutely terrible at washing their hands.",
"Some good answers already, but I wanted to add one thing. Your hands are a much better home for bacteria, fungi, and viruses than ceramic dishes are. Dishes that are relatively clean/dry lack the conditions that make life possible (water, energy source, warmth etc). Your body is home to many microorganisms because it has all of these things. In fact, bacteria cells outnumber humans cells in your body 3:1.",
"Dishes touch a lot less than your hands. If you're normal, then the top of your plates will only ever touch edible food, so that's all you need to wash off. Hands go everywhere.",
"You aren't washing a dish to remove viruses, you wash a dish to remove food that would rot. Even food borne illnesses don't last long on surfaces. Like if you dragged a piece of raw chicken with salmonella across your counter, pretty much as soon as it's dried all the salmonella would be dead. But there'd be dried chicken juice on your counter that would mold and be gross. So with plates, pretty much if it looks clean, it is clean enough."
],
"score": [
21,
6,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j093os
|
Why do you need to pee when you’re nervous?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6qjenr"
],
"text": [
"\"When you're nervous your body goes into fight or flight mode. The fight or flight mode response can increase the kidneys production of urine.\". Source: URL_0"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.livescience.com/60524-why-do-you-pee-when-nervous.html"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j09q0m
|
; Why haven’t we made machines that work like plants (Greenhouse gasses in, 02 out?) how complex is the actual science and could it be mass produced?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6pabk9",
"g6p8k60",
"g6pbhm7"
],
"text": [
"It's probable we could develop one, for billions of dollars in research, but given that we already have a free version that we spend millions of dollars destroying, it's unlikely that making an alternative to plants would be a good investment.",
"Such machines can be made but they require energy to operate. We make that energy by producing even more greenhouse gasses so the entire process is counterproductive. It is unlikely that you can invent a process to capture greenhouse gasses that is inexpensive and results in a net negative.",
"its not actually that hard ot do, the issue is scale and the logistics. in order to do something like this on a scale that it would actually matter it would take too much space and resources to pull off, these system also rely on having energy, this energy has to come from somewhere, like has to be thru generating more greenhouse gases, so you are also fighting against efficiency."
],
"score": [
8,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0a29a
|
Why can app games use false advertising to show an entirely different kind of gameplay than actually offered? (Personally, I'd rather play the falsely advertised game every time.)
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6pbruu",
"g6qic4h",
"g6pilam",
"g6r7qd8",
"g6pcrvl",
"g6r9r2e",
"g6sid6c",
"g6qozq1",
"g6reld8",
"g6qmga7",
"g6pbtc5",
"g6r8vfl",
"g6rbcio",
"g6ro6ky",
"g6rjrk2",
"g6rasq6",
"g6rauqh",
"g6qgq38",
"g6rdw9m",
"g6snljb",
"g6rvbzx",
"g6rpyy5",
"g6rqd4s"
],
"text": [
"The mobile gaming market is sort of a wild west at the moment. Companies will pop up with some cheap garbage game that steals assets from more popular games, run misleading ads to attract as many gullible users as possible, then fold in a year or two only to form again under a different name and repeat the cycle. Part of the reason why this happens is because of microtransactions and speed. The companies appear and disappear faster than legal action can be taken against them; a straightforward intellectual property suit might take a few years to resolve and by that time they have already gone out of business. Microtransactions mean that their misled customers are likely only out a couple of dollars at most so the authorities don't have much motivation to crack down on them very hard. Ultimately they are doing it because they can get away with it.",
"You probably don't actually want to play the falsely advertized game. I looked up one of them where you move the pins to solve the puzzle. It's a real game, and you can download and play it. The problem is that all of the levels have to be hand-made, and they're not super difficult, so people just blow through them in a minute or two. As a result, the game devs FLOODED the game with ads. Like, you have to watch an ad multiple times per level. It's like, move a pin, watch an ad. Move another pin. People in the reviews talk about the game as being almost aggressively trying to make you stop playing the game in frustration, and they kind of are, because if you just played the content you'd clear the entire game in like 10 minutes. EDIT: If you want to sit through the ads, the game is called Hero Rescue.",
"Btw: [These]( URL_0 ) are the kind of ads I'm referring to.",
"This was explored in a episode of.the Reply All podcast. Here: URL_0",
"Part of it is trying to attract a certain type of people that will easily get obssessed with games and pay money for advancement in it. It seems they've found that people who play puzzle games more commonly have both of these traits and will get hooked into games easily, regardless of what type of game they actually start to play. Thus, they advertise puzzle games regardless of what type of game it really is.",
"Anybody miss paying for an app up front rather than this freemium BS? Also, I've reported them to Google and nothing ever happened. Google is a humongous and profitable company. If they wanted to nip this in the bud, they could. But as long as they get money out of it, it will continue to be a problem.",
"These ads are designed to piss you off. You’ll be like “OMG HOW CAN U BE SO STUPID LIKE LITERALLY THAT PUZZLE WAS SO EASY LEMME DOWNLOAD THIS GAME AND SHOW YOU IMBECILES HOW ITS DONE” Sadly my son falls for this every single time despite my efforts to tell him he’s just being provoked. 🤦🏻♂️",
"In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission is where you would go to make a claim of false advertising. Given its mandate and funding, these kinds of ads are way, way, *way* down on its priority list. And even if it were high on the list of Things The FTC Cares About, the first (and possibly only) thing the FTC would do is issue a cease-and-desist order. If the advertiser complies, then it's usually case closed. In other words, nobody cares.",
"What's worse: a potentially legitimate game with horrific advertising. Saw an ad repeatedly show up for me about a year ago. It never showed any gameplay. Only cheap military-style background music while a guy combined military emblems to make higher-ranking emblems and the voice line \"Sir yes sir\" played every single time. That was it. After weeks of seeing this ad over and over again, I couldn't stand to hear anyone say \"sir yes sir\" even once for the rest of my life, and I knew absolutely nothing about what the game was actually about beyond players enjoying emblem arrangements on the rank-up screen. Finally searched it in the app store once. Apparently it's actually some sort of strategy game with good reviews, and it got a sequel that also has good reviews. As far as I can tell, both games were somebody's honest passion project. I wouldn't know. I hated the advertising far too much to try it.",
"you wouldn't be able to sue for false advertising because nothing was sold. You downloaded the game for free, and if you paid for any microtransaction inside it you had time to experience the real game before. If they did that kind of advertising for a paid game, however, then that would be a whole different story.",
"Story telling vs actual game play When they are showing those images its story telling in the advertisement. Whereas the actual game play is different. Commercials have had alot of trial and error. One story years ago was that a car company showed a car driving underwater. So someone bought the car and then sued, when it sunk and couldn't drive. So the fine print of the ad after that said \"Car can't actually drive underwater\"",
"What i don't get is why they don't make those games available since they would be immensely popular.",
"It's extremely hard to get someone to download an app, but if you have enough people download it (for the right or wrong reason, with or without deception), the algorithm will show the app to more people in the App Store, eventually bumping organic downloads.",
"Same reason why scam emails are so \"obvious\", they only wanna attract idiots. Idiots would give them money, baiting a smart person wouldn't. All those scam email typos and bad grammar are not because they are idiots. That is why games are blatantly falsely advertising, to attract suckers that would spend money",
"I can only speak for larger companies but it’s not as nefarious as you think it is. Typically, the advertising team is separate from the product team and work with very different KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). The Marketing team’s job is to get the user to click on the ad and hopefully download it: what the players do after that is (usually) inconsequential to them. In the most basic terms, their job is to identify players they think will spend more money than it costs to acquire them, create a campaign that they think they will click through, and market directly to them. The reason you see those ads is because the cohort you belong to is likely to download and monetize in a way that offsets the cost of the marketing spend.",
"Any of you guys seen the Matchington Mansion game? Wow what an offensive game.",
"Mafia City is one game where the ad is completely different from the actual game. It looks to be some gta ripoff where you have to make choices but if you look up the gameplay on youtube, you'll see that it's the same old base-building game. Though the ads are entertaining to watch in my opinion. Level 100 boss gets turned into a Level 1 prisoner.",
"Online advertising has always been false and toxic. Games are just popular remember to slap the monkey and win a free psp",
"Look at the hamburger in any fast food chain ad. Does it resemble the burger that you get handed across the counter. The wonderful world of advertising.",
"Homescapes? Pulling the options to get the sludge out and the water to the man? Oh, yeah, that looks so much fun! I was so disappointed when it wasn’t the game.",
"I can't understand... if they think the game mechanics they falsely represents in ads are more catchy and enjoyable than the actual game, why don't they develop the game in the ads? Why should you make a game you don't even want to show in ads? All this thing is so shady and unintelligible to me.",
"I think a big issue is that once you click the ad for the game the ad goes away so by the time you find out that's not what the game is you can't report the ad. And the ad gets there in the first place because the ads aren't vetted thoroughly enough by the company serving the ads.",
"The falsely advertised puzzle games follow clear \"real world\" logic so people can understand what's happening in them without having to follow a tutorial, whereas the actual game likely requires several minutes to learn how to play. You aren't going to be looking at the ad for several minutes so they try and entice you with something you can understand within the time you spend looking at the ad itself. I'm very curious as to which company does the ads for Homescapes, Hero Wars, Evony, and all the rest. The ads are clearly outsourced to someone else but I have yet to find out who."
],
"score": [
7722,
539,
389,
92,
81,
62,
25,
24,
13,
11,
9,
7,
7,
7,
7,
6,
6,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://pics.me.me/homescapes-can-you-help-out-here-help-her-escape-install-67723848.png"
],
[
"https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/rnhw23"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0a84w
|
Why do paper cuts immediately hurt, but many stab victims report to not have felt anything?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6pc35h"
],
"text": [
"It’s a neat little feature we evolved, where our bodies release a huge wave of endorphins following a serious physical trauma. Most animals (most vertebrates? Not sure) have a response like this, because it allows us enough time to escape the threat and avoid further injury. Think how fucked you would be if you were in so much pain that you couldnt even crawl away from the thing trying to kill you. If youre being mauled by a lion, you have a much better chance of surviving a bite to the thigh than a bite to the thigh and then a disembowlment. It doesnt really happen on the same level with things like papercuts and small abrasions, because they’re not life threatening or all that physically traumatic. But if you’ve ever taken a bad spill on the stairs and whacked a knee/elbow real hard, you might have noticed that the pain dulls after the initial sharp blow, and then hurts like HELL the next day. Its essentially the same phenomenon"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0brkd
|
what is circumcision? what happens if a male isn’t circumcised? is it painful?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6pm91b",
"g6pmgs0"
],
"text": [
"The head of the penis is normally covered by a retractable piece of skin called the *foreskin*. Circumcision is the process of cutting off and removing the foreskin. The foreskin provides protection to the head of the penis and extra lubrication. While there are some medical cases which require a circumcision, most circumcisions are done for religious reasons (it's a requirement in Islam, Judaism and some other religions) or tradition (in the USA). It is a very controversial subject because most people who are circumcised have it done to them as babies, and it is viewed as genital mutilation.",
"Cutting off the foreskin, not much, and it is painful, especially if done as an adult. The two main reasons it’s still done are religious and tradition in certain countries (where some people 100+ years ago thought it prevented mastrubation). There’s a very slim chance it lowers AIDS risk, but the studies I’ve seen didn’t reach statistical significance."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0cs76
|
Why does the inside of our mouth heal so much faster than the rest of our body?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6pxowb",
"g6qimni",
"g6q6gpg",
"g6rgneq"
],
"text": [
"Different kind of skin cells designed to heal faster because mouths are a good place to get infections.",
"Also, the skin of the eardrum heals faster than many other tissues. You can rupture an eardrum one day, and if it's not torn open, can heal in 1-2 days.",
"Because people whose mouths healed so slowly that they couldn't eat died more and reproduced less. On top of that, bad breath doesn't charm anyone* *rule 34 may make this a false claim.",
"The inside of the mouth heals faster than skin because it grows faster than skin. Epithelial tissues are the ones that touch the outside world. So that includes the inside of your mouth and skin. Epithelial tissues rub off when things run up against them. So our body is constantly growing new cells to replace the lost ones. The inside of the mouth is wet, so the cells rub off more quickly than skin cells. Mouth cells have to be replaced more quickly, so it grows faster. The inside of your mouth completely regenerates every day because it has too."
],
"score": [
26,
16,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0dk2z
|
Why does water taste fine for 4 billion years, but terrible after spending one night in a glass beside my bed?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6q3ya7",
"g6q5df4"
],
"text": [
"It doesn’t taste fine for 4 billion years, it goes through a pretty rigorous filtration/treatment program from either your municiple water plant or where ever your bottled water company gets it from. To stop water from getting stagnant you need to keep it moving, keep it away from air, keep filtering it, and or keep evaporating it and condensing it. Rivers do all of those things. Thats why people get up in arms about wasting water, because you didn’t actually just scoop it up from nature, you’d get dysentery or cholera, your town/city spent a lot of time money and energy (a lot of energy) to treat it for you.",
"There are actually 2 pieces to this puzzle. Temperature, and dissolved gases. As your glass is sitting on your night stand, the water inside is brought up to room temperature. This does change the taste of your water a little bit. But the big player here is the dissolved gases. Solubility is how easily your water can dissolve gases. As the temperature increases, so does the solubility of the water. This allows it to absorb more gasses (carbon dioxide). That's what makes your water taste 'stale'."
],
"score": [
16,
10
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0dq0i
|
should UDP be preferred over TCP for increasing bandwidth utilization?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6q6kqu",
"g6qg8xe"
],
"text": [
"The choice depends on your application. Most traffic is TCP because it makes sure all packets have been received. Like when you read someone the Wifi code, and they'll tell you how much of it they were able to type in so you can read the rest of it to them again. (This will use slightly more bandwidth.) Time-sensitive things, like some online games or a livestream, may be better served with UDP. It's comparable to throwing paper airplanes at your destination.",
"UDP may be more appropriate for real-time uses, where old data is useless and no longer relevant so holding things up to wait for a resent packet or wait for a slow packet would be counterproductive. TCP is more appropriate when you want to make sure you get all the data, (and in the correct order), even if you occasionally have to wait for dropped packets to get resent or things to sort out their order."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0dwdu
|
why do we feel pain in our stomachs when we don’t have nerves internally?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6q7606"
],
"text": [
"You understand incorrectly- we do indeed have nerves throughout our whole bodies. (Almost) any signal of any kind that gets sent to the brain is sent with nerves. It's just as important for your body to be able to signal internal pain, as in your examples, as it is for any surface injuries."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0ecme
|
How did humans cut the umbilical cord before we had tools? How did we even know we were supposed to cut it?
|
Exactly what the post says. I get that now it’s normal: baby pops out and you cut the cord. But how on earth did we know how to do this? And what did we use back in the day?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6qvsh6",
"g6qc59u",
"g6qct0s",
"g6scrau"
],
"text": [
"As always for these kinds of questions, you call in the monkeys. [In chimpanzees]( URL_0 ), *the mother leaves the cord in place and nurses her young with the cord and placenta attached until the cord dries out and separates naturally, within a day of birth, at which time the cord is discarded.*",
"Tools is a relative term. Humans have almost always used tools of some kind. Instead of surgical scissor they used sharp rocks. If nonsharp rocks were around they used dull ones. In the worst cast scenarios... They used teeth.",
"Or if you just let it dry it'll just fall off / break off like any other animal's umbilical cord.",
"Cord cutting was, before the 17th century, actively discouraged until HOURS after the placenta was delivered. It was only when men forced female midwives out of practice did cord cutting become a \"medically unnecessary\" but \" kept the bed linens clean\" which made it standard practice by men. Men believed the placenta could not be allowed to be naturally expelled- they would clamp the cord and pull out the placenta which was a leading cause of maternal death as parts of the placenta were left in the uterus because men believed that the uterus would \" close\" after delivery. Today the WHO recommends that the cord should remain intact at minimum \"after cessation of pulsation\" as the cord contains 8- 10% of the new baby's blood supply. Premature babies who have their cords cut and lose that cord blood are at higher risk of brain bleeds ,GI issues and extended mechanical ventilation. So the answer is : women saw no reason to cut/ tie the cord until ( sometimes) many HOURS after the woman naturally expelled the placenta. Men made cord cutting a laundry issue and thought the uterus had an automatic door that could suddenly close without warning. Female midwives/ doctors who challenged the male \" physician\" were labelled witches and burned in every country that tolerated Catholicism. Source: URL_0"
],
"score": [
46,
18,
11,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbilical_cord"
],
[],
[],
[
"www.ncbi.nln.nib.gov"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j0ecx6
|
whatever you want
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6qfxxy",
"g6qj1ya"
],
"text": [
"Benzene was the best degrease back in the day. My grandad used it in his garage with no ppe. Now known as the worst carcinogen ever.",
"The wankel rotary engine had a triangular rounded rotor rather then pistons, which would create 3 combustion chambers per rotor and could have a combustion happen every 1/3 of a rotation. It created a high revving and powerful for small displacement engines, getting 276hp out of a 1.3l. Unfortunately due to burning oil it was bad on emissions, and trying to keep 3 sealed chambers was difficult, the last rotary powered production car was the Mazda RX-8, discontinuing in 2012"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0eday
|
why is it okay to eat beef/steak at a lower temperature than chicken and other meats?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6qmzui",
"g6qg5bw"
],
"text": [
"Every species of animal has its own selection of pathogens that can live on/in it. Broadly speaking, cows don't harbor that many bacteria, viruses, or parasites that are harmful to humans. The main threat from beef is that bacteria get on the outer surfaces during butchering and can slowly multiply even while refrigerated. This is why a rare or medium rare steak, with an internal temperature around 120F is *usually* OK to eat. Chickens and pigs harbor considerably more harmful germs. But many types of fish essentially have no harmful germs, which is why the miracle of sushi exists. Also, if you heat a plate full of of assorted bacteria to 165F in one minute, a lot of them are still going to be alive. A lot less after 10 minutes at that temperature, and almost none after 20 or 30. So when we say *\"you should cook X meat to Y temperature\",* there are some assumptions about time built in about how long it has taken to get there. It's not just that getting to the right temperature magically kills the germs, it's the fact that you've spent a lot of time at hot-but-not-quite-hot-enough temperatures too. Does pork really need to be 150 degrees to kill all the bad stuff? Not really. 130 or so is probably fine. But by cooking it to 150 you ensure that the meat has been *at least* 130 degrees for long enough to kill the stuff that dies at 130 degrees.",
"When an animal is first slaughtered the meat is sterile. That very quickly changes because there are bacteria on everything, including the tools used to butcher meat. Those bacteria get on the surface of the meat and can only penetrate a short distance into it. The meat on a chicken is really thin and that short distance that bacteria can penetrate into it is enough to get to the center of the meat. That means that you need to get every last bit of the chicken meat hot enough to kill off bacteria, otherwise there could be bacteria in the center that are still alive. Cuts of beef are much thicker than chicken meat. Although bacteria can penetrate into beef the same distance that they can penetrate into chicken, on an average cut of steak that's still pretty close to the surface. Because there are no bacteria in the center of a steak there's no need to actually cook the center at all. As long as you've charred the outside, the parts of the steak where the bacteria are have all gotten hot enough to kill them off. This is also why you need to cook ground beef to the same temperature as chicken - by grinding the meat up you distribute the bacteria throughout it, so you have to heat everything up enough to kill off bacteria, regardless of how deep into the meat you get."
],
"score": [
10,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0ftvu
|
How do we know that the northern lights involve the magnetosphere?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6qrj94"
],
"text": [
"We can physically see/detect this activity happening at this distance from the planet, and can detect the presence of what we call the magnetosphere via other means. Ergo..."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0fxt7
|
I keep reading all these recreational drugs increase dopamine - the 'feel good' drug in the brain. So why is just injecting dopamine itself not a thing?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6qr0ed",
"g6r3o0r",
"g6qrfda"
],
"text": [
"Dopamine cannot cross the blood/brain barrier. Injecting it into your bloodstream wouldn't work. Injecting it directly into your brain would create all sorts of other problems. Starting with the fact that you just stuck a NEEDLE into your BRAIN.",
"First of all, dopamine is not a feel good drug. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain involved in several function. 1 : It's involved in motricity, when your get Parkinson disease, your dopaminergic neuron dies and this causes the motor symptoms. 2 : It's involved in vision : Some neuron in the retina layers respond/secret dopamine. 3 : It's involved in hormonal control of like prolactine in the tubero-infundibulum pathway (around the hypophyse) 4 : It's involved in MOTIVATION in the reward/limbic system. MOTIVATION, not pleasure. The point of dopamine is to associate a pleasing sensation with an action so you can feel motivated to do it again. It's at the core of what we call \"the reward system\" and it motivates you to do stuff. When you're eating food, it feels good, what feels good is associated with being beneficial to your survival so you have all the interest in the world to repeat that action so you can thrive. Dopamine acts like a glue between the \"feel good feeling\" of eating and the action of eating, so you can associate the two together and later on get more motivated to do it. Drugs hijack this system by inducing a massive dopamine release while the drugs provoke a feel good sensation : The massive dopamine release associate the feel good feeling with the drugs and you start getting more and more motivated to do it again : That's how addiction begin. But dopamine is not pleasure. They did an experiment on rats if you remove the dopaminergic neurons in a region called \"the ventral tegmental area\" which is the core of the reward system, rats will still exxperience pleasure when they drink sweet water (because rats really like sweets) but they will let themselves die of starvation because they will feel absolutely no motivation to reach for food. And in drug addiction, way before physical withdrawal kicks in, you get an obsessive motivation to get drugs : that's called craving. It's not a seeking of pleasure, it's a seeking to relief a compulsion : You NEED to do it, you are pushed to do it, you cannot do otherwise. But the pleasure is long gone. Also, dopamine does not cross the blood brain barrier. So dopamine injection wouldn't work.",
"Because the dopamine is being released in the synapses of the brain. It doesn't just flow directly there from the blood stream, and dopamine in the blood would not have the desired effect. There are actually situations where a dopamine injection is a good idea, but that's like, heart failure, not wanting to get high."
],
"score": [
144,
79,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0gbgv
|
Why aren't we able to make powerful and small telescopes? Where is the bottleneck in having one that could fit in your pocket and you could still see Jupiter for example?
|
It seems like while the quality and clarity of images we receive from telescopes has improved, sizes have remained the same for the past century more or less. I'm aware of Cassegrains that are somewhat smaller, but for deep space, huge Dobsonian reflectors are pretty much the gold standard. Aren't there any techs that we could utilize to achieve this, since it seems everything is getting smaller nowadays.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6qugg1",
"g6quqmz",
"g6qv5i6"
],
"text": [
"Telescopes require catching a lot of light. The more light you can get the better your image is. you can make the lenses bigger and get their focal lengths right but you start hitting limits with the glass distortions. Then you go in the mirrors and them reflecting the light and the proper focal points but you hit quality issues again. you can have a really sensitive receptor and aiming at a spot for long period of time but then you start getting distortions and noise.",
"The bottleneck is physics. There is simply only so much light that you can detect with a small lens. And with only so much light, you get only so much clarity in picture. This is why observatories grow massive, because only at that scale are other factors like the atmosphere the bottleneck. It's why the astronomy of today is actually a lot about knitting together pictures from different observatories to get one picture that's the size of the planet.",
"Well, you *can* see Jupiter with a small telescope. Galileo did, after all. URL_0 But the resolving power of a telescope is proportional to its diameter, so you'll see better with a wide one."
],
"score": [
14,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Astronomy"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j0gm8l
|
Why do PCs take so long to start up?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6qyz3f"
],
"text": [
"Not sure about your computer, but mine can go from cold off to login/desktop in about 20 or 30 seconds. A big factor here is what hard drive you've got - a solid state hard drive is going to boot up a lot faster than a 7200 RPM magnetic hard drive; just in terms of how much faster SSD's are at loading things (not just games, but the OS). I do remember using older computers without SSD's that would take 5-15 minutes to boot up, and that was painfully long. ;; There's a lot of other stuff that happens during startup; like the computer doing things to initialize memory/RAM and send/receive signals to other components installed on the motherboard. But usually the biggest boot-up factor is going to be from loading the OS off the hard drive; a faster hard drive (an SSD) is going to trivialize that by loading so much faster. ;; It also depends on other factors like where/what it's actual boot drive is setup to do. A school I attended years ago used networked boot-drive images. Which is to say the OS was actually \"installed\" on some other computer, and at start-up the work stations would retrieve the OS data over the school's network. That meant a lot of time spent waiting for the computers to boot up because they were all waiting to get data sent to them over an ethernet cable instead of load it directly from their own hard drives."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0gpdc
|
What makes a substance inedible or poisonous? And what happens in the body once someone consumes it?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6qybco",
"g6r0kgz"
],
"text": [
"Well a lot of things make something inedible. Something that your stomach can’t dissolve (metals, plastic) will just sit in ur stomach until it gets stuck or passed through ur bung hole. Something can be poisonous and cause cell death when absorbed, or something can have organisms in it that can make you sick (fecal matter, raw meat, etc). What it does in the body, and the damage it causes mostly depends on what the material is",
"A poison (or any toxic substance in general), interferes with some aspect of bodily function. Let us consider alcohol as an example. Once ingested, it makes its way to the brain, where it inhibits excitatory ion channels and enhances the effect of inhibitory ion channels. This means that messages in the brain, and the rest of the body are slowed down, and require a larger stimulus to get the same response. In people who are affected, this manifests as slowing of reflexes, impaired co-ordination, etc. If the ingested toxin is able to be metabolised by the liver, or excreted in urine by the kidney, or both (some toxins like lead accumulate), this process will begin as soon as these organs receive the substance via the bloodstream. If a substance is taken orally, the liver metabolises a part of it immediately, even before it is available to any other organ."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0h5rf
|
What is the purpose of a decanter and how does it work?
|
I was reading some comments in another post about exposed water tasting bad, and I read many comments about decanters. After googling around for a bit, I still don’t understand how they behave any differently than a standard glass. I would appreciate any explanation about this mysterious glass item.
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6r4rus"
],
"text": [
"Decanting is just a way of pouring a liquid in such a way that any denser material remains in the original vessel. The glass itself is typically not that remarkable, aside from usually looking pretty. It can be done quite easily in a wine bottle, if you slowly pour liquid out of the bottle, the densest bits (in this case, likely sediment, although immiscible liquids like an organic solvent behaves the same way) will hang around in the round bit below the neck as the lighter fluid flows over top. It might be important to note that a decanter often refers to the receiving flask, so the term itself is a bit of a misnomer."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j0h6ca
|
Practice makes perfect, but despite years and years of typing in both phone keyboard and computer keyboard, we still make multiple typos. What is the explaination behind this? How do we improve to get near-perfection?
|
Or is it really just because i'm still not typing for long/frequent enough?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6r32lt",
"g6r4k7x"
],
"text": [
"Did you mean to say that you make a lot of typos? Professional typists, as in people whose jobs depend on not making typos, make very few and not often. I assume you type with autocorrects and other helpers and have no motivation to not make errors.",
"First, it's not meant to be taken literally. You never achieve perfection, no matter how hard you practice. Secondly, generally when you practice at something and become good at it, you move to something harder. For typing, you start out slow, making lots of mistakes. As you practice, you make fewer mistakes at that speed, but then increase your speed, which increases your mistakes. Now, at some point, you're not really increasing your typing speed but what you are doing is thinking about it less. You're not really focusing on your typing as you did when you started out. You're leaving it to mostly muscle memory and automated processes. Essentially multitasking, and humans really don't multitask well. So rather than focus and type really well, we just type fast automatically and don't really care about the few typos."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j0hwgb
|
why do busses not require seatbelts, but other vehicles do?
|
Seatbelts are required by law where I live for normal vehicles. In a bus, it seems like seatbelts would be much more necessary so that in an accident, people don’t turn into projectiles where there’s more people than in a normal car.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6remri",
"g6re8db"
],
"text": [
"Because busses are so much larger. The reason seat belts are needed to prevent people becoming projectiles is because cars stop so much faster. But if a bus hits a car, it just flattens it. If it's hit from the side, then seatbelts actually INCREASE the risk of injury substantially. Studies have repeatedly failed to find any real benefit to adding seatbelts to larger vehicles. According to the NHSTA, in the majority of fatal accidents, seatbelts provided no benefit anyway. They're only really useful in minimizing injuries in minor accident, which aren't really a concern for busses. Any accident powerful enough to kill someone on a bus is powerful enough to overcome a piece of fabric.",
"In an accident, the smaller vehicle will experience the more severe shock. Because a bus is very large, if it gets into an accident with a car, the shock to the bus passengers will be very mild. So bus passengers don't need to worry about these kinds of small accidents. You are still screwed if the bus drives into a concrete building, or falls off the road into a ditch. The main reason buses don't have seat belts is because people didn't use them, so why bother with the cost."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j0hx9l
|
How does Bluetooth work?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6rtwf4"
],
"text": [
"Each Bluetooth device has a little radio in it. The Bluetooth radios can talk to each other if they are on the same channel. It's kinda like setting the TV to the right channel so you can watch a particular show. TVs stay in the same channel until someone changes the channel. But Bluetooth radios don't stay on one channel. In fact, they jump around about 80 different channels all the time! All that jumping around follows a pattern, and there are many different patterns. The only way two Bluetooth radios can talk to each other is if they both jump between channels at the same time following the same pattern. But if the first Bluetooth radio doesn't know the pattern or timing of the second Bluetooth radio, how do they find each other in the first place? When you want to Bluetooth products to talk to each other, you first have to 'pair' the Bluetooth radios. When the radio is put in pairing mode, it goes to a specific pattern that all Bluetooth radios know. That way, the two radios can find each other. Once they find each other, and after they ask each other some questions to make sure they're talking to the right radio, one radio tells the other radio what pattern it is going to use, and provides the timing. Then they both jump to the pattern and talk to each other as they jump from channel to channel. Usually, each radio stores the codes so they can find each other again next time (a process called bonding). Once they are paired and connected, the two radios can exchange all sorts of data. That data could be music streaming from your phone to your headphones, letters and words from your keyboard to your computer, or movement data your smartwatch to your phone."
],
"score": [
39
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0i7tn
|
why are flavors appealing in certain forms but not others? For example I LOVE peanut butter but a peanut butter Jelly Bean or peanut butter soda sounds disgusting
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ree6b"
],
"text": [
"I have a similar case with pumpkin pie ice cream. For me, because of the taste, I’m expecting a similar texture, and if it’s an ice cream flavor, I don’t get that warm and chewy feeling that I’m expecting when I taste pumpkin pie. The taste and texture just don’t go well together in some flavored foods."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0j7s5
|
Why when you've gotten your password wrong 3 times and you're asked to make a new one, no programs will allow you to use the same password you originally had?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6rrb87"
],
"text": [
"It’s a common security “best practice” to maintain password history and disallow reuse of passwords. The idea being that requiring a different password each time the password is reset makes it less likely that your account can be compromised."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0j8nq
|
How are candles/flames able to flicker or move without any wind or movement at all?
|
With no wind, the candle flame should be perfectly still and not move at all, yet it moves freely and easily in a still environment. How is this possible?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6rq2m3",
"g6sj51r"
],
"text": [
"Three things I can think of are as follows: 1. As the wick burns, it’s providing a different ‘amount’ of fuel. Kind of like the wick is thicker or thinner or has more surface area to burn 2. Flame causes heat. Heating the air making it rise, therefore there is an in rush of air filling the void so-to-speak 3. Possible that different air pockets provide a different amount of oxygen, which increases the size of the flame",
"It is a misconception that flame that isn’t “dancing” is not moving. Flames rise because the burning fuel is caught in the air as it burns, and heat rises. A flame and the air around it are always moving. Flickering is part of its nature; any time there is small difference in how one party of the flame burns compared to another, the flame will flicker."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j0jm0i
|
Why do we experience post nut clarity? What happens in the body when we experience it?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6scvbj",
"g6rzhuq",
"g6sag3a",
"g6t9rlz"
],
"text": [
"Right above your eyes is this structure called the Orbitofrontal Cortex. It's one of the \"newest\" components of central nervous systems and is identified with abstract risk/reward processing of choices that fall outside normal Darwinian motivations. While \"I should eat this food\" is handled elsewhere, \" I should share my food with my weak friends so they'll get stronger and help me acquire and protect more food\" is a complex reward decision handled by the OFC. It also handles behavioral regulation for social and partner interactions. During arousal, the frontal cortex sees decreased activity. Post-arousal, this activity returns, and you judge yourself for what porn you were watching and not disgusted by at the time.",
"This is because sexual arousal is controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system (also known as \"rest and digest\") but orgasms are controlled by the sympathetic nervous system (also known as \"fight or flight\"). The key thing is that these divisions of the nervous system all activate together (for the most part), so when the sympathetic nervous system is engaged, this increases your heart rate, increase blood flow to your brain and heart, and basically everything associated with trying to deal with a threat, such as increased decision making speed.",
"Wait post nut clarity is *real*?! I thought it was a meme. I've never experienced that. I'm kinda jealous.",
"I always felt it was the reverse. Not that you get smarter afterwards, but you get stupid during. While you are having sex, your priorities are very different, you can't think straight. Afterwards you come back to your senses, back to \"normal\", and a lot of things you just did or thought seems a lot stranger from that vantage point."
],
"score": [
23,
12,
10,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0jnly
|
Why are some unopened juice containers stored in the fridge at the grocery store while others are on the shelves?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ruqya"
],
"text": [
"Pasteurization. Ones been heated/cooked to kill anything harmful in it. Same thing with canned veggies vs fresh veggies. Ones been cooked"
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0ju51
|
why are human feet so fragile to tougher terrain compared to other animals.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6rxsa5"
],
"text": [
"Shoes, we wear shoes majority of the time. Think about your hands. If you work with your hands a lot over time they become tougher vs. a person that doesn’t or a person that wears gloves. So if we didn’t wear shoes majority of the time over time our feet would become tougher/stronger. There are plenty of African tribes and other types that go hunting barefoot"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0juct
|
How is it that some really famous illegal streaming sites don’t get shut down or sued?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6rzfdu",
"g6rxpwa",
"g6sij9q",
"g6rxx2j"
],
"text": [
"Damn those sites! Which sites are you talking about though? What are the best illegal streaming sites, specifically? Feel free to DM me.",
"Many of them are based in other countries where the laws about pirating media are different. A lot of the larger corporations have a harder time suing those streaming sites, as international law suits are complicated, and in many cases there's not much that can be done if the country at question goes \"That's not illegal here, so you can't sue them.\"",
"The internet is designed to be inherently free and unrestricted. For the internet to work, everyone has to agree that their computers will pass data another computer asks it to send to another computer. Because the internet works this way, it requires great organization and effort to block a website. In comparison, it is easy to circumvent these blockages, because the internet design is in favor of freedom. It’s like trying to chase a squirrel, it’s just too fast to catch. It can go faster and change direction faster than you. It has a big advantage.",
"They usually do get shutdown. But it's hard to sue if they're based in a different country and if it's hard to figure out who is running the website. The best they can do is hit them with a DMCA notice, but even then it really only applies to America. There are other country equivalents but as you can probably already see, this means a long legal process in each country, especially when a new website just pops up again."
],
"score": [
9,
9,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0jwje
|
'Meteoric Rise'
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6rym57"
],
"text": [
"Meteoric, as in \"fast, hot, and unforeseen\" Into the stratosphere, man. But really, it's just an idiom, don't worry too much about it."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0jxno
|
Why do companies like Amazon and HBO continue to stick with the one episode a week format?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6s1bi0",
"g6s10ul"
],
"text": [
"If you pay a monthly membership to them once, and watch all the episodes of a particular season of a particular show, you have little reason to continue paying. If they extend the length of their season to many months then they get more money from you.",
"HBO still deals in cable TV, so those episodes will get posted around when they are broadcast. As for services that are strictly streaming, there are two reasons I can think of. One is that, if a show is releasing weekly, you’ll have people talking about it for several weeks since there’s new stuff coming out. That’s a way to build hype. The other reason is that these services charge monthly subscriptions, so if a show is coming out every week, you either have to wait for the season to finish, or subscribe for multiple months."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0k0eg
|
If breaking the sound barrier makes a sonic boom, what would the equivalent reaction be for breaking the light barrier?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6s11du",
"g6s1ati",
"g6s04os",
"g6s09af",
"g6s9r9t"
],
"text": [
"There is a thing called [Cherenkov radiation]( URL_0 ), which happens when particles are travelling faster than the speed of light in that medium. It happens around nuclear reactors, when β and γ particles, travelling at close to the speed of light in a vacuum, travel through the surrounding cooling water. The speed of light in water is about 0.7 times the speed of light in a vacuum (*c*), so these particles have to shed their energy and slow down, which they do by emitting a pale blue light.",
"It is not possible for particles to travel faster than free space light speed but they can travel faster than the speed of light within another medium, such as water. The resulting “sonic boom” is called [Cherenkov radiation]( URL_0 ). I wish I knew more, but I am not an expert. Edit: added a oeriod",
"The laws of physics do not allow this so we have no way to predict this using the laws of physics (our framework for understanding the world around us). As your said in your post, we cannot go faster than the speed of light. ETA: sorry I just realised that was a lie. What I said is only true in a vacuum. If instead you look at light in an object, if some particle travels faster than light (which is possible, because light slows down in media), then these particles emit something known as [cherenkov radiation]( URL_0 ), which apparently is what the blue glow of nuclear reactors is.",
"The problem is it simply can't be broken in our current understanding of the universe. We can't begin to hypothesize because it can't happen. You would need infinite energy.",
"our understanding of physics dictates that is impossible in a vacuum, because nothing that possess mass can reach the energy necessary to achieve the speed of light. you start hitting into problem regarding special relativity(its a potential theory that time starts getting a bit screwy the close you get to the speed of light.) however if you have a medium the speed of light is actually a bit lower which enables the possibility of breaking the speed of light: this phenomenon is known as Cherenkov's radiation, you commonly see it in nuclear reactors, its the reason they emit a pale blue light into the neighboring area of the core that is under water."
],
"score": [
41,
12,
7,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation"
],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0kjgg
|
What makes a computer go to sleep when you shut the lid?
|
Like the question says, what makes a computer sleep when you shut the lid? Is it sensing a lack of light somehow which tells it to sleep or something? How does it tell when the lid is shut vs open just a bit?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6s6dnh",
"g6s61tb",
"g6s65sf",
"g6seu1g"
],
"text": [
"There's a sensor in the body of the laptop that senses the lid is closed. Exactly what and how it works depends on the design. One example for Dell and HP is a sensor on the board that detects the metal of the lid, or a tiny magnet buried in the plastic. If you don't like that feature you can turn it off in your Control Panel power settings. When I close the lid on my laptop it just turns the screen off and the laptop keeps running.",
"Depends on the laptop. My cousin once had one where you could see a button above the keyboard, the screen folds down and presses the button in. Of course, we would push it with the screen open and it would put her computer to sleep. I assume most laptops have a physical button or switch or sensor that notices when the cover closes.",
"Depends on the laptop. Older ones had a little switch near the hinge that would get pushed when you close it. Others have sensor built into the hinge itself that sense when it’s open to certain angles.",
"Modern laptops use a magnetic sensor somewhere on the base or the lid with a matching pair of magnets. When they’re brought together the laptop feels it and knows to go to sleep. Some devices and magnets can trick it, like speakers can trick it"
],
"score": [
7,
5,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j0kkvs
|
What is the argument against Obamacare? I understand why many insurance companies wouldn’t want Obamacare but what are valid arguments against Obamacare for the individual? Also extend the same question to Universal healthcare.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6s7go0",
"g6s7zy1",
"g6s96ff"
],
"text": [
"Some arguments against Obamacare include: - It's not causing medical care to get cheaper, and it's not addressing existing medical debt. - Forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions is causing the average persons rates to go up. - Companies are switching staff to part-time work to avoid paying for increased benefits. - The individual mandate was deemed unconstitutional, you can't legally force people to get insurance. This was a backbone of the whole plan. - Fining people for not having insurance is a cruel way to punish people that couldn't afford insurance in the first place. For Universal Healthcare: - Taxes will increase (but the reduced cost of insurance will result in a net gain for most people) - Increased wait times at the ER, and for diagnostics scans because of increased demand for services - People will lose jobs in the insurance industry and related fields as they are forced to downsize. *For context I'm Canadian, and I've seen the downsides of Universal Healthcare first hand but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Even with the drawbacks the US would be much better off with such a system*",
"Part of it is that hospitals are over charging because they expect you to have healthcare, and requiring people to have it wont fix that. Also, people don’t like paying higher taxes for other people’s healthcare while still paying their own in full. Finally, people say that by giving everyone access to hospitals, people will use it for things that aren’t that important, thus wasting the doctors time and reducing quality for everyone.",
"Health insurance is people pooling their risk together. The idea is that the cost of treating people suffering adverse health events is covered by people who happen to have no adverse health events. The thing is some people, particularly young without any preexisting conditions are most likely not going to suffer any ill health in the near future. If they opt out of paying into that risk pool, then the risk pool is predominantly made up of people who will most likely need substantial money to pay for healthcare. The risk isn't spread out as far. It becomes less a little bit of money you pay in so you don't end up with a huge bill, and more a huge bit of money you pay in to avoid a nearly equal huge health bill. This is what those 'High risk pools.' you may have heard about were talking about. The health insurance companies offered people with preexisting condition high premiums to offset their high risk, but there wasn't much benefit in taking part in them if the premiums they charged were near the cost of the healthcare they stood to receive. Obamacare made it obligatory for even those without big statistical health risk to buy health insurance so *everyone's* premiums would be lower. Otherwise healthy people opting out of carrying health insurance will most likely save money in the long run, but there still is a remote chance they'll face some huge health crisis requiring funds they don't have. Congress has since removed the obligation to buy health insurance, so now Obamacare has far less money to cover people with preexisting conditions. The GOP is now working to make the courts declare Obamacare unconstitutional on the basis of it not being fundable due to the very rules they themselves stripped from it."
],
"score": [
11,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0l0oh
|
What is war like nowadays?
|
Is it just two countries aiming bullets at each other? Is there more to it?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6sgx8t"
],
"text": [
"Theres definitely a lot more to it. The truth is war looks very different depending on the countries involved so, for the moment, let's imagine a scenario where two states with large militaries and fairly modern technology go to war. And in the interest of eli5 let's imagine they're two rival groups of kids on the playground. Now there is some merit to physically fighting (shooting bullets at each other as you mentioned in your question) but you've thought about this conflict for a long long while and you realize there are other ways to improve the odds. First, you could work on making sure you know how the other group is planning to use their guys for the fight and if your information is really good you can think of ways to counter their strategies (intelligence) or you could try to message the school to build public support for your cause making it harder for the other group to justify the fight (shaping public opinion)...after all they started it, right? You could try sowing discontent in the enemy group itself making it harder for their leader to convince his people to come to the fight (psyops.) You could even appeal to the teacher and hope that they'll intervene (appealing to regional/global powers like the us/un.) All of these are ways that countries fight wars but by far the most effective is convincing the other guys that you're so tough that theres absolutely no way you could be beaten anyway so they dont even bother (deterrence.)"
],
"score": [
14
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j0l5t3
|
why it is that you can talk for hours using hundreds of words but if you’re asked “write a list of 50 separate words down” it’s really hard unless you cheat and write a sentence?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6si25k",
"g6shayh",
"g6sq6nw",
"g6skl00"
],
"text": [
"How would this be hard? Write down 2-3 words beginning with each letter of the alphabet. You’ll easily come up with 50.",
"For me it's the opposite.. I have a far easier time expressing through typing than talking.. I think it's very individual to be honest",
"If someone ask you to just say 50 words, it’s quite hard unless you cheat and say sentences? I think it’s the same if we reverse this question? It’s very hard to think of something to say when you’re asked to sound check “just say something”.",
"Information (in this case, words) is stored and retrieved in relation to other cues. If you start a sentence, your brain will pick up on which words should be filled in next because the previous words act as a cue to recall more and more words. Without cues you'd have a hard time recollecting anything. But with one word providing the cue cue for the next, you can go on and recall many unique words."
],
"score": [
17,
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0ldzg
|
can someone please explain the sugar or flour incendiary scene from Equalizer 2?
|
In the scene sugar or flour is blown in the air by industrial fans and once a spark is introduced a huge explosion occurs.
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6sik9d"
],
"text": [
"Sugar and flour are extremely energy dense, it's why we eat them. They also burn readily. If they are in powder in air they can burn rapidly, in a chain reaction we call an explosion. Flour mills can actually be pretty dangerous if the people in them aren't careful. Hot machinery, open flames, and sparks can be disastrous when there's lots of flour in the air. Even today with modern equipment and safety, there can be explosions. URL_0"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://youtu.be/SvKwY5xCexg"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
j0le2l
|
How the hell do electric eels work?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6sk9v5",
"g6trums"
],
"text": [
"It's through a chemical reaction that they can do this. The electric eel has three pairs of abdominal organs that produce electricity: the main organ, the Hunter's organ, and the Sach's organ. These organs make up four fifths of its body, and give the electric eel the ability to generate two types of electric organ discharges: low voltage and high voltage. These organs are made of electrocytes, lined up so a current of ions can flow through them and stacked so each one adds to a potential difference. When the eel finds its prey, the brain sends a signal through the nervous system to the electrocytes.[6] This opens the ion channels, allowing sodium to flow through, reversing the polarity momentarily. By causing a sudden difference in electric potential, it generates an electric current in a manner similar to a battery, in which stacked plates each produce an electric potential difference.[6] Electric eels are also capable of controlling their prey's nervous systems with their electrical abilities; by controlling their victim's nervous system and muscles via electrical pulses, they can keep prey from escaping or force it to move so they can locate its position. So, don't fuck with electric eels!",
"How many eels would it take to charge my phone?"
],
"score": [
47,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0lrbp
|
How did they do that one visual effect in the Bohemian Rhapsody music video
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6st6lh"
],
"text": [
"It was usually referred to as a \"ghost motion echo trail\" (or some variation of two or more of those words). It essentially involved using what was called a \"squeeze zoom\", where they would zoom out of the screen causing the image to shrink in the frame. But instead of shrinking the single frame, they would duplicate and repeat the frame as they zoomed out."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0lufa
|
why is it that when a mirror is broken, the reflection splits in to two even though it is in the same position and angle as the original one which gives only 1 reflection
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6snphh"
],
"text": [
"Instantaneously as the mirror splits, the two halves shift - ever so slightly - changing the angle. This means that they're not quite in exactly the same position or angle they were before the break. This often creates a double image, particularly if the mirror's middle broke \"inward\", causing a depression in the middle of the mirror (like from an external impact to the surface of the mirror). A different set of images could form if the mirror were broken from the back or dropped on the floor, as the fragments would angle differently on breaking"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0m4tq
|
Was Japan original people, or did Chinese/Korean members move to Japan and eventually, Japanese people developed their culture to be "Japanese"?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6ss6yd",
"g6t7rxq"
],
"text": [
"The first inhabitants of the islands that eventually became Japan date back to 30,000 BC, long before the concepts of \"China\", \"Japan\", or \"Korea\" existed. Given that most people during that time period were nomadic hunter-gatherers, it doesn't make sense to say they were \"Chinese/Korean members \\[who moved\\] to Japan\". They were nomads who moved around. The concept of borders didn't even exist yet. They were just people living off the land. It wasn't until tens of thousands of years later that people started settling down, establishing ownership of the land, creating kingdoms and empires. Once people were divided, you start seeing distinct cultural differences.",
"> Also, bascially every single human being is from Africa, including asians/white/mexican/black etc. ? Every human is African if you go back far enough. If you don't go *quite* that far back, > The [Yayoi people]( URL_0 ) (弥生人, *Yayoi jin*) were an ancient ethnic group that migrated to the Japanese archipelago mainly from the Korean Peninsula during the Yayoi period (300 BCE–300 CE). Radio-carbon evidence suggests the Yayoi period began between 1,000 and 800 BCE.[1][2][3] They interacted, killed off and/or mixed with the remaining Jōmon people to form the modern Japanese people. Most modern Japanese people have primarily Yayoi ancestry (more than 90% on average, with their remaining ancestry deriving from the Jōmon).[4] > ... > The most popular theory is that they were the people who brought wet rice cultivation to Japan from the Korean peninsula and Jiangnan near the Yangtze River Delta in ancient China.[6]"
],
"score": [
13,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_people"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
j0mgiq
|
How come sometimes you have to urinate every couple of minutes even though you didn’t drink more than usual?
|
I drank some Gatorade and now I’m going to the bathroom to pee every 5 minutes or so. I even had to go right after just leaving the toilet room. I didn’t drink too much at all How come sometimes seemingly at random, your bladder can’t hold it?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g6sux56",
"g6ud5ht"
],
"text": [
"If this is a problem that happens somewhat frequently, go see a doctor. Not trying to be funny.",
"It's an effect of diuretics (or in some cases a lack of anti-diuretic hormones) and is generally known as \"dumping\" Whenever you drink water, or do something like fall asleep, ADH (anti-diuretic hormone) production in your brain is stimulated, which tells your kidneys to concentrate your urine (part of why you can sleep for 8 hours without pissing, when normally it's every 2-3 while awake) Whenever you drink something like coffee, or pepsi, anything with a diuretic effect, you're invoking a balance between said diuretic effect and your ADH levels. If your ADH levels are displaced by the amount of caffeine (or sugar, if you're diabetic. really this can happen for any variety of reasons, only a couple of which are actually medical issues) in your blood, your kidneys will rapidly dump it, in the form of clear, unconcentrated urine. Generally speaking, kidneys being able to respond like this means they're healthy. You might have diabetes mellitus, though if ADH is involved you're more likely to have diabetes insipidus. Either way, my bet is that you have nothing. But you should still get a urinalysis done to look at GFR and Creatinine levels, and if you're really worried, a scope up the dick to look for an enlarged prostate can't help. Like I said, there are dozens of reasons that this can happen, very few of which represent legitimate health problems. If your kidneys aren't dumping because of sugar or an ADH deficiency, it may just be a thing you have to deal with. I too deal with this. No health problems, no medication that could cause it, no condition like diabetes, nothing wrong with my kidneys, but pretty much every morning I experience some degree of diuresis. Either way, get it looked at. During the times when it does represent something bad, it generally represents something very bad."
],
"score": [
11,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.