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l5ta2c
|
Why is it that after eating spicy food, eating hot (as in temperature) food is so much more painful?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Capsaicin (the thing that makes peppers spicy) makes the TRPV1 protein activate and sends \"this is hot\" siignal to the brain. TRPV1 is the same protein that sends the signal to your brain if you burn your tongue or touch a hot stove. So to your brain, you're burning something that's already burning... Making it hurt worse :)",
"because the spice you feel is not actually flavour, it’s a pain, and the heat in the rest of your food accentuates that already-existing pain."
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|
l5tkac
|
Noise Cancellation in the AirPods Pro: How Does it Work?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkwn3my",
"gkwd8b0"
],
"text": [
"It sends out opposite sound waves. When sound waves hit your eardrum, they vibrate it and you hear the sound. A opposite exact sound wave hitting your eardrum at the same time, will prevent you eardrum from moving, so you don't hear either sound. It only prevents your eardrum from moving for the intended sound though, so you still hear other sounds, like the music. Think of the opposite of a double bounce on a trampoline. Someone lands at just the rint moment and you dont bounce back up, or how you stop yourself from bouncing, by pushing back in just the right timing to stop it from bouncing.",
"Sound waves are picked up by a microphone, and turned in to electrical signals. These electrical signals have been combined with whatever music you are listening to (or silence if you are not listening) and turned back into sound in the tiny earbud speaker. What you \"hear\" at your eardrum is the sum of the sound from the earbud speaker and the sound coming in from the outside of the ear. The sound from the speaker is the opposite of the sound from outside, so they cancel out. Thus \"noise cancellation\"."
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5,
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|
l5tl9z
|
How is it that stuff like fats, sugars, and oils from the food we eat make it all the way to our heart and blood when it only travels down our digestive system?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkwg5xa"
],
"text": [
"From chewing to stomach your food is broken down and separated, and once it hits the small intestine it’s time for your body to absorb it. Once absorbed it’s blood cells which act like delivery trucks, that move these different fats and sugars. This is why they get clogged in the heart and arteries because the blood cells get bogged down with them."
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6
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|
l5tr0u
|
Why is filibustering a thing?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
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"gkwgbph",
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"text": [
"It's a sort of loophole in the rules in the US Senate, which basically goes \"A Senator can say that we're not ready to vote on this yet, and that we have to finish talking about it first.\" and doesn't give rules as to what \"talking about it\" actually means, so that a Senator can say \"We're not ready to vote on this yet, we have to think about what this might meant to Aaron Alexander, Aaron Abertson, Ashley Apkins...\" until they get 60 Senators to say \"No, we're ready to vote on this now, stop naming citizens in alphabetical order.\" The current set of rules that the US Senate follows basically goes \"I don't actually have to stand up and talk forever, but you should still act like I am, and the vote doesn't happen until we get 60 people to say that we're ready to move on to the vote now.\" Some people think that requiring 60 votes to let a bill make it to the floor is a good thing, that it will force more compromise and cooperation between political parties. Others think that it's unnecessary, and plenty of other legislative bodies all over the world do perfectly fine without that rule.",
"Agree with the u/mugenhunt that in a way, it started out as a loophole but since it exists, it would have to be actively eliminated. Why hasn't it been? Kind of a game theory problem. When your senate majority came to power it was the minority before, and back then you probably (in my **recent** memory I think no majority has had 60) had some ability to block the most odious things that \"those bastards\" tried to push - all you had to do was prevent too many of your side from joining them and you could block it. Well, those people remember how little power they had in the minority and that they'd have literally zero power if they didn't have the filibuster. To be honest, I think if you were in a minority of fewer than 40 Senators you may as well not even show up for work because the majority literally doesn't need you for anything and can straight-up ignore you. Well, that would be how every senate minority would be without the filibuster. So they don't eliminate it because they know their majority won't last forever. Note: I hate the filibuster.",
"The ELI5 explanation is that Southern Democrats wanted to block all civil rights legislation, so they gradually changed the Senate rules (which did not have a filibuster at its creation) to allow a small number of Senators block any bill they didn't like. And that's not grandstanding, that's the actual reason."
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l5trp1
|
How does an artist go from recording a song to making money off a streaming service (like Spotify) if you can listen for free? Does amount of plays affect how much they make?
|
I know artists make most of their money off tours and merchandising, but how do streaming services work? With CDs and purchased music slowly becoming a thing of the past I’m really curious. Does Spotify “buy” the song (or rights to it)? If someone gets 1million plays for one song do they make more than 1,000 plays or is it a set price for the song for the streaming service?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Spotify is just the platform. The artists or labels still own the rights. Anyone can put a song on Spotify. You’ve gotta think, Spotify premium is $10/month and I’m sure they have millions of subscribers, then they also have ads that play that I’m sure they make their money from. Each Spotify stream on a song will make like $.00001 or something like that. 1 million streams on a song pays out around $7000",
"Spotify pays the music label directly (not the artist!) on a per play basis -- a little under a $0.01 per play. The label will then pay the artist a small portion of this, so the artist may get something like $0.002 per play. Some big name artists can negotiate higher rates, but pretty much like 95% of others are just getting the usual rate, which you have to play so many songs that its just insane to make any realistic money on it, in my example above, the artist would have to have 5,000,000 streams of their song to make $10k. You should also note, that on Spotify is said that the top 10% of artists account of bout 90% of streams-- that means, to be realistic, unless you're a massive pop star like Ed Sheeran or Lady Gaga, you ain't making much money on spotify. Other streaming services, like Apple Music operate the same way, but rates between different streamers can vary."
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3
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l5utg6
|
Why do doctors only accept certain insurance? Aren't they still getting paid from every insurance company?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkwmdoe",
"gkwlfb9"
],
"text": [
"The short of it : They've signed deals that give them better prices in exchange for the same amount service provided. In ELI5 terms; lets say one friend wants to give you 1 kitkat bar if you do a dare. But another friend will give you 2 kitkat bars for the same dare. You'll side with the 2 kitkat friend over the 1 kitkat friend.",
"The insurance companies set prices for things. Lets say insurance 1 pays 140 for a blood test while insurance 2 will pay 160. As the doctor i might decide 140 is not enough so I refuse to take insurance 1."
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7,
4
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l5v9id
|
Why do unhealthy foods like junk foods taste delicious and addicting while healthy foods like vegetables dont?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"gkx2tau",
"gkwnxen",
"gkwrkxo",
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"gkwr1pa"
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"text": [
"For the vast vast majority of human evolution, high-calorie energy rich foods were rare and hard to come by. Having a craving to eat as much fat as you could whenever it was available was a very good survival instinct because who knows when the next big meal is coming. And in the meantime maybe there's a flood or fire, or you get sick or hurt, or a drought happens. When any shit like that goes down, you're more likely to survive if you gorged on that dead animal you found and built up your energy stores. Only very very recently (evolution wise) did high calorie foods become cheaply and *reliably* available, all the time. So what used to be a useful instinct isn't always suited now, but there hasn't been enough time to re-adapt yet. If humanity lasts another 50k+ years, all the obesity- and heart-related deaths from overeating will possibly push the balance and reduce our craving for junk food. But there's a million years of calories=life to overcome.",
"Sugar. Eating sugar releases opioids and dopamine in our bodies. This is the link between added sugar and addictive behavior. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is a key part of the “reward circuit” associated with addictive behavior.",
"A lot is also affected how we cook and season those veggies. In their natural state, they can't really compete with the sugar rush that other foods can give us. Also they can contain bitter elements that have to be cooked out. Spice them up a bit and do a proper sauté and you can turn lots of veggies that people think aren't good into a dish which they will enjoy. Bland and bitter Brussel sprouts suck. Properly seasoned sautéed Sprouts are amazing.",
"Fat and sugar, We crave it. Its why McDonald is so good, they put an ungodly amount of fat and sugar into it.",
"It's worth noting that addictive foods are defined by wanting to eat more than a healthy amount, so even if \"healthy\" foods were addictive, they would be unhealthy at those levels. Also, it's because we engineered junk foods to be maximally delicious, not maximally healthy, so health concerns took a back seat when we designed them."
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l5vci8
|
What’s the difference between a colored pigment and an object that scatters light so that only that one color is reflected?
|
I saw the below tumblr post and was confused. I thought that, by definition, color is what’s reflected when all other light is absorbed? i’m going off my 7th grade science lesson memory though, so I clearly could be wrong. URL_0
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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],
"text": [
"Pigment absorbs all wavelengths of light except for what is reflected out. Rayleigh scattering simply bounces the shortest wavelength, blue, in a different direction. The other wavelength colors keep going. Picture it like this. Some dude is driving a car, going 100 mph, with a 20 oz baja blast mountain dew in the cupholder, and you slam into a wall. The whole car smashes flat against the wall except for the baja blast which bounces off the wall and hits you right in the face with that blue baja goodness. That's pigment Now picture that same dude driving 100 mph and as he's about to go flying past you, he hits a pothole. It's not enough to crash as he keeps right on going, but the baja blast bounces out of the cupholder, out of the car window and hits you right in the face. That's basically rayleigh scattering."
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l5vmem
|
How does cash work for the ultra wealthy? I remember reading about some billionaires taking very small salaries. All of their wealth is in the ownership of their companies. I understand there are loans involved, but how does that all work?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Lets use Jeff Bezos as an example. Bezos owns a huge chunk of Amazon. 54 million shares as of August. Each of those shares is currently valued at $3326.13, leaving Bezos valued at over $179 billion just on his stock value, not counting anything else he may own. This is, obviously, not money and can't be used as such. When he needs cash beyond what he has on hand (and how much he keeps on hand is his business, not something we're privy to), he can sell stock, as he did last year, selling over $7 billion for cash to fund his spaceflight company, Blue Origin.",
"A common way of handling your liquidity is to draw down a line of credit secured by your equity in your company, which you can do at a cost of less than 2% a year these days. You’ll post, say, 50% of your equity as collateral and then draw down up to 10% or 20% of that.",
"Often leaders are heavily incentivized relating to financial metrics. The salary isn’t small, but it’s a small part of the total package. Hit your financial commitments to the business, hit the jackpot, maximize your bonus. Often leaders are given a combination of salary, financial bonus and also stock options. The stock options mature over time, motivating that employee to remain at the company for a longer period. Typically if you leave a company before the options vest, you lose the stock. As to your question relating to cash. In my experience the wealthy carry little to no cash.",
"How much does your parents own? Other than their saving and salaries, the biggest portion of their wealth will be their car and houses. Same for the ultra rich. Instead of house and cars, they own companies. 20% of a company worth 80 million in stocks is 16 million worth. And with the ultrarich, they either own ALOT of different stocks, or a major portion of the business. Its why Jeff Bezos is so rich. This is also why while they are worth in \"billions\", the movement to actually tax them never took off. Shares arn't money until actually traded in and kept as saving, such that if they traded 20 million shares, made 4 million dollar, then immediately invested in 24 million new shares. You can only tax their salary, which is 100k. and not the 4 million."
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l5vsbb
|
How do advertisers determine my preferences by using internet cookies?
|
Would cookies be defined as personal data? If so, can the user deny cookies and still surf the webz without issues?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Imagine your parents are tracking your iPhone location. While you’re moving around freely, they know where you are. Your mom can look and see you’re at the park. Because your mom knows you’re at the park she sends you a photo of a squirrel with the caption “deez nutz”. You’ve received the text but all you can say is OK. You can delete the text, but you can’t un-receive it. You = you. iPhone tracker = cookies. Squirrel = ad. Your response “Ok” to your mom = cookie banners (they usually don’t do anything)",
"Cookies are one way that a website can use to offload some storage onto a user. This can be incredibly useful -- for example, if you have a website you use daily, you can habitually close the browser tab for a day or two between sessions and the next time you navigate to the site you'll still be logged in. The website hasn't \"remembered\" your session, the website gave you a cookie that's essentially a \"I was just here a few days ago, please log me in\" pass, and your browser hands the website that cookie when you connect to it. That's all a cookie is, it's just a piece of data that the server sends to your browser, and your browser by default will dutifully send it back every time you revisit the website until the cookie expires. The way a tracking cookie works is primarily only notable for extremely large corporations like Google and Facebook. They offer services to other websites, usually for free, that help make hosting that website easier. If you've ever seen a \"log in with Google/Facebook\", that's one example. They do this, and in exchange, Google and Facebook now have bits of them embedded into a HUGE chunk of the web. It's hard to visit a popular website these days that doesn't have at least one of these players wormed into them. What Google and Facebook then do is give your browser a cookie that's essentially just an ID card. Every time you connect to a website that has one of these embedded bits, your browser will \"phone home\" to them and present your ID cookie. Instantly, that company now knows that your ID visited the page you're looking at. Collect enough page hits from enough users and you can get a pretty good idea of what people are into."
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l5vt6p
|
what money is actually made or lost daily in a stock short squeeze scenario? is it all on paper until cash out or are the daily numbers we see realized losses/gains at whatever point they are reported?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"The YouTube channel TLDR News had a good explanation. Basically, shorting stocks works like this: You see that an apple stand is selling apples for $1. You ask to borrow an apple with the promise that you will pay them back later. Then you sell that apple to another person for $1. Now the price of apples drops to $0.50 so you go to another apple seller and use the $1 you gained from the apple sale to buy 2 apples. You give one to the original apple stand and keep the second. You're now ahead by 1 apple, or $0.50. If the price of apples rises to $2, though, you're in trouble. You have $1 from your apple sale, but still owe the apple vendor an apple. You can't buy one for $2 because you'll have lost a dollar. So you might \"short apples\" again to try to cover your losses. You borrow a second apple from the vendor and sell it to someone for $2. Now you owe 2 apples to the vendor and have $3. If the apple price falls, you can cover your losses without needing it to go under the original $1."
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l5wcwm
|
how can politicians get away with blatantly lying about their promises?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Lying in itself is not a crime. If you can prove that a politician committed a crime by lying, that's another story. The true limitation on lying politicians are the voters, but... we all know how much they care and/or pay attention",
"Because a lot of voters only look at the letter (D or R) and only care about negatives from the opposing team.",
"If you don’t re-elect them, then they don’t get away with it. Voters need to hold their elected officials accountable."
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l5wdlk
|
Conservation of momentum
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkwvspj"
],
"text": [
"Momentum is a value associated with objects in motion. It's equal to their mass times their velocity and, like velocity, it's a vector - it has both an \"amount\" (magnitude) and a direction. So an object that has 2 kg of mass moving directly upward at 3 m/s has a momentum of (2 kg)\\*(3 m/s) = 6 kg\\*m/s pointing upward. (The kg m/s is just the unit we use to measure momentum.) Conservation of momentum says that if you have a closed system (that is, nothing you're examining interacts with anything you aren't examining), interactions can never create or destroy total momentum - only transfer it from one object to another. For example, if our object from before, with its 6 kg\\*m/s upward momentum, hits another object that weighs 1 kg and is sitting stationary (that is, it has no momentum to begin with), there are a bunch of possibilities that conserve momentum: * The other object might start moving at 6 m/s upward and our original object might stop. Then the second object has momentum (1 kg)\\*(6 m/s) = 6 kg\\*m/s momentum upward and our original object has 0 momentum. The total momentum remains 6 kg\\*m/s upward. * The other object might start moving at 2 m/s upward and our original object might slow to 2 m/s as well. Then their momenta are, respectively, 1 kg \\* 2 m/s = 2 kg\\*m/s upward and 2 kg \\* 2 m/s = 4 kg\\*m/s upward, for a total of the original 6 kg m/s upward. * The other object might start moving at 12 m/s upward, and our original object might bounce off of it at 3 m/s. Then the second object has momentum 12 kg m/s upward and our original object has momentum 6 kg m/s *downward*, for a total of 6 kg m/s upward. Which one happens depends on other physical factors (for example, if you consider conservation of energy as well and assume both objects are completely rigid, you always get one outcome). But conservation of momentum tells us that if the first object stops, the second one will *have* to move at 6 m/s upward to conserve momentum. Conservation of momentum is one of a bunch of conservation laws, which all have the same basic structure: the total amount of some value doesn't change, no matter what happens within the system. Conservation of energy, conservation of mass, conservation of electric charge, and so on are all examples (some of which aren't actually fully conserved, but are close enough to it for practical purposes in everyday life). Finally, other posters may note that strictly speaking the definition of momentum I've given here is the *classical* (that is, not-relativity) version. In relativity, momentum is more complex, and objects without mass can still have it - but that's a story for another day."
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l5wy12
|
What is the point of buying an option when you could also buy the stock and not pay the extra fee? You still want the company to do well, and you don't have to pay the extra.
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"There is no downside risk. Scenario 1:Person A buys stock from Person B for 100$ Person B: No Exposure, has 100$Person A: Has stock. If in 1 month:Stock 150: +50$ - 2x Transaction Fee (Buy/Sell) Stock 100: +0$ - 2x Transaction Fee (Buy/Sell) Stock 50: -50$ - 2x Transaction Fee (Buy/Sell) Now for an option:Person A buys 1 Month option for 10$ from Person B After 1 Month:Stock 150$: Person A buys stock for 100$.Person B: 110$Person A: +40$ - 2x Transaction Fee (Buy/Sell) Stock 100$: Person A declines.Person B: 110$Person A: -10$ Stock 50$: Person A declinesPerson B: -40$Person A: -10$ Basically, someone is selling you the right to the profit of a stock over a period. You make less than buying outright, but they retain the downside risk. Edit: Also note that the option price isn't necessarily today's price. If the stock costs 100$ today, someone could sell you a 120$ option tomorrow. Basically, they make some extra money if the stock only goes up a little, but if it goes up a lot you get the money instead. They are basically selling you their upside potential for a fixed fee. Story would be: Bob buys stock for 100$, thinks it'll be worth 120$ in a month. He does not think it is likely to make massive swings down or up. Sally thinks the stock is likely to swing widely on news in the next month, and oculd end up at 20$ or 200$. Sally is unwilling to risk losing 80$ for the possible gain. However, since Bob doesn't think it'll do that, he makes an offer: Sally pays him 10$ and if the stock goes above 120$ she gets the extra. Now instead of risking 80$ for a potential 120$, she is risking 10$ for a potential 110$. Of course if Bob is right about the stock and it gains only a little, he has now made 30$ on the stock instead of 20$"
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l5xdhs
|
Why are elephants better suited for warm climates when the square cube law dictates they should have trouble dissipating heat?
|
My understanding of the square cube law, should it need to be corrected: The larger an animal is, the less skin (and therefore heat dissipating area) it will have for its size. I read somewhere that animals of the same species tend to be larger in colder climates, so to my understanding, it should relate to elephants as well, but if that’s the case, how do they thrive in the heat where they live? Thank you!
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"Elephant-sized animals thrived in very cold climates as well. Elephants' size does present a problem for heat, and that's the biggest reason for their famously huge ears. Perhaps african elephants are just the largest size that an animal can reach in the climate they live in.",
"The giant ears are also to radiate heat. African elephants have giant ears, mammoths had tiny ears.",
"They got tons of folds in their skin, which traps moisture longer, and allows them to stay cooler longer. Asian elephants that live in cooler climates have smoother skin than African elephants, which live in warmer climates.",
"You are taking the square cube law very seriously. It isn't really a 'law' but rather an general thumb rule derived from a basic geometrical fact. This 'law became popular because it fits in with another observation - large animals tend to have slower metabolism than small animals, possibly because they have a higher tendency to overheat. What it really tells you is that large animals will require more adaptation in temperature control to survive in hot climates, as compared to small animals. These adaptations include slow metabolism, different diet, or like the elephant, large ears. [Here]( URL_0 ) is a infrared picture that shows the heat distribution of an elephant. As you can see, it's ears are much cooler than the rest of it, because they are really efficient heat exchangers. Similarly small animals will require more adaptation to survive in cold climates. It's like saying a blimp flies because it is lighter than air, than how does an aeroplane fly when it is heavier than air? Well, it flies because it has wings and a massive engine to make it possible."
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l5xqwc
|
If some of the elements on the periodic table can only be produced in a lab, why are they considered elements?
|
Some of the high number elements only last for seconds or less, why do they get a spot on the table if they would never be found naturally?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Because they still exist? The periodic table isn't a list of things you'll find in your yard - it is a list of the nuclear elements which we have observed. As for why studying things that don't naturally exist is *useful*, the elements which only exist for brief periods often play a crucial role in nuclear chemistry. Nuclear reactors, for instance, would not be practically possible without 'delayed neutrons' from these elements.",
"An element is simply something made of only one kind of atom. All atoms in the element have the same number of protons. That's what an element is. This definition doesn't say anything about \"natural\" origins. It holds for oxygen as it does for Dubnium or whatever. Also, the lines between nature and lab in this case can be blurry. Synthetic elements are typically produced by fusion or particle accelerators. However, nuclear fusion and other similar processes also occur naturally in the Universe. Also, the Universe is incredibly old, so it's possible that the elements we call \"synthetic\" are actually things we could find in the Universe if we went back in time."
],
"score": [
27,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5xv4k
|
why can’t some human body tissues regenerate themselves like skin tissue does?
|
I’m watching this documentary about an octopus and eventually it gets one of its arms eaten by a shark. As time goes by, the arm just slowly grows back again and that got me thinking: Why can’t humans do it (or other mammals)? I understand there are way more complex body tissues in a human arm than in an octopus arm. But what exactly is the difference?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkx4iyd"
],
"text": [
"An arm has many tissues, nervs, bone, muscle, skin. Simple tissues can regrow easily. More complex tissues take more time or are just too complicated to regrow. Mammals like us, are just not designed to regrow parts of us."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5y19x
|
How was the first computer software coded?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkx4hf7"
],
"text": [
"The very first programs were written directly in machine code - that is, they told the processor exactly what to do at each step through instructions mechanically fed to the processor via punch cards. The first compiler (thing that translates human-readable source code into machine code) had to be written that way, too - but once one compiler existed, you could write a new compiler using the language of the old one and bootstrap your way all the way to complex modern languages."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5yqqj
|
What is happening with this GME stocks thing? Why is it garnering so much attention?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkx8hei"
],
"text": [
"Gamestop wasn't doing great. For obvious reasons. Some major investors were starting to make bets against it. The lads over at r/wallstreetbets coordinated to screw them by manipulating Gamestop's stock. So the stock is now artificially exploding just because of some Redditors."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l5zjag
|
What's preventing temperature across the globe to reach an equilibrium since air flows freely?
|
If I open the windows in my room, which has AC turned on and it's cool in the summer, it will quickly become as hot as it is outside, why isn't it happening around the globe?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxevjs",
"gkxc5ks",
"gkxfc89",
"gkxc5is",
"gkxl3iw",
"gkxicxp"
],
"text": [
"We perceive air as this uniform gas that's just everywhere, when in reality air actually clumps around itself and forms bubbles and pockets. These bubbles form when air of the same temperature and density clump together. You'll get bubbles of cold air, bubbles of hot air, bubbles of wet air, bubbles of dry air, etc. In fact, wind is when these bubbles push against each other. The bubbles are so huge and so sharply determined by their heat and density and humidity, that they don't just blend into each other: they actually form a wall, or a front, and push against each other. You may have heard the weather forecast talking about a warm front or a cold front coming in. That's a big bubble of one type of air pushing another. You get wind at the line where the bubbles meet, and one bubble is pushing the other. Some airline turbulence is also caused by these bubbles, since they don't just push around horizontally on the surface of the earth but they stack vertically on top of each other into the stratosphere, too. So sometimes when there's turbulence or the feeling of a sudden drop while flying, it might be because the plane is punching through one air bubble into the next.",
"Because the energy the earth recieves changes all the time. If the sun is hitting about half of the earth all the time, it's actively warming that part up while the other half is cooling down, throw in wind, geothermal energy, tidal winds, different altitudes. You get quite a volatile heat distribution that can change rapidly",
"The globe is huge and the Earth is continually being heated unevenly, the temperature range on Earth is relatively small.",
"Areas around the equator receive very strong sunlight and the poles get very diffuse sunlight, so they do receive different amounts of energy. The heat energy also doesn't all stay in the earth and its atmosphere, some is lost into space, so it's not a closed system.",
"If I understand it rightly, it's always trying for an equilibrium, and always failing. Heat flows from the tropics to the poles, which is why the arctic is warming at the fastest rate on the planet. BUT - air has very little heat capacity, and air temperature is very much conditioned by the local ground or sea surface temperature. Most of the heat that reaches the planet ends up in the oceans, and it takes a very long time for heat to distribute through the water column. So ocean currents transport heat around, and where they go is shaped by continents. The Arctic, for instance, is much more open to heat inflow than the Antarctic, which is walled off to some degree by the winds and currents circling it (not entirely - as the oceans warm they eat away at Antarctic ice sheets).",
"Because some parts of the planet have a lot more energy flowing into them. If you have a heater running in the corner of your room, the air right in front of it will be warmer, even if you have the window open. Now imagine your heater was thousands of miles from the window."
],
"score": [
48,
31,
9,
5,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l5zqev
|
Assuming there’s no wind, in which direction would air draft if I were to open a window if it were hotter inside than outside?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxdrvb"
],
"text": [
"air inside your room is warmer/lighter near the ceiling, compared to the air below it as you go down to the floor. When you open the window, the air near the ceiling start to escape out because it is a law of physics that heat always moves in hot- > cold direction. To replace this escaped air near the ceiling, air from the floor side moves upward and then out. Then to replace the floor side air, fresh air should move inside. And the cycle continues."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l604ko
|
why do cross-platform PC games become increasingly harder to run during a single console generation?
|
i mean, the console specs remain the same, so do they just stop caring about pc optimisation later in the generation?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxggw6"
],
"text": [
"Games developed for a given console tend to become better and better during the span of that console generation, as studios accumulate specific experience on how to best exploit the HW, the quirks, and the possibilities afforded by that console (including ones initially unseen or overlooked by anyone). (They also become more confident of being able to avoid the pitfalls, and so willing to push it nearer to the edge). This can make the games increasingly harder to adapt to different HW."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l60qtg
|
How can an adapter convert Usb to HDMI?
|
Like why do we even need an HDMI port then
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxhxel",
"gkxi2bt",
"gkxiumt"
],
"text": [
"The usb adapter contains a 'mini video card'. It registers to the operating system as a video card and is treated by the OS as such. It is terribly limited in speed.",
"These devices are little external \"graphics cards\". They get the data via USB and render themselves a signal for the monitor. They are very low power, so probably very bad for fast moving things like watching videos, but for a powerpoint presentation they will do. This is because of the limitations of USB, inside a PC, the graphics card is connected via a very capable connection making it possible for even 3D stuff to be fluid. HDMI only carries the image information itself, not the data out of which the image is drawn.",
"This devices is not a simple adapter that just converts between two different plugs carrying the same type of signal. For example a USB-C to USB-A adapter does not have any active components and just connects the two together directly. But an USB to HDMI adapter is an active adapter with its own microchip inside it that communicates with the computer and the monitor using two seperate protocols. To the computer it looks like a video card but does not have any GPU so it can not render anything but full frames. This means that another GPU on the computer can transfer fully rendered frames over the USB line to the adapter. When the adapter receives such a frame it stores it in its internal memory and then continuously outputs it on the HDMI cable as a HDMI signal. You will often notice the difference between passive and active components in its price and its features. A passive adapter is just a few bucks but an active adapter is significantly more expensive. And while a passive adapter usually supports all the features of the underlying protocol as it does not touch any of the signaling an active adapter may be limited in bandwidth or capabilities."
],
"score": [
10,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6169v
|
What Language Do Bilingual People Think In?
|
I'm just curious what language bilingual people think in? I mean, lets say you have a person who was born into a home where the mother speaks Spanish and the father speaks English and he learns both languages at the same time as a result. Would he think in English only, Spanish only, a mix of English and Spanish or one someones and the other sometimes?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxk67p",
"gkxkj8h",
"gkxl236"
],
"text": [
"I am not bilingual but I use three languages in my daily life, Finnish, English and Swedish. Even though I am fully fluent only in Finnish I find myself thinking in English and in Swedish more often than in Finnish. This is probably because I live in Sweden, study in English and hear Finnish quite rarely these days - I mainly use it when writing to my friends and family in Finland. Based on this I would guess(!) that bilingual people also think in the language they hear and use most of the time. Maybe some only think in the other language and some switch. This is probably individual. But this is again, just me guessing.",
"Whatever is most convenient, sometimes a portmanteau of multiple languages. Turns out some languages are surprisingly compatible.",
"So I wasn’t raised bilingual, but I became bilingual due to circumstances.. I’m Dutch, living in the German part of Switzerland, with my German girlfriend and our daughter. I almost exclusively speak Dutch with my daughter (so she learns the language) and of course all contact with friends and family (that are still in the Netherlands) is in Dutch too. In these instances I think in Dutch. I’m near-fluent in English as well and in moments of using the English language, I think in English (writing this right now for example). All other moments, I think in German, since this is the language I use the most by far. The mind effortlessly swaps between these 3, based on current activity."
],
"score": [
6,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l619vp
|
Why does our body feel much warmer before going to bed than it does in the morning?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxkk6t"
],
"text": [
"Your body temperature decreases during the night. The temperature is the lowest around 4am and highest in the evening."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l61z7d
|
Why do some websites punish you for using ad blockers? Why can you get free stuff in games just for watching ads? What do these people gain or lose from the simple fact of someone staring at their ad for 30 seconds?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxnsm3"
],
"text": [
"The advertising industry works like this. I want to sell something, I pay someone to put my ads everywhere, hoping I gain a lot more (because my ads convinced someone to buy my stuff) than what I pay for. The websites are being paid for putting those ads. If everybody starts using ad blockers (and refuses to set up exceptions), the whole thing is completely useless, because no one even sees the ads, so there's basically no chance for the whole ad concept to even work. And if this doesn't work anywore, they (websites hosting ads) lose a significant part of their profits. Hence why they \"punish\" you."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6243f
|
What are these Varicose veins?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxrhpe"
],
"text": [
"The veins on your legs have valves inside of them so that it's easier for the blood to get back up. It's necessary because if there weren't those valves, the pressure gradient isn't strong enough to get your blood all the way up. And that's exactly what happens when you get varicose veins - the valves get damaged, the blood can't go up and it just fills the damaged vein which then prominates of the leg and can get inflamed (of course, most of the blood still gets back into your body through other veins - aside from the surface ones that you can see as varicose veins there are also deep veins)."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l62455
|
from earth, we can see stars. From the ISS live stream, we cannot see the stars. How come?
|
I noticed when watching the live stream video from the ISS there were no stars visible, in the same way we see them from earth. The ISS was in a night zone of the earth. Does it have to do with light?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxogs0",
"gkxoj2x",
"gkxoh8a"
],
"text": [
"Most of the time it is daytime on ISS. Even though the sky is not bright blue like on Earth but rather black the ISS itself and the Earth in the background is still lit up making it even brighter then even the brightest day on the surface. This means that all the cameras and indeed the crews vision is adjusted to daytime. This makes it impossible to see any stars in the footage. It is actually the same reason why we can not see stars from the surface of the Earth during daytime as well. The stars is still there in the sky and shines just as bright during the day as they do during the night. However the light from the Sun and all the secondary reflections from the sky and the ground lights up everything so that it is impossible to see the stars without specialized equipment.",
"We can't see the stars because the sky is dark and taking good pictures of the sky requires some long exposure shot. This is also why when you randomly snap a picture of the sky you can't always catch stars, even if you do see them. When they do take [good enough pictures]( URL_0 ), you can see a lot of stars.",
"The light from the stars is often too weak and dim to be easily picked up on camera, especially if there is something much brighter in the camera field. In order to just take a picture of the night sky it often requires a long exposure time. We can see the stars with our naked eyes because our eyes are much more sensitive than most cameras and are capable of fairly quick adjustments, allowing us to focus on the dim points of starlight."
],
"score": [
18,
7,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/DatabaseImages/ESC/small/ISS044/ISS044-E-45215.JPG"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l62e4q
|
How does those heat packs with a tiny metal disc inside work?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxqdwo",
"gky7gzc",
"gkxu3i5",
"gl09dqw"
],
"text": [
"The packs contain a liquid (actually a gel, usually made from a solution of sodium acetate) which has the property that it releases heat when crystals form in it. When you flex the disc it simply causes a sudden sharp point to occur within the substance. This is enough to start the crystallisation process which then rapidly spreads throughout the entire gel. It therefore heats itself up and then gradually emits that heat over the next hour or so as it slowly cools down.",
"The sodium acetate inside has a melting / freezing point of 58 C (138 F), and is super-cooled because it's very pure. When you click the disk, it sets off a freezing reaction. When it freezes, it releases all that \"stress\" of being super-cooled as heat and returns to its freezing point temperature. Sodium acetate is used because it is non-toxic (it's the stuff used for salt and vinegar flavor chips), easy to make, can be super-cooled easily, and has a nice freezing point that's warm but not too hot for us to handle.",
"A sharp point starts the reaction only made me ask how does a sharp point start a reaction so I went looking: “When the activator is clicked, the friction causes a few molecules to react, creating a chain reaction.” Thank you URL_0 . Friction starting a reaction makes sense to me.",
"You can even recreate this safely at home: Get some vinegar concentrate (or just pure vinegar), then add baking soda until it becomes about pH-neutral; this roughly means it tastes neither soapy nor too acidic when you put a small amount on your tongue (the resulting chemicals are by the way safe unless consumed in exorbitant amounts). Then heat the mixture to cook away most, but not all, of the water; the exact amount requires a bit of experimentation: let it slowly cool down. If it crystalizes immediately on its own, you have to add a bit of water and reheat; if it does not crystallize even if you stir it strongly, there is still too much water. The right amount means that it stays liquid until you start stirring, which will cause it to crystallize quite fast. But beware, it gets hot!"
],
"score": [
68,
23,
11,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"Thermafreeze.com"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l62vj4
|
; Why do halogen lights get burning hot but LEDS don't get hot at all?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxv67l",
"gkxwcc9",
"gkxua6o",
"gkxtav2",
"gkxwhwo"
],
"text": [
"Different method of operation and different efficiency. Halogen lights are just producing light by making a wire get very, very hot to the point it gets white hot, same as old-style incandescent bulbs--so most of their output is actually heat. LEDs produce light via semiconductor interactions in a diode junction, and are far more efficient, so most of what they produce is light rather than heat. That doesn't mean they don't produce heat at all--depending on how your LED lamp is constructed it may have an aluminium heatsink behind the LEDs to soak up the generated heat and allow them to last longer, or the newer \"filament\" style rely on the gas in the bulb to carry the heat away.",
"It's about how efficient you can turn electricity to light. Halogen light bulbs work by heating up a filament inside. What’s different from regular light bulbs is that halogens ones can recycle the vapors of the tungsten filament inside - the filament gets “fixed.” However it works, it still works by making a metal very hot. So, what about LED? LED uses electrons, or more specifically, photon emitting electrons, to produce light. How can it force electrons to only produce visible light (well, more than light bulbs, at least)? Well, here’s the answer. There’s two semiconductors. When a current flows through it, electrons goes from one to another, releasing energy as photon during the process. Now, why does it release electrons? So, semiconductors are usually made of silicon and another material (more in that later). Now, silicon has 4 electrons on its most outside shell. It bonds with each other using covalent bond, by sharing electrons and getting 8 electrons (the number of electrons that is most stable for that shell). Now, add an atom that has 5 electrons on its outer most shell. When it bonds with the silicon, you have 1 electron that is not used in the bond. Ok, we have a semiconductor that has 1 free electron (of course, it’s not only one but go with it). Next, we make the same conductor but this time the atom you add has only 3 electrons. Now, it needs 1 more electron to make 8 (the stable amount). So, we have one semiconductor with a free electron and another semiconductor that needs 1 more. That free electron moves to the other semiconductor to fill the hole. Yeah, but why does it release a photon? Energy difference. Only electrons with a certain energy level can be in a shell (well, orbital to be exact). Different shell have different energy levels. That means, if the electrons need to have an energy level of 1 to be in that shell, the electron needs to have an energy level of 1, not 1.1. The free electron has more energy than the hole requires. So what does it do? The electron releases energy, in the form of light. By the way, the energy difference between the semiconductors determine the color of the LED. If you want a blue LED, you’ll need a energy difference bigger than a red one.",
"Head on over to r/flashlight and check out the holes they've burned in things with LEDs yo.",
"OP, it's a common misconception that LED light sources run without producing heat. It's simply not true. Yes, they do run cooler compared to a halogen light source, but a LED does run hot.",
"Halogen lights are actually designed to run hot, hotter than normal incandescent bulbs. Filament bulbs in general produce light by heating the tungsten wire to white heat but that means there is waste heat which makes them inefficient. There is also a limit to how bright they can be before the wire burns out because the metal evaporates. Halogen bulbs have a small amount of iodine or bromine inside which deposits evaporated tungsten back on the filament so they can be brighter and not burn out too soon. For that chemistry to work the inside of the \"glass\" (fused quartz not ordinary glass) has to be quite hot which is why the bulb is usually fairly small and burns you."
],
"score": [
14,
9,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l63k1f
|
What does air quality mean on the weather app and how do they calculate it?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxvwkt",
"gkxxhtm"
],
"text": [
"It's a measure of foreign particulates in the air that can effect your respiratory system. It can be measured by air samples as well as being predicted by using meoterolgical analysis by looking how formations of polluted air are moving.",
"It's a measure of pollutants in the air, different countries use different types of scales and generate an easy to interpret number or band/grade for you. Most common are PM2.5 and PM10, PM stands for Particulate Matter, measured in micrometers. They may also measure other sources of pollution such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide."
],
"score": [
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l63pic
|
Is the solar system rotating on the same horizontal level or are they rotating in different positions in a 3D sphere around the sun?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxx22w",
"gkxx457"
],
"text": [
"Most of the stuff is rotating in roughly the same plane around the sun. Though there are a ton of small objects, principally in very long orbits, that rotate at other angles as well. The stuff that all rotates in the same plane does so because of conservation of angular momentum. Basically, they all started off from the same big, rotating cloud of dust that formed the solar system. They were all rotating in different directions. However, as objects traveling around the center of mass of the cloud (where the sun is now) in different directions collided, some of this rotational motion was cancelled out. If you were to \"average out\" the direction of rotation about the center of the cloud, that's the direction most things revolve around the sun travel. Since motion orthogonal (at a right angle to) this direction all got \"canceled out,\" most of the solar system rests on a plane. The objects that don't rotate on that plane are mostly objects the solar system has pulled in after it formed or are just a portion of the few, small objects that didn't collide with much stuff in the early days of the solar system and happened to retain their odd angle of rotation about the sun.",
"I assume by the solar system, you mean planets and other bodies orbiting around the sun The short answer is, yes, predominantly most bodies orbiting the sun are in _almost_ the same horizontal level. I am quoting the relevant part and linking the article to explain why, > Here’s the yes part of the answer, beginning with another astronomy definition; the Earth-sun plane is called the ecliptic. Most major planets in our solar system stay within 3 degrees of the ecliptic. Mercury is the exception; its orbit is inclined to the ecliptic by 7 degrees. The dwarf planet Pluto is a widely known exception to this rule. Its orbit is inclined to the ecliptic by more than 17 degrees. > It makes sense that most large planets in our solar system stay near the ecliptic plane. Our solar system is believed to be about 4 1/2 billion years old. It’s thought to have arisen from an amorphous cloud of gas and dust in space. The original cloud was spinning, and this spin caused it to flatten out into a disk shape. The sun and planets are believed to have formed out of this disk, which is why, today, the planets still orbit in a single plane around our sun. URL_0"
],
"score": [
46,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://earthsky.org/space/planets-single-plane"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l63ttd
|
If our planet is rotating and shooting through space, why do we see stars as dots of light instead of blurred lines across the sky?
|
I’m sitting here trying to sleep and this is keeping me awake.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxxh6x",
"gkxxxj3"
],
"text": [
"Because we are very slow compared how far away they are. Imgagine you drive a whooping 150 Miles per hour with your car. Far away objects like mountains still don't blurr because in relation to their size and distance you're still slow. Bushes on the roadside are a different story though.",
"The stars are ridiculously far away compared to our movement. It’s like how a mountain in the distance doesn’t change location as you walk around town. Check back in 50,000 years from now, and the stars will be in slightly different positions. Partly due to us moving, partly due to them moving."
],
"score": [
31,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l63yd2
|
What is the difference between credit and debit?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkxyb3k",
"gkxyafc"
],
"text": [
"Credit is not having any apples, eating your friend's apple and giving two back. Debit is having an apple and eating it.",
"When you pay with credit you don't actually have to have the money. A debit card draws money directly from your bank account. A credit card doesn't. You're borrowing money from Discover or whomever. We don't tend to think of credit cards as borrowing since the interest rates are so high that nearly everyone just pays them off immediately. As for why to use credit cards: * security - When you use a debit card you're basically leaving around information that leads directly into your checking account. Way easier to deal with fraud with a credit card. * Building credit - If you don't have lots of assets and don't have a history of borrowing and paying it back, it can be hard to get a loan. Paying off a credit card every month is one way you can make yourself look like a safer borrower."
],
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18,
7
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|
[
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[
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|
l6483x
|
How does the human body differentiate between abrasions and cuts or stretch marks? And if the body sees them similarly, why do they heal differently?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkyabb1",
"gkyu28g"
],
"text": [
"Not sure what you mean? It depends on the depth/extent of the injury. If the damage reaches to the basement membrane separating the skin from the underlying tissue, the skin can't repair itself properly so it \"paves it over\" with a bunch of collagen fibers, forming a scar. A stretch mark is essentially the skin tearing itself from the underlying tissue growing too quickly.",
"I think what you are asking is more about how they heal, and what concerns you have for each. Stretch marks are of no concern, think of it more as scarring from quickly growing skin. An abrasion, which could also be called a cut in some cases, generally has a \"slice\" look. A flap, if you will. You want to get into the wound and clean it out to avoid festering bacteria causing infection. Then, in some cases, stitch it back to hold it closed and aid in the healing. A puncture is a little trickier. It usually plunges bacteria much deeper, and creates a sort of suction on the way out, closing the wound. Often you'll want to make sure to bandage and use antibacterial ointment on these for several days. Tetanus is also a factor for any dirty wound. So it is less about how your body \"views\" the injury, and more about what to watch for in wound care."
],
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22,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l64h4e
|
Why are UFC/MMA fighters heavier during the fight when compared to weigh ins? Then,What is the point of weigh ins and weight classes?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gky1z61",
"gky24de"
],
"text": [
"The weigh in takes place prior to the fight, but close to the fight. The purpose is to ensure that both fighters are of similar weight so that the fight is “fair”. Conventional thinking would say that the fighters should train at that weight for a while. But what they do instead is train at a heavier weight. They want the extra strength, muscle, etc. They might be a few days away from the weigh in and be several pounds overweight. Then what they do is take extreme measures to quickly lose water weight. They will stop drinking and exert themselves to lose lots of sweat. They drop several pounds very quickly. They weigh in just under the limit, and then the next day rehydrate. It’s to gain an advantage.",
"Former Wrestler: The weigh-in process (in general) is a bid to qualify in a weight class beneath yourself so that you have a weight advantage on your opponent in the match. Because of that, I would purposely dehydrate myself before weigh-ins by doing things like wearing sweatpants, getting into a thick sleeping bag and going to sleep for a few hours before weigh-in to sweat out moisture. Then, after weigh-in, I would rehydrate. There is more to it, but this is ELI5 after all. I hope this helps you understand the discrepancy in weight from weigh-in to match."
],
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7,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l6505d
|
How do stocks work and how do you make a profit off of it??
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Shares of stock are tiny fractions of ownership in a company. The two main ways to make money are “buy low, sell high” and dividends. The first means that you buy shares, hope they increase in value and then sell them. So you buy shares of Apple at $50 and when it’s increased to $150 you decide to sell and buy Tesla shares. Dividends are quarterly payments from company profits that some companies make. They are typically about 1-3% of share price but not all companies pay them, choosing to reinvest profits into growing the business. There are also companies who pay out larger dividends because they are stable, slower growth companies (like utilities).",
"Let's say a company makes $100 million a year in profit, and pays all its profits as dividends. There are 50 million shares of the company in existence. So for every share you own, you get $2 every year. Own 100 shares, you get $200 per year. The price of the stock is how much you pay for that income stream. If the stock's trading at $20 per share, it means you pay $20 now to get $2 per year. This is expressed in the P/E ratio (Price / Earnings), which in this case is $20 / $2, which is 10. P/E is like the \"price tag\", how much you pay for $1 of annual profit. So if you buy 100 shares for $20 each, you paid a one-time cost of $2000 to get a steady income of $200 per year. The dividend isn't guaranteed to stay the same. The company can increase or decrease its dividend, usually in response to increased or decreased profits. Also the company can choose to invest some of its profits in improving itself, for example, instead of paying all $100 million to shareholders this year, it instead pays $80 million to shareholders and uses $20 million to create more / better products, or open / remodel stores, or save up a \"warchest\" of money immediately ready to respond to some problem or opportunity. There are two basic strategies long-term investors use to make a profit: - Dairy farmer / value investing: Buy a stock for $2000. Get a $200 check once per year. After 10 years, you have more than your original $2000, and you continue to own the stock which continues to give you $200 per year (or more if the company's continued to improve). - Meat farmer / growth investing: Buy a stock for $2000. Hope the company is successful, and you'll eventually be able to sell the stock to someone else for $3000.",
"Stock is a claim to ownership of a small part of everything the firm owns. Things, generally speaking, have value. If a firm seems like it's growing a lot, selling more stuff and the like, people may be willing to pay more for a share of ownership in the company than they did before this growth became clear. If you bought the stock earlier you may be able to sell it now for a profit. In a nutshell, you can earn money by buying something, waiting until it becomes more valuable, and then selling it.",
"There's 2 ways to make money off of stocks. Dividends and buying low/selling high. Dividends are money the company decides it can share with their shareholders. This is basically the profits that they decide not to reinvest and instead send to their shareholders. Buying low/selling high is generally seen as the \"real\" way to make money in the stock market. In general, if the company is doing well, their stock price will rise much faster than whatever they pay out in dividends. That second aspect leads to an interesting phenomena. You know how CEO's are generally paid in stock? Well, paying them in stock adds shares in the company to the market. This should cause stock prices to go down because there's a larger supply. But that generally doesn't happen for companies that are doing well because of investor demand for the shares. In reality when CEOs are paid in stocks, the shareholders are actually paying their salary. Not the company itself. This is why it's such a common practice, companies are offloading the cost of their CEO to the shareholders.",
"Let's say 3 friends decide to start a business. Adam contributes $50k, Bob contributes $25k, and Charlie also contributes $25k. The business then purchases equipment: computers, desks, machines, product etc. This $100k represents the business's \"Capital\". It then issues 100 \"shares\" of stock. Adam gets 50 shares, Bob and Charlie each get 25 apiece. They \"Share\" ownership of the company. You can say they bought each \"share\" of stock for $1k. This is the \"Share Price\" of the stock. Over the next year, the business earns revenue of $200k. It pays its employees, Dan and Evan $100k, buys more equipment for $30k, and has other expenses like electricity and water for $10k. The leaves $60k in profit. This profit is taxed and the business is left with $40k. This $40k is split between the owners according to the number of shares they own. Each share gets $400 ($40k/100) so Adam get's $20k, Bob and Charlie get $10k each. This payment is called a \"Dividend\", which as income to Adam, Bob, and Charlie is also taxed. Between the 3 of them, they only make $30k. The $60k in profit for the business turned into only $30k of profit for the owners. When you hear the phrase \"double taxation of dividends\" this is what is meant. But we aren't done. You see, the business bought $30k of equipment so the business now has $130k in capital. Each \"share\" isn't worth $1k anymore; it's worth $1,300 ($130k/100). The share price has gone up. This is called \"Capital Gains\". Now, since Charlie owned 25 shares last year, and owns 25 shares this year, he hasn't experienced any income so this Capital Gain is not taxed even though he has made a profit. The profit only exists \"on paper\" it is not \"realized\". & #x200B; Now Frank comes along and thinks \"Hey, this stock made a 30% increase AND paid a 40% dividend. This is & \\^$#ing amazing! I wish I owned some of this stock.\" Of course, Adam, Bob, and Charlie think this too so they aren't willing to sell any shares for $1,300. Charlie is willing to sell 10 shares at $1,800 and Frank agrees. Charlie bought his 10 shares for $10k and sold it for $18k making $8k in profit (and only now does he pay \"Capital Gains Taxes\"). Also, guess what just happened to the Share Price? In this way, the share price becomes divorced from the actual value of the business and more about people's expectations about the business's future value. Now that, I hope, you see how there are 2 ways to make money on stocks, Dividends and Capital Gains, you can see how tax policy encourages different business behaviors. Tax dividends to shift towards capital purchases and share price increase, or tax Capital Gains to shift towards paying out profits. Each has their pros and cons."
],
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4,
4
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|
[
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[
"url"
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|
l65ziu
|
How do they know what chemicals your brain is producing in response to certain stimuli when it should involve opening your head to watch it?
|
They say that the brain releases dopamine when X happens, or releases oxytocin when X happens, etc. How do we know that's happening inside somebody's head without cracking their skull open?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkypq1o"
],
"text": [
"Mostly indirect evidence, eg. we know that X is swirling around your brain because we took a blood sample and its high in Y which corresponds to X in scenario Z. Alternatively, we injected you with X which makes Y light up on your brain scan while we show you pictures of your parents getting handsy. Sometimes semi-direct evidence, like having brain cells in a petri dish and observing them respond to stimuli or chemicals. Sometimes also direct evidence like actually having a rats skull open and continuously probed as scientists(hopefully) feed the rat sugar or something. All of it builds a knowledge base which is used to make accurate observations via indirect evidence."
],
"score": [
11
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l661od
|
$GME? What has happened? What did Melvin Capital do for this to happen?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkycr0q",
"gkyfuv9"
],
"text": [
"Melvin basically gave IOU(I owe you) papers to people with the stocks then sold them expecting the stocks to be lower when those IOUs are cashed out. Some people noticed and bought stocks to raise the price. Everyone with an IOU asked for the stocks back since the price was higher, and Melvin was forced to buy them at a higher price, which caused the price to keep raising.",
"1. Huge short positions in GME as the hedge funds and institutions al investors were betting GME goes the way of blockbuster. 2. When you short you borrow stock sell it now with hopes that the price is lower and can replace the borrowed shares by buying lower. 3. Retail investors got enough mass to make GME price go up. 4. Institutional investors still have to buy shares back to replace the shares they borrowed at some point, however, it gets more and more expensive. 5. The brokerage that loaned the shares says we are nervous that you will not be able to buy back the shared we loaned you because they are getting extremely expensive so we will force you to either give us cash as a collateral or you need to give some shares back now. 6. Institutional investors are forced to close their position, meaning they buying at the market price which also causes the price to go up. Short squeeze is under way, but it is also important to know that when these short positions get closed the stock will drop like a rock. The retail investors that bough in at a high point and don't sell soon enough will learn there no longer demand for the stock and they will lose a lot of money too."
],
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3,
3
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|
[
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[
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|
l663e2
|
How does energy change form?
|
For example, we have chemical energy in the form of fuels and can convert that chemical energy into electricity. How does that process work? How can we turn kinetic energy of wind mills to electricity? How does sunlight turn into heat energy? How come we can measure energy in Joules when there are so many forms of it?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkydi84"
],
"text": [
"Most of it works with expansion of gasses, which in turn drive a turbine generator. Heating up water (by means of focussed sunlight, heat from radioactive decay or burning any fuel) turns it to steam which expands. This expanding gas pushes through a system of pipes until it reaches a turbine generator that exchanges the rotational force of the turbine into electricity. Similarly, an internal combustion engine (like in a car), burns fuel inside the cylinders, the expanding gasses from the explosion push the pistons which then turn the crankshaft and creates the rotational force that drives the wheels."
],
"score": [
4
],
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
] |
l66459
|
Why does transparent plastic become opaque when it breaks?
|
My 7yo snapped the clip off of a transparent pink plastic pen. He noticed that at the place where it broke, the transparent pink plastic became opaque white. Why does that happen (instead of it remaining transparent throughout)? This is best illustrated by the pic I took of the [broken pen]( URL_0 ).
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"Yay finally my time to shine! Plastics are made of polymers, which are long molecules, all entangled together - imagine cooked spaghetti. In this state, the material is see-through. This is known as amorphous, and is the reason glass is see-through too. When you bend the plastic, you stress these polymer chains and stretch them out. This allows them to align together, imagine raw spaghetti. In this state, the polymer chains can crystallise, and this blocks light. Crystallisation is essentially just the process of creating an ordered structure of atoms or molecules. To prove this, try heating the plastic up a bit, and see if it goes transparent again. The heat allows the chains to move back into their relaxed position. Source: have a degree in Materials Science. EDIT: Seems most of these other answers are contradictory, shows how misinformation can spread. Best is to just read up yourself: URL_0",
"Probably a combination of 2 things 1. The broken side isn't smooth any more. Rough surfaces get hazy since they diffuse light that passes through them. 2. Plastic tends to bend before it breaks. When it bends, it's ripping apart in a bunch of tiny cracks which traps air. These gaps and air bubbles diffuse light similar to reason #1 Source: I am a programmer and 3D artist who deals with surface materials and light transport equations for most of my day. Basically I get paid to ask the question \"Why did the pen turn opaque when it broke,\" and re-create it 😁 EDIT: I didn't think I would have to explain this, but a lot of you seem to be confused what the term \"Artist,\" means. I do a lot of product visualization, which means making things *look* photorealistic. I do this by understanding *common surface properties* that apply in a lot of cases and applying them in practice to reach the desired result. While this leads me to have a more in depth knowledge of surface behavior than the average person, I am not a molecular scientist, nor do I claim to be hence why literally the first word of this post is \"Probably.\" While there weren't when I originally posted, there are currently much better answers here now, so to those people who's day this post apparently ruined, I hope you have a better day from this point forward 😊",
"Plastic polymers are structures of relatively ordered chains of hydrocarbons. When you put stress on this structure, you're breaking apart molecular bonds in those chains, causing them to form small void spaces in the structure as they're displaced and rearranged. These voids refract light differently than the rest of the structure, causing the opacity you observe.",
"Basically, think of plastic like hair. What do I mean? Well, plastic isn't a solid material like glass or metal. Instead, it's made of tons of small strands that look kind of like hair. Now, think of a Queen's hairdo - let's take Elsa from Frozen as an example. Imagine her hair all nice pretty and shiny, and maybe a bit translucent. It's all perfectly braided together, woven into a perfect bit of art. This is the clear state. It's the state that plastic is when it's fresh poured out of the mold. Now give Elsa a case of bedhead. Her hair has been tussled, and bussled, and all sorts of messed up. It doesn't look so pretty anymore. it's lost it's luster, and is all slept on with weird shapes and frizzle with a nightmare's bluster, and that reflective sheen is nowhere to be seen. Plastic when you flex it, is like giving your material bedhead, and it does like that. Whatever original look it has, it gets all messy, and it changes. In both colored, and clear plastics, this \"bed head plastic\" tends towards white as the original color properties get all messed up as the strands of plastic rearrange out of their perfect pretty original form and start to reflect the light differently then they used to. Just like how bedhead hair isn't shiny and light reflecting anymore. To get the \"pretty\" hair back, you have to melt it down again and repour it at a foundry, which is the plastics version of going back to the hairdresser. Some plastics do this super easily, some not at all. Kinda of like how if you're trying to get perfect straight hair to fold into a new Scandinavian royal hairdo, a woman like Elsa might be able to do it super easily, whilst a lady like Merida (From Brave) will have a nightmare getting her hair to lie straight enough to go into great braid, and it'll be suuuper easy to get it back out of that shape.",
"Plastics are made up of chains of molecules, when you stretch them, the molecules align, allowing bonding between the chains, this is crystallization, and results in opaqueness. In addition, when stretching the plastic on a microscopic level, voids form (this is crazing) these voids also result in opaqueness, so what you are seeing is a combination of the two effects. Even if the plastic doesn’t seem deformed on a macro level, it has been severely traumatized on a micro level.",
"Ok, here is the ELI5: Well matter is compose by small balls (atoms), that balls are arranged in basic shapes like cubic and rectangles, OR can have a \"random\" arrange. Ok so plastics can have a mix of a part that have a basic shape AND random; OR can be all random arrange. So now any material to be transparent/translucent it have to have a high %% of ONLY one of the 2 arrangements (random or basic shape), transparent plastics have in general a high %% random one (if not 100%). This occurs in a natural way, for them, if you cut it, it can or can't change in the edges (depending on how you cut it). If you stretch it, the balls start rearrange, losing his natural positions so it became les translucent/More opaque. This is due the diffraction of light into the material. Hope it is enough ELI5. Of course this is a bit more complex.",
"The substance plastic is made from in this case clear plastic is uniformly arranged like a stack of small glass windows. When you bend it that uniformity is lost and the small windows are scrambled and you can't see straight through them anymore. Edit: Words and a extra period.",
"[This has popped up on reddit before]( URL_1 ) [And elsewhere]( URL_0 ) ELI5 explanation: Plastics are like glass, they are a jumble of molecules fused into a lump. When you bend plastic you can cause tiny internal surfaces to form, like smashing a piece of glass into powder will now be white looking. You are also causing changes in density of those molecules in the plastic. You can undo it by melting the plastic like melting that powdered glass back into a single lump."
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"https://www.polymersolutions.com/blog/why-does-plastic-turn-white-stress/"
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[],
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"https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/15084/why-do-many-transparent-plastics-turn-opaque-when-deformed",
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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l669ea
|
What is the point of all the different types of screw heads?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkydi8a",
"gkyepqz"
],
"text": [
"Sometimes there are specific needs. One might need a fastener that can be used with a large torque but a small head, where Torx-style fasteners and the like are often used. Or the manufacturer may want to make it difficult to remove the screw using a obscure or custom tool interdac.",
"Some types were easier for the pioneers to make, like the flat head. But these types are garbage and your screwdriver slips out. Others, like the allen head, have good grip on your driver, but strip out if you even look at them wrong. These are also garbage. So we came up with better solutions like the hex head and the torch which give you the best of both worlds. Edit: there are also \"security heads\" that are just regular screw heads with a pillar in the middle. The purpose of these are so that people cant unscrew the doors on bathroom stalls with a normal screw driver."
],
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7,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l66a74
|
What the notion, “The fight against ape hood is fate versus free will”, means?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkyezyr"
],
"text": [
"Not familiar with the saying. But it sounds like our battle to resist natural instinct (fate) compared to us using critical thinking developed parts of our brain (free will). I.e, doing things purely based on natural instinct, is the same process as fate. Where as being human and thinking through decisions and having choice, is the notion of free will."
],
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4
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l66gd5
|
What is Bullwhip Effect?
|
I know it's got something to do with demand and supply chain, but can't seem to get it.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkyknye"
],
"text": [
"It's the supply chain version of a basic theory in control law that delays make systems more unstable. In short, it means that the farther up the supply chain you are (the farther away from the end user), the wilder swings in orders you see. This happens because each intermediate step in the chain tends to aggregate orders and work on a longer lead time, so their buffers and fear of running out of stock get larger. Imagine a three-stage supply chain for beer: brewery, distributor, retailer. Lets assume the retailer sells cases, and orders from the distributor every day and the distributor delivers it the following day, and the distributor does the same with the brewery only they order pallets of cases. A major sporting event is coming up on Sunday, the retailer places a larger than normal order on Thursday to stock up for Friday because they think people will start prepping for the \"big game\" (pick whatever event you like). All other retailers do the same, for the same reason. The distributor gets hit by several large orders at once...they fill what they can, backorder the rest from the brewery, \\*and order more so that this doesn't happen again on Friday\\*. But there's more than one distributor too, and they're all doing the same thing, so the brewery gets slammed with a \\*giant\\* pile of orders, which they can't fill either, so they fill as much as they can, backorder the rest, and \\*start brewing even more beer\\* so that this doesn't happen to them again on Saturday. When the dust all settles on Monday, the retailer is back to their normal stock but pissed off some customers because they ran out of beer over the weekend, the distributor has a huge overstock because the Monday orders are back to normal, and the brewery is sitting on a giant pile of beer with no customers. This is an overly simplified example, obviously real supply chains try to forecast and adapt, but the basic system dynamics are remarkably robust. If you use orders as your demand proxy and use that to make production decisions, you're always \"behind the curve\". MIT runs an academic game (\"The Beer Game\") to simulate this and has been doing it for decades, they have a really robust dataset and the ability for people to screw this up even in a completely transparent setting where everyone knows everything is pretty amazing."
],
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5
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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l66o0a
|
The Gamestop AMC "market manipulation" I keep reading about.
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"This is likely to get removed so I'll just copy-paste my answer to a prior thread: \"Short selling\" a stock essentially means that you \"borrow\" a stock in order to sell it, then agree to buy it back again in the future and return it to what you borrowed it from. Ex. stock is selling for $10. I borrow it and sell it for $10. Its price is falling, and later on it's selling for $5; I buy it back and give it to the lender and now I've made $5. The risk is if the price increases, you have to buy it back at that price. So if it sells for $20, I have to buy it back and I've lost $10. The danger here is there is no limit to that buy back requirement. In a normal exchange if you bought a $10 stock and it dropped to $0 you've lost $10. If you short sell a $10 stock and it jumps to $1,000 you've lost $990! Wallstreetbets noticed that a lot of companies were short-selling GME stock. How much credit you give them for this event is debatable, but there are definitely people there reaping the reward. They decided to collectively jump in and buy a LOT of GME stock (normal purchases), driving up the price and causing the large number of short-sellers to get really screwed. When the short-sellers have to re-buy their borrowed stock, it causes a surge of demand that drives up the price, which in turn makes other short-sellers have to re-buy in turn, and a cascade of price increases happens (this is the \"squeeze\"). As long as the actual holders of stock keep holding it they're reducing the available stock that can be bought and keeping the squeeze going. It's causing massive losses to the short-sellers who are forced to re-buy a portion of their shorts which drives up the cost which triggers being forced to re-buy more portions, etc. Two of the major companies involved have already lost billions. That's for the most part going to the stock holders, and word of this event going out is encouraging even more people to jump in... $600 invested may not be a lot but when millions are jumping in... that's why you see GME going from $10 to ~$200 or more in the last month. There's a lot of pressure in that sub for people to keep holding and keep driving the price up. They're aiming for at least $1,000. It's amazing for people who bought in low but there's a lot of risk when people actually start selling that the price tanks and people who have invested huge portions of their life savings are not going to be happy when that happens.",
"A few hedge funds started shorting the stock of GameStop, thinking that the company's stock price was due to go down because of contraction in the games industry. Some \"anti hedge fund\" folks started a pumping effort on the stock, encouraging people to buy and hold the stock. This is a direct attack of these particular hedge funds. This could cause the hedge funds to take very, very large losses ($B) if the pumping effort can hold the stock price high enough through the end of the month. Next month, after the hedge funds losses have been taken, time will tell the future of the stock. If it stays high, the hedge funds were wrong - so that's why they lost money. If it goes down, then the hedge funds only lost money because of the pumping effort - a success for the anti-hedge folks. If this happens, then the anti-hedge folks will have shown that hedge funds can be attacked and losses imposed on them. That will certainly be bad for hedge funds overall. The \"good thing\" vs \"bad thing\" implications of this largely depend on your investment strategies.",
"The financial services professionals predicted GME stock would tank and gambled accordingly. Those lovable autists in r/wallstreetbets decided to piss the pros off by ensuring that their gamble would not pay off. WSB gambled on a big price rise, and then did various things to make that price rise happen. GME is now hugely over-valued and WSB is loving it. At some point the laws of physics (what goes up must come down) will reassert themselves, lots of people will lose money and the financial services industry will scour WSB for some scapegoats.",
"A big investor bet that a stock would go down, and they orchestrated giant sales in order to make it so. It was so profitable that they sold more stock than was even available, which is super-greedy, but not unusual. But we found out. When you sell a stock expecting it to go down, you are required to buy it back at some point. But because we found out, we bought all the stock there was to buy. And now, they’re super pissed because we’re playing keep-away with those shares- and we’re using Reddit to warn each other about the shady bulk sales and scare tactics they’d normally use to get us to sell. So as long as we stick together, they’re going to keep losing money, because they’re paying TONS of interest on the shares they borrowed to sell. And because we keep buying, the price they’ll eventually HAVE to pay keeps going up. There is no limit to how much money they can lose if none of us sell. So now they’re going on TV and using words like “collusion”, and “fraud” to justify some legal intervention because we’re doing to them what they normally do to us. TL;DR: We’re playing keep-away against the billionaires, and Reddit is allowing us to win."
],
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119,
23,
15,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l67jpu
|
Why video streaming services are not like music streaming services.
|
Why video streaming platforms "fight for exclusive content" while music streaming platforms provide almost the same content ? If I want to watch a marvel movie I need a subscription to disney+, if I want to watch the boys it's on prime video, if it's sex education it's on netflix. I'm willing to pay 50€/month for a service that provides everything but that doesn't exist… (I know I can subscribe to almost everything at this price, but there's too much trouble switching between apps to find a specific movie). So the question is "why it is this way for video and the other way for music ?"
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkyopwi"
],
"text": [
"It's just the way things are. Video companies are willing to pay a premium to video owners to have their content on their platform. Meanwhile, partly due to the absolutely massive volume of people producing music, and to try drumming up future album sales, music companies often distribute songs rather freely, with a system of \"pay us royalties every time you play this song.\" So video gets their money upfront. Music is pay-as-you-go. Video also costs a lot more to produce than a song, which is why they tend to want money upfront, and offering exclusive rights increases the value of having that video available if it's a popular show/movie."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l67s79
|
Why does water go gluglugglug when we pour it too fast? Will it take a shorter time to empty the container if we pour a bit slower?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkypf14",
"gkyq3uw",
"gkypqjc"
],
"text": [
"Because air has to fill the empty space the water leaves behind it. If you have a container with another hole large enough to suck air in behind the water (while the contain is pouring), it'll pour faster and not have the mentioned issue. Alternatively if you can spin the container for form a vortex as the water pours out, it'll also pour faster because air can go through the middle of the vortex instead of the water having to temporarily stop so air can flow through.",
"In order for water to get out of the container, air has to get in to replace the lost volume. Otherwise you end up with a vacuum in the container and the water gets sucked \\*in\\*, not out. If you pour normally, the water comes out the lower part of the opening and air goes in (at the same rate). But if you pour too fast, the water fills too much of the opening and the air starts to meaningfully speed up to get through the opening. This causes the pressure in the opening to drop, which pulls the water up to fill the opening. Once the water fully fills the opening it's all water out, no air in, so you start to build a vacuum in the container. Once this gets strong enough to reverse the flow, the water stops and you get a \"glug\" as a slug of air gets pulled into the container. Now the water charges forward, plugging the opening again, and the cycle repeats...glug, glug glug. You almost always get a faster total flow by going just up to, but not over, the \"glug point\".",
"There's only one hole in the container, and air has to get in to occupy the space being freed up by the water coming out, so if you pour too fast you get a glob of water going out, then a similar amount of air getting sucked in, then a glob of water, etc. Yes, it would probably empty the container faster if you didn't tilt it far enough to completely block the outlet, because then air can come in at the same time as the water leaves."
],
"score": [
20,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l683tt
|
How are cosmetics and skincare products tested for safety if they don't use animal testing?
|
Do they just use humans which are taking a risk? Even if theoretically something is safe and effective, you need to actually test it to verify.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkyu7do",
"gkyv6gh",
"gkz6hkb"
],
"text": [
"Almost all chemicals used in cosmetics have been extensively tested over the last 60 years or so. However, even when a company explicitly states they do not use animal testing on products, that does not necessarily mean they do not use chemicals that the provider at some point in the past (or present) did not test on animals at some point. And yes, most cosmetics are tested on human volunteers; most actively state that they have tested under dermatological support, or have in-vitro results on human cells.",
"It differs by manufacturer, but in general they will use chemicals or a mix that they know is safe on humans without the need to test it. They know this because the tests have already been done (on humans and animals) for cosmetics already in the market. A totally new chemical untested would need significant tests run before it was allowed to be sold in the market.",
"\"No animal testing\" only means the final product isn't tested on animals. Precursor products could have been. Individual chemicals bought from other companies could have been. But also, makeup is not nearly as innovative as it's marketed to be. It is not a great mystery what this eyeshadow palette is made of: the same thing every eyeshadow palette, with some tweaks to the same pigments used everywhere ever. They pretty much already know what something is going to do."
],
"score": [
17,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l69jaq
|
Why do some nuclear detonations leave craters, and others don’t?
|
Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t, but other detonations did, like Castle Bravo.
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkz29cn",
"gkz2q5x"
],
"text": [
"It's a choice of the person detonating the bomb. In Japan, the US wanted to damage the largest area with \"enough\" damage to knock down buildings. An air burst provides high pressure over a larger area, and no crater. In other situations, you can apply the \"most damage\" to the ground by setting off the nuke right on it. This was done with a relatively short tower in the Trinity blast, leaving a crater of the glass-like mineral trinitite.",
"The Castle Bravo detonation was both 1. orders of magnitude stronger than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and 2. took place *on the ground*. Little Boy and Fat Man were detonated about 500m above ground level."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l69t7j
|
What does cooking in oil make potato stiff and crunchy, but cooking in water just makes it soft and floppy?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkz5ppz",
"gkz6642"
],
"text": [
"Potatoes are full of starch. That starch wants to absorb water and puff up. If you cook them in water, the potato starch hydrates (more) and the cell walls that give the potato structure break down and get floppy (same reason crunchy vegetables get soft when you cook them). When you fry them in oil, the oil is a lot hotter than the boiling point of water. In addition to being unable to absorb water ('cause there isn't any), the water that's in the potato turns to steam and escapes. This is where all the bubbles during frying come from. The potato gets way hotter and the water is driven off...what's left is basically browned dried out starch and \"toasted\" potato structure...without the water, that's stiff/crunchy. If you soak a chip in water, it will absorb water and go back to being floppy.",
"On contact with oil, the moisture on the surface of the potao, or any other food item, immediately vaporises, sending out volcanic jets of steam that spatter the oil. The exterior of the potato is now dry, mummified into a hard crust. Within that shell, the temperature skyrockets and the water vapour that didn't make it to the surface in time to escape is trapped. It steams the potato flesh instead, giving it that fluffy quality that contrasts so nicely to the crunch."
],
"score": [
20,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6a7if
|
How can certain liquids we drink, like coffee, soda, and alcohol, dehydrate us? Aren’t they all mostly water? Shouldn’t they hydrate us instead?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkz7xqs",
"gl03zeb",
"gkz8q0y"
],
"text": [
"this is kind of a common misconception. and everything i am about to say comes from a talk i listened to from a nutritionist who works with Division 1 (college) and Olympic athletes. If you're severely dehydrated, pretty much all liquid drinks apart from hard liquor and beer and wine, will help you. Alcohol is the real one that doesnt work well. The problem with alcohol is that the chemical alcohol is a diuretic, it makes you pee. so youre still taking in the water in the drink, but the alcohol is stimulating your kidneys and bladder to pee out more water. but even then, if you're severely dehydrated, low % alcohol beverages will probably help you than just letting yourself go without drinking anything. Another is high concentration shots of espresso won't really help you, as caffeine also stimulates going to the bathroom. But most drinks, sodas, coffees. teas, sports drinks, will hydrate you. The kicker is that they just wont hydrate you as well as plain old water. So when youre working hard, sweating a lot, you should be drinking plenty of water. But if youre just sitting around all day, a cup of coffee and a glass of soda and no water aren't going to lead to you shriveling up like a grape.",
"They do. That was just your mom trying to get you not to drink so much soda or whatever. Or beverage companies who make higher profit from water.",
"Caffeine and alcohol have diuretic effects -- they signal your kidneys to dump a bunch of extra water into your urine. If you don't have enough extra water in your system to make up for this \"water dump\", you get dehydrated. That said, coffee, tea, and soda don't dehydrate you very much because as you noted, you're consuming a bunch of water along with them -- to replace the water you'll lose. It's concentrated caffeine such as straight espresso, energy drinks, or caffeine pills that will leave you with a water \"deficit\". Alcohol depends on concentration. 5% beer will very slightly hydrate you. 13% wine will only dehydrate you a little. 40% liquor, though, will definitely leave you in a bad way. In fact, most of the cause of a hangover is dehydration, which is why liquor typically causes the worst hangovers (unless you also chug a bunch of water to compensate)."
],
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18,
3,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
l6b65t
|
How and when did the republican and Democratic Parties basically switched place regarding a minority rights
|
I’m not from the US so my question might be flawed but that’s how I see it from where I am.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkzgq7v",
"gkzh7d3",
"gkzhhjs",
"gkzklti"
],
"text": [
"The platform switch between the Democrats and the Republicans is often associated with new-deal Democrats under FDR which led the US through much of the great depression and the 2nd World War. FDR's Democrats were responsible for the biggest shifts in welfare policy in the US's history creating programs like Social Security. FDRs predecessor President Herbert Hoover is generally regarded as the President who's policies led to the great depression, with the homeless encampment in Central Park New York famously being dubbed 'Hooverville'. Hoover was a Republican and very Conservative so by this point the parties had already mostly flipped. But the switch was actually a more gradual process between the 1860s and 1936. The Democrats became more liberal while trying to attract the new Western voters while the Republicans began to appeal more to Urban centers and the associated businesses. Prior to 1936 the Democrats are often referred to as the Southern Democrats while the post 1936 Democrats are referred to as New-Deal democrats. \"The party of Lincoln\" is often used to refer to the more liberal Republican party of old. After WW2 the Democrats continued to liberalize through the civil rights movement of the 60's and 70's, while the Republicans became increasingly conservative under Nixon and Ronald Reagan.",
"In the 60s, it was primarily the Democrats from southern states that were against civil rights legislation. Democrats had been in power in the south since the end of the Civil War, and were responsible for a lot of the laws that made it difficult for African Americans to vote. When President Johnson, who was a Democrat, supported civil rights, they left the party. Republicans, especially Richard Nixon, saw this as a huge opportunity to gain power in southern states. They appealed to the racism and those states flipped from being reliably Democratic to reliably Republican. It was known as the \"southern strategy\", and you can find a lot more by looking up that name.",
"ehhhhh, it's complicated. The Republican party was, in the civil war, a very young, very radical political party and many of its members considered abolition and reparations as central aspects of the party's mission. The entire (white) South became uniformly Democrat in reaction post-war. But, especially further into the 20th century, both parties were divided along different lines than racial civil rights. City/rural, free trade/tarrifs, or foreign policy issues were dominant rather than ideas of social equality that dominate politics today. The parties had a lot more overlap, and there were democrats and republicans who were conservative or liberal, northern or southern. It wasnt really until the Civil Rights Act that the parties divided really hard on race again. Republicans in congress voted for the Civil Rights Act & Voting Rights Act - a lot of them! But, like the civil war, the whole South rejected the Democratic party whose presidents pushed for them. LBJ famously remarked \"we've lost the south for a generation\" when the Civil Rights Act passed, although he underestimated, if anything. Also, during the time of Nixon and Goldwater the Republican Party got WAY more conservative. Reagan continued this, and today we have a centrist political party and a far-right one. Far-right political parties usually don't treat racial minorities well.",
"Thank you all ! I’ll look into the southern strategy !"
],
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10,
9,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6boo4
|
How did the first ever living creatures start, how can life start from nothing?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkzilzp",
"gkzjmf0",
"gkzu5b3"
],
"text": [
"We don't know the specifics. We do know that amino acids can be produced in environments similar to a primordial Earth, so it's possible that an incredibly simple self-replicating piece of RNA just happened to form, which then could spread and evolve into life as we know it, but that's only a hypothesis that has not been experimentally confirmed.",
"Sometimes, amino acids randomly happen to configure themselves into a stable state that just so happens to have the right configuration to catalyze the reaction of other amino acids into the same arrangement. In other words: Given the right circumstances, this arrangement of amino acids happens to create copies of itself. Sometimes, those copies are not perfect, but instead, produce slightly different arrangements. This is a process known as \"mutation\". If something mutates, it might happen to turn into an arrangement that is even better at creating copies of itself than the original one. This is known as \"evolution\". The best arrangements at creating copies of themselves will end up becoming more numerous, thus creating even more copies of itself than alternate arrangements do. Eventually, the majority of arrangements will be those that are the best at creating copies. This is known as \"natural selection\". After the ocean ran out of amino acids, these arrangements could no longer spread as easily. Until some arrangements happened to randomly contain the right type of chemical bond causing them to break apart *other* arrangements of amino acids back into their constituent amino acids. In response to which, arrangements started flourishing in which the vulnerable amino acids ended up surrounded by more resistant molecules. The arms race is still continuing today. At some point we just stopped calling them \"arrangement of amino acids\" and started calling them \"lifeforms\".",
"We don’t know for sure, but the most likely explanation at the moment seems to be that some relatively simple self-replicating molecule was formed in a deep-sea alkaline hydrothermal vent. It only had to happen once, then this molecule could replicate, with copying mistakes providing the driver for evolution by natural selection to take over from there until, eventually, the first cells arose."
],
"score": [
11,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6ctjf
|
Why are there multiple different formulas for the same chemical/substance?
|
Butyric acid, for example, has C3H7COOH or CH3CH2CH2CO2H or C4H8O2 (This one also applies to ethyl acetate). Are there different methods for writing formulas?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkzr2t5",
"gkzrfow",
"gkzrigj"
],
"text": [
"All three describe the same structure in different ways. The third is the most simple, counting up all the atoms in the molecule and just listing how many there are of each. The second one is a little more complicated and describes the molecule in terms of the carbon backbone, listing which atoms are attached to each carbon. So 3 hydrogens on the first carbon, 2 on the second etc. The first one is basically the same as the second but assumes that you don't need to know how many hydrogens are on each carbon in the chain because its always pretty much the same. So only the functional group, the COOH is separate",
"The chemical formulas and also the names of the chemicals are actually descriptions of the chemicals. And as any descriptions you can use varying levels of detail. In chemical formulas you can list the formulas of different groups of the chemical separately. But how big the groups are or even where you group them is up to the person writing the formula and often depends on what is important features.",
"Technically all three are the same thing, but that's like saying 6/3 and 2 are the same thing. One is definitely preferred, but the other one may be appropriate in certain circumstances. The first one is the form I'd expect since it gives information about the structure of the molecule. The C3H7 part is a hydrocarbon chain and the COOH is the organic acid. The second one tells me the same thing, but (unnecessarily IMHO since the carbons all have the maximum number of hydrogens attached) explicitly shows that hydrocarbon chain. That form could be useful though if it wasn't full and you needed to show where the hydrogens were missing, or if it was branched and you wanted to show where the splits were. The third one is too vague. There are way too many possible ways to arrange those atoms to tell me anything useful. It could be butyric acid, ethyl acetate, or even some weird carbohydrate."
],
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9,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6d9dq
|
why is Statehood important (DC is pushing for it)?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkztd3e",
"gkzsfo1"
],
"text": [
"There are a lot of reasons. Just a few: * Taxation without representation--DC residents pay taxes but have no representatives in the legislature to speak for them * Autonomy--they can make their own laws governing themselves * In the 1/6 attempted coup, no one in DC government could call in the national guard, they had to wait for the president or secretary of defense to do so. Since those guys wouldn't do it, there was a wait of hours while the mayor of DC and the governor of Maryland desperately tried to get someone to do it. If DC were a state, the governor of DC could call in the national guard * population: DC has a population larger than that of a couple of states (Wyoming and Vermont) yet they have no representation * adds democrats to congress. If it becomes a state, DC will likely add 2 democratic senators to congress and 1 democratic congressman to the House. So for that reason, Republicans are pretty opposed to DC statehood while democrats tend to favor it.",
"Without statehood you don't get represented in the Senate or House of Representatives. That's the biggest thing by far. Several American territories want to have say in the federal government that rules over them. Puerto Rico and Washington DC are pushing the hardest"
],
"score": [
12,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6dfze
|
Why can't prices stay the same/inflation be 0%?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkzw5gi",
"gkzxgh6"
],
"text": [
"Governments control the monetary supply and try to maintain a slightly positive inflation rate. You want money to devalue by 1-2% a year so that people and companies don’t just squat on it - they have to invest that money in tangible assets or businesses and keep the economy rolling. If your money didn’t lose value - or worse, gains value - there’s an incentive to hoard it. Making sure money stays invested and not sitting in McDuck vaults is part of the central bank’s mandate.",
"0% inflation is an unstable point. Like setting a ball on a sloping driveway, you can't make it stay still there. It's unstable for inflation because if there is no cost to invest money, then people with money have no incentive to spend or invest it because it will be worth just as much next month. As a result, they spend less and the economy slows. 1-2% inflation is like a little crest in the driveway. The ball can be rolled there and stopped there, but it won't go there on it's own."
],
"score": [
10,
5
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6dlt1
|
Why does blowing on a candle extinguish it, even though fire needs oxygen? When you blow on embers, they start to glow, but on a candle, it kills it. Why?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkzv2up",
"gkzv68m",
"gkzw2c9"
],
"text": [
"Solid wax doesn't burn. Even liquid wax doesn't burn -- the heat of the flame vaporizes the liquid wax in the wick, turning it into a gas. This gas mixes with oxygen in the air, so it can burn. When you blow on a candle, you are adding oxygen, but you are also removing the gaseous wax faster than it can vaporize from the liquid. Since there is no longer enough fuel to sustain the flame, the candle goes out.",
"Fire needs oxygen, fuel, and heat to continue burning. Oxygen is usually free from the air, fuel comes from the candle wax, and the reaction itself generates heat. A fast, strong wind does provide more oxygen, but it also removes heat. Remove heat faster than the fire can generate it and you’ll kill the reaction.",
"The candle is solid, but it's the gas form of paraffin that actually burns. It's not spontaneous burning, but it will keep burning if there is a flame. The heat from the flame vaporizes some candle, conveniently right at the base of the flame. When you blow the flame away from the wick, it's not there to ignite the gas and the flame goes out."
],
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10,
3,
3
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6dy5z
|
What is happening in your body when you eat something that makes you feel sick, but not enough to actually vomit?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gkzyxf4"
],
"text": [
"Vomiting isn't an open/shut type valve (like turning on a garden hose) - it takes a lot of different signals triggering different muscles throughout the body to vomit. When you eat something that makes your body thing \"POISON!\". The stomach can detect many different toxins, poisons... and mistake a few things for them too. The stomach reacts by releasing a bunch of different chemicals into the blood that go up to the brain to evaluate what to do. The more of the trigger the more chemicals are released. At the point the brain starts to react. The reaction is going to be stronger if the signal is stronger. First your body starts anticipating throwing up by coting your mouth with saliva to protect against the stomach acid. Then your diaphragm starts to contract putting pressure on the stomach. At same time your body will involuntarily inhale air, since the next step is the closure of the lungs to prevent breathing in vomit. Then your stomach's sphincter seals shut ensuring the content of your stomach only has one way to go. Then your abdominal muscles contract to increase pressure, and you vomit, then start sweating to cool yourself down. If the signal to the brain isn't strong enough, only a few of these things might happen in anticipation of a stronger signal coming. So, your mouth my start watering for instance. Another issue might be the stomach is mostly empty, meaning more pressure would be needed to induce vomiting, but the signal isn't strong enough to get there (you might experience dry heaving as the abdominal muscles contract, your airway is shut off, but you don't vomit.)"
],
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7
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[
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] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6f0t2
|
What does it mean if the short interest is 140% of the float? Like how is that even possible?
|
I understand what short selling is and that the float is the shares available on the market for trade. But not the other stuff
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl07m7u"
],
"text": [
"The same share can be shorted more than once. To keep it very simple, let's say there's a company with just a single share on the market. You borrow that share from someone named Aaron with a promise to return it and then sell it immediately to someone named Bryan. You then borrow the share from Bryan with a promise to return it and sell it immediately to someone named Clark. Now you have an obligation to return one share to Aaron and one share to Bryan. but there's only one share that exists, so the short interest is 200% of the float."
],
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12
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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l6fhwz
|
Why do we associate mint with “cold” and pepper with “hot”?
|
What quantifies a food as being “cold” / “hot”? Mint and pepper are two examples that come to mind. They are two foods that do not objectively have a temperature, but are for some reason always classified as cold or hot, respectively. Anybody know the answer to this?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl08wso"
],
"text": [
"Well, it's not that we \"associate\" these with hot or cold. The chemicals in that food actually trigger the *same* *nerve response* as actual hot or cold do. From our brain's perspective, they are identical to \"true\" heat or \"true\" cold. All of the sensations we ever have are just our brains reacting to some kind of stimulus, and there are countless ways to trick our brain into experiencing the \"wrong\" stimulus. Mint and spice are just two of the more safe, cheap, and common ways of doing so."
],
"score": [
37
],
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[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6fvun
|
Why do whales not get cancer?
|
I thought cancer risk increases with higher body mass.. so why are the largest creatures alive like blue whales not covered in tumors?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl0bysf",
"gl0c0qo"
],
"text": [
"They certainly can get cancer, but the answer lies in their genes. They have some interesting genes that seem to have developed or even evolved faster than the rest of their bodies would suggest, and several in particular that regulate their cell cycle, proliferation, and the process of in-cell DNA repair. Basically, all the things that maintain healthy cells.",
"That is actually called the cancer paradox. It's not quite clear whyly, but it is to be assumed that large animals simply are better at dealing with cancer. On very fascinating idea is that of metacancer. The amount of cancer that would kill a person won't bother a whale much, so it can keep growing until the cancer may get cancer... As In rapidly growing cells that compete with the tumor. And that, in effect limits it's growth to manageable level's."
],
"score": [
8,
8
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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l6h29t
|
How are songs remastered?
|
It seems that on Spotify all the Beatles songs are remastered. What exactly is a remastered song, is it not just re-recording a song?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Remastering basically has two components: reworking the mix and \"restoring\" the audio. Studio gear, even back in the day, typically records each instrument and vocals onto separate tracks. That's re-balanced, along with often having some equalization applied, to provide a \"polished\" final sound for various audiences. FM isn't very good at transmitting the highest and lowest audible frequencies, and back then a lot of audio gear wasn't good at reproducing the highest frequencies either. So an old FM mix tends to have boosted bass around 80hz and treble somewhere in the 7k-10k range to give the impression of a \"full sound\" where a vinyl production wouldn't have those boosts. Things like that. So in a remaster they re-work the balance between those different studio tracks (where it's still available) and tweak the equalization to match modern tastes. For \"Restoring\" the audio, there may be loss from the recording material, the microphones themselves weren't great at recording the highest end and some things like that. We have algorithms now that are intended to bring out or clean up missing or distorted sounds from technological differences, degraded recording media and so on. It may be cleaning up static or trying to restore the very upper end \"sparkle\" to things like cymbals or sibilance to the \"s\" sound in vocals. Bringing out that kind of thing is more art than science and is a lot about taste. So...that's what a remaster is for, adjusting the mix to modern tastes and playing around with some equalization/digitization magic to try and make it sound like a brand new recording on the best gear.",
"Songs aren’t just recorded at once, on one microphone. Each instrument and singer usually has their own microphone and are frequently recorded separately so that each of those elements can be mixed together by the band and producer. Remastering a song involves going back to those original recordings and mixing them again. This could mean any number of things like boosting/lowering the relative volume of individual elements to emphasize different aspects of the song, applying or removing EQ or other effects like reverb, or simply creating a stereo mix from a mono recoding. Often times for older songs it involves re-digitizing the master recordings at a higher quality than was previously possible too.",
"It is not in fact re-recorded! Imagine a song being a car. In the old days, when you bought it, a red car was all the rage but through the years, the color has faded, the polish doesn’t look as fresh anymore and the red color is not modern at all now. You don’t build a new car from similar materials, because you like the car. You take your car to be sanded down to the metal, and then you have it repainted in a new sparkly and much more modern color, and you add a nice new polish so it really shines and looks as it was a brand new car. Basically when a song is mixed and subsequently mastered, the raw sounds recorded such as the drums, vocals or sounds from the amplifiers, are edited to fit better together. This is done with a range of tools such as reverb, delay, saturation, compressors, limiters or even equalizers to highlight certain frequencies of an instrument or the whole song, and in general setting the volume of one instrument compared to the others. Some mix engineers prefer specific parts of a song to be louder and quieter than others for example how much the vocals are in front or ‘hidden’ deeper in the mix. When all of that sounds good, the song is mastered to ‘glue’ the whole song together and make sure that it is at a specific volume matching all other songs out there so there isn’t a big difference in volume when the radio or Spotify switches from a Beatles song to a Katy Perry song. But why do it again now, so many years later? There can be many reasons, but for example with The Beatles, they were some of the first to record electric guitars so since then we have learned a lot about recording, mixing and editing electric guitars. They may be very rough on the original songs and generally not ‘pleasing’ to listen to. The equipment we use today has also evolved a lot so everything is much more clearer now. Something that a mix engineer couldn’t hear 40-60 years ago can much more easily be heard on modern studio monitors and seen with modern visualization tools. That way we can now control the frequencies much tighter. Song is mixed and mastered depending on the primary listening medium. If you mix/master for vinyl it is going to sound different from streaming, simply due to different storage methods. The old Beatles songs were recorded on an analog medium (tape) and has since been converted to a digital media to use on Spotify, and surely some quality would be lost in that conversion. So in short, a remaster *may* also mean it has been re-mixed (not remixed), but it could also just be only the final polishing of the song to ensure it has more clarity and fits better with our modern ways of listening to music. An engineers job is always for the music to sound as good as it can on as many devices as possible - some people have hifi speakers worth thousands, others will listen on their smart phone speaker.",
"So essentially all of the raw vocal and instrument tracks were recorded one each to a \"track\" which was literally a track on a tape. You've heard of a 4-track or whatnot, it means that tape deck could record 4 different tracks. Nowadays, each \"track\" or if you want a mic or a line in from an instrument gets recorded digitally. So the process of \"mastering\" is how you go from those raw tracks to the single finished \"master\" track i.e. what gets sent to the record/tape/CD factory. It involves mixing all of the tracks together at one of those mixing consoles with all the knobs, controlling fade, echo/reverb and a bunch of other effects, relative volume, left/right/fade etc. to get the desired effect. Back then, lots of times a lot of compromises are made in the rush to get an album made - studio time wasn't cheap (and very few artists had all the mixing and recording gear at home). Plus you needed a skilled recording engineer ($time) etc. Maybe your engineer didn't make your hot guitar solo sound the way you wanted, but you ran out of time. Maybe the keyboard synth was too loud and you couldn't hear the wicked bass line. Maybe you always wish you'd put a cool reverb on the vocals of a chorus but you didn't have the equipment to do it. Maybe the sound mix just was muddy and uck, maybe the master tape sent to the record factory was mistakenly one of the bad tapes and the vinyl sucked because of it. Maybe the lead singer never liked the album version of his singing because he had a sore throat that week at the studio, he/she might actually re-record that song's vocal tracks. Who knows? Remastering all these old tracks are going back to the raw tape recordings where they exist and rebuilding, remixing the entire song from the ground up. Its a bit like a movie director putting out a \"Director's Cut\". Its how the artist really really wanted the song to sound but didn't get it right back then. To give an idea of what that might look like, check this post out. A recording engineer \"remixes\" a song by Def Leppard: URL_0 Each channel or vertical bank of controls/meters/sliders corresponds to one of the raw recordings (guitar, each drum mic, vocal mic, each keyboard etc.) Ill be curious to see how remastering albums trends in the future now that good quality audio equipment can be had for home studios and with computers you can pretty much go back and fix whatever you like whenever you like.",
"You basically take the original, highest quality recordings and then redo the final \"mastering\" process of the songs, except this time it's for a new medium. You also might need to redo part of the mixing stage, which is a bit more complicated. Mastering is the final stage of music production, you send the mixed song off to an audio engineer and they make it sound as loud and clear as possible for the intended medium (be it vinyl record, CD, etc), all while testing it on different audio setups, removing certain resonances and audio hiccups and such. Remasters usually try to make songs sound better for modern audiences and streaming platforms, following all the suggested guidelines regarding volume and such. Songs from the 60s, etc, were meant to be listened to on vinyl record or the radio, not headphones in a pristine digital audio stream. So the mastering engineer's job (or even mixer if the songs need to be mixed again) is to make the songs fit this new world, to squeeze all the new juice they can from those original super high quality recordings they've got stored somewhere. If you're also remixing (which is quite common), you'd also be redoing parts of the mix itself to fit modern sensibilities and such, maybe the song is very old and the drums are too quiet/badly mixed, who knows! anyways, hope this helps!",
"Often in posts like this there is one reply and then the next reply contradicts it, and so on. I’m very pleased that here the replies agrees with each other. Bravo! You all got my upvote."
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|
[
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[
"url"
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l6h5l1
|
Why do you go light-headed when you take in a really deep breath, or get up too quickly?
|
Using the Wim Hof method of breath excercises, sometimes go dizzy, and always makes me yawn. - Why?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl0yxc7"
],
"text": [
"Disagree with above explanation. This process happens too fast for blood CO2 or Oxygen changes When you take a deep breath and hold it, it’s called a valsalva. It transiently increases your the pressure in your veins, so your heart reflexively slows down. (Try this yourself feeling your pulse). When you stand up and breath out, you simultaneously release the pressure in the blood vessels and blood pools in your legs (by gravity). It’s called orthostasis. Your body then reflexively tightens the veins in the lower body the combat the pooling, but it takes a second. During that time you have lower blood pressure and a slower heart rate, your brain gets less blood and you feel dizzy"
],
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3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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l6h9i8
|
how do spaceships have propulsion in a vacume with nothing to thrust against?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"gl0kwng",
"gl0k5ig",
"gl0lwxw",
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"text": [
"> nothing to thrust against? There is something to thrust against: their own exhaust. It's counter-intuitive at first, but it's no different than jumping off the ground on Earth. You use force (provided by your legs, or by the chemical reaction in rocket fuel) to push something you have contact with (the Earth, or the fuel) away from you, and you move in the other direction. And yes, if you jump, you push the Earth away from you with the same force as it pushes you up. It's just way heavier, therefore it only accelerates by a tiny tiny amount.",
"Newton's third law is responsible here: \"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction\". If you were wearing roller skates and holding a baseball, and you threw the baseball away from you, you'd start rolling the other way. You don't go as fast, but that's because you weigh more than a baseball. Rocket exhaust isn't pushing against anything - it's just being thrown backwards _really_ fast. This is makes the rocket go the other way.",
"It's Newton's third law of motion: Every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. Basically imagine you're sitting on a swing and have a bowling ball, if you throw that bowling ball you will actually move back as well.",
"You’re thrusting against the mass of the material you’re firing out of your nozzle. You use force to make it move (quickly) out of your engine and since every action results in an equal and opposite reaction, you are propelled.",
"Take your machine gun and go out in a rowboat. Shoot it a bunch. The recoil is going to push you and the boat, right? you're not pushing against the air, or the water. You're pushing against the bullets, and the bullets are pushing against the gun, and you move in opposite directions.",
"Sit in a swivel chair and swing your arms from side to side. You're going to turn and move much more than air resistance will explain because you're pushing against the mass of your arms. In a spaceship, the rocket exhaust is filling the role of your arms. It's very light, but it's being pushed away very, very hard."
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|
[
"url"
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[
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|
l6i1le
|
Why do your hands feel numb while warming up after being exposed to bitter cold?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl0ovo0"
],
"text": [
"In order to conserve core body heat in the cold, the body restricts the blood supply to your extremities when you are exposed to extreme cold. Blood carries heat from your body, and pumping it through your hands and feet provides a lot of surface area for that heat to escape. By limiting how much blood goes to those areas, it limits how much of your body heat can escape and concentrates your body heat in your core, thus protecting your vital organs and keeping you alive. This restricted blood supply is what causes the numbness, and the tingling you feel as you warm back up is all of the blood rushing back to those areas."
],
"score": [
3
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6i5b7
|
why do eyelids randomly start twitching for a few seconds?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl283ua",
"gl25ajh"
],
"text": [
"This phenomenon is called a fasciculation. It is caused by a spontaneous action potential, which makes the muscle contract involuntarily. It actually happens in every muscle in our body, but other muscles are too big and the area it happens is less sensitive so we are less likely to notice it!",
"I've asked my parents about this before, pediatricians, and they said it is due to tiredness, lack of sleep, and long times of focus. I have also noticed (with myself at least) that it increases during exam periods, which would make sense here, with all the reading (focus) and lack of sleep. Your twitch my be different from mine, I may have misunderstood them, etc... so don't assume this comment is directly from a doctor."
],
"score": [
14,
5
],
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[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6i976
|
'Why do we get wet from cold things?'
|
Miss 9 wants to know why we get water on the outside of our glasses, straws etc when we have a cold stuff inside like cold water?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl0trc0",
"gl0r5ct",
"gl0rcgh"
],
"text": [
"Since neither the question nor any of the answers given thus far have mentioned it, it’s called “condensation”.",
"There is water in the air at all times. Hot air holds more water than cold air. When the air cools, if there is too much water in it, some of it gets squeezed out. This is why you will sometimes see few on the grass in the morning. The air cooled over night and squeezed out some of the water onto the grass. Cold objects, like glasses of ice water, cool down the air immediately around them. This causes some of the water in the air to condense onto the surface of the glass.",
"There is water vapor in the atmosphere. The water molecules separate and attract due to the temperature. When the temperature on a surface is low enough, the water molecules get closer together. Enough of the water vapor molecules get together then turn into liquid water."
],
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8,
4,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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l6ibmu
|
How can I have a normal body temperature but still be cold?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl0quak"
],
"text": [
"When the air outside is cold and the molecules of air hit your skin, your skin transfers some heat energy to the air. So the air bouncing off your skin basically sucks the heat off your body. And hypothermia is when the air is sucking the heat off your skin faster than your body can heat your skin back up."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6id7x
|
How is it a Full Moon tomorrow (at least where I'm at), but 99.6% illuminated compared to 99.8% illuminated the next night?
|
I use a moon following app and tomorrow is considered a Full Moon but 99.6% illuminated. The next night it is 99.8% illuminated but considerd a waning gibbeous.
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl0uv6w"
],
"text": [
"The full moon is on January 28 at 19:16 UTC. What time it is for you depend on your local time zone. The full moon is at the same moment for any location on earth. The app you use is likely correct but hides some information from you. Because the illumination of the moon changes during the day it has to pick some time or calculate an average illumination for that day. It could also be something like the illumination when it is higher in the sky for you or the average value in the sky. So it is not unreasonable that some definitions like that result in slightly more lunar illumination the day after the full moon. If the used value is the illumination for the start of the day then if the full moon is after 12:00 is should be larger at the start of the next day. I would use [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) for moon data and it shows a small difference in illumination depending on where you are on earth. I found values from 99.2 to 99,4% right now."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/phases/"
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6ioos
|
What does it mean to 'short' a stock, and why has it made Game Stock shares worth hundreds of dollars?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl0txlb"
],
"text": [
"Short selling involves borrowing a stock from someone who owns it with the promise to return it at a later date, and pay a small fee based on the value of the stock. You then sell the stock, wait for the price to drop and buy it back at a cheaper price. You then return the stock to the original owner and pocket the difference. This allows people to make money off of a drop in the price of a stock. Unlike with regular stock trading, however, the potential losses of you are wrong are not limited. If you buy a $10 share in a company and the company goes bankrupt, you lose $10. If you short a company with a $10 share price, and that price jumps to $100 per share, you just lost $90. Since the start of the pandemic, GameStop has clearly been struggling in a big way. Such a big way, that a lot of people, including major hedge funds, decided to short GameStop. A lot. Let’s say I own a share of GameStop stock and you want to short it. I lend you my share, and you sell it. Now someone else wants to short the stock as well, so they borrow the share from the person you sold it to and then they sell it. And so on. If this happens enough times, you can have more people who owe back a share to the “original” owner than there are actual shares of the stock. This happened to GameStop which had 140% of its share sold short. This presents a problem for short sellers if the price of the stock starts going up instead of down, because there aren’t enough shares to go around if they decide they all need to cut their losses and buy back the shares they owe at once. Some smaller investors, including those at r/wallstreetbets, noticed this happening to GameStop’s stock and decided to take advantage. They bought up a bunch of shares themselves, driving the price up and further limiting the availability of shares. This caused some short sellers to pull out, which drove the price up further, which caused more short sellers to pull out, and so on. Meanwhile, the attention brought to this story and the quickly rising share price caused more people to buy the stock in the hope of taking advantage of the meteoric rise in price to make money themselves. Back in the summer, you could buy a share for $4 apiece. Yesterday, those same shares were $147 each. Today they’re $360. The big hedge funds that were selling the stock short are currently literally billions in the hole while the smaller investors are making money hand over fist. That all said, GameStop is still a struggling company underneath it all. It is nowhere near as valuable as its current share price, which means that, eventually, the bubble is going to burst and the price is going to come crashing back down. Anyone who buys in at the top expecting it to keep shooting up is going to lose a ton of money. Anyone still shorting it at that time is going to make a ton of money, and anyone who bought it early and sells before it pops is going to make a ton of money. It’s not entirely clear whether the hedge funds are going to wind up actually losing billions in the end or if they can recoup some of that when the bubble bursts (they may or may not come out ok), but there are definitely going to be a bunch of people currently riding the hype train who lose whatever they invest at this point."
],
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3
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|
[
"url"
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[
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|
l6jutx
|
Why do men suddenly "lose interest" after ejaculating ?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl12iiv",
"gl18q2n"
],
"text": [
"If you're expending more energy in sex after already procreating, you are wasting energy. Also it's not \"losing interest\", it's a refractory period. If your male partners are losing interest in you after sex, you need some better partners.",
"Evolution, oxytocin, and vasopressin. ( Males are here to \"plant the seed.'. While women have to rear the offspring. So us women are more picky, and look for things like protection, status, and these days money, cars ect (Because through our history the higher the status, the more likely our offspring is to survive) While men look at clear skin, bright eyes, shiny hair ect (as all of this is indicative of health of the woman and therefore will produce good offspring) so it's already in the male Brain to plant his seed with as many woman as he can to produce offspring. (Side note... Only like 3-4% of mammals are monogamous.. and the male and female are normally the same in size) but back to your question. what makes our males monogamous? Let's start with the stages of relationships and the hormones released So lust or just sex is about our testosterone and estrogen hormones. Attraction is dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin Attachment is oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxxytocin is the main female bonding/ love hormone that is released Durning sex... (as well as other times like breast feeding so we bond with out offspring) Vasopressin is the main hormone in men that influences /bonding/love that's released during sex. Both cause a release of dopamine. Males that are monogamous have a high concentration of these vasopressin receptors in their brain, causing them to relate that flood of dopamine to be after cumming to be related to a specific partner. While men without this high concentration do not relate the \"feel good\" to a specific person but to sex itself :) There's a pretty cool study about montane voles (polygamous ) and prairie voles (monogamous) prairie voles respond to vasopressin by getting a high, making them want to stay with that mate, where montane don't. BUT when scientists switched the amount released of vasopressin/ oxytocin the montane became monogamous and prairie voles became polygamous! I can geek out on this subject and ramble on, but if this seems interesting to you, look up evolutionary psychology. Oh and a great book called \"the male Brain\" Just adding. This does not mean every man or every woman follows this. there are always variables. But we can't try to push away or hide our evolution bc we don't like or agree with it. Edit: to add more detail"
],
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4
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|
[
"url"
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[
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|
l6k2h0
|
Loudness in regards to music production.
|
I've been reading about the "Loudness War" and the "wall of sound" approach with sound mixing and I can't really conceptualize what means. For me loudness is determined by the volume knob regardless of how the song was mixed but this is clearly not what they're referring to. So what is "loudness" in this context and how does it affect the sound on the listener's end?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl18bxw",
"gl186pl",
"gl19a65",
"gl18n4h",
"gl18vza"
],
"text": [
"When music is recorded there is an absolute minimum and maximum value for volume that can be stored on the media. Think about the minimum as the floor (zero feet) and the maximum as the ceiling (10 ft) and the song volume as jumping in between the two during quiet (floor) and loud (ceiling) parts of the song. Lets say that you have a song where the loudest part is a 7 as played but when you record it you want it to sound like a 10 so its louder than other songs, that’s OK, you can just bump up all parts of the song by 3, so your 7 becomes a 10, the 6 becomes a 9, the 5 is now an 8 and so on. Then on the next release you want it even louder so you bump up all parts by another 3, the problem is that the parts of your song at a 10 can’t go any higher, 10 is the max. Furthermore other parts of the song that were at a 7,8,and 9 are now also all at a 10 for volume! So when the song is played those parts of the song which were originally at different volumes are now all equally loud (technically called “clipping”). This ruins the soundscape of the music because parts which were originally louder and quieter relative to each other are now all at the same level of loudness.",
"Let's listen to a song. It starts off quiet, but becomes louder as it picks up. Do you change the volume knob during this process? The song starts with a specific loudness, and the volume knob then multiplies this. That way, quiet moments stay quieter and loud moments stay louder. So, what if instead, we made the whole song a 'loud moment'?",
"Let's see if I can keep it ELI5: Let's take for example Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. It starts out softly, just acoustic guitar and a flute comes in. These sounds, as you'd expect, are soft. The song builds, bass and drums come in, and then acoustic turns into electric guitar and bombastic vocals. It's LOUD! Now, this is great for critical listening: Under quality headphones, or on your couch listening through a hi-fi setup, which was popular and common when the song was released in the 1970s. But, if you're listening in your car, the soft parts might be too soft for you to hear the music over the road noise. So you turn up the intro. Then, damn the loud parts are so loud that the sound gets distorted, it hurts your ears, and you end up turning the loud parts down. Then came the 1980s when cassette Walkman players became popular with their open-air mini headphones. Now the outside sounds of the bus, cars, whatever are intruding on your soft music. So again you're turning the volume up and down again. So, sound engineers came up with a solution: Remaster the song with the soft sounds turned up, and the loud sounds limited so they're not too loud or overdrive your amplifier, even if your amp is a cheap Walkman or factory car stereo. The result is what we audiophiles call \"brickwalled.\" If you look at the song on a graph of loud vs. soft, the original has soft parts and loud parts, but the brickwalled version looks equally loud throughout the song. [Here's an article]( URL_0 ) with a graph to show what I mean. So while this may help you enjoy the song in your car or over a Walkman, when you critically listen through your $10,000+ home hifi system, it sounds horrible. The dynamic range (differences between soft and loud) is gone. The loud parts might be squashed to the point where it just sounds terrible. In our Stairway to Heaven example, the opening softness drawing you in, with a crescendo to a glorious loud, bigger-than-the-sky sound...it's just gone. The excitement has been taken out. We people with good audio systems hate this.",
"Without going into the physics of it - the \"wall of sound\" is basically cranking the volume up and removing all dynamics - as in, the difference between quiet notes and loud notes. Think of a piano recording, or even an orchestra. It's not all 100% loud, right? You want to hear the quiet moments, you want to hear the loud moments. The wall of sound removes that difference and just has it all at the \"loud notes\" level. This is very popular in pop music, or the kind of music you'd expect to hear on the radio anyway.",
"Can I recommend that you listen to some symphonies (any, choose randomly) to feel the power of good dynamics? Quiet notes add suspense, anticipation. Loud notes are exciting, satisfying. New music is a lot of instant satisfaction, but there's not much build up. It's just BAM tune! then over. One example of a similar scenario is yummy food. Sure, it's good to eat. It's amazing to eat yummy food. But to smell it cooking beforehand adds anticipation and makes actually eating it feel even better. I think of the quiet notes as smelling food cook. You know what's coming and you develop a taste for the flavor, you start anticipating it. Then the orchestra crescendos, the tune climaxes in full volume, and you eat while your taste buds dance for joy and satisfaction. In the 80s, music producers started only being loud, the value of soft notes seemed to be lost. People noticed. Maybe things will turn around, and full range of dynamics will come back to modern music."
],
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9,
6,
5,
3,
3
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"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.shockwave-sound.com/blog/the-loudness-wars-over-compression-and-its-impact-on-music-quality/"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6kfp3
|
Why is the potential difference the same across a wire?
|
I’m trying to understand how a potential difference can be the same across a wire. If voltage is joules per charge then I understand why the energy per charge would remain the same across the wire, but the term potential difference makes it seem like the potential energy changes across the wire. I’d appreciate any help understanding this. Thanks!
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl15yyr",
"gl16lti"
],
"text": [
"If the potential were different at one end of a wire relative to the other end, charge would flow from the high potential end to the low potential end. It's like water in a still swimming pool. If the water were higher at one end, the water would just flow to the other end until the surface was level.",
"I think you've just gotten tangled up in terms while your understanding of what's going on is stronger. Along a (perfect) wire the *potential* is the same. That means that the *potential difference* across the wire is zero. If the potential changed across the wire then that would mean that as charge moves down the wire it loses energy. That energy has to go somewhere, and in general in physics if energy is going somewhere the first place to look is heat. Real world wires do have a very small potential difference across their length when current is flowing, but often it can be rounded off to zero--if you're losing a lot of energy in your wires you probably need better wires."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6kljy
|
Why did Game Stops stock skyrocket today?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl16x3f"
],
"text": [
"It started when a hedge fund shorted the stock, driving prices really low. This means they borrow the stock in order to sell it, so they get paid whatever money the stock is worth now, but then they have to buy it back after a while to give it back to whoever they borrowed from. If you think the stock is going to go down, you get to sell a stock now for maybe 10 dollars, but if it goes down like you think it will, maybe you can buy it back for 5 dollars later. Now, the problem is that they sold more shares than actually existed, driving the value far below the stock's actual value, and people noticed this. The hedge fund still has to buy back those shares though, even though they're losing a ton of money on it, so the people selling can ask for basically whatever they want."
],
"score": [
12
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6l2fi
|
What's the difference between extracting a zip folder and just opening it?
|
There doesn't seem to be a difference between just opening a zip folder (navigating inside) and using its contents and extracting them to the folder it's located in. What's the difference, if there is one?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1bmbr",
"gl19hce",
"gl1l684",
"gl1a9le"
],
"text": [
"Windows extracts or expands the file you select within a zip file in the background. It is actually written to the drive in a temporary folder and then executed or opened.",
"when you only open it, everything is stored in RAM, not to disk. If you extract it, the extracted files in their full form are stored to disk",
"If you browse the content without extracting and open a file, it will unzip itself anyway, but only that specific file and in a temporary way (cache) that doesn't require disk space. The problem is, sometimes complex files like applications and design assets are linked to other ones in the same folder, so if you only open one it may not work properly.",
"The zip file contains two things. First, an index of files that it contains, and second, the contents of those files. When you open and browse around a zip file, you are just navigating that index. If you have an application that supports opening files from the zip, then all its doing is extracting the file into a temporary path and opening it, and then later cleaning up."
],
"score": [
9,
4,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6l6df
|
Why is it so hard to find motivation and have self-discipline?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1d2hh",
"gl1a3cz",
"gl1ruws"
],
"text": [
"It's a skill just like any other that people just weren't taught in school. But look at learning English. You had to learn English to communicate, you couldn't give up and say no. It didn't matter if you liked English or not, you needed it so you developed it. But you didn't do it alone in your room with grammar books and flashcards. You were social, you watched tv, you talked to other kids, you listened to adventure books, it was fun. So the 3 simple keys to motivation and discipline is putting yourself in situations where you need to make it happen. Put something on the line, bet money, commit to a performance, even just buying a class and investing that money gives you less reason to quit. And second make it social. Learn a language with others, get a trainer that pushes you, surround yourself with others that won't let you quit and that motivate you. Ironically to develop self-discipline you need other people. You start going to the gym to take a class with a group, and after some time you can go more times without them, then you can workout without an instructor, then you can develop your own routine and push yourself. And last, it needs to be fun. Kids learn English from cartoons and power rangers. Like if you want to lose weight maybe you hate running but riding a bike is fun, or swimming is fun. Maybe you don't want to give up candy but try replacing it with your favorite fruit. Or instead of soda you make your own sweet tea and lemonade, even if there's a lot of sugar it's going to be less than soda. If you want to learn an instrument you start by learning songs you like. Apply these 3 things and you got it.",
"Your brain is a creature of habit. If you’re not very motivated and controlling of yourself then it continues to act that way. You have to actively think in motivation and control otherwise the brain will never change",
"This all depends on if you are neurotypical or neurodivergent. If you are neurotypical: you may see a lack of self-discipline of motivation due to a lack of ‘skill’ in the subject. Similar to the Sims, you have to put in time and effort to level up that skill. If you don’t work at it then you will stay in the same track. This is all due to the process by which your brain works. The brain is reliant on neural pathways and if the pathways are not used or infrequently used it will be harder to use those pathways. The more they are used the easier it is to do them again. u/TheNerdChaplain does a really good job of offering techniques to increase this process. If you are neurodivergent: You could be experiencing ‘Executive Function Disorder’ which could be result of Anxiety, ADHD, Depression, PTSD, or a physical trauma to the brain. This will see a huge decline in self-discipline, despite the want or ‘motivation’ still being there. You may also see a decrease in motivation or drive with Depression or Bipolar Disorder (Depressive Episodes). Ultimately if you feel like you are struggling, see a therapist. Trust me when I say that everyone can benefit from therapy. They can help you to learn effective techniques to develop better self-discipline. If the therapist feels like you have issues more closely related to neurodivergent instead of neurotypical brains then They may suggest seeing a psychiatrist to be prescribed medication. Best of luck. Source(s): - Training in Psychological studies via BSN and BA of Biology and Psychology. - Personal Experience"
],
"score": [
37,
8,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6lkxh
|
why are certain features attractive?
|
I understand why men would like big boobs and big butts (fertile) and why women would like strong men (protection), but why do people find thinness, facial symmetry, certain eye colors, face shapes, lips, etc attractive? and why are people attracted to different things?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1e41e"
],
"text": [
"It's literally all learned behavior. Like even big boobs, there are cultures where big boobs aren't attractive or even sexualized at all. It comes down to exposure. Whoever took care of you and loved you as a child, those traits are what we like in people as we get older. So if your mom had long red hair, and never wore make up. You wouldn't look at a girl and think of your mom, but you would link that to feelings of love, safety, happiness, etc if you had a loving mother. And also the media. If you look at fashion and beauty in America it's directly linked to the people with the most publicity like Marilyn Monroe and Kim Kardashian. Kim is curvy, wears a lot of skin tones, doesn't like jewelry, dark but even tan, etc. And those traits have been shown repeatedly for 9 years or so and now they are what is considered attractive. If you look at the hot girls from the 80s and 90s young people today might find them average because they were exposed to different images."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6lmc6
|
" How or why is having a late sleep schedule harmful to health?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1e65r"
],
"text": [
"The science around sleep isn't as straightforward as that. It's more important that you match your body's natural circadian rhythm than sleep at a specific time. Some people's natural rhythm is later than others. People who sleep later do have worse outcomes on average, but the reason isn't well established. That effect might be from people whose real rhythm is earlier who have fallen into a bad habit of late sleeping, which is easy to do in the modern world of electric lights and screens. It's hard to tell the difference between that and a naturally late rhythm though, since studies have also shown that people on a poor sleep schedule think they're perfectly fine but before-and-after mental tests can tell they aren't actually doing so good. So which are you? It's more probable statistically that your boyfriend is right. But there is an outside chance that your natural rhythm is much later than most people's. Testing it is a bit of an ordeal, you have to follow proper sleep hygiene and take several weeks to try shifting your schedule. After a month of trying that, making sure not to ruin it with late night lights and screen use, if you never get that feeling of \"oh wow, this is what life is supposed to feel like?!\", and you go back to sleeping later and it's all fine, then I guess you really are very late-shifted and you shouldn't mess with that. (NOTE: I'm not a doctor, but I pay very close attention to anything sleep-related that comes through my life and it's paid off bigtime for me)"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6lqgc
|
how do stocks work?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1dwgy"
],
"text": [
"A business has the option to \"go public\" and let other people buy partial ownership of the company, investing in the business. They become a shareholder in the company, and can get to help make decisions about the company's future, and in some cases get paid a bit of the company's profits. The company gets the initial money from the people who buy into it. People who own shares of companies can buy, sell or trade them. If you think that the company you invested in is doing poorly, you may try to sell your share, your partial ownership, and use that to instead buy a share in another company that you think will do better. Some people are able to become very rich by buying and selling stocks, shares in a company."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6lwwl
|
Why does it hurt when water touches an open wound?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1fa2q"
],
"text": [
"Water has a polarized molecular structure, meaning when it comes into contact with a nonpolar, and often lipid substance such as a wound (the blood tends to cause it to be lipid and plasmized) it has a ionization reaction which basically means both the water and wounded cells are trying to get away from each other"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6lzc5
|
Music theory - How do keys and octaves work?
|
I understand that keys and octaves are different and sound different but how does a song or tune sound the same in a different octave or key? How can something sound different enough to be recognisable yet sound the same so that it seems normal when heard?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1h1u9",
"gl1h724"
],
"text": [
"Unless you are one of the very very rare people with perfect pitch, you don't \"hear\" music as pitches - you hear it as *intervals*. So if I play a C and then an E, you won't know I played a C and an E without taking an instrument and strumming for a bit until you find pitches that match. But you (at least if you've trained your ear to any degree) *will* recognize the interval between C and E as a major third. Even if you haven't trained your ear, you know what this sounds like even if you don't know the name to match it. You would recognize the interval from F to A as a major third as well, but without playing the two back to back you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two. In general, you recognize melodies through a combination of these interval structures and the rhythm between notes, and not through pitch itself. So if I play a key, then drop by a fourth and play that note, pause briefly, jump back up to my root note, and then run from my root note through the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th of the major scale built off that root note, you'll recognize the opening of the Legend of Zelda main theme *no matter what note I started with*, because you go \"oh, that's the series down a fourth, up a fourth, pause, run up a scale\". (More generally, you'd notice the motifs of \"drop a fourth\" and \"run up a scale from first to fifth\" even in isolation if you're familiar with the tune. You'd also probably recognize it if I used a minor scale instead - and you'd feel the tension when I hit the minor 2nd and 3rd of the run up the scale because they're not the notes you're expecting.) The complication comes in when you deal with actual instruments, whose sounds *are* somewhat different in different ranges. A tuba, for example, is a necessarily low-pitched instrument, and so your choice of key for a tuba piece *does* matter to the quality of the tuba's sound - but not to your recognition of the melody itself.",
"Okay so in western music there are only 12 notes A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# and then it repeates infinitely. And octave is when you play the same note 12 notes up but it's the same note. So in the same way you can have Dark red, Red, and Light red. You can have a low A, mid A, and a high A but they are all still A, right. And octave is like that. A key is a subset group of notes like the key of C is C D E F G A B C, so not all the notes just 7 of them, the key of C just so happens to be all the white notes on a piano. So something interesting about music is you aren't really hearing the exact pitch in a melody but the distance between the notes. So if I played a melody like C E G E from the key of C that's the 1st note, 3rd note, 5th note, and 3rd note of the scale. Then if I play in a different key lets say the key of D which uses the notes D E F# G A B C# D and play D F# A F#. Because that's also the 1st note, 3rd note, 5th note, and 3rd note it's essentially the same melody but starting from a different point. So even though the colors are different it's the same drawing if I continue with the the paint analogy"
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6m0ip
|
App developing and patenting
|
What’s the deal. You have a great idea you want to make an app. How does one regular ol’joe shmoe go about creating and patenting an app/idea ?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1h448",
"gl1kkl8"
],
"text": [
"If you don’t know how to do it yourself, you hire someone who knows what they’re doing. if you want to patent something, hire a patent attorney.",
"Oh hey, I can answer this one! I’m a UX/UI designer at a software dev company and custom designing apps for people is our entire trade. When you work with a company on something like this, they’ll be able to provide you with custom design & development and you still keep intellectual property (well at least that’s how my company does it). If you’re serious about your idea feel free to ask me anything!"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6mifk
|
Why otc medicine dosage goes by age but doctors use your weight?
|
Why does your doctor go by your weight when prescribing medication dosages, but the over the counter stuff always goes by age? Even though I am 25[F] I only weigh like 90 pounds (I'm 4ft 12in). When I take allergy medicine or cough medicine, I either have to take the children's version, or take a half dose of the adult version. Whole doses of adult versions of OTC meds are way too strong for me.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1kmq8",
"gl1jcvi",
"gl1mdiz"
],
"text": [
"With the exception of Tylenol (one of the deadliest drugs out there, seriously look it up), the difference between a standard dose and a lethal dose is fairly large. So although you might get knocked out by 2 Benadryl where as I can take 4 and safely drive, you would not be in serious risk of death even taking my dosage. Meanwhile there really isn't a ton of medicine per capsule. Drug companies have to market for the stupidest customer, so they need to make sure that it's relatively hard to overdose on their product. They also have a vested interest in getting you through that bottle as fast as possible so that you buy again. At one point an aspirin company doubled their sales numbers, simple by upping the recommended dosage from 1 pill to 2. Now compare this to prescription drugs. It's on the extreme side, but lets look at Fentanyl. Go to your sugar dish, and very carefully count out 4 individual grains of sugar. That's the lethal dose of Fentanyl for a human being. So in conclusion, drug companies plan their products in a way that means you really have to go overboard to hurt yourself (and thus looser dosage guides), meanwhile serious drugs require much more precise dosage.",
"Actually even with OTC medication you should go by weight first, if that is unknown then age. It has to do with how well the medicine will take to saturate the body, so say your overweight/obese it will take more to actually saturate and be effective, as well as how fast someone's body may eliminate the medicine.",
"All medications have an effective dosing range, from the minimum amount necessary to have the desired effect, to the maximum amount that is safe to be consumed. Over the counter medications are fairly safe, and most have a fairly wide effective dosing range, wide enough that the average adult can safely take the recommended dose and it would be effective, with lower doses for the average child within certain age ranges. The reason you may need to take the children's dose for some medications is that you are an outlier, well below the average weight for an adult, at least in your current country, and thus have a lower effective dosing range closer to the average child within certain age groups. Very large and/or heavy individuals would also be considered outliers, requiring a larger dose than the average adult for the medication to have the desired effect. Prescription medications, however, tend to have much narrower effective dosing ranges, and much more dangerous effects if not taken properly, such as toxicity, kidney or liver damage, etc., which is why the doctors calculate your specific effective dosing range by your weight and then determine your dose from the dosage forms that are available in commercial pharmacies."
],
"score": [
17,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6mopr
|
How come in TV shows they always make a huge deal about the victim saying they “don’t want to push charges” when in reality, the system can still charge them for the crime? What does a victim “pressing charges” actually mean?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1n56n",
"gl1ndki"
],
"text": [
"On TV, its a trope to push the drama. In real life, it is extremely more difficult to convict someone of a crime if the victim doesn't testify, or if the jury thinks they're unwilling to testify",
"Depending on the crime, an uncooperative victim can make it difficult for the state to successfully prosecute a crime. So if I’m a victim and “pressing charges” basically what it means is that I’m accusing someone of a crime and willing to testify or provide evidence."
],
"score": [
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6mse5
|
what are interest rates
|
Hi, I don’t know a whole lot about interest rates. I’ve never had to loan anything. I know interest rates are the principal charged by a lender for being able to borrow the money. I know that low interest rates can make the economy look like it’s doing well when it’s not, but why? Why are low interest rates bad? Why do people think that we need a higher interest rate? Why would people want to pay back way more when they lend something? The only reason I could think of why a higher interest rate is good is because it shows stability in the economy. Can someone please explain this?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl2342r"
],
"text": [
"I'll ELI5 why low interest rates pump up the economy. You are right that loans create a chance for failure, but personal loans are less important than business loans here. Let's say I own a huge company. We're doing well, and we want to expand. Now if I own a big company, I probably don't actually have a lot of cash available. I'm constantly buying more inventory, paying employees, etc. And for my biggest clients, I keep a running tab open for them and they pay up every few months. So I have lots of reliable income coming in, but don't have millions in cash on hand to pay for a major expansion. To grow my business, I'll have to take a loan. For a successful business like mine, there's almost no chance I'll default. So the next question is, WHEN should I get the loan? For a big loan like this, the interest is expensive, so getting a lower rate could save me a lot of money. If the rate is really high right now, and I expect it to drop soon, I'll wait and delay my expansion. If the rate is really low and I think it'll go up soon, I might decide to do the expansion sooner than I intended, because I don't want to miss out on this good deal. So when the rates are low, it encourages extra economic growth. The next thing to consider is the monetary supply and velocity of money (how frequently a typical dollar is spent). Let's say I go through with my expansion plan. I buy new equipment, hire new employees, pay to have a new facility built. Every dollar I spend goes to someone else. My employees might buy a bigger house or a new car. The companies that I bought products from might use the extra profit for an expansion of their own. The money gets respent on MORE economic activity. So if a lot of companies take loans like this at once because of the temporary low rates, it has a big impact on the economy. So what's the downside? Remember how I said that I was gonna expand my business anyway, I was just deciding when? All the low interest rate did is make me do it sooner. And now a lot of people are spending money, but there's the same stuff available to buy. So companies start raising their prices. Everything gets more expensive, and this is called inflation. If the rates are kept too low for too long, inflation is a negative side effect. Let's say I'm a middle class who has been carefully saving for retirement my whole career. Well now everything is more expensive than I planned, and my savings are worth less. I wanted a comfortable retirement, but now I'm gonna have to settle for a more affordable plan. The key to a good interest rate is to try to have slow, sustainable economic growth. We don't want to cause too much inflation, but we also want to encourage economic activity."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6mtjg
|
If more sleep than required/usual (9hr+) is bad for body, why does the body enjoy it and doesn't break the sleep when our body is refilled back?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl225r2",
"gl2bl3c",
"gl1lpz0",
"gl2arxq",
"gl1td3s"
],
"text": [
"Wait since when is oversleeping bad for the body?",
"That's kinda like asking \"if NOT exercising is bad for body, why does the body enjoy sitting around doing nothing and doesn't break sitting around doing nothing when the body is refilled back? Sleeping too much isn't bad for your body because you're *sleeping*, it's just that doing absolutely nothing isn't as good for the body as doing things. It would be equally unhealthy to lie awake in bed for a long time every day.",
"lemme guess, you just woke up from oversleeping, didn't you ;) ?",
"It’s also possible something is disrupting your sleep and rem cycle. My fitness watch often tells me how I got about 8 hours of sleep in a 9.5 hour period.",
"Being sick or sad can sometimes make you tired and sleepy. If you sleep too much, you won’t go outside to play or do fun things to stay healthy. When you are happy and healthy, you don’t want to sleep too much because you have so many fun things you want to do instead. So if you are feeling extra sleepy and don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, think about why. If it is because you feel sick or sad, you should talk to someone about it."
],
"score": [
27,
23,
20,
15,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6mw9j
|
What the fuck is happening with wallstreetbet
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1lxxa"
],
"text": [
"It's basically a modern version of the plot of the 1982 Eddie Murphy comedy \"Trading Places.\" Some hedge funders were betting a stock will fail. They borrowed shares of GameStop stock and immediately sold them with the plan to buy them back later at a lower price, then planned to return the stocks and keep the difference as a profit. Then reddit decided to bet the stock would do well. The price went up. The people who bet it would fail still have to get those shares back at whatever the price is. There's essentially no limit to how much money they might lose. They may go bankrupt and then some."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6n191
|
what the hell is geomining?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl26czp"
],
"text": [
"Geomining is the collection of location data. Currently, apps like Google maps on your mobile device track where users are at any given point in time. This data is anonymous but can be sold to companies interested in knowing traffic patterns. This can be used to target advertising in high traffic areas or to route shipping to avoid high traffic areas. There are probably a ton of other uses for the data as well, but those are two of the most obvious. The ads you are likely seeing are from companies trying to build a location database. In exchange for anonymously tracking your location, they offer rewards."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6n86y
|
Alchemy. What exactly is it?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1npvp",
"gl1nll4",
"gl1or0q"
],
"text": [
"Alchemy is, or more accurately, *was* a pseudoscience that spawned a real science by accident. Humans observed long ago that you could transform some things into other things. This was the beginning of what we now know as chemistry, but well before we knew what limitations were placed upon these transformations it was believed that *in theory* you could turn whatever into whatever else. Alchemy was the study of this transformation.",
"It was basically what existed before Chemistry. It was mainly concerned with turning other metals into valuable metals like Gold. They didn’t have the technology to do it. Today, we can turn lead into gold, but it requires a nuclear reactor and costs more than the resulting gold is worth.",
"Alchemy was an early attempt to understand the forces in the world we'd come to describe as chemistry. Since we didn't have much foundational understanding for what we were learning going in, alchemical studies tended to involve a strange combination of reasonable scientific observations and high mysticism."
],
"score": [
18,
10,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6naqc
|
What's the difference between a Neoliberal and a Leftist?
|
Both of these ideologies seem left-wing, but what's different about them? What does one believe that the other doesn't? What conflicting ideas do they have?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1p357",
"gl1px45"
],
"text": [
"Neo-liberalism is the opposite of leftism. A neoliberal is someone who believes in free market capitalism, deregulation, privatisation, and and reduction in government spending. They are conservatives in the “Reagan Republican” mold. Leftists are less well defined as a specific ideology, but the “direction” tends toward more socialist forms of government. They are, in many ways, the opposite of neoliberals. Recently, some people have tried using neoliberal as a “liberal” counterpart to the term neoconservative, which arose as a global interventionist ideology, but it doesn’t have a good definition as to what it’s supposed to mean in that sense, and trying to use it that way runs counter to how the term has been applied for decades.",
"Neo-liberalism is not a leftist ideology. Neoliberalism supports free market ideology, specifically limiting the government's interference with the market / private sphere. It also promotes individual responsibility and austerity (in public policy), and in general more aligned with right-wing values. I'm genuinely interested to know what makes you think neoliberalism is left-wing.. A leftist is not an official concept, but it describes someone who supports socialist and/or progressive (i.e changing the system) ideology. Because it's such a broad term, leftists don't always support the same ideology. You'll have to define what leftist means to you to further unpack this concept. However, I would say that leftist people usually oppose neoliberalism, as the latter seeks to concentrate power in the hands of the few (rich elites), while the former seeks to redistribute wealth and resources. Finally, it's important to add the caveat that in political science, definitions are important, and there are several ways to define the same concept. My definitions are not complete, so this is a brief answer to a much larger discussion on the right vs. left discourse."
],
"score": [
12,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6nkag
|
What would happen if nobody was there to buy the stocks you sell?
|
So I understand the basics of it, buy low sell high make a profit. But when you ”sell”is there actually someone that you are selling it to? And buy stocks in a company means the company gains more money?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1qtgv",
"gl1twij"
],
"text": [
"When a company goes public, they have an initial public offering of stock in the company (or an IPO). The public buys these initial shares from the company, allowing the company to raise a large amount of money. All stock trades after this point are between people who bought those initial shares and other people who are interested in buying those shares. Financially, this has no effect on the company except that the shares represent a per ownership of the company, and thus who decides to buy or sell shares will, in part, determine who has control over the company, and if the company wants to offer more shares in the future to raise more money, the stock price will determine how easy it is to raise the desired amount. Every stock sale happens between someone who currently owns a share or shares and wants to sell, and someone who wants to own shares in the company. If you want to sell a share and no one wants to buy it, then you keep lowering the sale price until you either find someone willing to buy it, or you stop trying to sell. Likewise, if you want to buy a share and no one wants to sell to you, you keep offering a higher purchase price until someone sells to you or you give up trying to buy it. The “stock price” is whatever price it was last recorded as being bought buy someone at. This is how stock prices go up and down. If more people are trying to sell a stock than are trying to buy, they’ll lower their price trying to get someone to buy from them. If more people are trying to buy, they’ll offer more money to get someone to sell to them.",
"There has to be a buyer for a seller. If no one wants to buy at the price you are asking you’ll have to drop the price to bring out buyers."
],
"score": [
13,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6nkpv
|
What processes is our body going through when we get knocked unconscious?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1xeqc"
],
"text": [
"Not a doctor, but my understanding of it (gleaned after being knocked out cold) is this: the brain is floating in cerebrospinal fluid which buffers the brain from the skull. If you get hit hard enough, the brain slams into the skull, causing trauma. As a result, multiple neurotransmitters fire simultaneously, which creates an overload and a sort of ‘system crash’ (an electrolyte imbalance in brain cells causes blood vessels to constrict, cutting blood flow drastically, and hampering normative neuron operation). Once blood flow is restored, brain cells regain their electrolyte balance slowly, so even if you regain consciousness, it takes a while still to shake carryover side effects like nausea and dizziness while everything is coming back to normal."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6ns1k
|
When you buy stocks, who are you buying it from? When you sell, who are you selling it to, and can that person say “No thanks, I don’t want to buy it back”?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1ro39",
"gl1rb6f",
"gl1r5us",
"gl1r3xa",
"gl1r7mx"
],
"text": [
"When you buy a stocks you are buying it from the first person willing to sell it for the price you are offering. when you sell stocks you are selling it to the first person willing to pay what you was trying to sell it for. And when I say person here, I'm really talking about a person or a group or a company or a fund. It doesn't really matter it's the first deal that matches the offer in the sale price.",
"The computer systems all talk to each other. If you want to buy something your computer yells out \"I want XZY and I'll pay $xx.xx\" and wait for someone else's computer to yell out \"hey, I've got XZY and I'm willing to sell it for $xx.xx.\" If you're only willing to pay $100, but everyone else's computers are yelling $105 no one is going to take your offer.",
"I don't know enough to answer this with the respect it deserves but I can answer it like you're 5. Basically you buy in to the company, the value of the stock depends on how well its doing, how many people are buying stocks. More people buying than selling = rise in price. More selling than buying = goes down in price. No it cannot be refused to be bought back, but you may take a loss on the value of the stock and not get what you paid. You may get more than you paid (thats kind of the point)",
"> who are you buying it from? Someone selling stock in that company when you want to buy it, could be a hedge fund could be the company itself or could be an individual > who are you selling it to, Someone who wants to buy when you want to sell, again could be many different types of entity > and can that person say “No thanks, I don’t want to buy it back”? You don't generally sell to the same entity you bought it from but of course no one is forced to buy stock at any price",
"The initial stock, the IPO, is bought from the company in question. After that it is just investors selling to other investors."
],
"score": [
25,
13,
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6o20g
|
Why so video games have disclaimers for real people and events being coincidental, but not movies?
|
*do Like when you start up a game and how it says something like "all characters, events, etc. are works of fiction and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidence and was not intended by Jane/John Doe Studios" If it's a work of fiction, then why aren't movies and TV shows showing similar disclaimers at the beginnings even though a lot of them are also "works of fiction?"
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1tf09",
"gl1so5u",
"gl1y5io",
"gl1spa8"
],
"text": [
"Watch for the end of credit on a movie and you will see it there. Even on nonfiction they add in that some of the people and events were added for dramatic purposes.",
"The disclaimer came as a result of litigation against the 1932 MGM film *Rasputin and the Empress*, which insinuated that the character Princess Natasha had been raped by Russian mystic Rasputin. The character of Natasha was supposedly intended to represent Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia, who sued MGM for libel. Since then, a lot of movies have included that disclaimer if there's any remote possibility that it might resemble a real life person.",
"Movies usually put them in the credits, which most people don't stay and watch unless it's a Marvel movie. South Park is a good example of a show that puts the disclaimer right in front of you. Watch a movie until the very end of the credits, right before they show the studio logos.",
"They do. Law & Order is comically famous for putting up this disclaimer while blatantly ripping cases from the headlines for episodes."
],
"score": [
14,
13,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6o63n
|
What makes glass transparent?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1u21k"
],
"text": [
"So to answer this question accurately, you have to know how light interacts with an atom There are 3 things that can happen when an atom gets close with a photon of light 1. Nothing, it passes through without interaction. 2. The photon is absorbed, and an electron in the atom gains that energy. 3. The photon is absorbed, and the electron that gains the energy breaks away from the atom. Visible light isn't strong enough for #3 so only the first two apply. What is happening in glass is #1, the light passes through, but does not have enough energy to excite the electrons in the glass, so it just passes through. The same thing would happen with opaque objects if we could see in radio waves, which is why you can listen to a radio while indoors. Most other objects we can see interact with #2, and this manifests itself as different colors based on how much of that light absorbs into the object vs is emitted back out."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6op3g
|
Why bees are important?
|
Is it only because they aid in pollination or is there more to it?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1wmc2",
"gl1woic",
"gl1y9yu"
],
"text": [
"Does there need to be more? Pollination is crucial to the success of global agriculture, not just making pretty flowers. If there were no pollinators, many, many people would starve.",
"When a mother and father love eachother very much... They want to express that love physically, but plants cant so they send the bees to send eachother reproductive/fertilizing pollen to make up for their lack of legs, arms, brain and all that jazz.",
"If you eat or have eaten: Watermelon Squash Cucumbers Pickles Most fruit Honey Almonds Cashews And a few other things You can thank bees."
],
"score": [
7,
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6otx4
|
How do you short more than 100% of available shares?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl1yu36",
"gl1xx7q",
"gl1yblg",
"gl1x2ik"
],
"text": [
"Alex has 100 shares. That's all there are. Bill borrows the 100 shares from Alex and sells them to Chad. Bill borrows the 20 of the shares Chad just purchased and sells them to Diggory. There are now 80 shares held by Chad, although Chad has a claim on 20 more. Diggory holds 20 shares. Alex also has a claim on 100 shares which were lent. Chad decides to keep the 80 shares and doesn't offer to sell / release the 20 shares which were lent. Diggory also decides to keep the 20 shares purchased. Bill is SOL and has to offer increasingly high amounts in the market to clear the 120 share debt owed. Bill owes 100 shares to Alex and 20 shares to Chad. Maybe try this with Monopoly money or Monopoly properties and IOU notes. I haven't closely followed this case and I'm surprised that 120% of the shares are owed. That's very poor practice..",
"A owns 10 shares. B borrows 10 shares and sells to C, thereby shorting 10 shares. C now owns 10 shares. D borrows these 10 shares from C and sells to E. There are still only 10 shares owned now by E, but B and D each have a 10 share short position for a total short of 20. So the short position can be higher than the shares available.",
"Aaron shorts the stock by borrowing from Billy and selling to Charlie. David also wants to short the stock, so he borrows from Charlie to sell to Eric. This single set of stocks has now been shorted twice, and there’s no limit to how many times it can happen. Once the shorts start coming due, there’ll be a problem. The first one to buy it back will get it the cheapest. For the last buyer, the seller can practically name whatever price they want. Granted, I’m sure there’s some kind of escape clause or flat penalty that can be charged, but either way, it won’t be cheap for the last person.",
"It’s like playing musical chairs. Except you want to be the first one out. Not the last one holding. Because that guy is screwed."
],
"score": [
23,
8,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6p7lg
|
If we know the half-life of a nucleus, why can't we get the 'full-life' by doubling it?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl200k9",
"gl204o7",
"gl200rm"
],
"text": [
"It’s a probability. It’s like a game where everyone flips a coin and anyone with tails leaves. The half life would be how often they flip their coins. We can’t guarantee when everyone has gotten tails because one guy might get 20 heads in a row.",
"After a half-life passes, you have exactly half of your original amount of radioactive. After another half-life passes, you have half of that, i.e. a quarter. Wait for another half-life, and you have an eighth. P.S. Of course, I'm being theoretical. There is no such thing as a 3rd Half-life.",
"The half-life of a substance is the amount of time it takes half of a given amount to decay. If you took 100g of caesium-137 and waited 30 years, you would only have 50g left. If you waited another 30 years you would only have 25g left. There is no way to tell when any specific caesium-137 atom will decay, just that in bulk about half of them will decay after one half-life."
],
"score": [
10,
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6pdpy
|
what is space?
|
In that I mean, what is the fabric of space? I pretend to understand, but I don’t think I can conceptualize it. Space space is all around but also like, it’s nothing and everything? Gravity bends space, but like is space made of something? Is there something in between all of the atoms around us? Would we feel it if we were in distorted space?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl21ber"
],
"text": [
"Space is just the universe, boiled down it is likely just different forms of energy. Some energy has turned into matter,, i.e. stars and planets.. other energy is fields like the electromagnetic field and a good % of the universe, like 75% we have no idea what it is.. there are a lot of big unanswered questions like this.. You may as well ask... why is there a universe or anything at all. We don't know."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6ptb7
|
what is a hedge-fund?
|
I’ve been trying to follow the Wall Street bets situations, but I can’t find a simple definition of hedge funds. Help?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl29pmj",
"gl2iul4",
"gl2cctp",
"gl2iqin",
"gl2wk9d",
"gl2wmvg",
"gl24m0r",
"gl2xh9b",
"gl2feet",
"gl2xfh9",
"gl2mu5n",
"gl2xb3t",
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"gl2ekwe",
"gl2i6vv"
],
"text": [
"You and I as individual investors can trade a company's stock, bonds, commodities etc. on a public market. Then there are investment companies which offer pooled funds, where we can put in money and they will bundle it together and trade common securities (stocks, bonds etc.) for us, hopefully getting positive returns while saving us from having to do the work ourselves. There are different types of such funds, mutual funds being the most common – either actively managed by an investment manager or tracking some index like the S & P 500. The basic idea is to buy hundreds or thousands or more securities together to not be affected by fluctuations in a single one. Hedge funds take things up a notch. They are specialized and exclusive versions of mutual funds open only to institutional investors or very high net worth individuals. They are also far less regulated than publicly accessible funds. Hedge fund managers use very aggressive investment techniques and invest in a wider array of products than just stocks or bonds – like options and other derivatives, real estate, currencies, art, precious metals or really anything else that can be bought and sold. They often use large amounts of borrowed money (aka leverage) and so are generally exposed to a lot more risk than normal funds. They also frequently take short positions (bet that a stock will go down instead of up) in order to \"hedge\" against market downturns or take advantage of failing companies. Worth noting though that while the name \"hedge fund\" originated in the 50s and 60s because such funds would optimize their investments to reduce risk, today's hedge funds are mostly the opposite. It's more and more just a generic label used by private funds with varying (and sometimes opposite) goals and investment strategies.",
"No one has really covered the whole point of a hedge fund here. Sure, the idea is that you pick instruments (stocks, futures, options, commodities, etc.) that you expect to go up, and go long on those, and you pick things you think will go down, and go short on those. And then you do the part that actually makes you a hedge fund: Try to work out the correlations across the rest of the market to those stocks you have picked, and go long/short in the opposite direction, so that you are market neutral. Simple example: You think BP will do better than Shell, and you think BP & Shell are generally pretty closely correlated in the market. So you go long BP and short Shell. If you're right, then if the whole market goes up you make money, because although you will lose money on your short position, you more than cover that with your long given BP will go up more than Shell will. But the point of the hedge is that if the whole market goes *down*, you *still* make money, provided you were right in your analysis of BP outperforming Shell, because BP goes down less than Shell does. You have thus hedged out your \"market risk\" (otherwise known as \"beta\") and locked in your market-neutral independent profits due to your stock picks (otherwise known as \"alpha\").",
"You should think of hedge funds in investing terms similar to the difference between a basic car like a Honda Accord versus say a Ferrari. Most regular individuals will invest in stocks or index funds, or mutual funds, just like most people will have a regular car. These will only go 'long' positions (which just means they tend to only buy stock in companies they like and hope they go up for a profit). Hedge Funds are the Ferraris of the investment world, they are private and generally only accessible to the wealthy. They can use a host of different complicated financial instruments to invest money. The most basic example is shorting, basically betting against a company. How does shorting work? Example: John shorting company A Let's say you own 1 share of company A and John believes its stock price will go down. John will borrow that share from you and promise to return it at a specified date (let's call it a month from now.) So he borrows your share, sells it on the open market for its fair price, call it $100, believing it will go down. Let's say in two weeks the price goes down to $50. John can repurchase the share for $50 dollars, give you back the share worth $50 and profit $50 off of the decline of the stock price. Bear in mind this is an extremely risky strategy, because the maximum profit to be made off shorting company A would be $100 a share (because the stock can only go down to 0), but theoretically, the price can go up to anything, $1,000, $10,000, etc. In the event company A's share price went to $1,000 by the end of the month, John would have to purchase the stock for $1,000, losing $900. Extremely risky. These sorts of more complicated financial instruments are why hedge funds are only accessible to the wealthy. The US has drafted laws that are supposedly meant to 'protect' lower income and less knowledgeable investors (apparently concluded from how rich you are) by only allowing those with a certain net worth to invest in these types of complicated strategies. This is also why they charge substantially higher fees than regular investment managers (think 2% of assets managed and 20% of profits, compared to roughly 0.5-1% for a regular actively managed investment fund). Now, being that hedge funds are the Ferraris of the investment world, they should have all of the bells and whistles that a Honda does not. Sure, both are trying to make your money go up, just like cars get you from point A to point B, but hedge funds should ensure a smoother ride and only be staffed with the best talent. In reality, this isn't necessarily the case, but that is a whole other discussion. In short: Hedge Funds are Ferraris, while regular investment funds are Hondas. Ferrari is shiny, loud, fast, and seems amazing compared to a boring Honda, that is, until you realize new tires will cost you 5 grand, you can't fit your groceries in the trunk, and it costs an arm and leg to maintain. Honda actually seems like a cheaper, better way to get around that will more easily fit your needs. Not sure how well I explained it but I've worked in industry so feel free to ask any questions, happy to help answer them more thoroughly or explain it differently so it makes sense!",
"The simplest explanation: Imagine you have a candy market in town. You can buy a piece of candy from each stall, and as their supply decreases, your piece of candy increases in value as there are fewer of them. Normally you can only buy the \"normal\" candy, and only a little bit as you don't have a ton of money by yourself. But what if you and your friends went together to gather all your money and buy candy from each stall? Suddenly much more candy, and if one stall does poorly, it wont be a big problem as you have candy from other stalls. Now say you wanted to buy the special candy. The stuff not found in stalls. You would have to go together with your friends, get a bunch of money and call yourself something, so other people recognize you. One day, however, you realize: \"there are other things than candy. What if we bought things like race cars, dinosaur fossils and shoes, held onto them and sold them when they became worth more?\" So you do. You borrow money or get it from wherever you can, and risk it all on something you believe is a good idea. You've now become a Hedge Fund. Here comes the tricky part: People now recognize you. They know what you do, and that you do it well, so they want in, so you make a demand: \"you have to make this much money available so we can buy dinosaur bones, candy and anything else, and we'll share the profit with you if we make any\". Suddenly, you're an exclusive group, which means you can be tricky. People trust you when you say Twirly candy will soon be sold out. They trust you when you say Candy canes are not worth the price they cost. So you do the tricky: You bet with the other people that buy candy that Candy canes are going to drop massively in price, then immediately afterwards you go out and say \"Candy canes are not worth as much as they are being sold for.\" Suddenly Candy canes are being sold en masse. Their value drops a ton, which is normally a bad thing, but since you've bet that they would drop in value, you are now making money. This was possible because you: A: Pooled your funds with other people. B: Don't have the same regulations and oversight as other collective investors, as you trade practically anything, so you are free to bet a ton of candy is going to go down (commonly called \"shorting\"). C: Are considered an authority. & #x200B; Just to go further: This is what happened with Gamestop. A Hedgefund (collection of people) shorted Gamestop believing it would do terrible. Since they are kind of dicks with much too much money - oversimplification - another subreddit - Wallstreetbets - decided to buy a ton of Gamestop candy, so their value went up. This made the Hedgefund lose all their money, as they bet a ton on Gamestop doing poorly, and lost that bet.",
"Imagine you ask your mom to borrow her watch for a week. Now you tell your little sister that the watch is worth a lot of money, and she pays you a lot of money for it. A week later, you come back to your sister and tell her the price for a watch isn't so high anymore, and ask if you could buy the watch back for a low price. Now you give the watch back to your mom, after making money off of it without really doing anything. That's what hedge funds do, except on a bigger scale and with stocks instead of watches. They borrow the stocks, sell them when they're expensive, buy them back when they're cheap, and make millions.",
"Everyone here’s taking way too long to explain it. Wall Street bigwigs like to short stocks. This means borrowing a bunch of them and selling them off, but you agree to buy them back at a certain point in time. When you do this, you want the stock to tank in value, so that when you buy them back, you pay much less, leaving you with a large profit. Wall Street hedge funds, which are the bigwig’s mutual exchange fund, tried to short GameStop stocks. r/wallstreetbets retorted; they’re a group of small time investors and circlejerkers who artificially inflated the moribund company’s value by purchasing shares en masse. They essentially turned GameStop into a Fortune 500 company overnight, and the Wall Street bigwigs actually took a loss for once.",
"A hedge fund is a kind of investment firm that specializes in low risk, high dollar trading. Only profitable if you are VERY rich or representing some kind of group fund. The name comes from the practice of doing paired, opposing bets to reduce risk. Say you bet a lot that Tesla does well this year, but also bet a little on the off chance they do poorly. You're literally hedging your bets.",
"**There is no such thing as a \"hedge fund\"** These firms should be called by their proper name: **Speculative Funds**. They make high risk (and often highly leveraged) gambles in the securities markets, using hedging tools and techniques that were originally meant to mitigate risks (such as shorts, options, futures, and other derivative securities). They are much less regulated than traditional investment banks (JP Morgan, etc) and as such operate under the radar. They also appeal to high net worth individuals. A famous Speculative Fund, Long Term Capital Management, nearly caused a systemic collapse years ago. It was run by some of the most brilliant Financiers and Economists to ever live, which stands to this day as a testament that even the geniuses cannot predict everything. And that is what we are seeing with GME these days. A large number of Speculators gambled with very wealthy people's money and underestimated the number of people who also knew how to play their games. And more importantly play those games against THEM. And they are pissed, because peasants are not supposed to beat them at their own games.",
"It is a private pool of funds from accredited investors that can be invested however the managers see fit, as long as they can raise the money. They are loosely regulated because of accredited investor rules. Basically, the wealthy investors must (should) know what they are getting into. Hedge fund managers can be aggressive, conservative. Basically whatever they want to do that is 'legal'.",
"Actual ELI5: A normal fund invests in stocks and bonds. Basically you invest in cash-generating machines, which makes a lot of sense long-term. But nothing else is allowed. A hedge fund may invest in anything, usually derivatives but can really be anything. This is **more like taking bets**. So they take a bet with someone else on the market. “We think this cash-generating machine will generate _less_ money next year” and someone is on the other side of the bet. This is much more risky, includes different regulation, may go in the opposite direction of the market (hedge) and is not long-term in itself since it needs new bets continuously.",
"What hasn't been mentioned is that the general public is not allowed to invest in hedge funds unless you have something like a million liquid lying around. Hedge funds exist solely to richen the rich without any public benefit.",
"You're in Las Vegas at a roulette wheel. You want to win as much money as possible so you bet the long odds 'Double Zero'. But you know '00' is a long shot so you also bet on 'Red'. You wont win much much it will cover the bet you made on '00' if you dont win. That's what a hedge fund does with the stock market.",
"I want to add an easy analogy for shorting: & #x200B; Imagine there is an airline that knows exactly how much fuel they will need next month. They can't buy it now because of budget and storage constraints. However, they know how much the fuel costs right now, and they think it's a fair price. The price could go up or down next month, but they want to have security. So they find a seller that promises to sell them the fuel in the future, but to todays price. This is called hedging. The seller thinks that the price will go down, so at the time of delivery, he will buy the fuel for less than what the airline agreed on, so he makes a profit. If the price goes up, he still has to fulfill the contract, so he has to buy fuel for a higher price and make a loss. The big hedgefonds gambled on Gamestop being cheaper in the future, and sold promises to sell stocks for a certain price. Since they didn't actually own stocks in the first place, but wanted to buy them later at a lower price to fulfill this promise, they actually had to buy them at inflated prices, making them lose money.",
"Simple definition. You are Bill Gates in the 1990’s. You have a lot of wealth but it is all tied up in one company: Microsoft. That company does basically one thing, software. If Microsoft does well, you’re going to do great financially. If Microsoft tanks, you tank. What to do? In comes the hedge fund. It’s called a hedge fund because it is designed for people like you who want to reduce the risk of having all of their wealth invested in one thing by making bets on other investments whose risks that are unrelated to the bulk of their wealth. It’s a fund that is designed to hedge (offset) some risk to the bulk of their wealth. Back to being Bill Gates again. He might hire a hedge fund manager who figures out that when Microsoft’s stock goes down, Campbell’s (like the soup) stock goes up. So Bill would give that hedge fund manager money to balance out his portfolio by investing some money in Campbell’s. Hedge funds typically don’t mess with most “retail” investors because most people aren’t Bill Gates. The kinds of investments that they come up with are often pretty specific, require a lot of money to work, and are complicated. Not something mom and pop need to worry about.",
"I note that the term is VERY ambiguous and thus confusing. This is something that’s hard to give a simple answer, and I’m intrigued in the various angles from all these answers. I refer to the CFA institute as a source for one definition they provide: The term hedge fund is something of a misnomer: While some funds may employ strategies that are “hedged” in the traditional sense to mitigate or reduce risk, others may not hedge exposures or employ hedging techniques. By simple definition, hedge funds are pooled investment vehicles that can invest in a wide variety of products, including derivatives, foreign exchange, and publicly traded securities [...] For full link: URL_0"
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