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l4ramb
|
WTF is happening with GameStop stocks this past week?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"I'll repost my answer from the other thread, with a little more detail: A bunch of people said \"I don't have game stop stock, but if you give me $20 right now, I'll sell you two shares next Monday morning, no matter what the price is.\" If you think that the price is going to be higher than $10 a share by Monday, giving someone $20 to do that is a good deal. If you think it's going to be lower than $10 a share on Monday, taking $20 from someone to do that is a good deal. So, these people thought that they could take the money now, and then next Monday buy the stock for cheap and give it to the people who wanted if, and everyone shrugs. Instead, the price went way way up, and now they have to give the people the stock who gave them the money a week ago, even though it's really really expensive. And since both sides pinky-swore \"no backsies\", they gotta do it. The thing is, if some other guy who isn't in on the deal KNOWS that you made the deal, he can buy up a bunch of Gamestop stock - enough that you can't get it anywhere else - and then say \"hey I heard you pinky-swore you'd give this guy some stock, and you don't actually have any. I'll sell you the stock for *bites pinky* one MILLION dollars.\" And if no one else wants to sell him the stock so he can give it to the person he pinky-swore he'd give it to, he's gotta pay the one MILLION dollars. Or, even if there *are* other people who he can buy the stock from, they all notice that someone is desperate to buy the stock to fulfill a pinky-swear, so they ALSO decide to demand one MILLION dollars - so even though he could buy the stock from anyone, the price is still absurdly high. This means that everyone who wasn't in on the promise makes a whole bunch of money, which the person who made the promise loses. At the end, the guy who received the stock can try to sell it at the new price, but it's likely that the \"bubble will burst\" and the price will go back to normal after everyone's done screwing the guy who made the stupid promise. \"Stopping trading\" is basically where the recess lady comes over because a bunch of kids are crying and says \"I don't know who's lying to who, but something about this looks like somebody is tricking someone out of their lunch money. Everyone stop giving people their lunch money and we'll let the principle figure out what's fair.\"",
"It's triggering a short squeeze. ELI5: Imagine you're out on your front lawn and you overhear your neighbor John asking your other neighbor Mary if he could borrow a pound of bacon for breakfast, saying that he will go to the grocery store later in the day, buy bacon, and return a pound to her tomorrow. You think to yourself, \"hm, i can make some money off of this.\" So you hop in your car, drive down to the local grocery store and buy all the bacon that they have before John could get there. A few hours later, you see John running around in a panic trying to find bacon for sale so he can keep his word to Mary. you grab the bacon that you got from the grocery store, run up to him, and say, \"Hey John, I heard you were looking for bacon. I have a pound here that I can sell to you for $420.69!\" & #x200B; r/Wallstreetbets caught word that a bunch of hedge funds sold short (i.e., borrowed shares) of GME. so they ran out and brought up as much shares of GME as they could, and are/will sell back to the hedge funds at insane prices.",
"A bunch of hedge funds had decided that Gamestop was going the way of the dodo thanks to Amazon's direct competition and the consoles shifting toward downloaded games. They sold short (a much simpler example might be borrowing someone's pre-order copy of Madden and selling just before the season when demand is high but promising to replace it just before the Super Bowl). Now the Super Bowl return date is getting closer, and you need to go buy a copy to give back, but 2 million redditors decided to buy all the copies they could find with the goal of charging you $1,000 or some similarly absurd price. Redditors are buying, and other money is following them, because short squeezes are a rare, and they tend to go and go and go until they flip usually quite suddenly, so when they go and go other people pile on adding to the pain!"
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|
l4rh8m
|
Is gravity instant, and why is it (not)?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"Not instant. Gravity has to follow relativity rules. Gravity's effects are limited by the speed of light.",
"Gravity moves at the speed of light. If the sun suddenly disappeared, then the Earth would continue moving in its normal orbit for 8 more minutes until gravity (and light) caught up.",
"The delay would be ten minutes precisely because it is ten light-minutes away. Gravity moves at the speed of light, though it's more accurate to say that gravity and light move at the only speed allowed for things without mass, also known as the speed of information or the speed of causality. The term \"speed of light\" just stuck because light was the first thing identified to move at that speed. That speed is the speed at which information moves through the universe (which, interestingly, also is the reason time moves as fast as it does). Relativity dictates that because it is moving at that speed, time does not seem to pass for gravity or for light; from a photon or hypothetical \"graviton's\" perspective, it seems to instantly teleport to its final location. Because it seems instant, there is no time during which it could accelerate or decelerate, meaning that the speed of light is the *only* speed at which it can move. (Also, this is one reason why we can't reach the speed of light ourselves; you can never reach the moment time stops because it takes moving time to reach it.)",
"The oscillation of a massive object produces gravitational waves. Like electromagnetic waves, these follow straight lines through spacetime and thus travel at the speed of light in a vacuum (c). So, if your objects are ten light-minutes apart, then your objects feel one another's pull delayed by ten minutes."
],
"score": [
8,
5,
5,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l4s1p8
|
What does the saying "physics breaks down" when talking about something really confusing?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"gkq54eb",
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],
"text": [
"Modern physics is just our best guess at how the universe works. Our equations, our understanding, all of it is *mostly* right, but not all of it is 100% correct - especially when talking about exotic situations or things at the cutting edge of physics research. When trying to predict what happens under certain conditions, we start getting infinities or divide-by-zero errors out of the math when it previously gave us ordinary numbers, and scientists have come to associate that with \"we've done something wrong\" rather than \"the universe actually does this.\" Basically, the phrase \"physics breaks down\" is shorthand for \"our math is glitching up because we don't understand this 100% yet, but that's really neat because it means there's more to learn here.\"",
"* Here the term \"physics\" actually means \"our understanding of how the universe works\". * We have a pretty good model for how things work but in some cases that model doesn't work anymore and so we say \"physics breaks down\". * Really we should say \"our model of the physical universe breaks down\"."
],
"score": [
24,
9
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
l4s9qo
|
Why are mirror images flipped horizontally but not vertically?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"gkq5z9q",
"gkq6bfs"
],
"text": [
"Basically, imagine you're behind someone and looking through their back to see the front side of them from behind. This is, more or less, what you're seeing in a mirror. When looking at them from behind their head will still be up and their feet will still be down. However, if you were to read the lettering on their shirt after x-ray-visioning through the rest of them, it would appear to be backward.",
"They dont really. Mirrors flip front-back - the direction that is perpendicular to their surface. Left and right seem to flip because they are defined relative to our front/back - URL_0 . by flipping front and back, the definition of whats left/right is flipped. Its the same when you turn around (i.e. flip your front and back) - left amd right are reversed, an object that was on your left is now on your right, but things havent actually changed position. You can easily check this. Draw an arrow on a piece of paper. Hold the paper in front of a mirror. The original and mirrored arrow will point in the same direction."
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8,
4
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"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l4sj5b
|
What does a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) do? What is its part in web servers?
|
This isn't the "CGI" they use in movies. It is a term from computing but I don't quite get its function.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"gkq9ige",
"gkqbf5z",
"gkqauin"
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"text": [
"It’s the original server side scripting platform for web. Before PHP and ASP, this was how you would run custom scripts at the server side.",
"CGI defines a set of rules for how an application can communicate with a web server to handle incoming requests. The web server sets up various [environment variables]( URL_0 ) based on the incoming request and then executes an application with that environment. The application can look at those environment variables to determine what the request was for and process it accordingly. The application then outputs a response to the web server which will forward that response to the end user. By implementing CGI applications and web servers can be paired together to create dynamic websites.",
"CGI -the Common Gateway Interface- is an agreed-upon standard by which Web servers can, rather than serve static files, run separate programs on the server. Mostly it's a means of specifying which aspects of the server get put into the program's environment variables just before running them. The first Web-based mail forms and discussion forums were CGI scripts. Perl was the most popular language for writing them, but you could use any language as long as the server had some way to run it. True CGI scripts aren't all that common anymore. Part of this is due to the potential for security problems, but it's also a question of performance: starting up and tearing down a program every time the server has to run the script takes time. The usual practice nowadays is to embed a language into the server itself (often via plugins, as with PHP and Java servlets) and run that instead: this gives the server more control over what can and can't be done in code, and it also cuts out the overhead of running a new process every time. But these scripts are still sometimes called CGI scripts for historical reasons."
],
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5,
3,
3
],
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_variable"
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l4tphy
|
why do ceramic and glass come out of the dishwasher dry, but plastic comes out still wet?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkqf6nm",
"gkqlijd"
],
"text": [
"Ceramic and glass dissipate and retain heat much better than plastic. This means that the water on the ceramic and the glass usually heats up enough in the dishwasher to evaporate, whereas plastic does not hold heat nearly as well, causing the water not to heat up to the point of evaporation. Also explains why ceramic and glass dishes are still hot to the touch right out of the dishwasher, whereas plastic cools off much quicker.",
"Water disappears off of hot stuff faster than cool stuff. Ceramics and glass hold their heat longer than plastic so the water on them disappears faster because they are hotter longer."
],
"score": [
19,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l4ug10
|
why do churches even get tax exemption?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"gkqjq2c"
],
"text": [
"Legally speaking because of the 1st amendment. Taxes are laws passed by congress and \"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...\" Edit: though apparently there is legal thought that this could be challenged but is just unpopular URL_0"
],
"score": [
4
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"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/life/entertainment/story/2019/sep/13/why-churches-dont-pay-taxes/503524/"
]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
l4v0tu
|
Can you still say "do not" in a sentence where saying don't would make more sense?
|
I have some confusion regarding the words don't and do not. I know that don't is a contraction to do not, but sometimes you must use don't in a sentence because if you use do not, it will not make sense, for example, the sentence, "don't you hate it" doesn't make sense when you say, "do not you hate it". This confuses me because although using do not to replace don't in sentences like that don't sound right, "do not" is still the original longer word for "don't", so can you still use "do not" for sentences that wouldn't sound right, originally using "don't"?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkqnkfs",
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"text": [
"*Don't* has multiple uses within the English languages. As a contraction for *do not* it can be substituted in those sentences no problem- *don't touch the stove* vs *do not touch the stove*. However, when it's used as an emphatic in a sentence where it emphasizes the sentence expression, the full phrase is used- *don't you like this weather?*. It's called the emphatic tense.",
"For sentences like that instead of saying “do not you hate it?” you would says “do you not hate it?” so it makes sense in the sentence."
],
"score": [
12,
9
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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l4vxik
|
What makes up dryer lint? Like what is it?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkqsttm"
],
"text": [
"Mostly small fibres from your clothes. Jeans, hoodie and towels in particular (but every clothing item basically) all shed miniscule fibres which over time collect in the dryer filter (and make up some portion of the dust in your home). Remember to clean the filter regularly, otherwise fire."
],
"score": [
9
],
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l4wqn2
|
Why do we and other mammals have two holes in our noses? Why not only one since the air goes to the same place?
|
(sorry english is not my first language)
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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],
"text": [
"The septum between the two nostrils plays a big part in filtration. any foreign bodies that don’t belong in your O2 stick to the mucus membrane and form boogies.",
"The easy answer is incase one becomes blocked we have another to serve the function. Our bodies do this with several important functions.",
"Because we're bilaterally symmetrical, like most organisms on the planet. We have two of many things-eyes, ears, nostrils, lungs, kidneys, arms, legs etc. This provides some redundancy- if we lose one, we have a spare- but also that redundancy is critical to our senses such as our binocular vision and binaural hearing. Why? Evolutionarily, the answer is a little mundane. The common ancestor we're descended from was bilaterally symmetrical. Since that obviously conferred some advantage, those genes persisted. When it came time to part ways down our evolutionary paths, we conserved that bilateral symmetry at the core of our DNA."
],
"score": [
6,
5,
4
],
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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l4wso9
|
How does your brain decide what to hallucinate?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"The drugs make a total mess in your brain's chemistry. That causes pretty much random synapses to activate, which in turn results in random neurons firing. Then, say, a random bunch of neurons randomly fires in the exact combination that causes your memory to bring about the picture of Richard Pryor and transfer it to your cognition. Very simplified version, but can't think of any better explanation rn.",
"I would say that the content of your hallucinations is at least partly determined by connections that are already present and therefore not random. Dreams are not random either. The chance is high that it will include stuff you have seen and heard before, and combinations of those elements. Your brain is a network of connected units and connections vary in strength, which makes certain patterns more likely than others. In the process everything also gets interpreted, because that just happens to be what your brain is very good at. So a general increase in likelihood of firing in a certain brain area does not lead to random light patterns, but more likely figures, shapes and colors, because your brain is specialized in seeing and imagining figures, shapes and colors. That said, other weird things happen, such as your attention may be captured by the thought of Richard Pryor and can't shift to something else like it would normally do. You have some control over what you think but the part of your brain that does the controlling may be affected in some way by the drug as well. So thoughts that normally get discarded may now capture your attention and stay there."
],
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17,
3
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l4wwfc
|
why is it relatively easy to heat up matter (in absolute terms - Kelvin) to crazy temperatures, but so difficult to reach absolute zero?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"It isn't particularly hard to make things cold. Put them in the dark in space and they'll drop to very low absolute temperatures quickly enough. Craters on the moon that never get sunlight drop as low as about 26 K without any human intervention at all, and those are sitting on an object with internal heat pretty close to a star! The coldest known place in space, the [Boomerang Nebula]( URL_0 ), is at only 1 K (colder even than the dim glow left over from the Big Bang). (Interesting fact: the temperatures achieved in labs here on Earth are, in fact, probably the coldest temperatures ever to exist in the Universe.) It's hard to get things near absolute zero **on Earth** because Earth is very far from absolute zero. It's a warm world, and the more different you want a temperature to be from baseline, the more work you need to do. Any object on Earth's surface wants to hang out somewhere in the range of about 200 K to 300 K - that is, the temperatures found here on Earth. (Another factor is that we know lots of ways to generate a ton of uncontrolled energy very quickly, but that only works to heat things up. Cooling things below the temperature of their environment requires *control* of energy, which is a lot harder than - say - setting off a nuclear weapon. It's an engineering challenge, not a thermodynamic one.)",
"This is my understanding on it. Heat doesn't just transfer through touch but by radiating through air also. In order to reach absolute zero not only do you have to get your intended target that cold, but the air surrounding it that cold also. And the only way to get the air surrounding it to absolute zero is to get the air surrounding that air, or even the objects on the \"other side\" of the air that would be radiating heat also. Eventually what this leads to is either an all or nothing where everything is at absolute zero or nothing can be"
],
"score": [
5,
3
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang_Nebula"
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l4wwox
|
Why do wounds get itchy when healing?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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],
"text": [
"It's your skin tissues getting back together and the nerves relinking. At this point when the nerves merge ya get that itch.",
"I think it’s connected to swelling. Your blood vessels near the wound are enlarging to get more blood flow to the healing area, generally red and flushed skin can feel itchy. Someone else will have a better explanation of why that is."
],
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6,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l4yi1s
|
Can everything in it's simplest form be narrowed down to a Boolean (true or false) value?
|
I thought about this for a while and was honestly wondering, and I mean everything in it's once simplest form, math, science, English, whatever, in it's very broken down form, will it come down to a true or false? (I'm gonna get flamed)
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"In short, no. It depends on what direction you're coming at it from, but there's a whole branch of logic called \"fuzzy logic\" to deal with truth values on a continuum rather than pure 0/1 (Boolean false/true). There's also Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which essentially says there are always valid statements in any mathematical system that are neither true nor false, or at least can't be shown to be true or false, so you definitely can't always narrow it down."
],
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6
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l4yjio
|
Why do dueling cowboys not just shoot straight away?
|
When there are duels in Wild West movies, the participants typically stare each other down and hover over their holsters for a while before shooting. I appreciate that the whole bravado of these sorts of situations is about who can physically draw their gun the quickest (as opposed to the soonest) but surely being first helps? Whether or not you think you're faster at drawing than the other guy, it must be better to reach for your gun as soon as possible, rather than wait around and risk the other guy getting a head start on you. It doesn't make any sense to me.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"text": [
"I think it’s a misapplication of trying to imitate Samurai from Kurosawa films. Kurosawa knew how to build suspense with atmosphere and cinematography. In martial arts, especially if you have more skill and experience, you’re able to read the opponent’s body movements to anticipate their actions. However, with drawing a gun, although there is some similar forms of anticipation, there’s less strategy to anticipate, considering it’s simply point and shoot and kill the other guy before he kills you. The only reason I could see if strategy matters more is if your goal isn’t to shoot to kill or perhaps you have little ammo, like 1 bullet, to use. Otherwise you’re right, it’s pretty much something silly used for the rule of cool.",
"If you want somebody dead, you shoot em in their sleep. If you want to prove your honor in a duel, you challenge them to a duel. If your goal is just a dead opponent, you don't ever want to challenge them to a fair fight. Duels like this weren't really a thing, but they make for a great climactic scene.",
"Cowboy duels are mostly a movie trope. They are meant to evoke formal duels previously popular amongst European nobility. And yes, there were formal rules; including who picks the weapons, who picks the location, and who shoots first. Now, I said mostly a movie trope. There were a few Cowboy duels, such as the Wild Bill Hickok - Davis Tutt shootout, but they were incredibly rare. By the Cowboy era dueling had been outlawed for decades and most of the rules had fallen by the wayside",
"Duels like these rarely happened in real life, infact I believe only one can be historically validated if I remember correctly. They were used in films to create suspense",
"Came across this info and i thought it might help. I’m not sure who the original author of this info is tho. The Cowboy Code By Gene Autry 1. The cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage. 2. He must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him. 3. He must always tell the truth. 4. He must be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals. 5. He must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas. 6. He must help people in distress. 7. He must be a good worker. 8. He must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action, and personal habits. 9. He must respect women, parents, and his nation's laws. 10. The Cowboy is a patriot.",
"There are two types of duels. Duels, which had rules and really happened, and cowboy duels, which did not happen. Dueling was a thing. It was done for honor. And because it was done for honor they had to follow the rules or be dishonored. So they had witnesses. They chose a distance to shoot from (the point of a duel was to show you were brave not to actually kill someone). And they had some timer that told them when they could shoot. Cowboy duels were made up for the movies. In the actual shootout at the OK Corrall Wyatt Earp's side shot the other before they could draw. It was not a gunfight, it was a massacre. But Wyatt Earp lived long enough to be friends with movie makers in the 1920's and they made the movies the way he claimed it happened."
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[
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l4z90z
|
The global debt is 277 trillion dollars. To whom do we owe this money, exactly?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Alice owes Bob $5. Bob owes Charlie $5. Charlie owes Alice $5. The total debt of these three people is $15. They owe it to each other. David shows up and just gives Bob $5. Bob pays Charlie the $5, cancelling his debt. Charlie pays Alice $5, canceling his debt. Alice pays Bob $5, cancelling her debt. Bob decides to give David the $5 back. Literally nothing is different from the original situation, but now the total debt is $0. This is why money is weird, and why some people don't trust banks.",
"> To whom do we owe this money, exactly? That is all debt owed by all the governments on Earth to anyone. Most governments operate by issuing bonds, which are a debt instrument, but are not similar to personal debt in any real way. Anyone who presents government debt like it's a personal debt that must be \"paid back\" has an agenda. Realistically there's no reason most countries would ever need to zero their debt, and if the US ever did that the global economy would probably implode."
],
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12,
4
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l4zdue
|
Why is the lather of soaps, shower gels, shampoos etc always white even if the colour of the liquid is different?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrfga8"
],
"text": [
"I would like to make a guess on this. In liquid or solid form, light only penetrates a short ways before reflecting a color back. But the lather is made up of bubbles of all sizes. When light hits it, it refracts and scatters so maybe they act like a prism and return white?"
],
"score": [
3
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
l4zgl0
|
Why do most telephone calls still sound so terrible?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrdca0"
],
"text": [
"One issue: keeping everything compatible with everything else. HD voice can't be used for all cell phone calls since there are still a lot of devices relying on 3g networks for voice calls, as an example."
],
"score": [
10
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l4zpgr
|
Why is passport theft and reselling a problem if the victim's picture is inside?
|
If a person's picture is inside, wouldn't that mean that the person selling it would need to find someone who looks exactly like the victim? That seems like such a big constraint. Whenever I've been in any international checkpoint, the TSA/immigration person has always looked at the picture and compared it to my face for several seconds. [Please don't give overly specific advice about how to conduct a illegal activities.]
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrf36s"
],
"text": [
"Its easier to replace an image on 1 page of a legit passport than to try and counterfeit the entire thing"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l50lwe
|
what is the P=NP problem, and why is it a problem?
|
Mathematics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrkmir"
],
"text": [
"It's a \"problem\" in the sense of \"a math problem\" - it's a question we are trying to answer. The full explanation is very complicated and way out of ELI5 territory, but a simple answer is, roughly: **are there any problems whose answers are easy to *check* (problems in the set called NP) whose answers are not also easy to *compute* (problems in the set called P)?** Intuitively, it seems like there must be. For example, it's very easy to check the factorization of a large number (you just do the multiplication, which is not difficult), but as of right now, we know of no way to compute such a factorization quickly. However, the problem is that no one has *proven* that *no such method exists* - and in fact, fast methods have been found in recent years for solving related problems (like checking whether a number is prime). Put another way: we know factorization is in NP, but we do not know if it is in P (as opposed to checking whether a number is prime, which *is* known to be in P). Anything that is in P must be in NP, because if you can quickly compute an answer you can always check an answer by just computing it and seeing if it matches. But it's not known if everything in NP is in P. We know of lots of problems that are definitely in NP but whose status inside or outside P is uncertain. In fact, we know a bunch of problems (\"NP-complete\" problems) that are in NP and that, if *any one of them* is in P, then everything in NP is - but as of yet, we haven't proven that any of them are or aren't in P."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l50sq2
|
How do animals think? Do they have thoughts with feelings or do they think with "words" like humans do?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrn87k"
],
"text": [
"You are essentially asking about an inner dialog or consciousness for animals. That's a very active field of research with many takes, so here's my take as a neuroscientist who is not a specialist in linguistics or animal cognition. We think with words because there are areas in our brain the produce and process words. But we can also have purely visual thoughts, or emotional reactions, or we can imagine a route, or we can sense an aroma and it can call to mind another aroma, and we don't use words for those thoughts. Most animals have brains that don't have our language centers, but they do have various brain areas that do many of the other things we do. Those brain regions show activity like human brains when they do analogous tasks. Therefore it's not unreasonable to speculate that different animals have cognition of some kind, unless the bar is set at \"must use words\". But remember Helen Keller did not have words for the early part of her life, and yet she had thoughts and was sentient. Babies have thoughts before they have words. And then there are birds who have very sophisticated song processing computational machinery. Do they think in a language of song? It's not unreasonable to speculate. Same with dolphin and whale songs."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l50v8e
|
Is there an limit on how hot something can get?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrmy2u",
"gkrsesu"
],
"text": [
"Sort of, but it depends on what you mean by \"how hot\". And yes, that sounds pedantic, but when high speeds get involved this gets weird. Static temperature is what we normally think of as \"how hot\", that's basically, \"If I'm sitting on this object and put a thermometer on it, what's the thermometer say?\". There's an upper limit there because at some point it gets so hot that it all breaks down into component subatomic particles, then quarks, then whatever quarks are made of and it starts to get philosophical about whether you have \"something\" anymore. Total temperature is how we deal with objects with a lot of kinetic energy...they can \"act like\" they're hotter than they are. It's basically \"how hot would this be if we slowed it back down to zero speed relative to our thermomenter?\" This is why high speed aircraft and spacecraft get hot even if they're running into air at normal temperatures. There's no theoretical upper limit here because your kinetic energy heads out to infinity as you get close to light speed and you can get arbitrarily close. There's also a practical limit...the total amount of energy in the universe is finite. If we squash that all into one \"point\" we can't get hotter than the big bang was...that's not infinite, even though it's so high that it might as well be.",
"Yes, it's absolute zero. But from the negative side. We've all heard temperature is the average kinetic energy of the atoms or molecules. Which is true, for ideal gases, so really nothing. Pretty close for helium though! Take any solid or liquid, and you can see why this definition falls apart. Solid atoms aren't flying about with high kinetics energy. They are vibrating, rotating. Electrons are moving. Not balls whizzing about like an ideal gas. So what is temperature really then? It's the relationship between entropy and energy. It's the rate of change between them. When you add energy, how much does entropy change. That is temperature. Normally, more energy means more entropy. These are positive temperatures. So what is entropy? It's order, or chaos, or more accurately how many ways you can rearrange everything, and how rare the current arrangement is among that. If the universe was made of a bin of loose Lego blocks, if you grouped all the colours and shapes into piles, that is low entropy. If you shook it mixed it up, that is high entropy. And the shook up state is way, way more likely. There's simply more messy states possible than there is organized ones. That's why shaking it always makes it more messy, never more organized. It's rolling the dice, but when you have hundreds of Lego pieces, very unlikely to end up more organized by shaking, only deliberate sorting. Entropy in our universe is the excat same thing, but with atoms. Imagine a simplified substance in question has a bunch of molecules/atoms, and these only have two available states they can take. Low energy, and high energy. If everything is at lowest energy (but not necessarily still), that is absolute zero. 0K. -273°C. As you add energy, some of these atoms move to the high energy state. This increases entropy, as now you have a less organized mix of low energy and high energy. As you add more and more energy, eventually you approach the point where half the atoms are low energy, half are high energy. This is positive infinite temperature. And entropy is absolutely maxed out, 50/50 split offers the absolute most possible mixes and is the most common by far if you just flipped each molecules state like a coin. But now adding more energy does something special. It lowers the entropy now, makes things more orderly. Now you are getting a majority of atoms in the higher energy state, making it more organized, or lower entropy. This is a negative temperature, the relationship has flipped. This isn't an everyday phenomenon, but lasers actually do show this property with their electrons. Things with negative temperatures will always dump their heat to something with a positive temperature. -100K is hotter than 999999999999K, heat will flow away from it. -10K will also give heat to -100K. A lower negative number is hotter, it means more atoms have high energy. As you might be able to see where this is going, what happens if you keep adding more energy. Well, eventually all the atoms will hit the maximum energy state. We are back to minimal entropy, but this time archived by adding energy rather than removing it. So we've hit absolute zero again, but this time from the negative side. This will give heat to any higher negative temperature, and any positive temperature. Therefore, by definition of hotter, the direction heat flows, the hottest temperature possible is 0^- K. The negative meaning you approached it from the negative side, not the positive side. As weird as it seems. This is a limit, you can't reach it. Same with the more familiar absolute zero from the positive side, you can just get arbitrarily close. Now, I should clarify, a negative temperature requires there to be a maximum energy state. If it can go infinitely higher, you'll never hit an inverse to negative temperature and just get higher and higher positive temperatures. As I said, lasers demonstrate this behaviour, taking a limited view of a select system. The concept has applications. But whether a wide open system or the universe itself has a higher energy cap, who knows. We're certainly nowhere near making this on a wider view than a selected closed system. 0K is the maximum temperature by the definition of temperature, but not necessarily for the open system of our universe, may have another fundamental cap. Or just nonsense at a certain scale. Our laws of physics basically only tell us they work with what we have seen, and can be extrapolated outwards, but we usually pick some absurdly far off value and say \"our physics models almost certainly don't work here\". Centre of a black hole, something as small as the Planck length, absurdly high energies and temperatures, these are just complete unknowns that extrapolating our models to are wild guesses."
],
"score": [
27,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l50zre
|
why when on a train / in car when you’re slowing down gently do you get the jolt at the end?
|
It seems like even when at a slow speed and somewhat smoothly and constantly slowing down, there is still a jolt right at the end
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gks1pis"
],
"text": [
"I am sure you know that even without using the brakes a car will eventually come to a stop due to rolling resistance. The last little bit before the jolt happens when the car is moving slowly - if the brakes are still applied you will have the stopping force of the rolling resistance *plus* the stopping force of the brakes. More than is required to coast to a gentle stop. So you get a bit of a jolt. With practice you can learn how to reduce the brake pressure as the car slows so that there is no jolt at all."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l510k4
|
When two "incompatible" animals crossbreed, at which point does the process fail?
|
Joke answers aside, if two distant animals mate, how early or late in the process will the offspring fail to form? Will it be as early as the sperm not even being able to penetrate the ovum? Will the zygote form, but be unable to successfully dvide? Or will there briefly be a hybrid baby, but too deformed to possibly survive?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrman4",
"gkrn351"
],
"text": [
"Usually it fails very early in fetal development. The sperm might penetrate the egg, but the resulting zygote has broken genetics that don't allow it to multiply properly in a way that creates a viable living creature.",
"Any of the above, depending on how closely related the organisms are. Typically either the sperm will fail to penetrate the egg, or it will penetrate the egg but fertilisation will fail, or fertilisation will succeed but the resultant zygote will be non-viable and fail to divide."
],
"score": [
30,
13
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l511wy
|
Why do people get ‘stuck’ to the object they are being electrocuted by?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrmqd5",
"gkrmqvg",
"gkrmryw"
],
"text": [
"Muscles use a tiny amount of electric charge to move, so when you grab something shocking, the muscles in your hand clamp down and make it so you can't let go of the thing shocking you.",
"Simply, it causes the muscles to contract. If they’re touching it with their hand, their fingers contract around the item, gripping it tightly.",
"Electricity makes muscles contract and as long as youre holding something and it is putting a lot of electricity through your hands will contract on that object until the current is stopped."
],
"score": [
14,
7,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l51z96
|
Why does paper rip nicely in a straight line when you tear it vertically, but not horizontally?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrsw06"
],
"text": [
"This has to do with the manufacturing of the paper. Paper is wood. The pulp that the paper is made from has fibers. They way these are pressed align them somewhat. Depending on the type of person you, you made have paper that folds and tears better in one direction vs the other. On a larger scale. Imagine that a tree trunk is thousands or little straws going up and down. It you lay this log on its side and cut along these straws you will now have a flat board made of straws. It won't be easy to break this board Against the straws, but it will be easy to pull the straws apart."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l520ey
|
Why are protons the only stable baryons?
|
And why is almost all "matter" in the universe (that we can ever interact with) composed specifically from protons, neutrons, and electrons? Would it be possible to have a proton analog that's composed of a different arrangement of quarks and how would the 'chemistry' of those particles work? Would it be analogous to what chemists study today if we somehow had matter made of other analogs of protons and neutrons? Asking as someone super-interested in both physics and chemistry. I know this is more in the physics-domain though.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrtbf5",
"gkrvu81"
],
"text": [
"Protons are the only stable baryons. Neutrons have an average \"lifetime\" of about 15 minutes, as free particles. Certain combinations of protons and neutrons can make some stable nuclei for most elements of the periodic table. (Lucky for us!) That's the only reason we ever get \"stable\" neutrons in those energy-favored combinations. You might be super interested in this [list of baryons]( URL_0 ) So, for example, you can search there for \"charmed omega\" and \"double charmed omega\" and \"bottom Xi\" to see their status in the zoo of particles. There won't be any stable arrangements of heavy quarks, though, so the very rapid decay of those particles will make them unsuitable for building an atom to enjoy.",
"Baryons are quite heavy. Even the difference between the proton and neutron - which is tiny compared to their masses - is larger than the mass of every other stable particle. This means that heavy baryons tend to have enough energy in their decay into lighter ones to produce other particles that conserve the various things that have to be conserved when a particle decays. One of those things that has to be conserved, at least in normal everyday physics, is *baryon number*. Roughly speaking, this says the total number of quarks/baryons (minus the total number of antiquarks/antibaryons, which is usually zero for our purposes) is conserved in all particle interactions. You can turn a proton into a neutron, but you can't just get rid of a proton. We don't think this is actually conserved in the way energy is - otherwise, why do we have more baryons than anti-baryons? - but it's very close to conserved and has never been observed to be violated in any interaction we've managed to do so far. Because the proton is the lightest baryon, it can't decay into lighter particles without violating the conversation of baryon number. So if baryon number is actually conserved, the proton has to be stable. If it's only *almost* conserved, then the proton *isn't* stable - but its lifetime may be very very very long. Current theoretical physics predicts the proton may be unstable with a half life right on the edge of what we could observe today, but despite a lot of searching, we've never observed it."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_baryons"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l52aen
|
Why won't the universe end in a collection of gigantic black holes? (And won't those eventually merge together?)
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrwgq9"
],
"text": [
"Two reasons: 1) Black holes evaporate. Theoretically, the universe *would* reach a point when all of the matter is contained in black holes, many of which will merge together into larger and larger black holes (except point #2 below). Over time, though, they would slowly evaporate through Hawking Radiation until nothing is left but light of various wavelengths. Many of the black holes would evaporate before ever getting close enough to merge. Eventually, the very last most supermassive of all black holes will evaporate into light and heat. This is the *Heat Death* of the universe. The time frame for this is inconceivably large, upwards of 10^100 years. Remember that the universe is only ~14 billion years old, so 1.4 x 10^10 years. Take the entire history of the universe so far from Big Bang to today and repeat those 14 billion years. Repeat them again. Repeat them until you've repeated once for each of the last 14 billion years. That's still only ~10^20 years. But that will probably never happen because: 2) The universe is not just expanding, the expansion is accelerating. Right now, the expansion is incredibly small - the four forces of the universe are *way* stronger than the expansion. Even over cosmic distances, the gravity between neighboring galaxies is strong enough to pull them towards each other. The Milky Way is scheduled to merge with our neighbor, Andromeda, in ~4.5 billion years. However, because the expansion is accelerating, it will eventually be strong enough to overcome the gravity of galactic local groups, flinging the galaxies away from each other. If it continues accelerating the way we observe it today, it will eventually overpower the gravity within galaxies, and then within solar systems. Eventually the expansion will be faster than light, and even the strongest forces holding atoms together won't be strong enough, and all matter will be torn apart. This is the \"Big Rip\" scenario. It does assume that the universe continues expanding the way it is, which may not be the case. If it is the case, most predictions put it somewhere around 20~22 billion years from now, long before the universe has time to collapse into nothing but black holes and *way* long before those black holes have time to evaporate."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l52hrq
|
How do companies get money from an IPO?
|
I understand companies go public to raise funding and become larger. Practically, how do they get money from the shares?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrv26a"
],
"text": [
"Because they are the ones selling the shares to begin with. You buy the shares you want by giving them your money. That's how they raise the money."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l52pbt
|
why do events and broadcasts incorporate a sign language interpreter instead of quality text captioning, which seems like it would be just as useful or more (many people have a range of hearing issues who do not know ASL)?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrwepu",
"gks935s",
"gkrx0yv",
"gktrpld"
],
"text": [
"The people in the audience would not be able to clearly see closed captioning and it's a lot more personal when you've got a live person interpreting for you rather than just words popping up on the screen. It's also really difficult to synchronize text with live speech - even if you have the script ahead of time, a person's going to naturally do unscripted pauses (coughing to clear throats, pausing for effect or to gather thoughts, taking a sip of water, etc.) that would throw the text off sync.",
"English =/= ASL. ASL is a different language than English. There are also programs/people that will do audio translations for spoken languages. Chinese, Spanish, Russian and so on. Deaf Americans tend to have a lower skill in reading English, so captions wouldn't be nearly as helpful as an interpreter. Any government funded/supported anything is required to provide interpreters. Most private enterprises are also required to provide interpreters if asked.",
"Lots of Deaf people find information more easily accessible when delivered in their native language, ASL, than when delivered through English text.",
"ASL provides more context and urgency to the words. Good ASL Interpreters will match the emotion of the speaker when signing. You can watch videos of an emergency announcement, policy change, and rap concert. The interpreter will act different for each to get the point across better. For instance [this interpreter]( URL_0 ) uses her face to add more emotion while the speakers face doesn’t change. She’s interpreting the urgency/emotion behind the words to convey a more specific message."
],
"score": [
31,
14,
11,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/kdEyKDpk3Yc"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l52snj
|
Why did the early globemakers decide that the North pole is the "right side up" instead of the south pole?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrxzg2",
"gkrzh8c",
"gks5kjm"
],
"text": [
"Because they came from the northern hemisphere. Seriously. Why do we decide one pole is north and the other south- they are just opposites. Why is one contact positive and the other negative? Because it was decided that way- actually it used to be opposite but now it goes with the flow of electrons, however car electronics are different- why? Because someone decided and we needed a reference point.",
"Every civilization that has progressed to the point of making maps was located in the northern hemisphere. A map, by itself, doesn't tell you anything about where you are or where you're going. To use a map you need navigational references in the form of landmarks, but just navigating by landmarks along is difficult - you still need some way to figure out which direction is north/south/east/west. In the northern hemisphere you can use the North Star as this reference point. The North Star is always in approximately the same location in the sky and if you travel towards it you will head north - regardless of where in the northern hemisphere you're located. To enable people to use the North Star to navigate, pre-modern maps would have an arrow on them that pointed north. The idea was that you could physically take the map and orient it so that the arrow was pointing at the North Star. Once you had the arrow pointed at the North Star, it was relatively easy to orient yourself on the map. Because you're going to be holding a map with the north arrow pointing away from you, north became the default \"up\" direction used on maps. There have been historical maps that didn't have north as up - but these were mostly decorative. Because of the usefulness of the North Star, the most practical way to make a map that is intended to be used for navigation is to orient the map so that north is up. Of course, none of this is true if you're in the southern hemisphere. But civilized nations didn't really start exploring the southern hemisphere until relatively recently and very few people ever lived there. Even today, 90% of the human population lives in the northern hemisphere and of the 10% that do live in the southern hemisphere, most live very close to the equator.",
"Early Western world maps weren't made that way. They were centered on the Mediterranean, often with (central) Asia at the top, Europe at the bottom left, and Africa at the bottom right. But as for physical globes ... think about when you're using a globe for reference. You want to look at the parts of the world that you're in, that you travel in, and so forth. Those parts should be facing you, not facing the table. So if you're most likely to travel in the Northern Hemisphere, then it makes sense for that part to be facing you, the user. It's just user interface."
],
"score": [
13,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l52uv9
|
Why when you cut an onion you cry?
|
When my mom cut onion and I go near him and I suddenly cry..I want explanations about this
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkrxig8",
"gkrxibn",
"gksg1qc"
],
"text": [
"When you cut an onion, though a small series of steps, it releases something called syn-propanethial-S-oxide. It irritates your eyes and causes you to tear up. I’m not 100% how much of this is true, but you can supposedly reduce this by putting onions in a freezer for a short time before cutting them, as well as making sure you have a nice, sharp knife. That allows you to split cells without bruising them as much and lessens the effect.",
"Onions have chemicals in them that irritate your eyes. When your eyes are irritated, they produce extra tears to wash whatever is irritating them out. It's the same principle as something like pepper spray, although much less intense.",
"I used to have to cut boxes and boxes of onions in a previous job. For some reason wearing contacts seems to block like 90% of the burning chemical from getting into your eyes. No one else wore contacts at my job...I always had to cut the onions..."
],
"score": [
6,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l53arb
|
- Why do kids tend to not like vegetables?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gks0ido",
"gks0ppr",
"gks2tkj"
],
"text": [
"They do like them, if you do it right. I used to act like veggies were rare and special treats. In fact, initially I would only give my kids the tiniest of bites of things like brussel sprouts, pretending that they were as rare as candy. I trained them to eat things by leading by example as well. I would have a snack at night of broccoli, cauliflower and carrots with a little bit of ranch dressing, or I would have sliced bell pepper with gouda cheese, and only give them just a tease of a bite so they really wanted more. I would make bright and colorful dishes and call them by names kids would love or be intrigued by like, \"Clown Barf Stir Fry\". It worked and all of my kids LOVE vegetables, and as adults they choose and eat veggis all the time.",
"Kids are given too much processed food that’s high in sugars and carbs. Veggies are more bitter than those, so don’t taste as rewarding. Also, many adults don’t know how to prepare or pair vegetables, resulting in yummy tasting non-veg and bland bitter veg. I had this discussion with my kids yesterday, all of whom love vegetables and can’t stand over-sweet processed foods.",
"Why do adults start to like them as we get older? I hated veggies as a kid, but love them as an adult. What changed lol"
],
"score": [
14,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l53b7s
|
How did the Moon become ‘locked’ to the rotation of the Earth, such that we always see the same face of the Moon? What is the process, and do we expect this to happen with most moons & their respective host planets?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gks0skh",
"gks33dt",
"gks11m1",
"gks0ozx"
],
"text": [
"One side of the Moon, the one closer to the Earth is pulled more strongly towards the Earth than the far side. This cause the Moon to stretch slightly, which distorts it. When the Moon was rotating (before becoming tidally locked) this stretching generated heat. The heat came from the kinetic energy of the rotation of the Moon. Another way to look at is it that the bulge that was formed by the tidal forces would be moving away from the closest point of the Earth as it rotated. This bulge would be trying to \"climb uphill\" with respect to the Earth and the Earth was pulling on this and slowing the Moon down. The same thing happens with tides on Earth, even the land has tides but far less than the oceans (obviously). The Earth is also slowing down and given enough time will become tidally locked to the Moon.",
"Planets are only sort of solid; they’re more of a jiggly solid once you get to a planetary scale. If you poke it with a colossal explosive event from our perspective, from way up in space, you can measure the ripple that goes through it. So with that in mind, consider that the planets have gravity and pull on their moons, which creates a bulge on the moon (think like a 1cm bulge; not noticeable, but accounts for a very large mass). If the moon isn’t orbiting at the same rate that it’s spinning, that bulge would have to move across the surface. If the moon is spinning faster, the bulge’s movement will sap energy out of the moon until it’s locked.",
"Its called \"tidal locking\" because its the result of tides If you look at the Earth you'd notice a bulge on the side that faces towards the moon and on the side that is facing away. They're more obvious on Earth because that bulge is \"high tide\" and most people have encountered tides. The bulge of water moves along the Earth's surface as it rotates under the Moon, since the water flows relatively freely it doesn't slow stuff down much. The Moon also has tidal bulges, but since the Moon is made of rock the tidal bulge moving along the surface used to expand and compress rock as the Moon rotated over Earth. The expansion and compression had friction losses and gave off some energy as heat slowly sapping the rotational energy of the Moon. Over time the friction of the tidal bulge moving across the surface slowed the Moon down until its orbit and rotation were in sync and the tidal bulge no longer moved across the surface Whether or not a satellite will become tidally locked depends on the mass of the host, the mass of the satellite, the distance between the two of them, the starting spin rate, and the rigidity of the satellite. Objects that are closer to bigger planets experience stronger tidal forces, further away or smaller host planets result in weaker forces. Similarly, a big moon that is spinning fast has a lot more energy that needs to be bled off than a slowly rotating little asteroid that gets picked up in orbit.",
"This is known as tidal locking or synchronous rotation. The moon completes one rotation, spinning about its own axis,in the same time it take to complete one orbit, rotating around the earth. So as the moon orbits, it slowly turns to keep the same side facing us. This can happen elsewhere for instance Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other. Both bodies are always facing the same way at each other. I’m uncertain if one would expect this to happen with other planets and their moons but it’s possible."
],
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14,
7,
5,
3
],
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[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l546nk
|
Why are the values for depreciation different in cash flow statements and income statements?
|
Trying to calculate EBITDA, but was wondering why you have to use the depreciation value from the cash flow statement instead of the value in the income statement.
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gks5th5"
],
"text": [
"In your cash flow statement, all the cash left on day zero when you bought the asset. (Unless you bought it with a loan, in which case you have to track the loan payments.) On the income statement— just because you bought a $20,000 piece of equipment (with an expected 10-year life) and only made $12,000 with it, doesn't mean you lost $8,000. You still have a machine that's (probably) worth $18k. It hasn't gone anywhere. Your equipment expenses for the year are just $2,000."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l54yti
|
Why do doctors or first aid guides advise never to use ointments on burns if that's what they are made for?
|
I've looked up many guides for burns. All of them suggest cool running water and avoiding ointment. But isn't ointment made specifically for burn wounds?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gksb1ur",
"gksazou",
"gkspvlx"
],
"text": [
"Burns come in many varieties and severities as do the various ointment made for them. What might be good for a friction burn might not be good for a chemical burn. By that same token, the care required for a first degree and third degree is vastly different. To keep the guidance simple for everyone, they just tell you not to apply any ointments.",
"Ointment is to provide a barrier between the damaged skin and the environment. A burn usually needs air while it is healing, but also needs to be kept cool and clean. Water does these things. Ointment is useful once the area has already begun to heal.",
"At the time of the burn injury you need to cool the skin down to prevent the severity of the wound. Water is the best way to do this. Later on when the wound is no longer hot then cream can be used to create a barrier and prevent infection."
],
"score": [
7,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l554wu
|
Why is it that if there is a fly on a mirror, the fly will seem a small distance away from the “mirror version of itself”
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gksbkm7",
"gksbolx"
],
"text": [
"The reflective mirror surface is on the back of the glass. The fly is on the front. The distance you see is the thickness of the glass.",
"In a standard mirror there is a sheet of glass or acrylic with a reflective backing. So there is a thin piece of material between the reflection and the object. This illusion is enhanced by the fact you can’t see the shadow. To the contrary, in a one way mirror the reflective material is on the “front”, so doing the “fingernail test” is an easy way to spot one because there will be no gap."
],
"score": [
19,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l55fwi
|
Where does the energy needed to break things by expanding ice come from?
|
When water freezes into ice it expands. And if the newly expanded ice doesn’t fit in its container, it often breaks the container. Where does the energy for this destruction come from? I’m guessing that if there isn’t sufficient energy to break the container, the water won’t freeze completely. But I’m unsure. Is this how those supercooled water scenarios happen? Where the water is liquid but when administered a shock to “seed” it the freezing process will rapidly spread?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkse3iz"
],
"text": [
"The energy comes from the bonds that are trying to form in the ice. It's like having a [bunch of magnets]( URL_0 ) on the verge of connecting with each other pushing against the container holding the water. If the collective pull of these magnets is stronger than what the container can contain, the container gives. If the container *is* strong enough to resist this force, effectively it increases the pressure inside since what ice can form squeezes the rest of the water. The temperature ice freezes is also dependent on pressure. Higher pressure lowers water's freezing point, so a strong enough container would keep it's water liquid longer than an open container in a freezer."
],
"score": [
14
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://cf.ltkcdn.net/toys/images/std/173479-320x239-SmartMax-toy.jpg"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5688g
|
What does the phrase 'cease to exist' actually mean?
|
I heard my teacher say, 'at 0^(o) Kelvin atoms cease to exists'. What does it mean? What does actually happen to an atom at 0^(o) Kelvin? Does the electron collapses into the nucleus? And the object dismantles at atomic level? I know we haven't been able achieve 0^(o) Kelvin, but is it theoretically unachievable?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkslisb",
"gksilkw"
],
"text": [
"It ... means, unfortunately, that your teacher isn't quite clear on how ultra-low temperatures work. Nothing about being at 0K would destroy, collapse, or disintegrate atoms; it wouldn't cause electrons to \"stop orbiting and fall into the nucleus\", in particular. The electrons would be guaranteed to be in their lowest possible orbitals or energy states, sure. But if you have say, an iron atom, with its 26 electrons, that'd still be two electrons in the lowest, 1s, orbital, 2 in the 2s and 6 in the 2p, 2 in the 3s and 6 in the 3p, 2 in the 4s, and the last 6 in the 3d (which is higher-energy than the 4s orbital). The electrons aren't allowed - Pauli Exclusion Principle - to all collapse into the lowest orbitals. The iron would be thermally vibrating as little as possible, but would still have an irreducible bit of what's called \"zero-point energy\". (Which happens to be enough to keep helium liquid there, though every other element and compound is a solid.) But 0K is, yes, theoretically unachievable. We can get VERY close... but by the time you get there, each halving of the remaining temperature takes as much effort as the halving before it did, so you'll never quite reach true zero. But we can get close enough for, as far as we can tell, all practical purposes. --Dave, my fingers are cold just typing this",
"Temperature is the measure of how fast atoms/molecules are moving, the faster they move, higher the temperature. At 0 kelvin atoms/molecules would not move at all, they'd be completely still. No, the electrons don't collapse into the nucleus. It is unachievable because you need something colder than 0 K° to make something 0 K° which is impossible. We still made it to thousandths of a degree kelvin though."
],
"score": [
15,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l56rig
|
Why does your stomach hurt when you get hit in the nuts?
|
My friend just shot me in the nuts with a nerf gun and I'm wondering why does that make your stomach feel nauseated?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gksljk9"
],
"text": [
"The pain radiates because of nerves in the body that connect. It is a very bad pain to have and can be bad for your health. How often do you injure each other like that?"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l56rtc
|
If a pixel display made of red, green, and blue lights can look white to the human eye, would a large-enough mural of red, green, and blue stripes/dots on the side of a building look like a white wall from a long-enough distance?
|
I'm guessing the air molecules between the viewer and the wall would block a significant amount of the light reflected from the wall from reaching the eye at all, but would this theoretically work, maybe in a vacuum? Another way to phrase it: Would a planet with a uniformly-tiled red, green, and blue surface look white to a person looking through a telescope?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkslrwv",
"gksodal"
],
"text": [
"Yes. If the balance between the red, blue, and green are correct it would look white. This Uris exactly how ‘jumbotron’ screens work at sports events. They are just Modules of RGB lights seen at a distance. If you get close enough you can see the separate lights.",
"The key difference here is between additive and subtractive mixing of colors. Subtractive mixing is what occurs with paints and crayons and in your case, a mural. Pretty much all objects that don't produce their own light waves follow these rules. Each color of paint absorbs all colors other than its own. So red paint reflects red wavelengths of light while absorbing all others. If you mix this with yellow paint and blue paint you'll end up absorbing most or all of the light, which would appear black from a distance. When we're dealing with light being emitted by the pixels we end up with additive mixing instead (which is rarely taught in schools, regrettably). There is no absorption to consider, it's simply the selective emission of light. You're basically combining 3 different bands of color wavelengths, which results in the effective emission of all bands present. If the bands combine to cover the whole visible spectrum of light, then it will appear white. If your planet generates its own light across the red, blue and yellow spectrums, then it will appear white. If instead it is reflecting the light from its star across all of these spectrums, it'll appear black."
],
"score": [
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l56zum
|
Why is it fine to breathe in mist but dangerous to have water in your lungs?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gksmgz0"
],
"text": [
"Too much water prevents a quick gas exchange with the membranes of the lungs. You’d be able to take in air, but you wouldn’t have a way to make sure it dissolved in the water at the quantities you’d need."
],
"score": [
36
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l57d0u
|
How does the moon orbit earth while earth orbits the sun instead of just orbiting the sun?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gksp5wp",
"gktmy0d"
],
"text": [
"It orbits the Sun, too. To Earth, it appears that the Moon orbits the Earth in a circle. But from the Sun's perspective, the Moon orbits the Sun in a nearly-circular orbit where it is sometimes closer and sometimes farther away from Earth. [Something like this exaggerated image]( URL_0 ).",
"You may like to consider the Earth/Moon pair as ONE system, that is orbiting around the SUN once every year. It is the centre of mass of that pair that traces out the (nearly) circular path around the sun. If we then zoom into the combined pair we see that they actually rotate about the same centre of mass , like an out-of-balance dumbell, once every 28 day. The centre of mass (and so the point about which they rotate) actually lies within the earth so the moon 'appears' to orbit the earth but in fact they both 'wobble' about that point. When the moon is near the sun the earth's centre is 'outside' the orbit, and when the moon/earth rotate so the moon is further from the sun then the earth's centre is 'inside' the orbit."
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://i.imgur.com/EC0xNzM.png"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l57wp0
|
Why do people get bags under their eyes when tired?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkst1bk"
],
"text": [
"The skin under your eyes is really thin, so color can be seen through it better and it's not as resilient. When you don't get enough sleep your blood vessels dilate (get bigger in diameter) which means more blood concentrated in that areas. Because the skin there is thinner the increased amount of blood is more visible than elsewhere, so you get that dark baggy look. Dehydration can also play a part as the flesh under the skin loses some of its tone and the skin sags a bit."
],
"score": [
54
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l57zpw
|
What is happening with r/wallstreetbets driving up the price of GameStop stock?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gksv6r4"
],
"text": [
"a bunch of investors saw gamestop as a losing business and expected the price to go down. they shorted gamestop stock. that means they borrowed the stock and sold it, intending to buy it back at a lower price, and returning it. a bunch of redditors banded together and kept on buying the stock, driving the price higher and higher. eventually when the contract expires, the people that shorted the stock will be forced to buy back those stock at much higher price than they borrowed it at, losing money. e.g. if I borrow 10k shares of your GME when price is $100/share, sell it, expect it goes down to $50/share, buy 10k shares back and give you back your stocks, I make $500k profit. however if the price goes up to $200/share, then I have to cover the short and buy 10k shares at $200 price, costing me $2mil buy and holding a stock, you can only ever lose at most 100% of your investment. shorting a stock, you can lose much more."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l58zb4
|
If white light is made up of all colour wavelengths, why does mixing colour pigments end up with a muddy brown?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkswlu7",
"gksws8f"
],
"text": [
"Because pigments don't have colors per se, but they absorb certain wavelengths; if a pigment looks green it means that all other colors of the wave have been absorbed and only the green combo gets bounced back. Now if you mix up more and more pigments, the more colors gets absorbed, and the closer you will get into brown territory (with absorption of all color turning it black)",
"Because of how pigments work, the color your seeing is the color that the pigment reflects, every other color is absorbed. So a red pigment, absorbs all’s the wavelengths of colors except red, which it reflects most of. A Yellow pigment absorbs all the wavelengths of colors except yellow, which it reflects most of. When you mix yellow and red pigments, you get a mix of yellow and red reflecting that your eyes/brain perceive as orange. Here’s the thing, not ALL of the red and ALL of the yellow is reflecting, the individual bits of yellow pigment are still absorbing the red light that hits them. And the individual bits or red pigments and still absorbing the yellow light that hits them. So you’re not getting a perfect reflection of all the colors, only a partial reflection, so when you mix up a bunch of pigments there’s still an unbalanced amount of light getting absorbed leaving you with darker browns/blacks. You would need something that perfectly reflects all wavelengths of light to have perfectly white light, like a mirror. Though Most mirrors aren’t actually perfect reflectors and absorb a bit of the light that hits them."
],
"score": [
12,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l59f9l
|
How does mixing pigments affect light absorption/reflection? How does the eye perceive light reflected off of pigment mixes?
|
Any insight from physics/chemistry-savvy people is appreciated! If you mix yellow and blue paint, you get a green mixture. My question is about the specifics of how light reflects off of the green paint and enters the eye, and how the eye perceives it. I see two options: 1) The yellow and blue paint are mixed at a molecular level. However, no chemical reaction has taken place: The molecules that make up the blue and yellow pigments remain the same as before. When white light hits the green mixture, the blue/yellow pigment molecules reflect blue/yellow light, respectively. Countless waves of yellow and blue light enter the eye. The rods in the retina interpret the presence of simultaneous blue and yellow light as the color green, although no actual green light has entered the eye. 2) By mixing the molecules of the blue/yellow pigment, they are rearranged into a new molecular structure. This new structure somehow absorbs both blue and yellow light, along with all other colors of the spectrum except green. The green light gets reflected and enters the human eye. The rods in the retina interpret the pure green light as "green". I'm guessing 1) can't be true, because it would follow that mixing all colors of the spectrum would result in a mixture that reflects all colors of the spectrum, or white light. But we know that it's impossible to mix white from any combination of pigments. However, I'm not convinced 2) is correct or accurate, either. Thank you very much for your time!
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gksyy0d"
],
"text": [
"It's (1), for the same reason that your monitor can produce a wide range of colors with only red, green, and blue pixels. It can, for example, render yellow by lighting up the red and green parts of the pixel. (Your monitor's pixels are adding light while pigments are removing light, but it's the same idea.) The problem with your reasoning for (1) is that pigments only reduce, never increase, the brightness of any given frequency of light. Your blue pigment *absorbs* some green and all red, and your yellow pigment *absorbs* blue and a little red/green. You end up with a mild reduction in all three, but mostly in blue and red, which makes the color you see *both darker and* greener. Continuing to mix pigments in will result in a low-brightness brown or gray, not a white as compared to the original color of your canvas - but note that you distinguish white and gray **relative to the background**, not as absolute colors in their own right. The moon, for example, is the color of asphalt, but appears brilliant white in the sky because it's set against a dark backdrop and is brightly lit by the sun."
],
"score": [
4
],
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
] |
l59o0r
|
Why do birds repeatedly do U-shaped flight maneuvers (almost like a skateboarder in a halfpipe) around towers?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkt047m",
"gkt0chn"
],
"text": [
"Without knowing the specific bird, there are two possible answers. First, birds don't expend 100% of their energy trying to survive. Not every single action is carefully measured to expend the least calories or to create baby birds. Like most birds and mammals, there's some room and some time left for them to choose one thing over another when it doesn't really make much of a difference. Seagulls will ride thermals - masses of rising air - upwards to gain height and circle, effectively just flying for free. Ditto with groups of crows or ravens who \"play\" by swooping and acrobatic turning. The steeple just makes for either a point they can fix on, or might have some landing spots but they're in no hurry to pick one, or might even have some interesting air currents around them. The second reason is to confuse potential hawks or other birds of prey. [Starlings are really good at this: here's a gif of them in action.]( URL_0 ) The random changes and movements throw off any potential attacker because they have a hard time picking a single target. And quick twists and turns work almost as well for single birds.",
"It has to do with flocking behavior. A flock of birds, shoal of fish, or herd of buffalo doesn't have a mind of its own. There's no single leader or central governance that tells the herd where to move. Instead, each individual member of the group has the same instinctual behaviour that creates the group in the first place. It's a little bit simplified but if you think of an individual bird, that bird has a couple of things affecting its behaviour: & #x200B; * That bird wants to be at the centre of its local group of neighbouring birds because that's where it is safest. * That bird wants to move along with the general direction of its immediate neighbours otherwise it'll lose the flock and be on its own. * That bird wants to avoid collisions with its immediate neighbours in the flock. * That bird wants to avoid colliding with any obstacles like trees and buildings. * That bird wants to avoid any dangers it might perceive, like a bird of prey or danger it thinks it sees on the ground. * That bird wants to move towards anything it is motivated to move towards. Like a food source, a nesting tree, a resting spot or anything else that catches it's fancy. And that bird is constantly evaluating how to adjust its direction based on which of those criteria it prioritises. Trying to get into the centre of its local group will likely also force it to more heavily prioritize avoiding collisions with other birds. Changing position within its local group might also change its awareness of what direction the remainder of the flock is moving into. And as that one bird is moving through the group, it'll displace other birds who are also following those criteria and as a result, will wish to adjust their heading. And since none of those birds can really oversee what's happening with the entire flock, they all just respond to their closest flockmates that they're more aware of. The end result is a group that improves the survival rate of its individual members even though none of it's members really communicate with each other to organize that group or coordinate its movements. The flock simply moves according to the needs of its members. If it's morning, most of its members will prioritise moving towards food without losing the group. If its night, most of its members will prioritise moving towards a roosting spot without losing the group. That's why the flock has that fluid motion. All of those birds are constantly juggling contradictory needs to pick a direction to fly into. [It's actually been formalised into an easy to programme algorithm called Boid's algorithm.]( URL_0 )When you see things like bat swarms flying out of a cave in a movie, that's often Boid's algorithm applied to computer animation."
],
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3,
3
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"text_urls": [
[
"https://i.imgur.com/dtVJug1.mp4"
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[
"https://eater.net/boids"
]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5a3s6
|
How did the Neanderthals go extinct?
|
I heard they went to war with our ancestors. How did we win?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkt2r09",
"gkt1wh5",
"gku9cqw"
],
"text": [
"While it's hard to prove one way or the other, there have been sites discovered where interbreeding was found in the remains. Socially, that implies that a hybrid neanderthal-human individual was not only possible, but that such individuals were accepted parts of their community and lived until adulthood (implying they weren't too weak or sickly to survive). Depending on ancestry there's also a very high likelihood that a given individual will carry the markers of minor neanderthal additions to their genes. It's much lower in sub-Saharan groups, much higher in Eurasian, because neanderthals really didn't backtrack from Eurasia into Africa once they evolved. There's also a high margin of human-caused extinction through out-competing them. Tools known to be made by neanderthals as opposed to modern human ancestors don't show many significant changes over an astoundingly long time- We were figuring out how to make better tools, they weren't. With better tools, we had better living. Eventually, it's suggested, there just became more and more of us, less and less of them, until we were all that was left. More like neighborhood gentrification, and less of an explicit war where two groups met on a battlefield and murdered each other to death. There's also an argument to be made for climate change as a cause. It's a theory that's getting stronger and stronger in regards to Pleistocene megafauna (with the exception of australia); that it wasn't just anthropocentric, and as the ice age ended, biomes changed. Eventually they changed to a point of not being able to support the megafauna.... Or the neanderthals. There are a lot of factors at play, and we really aren't at a place where we can point to any one of them and say \"That. That's why.\", all we can do is extrapolate from the evidence we have and keep piecing things together as new discoveries are made. \\--Of Note; I don't have a Ph.D or anything, I just never outgrew the 'dinosaur' phase..",
"It was a combination of things but basically we out bred them, fought with them and competed over resources. We had better tools and weapons. . We also bred with them. 60,000 years ago it wasn't just Neanderthals. There were several other species of humans. Every modern human has 2-3 percent DNA from these other humans. But my 2-3% is different from yours. In total they estimate other species contributed about 20% of our modern DNA. Try YouTube, for a better understanding. They have excellent videos on this stuff that explains it better than I can here.",
"Neanderthals had biggers brains/bodies that were more demanding for resources, when the last ice age ended their bodies were not suited to the climate. When the Homo Sapiens finally made his way I to eurasia neanderthals were already weak and outnumbered, making then easy to disappear with interbreeding and competition for resources. URL_0 good TierZoo video that talks about it"
],
"score": [
24,
10,
4
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"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/BJzJtm7OfdQ"
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5an70
|
how do modern cars have parking cameras view of the car from all angles? Like from the top, view of the whole car?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkt410a"
],
"text": [
"Composite images. Many images combined into one. Including radar data for accurate distances."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5ayej
|
why is that we find comfort in humanising anything we like/love like our pets or other animals annd even sometimes inanimate objects?
|
Psychology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkt7dim"
],
"text": [
"We developed in tribes where basically everything outside of the tribe was our enemy or our food, so comfort only really existed in our tribes. Humanizing animals and things is a modern way of accepting then into our tribe."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5b1of
|
if Depression is a chemical imbalance in your brain, how can talking in Therapy do something about that?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkt7r16",
"gktzjur",
"gkt5urb",
"gkuplv6"
],
"text": [
"Your brain produces or stops producing chemicals based on your emotional and physical state. Change your state, change the chemicals. Talking changes your state. So does exercise, touch, food, meditation and environmental changes.",
"One thing that people learn in therapy is coping skills. You might learn that the negative thoughts aren’t necessarily true, they might be the depression talking.",
"Therapy is helpful for the dr to diagnose and treat you. Over time chemicals change and you may need a change in treatment. Talking also helps to actually release more of certain chemicals which can help to balance a patient. Regular visits are just like regular oil changes on your car, keeps things in decent shape.",
"It's actually never been proven that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance URL_0 \"So how did this theory take over and convince so many people a chemical imbalance caused depression decades after experts knew better? Jonathan Leo, Ph.D., professor of anatomy at Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee, primarily attributes this to the power of drug company advertising on TV.\""
],
"score": [
47,
5,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://themighty.com/2019/12/is-depression-caused-by-chemical-imbalance/"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5bh0d
|
why does water make your skin fold up
|
edit: you know, when you stay in a pool too long and the skin on your hands and feet just kinda deflate like a balloon extra points if you explain why this doesn't occur on the rest of our skin
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkt8y4e",
"gktclou"
],
"text": [
"This is mainly to improve our grip underwater. It's also why it doesn't occur anywhere else, other than our feet, to improve our grip while walking, and on the fingers / hands to again improve grip. There's no point in the skin on our arms doing this as they aren't naturally gripping anything",
"I answered this a while back. Here is my comment: There have been arguments that pruning enhances gripping, which makes it evolutionarily valuable because when you're drowning or have been for a while at sea, you'd wanna be able to grab something to hold on to or to get out. However.. A study showed that not to be the case, and showed the grippiness doesn't change after fingertips get pruny, but this remains controversial as it has been shown that it does enhance grip in some other works (we can get into some comparative analysis of the studies to deduce our conclusion, but that's too much for ELI5). Now let's talk mechanisms. Two main hypotheses exist for how wrinkling happens. 1) being in water for a while causes the top or outermost layer of the skin to swell due to osmosis (water flows in) and while the bottom layers don't change size, this causes wrinkling. 2) a lower layer in the skin actually shrinks, causing the top layer to be too big for it and therefore wrinkles. This shrinking would be due to a physiological response to cold or to water, where the body reduces blood flow to the fingertips and toes to reduce heat loss. Blood vasculature in those regions actually make up a significant volume and when it's reduces, shrinkage happens in the tissue. A quite recent study wanted to understand this. So they did some research on both mechanisms and found neither to be quite sufficient in explaining the amount of wrinkling you observe when submerged in water for a while. They now, based on mathematical modeling, believe there is no dominant mechanism (we already know both happen, we just don't know which is the main reason). They think both contribute almost equally, as even very small low layer shrinkage and top layer swelling can synergistically cause a large amount of wrinkling. So basically.. Both mechanisms are true. Hope I explained it well, let me know if you have questions. Here is the last paper for your reference, URL_0"
],
"score": [
8,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/27913950/"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5brg6
|
Why do babies and children think it’s funny when people hurt themselves?
|
You know like when their parents or siblings sort of jokingly pretend to get hurt or fall over. I guess even adults find people hurting themselves to be funny sometimes, why is that?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gku6kj3"
],
"text": [
"A prominent (though disputed) theory of humor says that it relies largely on subverting expectations. The idea is that laughter descends from a signal that essentially means \"wow that was unexpected, but everything is still okay!\" A child watching somebody walk (or do anything) reasonably expects that the person knows how to do what theyre doing succesfully. Aren't adults supposed to be good at things? When that expectation is subverted by the person suddenly falling down, the child laughs because it surprises them. An adult in that situation might wait to make sure the person isn't hurt before laughing, but adults can certainly show similar reactions. When the action is repeated over and over again by a parent (who is likely also laughing, providing positive reinforcement), it becomes a sort of game that is amusing even when it is no longer surprising."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5c3w4
|
Is there such a thing as new plate tectonics or there's only the same old plates moving around since the earth was formed?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gktd4cr",
"gktkxdo",
"gktfkus"
],
"text": [
"The plates do change over time. We do have examples where plates have cracked in two and new land forms between them pushing them apart. And we do see plates being pushed down between two other plates and dissapearing completely into the mantle. So the tectonic plates do change over time. In fact none of the current surface was present at the formation of the Earth and it have all been formed afterwards through one process or another. This is one of the issued studying the early history of the planet because everything that was there is now gone. This is why we have to venture to the Moon, asteroids and other planets in the solar system in order to study how the early Earth was.",
"For example: The mid-atlantic ridge is a long 'crack' between 2 plates. As they move apart the gap is filled with 'new' material from within the earth. This forms a 'conveyor' of material, with the older plates eventually sinking back into the earth as new is released from these 'hot spots'.",
"You can see the African plate being split in two down the Rift Valley; so yes, there are new plates being formed and old subducted and destroyed."
],
"score": [
7,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5d4pl
|
"once an addict, always an addict" - is that true? why?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gktghc8",
"gku3nzg",
"gktjq5c"
],
"text": [
"Like most things, it's never quite that cut and dry. For a start, the thing that makes drugs different from other addictions (say, to video games for instance) is that they can form a chemical dependency in your brain, and thats hard to shake. Someone who frequently took highly addictive opioids, for instance, would have a very difficult time indeed trying to 'get clean', because their body has been kind of tricked by the drug into thinking that they NEED the drug. But more importantly, the reasons people get addicted to drugs (or other kinds of addictions) are also at play. If someone uses heroin because their living situation is too upsetting to deal with sober, then no amount of rehab or bootstrapping is going to help them. Until their living situation changes for the better, then yes, they're far more likely to fall back into those drug habits.",
"A little of both. Everybody has things they would never ever do because you couldn't live with yourself if you did them. Now imagine that you make 1 mistake and cross that line. No matter what you do the rest of your life, you can't take that back. Once you cross that line the first time, it's easier the second time, and even easier the third. If you prided yourself on never stealing, but then you got in a situation where you had to steal to survive, it would be much easier to do that a 2nd time than it was to do it the first time because you no longer have that mental block that \"I'm not a thief\". The same could be said for many different things. \"I'm not a cheater. I love my partner\" \"I would never have a drink to get through a bad day at work\" \"I would never lie to my family\" \"I would never become an addict\" Personally, I was physically addicted to medication prescribed by my doctor for over 10 years. If you missed a dose, it was horrible. I never abused it or took more than was prescribed, and yet still I was completely physically addicted. I hated the idea of living in fear of missing a dose, and finally just quit cold turkey. That was like dying for a month. But I've been off them for a year and a half and don't miss it. I wouldn't say I'm an addict. I want nothing to do with anything like that again, doctor prescribed or not. The thought of taking pills that could cause physical addiction makes me physically ill. For me it was a case of \"never again\" because it was so hard to quit I'd have to be a lunatic to ever willingly put myself in that situation again. It was the same when I quit smoking 10 years ago. Never again. It feels GOOD to get a monkey off your back, and once free of that weight, you never want to feel it's burden again.",
"It's 4 levels - 1. There are certain genetic factors that may predispose some individuals to addictive behavior. 2. People who have become addicted often started substance abuse because of some other psychological stress factors in their life. If this root cause of escaping reality is still in their life, there may be a tendency to go back to substance abuse. 3. Depending on the kind of addiction, specific changes can be induced in the physiology of the nervous system. After all the cause for addiction IS due to the body becoming dependent on the presence of the substance on the cellular level. These changes may not be reversible, and people may experience discomfort when deprived of the substance. 4. Some people actually enjoy the feeling created by narcotics. So together, these translate to - your body needs it, your mind needs it and it feels good. There is very little to stop it on an instinctual level. The reasons to not do it require that you think of long term consequences, which humans are generally bad at and have to put a lot of efforts and training into. In the short term, just doing it is easier and feels fantastic ! Hence the saying 'once an addict ...'."
],
"score": [
8,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5dcw0
|
Why do we have a sense of rhythm and how does it work?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gktjc9x",
"gktycsm"
],
"text": [
"[This article from University of Oslo]( URL_0 .) explains a bit. Science doesn't *really* know, but Dr. Anne Danielsen says \"rhythm\" exists everywhere! Walking, eating, talking, working all have rhythm and sync up with other humans. She says it helps us, \"break down events in time.\" So, in essence, rhythm is like our internal sense of timing. But it's also still being studied! So kudos for asking a question that the leading minds of the world are asking too!",
"I can’t remember where I heard it, probably Star Talk, but someone postulated that rhythm and music might’ve been used to rally hunters before a hunt or to psych up warriors before a battle."
],
"score": [
21,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.uio.no/ritmo/english/news-and-events/news/2018/a-sense-of-rhythm---why-do-we-have-it-and-what-doe.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CMany%20people%20probably%20don't,another%2C%E2%80%9D%20says%20Professor%20Danielsen"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5dszd
|
How does muscle memory work, and why is it only certain things?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvl95h",
"gktkktd"
],
"text": [
"Your neural pathways get coated in myelin. Data throughput can increase 200x. Read the book, \"The Talent Code\", it's fascinating.",
"The neuromuscular pathways have become so strong from years or practicing, that its easy to pick right up again. The more you practice something, the more natural it becomes no matter how complicated it is."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5e6i0
|
Why do companies/government always consider interest whenever they are lending you money but when an individual is "lending" to them no interest is ever accounted for?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
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"gktp2xz",
"gkukcyq"
],
"text": [
"It’s about risks. When you deposit your money with the bank there are several channels to invest the money. For example if you’re opening a savings account, you’re getting a small interest. But your money is guaranteed over a long period. They can take this money and invest it in the stock market - sometimes trading high risk shares. If that brings high profit, you don’t see that but neither the potential loses. That being said, you can always skip the regular savings account and opt for higher risk investments. You have many investing channels today. But you are right - as an individual, you do not have leverage over the bank and your negotiation options are insignificant. They set the rules. In most cases you can either take it or not. And it goes even further: banks are coordinated with one another and its not likely to get a much better deal elsewhere. There is no real competition between them. The feds sets the rules and these are (almost) equal for all banks. The government decided long ago that stability of the banks is on a higher priority than the individual customer.",
"> Example, bank gives you a loan it will always have some interest, however when you deposit money into a bank they are free to do whatever they want with your money, allegedly even get profit by investing but the user will rarely get its interest back, sometimes even they\\`ll loose money because account fees and manteinance is charged. Change banks. The entire point of having a savings account is that it does, in fact, accrue interest. If you have an account with a bank and you aren't gaining interest on it, you have been scammed.",
"In my country, the US. Banks do pay interest. In some states the landlord does have to pay interest on the security deposit. If the IRS delays your refund, they do pay interest. Like this year, many taxpayers got interest payments.",
"Not to defend the banks too much, but they are providing you with a service: Safe storage of your money, necessary legal guarantees and insurance, and infrastructure for you to access your money within a regulatory banking framework. Yes, they invest your money and yes, they make profit from doing so. That's the whole idea of a bank. They don't give you that profit back unless you have savings accounts with them (where they pay interest) because you're paying to use their services which they have to provide to a high regulatory standard. And most countries have types of \"banks\" that don't do that, they just hold your money and cover reasonable expenses. You can always use those. That said: I stopped using savings accounts this year when they all went down to 0.5% interest. Within 3 months I'd made 34% on my money. I withdrew a load that went insane and am still on 11% profit in 6 months. Savings accounts are a safe way to keep inflation at bay only, while the banks are capable of reaping 11-34% interest with that money just if they were advised by a complete amateur. It's not a question of morality - banks are immoral in many ways. But you're handing someone $1000 and expecting $1000+ back, while also holding them to account for the safety of your money and the immediate access to it no matter where you are in the world. And then begrudging them any money they DO make on that in the process. If you want to avoid this - try it yourself. And then look at how many warnings about \"You could lose all your investment\" you will see when you try."
],
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5,
3,
3
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5exmf
|
If red tide causes bad shellfish, aren't all the fish impacted as well? And how does the local wild life not get sick or die after digesting, while humans do?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gktrh0f",
"gktqjx3"
],
"text": [
"The fish are equally impacted. A red tide is usually followed by dead fish washing up onto beaches for the next few weeks. Shellfish is immune to the toxins but will not metabolize it either so they will concentrate it. This means that sealife which feast on shellfish such as otters and seabirds are some of the most impacted species to red tides. These events are quite devestating to the local wildlife and will cause deaths long after the red tide is over. But it does not kill all sealife at once. So even if it is tragic it is something that the local wildlife will recover from. But that does not mean that humans should also suffer the same fate.",
"Red tides can cause massive wildlife die offs. Fish and birds are more mobile than shellfish and may try to avoid the area, but a significant algae bloom will wipe out a lot of local wildlife. There’s often a fish die off during a red tide, and then a secondary hit to birds and beach scavengers that try to eat the contaminated fish."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5fa3b
|
Why is it that we can swallow large amounts of food all day, but can struggle to swallow one pill, even with food or water?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gktsyfh",
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"gkttbpv",
"gktu781"
],
"text": [
"When you swallow a pill, you're thinking of the pill, which often times is fairly large and rigid compared to the food that you've chewed, which is mushy, soft and in smaller portions when you swallow",
"Personally I'm chewing my food down to small pieces but theres no way in hell you're getting me to chew my medicine",
"Pills are usually dry, and your throat doesn't like dry stuff. That's why drinking water helps swallow pills. Have you ever eaten a dried out chicken breast? Oof that's unpleasant and hard to swallow.",
"You have a natural instict to withold any larger chunks of food in your mouth as you swallow. This is to make sure that all the food have been properly chewed so that your digestion works better. However if you need to swallow a pill this will also trigger this instict and your natural reaction will be to drink the water and eat the food but not swallow the pill before you have chewed it properly. It is therefore normal to have to train yourself in taking pills. Most pharmacies will be able to provide you with some smaller and easier to swallow training pills that you can use to overcome your natural reflection. You might also find such pills in the supermarket. You can also buy cheap vitamin pills to train with. Even some candy can be used to train with if it have the right size and texture. If you do plan on getting treatment that require you to take pills it is recomended that you practice a bit before hand so that you can get used to taking pills regularly before you start treatment with the real drugs."
],
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10,
3,
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3
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"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5fnx5
|
Do charities have to pay for advertisement? How can some charities afford to give a "free gift" to people who donate money?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gktvdb1",
"gktvipp"
],
"text": [
"Company X makes product Y. They run a batch of 1M and sell 700K. They give the other 300K to the charity, as a \"gift in kind\", perhaps customized with the charity's logo. They deduct the value of this donation from their taxes. The charity gives you one when you donate money, which you deduct from your taxes.",
"Charities have to pay for all the regular things, buts its pretty easy to ask for discounts as a donation. For instance a charity could go to a TV station and say \"we can pay 75% of your ad fees and if you waive the other 25% you can write it off on your taxes\". Works pretty well. As for the free gift, they're generally not that expensive. There are large industries for brand products like pens, towels, shirts, etc and when they are bought in bulk they are quite cheap. My old charity sold t-shirts and our production cost was only $2-$4 per shirt. Charities actually keep track of how effective their fundraising abilities are, they know when they send out those mailers just how likely people are to donate money back."
],
"score": [
4,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5ggvn
|
How does dish soap work? Why does it slowly stop cleaning away the grease in a dish?
|
I'll try to explain my guess as best as I can, because English isn't my first language. so, is it wrong to think that soap "expires"? for example, if you're washing a very oily dish, the soap can only do so much. I could also represent it like this: Soap and Oil are enemies, and Soap has 5 soldiers whereas Oil has 10. because Oil is stronger, soap "loses". so basically you wash the dish with soap but the soap runs out of "particles"? Is that why you need to reapply dish soap to your sponge?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"gkudwgk"
],
"text": [
"Soap has molecules that have both a fat-attracting and a water-attracting side. Therefore it makes oil and water miscible, enabling the water to wash away the oil. > has 5 soldiers whereas Oil has 10 Not a bad analogy. I'd say it's more like soap is taking prisoners (oil). You need at least one policeman to arrest someone, otherwise they will escape again. And that policeman is then not able to do anything else, so you need a minimal number of police to arrest all the oil.",
"Yes that is it. Have you ever seen the reverse? Your sink is overflowing with bubbles because you in too much soap for only a little bit of grease?",
"Saying that the soap runs out of \"particles\" is actually pretty much 100% correct. The way that dish soap works in general is that all soap molecules have 2 sides to them. One side is able to attach to oil/grease (non-polar side), and the other side is able to attach to water (polar side). So, when you use soap and water on an oily dish, the soap attaches to the oil on one side, and then water attaches to the other side and pulls the soap away, along with the oil that the soap is attached to. Because of the way that this works, each soap molecule can attach to only 1 oil molecule at a time, so you need as many soap molecules as oil molecules in order to pull away all the oil."
],
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6,
6
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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l5gino
|
What exactly caused the networth of the world's billionaires to increase substantially?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Wealthy people don’t keep money in checking accounts or Scrooge McDuck vaults of gold - they keep all their money in investment assets. A combination of very low interest rates and negligible returns on most other types of investments has pushed the stock market to double in the last five years. If you had a billion dollars in the market in 2015, it’s now worth two billion. If you had zero dollars in the market, you made nothing.",
"Owning stock and having the stock increase in value causes the net worth to increase dramatically. Keep in mind, it’s not real money necessarily until it’s sold. If the markets crashed, their net worth would also drop dramatically. If you look at Elon Musk, nearly all his investment is in Tesla. Tesla stock price doubled in the last few months alone. So not even counting income, his net worth skyrocketed.",
"Elon Musk owns \\~20% of Tesla. He owned \\~20% of Tesla last year when the company was worth \\~$58 billion dollars, and he owns \\~20% now when it's worth $842 billion dollars. So his net worth increased by $156 billion dollars, but he doesn't exactly have more of anything. He had 20% of Tesla and he still has 20% of Tesla. (This ignores SpaceX, the numbers are approximate, Tesla has diluted shares by issuing more, specifics are always more complicated, etc, etc, but this is the gist) Someone like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos are the easiest because their assets are really a portion of the companies they founded. What makes those companies become worth more is that investors (individuals, big finance cos, pension funds, etc) think the company will be worth more in the future so they buy shares. That's the easiest way to think about it. They own assets and those assets become worth more. edit: the $58B valuation was two years ago, not last year",
"Most \"rich people\" aren't rich in the sense that they have a pile of cash in the basement, or a lot of money on their bank account. They're usually \"rich\" by owning shares of their companies. If the stock price of that company goes up, they get richer by that percentage. It is also the reason why they can't just spend X% of their net worth on < cause Y > . It's not liquid assets, they would have to sell stock of likely their own company, which in turn negatively impacts the stock price (since the CEO selling his own stock doesn't paint a good picture).",
"A lot of Covid policies closed small businesses but left bigger ones open. Costco & Walmart sell groceries and were allowed to stay open, while small businesses that only sold other things closed, forcing a lot of people to buy online from large companies or in store from those big companies. Also wealthy & upper middle class people couldn't spend money on vacations and had some other expenses drop, which meant more money to save, which meant more money to the stock market, which benefited again, the rich who held the most stock.",
"Most billionaires' wealth is tied up in stock, look at the top two: Musk and Bezos' wealth directly tracks their respective companies stock prices. So, if you take their wealth at the lowest point of the post COVID stock crash in march, and compare it with the highest point of the stock market since then, you've got them \"getting richer\" without anything changing except the macro conditions. On top of that, I'm shocked, *Shocked!* that companies which focus on providing goods and services at low costs without person to person contact are doing well during a pandemic where quarantines are being enforced.",
"The vast majority of their wealth is in shares of stock in companies they founded or inherited. When shares of those companies go up, so does the net worth of those holding vast sums of shares in the companies. Companies like Amazon, Wal-Mart did well during the pandemic, as people shopped from home more, focused spending on necessities. Other cases were simply companies that continue to perform well despite the pandemic, like Tesla.",
"The premise of your question is based on several misleading articles making the rounds. The articles claiming billionaires have become very wealthy during COVID are misleading because they are selectively choosing 1) which billionaires to track, and 2) at what point to start measuring the increase. 1. Many of these articles are focusing on the [very richest people]( URL_1 ) or those who [became richer]( URL_0 ) during COVID. These articles are not providing a comprehensive census of all billionaires. In truth, we don't know how the average billionaire has fared. 2. These articles almost always start the counter mid-March: that is, *after the stock market already crashed*. Why is that problematic? Because markets fluctuate, and billionaires' wealth is mostly in financial assets, starting at a low point (which by definition is followed by an increase) paints a more dramatic picture. The reality is that these billionaires also *lost* a lot more wealth than anyone at the beginning of the pandemic; the stock market took an absolutely massive hit that reflected lost productivity and profit due to the pandemic. Much of the wealth increase for these billionaires is simply the **recovery** of their wealth since the beginning of the pandemic. As to why has their wealth recovered? Well, you can see that most of the people who have benefited most are in industries particularly suited to benefit during this time. But more importantly, they were all on very good trajectories to begin with. It's entirely possible they'd be *even more wealth*y had the pandemic not occurred.",
"If you owned 1 million shares of Tesla at the beginning of 2019, it would have been worth about $60 million. If you owned 1 million shares today, it would be worth $883 million. There are almost 950 million shares of Tesla. If you are Elon Musk, and most of your wealth is in Tesla stock (which he owns a ton of as its founder), your net worth just shot up by a factor of 12. It isn't related much to the pandemic. It is happenstance. Other people have gotten rich on Tesla's stock - and plenty of people have lost money on it too. Generally speaking, when someone becomes insanely wealthy, it's because they start a new company - largely with their own money - and the company grows to become successful. So Musk owns a lot of Tesla. Bezos owns a lot of Amazon. Bill Gates owns a ton of Microsoft. And the hyper rich elite all become that way through that incredible combination of skill, luck, and circumstance.",
"Anyone with a 401k and didn't lose their job had their net worth rise in 2020. My 401k is up 22% since this day last year, and wayyy up since it bottomed out in March.",
"There's a big overlap between billionaires and ownership of technology companies, which have done very well during the pandemic because people are at home on their computers and devices. Even outside of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc., big companies like Wal Mart have done well because they have technology infrastructure in place to ship to home. Beyond that, the majority of billionaire wealth is invested in the stock market and other investment vehicles that are tied to stock performance, and stocks have done will during the recession because of the tech factors and because the various COVID stimulus measures have propped up the stock market.",
"You know when politicians claim to help the little guy by injecting trillions of dollars into markets, stimulus checks, and controlling wages? Well, it borrows from the future earnings and production of people and industry, so the only way to ACTUALLY benefit from it is to invest in the markets which react positively to government being proactive in protecting against a collapse even if it means harming the future. And who has extra money to invest during a crisis? Those who have no debt, and have extra savings or capital to invest. This isn't necessarily just the \"rich\" but correlates with them as they have proper financial handling standards and understand that the face value of politicians saying they are helping the little guy is just bullshit to cover up massive transfer of wealth from the earnings/production in the future from all to those who were able to invest in the market now. Both parties do this, but one routinely does it while claiming they are against the rich and helping the poor, despite it clearly being otherwise of you take more than a few seconds to think and don't blindly applaud when \"your guy in office\" is the one saying it.",
"Small businesses got shut down during covid and big businesses were allowed to stay open. Covid essentially destroyed Main Street more rapidly than the large corps could have possibly hoped or dreamed.",
"I think an important thing that people have missed is that billionaires are often rich because they have invested in or developed innovative technology that has become more relevant because of the pandemic."
],
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"https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/12/01/american-billionaires-that-got-richer-during-covid/43205617/",
"https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55793575"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5gtol
|
Why do bank transfers take ~3-5 working days to complete?
|
Why does it take so long? With current technology I don't understand why it takes a whole 72 hour minimum? What happens in the background? It sounds reasonable for pre-computer era but nowadays? & #x200B; EDIT: In the US, guess today I learned in other countries this is instant haha.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkuf7lz",
"gku45xy",
"gkuejr2"
],
"text": [
"Transfers can be handled by two methods in the US, Automated Clearing House “ACH” or wire transfers. ACH operates in batches, 3 times a day. The sending bank gathers all the transactions and a final total of money (here’s 62 credits, 72 debits, for a total of $123,456.23) and sends it to the clearing house. The clearing house then batches things up for each bank as well and sends those transactions and final overall total to the receiving bank). Each of those batches takes time. Funds availability depends on the receiving bank’s policy. My bank gives me credit for the incoming money as soon as they get the notification from ACH. Other banks wait until the notification and the actual funds are transferred to give you credit. Wire transfers use FedWire. The money is taken out of your account immediately and send via the Federal Reserve banking network directly to the receiving bank. Because it’s not as efficient as batch processing ACH transactions, there’s a higher cost associated with the transaction. But it is nearly instantaneous.",
"They don’t; in most of the world they take seconds; in Canada it takes < 10 minutes for an account to account transfer to be processed and show up.",
"Historically it came from the cheque clearing time. This is Uk. The cheques would be manually input at the branch level of bank A, then all the cheques sent to Bank A's clearing centre for processing, then each individual entry is routed to the issuing banks clearing centres for input into their system, and finally on the relevant branch. Similar time for standing orders/direct debits etc -hope this paints the historical side a bit for you. Present day transfers are pretty instant if staying within the same country (ie UK here) but most companies (not banks) who say it will take 3-5, or up to 7 days to processes your refund or whatever are saying this because that is their own administration timelines, not the actual banks timelines."
],
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8,
6,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
] |
l5h24y
|
Why is there a file size limit on emails?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gku4uzn"
],
"text": [
"Short version: you don't know what kind of mail server any particular email address is supported by. When you send files over a shared platform like WhatsApp, both you and the recipient are on the same platform. It doesn't even really need to send the file itself, you just upload it and it sends a link to that same file to the recipient, so there's no concern that there might not be enough space, that the recipient can receive it, etc. That is \\*not\\* generally true of email servers. You have no idea if you're sending to an enterprise-level datacenter backed set of servers, like a Microsoft or Google, or some guy running a mailserver on the side in his home office. Virtually all mail servers (Google included), impose a quota on the mail store size but you have no idea what the quota is of the address you're sending to or the bandwidth that server has. If you send a 4GB 4k video to someone it's entirely possible you'll tie up their entire bandwidth and mail server for hours, preventing \\*everyone\\* on that server from getting or receiving email, and potentially locking their account if you blow through their quota. Think of it like the difference between sending a postcard and sending a shipping container, without knowing what the destination physically looks like. Everyone can receive a postcard; not everyone can receive a shipping container."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5hm1k
|
Why is there a stereotype that older people are Republicans, and younger people are Democrats?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gku7xdp"
],
"text": [
"[Because it's generally true]( URL_0 ). That's not to say there aren't young Republicans, or old Democrats, but there's measurable party lines shown in age."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://news.gallup.com/poll/172439/party-identification-varies-widely-across-age-spectrum.aspx"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5iffn
|
how do heavier gases that are way denser than air, get high enough to cause damage to the ozone layer?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkuemr2",
"gkvio4p"
],
"text": [
"Molecular weight is just one thing that determines how particles in the air are going to move. If you took some molecules and put them in a perfectly still, evenly heated chamber, then yes all the denser molecules would fall lower. But the earth atmosphere isn’t a perfect chamber like that. The sunlight heating up the ground caused the air directly above that ground to heat up and create up drafts from rising warm air. Uneven hearing of the earths surface causes regions of air to move and shift around the earth, causing winds. Cold air moving into an area quickly forces the warm are near the ground up high into the sky away from the ground. All this energy and action and motion can pretty easily stir up the atmosphere and move “denser” molecules up and around. Tl:dr the earths atmosphere is less and nice steady pot that allows different density things to layer out. And more a boiling churning pot constantly being stirred up and messed around.",
"All gas molecules, regardless of weight, move around in random directions at a speed correlated with their weight. Periodically an individual gas molecule will bounce off of another gas molecule and head in a new direction, but as a general rule the atmosphere will be a well mixed mixture of molecules that is not impacted (that is, resorted) by these collisions. Because of this lack of sorting mechanism in the collisions, you end up with all kinds of molecules throughout the atmosphere until you get up really high where collisions get rare and the really light molecules become more likely to be able to escape to outer space due to their higher speed. If you consider the *relative* concentration of a heavier molecule like oxygen it remains pretty constant until you get really high up."
],
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13,
5
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5ifwd
|
Why wouldn’t a base-n (n > 2) computer be faster than our binary computers
|
Mathematics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"gkuwpg8",
"gkuds02",
"gkurxjl",
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],
"text": [
"When you look at the circuit, you've got three voltage ranges: true, false and \"I dunno\". As you make a computer faster and faster, you shrink these ranges to reduce switching time. Eventually you hit a point where you shrink them so much that your error rate goes through the roof - you can no longer discern the difference between each state. Now, consider a ternary computer. We have *five* voltage ranges: true, \"I dunno #1\", false, \"I dunno #2\" and \"the other one\". It should be obvious that you can't shrink these voltage ranges any more than you could shrink the voltage ranges above without running into the error problem. So to get the same number of bits/second, you need to double the \"I dunno\" ranges and increase the actual result ranges by 50%... to achieve a 50% higher bit rate.",
"It might be, if it could be made with the same complexity as our binary computers. However, the complexity of modern binary computers it much, much higher than any other sort of computer that's every been built. Base-10 computers have been made, and Base-8 computers were experimented with in the days of vacuum tubes. But Base-2 is the engineering winner for enormously high complexity at tiny cost.",
"Because you're still dealing with electrons scooting down a semiconductor, and it doesn't matter what base you're using, transistors can only switch so fast. Ternary computers do crop up every once and a while, and while they do make some problems easy, they make other problems hard. This is inherent with the incompleteness of any number system. Since these computers are Turing Complete, you can simulate one in terms of the other.",
"It's not only about how fast it is, but also how easy it is to actually build something that is relatively uncomplicated, and thus being easily maintainable. At the time the representation of binary with on and off was easiest to implement."
],
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26,
18,
11,
6
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5iqcc
|
Why do shops in the USA not include the tax on the listed price of items?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkueihk",
"gkugp8k",
"gkuf7wq"
],
"text": [
"Because tax is different depending on where you are. And psychologically it's better to advertise a lower price since everyone knows there will be tax.",
"The other answers are correct, but there’s also instances where you can buy things without paying the same sales tax that everyone else does. In some states, churches are exempt from paying sales tax on some or all of the things they buy. If I own a small shop and one of the things I sell are bags of chips, I can file a sales tax exemption with a big store like Costco and buy large packages of bags of chips and not pay sales tax on them because the state assumes that you will be charging sales tax on the chips when you sell them. But it doesn’t mean you can legally buy all of your home groceries using that same method. Sales tax exempt sales have to be “purchased for resale” and if you’re caught abusing it, you’re guilty of tax fraud.",
"100% a psychological game. You get to advertise a lower price and the higher price WITH tax can't be blamed on the store or manufacturer. I just want to add that we do the same thing with fees in the US. You can ad a bullshit fee to a price which goes directly to the vendor 9r manufacturer and customers don't blink. Add that same amount to the price and the heart clutching is crazy."
],
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4,
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
] |
|
l5isuf
|
Why does lukewarm water feel extremely hot on our hands/feet/etc. after being out in the cold?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkuf8ct"
],
"text": [
"Humans cannot \"feel\" temperature directly, they can only sense heat flow. That's why we invented ideas like \"wind chill\". When your skin has been chilled, it detects more heat flow from the water, thus the water feels \"warmer\". It works both ways, when you put your hand on a stone countertop, it \"feels\" cooler than the air in the room, though both are at the exact same temperature, because granite has higher heat capacity than air."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5jh18
|
Why does the oxygen level in the air doesn't change dramatically, when most of the trees shed their leaves in the winter?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Trees do not produce the majority of the oxygen. 50-80% of all oxygen comes from the sea where it is mostly plankton that produces it. so 20-50% is land and there is lot of other plants than trees. But even if they did you would not see a dramatic change because the amount of oxygen that is used is not very high compared to the amount in the atmosphere. If no oxygen was produced and the amount of animal was like it is today (do not as ask me what they eat if there are no pants) the all oxygen in the atmosphere would be used up in 52 000 years. That also assumes that all oxygen can be used. Let's say winter is half a year so 1/100 000 of the oxygen would be used by animals & #x200B; That is not the whole story of oxygen usage because it is used when nonanimals like fungus, bacteria break down biological matter. So more oxygen is used than just by animals but those processes then get slower in the winter especially if it is below freezing. The result is that there is a minimal change in oxygen level in winter vs summer we talk about 0.02 to 0.03 percent. I'm not sure the number is the percentage of the atmosphere or percentage of the average oxygen level but regardless it is not a lot.",
"Land based deciduous trees do not provide the majority of our oxygen. Additionally, near the equator day length doesn’t change and the southern hemisphere has summer right now. It’s the same every year.",
"There is an extreme amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. We have enough oxygen in the atmosphere to last for maybe a thousand years of winter. So we do not notice much of a difference in the oxygen levels between summer and winter, even though there is a tiny bit. What we can measure this better is in the carbon dioxide levels. There is more landmass in the northern hemisphere then in the southern hemisphere. So there is more trees and vegetation in the northern hemisphere then the southern. This means that more carbon dioxide is converted into oxygen when it is summer in the north then when there is summer in the south. And since there is not that much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere this does make out a noticeable change in levels. The difference is about 5ppm. That used to be a greater then 2% change in carbon dioxide levels but is now fast approaching only 1% due to the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.",
"It does. There is a 'peak' around August and a 'valley' around March. The thing is there is A LOT of oxygen in the atmosphere, and plenty of things that make it besides trees, so the variation is like 0.01-0.02% of the total atmosphere. In other words it isn't something you notice outside of some pretty precise measurements.",
"The other things posted here are true, but the big reason is that winter doesn't last long enough for us to meaningfully deplete the oxygen in the air. If you look at carbon dioxide, of which there is much less, you do indeed see a [very noticeable seasonal cycle]( URL_0 ) where CO2 levels peak in the winter of the northern hemisphere (where most land is, and thus most land plants live). This seasonality happens worldwide, though, because the atmosphere effectively mixes gases from every part of the world to every other part over timescales of weeks to months.",
"I love all the science about O2 productions. I would’ve pointed out that when it’s winter in one place, it’s summer in another...",
"The total mass of Earth's atmosphere - one fifth of which is oxygen - is approximately 5×10^18 kg, or roughly a thousand times the Earth's total living biomass (most of which *isn't* trees). Also, a bunch of those trees are in the southern hemisphere, where it's currently summer. Long story short, there's a lot more air than there's trees.",
"The oxygen in the air isn't really there because of the current trees, or any other current organism making oxygen via photosynthesis. Even if all the trees, algae, and bacteria that perform photosynthesis stopped suddenly, it would take a while to deplete the levels noticably. There's a massive surplus of oxygen in the atmosphere. The larger northern hemisphere having a portion of its deciduous plants stop for a portion of a year winter is nothing. How did the oxygen surplus get there? The oxygen is there from a couple billions years of photosynthesis, and then the organic matter not decaying or being burned. See fossil fuels, and what we are burning is just a tiny fraction of the organic molecules trapped that never turned back. Lot of carbon trapped in the ground, that never reunited back with the oxygen in the air.",
"Too many convoluted answers in here HEMISPHERES MOTHERFUCKER it’s not winter for the whole planet",
"Okay there are some super in depth answers to this and as others have stated we don't really NEED trees as much as one would think...but this is ELI5 so here is a fairly reasonable thing to think about even if we did. Winter for you is Summer for the opposite hemisphere. So as your trees fall, others are growing back. Kind of like the balloon effect. squeeze one side (Winter) and it gets smaller but the other side (Summer) gets bigger. Then flip it and it works the other way around.",
"As others say, there are assumptions built into your question that are false - the oxygen level does change (albeit not drastically), and 'most' trees don't shed their leaves in the winter. The two hemispheres have opposite seasons so for every\\* (not 1:1 but close enough for comparison) tree that loses its leaves, another in the opposite side takes its place. In addition, most of the oxygen in the world comes from the oceanic plankton - after all, it makes up most of the surface of the planet.",
"Hey! The atmospheric oxygen level actually does fluctuate by season - just not enough for you to really notice. A chart of atmospheric oxygen overtime is kind of sawtoothed because this. Edit: Link URL_0",
"because, they absorb co2. oxygen levels are stable whereas co2 levels climb dramatically in the winter.",
"To add to what others are saying about cyanobacteria and similar being the primary source of oxygen, you also have to consider that there is a HUGE amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. Even if oxygen production were ceased suddenly, it would take ages to get through it all. This article argues that, at current world population, it would take a full 4000 years to consume it all: URL_0"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve#/media/File:Mauna_Loa_CO2_monthly_mean_concentration.svg"
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[],
[],
[],
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|
[
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[
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|
l5jpwt
|
/What’s the difference between Christianity and Catholicism
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Catholicism is to Christianity like Brooklyn is to New York City. All Catholics are Christian, but not all Christians are Catholic. Christianity is any religion that recognizes the New Testament as a holy book. Catholicism is only one of those.",
"Originally, Christianity and Catholicism were the same thing, but back in the 1500s many Christians rejected the teachings of the mainstream church and started what became known as the Protestant Reformation, where new interpretations of Christianity that were separate from Catholicism were developed. This new group were called Protestants. So, Christianity is broken into either believing in Catholic Doctrine (following the pope, and some other doctrinal differences), or some form of Protestant Doctrine (not under the pope and then any number of differences between the “denominations” (another word for sect, basically). So, Christianity includes Protestants (Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, etc churches), Catholicism, as well as Orthodox churches which are more common in Eastern Europe as a result of the Byzantine empire. Doctrine wise, it gets complicated, but the “Reformation” basically started with a guy named Martin Luther posting a list of issues (the 95 Theses) he had with the Catholic Church on a door of a chapel, and if you’re interested in specific issues that started that change, that would be a good place to look.",
"Catholicism is a form of Christianity, and it's based in one very specific church with a very specific hierarchy (different ranks of people performing different duties, with the Pope at the top who is the head of the church and the one who is responsible for its organization and giving guidance, and then bishops and priests and other different members who help maintain order and serve at their own level). Other Christian churches sometimes have similar structures (such as Russian, Ukrainian and other Orthodox Churches that have a singular \"head\" at the top and more structure). And many Christian churches, especially in the US, tend to be more independent - they might have an association, but they don't fall under a strict organizational structure."
],
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4,
3
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
l5kon8
|
Why does having a good cry help one feel better?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkuv89p"
],
"text": [
"Crying releases \"Feel good hormones\" that relieve stress and put you in a better mood. The evolutionary explanation for this is that we're social and empathetic creatures. Seeing a human cry makes it more likely we'll help them, so the humans that cried were more likely to survive (Likely related to babies crying as well.)"
],
"score": [
6
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
l5kpst
|
Why do we swallow pills instead of chewing them? What happens when you chew them?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"gkuro6o",
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"gkus57s"
],
"text": [
"Don't do it unless they're designed for that. Many pills have a coating on them to buffer them from irritating the stomach too much. Other pills are designed to be released in the small intestine, and the coating keeps them from being released in the stomach. Others are time-release, and you'll get too much of a dose at once if you chew them.",
"Most tablets/capsules don't contain any sweeteners/flavors and would be very bitter if you tasted them. Also, some medications are taken in a delayed/modified release form that doesn't rapidly release the entire dose into the stomach when swallowed. Chewing/crushing these tablets may result in a larger than appropriate dose being absorbed at once, which may not be desirable.",
"Lots of science regarding dosages (amount) goes into pills to make sure we get the right amount of medication at the right speed and time. Others have commented about irritated stomach and release of medication at the small intestine, and from what I know that is all true and accurate. There is also speed of absorption, or how fast the drug goes from the relatively protected stomach to the blood. This in general is determined by surface area of the medication and reaction speed. Since everything in the pill (in general) will be absorbed at a similar rate, we can ignore the reaction speed part of the equation as a constant. Which leaves us with surface area. Pills start smooth, which means you have a fairly constant surface area, or exterior of the medication. This degrades at a predictable rate, getting medication into your system at a rate which your system can process. If you instead chew a pill that is not intended to be chewed, you have a lot more pieces of medication, which means more surface area and a faster rate of absorption into the bloodstream. This spikes the medication level at first, and the body clears this medication out sooner. Among other things, this can lead to hazardous levels of medication in the body, or a tendency to use more than one should in a long period. In short and in general - chewing medication causes a faster and stronger initial effect, while also going away sooner than expected. Can be toxic, depending on medication. - Biomed and college grad. If a doctor answers any of your question, rely on that info over this.",
"Chewing non-chewable pills are really gross. They have a terrible taste. Ugh. I can't imagine chewing all my pills. Some are capsules, so cannot be chewed. I guess you could open the capsule and pour the contents into your mouth, but that also would have a terrible taste. Some are designed for extended release. This is probably the most important reason. You can get away with chewing a regular aspirin, as they get dissolved pretty quickly in your stomach. But many meds are designed specifically to dissolve slowly, so the meds get released over time. For example, there is extended release morphine tablets that have very high amounts of morphine in them. If you were to chew one of those, you'd likely end up in a morphine overdose and if not given medical attention quickly, you would die."
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21,
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
] |
|
l5kvgs
|
What's so bad about the jungle cruise at disneyland?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkuswwk"
],
"text": [
"It features characters and animatronics that are based on outdated views of native or indigenous people. They are usually depicted as primitive attackers or cannibals, and not really shown so much to just be people. It's just not in line with how a politically correct society views the idea of tribal cultures and religious beliefs and lifestyles."
],
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|
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] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5l22d
|
why do websites load more and more cookies to the browser with each passing year?
|
I still vaguely remember a time when I could surf the web without worrying to have my browser loaded with cookies. Then cookies started appearing. I'm so old I still remember having sites that proudly announced they cleared the cookies as you logged off. Nowadays, it is as if without cookies the entire internet will break.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkuu3h5",
"gkv3dig",
"gkuuaz1",
"gkuuajx"
],
"text": [
"Companies figured out that user info is valuable. Usage behavior patterns are valuable both internally and externally and can be sold for revenue.",
"I can answer a slightly different but perhaps just as useful question: \"What do browsers do behind the scenes with cookies and other technologies, and why do they do this?\" Cookies are sent up to a website with each web request (well, essentially). This allows a server to say whether this user is secretly the same as that user. Aside from social media tracking (which most people have heard about) there are many reasons for websites to do this: * Tracking how a website is used: if there's a bug on the website only affecting some users, it can help the developers and maintainers to know how those users have been browsing their site. Does the bug only occur after browsing this particular order of pages? (Related: which parts of the site are people actually using, and do companies want to pay developers to maintain parts of a site that aren't actually popular?) * Anonymous browsing (ironically): a common example is when you can build a shopping cart on an online store without having to log in until you pay. Without that cookie, the server cannot know which anonymous cart belongs to whom. * Easy to access settings: if you want to change the theme on a website, it's easier for the server to let the website handle that sort of trivial setting. So the cookie stores a name of the theme you're using (maybe \"dark mode\" or something.) As for why (and why it is increasing), it's a combination of even more reasons: * Users expect websites to do more. Websites back in the nineties weren't very dynamic and didn't have as much functionality. Now we expect our inboxes to load emails live, to be able to chat with customer support in the browser, to view a map on one website that's secretly embedded from another website, etc. * Users are addicted to social media: cookies, and other background processes that you don't see, are essential for those simple buttons that let you share content with facebook, instagram, etc. * Advertisers are willing to pay for information about what you do: Websites can now show ads for products if you visited other websites that mentioned those products, for example. Does that answer your question? I guess it's not very ELI5. Cookies are not poisonous, and in fact most are relatively benign, but some are certainly used to manipulate you into voting a certain way, buying certain products, or agreeing with certain ideals. Source: I build web-based dashboards for a living, and have built social websites previously.",
"In the olden times webpages didn't have to warn you about cookies, they could just dump them on your ass without a word. Then the EU said that you need to be notified of it, so sites started telling you.",
"It's not that cookie use is increasing; it's because several countries (notably, the EU) have passed laws requiring websites to disclose to you that they are using cookies. Before, they just did it silently and you had no idea. EDIT sources for the downvoters: URL_1 URL_2 URL_0"
],
"score": [
10,
10,
4,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://gdpr.eu/cookies/",
"https://www.privacypolicies.com/blog/eu-cookie-law/",
"https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5l3gq
|
Why aren't our bodies constantly in a state of inflammation even though we are constantly being invaded by microbes?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkuuk0e",
"gkv4mfw"
],
"text": [
"We only get inflammation when a lot of microbes get into a place they shouldn't be. That doesn't happen constantly, that's unusual. Most outside microbes get on our skin and can't get through. Most that get in our respiratory system get stuck in mucus and pushed out, then swallowed. Most that get in our ears get stuck in wax and pushed out. Most that get in our eyes get stuck in tears and flushed or blinked out. Most that get in our mouth get swallowed and die in our stomach. A ton live in our digestive system, but they're supposed to be there. They can't get out unless something goes wrong with our intestinal lining. It's only if one of them breaches the skin/lining/whatever and gets into an area they're not supposed to be, and isn't immediately killed by our immune system but starts to multiply and release toxins that we get a macro reaction and get inflamed.",
"We are in fact in a constant state of inflammation... somewhere. Inflammation is a very generic response from the immune system and is applied in case of almost any damage. Microbes aren't really invading, they're just living their lives and most of the ones that find a home in the human body are mostly harmless. If they misbehave for some reason and manage to cause damage however, they may be responsible for inflammation. Most of the time, the cause for inflammation is mechanical. Scratch your arm too hard - minor inflammation, eat too much food and sprain some intestinal tissue - inflammation, walk around for an hour - inflammation. We have it going on all over our bodies, all the time as our bodies are being constantly torn down and rebuilt. The vast majority of it, we don't even notice, its either too small or too deep in the body."
],
"score": [
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5ldes
|
What happens when you pair and/or reconnect bluetooth devices and why does it never work reliably?
|
What's the internal process like and how can I ensure it to work as expected. I work in IT, but in general, it's arcane witchcraft to me..
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvh9mc",
"gkuxkfv"
],
"text": [
"There’s no way to ELI5. This is just way too complicated. Google “frequency hopping spread spectrum”. Bluetooth basically acts like a radio where both the receiver and transmitter are randomly changing channels constantly, in sync with each other by clocks. It’s really a miracle it works at all.",
"It's reliable for the devices I have. However, it's true that it's often unreliable because the BT spec is complicated, and you have inexperienced BT firmware developers in third-world countries that barely know what they are doing cranking out code on the cheap without any quality control."
],
"score": [
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5ll92
|
Why do people make “cash offers” and expect a better deal from a seller?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkux9qj"
],
"text": [
"there's nothing preventing a cash offer from closing and cash buyers are more likely to have money to cover shortfalls and/or close in 7 days or less. unlike a financed offer which requires the lender to appraise, underwrite, etc, which could cause delays or cause the deal to fall apart. in essence, the cash buyer is offering the seller a faster sale and less likely to fall apart. it's like, pick one. 1. 100% chance to get 90k in a week 2. 90% chance to get 100k in a month 3. 80% chance to get 110k in a month 4. etc etc"
],
"score": [
22
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5ly3c
|
Spam advertising bots. Why is it so hard to prevent them? Especially ones stealing content from other users.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkuzh0z"
],
"text": [
"I know Reddit as a whole, and many subs, put in a lot of work to prevent spam and bots from ruining the experience. I searched for an answer before writing this post and almost every result was about getting banned by mistake by over sensitive filters, so I can see there are filters out there trying to catch spam accounts. I don’t have a background in computers or programming so this might be a stupid question, but why is it so hard for Reddit to catch profiles like this who steal other user’s nsfw content and spam it out as an ad for a porn site? Especially with reverse image search software and when they are making whole subreddits just for cross posting. Example: URL_0 URL_1"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.reddit.com/u/xjzkctsnbgthevmqtg/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/PornBabesImgs/"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5mu2o
|
Why do share owners lend their shares to short sellers?
|
This is in relation to the gamestop short squeeze & short selling in general. Why do the original share owners offer up their shares to short sellers. Aren't they getting the same amount in 3 months as if he just sold them himself three months down the line? Is there some sort of benefit for the original share owner I don't understand? Bonus question: How / where do share owners list their shares for short sellers. Maybe do a ELI4 instead of ELI5. Thanks!
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkv5wx8",
"gkv5weg",
"gkvahpn",
"gkva8t1"
],
"text": [
"When a share owner is lending a share out like this, they are being paid a fee for it. Not a very big fee but... That is still more than getting nothing during that same period from the share just sitting in your account.",
"If you buy a stock, its almost always for 1 reason: That you think the price will increase. A short seller thinks the price will decrease. If you think the price is going up, what do you care about what anyone else is doing? As long as the price increase, which is why you own the stock in the first place, you're all good.",
"They don't exactly... it works much the same as when you put money into the bank, you don't explicitly allow people to borrow your money. The shares are borrowed from owners in the agregate/abstract, and then get replaced with new shares when the short is covered.",
"u/Baktru u/Ansuz07 u/Lithuim u/WeDriftEternal Thanks for the answers guys. You've explained it perfectly. 👍"
],
"score": [
14,
7,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5n8lz
|
How is Wish still an active website and vendor when they sell so much fraudulent products and scam people put of money?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvd7gq",
"gkv8ctf",
"gkvhp4x",
"gkvjxda"
],
"text": [
"One it's cheap. Two China does not care. People like cheap things. A friend bought a taser on Wish and all it did was tase the user.",
"You get what you paid for, no one expects quality products for a fraction of the price. That is their whole thing, it's like an online dollar store.",
"I have never been scammed on Wish. Indeed somethings are resold on amazon with a steep markup. I would never get anything like a laptop off it though",
"Tbh I've been happy with almost every purchase I've made on Wish. I've stopped using it and uninstalled it, but that's not because of problems with the service so much as it was I was constantly tempting myself with stupid crap I don't need and I'm an idiot."
],
"score": [
57,
51,
10,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5ndb2
|
Hammerhead Sharks
|
ELI5: What advantage does the facial structure of a hammerhead shark provide the shark.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvafba",
"gkvjp13"
],
"text": [
"The hammerhead shark has a sense we don't. The ability to detect electrical current. He can use sensors across his head to detect the electrical heartbeat, or the current from tiny muscle movements of his favorite prey, even if they're buried in the sand. Which is convenient, as his favorite prey (rays) like to bury themselves.",
"In a word (or 3), field of vision. Their eyes being located at the ends of the \"hammer\" means that they have a much wider field of vision than the average shark, almost like a panorama. They can see on either side at once, but the real kicker is that they have binocular vision in front AND behind them. & #x200B; Also, their wide head/\"nose\" allows for more electroreceptors that allow them to sense prey hiding in the sea floor. All in all, they're more perceptive in general."
],
"score": [
20,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5nly3
|
If a drum roll does not change pitch with speed, why do road rumble strips change pitch?
|
Seen here is a road with "musical" rumble strips: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ). The pitch produced by the rumble strips increases with closer grooves. In other words, with increasing frequency of tire-hitting-groove sounds, the overall pitch increases. I must be missing something, because I can't figure out why for drum rolls, with increasing frequency of drumstick-hitting-drum sounds, the overall pitch does not increase. Edit: I was thinking that the grooves themselves might have different properties which causes different pitches to be produced, but in this video ([ URL_1 ]( URL_1 )) it shows different sections of grooves up close and it seems that the only difference between them is the distance between the grooves.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvenmb"
],
"text": [
"A fast drummer might hit 300 beats per minute. That's five beats per second, and a whopping 5 Hz. You can't even hear 5 Hz, you can only go as long as 20 Hz. If you drummed at 500 Hz by some miracle, that is hit the drum 500 times in a second, you would get a high-ish pitch beating to it beyond the drum sound at around that note. The road strips are repeating at audible frequencies, that is greater than 20 Hz. Your second video has the math on how they can use spacing and an assumed car speed to hit the right notes. Keep in mind that's not the only sound there. There is many other vibrations at play when you drive over those, and one of them is the messy sound of a car hitting a single bump. The base drum sound if you will. A bang sound is a white noise, it has nearly all the frequencies in it in equal amounts. A drum, or a car hitting a bump, is a white-ish noise. White bang nosies have no tone, or note. They are just a short pulse that hits all the frequencies temporarily. If you repeat a bang or a pulse over and over, it still is a white noise at all the frequencies, but begins to pick up more sound levels at the frequency you are repeating it at, and all its harmonics (multiples). Bang at 500 Hz, and you'll get a white noise in addition to noise at 500 Hz, 1000 Hz, etc. You can google \"Dirac Comb Fourier transform\" or \"pulse train Fourier transform\" if you want to see it visualized and mathematically demonstrated, but without an introductory calculus background that won't help much. Your intuition about this is correct, but you're just underestimating how slow a human hits a drum."
],
"score": [
10
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5nvdd
|
Why do so many people have a hard time swallowing pills, but not food?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvf47a",
"gkvhq5u"
],
"text": [
"Most of the time it's mind over matter, but it can also be because if the pill is light enough it can float on the water and when you swallow the water goes down but the pill stays.",
"For me, it’s hard to swallow tablets (much harder than capsules) because they tend to stick. Just something about coming into contact with a moist, rough surface makes it act like Velcro in my mouth. Also some are tougher to swallow than others."
],
"score": [
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5o2c6
|
Can someone explain what the grey market is? In simple terms please haha
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvetjp",
"gkvfgzu"
],
"text": [
"White market is the market as we know it.(example: mall, everything is new, all from official store). Black market is the illegal market.(example: underground market). Gray market. is usually the second hand market, or who import but not an official seller. (most seller here are individuals and small businesses). though this is the case from where i live, i cannot guarantee that it would be the same in yours. edit: i felt like i should add the “white” and “black” market just to make a contrast (no pun intended) between it.",
"The market is trade of goods that's authorized or conducted by the manufacturer/distributors of a product. Buying stuff from Target/Walmart/RealStore or an manufacturer's website basically The black market is illegal trade in goods, like buying cuban cigars in the US during the embargo or drug deals or unrecorded weapons deals The gray market is unauthorized trade in goods, but not illegal trade. Ebay was created as a gray marketplace, none of the sales on there were explicitly authorized by the manufacturer of the goods but they also weren't illegal. Gray markets come up in industry settings sometimes when you need to get parts from \"brokers\" who, like GPU scalpers today, buy up lots of parts and hope to resell them at a higher price when someone really needs it. You're not guaranteed any quality from the gray market, you get what you get."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5o2cm
|
The History of Overdraft Fees
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvhlp7"
],
"text": [
"I used to work at a credit union software company and can say that overdraft fees are incredibly lucrative (for the credit union). A previous post said the bank lent the money to cover the overdraft, which is true. However, on a $10 overdraft, a bank might charge $25 if your account goes negative after the transaction. If your paycheck is deposited the next day, imagine the APR on that 'loan'. Worse, you can set up overdraft protection, where if there is an overdraft, the funds come from your savings account to cover the overdraft and keep your checking account balance positive. In this case there is no 'loan', but there can still be a fee. Of course this is all automated, and I know credit unions that make $30,000 a day just by running a program."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5o59e
|
Why is it when I'm playing a game with a controller, that my fingers out of all things get cold and stiff?
|
Since they are being used a lot I would assume that there would be an increased flow of blood, making them warm right?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvnrqr",
"gkvogkv"
],
"text": [
"You are likely holding the controller too tightly. & #x200B; This is probably because you associate the controller with positive feedback in the game, and since the game play gives you \"pleasure\" you hold onto it thinking that the tighter you hold the controller the better you will do, reinforcing the positive feedback. & #x200B; This is even more true these days with analog controllers. Back when controllers came out they were digital, the switch associated with the button you pressed was either on or off and you learned that no matter how hard or soft you pressed the button the same result happened. This is why you mean see pictures of people holding Nintendo controllers loosely vs people holding the Xbox controllers of today much more tightly. & #x200B; Also I think a lot of it has to do with an air of competition around game play today versus family fun and entertainment 40 years ago.",
"If you press to hard it blocks blood flow to the fingertips. You can press your finger on something and see how it loses color, that’s because you block the blood. If you press on the controller to hard for to long your fingertips won’t get blood and they’ll go cold and stiff."
],
"score": [
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5obf7
|
Why does the wifi signal strength frequently change and sometimes disconnects, when the router and the laptop are both always placed in the exact same locations ?
|
The indicator is usually a dot and three curved bars that determine the wifi signal strength on windows laptops
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvhbdu",
"gkvnotf",
"gkvg64y"
],
"text": [
"It's just a radio signal. Anything radio on the same frequency (2.4GHz or 5GHz) will interfere with it. Echoes of its own signal, other devices in your own house or nearby houses, people in cars driving past with their phones on, wireless devices like Bluetooth, doorbells, video senders. Hell, even microwaves. It's just a digital radio modem, in effect. Any radio interference on those channels will affect the strength and will vary quite considerably over time. Even your own devices are dialling up/down their speed as per their current requirements/battery status all the time which will affect the signal. You're sharing the airwaves with anything nearby that uses those same frequencies, basically.",
"WiFi these days operates at a fantastically high data rate, so the signal is pretty delicate. I worked on the earliest WiFi adapters, and given all the trouble we had in 1998 I'm astonished at how fast and how far WiFi now goes, and with very little set up. And so cheap! But it's easy for nearby electronics and the RF environment to interfere with a packet here or there. The software automatically re-sends these packets once the receiver figures out something is missing and lets the sender know, but that takes a few milliseconds, which is a hundred years in computer terms. Add to these that WiFi is a frequency hopping technology. Invented by actress Heddy Lamar (no joke), frequency hopping means that each WiFi channel is actually a set of frequencies the radios can use, and the hardware automatically hops between them to whichever is working best at the moment. So it's a very dynamic system of moving data.",
"The signal strength depends on the environment. Obstacles can degrade the signal. Other objects can also stand in such a way that they reflect the signal in a favorable direction. The signal strength can also simply depend on the weather or the air. Cold humid air absorbs more of the radiation you receive as WLAN than dry warm air."
],
"score": [
13,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5ofib
|
How is the snow always so even
|
ELI5: How does the snow always fall so evenly? Middle of winter here in the Midwest, we just got another 3 inches of pure powder last night. Prior to that, there was about 5 inches on the ground for a week. During that week, my neighbor never went outside, his snow was untouched. During the same week my fur child and I played in the backyard everyday, and towards the end it was very compact and rather ice like. Woke up this morning and we both had the same amount height of snow... I would have thought his side would still be higher than mine... ELI5 please??
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvrtis"
],
"text": [
"Snow will be blown around by the wind filling in any dips and divots in the ground a bit like if you pile the icing on the top of a cake in lumps and bumps and then smooth it all over with a spatula."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5oov7
|
How does darkweb work? Why do onions work on tor but not on other browsers? Does it mean tor know of all the .onions that exist?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvkmrj"
],
"text": [
"Darkweb contains a lot more then just the onion services. Tor is an anonymization service composed of lots of different voulanteerely run nodes around the world. These nodes works as routers and when you send encrypted traffic to them they will decrypt it and pass it on. Most clients will encrypt the traffic three times with the keys of three different nodes so that the traffic will be sent around the network through a path controlled by them before entering the global Internet. In order to connect the source and destination an attacker have to have compromised at least two of the three nodes. The onion services works using the same network. But instead of sending traffic out on the Internet they have their own servers to answer the requests. As the encryption key is used as the address for the service this often becomes quite long and unreadable. But even though the traffic is sent through the nodes in the onion network they do not know which nodes are services and which are just passing the traffic along to other nodes and they can not see any traffic because it is encrypted."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5ozcf
|
How do newborn animals, such as sea turtles, know what they need to do to survive straight after birth?
|
Sea turtles hatch in a hole in the sand and instantly know that they need to run to the sea to survive - something no one has taught them - instead of running in any other direction. Mammals know to suckle, spiders know to latch on to their mothers back, etc. etc. What's the ELI5 version of this.. genetic survival instinct(?). How do they know without being taught?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvmkis",
"gkvn0mb",
"gkvuvmv"
],
"text": [
"Evolution trial and error. The correct decisions get repeated in your DNA. Bad decisions, the organism dies",
"There are a lot of things that go into \"survival\" but you are on the right path in that some aspects are learned and others are biology (which would include genetic/dna) based. & #x200B; To answer your question like you were five. & #x200B; You developed sensors, over time they became tuned to what you like best (like best in this case means increases your chance of survivability). & #x200B; On the sea turtle example, they detect a breathable atmosphere like we do. As they head to water, mist gets in their airways and their bodies sensors say, the concentration of oxygen in that substance isn't enough to breathe it. So they respond by either staying on land in atmosphere they need or learning to hold their breath. Eventually things like hunger and fear may take over so even if they chose to stay on land, they don't find food so dying of hunger or holding your breath then becomes a decision. You risk holding your breath to search for food. & #x200B; Even finding food works like this, the turtle uses some of the same sensory inputs to detect of food is around. & #x200B; A lot of it boils down to trial and error. Multiply that over the width of a species and a lot of generations and you end up with a new born who is \"tuned\" in to what it needs to survive. & #x200B; Now then you ask, what about human babies... they seem very incapable at birth. Well, this is true and not true. Human babies are very resilient, but we've also become so succsessful as a species that we can devote extra care to our offspring which lowers the amount of \"tuning\" a baby has to have to survive. & #x200B; If you are struggling just to live long enough to mate and produce offspring, spending time with those offspring are a risk, so nature favors the offspring of breeders who are more capable on their own. Again multiple that over a population and generations and you get sea turtles who know what to do after being born.",
"In one word: Genetics. For the vast majority of evolutionary history, \"knowledge\" is passed from parent to child in the form of DNA (plus some amount of chemical state, constituting a form of \"working memory\"). Even simple bacteria, which undoubtedly have nothing representing a brain or central nervous system, contain a form of \"intelligence\" - they are survival machines programmed by their genes to behave in certain ways, e.g. \"when you sense an excess in salt concentration, turn away from it\". When we say that something is following its *instincts*, we mean that \"they are acting according to pre-determined genetic programming\". The reason humans, unlike most animals, need so much \"education\" after birth is because humans are at the far extreme of an evolutionary trade-off between *specific* intelligence and *general* intelligence. As modern society proves, humans aren't hard-wired to be hunter-gatherers - instead, they are hard-wired to be capable of *learning* any task. The evolutionary advantage is that this allows us to evolve at rates far, far faster than the natural selection of genes alone can accomplish, which is why we've gone from simple agriculture to a globalized technological utopia with computers and spaceflight within fewer than 100 generations. The evolutionary downside is that this requires our parents sacrifice a great amount of time and energy carefully imparting their knowledge onto us by teaching us about the world. Animals that abandon their young are at the other end of this evolutionary trade-off. Their downside is that they're generally bad at adapting to sudden and radical changes in their circumstances - specifically, change that happens faster than their rate of reproduction."
],
"score": [
17,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5p8sp
|
How come oversleeping makes people more sleepy instead of more "energetic".
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvmzal"
],
"text": [
"Feeling sleepy and not being well rested are two different things i find. When we sleep, there are 5 stages. Starting with stage 1 of non-REM with the fifth being the REM stage, or \"deep sleep\". When a person wakes up during REM, they feel very sleepy and disconnected from reality. This can happen if an alarm wakes you up during REM, or another external source. Also if a person overslept they are more likely to be in those deeper stages of sleep when they wake up. But usually the sleepiness goes away, and you feel energetic. You can also get very little sleep and wake up in the first or second stage of sleep and not feel sleepy at all, thinking you rested enough. However, whether you realize it or not, you won't have peak energy as you would if you slept enough."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5pmub
|
How are memories stored in our Brain and how does our Brain know which memories are important enough to be stored?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvqyfv"
],
"text": [
"Our brain memory functions like a computer. We have a sensor buffer, working memory, and long term memory. Everything that comes into your senses (eyes, ears, etc) goes into a sensor buffer. Your brain filters it for what matters (as it defines it). What matters is things that you are focused on, that move or change. Your eyes see your nose constantly but your brain just filters that out so you are not aware of it. Your brain then produces a \"frame\" of the world putting together all of your thoughts and senses. It is not an actual instant of time, but what your brain puts together as a meaningful instant. Your conscious mind reacts to that frame. It is in short term memory and you remember it for a few minutes before it gets erased. Your brain stores things in long term memory based on how important it is to you - which is determined based on how strongly you emotionally react to it. Things which you love or hate are considered important and stored. Things which bore you are forgotten (unless they bore you so much you hate them). So if you are bored while studying, you learn everything in short term memory but your brain does not put it in long term memory. It thinks you feel the information is unimportant. That is why you remember more of your teenage years when you are emotional and things are new and exciting than you do of later years when things are settled and routine."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5ps72
|
Since a full rotation of the earth is approximately 23h 56m long, but the clock we use have 24 hours in a day, where does the extra 4 minutes go?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvp9ih",
"gkvqabo"
],
"text": [
"Imagine if the earth didn't rotate, but still went around the sun. In a single year, we from earth would still see the sun going around the earth from our perspective, this is still kind of an \"extra day.\" The 4 minutes comes from this. After a single day, the sun is 1/365th of a full rotation away relative to the earth, a slightly different angle, starting our day later than a single rotation of the earth. We expect this slightly different angle to produce a single day if we add up the angle for all the days in a year. 1440 minutes in a day divided by 365 days 1440/365 = 3.945",
"It rotates once every 24h relative to the sun; the earth traveling around the sun causes a slow shift in the relative angles which means it takes slightly longer for the same point to come around to face the sun again. The 23h 56m for each rotation is what you would see if you were observing just the earth's position in space and not caring about the sun as a point of reference."
],
"score": [
8,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5q0dq
|
Why does the night's sky get this weird, pink/yellow shade after it's been snowing for a while?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvruf8",
"gkvr9zu"
],
"text": [
"It's a form of \"light pollution\". The fresh snow on the ground is a very clean white and so it reflects a lot of light from streetlamps, porch lights, etc. back upward into the sky. If the city were to suffer a power outage, the pink/yellow shade would be reduced or go away.",
"Answer: I expect it's because all the snow that has settled on the ground is reflecting the street lights back up into the sky."
],
"score": [
15,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5rf47
|
United States lottery
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkvzdsb"
],
"text": [
"You get to choose either a lump sum or several payments usually. The tax total is higher on a lump sum because of the percentages but there is a benefit to getting it all at once, (say if you died soon after). Also the taxes are taken out prior to receiving the money or you can “claim it” as income and pay it when you file yearly taxes."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5rlfw
|
Stocks. Just... all of it.
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkwqu0a"
],
"text": [
"Imagine you own a small store. Your business is doing okay, but you know if you move to a bigger location you'll make more money. But moving to a bigger place takes a lot of money, so you decide to take your business and split it up into pieces, then sell the pieces to your friends. And use the proceeds to expand. A while later, business is good, and expanding did help you make more money, and now that you are making more, your business is Worth more. Meaning all those shares are also worth more. Take that idea, multiply the numbers by a few million or billion, and create a market around buying pieces of a company and you get the stock market."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5rxke
|
How can you wash germs and dirt off your hands but not some smells?
|
Your hands stay stinky even when they're clean. Such as a fish smell lingers on the skin hours after fishing and labourously washing hands. Why is that?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkwz4e8",
"gkwf7ak",
"gkx19ai"
],
"text": [
"Germs are thousands of times bigger than smells. For a real ELI5: If you spill marbles on the floor, you can \"wipe\" them into a pile. If you spill flour, there's almost always a trace left behind unless you work very hard. Because the flour particles are so much smaller than what you're wiping with.",
"Dirt and bacteria are many orders of magnitude larger than the molecules that make up odorants. Cleaning them off is physically a lot different.",
"The outer surface of your skin is covered in many layers of overlapping dead skin cells. Unless you have a skin infection, bacteria don't make it past the first few easily-washed-off flakes, and your immune system destroys them if they do. Smelly molecules like fish or skunk are much smaller than bacteria, so they can penetrate much deeper into your skin; also, your deeper skin layers don't actively clear them away like they do bacteria. To get rid of them once they've soaked in, you'd have to scrub your skin raw, or just wait for them to slowly diffuse away on their own."
],
"score": [
58,
28,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
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