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l6q31w
|
How many carbon atoms in carbon 12?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"Carbon 12 is an isotope of carbon with an atomic mass of 12, meaning it has 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons (atomic mass = # protons + # neutrons). One atom of carbon 12 is still one atom of carbon.",
"Carbon-12 is a particular kind of carbon atom. This would be like asking \"How many hondas are in a honda civic?\" In general, carbon-12 makes up 98.9% of carbon atoms.",
"Carbon 12 is an isotope. Meaning a \"type\" of carbon atom. The 12 means that there's 12 particles in the nucleus - 6 protons and 6 neutrons. Every carbon atom has 6 protons, but the number of neutrons can differ. Carbon 12 is the most common carbon isotope. The other type is carbon 14 (which is radioactive and is used for determining the age of biological material)"
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l6qija
|
Why do we go to the bathroom in clean water and not water we already can’t drink like salt water or dirty water
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"Ots all part of 1 water system. To have a whole separate line of water just for that would cost a lot of money. Also there is the issue of that water clogging, bacteria living in in and a pet drinks it, you dont really know what's being pumped through there. For health and safety reasons its better to have all in 1 water.",
"Short answer, infrastructure. There are two sets of water pipes running to your house. Clean water in, dirty water out. If we were to have non-drinkable water for our toilets, that would require a 3rd set of pipes be built, both in our house and throughout the municipality we live in. There is is an initial cost and ongoing cost to this set of pipes. In theory, one could have a tank for their house that catches dirty water leaving their house and reuses it for their toilet but there are health issues associated with storing dirty water that may need to be addressed. The problem, again, is cost.",
"Some places do use \"grey water\" or other water that isn't fit for consumption for toilets. My brother sent me a picture of a urinal at CFS Alert (high polar Canadian armed forces base) of a urinal with a sign indicating the water from the urinal is not safe to drink... These kinds of signs sounds funny, *haha why would you drink from a urinal*, but likely legally required. Definitely using a separate water source than the regular clean water.",
"There's a photo I've seen from Japan of a toilet that has a sink on the back of it. Pretty much, you wash your hands, and that water is used to flush the toilet. It's a very neat idea, and I hope it catches on"
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l6qqew
|
Why is the Vatican considered its own country, while Mount Athos isn't?
|
For those who are unfamiliar, Mount Athos is kind of like an "Orthodox Vatican" (if we're to oversimplify, of course)
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"In large part because Greece and they consider them to be a part of Greece just with a degree of autonomy. From the 8th century to 1870 The Papal state was a sovereign state like many others in Europe and it had control of a large part of what is today Italy. Look at a map of [Italy\\_1796]( URL_0 ) So it had control of land, an army, and all other things that is part of a county. They were invaded and concurred during the unification of Italy in 1870. before that Italy was a lot of small states. The pope remains in control of the old fort known as Leonine City that is not the Vatican hills there is where the name comes from today. In practice, the pope remains in control of that area after 1870 even if Italy did not consider it independent. It would be a bad political move to completely remove any sovereignty of the church in a nation that was primarily religious Catholics. In 1929 you have the Lateran Treaty where Italy recognizes that the Papal state exists as an independent mention now called the Vatican City State that was a lot smaller than the old Papal state. The agreement was in large part because the dictator of Italy Benito Mussolini wanted to appease the church and the large part of the Italian population that was catholic and religious. The church never really accepted the unification of Italy before the agreement so as a political move to get the very influential church on your side it was a smart move. So the Vatican has been an independent country for a long time and was recrated. Italy and other nations consider it an independent nation. Mount Athos has not been a state with control of large areas of land historically. Neither they nor Greece considers them an independent county so they are not."
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l6qqrd
|
If we automate almost every job there is with machines, couldn't we just get rid of the economy all together and make everything free? What happens to the economy when we need no labor?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"Well that was the promise of automation. That a doubling in productivity would result in halfing working hours and no one would be fired. But that's just not how capitalism works. Why make the same profit and give your workers some leasure, when you can double the profits and not give them shit?",
"Knowing the human's way of doing, no. It's likely to be the opposite. We're gonna be unable to produce value comparable to machine and will not be employed anymore. The people that could afford robots will thrive while those that couldn't won't be able to afford life anymore. Furthermore, if we don't need to work, we don't need to learn. If we don't learn, we'll go back to the medieval era. Any random situation where we lose power and the entire world would remain under the thumb of the few capable of repairing these machines. Basically, the lay person will lose anyway, while we're likely to lose a lot of critical thinking.",
"In our lifetimes, we might well see a \"universal basic income\" (UBI). This is where every citizen receives a set amount of money each month from the government to spend however they like (I.e. Just like a salary now), regardless of whether they work or don't work. To pay for this UBI, the government could (as only one example) tax the labor that is now performed by the robots in exactly the same way they tax your and my labor right now. Under this system, people can still get jobs to earn additional money. But those people who don't *want* to get a job or who are less productive than the machines and so *cannot* get a job, are still taken care of. If we don't do UBI, you will soon see a situation where a large percentage of the population cannot get a job and starve and then you could easily have a revolution on your hands. However, people can still vote, even if they are unemployed, and so they may well vote to give themselves a UBI... in exactly the same way they \"voted to give themselves\" unemployment benefits, maternity leave, clean water etc etc. Further in the future, where nobody has a job and machines do it all, it could perhaps be the same, except that everyone survives off their UBI. BTW, making everything free may not be the best solution for a long time because money is a very good way of signalling (to the machines) what people actually want to have. If they start spending more of their UBI on iPhones, that's because they want iPhones and the machines can then make more iPhones...if they later spend more on hiking equipment, then the machines will make more hiking equipment and less iPhones. This is far far easier than the machines *guessing* what people want (or worse: deciding what people *should* want) and then giving it to them for free.",
"> Just to elaborate, im talking about in the far future where we have robots doing just about every job You're not talking that far into the future. We're replacing cashiers. My brother sells dairy robots. The mining industry is a heavy user of self driving vehicles and robotics. 3D printers are becoming more and more sophisticated. We have software bots that trade stocks, write music, produce art. We are heading to a future where [people are going to be out-competed by machines in virtually every area]( URL_0 )."
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l6r3p3
|
How can Shorting Stocks of a Company Destroy a Company and Make Them Out of Business?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"You're right, it doesn't matter to the company in it's every day business. The people who get destroyed are the ones who bet on it. However, stock price is normally an indicator of the company's health (not so much in this insane market anymore) and that's important if you need to raise capital. It's also important to the management who have to answer to their shareholders"
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3
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l6rg67
|
how is Pi actually calculated?
|
I understand Pi is circle’s circumference over diameter, but when mathematicians use calculator to get millions of Pi digits, which specific numbers are they dividing?
|
Mathematics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"There are different computational methods for calculating digits of pi. The key insight is that pi occurs in many different math relations, not just circles. This allows a person to sum together [a series of calculated terms]( URL_0 ) based on integers and a few math operations -- as many terms as you want for the desired number of accurate digits of pi. Otherwise there'd be literally no way to calculate trillions of digits of pi quickly and accurately.",
"Typically by adding lots and lots of fractions together (or adding a fraction, then subtracting fraction, and on and on...). The more numbers you add/subtract, the closer you get. Clever mathematics can prove that doing this forever will get you exactly pi, but you can't do it forever. All methods will always take \"forever\". The difference is how quickly they become close to the right number. The traditional ways take lots if work to say get close to say 3.141, but modern ways get there after only a few fractions, and are how computers find lots of pi digits quickly. There is little useful reason to find so many digits in pi, but it's seen as a challenge not only to see how far you can get, but how quickly your method (or computer) can do it."
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l6rwax
|
How are we bankrupting hedge funds by all buying the one stock?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"Say, for example, some people want to buy a bike for a $100 but I've heard that people don't really like that make of bike and the price of that bike is going to go down to $10 in a week. I can buy a lot of those bikes on credit and sell them to people. I have that week before I need to pay for all those bikes. I am certain that when the time comes for me to pay for all those bikes I sold I will only have to pay $10 for each of them. Something crazy happens and everybody loves those bikes. Can't get enough of them. Price on those bikes go up to $1000. Now my week is up and I got to pay for those bikes. I have to pay $1000 for every bike I sold for $100. I lose lots of money. This is what happend with GameStop stock. But it was billions. Hedge funds lost a over $14 Billion today betting that GameStop stock would tank and it didn't. That is shorting simplified..",
"The hedge funds are shorting a stock (making a bet that the price of stock will go down). In order to do this they have to put some money down as a guarantee of sorts. If the stock price however goes up in the short term, they can either sell at a loss (lose the bet and their money) OR they put more money down to 'hold on' to their bet for the long term and try to ride out the increased stock price (until it goes down enough for them to win the bet). This is a risky bet. If you don't have the money to 'hold on' to your bet when the price goes up, then you lose the bet. Currently, what's happening is that the big hedge funds bet against this games company, and had the audacity to announce it. They were basically trying to force the stock price to go down by saying this company is dead in the water and we're officially publicly betting against it. A lot of other small investors are not having this and instead are showing their support for the company by buying their shares and creating demand for the shares, thereby increasing the stock price. Now it's a matter of time Vs the hedge funds. Can the hedge funds hold on to their bet, or are they going to lose their bet? Looks bad for the hedge funds. The hedge funds were playing stupid games and now they are winning stupid prizes (well, losing) and also crying foul over the fact that they didn't think the face eating leopards would eat their faces. They thought they were the leopards. Edit: Also to add that there were so many hedge funds making big bets that the share price would fall, that they created their own demand when they had to put more money down to hold onto their bet when the stock price went up, which increased the price even more. They shot themselves in the foot as well.",
"The more demand to buy a stock the higher the price goes. If I short a stock, a simple view of what happens is I borrow stock from you, let's say 100 shares that are values at 50 each, I then sell those shares. I pay you a small fee each week that I'm borrowing those shares and when I'm done I but back 100 shares and return them. If the price has dropped from 50 to 10 then I've made 40*100=4000 profit, minus what I paid to borrow them. If the price has risen however then I have to pay more money to buy the shares again and I lose out, or I can keep paying you to borrow for longer hoping that the price goes down.",
"Bc they’re shorting the one stock. In order to short a stock you are BORROWING a stock. You must return the stock you borrowed eventually. But if you borrow and sell a stock at $100 and it goes to $200. You must purchase that stock at $200 to return it. Thus you’re losing $100. Now these hedge funds are buying 100s of thousands to millions of shares. If they bought at $100 and now it’s around $300 they’re losing 3x their investment. Even worse, they are shorting more than the available shares that are tradable. Which is illegal. If these guys are so greedy then it serves them right.",
"I feel very dumb trying to understand this, which is super, but kudos for those answering. One additional question. If I am the entity that they are borrowing the stock from, what is in it for me since it is apparent that the stock I own is going to down drastically? Is it because I am guaranteed to come out even?",
"It's a short squeeze. A short is when you borrow a stock, sell it, and later buy back the stock to return it to whoever you borrowed it from. Shorts are typically held for a limited amount of time. Once that time is up, the borrower has to return the stock and must therefore buy at whatever rate prize the market offers. If that prize has gone up (rather than down, which is what the borrower hoped for), the borrower loses money. Now, what happens if there's no stocks available in the market? Then the borrower must offer more than the market, causing the market to go up. If the borrower needs to buy a lot of stocks, and there are a lot of borrowers, the market will rise a lot, very quickly.",
"The part I'm most confused about is the holding part? I would have assumed that waiting until an extremely high price and all collectively selling would hurt the most? Would holding indefinitely not just mean that the \"short\" will never be forced to be repaid as its never being sold?"
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l6sg83
|
Why is short selling not prohibited? What benefit do we get from loaning stock?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"The theory is that is actually an important part of the system to keep a fair balance. One side of the equation is buying stock - making them more rare and increasing the price. The other side is loaning stock and selling it bringing the price down. Resulting in a fair price somewhere in between. Removing one side of the equation just makes it easier to manipulate stocks. At the moment we see one effect of this balance, people did bet against a company and went in way to deep (or bet that it will fall way faster than it did) basically flooding the market and causing the price to drop. Now people come in and see the cheap stock and say man i love that company - they buy stock increasing the price. But you could easily imagine it the other way round. Somebody buying up all stocks to artificially increase the price until somebody comes a long and just thinks that the company is going to shit and that price isn't where it should be. What can you do in that situation? You short - get more stock on the market bring the price down to a level that might be more appropriate. And to be fair I think we are seeing that side at the moment the price of game stop went through the roof. And it might not be a popular opinion but i don't think that company has good chances of existing in the long term. So the basic idea is that both of those sides balance out and the price settles somewhere in the middle. Not this wild ride we are seeing at the moment (which is great for making and losing money, but not really for a somewhat save long term investment). And of course that idea is based on people actually thinking about the value of a company - which would probably result in some pessimistic and some optimistic traders. Which really isn't true for most stocks nowadays if you look at most big stocks they mostly retain their price because of their popularity.",
"There are a couple of reasons: 1. The most important is it's pretty important for dealers to make a market even when they run low on inventory. Short selling is one of the tools dealers use to keep orderly, liquid markets running. 2. Another is, short sellers are key investigators of fraud (wirecard's fraud was first promoted by short selling funds). Just like the rest of wall street they tend to over predict fraud, but that's more a result of the rewards of investing (early investors tend to get the biggest returns so there's strong incentives to find everything scrap of information under every possible rock). 3. Finally, it gives all investors a tool to manage risk, having some exposure to short speculations means not losing as much when the market declines. For example, put options are often sold by investors who short stock to hedge their exposure, and put options are sometimes purchased by long investors as a sort of insurance on their positions.",
"Short selling allows people to make money on things that they expect are going to go down in price. There is really no other way of doing this. And this may be important when hedging your investments. Hedging is the term used when you are investing in multiple products that are related in order to ensure that you always gain a profit. This is what the hedge funds are basically doing as their clients wants nice stable profits which no stock can provide them with. So they invest in a hedge fund which then invest in multiple different stocks and shorts some of them in order to ensure that no matter what happens there will be a nice profit. The thing is that a hedge fund manager might look at the portfolio they have and all their analysis and notice that in some cases they will lose money but that corresponds with the cases where this one stock also lose value. So they would like to sell stock in that company so that they can ensure a stable return on investment for their clients. But they do not have any stock in that company to sell. If they are not allowed to loan stocks from others to sell they would have to sell stock in all other companies they invest in to avoid the potential loss but this also means they would lose out on the profits of those companies. So banning short selling would not be a good solution. It is certainly possible to regulate it more though. The theory in the US is that the clients of these hedge funds should be able to regulate the hedge fund themselves by threatening to switch to another hedge fund. But hedge funds rarely give insight into what their positions are as they are worried someone might copy their actions without doing the work they are putting into it. Even if they would publish their positions to their clients most of the clients are not that knowledgeable in financial risks so as long as the hedge fund returns a stable profit they have no reason to be worried. It is only when exceptional circumstances happen that they will notice anything wrong and by that point it is too late and they have lost all their money."
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l6sqiq
|
what is happening with wall Street bets and game stop?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"Two sides of market manipulation collided. Old money (/wallstret) artificially brought down the price by short selling, New money (/wallstretbets) artificially brought up the price by buying the now cheap stock in masses. And now everybody argues who is right and who is evil. Personally i think it's just everybody playing the game.",
"Either way, it’s showing how the rules of the game can be learnt by anyone now...not just the ones at Wall Street. This was a long time coming. What happens now is a guessing game and it’s amazing",
"Rich people bet that GameStop would go down in value because of Covid. Wall Street bets people came together and bought a bunch of GameStop stock so the rich people lost a bunch of money. They’re mad because it was “supposed” to crash and make the rich people more money until Wall Street bets bought it."
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6
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l6st7r
|
when did the idea of usa being leader of free world start?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"World War II. The USA, having sat out most of the war, was able to show up near the end to help push the allies to victory. Then, with a country that hadn't had any conflict on its shores, the USA was able to get a major boost economically after the war, with factories and infrastructure that were fully intact and able to immediately switch towards luxury production after the war, while most of Europe was rebuilding. So the USA was for many years in a position of power internationally, with a strong economy and military.",
"After WW2, when the US was essentially the only industrialized country in the world to not have its industries bombed into dust. We leveraged this into an expansive military that has allowed us to project force anywhere in the world, something no other country can match at the moment. Combine this with the economic soft power afforded us by the use of the US dollar as the de facto currency for trading oil and other essential commodities and we have tremendous international influence. For now."
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l6sxmp
|
why does the lack of iron makes you go lightheaded when standing up too quickly?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"Iron is necessary for the synthesis of hemoglobin - the part of red blood cells responsible for carrying oxygen. If you don't have enough iron, you become anemic, which means that your blood has lesser capacity for carrying oxygen. When you stand up, your cardivascular system needs to work harder to supply your brain with oxygen. If you're anemic, it's even harder. And that results in temporary oxygen defficiency in your brain which causes the lighheadedness.",
"Blood needs iron to move oxygen around. If you don't have enough iron, your body can't move oxygen as fast as it would like to. Lightheadedness happens when your brain isn't receiving enough oxygen. The brain just won't function as fast and essentially goes numb, like a sleeping limb. When you stand up, the blood in your body takes a few heartbeats to even out in pressure. Since your head is at the top of the bodies plumbing, any pressure drop will be most severe over there. Reduced blood pressure means less blood reaches the brain. Lower iron count means the blood that is there doesn't carry a whole lot of oxygen. It's a double whammy."
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l6sylc
|
during the second world War, why do the nazis decided to kill all Jewish people? Why do they chose them in particular?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"Jewish people have, for a large portion of history, been a popular target for systematic abuse. Traditional segregation caused them to have to work in banking and jewelry, which was originally considered bad work. This coupled with the fact that they had no homeland until the founding of Israel after WWII, meant they also checked the immigrant box as well After centuries of this, Jewish families had naturally amassed wealth and were then easy targets to point to as a reason the lower class was doing poorly, to distract from the pillaging being done by the ruling class. After WWI, Germany was in financial shambles due to the Treaty of Versailles, which forced Germany to pay damages for the war and reduce their standing army. This sorry state of affairs led to the National Socialist Party (Nazis) to rise to power, in promises of returning Germany to its former glory. Among their lies and rhetoric was to blame the Jewish community for hoarding wealth, which the public latched onto fervently. As the Nazis gathered more and more power, they emphasized more and more the evils of those they persecuted to justify the ever growing atrocities they were committing. The Jews were not the only group killed though. Gays, disabled people, Roma, and many others were massacred. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t say: the last 4 years share so many things with 1930s Germany it’s insane.",
"The Jewish people have been outsiders in Europe for centuries. They have their own religion, culture, tradition, heritage, and thus are distinctly different from everyone else. And people traditionally have found outsiders to be easy targets, people to blame for the bad things in their lives. So when the Germans were suffering economically after World War I, it was easy to blame the Jews, despite them not having anything to do with that problem, because blaming outsiders is easier than going \"We're suffering because our actions in World War I caused the other nations to treat us poorly on an economic level.\" That, combined with the fact that a bunch of people in Europe were already distrustful and hateful of the Jewish people, made them easy targets.",
"Firstly they did not start with the Jews. They started with the Communists, then went on to the rest of the socialist politicians. Meanwhile they would also kill journalist that opposed them and were part of the \"lying press\" as they called them. The Jews were some of the last people to get targeted followed by any other \"unwanted\" groups of people like disabled, slavs, etc. The Nazis primarily wanted to create a pure German nation and would only allow people with pure genes to live there. At first they would primarily try to scare the Jews to leave, and a lot of them did. However those who did not leave for various reasons were later massacred. The rhetoric used was that the Jews were in a secret cabal that ruled the country. They had secretly infected the financial and political centers and were manipulating them. Jews were often depicted as raping and murdering children.",
"Over many centuries, Jews coped with regularly having to move to escape prejudice or worse by ensuring their kids had skills and knowledge, which could not be stolen from them but were useful anywhere. They would also build strong community bonds. It is a strategy used by many other large diaspora. You can see it easily where foreigners do well in the small-time retail sphere (corner shops, bodegas etc) when starting out in a new country. Local see their exceptional economic rise (relative to themselves) and conspiracy theories thrive. A xenophobic riot is a good way to justify theft from them."
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l6tctf
|
Why do poachers kill rhino to take their horn when they can cut it off like some nature preserves do to save them from being poached?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Tranquilizing a large animal is not like it is in the movies. You need a large enough dose to put them down, but not enough to kill them. That is a very fine line. You have to give them an antidote, and it is very dangerous, even when groggy they can easily kill people in that state. Poachers don’t care about the animals welfare, they want a quick buck.",
"Say you see an elephant and you want its tusk. You got three choices: 1) Walk up to a healthy elephant with a saw and start cutting. The elephant will not be happy about this, and will f***ing kill you. 2) Get a very expensive animal dart gun, an elephant's worth of expensive tranquilizer, and hire an expert who knows exactly how much to give an elephant without either killing it or putting you back in situation #1. Hope the expert and the person you buy the tranquilizer from don't turn you in. 3) Grab one of the millions of AKs left over from last year's civil war and start blasting.",
"There's no benefit, really. Imagine trying to cut an elephant or rhino's tusks off with it still alive. Sure, you *can*, but you're going to bite into your profit margins or fall into the red if you want to buy anesthetics for your game. Meanwhile, the practical difference on how many elephants are around is nearly nil. Sure, if *every* poacher detusked the animals instead, it would help them all, but if *I* stop doing it, it doesn't benefit *my* business by more than a tiny percentage."
],
"score": [
14,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6tgo2
|
Why aren't more video games distributed on cartridges (SD Cards etc)?
|
I recently bought a Micro SD card and it got me thinking, these things can hold a ton of data nowadays (even more than a Blu-ray!) so why is it only the Nintendo Switch uses carts (which I assume are some sort of SD card) when they can conceivably fit any AAA title on them now?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl2ln2v",
"gl2ll8n"
],
"text": [
"Because games are mostly distributed via the internet nowadays. For consoles you *could* make a case for using SD cards (and I think the Nintendo cartridges are indeed such but with a larger case so they fit the cover art and don't get lost easily), but the Xbox/Playstation has inertia behind using DVD/BluRay drives. Indeed, one of the Playstation's features is serving as a BluRay player to watch movies. Disks are also quite a bit cheaper since they contain no electronics while an SD card is actually a tiny computer that communicates with the reader over a serial port.",
"in short. they cost more to manufacture. to put it in comparison, you can get a 50GB BD-R disk (blu ray writeable) for about $1.50-$2. and a 32gb sd card costs like $5-$10. because carts use flash memory. and flash memory is a lot more expensive to make than \"mostly\" plastic disks. there's no practical reason to have xbox or ps use carts b/c there's plenty of space for a blu ray or diskless. but the switch's format basically requires it to use a more portable format."
],
"score": [
13,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6tltb
|
why is it that when we yawn our hearing decreases massively for a second or two?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl2n2on",
"gl2oqi1"
],
"text": [
"Your throat is connected to your ears by tubes that allow pressure to equalize between the inner and outer ear. This is why yawning can help pop your ears, by manipulating those tubes. When you yawn, they are pinched shut, which increases the pressure in your inner ear momentarily. That increases pressure makes it harder for sound waves to move your eardrum, which makes everything sound muffled",
"Imagine your ear as a drum and the sound waves as the beating hand. Since it hits only from one side, you hear a sound when your ear\"drum\" vibrates. There is a canal called the eustachian tube that connects your ear's other side (behind the ear\"drum\") to your throat. This tube opens when you yawn. Now the hand (sound wave) is beating from both sides of the ear\"drum\" as the sound is going both from the ear-canal and also from the throat. So, no sound can be heard because there is no pressure difference on both sides. The ear\"drum\" doesn't move/vibrate with the sound wave. Even if you close your mouth when yawning, your nose is open. But yes, the muffling is reduced. Also the rush of blood to your face also makes the arteries in your ears gorge up and provide less room for movement, muffling the sound further."
],
"score": [
17,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6tq4g
|
Where does innate shyness come from?
|
Never really knew any simple scientific explanation behind shyness which is hindering a lot of people from become the best version of themselves growing up and even as adults.. Is being shy hereditary or is it developed from childhood? Some kids start off super shy for some reason and some kids are considerably more confident than others.. Does it have something to do with someone's upbringing in their early stages in life or the environment they live in also has an influence?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl36ma6",
"gl31swe",
"gl4lgxn"
],
"text": [
"This is kind of a hard thing to address because personality traits can be genetically predisposed, environmentally activated, and socially learned. Let’s say little Jimmy is born with genes that say he’s going to be outgoing. If Jimmy were to be subject to abuse or neglect during his developmental periods, his body could actually disable these genes and reconfigure them to make him shy - this is an area of research called **epigenetics.** From a social standpoint, behaviors can also be learned through a psychological phenomenon called classic conditioning, which is how your brain learns to relate an unrelated thing to something more relevant to you - say, you’re a prisoner and someone brings you a meal every day, but this person has a distinct type of sound when they walk. You would eventually associate this sound with food. The same concept applies to behaviors. If you’re outgoing and you’re repeatedly belittled for it, or one **significant** negative response occurs, your brain will associate extroverted characteristics with that negative response. To sum it up in a more general way, anything psychological is also biological. Nurture (environment and social conditions) works on nature (genetic predispositions).",
"As far as I know, it's usually developmental. Humans and other animals become bold through confidence. If the factors that provide confidence are lacking, shyness is often a result. It's probably not the best example but with many exotic pets, you have to supply a hiding place for the animal to retreat to when it needs to feel secure and hidden. But animals that have such hiding places tend to be bolder while animals that don't tend to be shyer.",
"You're building your question on shyness / introversion as some sort of disorder. It isn't. People come in all shapes and sizes and this is part of the normal distribution. You could equally frame your question as \"What's wrong with the noisy and extrovert\". We are all somewhere in a wide range. Why are some people in the middle? Could I suggest: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. & #x200B; This is assuming there is no underlying abuse where there is a fear of physical or mental attack."
],
"score": [
17,
9,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6tt04
|
What happens to Games Stop as a business thanks to what happening with its stock? I barely understand what’s happening but I’m kinda confused as to what happens to the actual business thanks to this.
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl2ni22"
],
"text": [
"They can raise capital very inexpensively by selling their shares at hyper-inflated prices."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6udyg
|
Why is it colder at the top of a mountain when its closer to the sun?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl2q7ss",
"gl2q8rq",
"gl2q851"
],
"text": [
"So as you get higher, and away from the earth, there is less atmosphere and less particles. Those particle having energy and moving around is what we call heat. With fewer particles around, we feel less heat. Space is the same, even though you could be thousands of miles closer to the sun, because there are very few particles in space it is still very cold. You WILL get a sunburn however, because the UV rays made by the sun can still travel and hit you even if you can't feel the heat you expect with them.",
"It's not meaningful closer to the sun at the top of a mountain compared to the base. Mount Everest is 8,849m tall and the sun is 147 million km. As you go up a mountain air pressure drops. The lower pressure air is colder as it expands. If you have a can of compressed air and you spray it onto a surface. You will find the surface cold when you touch it.",
"Thermal dynamics. Sunlight is absorbed by the earth and water. It converts to infrared radiation, heating the air causing it to expand/become less dense and start rising. The heat is constantly disapating to areas with less heat. Higher up there is less hot air above you to insulate the atmosphere."
],
"score": [
11,
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6uv5q
|
Why is water "matte" in some places and "clear" in others?
|
I notice it becomes "clear" when a duck swims through it for example, or on the river bank like in the picture example below. URL_0 Is it something on the surface of the water? Thanks in advance! Let me know if I can specify :) Also I added the flair "earth science", hope that fits.
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl2t1x4"
],
"text": [
"It's the wind ruffling the surface. Even a small amount of breeze will cause small ripples. Near the bank it's sheltered. With the duck, and even a boat moving slowly, it will move the water sideways it passes and break up the ripple formation. As a dinghy sailor on a fairly calm day, you can look at the water and pick the places with the best wind from the grey areas instead of the reflective ones."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6vd2l
|
How do insects like cicadas synchronize and know to emerge at the same time? In the case of cicadas it's every 13 and 17 years.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl321o1"
],
"text": [
"The eggs were all laid together 17 years ago, and they all have a 17 year internal timer to tell them when to emerge as adults. Emerge off cycle and you have nobody to mate with and no mass swarm to hide in, so only the cicadas that get it right reproduce for next time. The periodic cicadas evolved this bizarre adaptation to avoid predators. If you emerge in a predictable cycle every year, predators can return to that area every year and eat you. If you emerge in a mass swarm only once a every oddball number of years, migratory predators can’t rely on this and any local predators will be absolutely overwhelmed. This increases the odds of survival for each individual, despite how dumb the swarm of nearly blind insects appears. The giant swarm swamps the predators with vastly more than they can eat, and the majority survive to repeat the cycle."
],
"score": [
28
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6vdz7
|
Why is medical software so bad?
|
Many of my friends and family work in the medical field and no matter what software they use, they all complain about the same things: Sluggish performance, outdated GUI, extremely complicated menus, no ease of use, etc. How does that happen? Why can't medical software follow the same standards as B2C apps for our phones?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl2y8ut",
"gl2xdwu",
"gl2w14y",
"gl2yzfb",
"gl2xgn1",
"gl317nf",
"gl2wgxx",
"gl6qbs7"
],
"text": [
"[Sturgeons law]( URL_0 ) 90% of medical software is bad because 90% of software is bad source: I'm a software dev",
"Medical software isn't bad. I've worker in that field and there is plenty of up to date software out there. The problem is companies in general, and maybe medical companies in particular, hate spending money on stuff that basically does the same function as stuff they already have and isn't broken. This means stuff that doesn't wear out over time tends to get used well beyond its recommended use period and software is one of those top items.",
"It takes a lot of time and effort to update software which costs. Given that the market for it isn't huge the payback doesn't justify frequent revamping. Plus it is tried and tested, introduce new software and you end up with a whole new load of bugs and a lot of staff to retrain.",
"Developing software for the medical field is a very misserable thing. Firstly there is usually not a lot of clients as there is not a huge number of hospitals you can sell to. And these hospitals tends to prefer to use their money elsewhere then on software. So improvements such as performance and usability improvements is very hard to sell. On the other hand if the software fails then people will die. There are several examples of this happening. So when you write medical software you have to spend a lot of resources testing, verifying and documenting all your testing. This leaves very little available resources for improvements to the software. Especially if there is some software which have already been tested and approved as any changes means it is no longer approved and all test results are void. Even changes which would be standard in any other industry such as upgrading hardware or applying patches from third party vendors can be a pain to get approved in the medical field. So if a piece of medical software feels like something built in the 90s and never upgraded it is probably because this is exactly what happened.",
"A few things that affect the software prices are: * Design: the software is not something that you can just buy (like Microsoft Office) or download (like an app). The software is a database at its core (Microsoft SQL Database, Oracle, etc.) and then \"business logic\" must be custom-made on top of the database, to translate the doctors and nurses' needs into the database format. The devs can do this in-house up to a certain point, but the last parts of it, the finishing touches, they must send a team out to the hospitals to actually LOOK at what the doctors and nurses need, and program all of that into the software. * Certification: Once installed, *someone* must verify that all the menus and all the functions and every single screen actually behave as intended, so that data isn't lost or misplaced. Someone must sign a declaration that this was checked and the software is behaving as intended. Scripts can be used to do all the checking, but this is \"taking responsibility\" is a legal thing and so the devs will charge money, to offset the risk of lawsuits and financial loss. Because bugs happen. * Training: Everyone in all the hospitals using this software must be trained. It's not simple, they can't \"just learn it\" from use, they must be trained. The training programs for so many users cost money, as you can imagine. All in all, you're looking at millions (maybe tens or hundreds of millions) of dollars in costs to install and use this software, but it's *mandated* by government regulations, so basically there's huge financial pressure to use the cheapest possible software out there, and also to NOT upgrade it every year or whatever, keep using it for as long as it works.",
"Let me summarize the other answers lol. I think this is the case with the old joke: Pick 2 out of 3: Cheap, no bug, good user experience bad user experience = \"Sluggish performance, outdated GUI, extremely complicated menus, no ease of use\" Since budget are limited, they pick cheap. Since the people who decide which software to buy don't actually use the software themselves, they don't pick user experience. And besides, the have to pick no bug, or else, people will literally die.",
"I'm a programmer who has, on previous occasions, worked in medical software. There are several reasons: * Programmers are not doctors. They have no understanding of the needs and ways of thinking of the medical field. They also have a deep-seated disdain for anyone who is not a programmer. Why should they listen to some stuck-up doctor? They could be working on their next startup! * Doctors are not programmers. They have no understanding of the constraints and ways of thinking of the computing field. They also have a deep-seated disdain for anyone who is not a doctor. Why should they take the time to explain all this to some scruffy hacker? They have patients to see! * Bureaucracy. There is always requirements that forms must be submitted in a certain way, that patient consent must be recorded in a certain way, that records must be stored in a certain way, etc, that were put in place long before modern computers were invented and nobody can even remember the reason for but nobody has the authority to change. * Legacy. Often there is an existing system which all the important data is stored in, so the programmer has to spend a lot of time making his new program interface with the old system. Often the program has to interface with some piece of medical hardware that uses an undocumented protocol over a bus that stopped being produced in 1998. * Price. A lot of medical software is bought according to guidelines that require the buyer to choose the lowest bidder. You can imagine how well that works for software. So the winner is someone who promised to do a project that will really cost 1,000,000 dollars for 2,000 dollars, then hired a bunch of fresh-out-of-college programmers in Bangalore.",
"US Army vet here - I've moved to the civilian world and have had to use \"legacy\" systems in my job. * A lot of programs were \"form over function\" - 'who cares how it looks? It works!' * There were standards and formats that were either mandated by law or were traditional. * And yes, you can't just stop using a piece of software and replace it. A program that's in a \"mission critical\" application (medical, military, law, etc) is in a situation where it has to be used consistently with little downtime. In many cases, new features are built on top of the old software or the new software was made \"good enough\" to do the job. Just like how the missile radar I used to work on couldn't stop for a software update, a hospital can't stop admitting patients so it can use a new app. New software has to be tested, be compatible with old formats and old software AND still be in compliance with all the laws and regulations. A little hospital in some smol town may be used a software package 10-20 years out of date because that's all they can afford. They still have to be able to talk to that big city hospital, insurance companies, and governments at various levels."
],
"score": [
16,
15,
6,
5,
5,
4,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6vryv
|
why is hot water cloudy when it comes out if the tap?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl2xzy6",
"gl36hbs",
"gl2zo1o",
"gl5oxk2"
],
"text": [
"Heat makes gasses in the water expand causing it to bubble. Theres also a lot of minerals that get trapped in the water that add to the cloudiness",
"The shape of the water heating device, and the act of heating the water causes mini bubbles to form. The pressure in the pipes prevents the bubbles from coalescing. Just because the water is 30C hotter than the cold doesn't mean it suddenly gets bubbly. The geyser/furnace needs to impart the gas to the hot water. Not every house the hot water is cloudy, it depends on the specific geyser/furnace/pipes. Water out the kettle for your tea is not cloudy, no pressure to keep in the minibubbles.",
"The same reason that egg whites go from clear to white when whipped: air bubbles. Hot water has a lot more vapor than cold water, so more air bubbles.",
"Thanks to OP for asking this question and to all who responded! I'm staying at a house where the water gets like that and I was a little concerned about it."
],
"score": [
24,
14,
10,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6vutm
|
why is it when a 3rd party app uses the camera i.e. messenger, viber, etc. The picture quality it takes is significantly lower?
|
Does the app interfere with the software? I thought it merely asks permission to use that hardware
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl2ybra",
"gl3e25w"
],
"text": [
"90 percent of this is because of 2 things: 1. Picture size. That really adds up and if you let people post pictures at the native quality of their phone. This becomes limited to DRASTICALLY reduce drive space. 2. Uniformity. Once one resolution is set, everyone's pictures have the same level of quality.",
"On android in some apps like instagram or WhatsApp the app is just taking a screenshot if you use their camera function that's why it seems as their camera is weirdly bad, but if you use the phones camera app it's the normal quality. I don't know if you meant that but additionally are photos that you post or send often compromised (less pixel)."
],
"score": [
7,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6vx6w
|
when someone walks in the snow, how come those footprints disappear when it snows again? Why aren’t the footprints always there, just with more inches of snow?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl2ytaf",
"gl4vrkz"
],
"text": [
"If the snow falls straight down sometimes you’ll still see the outline of the footprints. Usually snow is accompanied by wind though, and the drifting snow fills in gaps and smooths out the surface layer again.",
"Sometimes footprints are still there if it snows a little bit. Usually, the snow blows side to side because of wind, and levels out the ground."
],
"score": [
35,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6w38n
|
File extensions vs File format?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl2zmam",
"gl2zuhe"
],
"text": [
"A file extension is basically a tag to tell programs what to expect from the data inside the file. That is, how it is organized and what it represents. There's nothing stopping you from giving a file an extension that says it's something else. You can call a plain text file a .mp4. Just don't expect a video player to know what to do with it. The format of the file is how it's actually, in fact, organized.",
"file format is the format of the file, is it a text file, or an image, or a video, etc. (It also goes deeper than that, like, what kind of video is it.) But life is kinda hard right if you don't know what is the format of a file. I give you a file and you don't know what to open it with. Okay, so what if we invent a way so I can tell you what kind of file it is, maybe on the file name, maybe by using some kind of acronym after a dot. That's what file extension is. It is just the few characters after a dot in the file name, telling what format it is."
],
"score": [
8,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6w8td
|
The stock market, hedge funds, and wtf is going on with Ganestop and why Reddit has something to do with it?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl30rtw"
],
"text": [
"Rich ppl bet gamestop would go bankrupt, they overextended on this bet. Smart redditors saw this and went on a buying spree which raises the price indefinitely if ppl keep buying. Rich ppl can't meet their shorts now without losing a ton of money."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6wm40
|
Entropy, please oh god please.
|
I have read COUNTLESS explanations, countless examples, countless ELI5s. But I still have no fucking idea what entropy is. I’m **not** leaving this earth before I understand what it is. Thank you.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl33pii",
"gl38wa5",
"gl32zcy",
"gl5nfo9",
"gl5fxsw",
"gl4fjba",
"gl38feh"
],
"text": [
"Over time, shit changes to the temperature of the things next to them. This is true for literally everything, so the temperature of the earth is slowly equalizing to the temperature of the space next to it ( which is very technically not a vacuum since there's tiny particles in it). \"Entropy\" is that idea. Things slowly lose their energy over time until the system has equal energy in it, and then nothing can change since it's perfectly equal. \"Heat Death\", often referred to along with entropy (so i'm guessing you want an explanation for that too) is when literally everything over trillions of years perfectly equalizes it's heat, and then perfectly equalizes all of it's other forms of energy in the form of heat because heat is bled off every time there's an action (usually in the form of friction). Eventually, literally everything will be an evenly distributed evenly \"room temperature\" blob, and because there's literally no potential energy left literally nothing more can happen. *edit: entropy is also a word which can be used when not referring to the physics concept, and in that case it simply means the general concept of stuff eventually falling apart and becoming useless.",
"I'll give you the answer that helped me as a physics undergraduate. Entropy is number of microstates corresponding to a particular macrostate. If you've not studied physics, that probably means nothing to you, so here's an example. Imagine a cup of coffee. It's filled with coffee and milk mixed together. Let's say that 80% of the particles in the cup are coffee particles and 20% is milk. There are certain number of ways you can arrange those particles of milk and coffee in the cup. This is the microstate. If you could somehow break it down and see exactly where each particle is in the mixture, you'd know its microstate. What do you actually see? You see a cup where the coffee and milk are well mixed together. Even if you don't stir it, they'll eventually look like that. That's the macrostate--the overall state of the system. An alternative macrostate would be to have the milk all in one layer on top of the coffee, not mixed together at all. There is nothing physically preventing this from happening. But there are only a few ways to arrange the coffee and milk particles that would produce this result. If you could take that cup full of milk and coffee particles and randomise their positions, on almost every randomisation you'd end up with a cup where the particles are evenly mixed. Because there are far more possibilities that produce that result. That's what people mean when talking about entropy as disorder. The more 'disordered' state has all the particles mixed up, while having them cleanly separated is 'ordered'. The disordered state has a higher entropy, because there are more ways you can arrange the particles to get that result. That's why, if you pour some milk in a cup and leave it, it'll eventually mix together on its own. Stirring just speeds it up.",
"I hope you get a decent ELI5 answer so I can hopefully understand what it is. My loose grasp of entropy is the transition from order to chaos.",
"Entropy basically means \"time goes forward\" or \"what is done cannot be undone\" Maybe that's too simplistic, let me try again. Ok, you know your big brother who's a teenager? Yes, I love him too. Do you remember how on Saturday his room was all tidy? But as time goes on it slowly gets messier? If we left it alone long enough it would just be chaos in there, a meaningless arrangement of all his stuff. That's sorta like entropy, where over time any closed system tends towards chaos. What's that you say? His room doesn't just get more messy? That's right, because your mom or I make him clean up once in a while. You could think of our intervention as external energy being applied to the system.",
"I've been reading responses for 10 minutes and I understand entropy less now than when I got here. 😅",
"(For the record: I don't understand entropy, and I've kind of made my peace with it. I 100% don't get how information has entropy.) Part of the reason entropy is hard to teachis that it started as people tried to figure out steam engines (hence a bunch of heat-related explanations), tied to a bunch of woo-woo but also grounded in massive, giant entropy tables for steam. Add in the ability of computers to do massive statistics, and the love of physicists to tie seemingly-unrelated branches of knowledge together, and you get kind of a mess. Not only is it hard, but it's hard with a long history.",
"Consider a system that contains four particles. They each have two states, let's call them high energy and low energy. We'll represent this with 0 for low and 1 for high if you want. What are the possible states? * 0000 * 0001 * 0010 * 0011 * 0100 * 0101 * 0110 * 0111 * 1000 * 1001 * 1010 * 1011 * 1100 * 1101 * 1110 * 1111 So with four particles, and two options each, we have 16 possible states. One thing you can immediately notice, the ordered states are rare. There's just 0000 and 1111. 2 of 16. So what is entropy? Literally that. It's how many possible states there are, and how rare a given one is among them. The 0000 is low entropy. One like 1010 is just as rare, but it has many similar looking ones that together are high entropy. Just replace these the digits with atoms, and the two possible states with much more degrees of freedoms. If you have a few billion, billion, billion atoms, there's a lot of ways you could arrange them. A perfect crystal has a few options, but not many. An imperfect solid has a lot more options. A hot gas has way, way, way more options. So there's just more ways to arrange a bunch of atoms that macroscopically look like a hot gas than there is that macroscopically looks like a perfect crystal. Just as an ordered number like 11111111 is rarer than a messy one like 10111010 if you were to randomly draw the numbers from a hat. And this is why entropy increases. If something changes, it's way, way more likely to go to a messy state than an ordered one. It's not impossible, but highly, highly unlikely. Now you may be saying, my example looks an awful lot like binary numbers. And it is. Entropy and information are really the same thing. Ordering of states. You can measure entropy in bits. But the information we use on a computer is more abstract and of a much, much, much lower scale than the thermodynamic entropy of matter. Better to use J/K, the thermodynamic unit. Now, you may think that looks like some sort of relationship between energy (Joules) and temperature (Kelvin). But let's roll this back for a second, and consider that temperature is actually the relationship, not entropy. Rather than entropy = energy/temperature. Consider that temperature = energy / entropy. Temperature is a relationship between changes in entropy with changes in energy. How does adding more energy change the possible states. That is temperature."
],
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53,
13,
12,
4,
3,
3,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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l6wvjf
|
how exactly does copyright work?
|
If I have an idea for a concept but the name of the concept I came up with already exists, can I be sued for using the same name? If so, can their copyright expire like book copyrights?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl36uxv",
"gl39wos",
"gl4xej3"
],
"text": [
"A trademark can expire if it’s not used. But the original owner can assert their rights through a lawsuit and you might not want to get embroiled in it. If your trademark is not used for the same type of product, in the same market, and clearly does not imply connection with the existing one you might have a better chance of asserting the right to use it. But if you say suddenly start selling cars named Tesla in the US....you will be sued for damages before you hit enter...",
"I'm not an IP lawyer, so take what I say with a grain of salt (all the more so because IP laws differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, even though they're often similar). A copyright generally protects the author's literary or artistic creations (among other things). It gives the author a bunch of rights, such as the right to sue you for using his work for profit without his permission, and some \"moral rights\" (like the right to be identified as the creator of the work). Copyright exists in the *work* itself (e.g. a book, the source code of a video game, a photograph). It doesn't attach to ideas or names. So if you, say, come up with a video game called Game of Thrones, and the game is not a derivative work of GRRM's book (for example, the game doesn't take place in the universe of A Song of Ice and Fire) - then there is no copyright infringement. HOWEVER, there are other IP rights that you might be infringing upon, like trademarks (which *do* actually protect names). The best advice is, if you really are working on an idea that you wish to monitise later - talk to a lawyer / patent attorney. The expense will justify itself down the line.",
"If the concept is different, then there may be no infringement. Sometimes, even when concepts are close, a lawyer can argue they are different, because of reasons. For example, suppose you invent a phone app called Chocolate Moo-cow. Now suppose there is a milkshake from a chain restaurant also called a Chocolate Moo-cow. Your lawyer can argue, a phone app is not a milkshake, and nobody will get the two mixed up, so you are not infringing. Now, suppose there is a chain restaurant called Chocolate moo-cow. Now maybe you have a problem because people could download your app expecting to get menus and reservations but instead they got phases of the moon or whatever goofy thing you put in your app. Now their lawyer can argue the confusion caused damages. So, if the name of the concept exists in some other space where people who use your idea will not confuse it for somebody else's idea, then you have not violated their intellectual property rights and you are okay. But be careful if it is borderline because then you may have to deal with lawyers."
],
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5,
5,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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l6wwc2
|
What exactly is going on over at r/wallstreetbets?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl373ok"
],
"text": [
"Normally on the stock market, you buy stocks of companies. These stocks fluctuate in value and usually mirror how well a company is doing. If the stock you bought goes up in value, you can make money. On the other hand, if the stock goes down in value, you lose money. The worst that can happen is that the stock becomes worthless and you lost all money you put into it. A variant of this where you make money if the stock goes down instead of up is shorting. This works by first borrowing the stock from someone else, selling them first and then buying them back later to return them to whomever you borrowed them first. While this allows you to make money if the stock goes down, if it goes up you lose money, and in contrast to normal stocks you can lose more than you originally made as the stock can theoretically go arbitrarily high. You also have to buy the stock back at some point in the future, at which point the stock will go up because of heightened demand. What happened is that someone noticed that the GME stock was heavily overshorted - more stocks were being shorted (borrowed and soled) than were actually available in the market. As I said above, shorting typically leads to a rising stock when the stock is bought back, so he bought in. But he also shared what's going on in /r/wallstreetbets, which has traditionally been opposed to heavy shorting. Now remember that shorts can lead to unlimited lossed as the stock can go arbitrarily high. So the folks at /r/wallstreetbets joined in not just because they expected the stock to go up, but also to cause trouble for whomever shorted the stock so heavily. One might even say that's their primary goal in this situation."
],
"score": [
3
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6wwfv
|
How does the stock market itself generate value?
|
I've never quite figured this out. I understand the basics of how stock works, and dividends make perfect sense to me. You essentially loan a company money to take advantage of a growth opportunity, and the company pays you dividends from its profits. I know I'm simplifying greatly. My question is about the stock market, and not the shares. Many large companies don't pay dividends anyway, and many investors are buying and selling shares based on future expectations of the value of the stock and not based on any dividend earnings. My basic understanding of macro economics would suggest that something that has no intrinsic value or valuable return would not be able to grow indefinitely without cannibalizing the value of something else. So in my mind, for one set of stocks to continually grow, the value of other stocks would have to eventually go down to compensate. So how does the stock market itself generate value?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl38pge"
],
"text": [
"The stock market as a whole tends to grow in value over time. This is for exactly the fundamental reasons you identified initially. Stock is ownership in firms, so the stock market essentially measures the value of (public) firms. As firms grow, or we found new firms, or we replace old firms with better/more efficient firms, the total value of the stock market increases as well. This is not an iron law of the universe, but so long as we continue to come up with new or better ideas for how to do economic activity (e.g. smartphones, internet retail, and electric cars - to cite a few firms that are currently huge on the stock market but weren't in our recent past), the market will rise not just in nominal terms, but in per-capita terms. You might say \"Ah, but that's only relevant to the people who are lucky enough to provide the initial investments to companies that then grow large. Once those stocks are on the secondary market, you can't really gain anything from buying them.\" This is both right and wrong. In the short term, buying and selling stocks is close to a zero-sum game (see: the front page of Reddit right now). You can make money if you're lucky, but it will come at someone else's expense. However, it can still be worthwhile to buy stocks if you plan to hold them for the long term. Firms can live forever. Failing that, an index of important firms (like the S & P) certainly can. Humans can't live forever. Every person holding stock is going to eventually want (or need) to get out of the market. As they do, they hand that stock to someone else just getting into the market. In this way, generations of people can each take their little ride in the growth machine."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6x0fh
|
If our heartbeat regularly fluctuates, then why are arrhythmia and your heart skipping a beat dangerous?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3cvzh",
"gl36983"
],
"text": [
"* It's not really the heartbeat that is the issue, but rather what is causing that weird heartbeat. * For example atrial fibrillation is when the upper chambers of the heart beat at a different speed/rhythm than the lower chambers. * This can cause blood to pool which can cause blood clots which can cause a stroke.",
"If you think of the heartbeat as a runner, then it’s logical that it can speed up and down as demanded by the race. Arrhythmia and skipped beats aren’t just slowing down, though; they are irregular or missed “pumping” signals. Our runner analogy might compare them to stumbling or tripping over something. Yes, it’s not the end of the world, but **if he falls over or stops running, you die**. Those are indicative of potentially fatal problems."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6x7n5
|
Why does squinting make you see better?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3bnr2",
"gl3fpgo"
],
"text": [
"Think about how a camera works. If you choose a more closed opening, called the aperture (say, f/10 instead of f/2.8), the range of distances that are in focus (without having to adjust the focus) becomes greater. When you squint your eyes the same thing happens -- the opening to the lens in your eye gets smaller, and it makes focusing less difficult.",
"We can see more clearly with more light. When you squint, the light coming into your eye(s) is getting more concentrated and focused. We are then seeing a smaller picture, but it is brighter."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6xd4n
|
If a grain of sand represented the earth, what item would represent the universe and how do you do such calculations?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3a0q4",
"gl3azzx"
],
"text": [
"It's pretty straight forward math....using some estimates, the observable universe is estimated to be ~93 billion light years in diameter but it's still growing. Light years are roughly 6 trillion miles. So 93 billion * 6 trillion miles gives you 558e+21 miles - or, 558 followed by 21 zeroes. A grain of sand can vary quite a bit, but a fair average is about 1mm wide (it can be anywhere from about 0.06mm to 2mm). So if the Earth, at it's equator is 7,917.5 mi, and that represents 1mm. That means the diameter of the universe converts to about 70,476,791,916,640,353,647mm, which is about 50,605,231 *times* the diameter of the sun. So if the Earth is represented by a single grain of sand, the *observable* universe would still be about 50 million times the diameter of the sun.",
"Let's look at orders of magnitude here. The Earth is 12,742 km in diameter, approximately. Let's change the units to make it easier in the future though. It is actually 1.2742 * 10^(7)m. A quick Google search for a grain of sand show that it is about 0.1mm, or 1.0 * 10^(-4)m. Now let's ignore the leading part and just compare the 10^(x) part. Sand / Earth = 10^(-1)/10^(7) = 10^(-8). A grain of sand is 100,000,000 times smaller than the Earth. Let's now take this difference and multiply it by the size of the (observable) universe. The diameter of the observable universe is 93.016 billion light years, or 9.3016 * 10^(10) lightyears. If we multiply this by 10^(-8), we end up with 9.3016 * 10^(2) lightyears, or about 930 light years. Thus, if the Earth was the size of a grain of sand, the observable universe would be 930 light years across. I can't actually find anything approximately this size. A big nebula could be 100LY, and a galaxy can be about 100,000LY."
],
"score": [
20,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6xljn
|
Why did ancient technology develop so similarly around the world despite societies living remotely from one another?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3byix",
"gl3jl0d"
],
"text": [
"Examples? What comes to mind is common needs and maybe even sharing of technology. The Bronze Age and later eras were pretty interconnected.",
"It didn't really. Much of the similar tech through Europe, Asia, the middle East and North Africa is just the same stuff passed around. The entire Eurasian continent was in contact throughout history and before. If one person in one part of it came up with an innovation it would spread through trade and conquest and migration to anywhere were people would find it useful. You can also look at cultures separated from that like the pre-columbian people of the Americas. They didn't have access to the same resources and were not exposed to the same idea and ended up doing some thing quite differently. For example swords. Swords were fairly universal in the old world that you had examples of the basic idea all the way from Japan in the east to the Iberian peninsula in the west adapted to local circumstances. They didn't have anything like that in the Americas, the closest anyone came to was putting some shards of volcanic glass on a wooden stick. Some ideas like piling rocks up in a pyramidical shape to create a building that is tall and won't fall over are universal and easy to come up with other require the right sort of resources to develop and some might seem easy, but are actually quite hard to come up with individually and were mostly just copied."
],
"score": [
6,
6
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6xm4a
|
The amount of THC in recreational cannabis is increasing, while the amount of CBD is decreasing. Why not take some extra CBD to lower the unwanted effects of THC?
|
I’m mainly talking about countries where THC is illegal while CBD is legal. Also, I don’t mean a market. I’m talking about these pure CBD sprays or whatever that is so trendy right now. Sorry if my English is bad, it’s not my first language.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3jcrf"
],
"text": [
"You can absolutely do that, to see if it works for you. However, biologically, the two things don't just offset each other. They interact with different receptors on neurons in the brain, leading to their different effects. If you have high THC cannabis, it will still make you higher than low THC cannabis, no matter how much CBD you add on top. The effects of the CBD might make the high more pleasant for you, but it isn't going to make you less high"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6xnms
|
What is qualia?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3afvz",
"gl468fn"
],
"text": [
"Consider the color \"red\". Now, we have a scientific definition of that color, rooted in a specific range of wavelengths of light. But also, there is your personal perception of the color red, which belongs to you and you alone. This is qualia. The perception of that color - that no one else can verify or attest to - is qualia. I don't know that what you perceive when you are looking at the color red is the same thing that I perceive when I look at the color red.",
"Basically qualia is anything you have to experience to know about. Like what ‘bitter’ or ‘soft’ or ‘blue’ is, like what hot and cold are. Like pain. Or the feeling you get when you need to sneeze but can’t. Try explaining a color - blue or red or green - to someone who has been completely blind since birth. You can’t, can you? Or pain to someone who can’t feel it. Or sweet to someone without sweet receptors. Also impossible. Human language has not yet been able to describe qualia."
],
"score": [
7,
3
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6xpew
|
why car rims move so smoothly on video?
|
When you see a car ad, when the car is going fast the rims move very smoothly and with a certain harmony that makes them look like they’re “disconnected” from the car. If you look at it in real life it’s completely different but then again, if you capture the movement with a camera and watch the video later you can even see the design of the rims. Why?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3czta",
"gl3csg1"
],
"text": [
"Has to be with the camera shutter speed. Since the wheels are rolling very fast, the shutter speed on your camera can make it seem like it's rolling slower or is even frozen in time. If you set your shutter speed very low like 1/1000 for fast moving objects, they will appear to move slower.",
"In video, you take individual snapshots very quickly and play them back very quickly. Let's look at a traditional 30 FPS video. That means you get 30 of those snapshots (or Frames) per second. Each frame represents 1/30th of a second. Now let's imagine how fast a wheel is moving. A car wheel might have 360 rpm. Over 60 seconds, it has 360 revolutions. This means over 1 second, it has 6 revolutions. That means in 1/30th of a second, it has 1/5th of a revolution. Thus, if you were recording it at 30 FPS, you would see in every frame that it moves about 1/5th of the way around. Now it just so happens that this wheel also has a 5 spoked design, so even though it moves 1/5th around, it still looks the same. Thus, every shot seems to capture the wheel in the exact same position. Now if you speed it up just a bit, rather than the wheel looking like it's in the same spot, it'll actually look just a bit ahead (i.e., 21% of a turn instead of 20%). This makes it look like it slowly creeps forward rather than turning very quickly. Likewise, if it slows down, it'll look like it's slowly spinning backwards."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l6yx7j
|
Why wouldn’t raising the minimum wage result in a proportional increase in consumer goods pricing (nullifying the wage increase)?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3jy04",
"gl3kc3c"
],
"text": [
"Wages are only a portion of the cost of the product. There’s also purchasing the product from suppliers, the cost of utilities on the buildings, insurances, etc. Also the percentage of people making minimum wage won’t be 100% of payroll. So yeah, a higher minimum would raise cost to the company, but at a MUCH smaller amount than most people think.",
"Because labor costs cannot be completely passed off to consumers in a functioning market. The milk company can't just charge whatever it wants. Other companies will cut costs to undercut it if it just raises prices. Likewise, even in non-competitive markets, willingness to pay for milk and all other goods doesn't just increase on a 1:1 basis with your income. Whether you make $7.25 an hour, $15 an hour, or $500 an hour you probably still wouldn't be willing to pay $10+ for a gallon of milk (unless you live in Hawaii). Willingness to pay for most goods does increase with income, but not anywhere close to a 1:1 ratio with income."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6z79l
|
what exactly is happening when our eyes go out of focus?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3mr15"
],
"text": [
"In order to see, your eye do a focus very similar to a camera focus, but instead of moving glass lenses, it expand a flesh translucid lense. The muscle expanding it can get tired if it expand it too much, and it might struggle to expand it after a certain period of time, so the lense go out of focus, causing you to see blurry. To \"heal\" it, you just have to either not look at all, or to look at a distant non-shiny object for a certain amount of time."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l6zsq9
|
how genetic is depression?
|
I know depression is hereditary, but I don't really get how it gets passed on like that, and what it looks like in the generation after.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl4a93a",
"gl4bob8"
],
"text": [
"Depression, along with many other mental illnesses, is caused by a combination of your environment and genetics. Your genes can give you a predisposition that makes you more likely to develop depression if in a stressful environment.",
"> how genetic is depression? This could be restated as \"how much of the likelihood of getting depression comes from genes?\" Part of this answer comes from the concept of *heritability* (often abbreviated h^2 ). This isn't only genetics; it's about the likelihood of the next generation getting something the previous generation had, while trying to rule out the possibility that it was just because people were raised similarly. Major depressive disorder has a heritability estimate between 30% and 40%, from what I've read recently. This estimate requires explanation. It **does not** mean that 30% - 40% of children whose parents have MDD will get MDD. The explanation is a little more fancy. A heritability estimate of 40% means that 40% of the *variability* in who gets MDD can be attributed to inherited factors. So imagine looking at a city full of thousands of people and seeing that some of them have MDD and some don't. The fact that some do and some don't is *variability* (it could also be called *individual differences* here). Now imagine you could come up with a number that told you about all the variability (in other words, a number showing you how much individual difference there was) in who gets MDD in this town and who doesn't. NOW (I promise, last step) take whatever that number was above, and ask, \"how much of this is because something was passed from parent to kid?\" The result of that will be heritability. I find this easier to understand when I break down the twin studies where much of this information comes from. In \"twin studies\": find identical twins who were adopted by non-biological parents, but in different homes. Find a few thousand pairs of twins like this (weirdly, that's doable; lots of adoptions happen every year). Now go through all of them, when they reach a reasonable age for testing, and give them an assessment to see if they have MDD. Because the twins are genetically identical (well, really really close, anyway), if MDD were 100% genetically caused, you would find that if one twin had it, the other definitely would, too. And if one twin didn't have it, the other definitely wouldn't. But what we actually find is that, if one twin has it, there's about a 40% chance that the other one will, too (Note: I hope I didn't get the math on this wrong; it might be slightly more complicated). In reality, that 40% heritability rate is calculated not only from identical twins raised in different households; the scientists (ideally) also factor in the number of non-identical twins raised in different households and non-identical twins raised in the same household. If you remember high school genetics you'll know that non-identical twins share a fairly predictable proportion of their genes, and it's not 100% like identical twins. These pieces of information all fit together to help epidemiologists zero in on exactly what percentage of *variability* in MDD occurrence is due to inheritance, probably genetic. Hoping that helped. I realized 5-year-olds would have a hard time with a lot of these concepts..."
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8,
6
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
] |
l6ztou
|
this quote by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb: "...it's centered on anti de sitter space, which we don't live in."
|
Hello, Harvard astrophysicist, Avi Loeb was recently on the Lex Fridman podcast and it was a very enjoyable episode but some parts were over my head. [Here's the part of the interview where he makes the argument that research on string theory and other cutting edge topics are more of a monologue than actual exploration because it is all done "anti de seeter space".]( URL_0 ) This is super interesting and would love some help making sense of it. Thank you for any help!
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3z4s6"
],
"text": [
"Starting from the beginning, you have to think about the shape of the Universe. The Universe was once a tiny point, at the instant of the Big Bang. From there it expanded to the shape it has today. If the Universe is curved, then closed loops are always possible. For comparison, the Earth is curved so from any point you can walk (ok and perhaps swim) in a straight line (due East, due South, or any angle in between) and eventually get back to where you started. If the Universe is flat, then you can fly in a straight line in your spaceship (to fix up the analogy) forever and never get back to where you started. Willem de Sitter came up with the mathematical formulation of this flat space around 1900. We've made a lot of measurements around here, and those measurements say that the space around here is flat. de Sitter used that flatness to hypothesize a uniformly flat Universe mathematically, and thus it's named a de Sitter space. However, it you go to a parking lot and make measurements, you could easily conclude that the Earth is flat. (**The Earth is not Flat!**) Your measurements simply didn't have sufficient accuracy over the tiny fraction you sampled. Some things are very hard to unify in physics. Quantum mechanics works almost perfectly at the scale of a few particles from the Standard Model. General Relativity works almost perfectly at the scale of the Solar System and Galaxy. The String Theory people might have a mechanism to unify these two perspectives, if it were actual science. Today, it's just a bunch of math. When ST makes a prediction that's different from QM or GR **and** we do an experiment to test that prediction **and** the ST prediction is right, then we'll really have something. However, ST had to make an assumption to get their math to work. Their assumption is that the universe is curved, an anti-de Sitter space. This assumption is uncomfortable to many, because space seems so flat around here. What ST really needs is a testable prediction."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l707hh
|
Why in tv show intros, they go through all the actors name without their character names but have one actor at the end that’s says “Bob Bobberson as Dr. Cool”
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl4jqzq",
"gl3sv1w",
"gl4coym",
"gl4n8lp",
"gl5h58w"
],
"text": [
"It's called title billing, and it's typically done as as a way to call prominence to a bigger name star in a smaller role, like a former A-list lead actor type who's taking a supporting role in their older age. They aren't the star, so they're not listed first/second and rather than get lost in the shuffle they get listed at the end and with a bit of a different format to set it off from the rest.",
"That person oftentimes has higher billing. The first and final names in those types of roll calls are more “prestigious” and they usually get paid more. Often (but notalways) this type of billing is something the actor has negotiated in their contract.",
"And all the different nuances mean different things too: ‘With blah blah blah’ is a special billing as is ‘featuring blah’ And then for first time or new actors or underage actors ‘introducing blah’ All in the contract negotiations",
"Other people have explained the reasoning behind this from the perspective of the movie industry or the star. The reason why they want their names to either be first or last is referred to in Psychology as the [Serial Position Effect]( URL_0 .) When you are read a list, you tend to remember the first and last items on the list the best, while often forgetting the items in the middle. Therefore, you will be more likely to remember the first and last actors names on the billing while often forgetting some of the ones in the middle.",
"It's usually done to highlight bigger actors who aren't the star. In the credits the main character of the show/movie is almost always going to be first to appear in the credits, but if there are other big stars (sometimes even bigger than the lead) they might get a special shoutout in the credits, usually by putting them at the end with a \"featuring\" or something else."
],
"score": [
88,
32,
20,
20,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial-position_effect#:~:text=Serial%2Dposition%20effect%20is%20the,and%20the%20middle%20items%20worst.&text=One%20suggested%20reason%20for%20the,of%20processing%20devoted%20to%20them"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l70aa8
|
with muscles, you use ‘em or lose ‘em. When you don’t exercise, where do they go?
|
I was reading recently that the human body doesn’t resort to using muscle/protein for energy unless the person has been starving long enough to run out of fat deposits to use... But even people who eat regularly but don’t exercise lose muscle? Where does it go? What physically happens to it?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3ua8a"
],
"text": [
"The muscles atrophy. In survival terms, it’s “expensive” to have muscle. When you have a muscle it requires energy, calories, to maintain that muscle and keep it the same size, to keep replacing dying cells with new ones. So when muscles go unused and aren’t being damaged in the kind of way that makes our body repair them larger, they slowly go away, because it is cheaper in survival terms, it requires fewer calories, to maintain a small muscle than to maintain a large one."
],
"score": [
16
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l70idq
|
What exactly happens during a short sell?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3v7rr"
],
"text": [
"I borrow the bagel from Tom. I sell the bagel to Jeff for 100 euros. I wait for the price to go down to 20 euros. I buy a bagel from the market for 20 euros. I give the bagel back to Tom. Profit is 100-20=80"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7160n
|
What's the connection between stock prices and the health of a company overall?
|
I don't actually know how the price of stocks relates to a company's overall health. I know growing/good company = high stock price, and failing company = tanked stock price. But in a situation where a failing company suddenly has a massive surge in their stock price, what happens? Does that company now have all that money?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl3zjr9"
],
"text": [
"In the short run, there is not necessarily a connection, as stock price is a prediction of the future. In the long run, the stock price is strongly connected to the health of the company."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l717hz
|
How come taking screenshots of video was difficult back in the day?
|
In the 2000s I remember when I had video players playing a file, trying to take a screen grab of it made a "hole" where the video was. It was pretty nuts, when I pasted the screenshot into Photoshop the hole showed areas of my video player application itself behind it. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl435cu"
],
"text": [
"* Most applications that want to show something on the screen have to give the data for that thing to the operating system. * The OS gathers this data from each app and also keeps track of which app is open \"over\" another app, and which are \"behind\". * Once it sorts all that out, it sends everything that is \"visible\" to the video card and the video card sends it to your monitor. * However back in the day, full motion video was super hard to render and it really could only be done by the video card. * So instead of giving that video data to the OS, it say hay, make a hole where the video is, and I'm going to send it directly to the video card. * When you take a screen shot, that comes from the data the OS has access to. * So it couldn't capture the video because that data went straight to the video card. * So instead you saw everything the OS had including the hole it made for the video."
],
"score": [
16
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l719fv
|
What is physically happening when your body develops a tolerance to something?
|
Do we build tolerances to everything we consume? Does it include healthy things too, like vitamins?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5hqfc",
"gl6ag2u"
],
"text": [
"That kind of depends on what exactly you're wondering about specifically. Tolerance to a bacteria or tolerance to an allergen like pollen or tolerance to a venom are very different processes and concepts. I guess you're interested in the venom one..? So; your body sometimes adapts to being exposed to a substance by improving the way you break it down. That's e.g. why alcoholics don't get drunk that easily - their liver starts getting better at processing alcohol because it's harmful to the body and it's trying to protect itself. Something similar can also happen with healthy substances - e.g. some vitamins need so called co-factors produced by your body to be absorbed. These factors will be overproduced drastically if you don't get enough of the vitamin to make sure you are taking up everything you can and not letting it go to waste. If you would go back to supplying your body with a sufficient amount of the vitamin, it would stop producing a crazy amount of co-factors so you would become less efficient at taking up the vitamin. In that sense there can be a tolerance but it usually doesn't compensate fully for the lack of e.g. a vitamin. In a similar mechanism, if you don't drink enough your kidneys will start reabsorbing as much water as possible - you essentially become tolerant to dehydration (to a certain degree). Our bodies have many such mechanisms to maintain what is called homeostasis - essentially an equilibrium inside your body in regards to all kinds of substances but also stuff like blood pressure, temperature etc.",
"there is a sort of balance that the body tries to maintain at all times, called homeostasis. basically, you try to have enough but not too much oxygen in your blood, enough but not too much body heat, enough but not too much calcium in your bones, etc. the body has many, many strategies for trying to maintain these balances. sometimes when your body is being pushed out of balance in some particular way much of the time, your body will enact some counterbalancing strategy all of the time. for example, you may always have an elevated level of some hormone if you always have too much sugar in your blood, or your brain may always spend a lot of time cleaning up some neurotransmitter if you're drunk every day. through these strategies, your body can \"tolerate\" the imbalancing force. the body doesn't have a strategy for tolerating everything - for example, if you consume too much vitamin A, there is nothing your body can do. you will just die. obviously, though we think of vitamin A as \"healthy\" because it's necessary for our survival and proper functioning, it's really the *proper balance* of this nutrient in our body that's healthy - that is, having neither too little nor too much."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l71hac
|
why do apps consume more memory the longer you have then open all else being equal?
|
On my Mac key apps just start consuming more and more memory the longer they are open even if not used (eg no new tabs added for a browser but after a week it’s sucking gbs of memory)
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl41vt9"
],
"text": [
"* Those apps are poorly coded and don't properly return unused memory to the operating system. * It's like a child who keeps wanting another glass of milk. * Instead of reusing the glass they have, or washing it when they are done, they just put it aside and grab another glass."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l71nm6
|
Does sugar found in fruits such as strawberries differentiate from sugar found in soft drinks? Do they have the same effect on the body healthwise?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl4ehr0",
"gl45aai",
"gl45tvi"
],
"text": [
"A big difference is not in the sugar it's in everything else. For example, eating an apple you're getting lots of fiber, water, and nutrients. This will keep you feeling full and will slow your absorption of sugar. In contrast, if you drink a can of coke you're getting no fiber or nutrients and so you absorb the sugar very quickly and won't feel full for long. This is the big difference between the two, it's not the sugar it's everything else. I can only eat about 2 medium size apples at a time which is only about 180 calories and it keeps me full for at least 2 hours. In contrast I could drink lots of pop during the day without feeling full or satisfied at all. This is why drinking pop all day can easily lead to weight gain whereas it is very hard to overeat fruits since they have so much fiber. That being said the occasional soda or candy is fine, it's all about balance.",
"Yes. Fruits contain Fructose where as sugars in soda contain Sucrose. It essentially has the same short term and long term effects. Raises blood sugar. Can cause diabetes (type 2) through insulin resistance. There is some evidence to show that it's not as bad as Sucrose, but then there is other studies that show that it's just as bad.",
"The sugar found in fruits is called fructose, our household sugar is called disaccharose. The latter is a combination of fructose and glucose and gets seperated in our body. So yes, basically, at least healthwise its all the same. This difference is due to the fiber you get from fruits, plus vitamins and stuff. Thats why a lot of strawberries is much healthier and more filling than the dame amount of pure sugar the strawberries contain."
],
"score": [
35,
16,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l72m4g
|
Virtual Machines
|
My college has a virtual lab where you can run programs that you don't have downloaded on your computer. How does this work?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl4fm0e",
"gl4g1tq"
],
"text": [
"The concept behind a virtual machine is to simulate a computer within the resources of another computer. So for example suppose you want to give some students access to a computer with 4 CPU cores, 8 GB of memory, and 500 GB of hard drive space. You might want to do this for various reasons, like in your case allowing students to run programs without needing to pay for licenses for every student. To do this the organization can simulate those computer resources within a much more powerful server system. They might have hundreds of CPU cores available for use, terabytes of memory, and hundreds of terabytes of storage space available. When a student wants to work on a virtual machine the software sets up a simulated file system and allocates the necessary resources to running it. For the student it will behave much like a normal computer, but the server can run many of these virtual machines at the same time. In this case the college is likely benefiting because they can pay for only a few licenses and only start that many virtual machines on the server. If another student wants to run the program after you are done the server can simply reset the environment and allow the other student to access the virtual machine you were using.",
"When you interact with your computer, like by typing or moving the mouse, you're sending a series of signals to a processing unit. The processing unit then responds, like by darkening some pixels on the screen in the shape of 'a' or by starting some calculation. There's no particular reason that set of signals needs to be sent only to a processing unit that is close to you. With the right software and an internet connection, you an instead send those signals to some other processing unit far away, which can then send back the results to be shown on your screen. This is not ideal - there may be lag or connection issues - but it can be useful if the far-away unit has programs/data/processing power that your local machine doesn't. As a side note, this may well be the future of video game technology. Products like Stadia run games on powerful computers in their facilities. You send them inputs over the internet, and they send you back a feed of the game. With a good enough internet connection and some technical refinements, it could be just as good as having that powerful machine in your living room."
],
"score": [
8,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l738nt
|
How do they make those big boneless balls of turkey that they slice at deli’s? They are the size of a turkey but it is just sliceable meat
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl4isok"
],
"text": [
"Extract whole turkey breasts from a carcass and press them together with geletin as glue, press into a mold and cook until to forms to mold shape"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l73dpy
|
Why does horseraddish/wasabi make my face feel like that?
|
You know the feeling I mean? Like someone jammed a needle into your sinuses, but like, in a good way? One time I had a burger with too much horseradish on it and I felt it in my scalp. So why is that?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl4g8ho"
],
"text": [
"Iirc, it's to do with them both containing allyl isothiocyanate. It will trigger nerve receptor cells in the same way that (e.g) tear gas would."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l74nfk
|
How can metals get stressed?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl4o10f"
],
"text": [
"Metals, down at the molecular level, are crystals. The molecules are arranged in a (mostly) nice regular structure. When you bend a metal a little bit you just distort the bonds and when you let go everything goes back to where it was. This is why most metals spring back when you let go. But. If you bend them really far, you actually rearrange bonds in the lattice and the distortion becomes partly permenant. That's why, if you bend it far enough, it doesn't spring all the way back. If you keep bending it back and forth, distortions in the lattice keep building up and the metal is getting stressed. Just to complicate things, unless you're \\*extremely\\* careful to grow single-crystal metals, you'll always have tiny dislocations and cracks even when the metal is new. Those little local distortions can cause what's called \"stress concentration\", so even if you don't bend the metal far enough to cause a bulk distortion, you can spawn tiny localized distortions near the stress concentrations. Over time, these grow and spread and eventually result in big cracks, and eventually your metal breaks. This is called \"fatigue\", and happens to almost all metals if you cycle them enough times or at high enough stress (there's a trade between how many cycles and how much you bend it)."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l75v5f
|
Why aren't complete molar pregnancies viable?
|
Complete molar pregnancies have 46 chromosomes, but all chromosomes come from the father. All the information I've found explains that these pregnancies aren't viable, but not *why* having all DNA from the father would result in an unviable pregnancy if the sex chromosomes are XX or XY. I would think that having all the father's DNA would just result in some kind of clone, so I don't understand why it leads to a bunch of cysts instead.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5eqsy",
"gl4vz5s"
],
"text": [
"It's a phenomenon known as \"genomic imprinting\". When your body creates eggs and sperm, it \"bookmarks\" certain parts of the DNA depending on if it's eggs or sperm. Those bookmarks make sure that the combined egg and sperm DNA make the right amount of certain proteins that they both have genes for but might only want one dose of in the embryo. Most imprinted genes appear to be important in early development. Issues with imprinting generally lead to early miscarriage or serious lifelong disorders in the child (Prader-Willi or Angelman syndrome). There has been limited success with creating double-female-bookmarked mice but double-male-bookmarked mammals are still a complete lost cause. For obvious reasons we can't experiment much to see how these types of fertilizations would impact a human, but it's generally agreed upon that our current science would not be able to create a healthy human from two parents of the same sex without some rather significant leaps in technology.",
"Part of the formation of the egg and sperm results in certain genes being 'turned on/off'. Even if you have all the genes you need, if the right genes are not 'active' you run into issues. Last I knew (and possibly outdated, this is a fairly fast moving field) the 'trick' in a Molar pregnancy is that genes associated with promoting growth the placenta (i.e. the thing that connects the baby to the uterus) are turned 'on' in the sperm and genes associated with controlling growth of the placenta are turned 'on' in the egg (there are some evolution based arguments why it might make sense for this to happen), and only having dad DNA means that 'control' factor is missing and the cells go crazy."
],
"score": [
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l75xqa
|
How do stocks work?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl4uki7"
],
"text": [
"You give money to a company and they give you a piece of paper(share). That company uses the money to fund their business and succeed. When lots of people have bought, the value per share goes up. You can give the piece of paper back or sell it to someone for the amount that the value currently is. For example, if I bought 2 shares of Amazon yesterday for 3500 apiece, I will have 2 shares or papers. If lots of people sell today and the value drops to 3000, I have to sell and only get back 6000 dollars, making it a loss. You have to know when to buy and when it is highest so you can sell. Like if I bought 50 GameStop shares when it was at a dollar, I’m gonna sell at 20, because I know it’s gonna start to go down because people know this is the peak. See? I just made 1000 dollars by spending 50. Some people don’t even have a job and do this for a living."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l76yiy
|
Does a company profit from its own stock value increasing independently of the companies normal profits?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl4zue8",
"gl54t73"
],
"text": [
"Not normally. The stock is owned by the shareholders. The price of the stock doesn't affect the company's financials normally at all. There are some rare exceptions: \\- The company might be holding on to some stock that it bought back or held onto and never sold. If the stock price goes high, it can choose to sell that on the open market, and gain cash for things it wants to do. But this is rarely done. \\- The company could choose to issue new stock. However, this isn't an instant process, and usually causes the stock price to drop significantly. It's also done rarely.",
"There is a difference between capital and revenue. Capital is everything a company owns that it uses to create revenue. That is the factory, machines, processes, intellectual property, so on . . . Revenue is the cash a company receives from selling it's products. Profits are what is left over after all the expenses of production are paid, including labor. A stock is an ownership share of the capital of the company. The stock price increasing is the investment market's assessment of how valuable it's capital is. This is usually based upon the perception that the company will turn a profit. But selling shares does not create revenue and therefore it does not lead to profits. But selling shares creates operating money, that can be used to create revenue."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l77bic
|
How is Robinhood affecting the market the way it is right now and why is happening now
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl51npp"
],
"text": [
"To roughly summarize, Robinhood is an app that allows casual people without much money or training to buy, trade and sell stocks. A lot of people used it to buy GameStop and a few other company's stocks, at the suggestion of Redditors at WallStreetBets. They bought so much that they turned the stock value of companies that had been doing poorly around. This messed with the plans of many financial firms, that had money-making schemes that were based around selling and buying the stocks of companies that were doing poorly. Now that those companies aren't doing poorly, because a ton of Redditors were now investing in them, those financial firms saw their plans backfire, and instead of earning a ton of money, they lost a ton of money. Robinhood and a few other apps that make it very easy for people to trade are placing restrictions on those specific company's stocks that the Redditors have been playing around with. Some people feel that it's totally fair for Robinhood to do this, as a bunch of people who clearly don't have a full understanding of how the stock market work have put a lot of money into it, and this could backfire for them. Others feel that Robinhood is being pressured to do this by the large financial firms who stand to lose a lot of money because the Redditors messed with their plans, and that this is very unfair to the regular people who invested in Gamestop and other businesses."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l77dr1
|
how/why does coffee cause BM’s?
|
ELI5: After a tumbler of coffee I’ll have to run to the bathroom like 4 times just in the morning, why does that happen? Is it just the caffeine that does it?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl575kv",
"gl51pvi",
"gl5dq5x"
],
"text": [
"All that is truly known about the effects of coffee on the intestines is that it appears to stimulate intestinal muscles and makes things go. Both regular and decaf have been proven to be effective, however regular does have a more pronounced effect. Why that is exactly is unknown.",
"Oftentimes coffee is the first thing we consume in the morning so the BM is attributed to the coffee. The GI system slows down significantly when you are asleep. Activity in the stomach is a trigger to start back up again. So, if you had a carrot first thing every day you would attribute the BM to the carrot.",
"There's multiple factors but the major one is that after sleeping 8 hours you need to poop but sleeping kinda shuts down the need to poop so drinking/eating something starts it back up again also coffee helps stimulate your intenstines a little so that helps too"
],
"score": [
6,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l77sd9
|
How do those silica gel packets “keep things fresh”?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl547kv",
"gl54hv0"
],
"text": [
"They absorb moisture, which will keep the air and hence stuff in the package dry. This would reduce the chances of, say, fungus and other unwanted stuff growing because it doesn't have the moisture it needs to thrive.",
"They absorb moisture from the air around them. Thus they are used for things that should be kept dry as they'll mitigate the effects of humidity. They don't work indefinitely though, so you're still supposed to keep the product somewhere relatively dry."
],
"score": [
14,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l78qb8
|
when a stock goes up, how does that company get the money?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl59jkg",
"gl5a8o9",
"gl59lzp",
"gl5a1h6"
],
"text": [
"The company doesn't get any money after they sell their initial public offering or sell additional stock into the market. After it's in the hands of private sellers, it's the private sellers that make or lose money from buying and selling the stock.",
"Companies aren’t directly impacted by fluctuations in their stock, (either up or down) BUT.... 1) It influences their ability to pay dividends to shareholders at the end of the year. 2) Impacts their ability to get public funding at future IPOs 3) Many companies offer shares to executives. As such these people’s portfolios gain value. At certain times they can sell the stock at higher value. 4) It provides the company good advertising, making them highly desirable. That opens many doors: from lucrative deals with other companies to attracting high value employees.",
"In most cases it doesn’t. Companies can sell additional shares to investors and raise cash which does benefit the company but outside of the IPO or secondary offering only the stockholders benefit.",
"Higher stock prices boosts market cap and allows a company to borrow at cheaper rates. This can help reduce fixed costs and improve profitability. Or, issue new shares and increase cash on hand."
],
"score": [
8,
5,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l78zic
|
Who sets the prices for a companies stock?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5bjrd"
],
"text": [
"After the initial moment / IPO, the price is whatever people are willing to pay. You offer it for sale, and if someone buys it, that is what it is worth."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l797qk
|
How do we really know there is no two identical snowflakes?
|
I don’t really know what -illion word to use for how many snowflakes have fallen, but how do we know that out of all of them, no two are alike? (Sorry if flair is incorrect)
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5dsgp",
"gl5onsq",
"gl5ebtq",
"gl5etpt",
"gl62lps"
],
"text": [
"The idea that no two snowflakes are never alike is more about explaining a concept and not really about knowing that there have never been two identical snowflakes. It is about representing the amount of variation possible in a thing - really the more complex something becomes the less likely there is for something to be identical to it. Like every molecule of water is identical but there are so many molecules of water in a snowflake that the chance of another snowflake having the same number and placement of water molecules in it is so unlikely that it doesn't exist.",
"It’s a statistical statement, not a law of physics, in which the snowflakes communicate with each other, or anything like that. Let’s use an analogy with playing cards. There are approximately 80,658,175,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different ways of arranging the cards in a deck. If I shuffle well, I can be extremely sure that no two shuffles will result in the same arrangement. Actually I can very sure that all the shuffles done by all the people in the world ever won’t repeat the exact same arrangement. It’s the same with snowflakes. There are an unimaginably large number of ways a snowflake can arrange itself. While the number of snowflakes is a lot, it’s nowhere’s near that big. So we can be very sure that no two snowflakes are the same.",
"Okay, not exactly ELI5, but I've tired to find a fairly reliable link: URL_0 Sort answer : because showflakea are so sensitive to temperature changes and other factors as they fall to the ground, changing their shape as they go. It's not impossible for two to be the same, but the probability is very small. Small enough for for the notion to exist.",
"The statement itself isn't true if something has formed once another thing can form again in the same way. The sayings of no two snowflakes or no two finger prints are identical refers to rarity it's not literal.",
"Actually that saying is just about it being extremely unlikely. However, in 1988 Nancy Knight , a scientist at the National Center for Atmosphere Research in Boulder, Colorado, USA, found two identical examples while studying snow crystals from a storm in Wisconsin, using a microscope. URL_0"
],
"score": [
107,
21,
7,
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/alike/alike.htm"
],
[],
[
"https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-indentical-snow-crystals"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l79f4j
|
Are fried foods really that bad for you?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5eft5"
],
"text": [
"The real issue is that fried foods tend to be high in calories, because fat is pretty calorie dense. So it's very easy to eat way more calories than you need to with fried foods, because they taste good and you're likely to eat more than strictly necessary. Eating too many calories is going to result in weight gain. And fried foods tend to not have much other nutritional value, so you are getting a lot of extra calories but not much in the way of vitamins, minerals, fiber or the such."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l79p20
|
How do banks work?
|
If i go to the bank to deposit $100 into my account I give the bank $100 cash and i get a magical $100 in my bank account. Didn’t they just create $100 digitally out of nothing? or do they get rid of the cash i give them?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5fx96",
"gl5ptdy"
],
"text": [
"What you are missing is that after you gave the bank $100, the bank now has a $100 debt to you (in a simplified sense).",
"If you walk into the bank and give them a $100 bill, they make a record that says \"acct #1234 gave us $100\". In exchange for your $100 paper money, they give you $100 in electronic credit. That's the $100 that's now in your account and can be spent on Amazon, let's say. They have a few choices on what to do with the paper $100 bill you gave them now that they've exchanged it with you for electronic credit. They can either hold it in their vault, give it to another customer who wants paper money, or send it to the government to be recirculated to another bank/financial institution. Sometimes the government gets bills that are really old and beat up. They may choose to destroy these bills rather than recirculate them. It USED to be that governments tried to keep real, physical things (paper bills, gold, or silver) in their stockpiles or in circulation o represent the amount of money that had been sent to them by banks. But in modern times governments realized that gold and silver and paper money isn't really needed. Gov't now just does what the banks do - they keep an electronic record of how much money/electronic credit they have. Provided all the records are kept nd everybody trusts each other a bit, we can all agree that the electronic records are good enough. The gov't and the banks just have to keep enough money in circulation for those people who want paper money sometimes."
],
"score": [
9,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l79urg
|
How exactly is Robinhood manipulating the market and is there any real chance they get sued and lose?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5iin4",
"gl5m1cy"
],
"text": [
"They limited trading in GameStop, AMC, and others which might have made some sense due to the unusual activity with those stocks. Halting trading in a particular stock is often done at the stock market level. But since Robinhood unilaterally stopped people from buying the stock (but not selling it), it meant only their users were unable to buy it. Since Robinhood caters to small, typically young, individual investors, it meant only large institutional traders could buy those stocks for a period. (Some other stock trading apps followed suit but not all.) I wouldn’t be shocked if they got sued, though I doubt they’d lose if they fought it. Since fighting a class action lawsuit is expensive, it’s probably most likely to end in a settlement where they pay some money and agree to clearly state a policy or whatever.",
"Bill borrows your nice bike. Bill realizes the prices of bikes are falling so he sells your bike, with the plan of buying it back at a lower price next week. Wally sees this and decides to convince some of his friends to buy bikes, cause he thinks selling your bike was a dick move. Now there is a shortage of bikes, and the price goes up. Bill panics, instead of just eating his loss and buying a slightly more expensive bike he borrows as many bikes as he can then sells them. Hoping this will crash the market and he can then buy the bikes cheap. Wally says fuck you Bill and buys a shit ton of bikes.and the price of bikes sky rocket. Bill is fucked, except his dad is Mayor of bikeville and says, sorry Wally and friends are now only allowed to sell bikes not buy them. Not only that nobody but my favorite son Bill can buy these beautiful bikes, but anyone can sell. The market for bikes crashes because nobody but Bill is allowed to buy. And Bill being the dick he is only offers the shittiest prices. Bill can now buy back the bikes he borrowed at a cheap price because his dad is a fuckwat in a long line of fuck wats and he rigged the game so only Bill could win."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7au5z
|
How can you take a long vacation drive with an electric vehicle?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5n9rc",
"gl5nqlh",
"gl5o9eg"
],
"text": [
"You'll use a charging station along the way, the same way you use a gas station now. The slow charging you do at home is a limitation of the home power supply, not of the car; a well-equipped charging station can recharge the car quickly.",
"A problem I’ve been trying to read about! So there are supposedly charging stations every 200 miles in the us which means you COULD take that trip but the charging takes like more than an hour so that’s something that makes it more of a commuter vehicle in my eyes. And not ready for road trips just yet They ARE developing batteries that can be charged much quicker (like 15-20 minutes from what I’ve read). But that’s still prob a few years out, so in summary we’re not there yet but should be in five or so I would bet!",
"You stop at a charging station instead of a gas station. Most electric cars have a fast charge option that gets you up to like 80% in some reasonable amount of time (like a half hour). You do have to plan ahead a little bit to know where to stop while driving through some parts of the country but electric charging stations aren’t so rare anymore. I live in Louisiana and my colleague drove to Florida recently in his Tesla. It’s obviously easier to find a charging station in west coast cities than the Deep South. But supposedly, you can make it from Seattle to Miami in a modern EV without much hassle."
],
"score": [
12,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7awqr
|
How can Switzerland have Deflation and Low Unemployment simultaneously?
|
Doesn't a **stable deflation with low unemployment** defy all economist theories on why we should always have small inflation? What does Switzerland do right? Inflation rate of -1.9% since 2010 \[[source]( URL_0 )\] Unemployment rate (international standard) 4.5% to 5% \[[source]( URL_1 )\] Unemployment rate (swiss national standard) 2.1% to 3.6% \[[source]( URL_2 )\]
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5p7cm"
],
"text": [
"I can't confirm your source on inflation because it cycles uncontrollably through different reference periods (I've never seen a bug like it!) But this [source]( URL_0 ) seems to contradict the idea that the Swiss economy has experienced massive deflation since 2010. It had a few years with slight deflation and probably price stagnation overall. Meanwhile, the unemployment graph you provided indicates that Swiss unemployment has been a bit higher in the last decade, even if it's low by the standards of a lot of its neighbors. So on that level these data aren't all that inconsistent with the \"Phillips Curve.\" Inflation went down - unemployment went up. That said, the Phillips Curve isn't so much an economic principle as a hypothesis based on observing a small number of economies over a short period of time. There's already a lot of evidence that the Phillips Curve doesn't always hold, especially in times of economic turmoil. Many countries famously experienced \"stagflation\" in the 1970s - high unemployment combined with high inflation. Now that you know the term, you can read up more on your own."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHE/switzerland/inflation-rate-cpi#:~:text=Switzerland%20inflation%20rate%20for%202019,a%200.71%25%20increase%20from%202015"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7axly
|
How does a 3D cinema movie get translated into a 2D movie you can watch at home? Do they show you only one eye perspective or do they film a separate 2D version? Or is it something else?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5o5nd",
"gl6aodx"
],
"text": [
"Sometimes they rework some special effect shots, but usually you're just seeing the left eye view.",
"Many movies aren't really shot in 3D, they're shot in 2D and post-processed to create a 3D image. So a 2D movie existed before the post-processing. URL_1 URL_0"
],
"score": [
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2D_to_3D_conversion",
"https://realorfake3d.com/"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7bcqx
|
why does meat move after the animals death?
|
I've recently seen videos of fresh meat moving after death, and while they say its muscle memory, I confused and intrigued on the science of it.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5t6nl",
"gl5ti5p"
],
"text": [
"Electrical energy still being stored in the muscles after death, there's some weird videos of frog legs dancing when salted",
"When creatures die there isn't some overarching signal that goes through their system that lets all of the cells know that it's all over. Cells individually die as they either run out of food, oxygen or are poisoned by their own waste that isn't being removed any longer since blood flow stopped. Muscle cells are particularly well suited to operate without blood flow though since they can function anaerobically - they don't need air. So they stay alive a little bit longer than other types of cells. This means that they will randomly twitch for a bit until the cells die. I also believe that the nerve cells that control the muscles also send off signals as they die that causes the muscles to contract."
],
"score": [
5,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7brap
|
Why do plant branches grow in straight lines, but you see twigs in angular patterns?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl5wfzf"
],
"text": [
"Could you clarify what you're asking? Most branches don't grow straight, and the shape is influenced by many factors including availability of sunlight, competition, access to water and nutrients, etc."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7bwxz
|
Why does the moon look flat from earth when we look at it with our eyes when its obviously spherical
|
Is it all about how we perceive objects from afar or is it that we are only seeing it’s “face”(visible area) or maybe because of the sun’s light thats shining on it?(lack of depth)
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl68yu3",
"gl6r0ep"
],
"text": [
"You being a 3D being in a 3D universe ultimately see everything as a 2D projection. That's just how an image works. You'd need a 4D eyeball in a 4D universe if you want a 3D image. That's seems weird, but consider a 2D being in a 2D universe (like say Mario in the video games), any vision he sees is just going to be 1D lines to him. However, your brain has some tricks to interpret distance and give us depth perception, but they all have their limitations. To name a few, and why they don't help: * Binocular vision. You have two eyes, objects will appear at a different angle to each eye. How much difference in angle, how far away the object is. This is how 3D movies work, feed each eye a different image taken from a camera in a different spot, and you have binocular depth perception. This only really works at a close range, where your eyes have significantly different angles to see the object at. Close one eye, and the room you are in looks slightly different. Close one eye when looking out a window, and nothing looks different. The moon is way, way too far away for this to work, the closest and furthest away parts have no difference in angle to your two eyes. * Depth of field. You eyes have a focal length, which is how much they bend incoming light to focus it. Your eye muscles distort your eye lens to change this on the fly. If you focus on something of a fixed distance away, things closer or further away will be blurry. Or if you need glasses, always blurry as your eyes suck at this. Once things are far away, light light rays come in basically parallel so the effect is gone. No difference in bending required. That's why focusing on something 100m away doesn't make something 150m away blurry. The moon is way, way too far away for this to work. * Occlusion. Closer objects blocking further objects tells your brain which is closer. Many optical illusions play with the fact your brain tries to reason this out, and the conclusion it comes to actually alters your visual perception of the world. [Like this]( URL_0 ) Obviously the closer middle part of the moon does not block the sides, so this doesn't help. * Motion parallax. When you look out a car window, the lane marking lines fly by. The road signs near by move by fast. The trees further away casually move by. The mountain in the distance barely appears to move. The speed at which an object moves through your field of vision, when you or it moves, gives you an idea of how far away it is. Especially in reference to closer or further objects moving at different speeds when you move. The moon is so far away you don't see any movement to any parts of it. If you start driving, the entire moon just sits there, even more stationary than the mountain. The middle closer part and further sides definitely aren't moving at a noticable difference to you.",
"The Moon is many millions of miles away from us, so far away that the few tens or hundreds of miles difference between the closest parts of the moon and the farthest parts we can see is an insignificant distance, like the difference in elevation on a piece of paper between the blank spots and the spots with crayon drawings. Under a microscope those differences would look huge, but from a few feet away it just looks like a flat image."
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.askideas.com/media/36/Endless-Staircase-Optical-Illusion-Picture.gif"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7ckr5
|
Stock Market Megathread
|
There's a lot going on in the stock market this week and both ELI5 and Reddit in general are inundated with questions about it. This is an opportunity to ask for explanations for concepts related to the stock market. All other questions related to the stock market will be removed and users directed here. How does buying and selling stocks work? What is short selling? What is a short squeeze? What is stock manipulation? [What is a hedge fund?]( URL_0 ) What other questions about the stock market do you have? In this thread, top-level comments (direct replies to this topic) are allowed to be questions related to these topics as well as explanations. Remember to follow all other rules, and discussions unrelated to these topics will be removed. **Please refrain as much as possible from speculating on recent and current events.** By all means, talk about what has happened, but this is not the place to talk about what will happen next, speculate about whether stocks will rise or fall, whether someone broke any particular law, and what the legal ramifications will be. Explanations should be restricted to an objective look at the mechanics behind the stock market. EDIT: It should go without saying (but we'll say it anyway) that any trading you do in stocks is at your own risk. **ELI5 is not the appropriate place to ask for or provide advice on stock buy, selling, or trading.**
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"Hopefully this is helpful. I work in the stock market and my little brother asked me to explain what was going on. Here was my response: Let’s say GameStop has 100 shares outstanding currently trading @ $20 per share (so if you own 1 share, you own 1%, 25 shares = 25% and so on) That’s it. There are only 100 shares of GameStop. Throughout the day people are constantly buying and selling these shares for one reason or another (that’s why the stock price moves up and down constantly) Now, typically when you think about making money in the stock market you typically think “buy low, sell high” 📈. In other words, buying Amazon when it was cheap, and now it’s worth 💰 💰 💰. In this case you would be speculating that the stock price of Amazon will go up ⬆️ in the future - *fun industry term: you are “bull-ish”* Here is where the short selling comes into play. Let’s pretend You have a hedge fund. Alec’s hedge fund manager looks at GME (GameStop) and says “I think GME is over valued, it really should only be trading at $15 per share, not $20 🤔 “ In this situation, He is speculating that in the near future, the GME stock price will go down (to $15). - *another fun industry term; he would be “bear-ish” on GME* Now since the hedge fund manager thinks GME’s stock price will go down, He is going to try to make money on that guess by short selling (shorting) the stock. To short the stock The manager is going to *borrow* some shares from someone else, bob, and sell them at the current market price (which is $20). Let’s say he borrows 10 shares (total of only 100 remember) and sells them at the New York stock exchange for $20. He made $200 ($20 x 10 shares) A while later, GMEs stock price suddenly dips (fun industry term: “down ticks”). It is now trading at $15. Alec’s hedge fund manager was right! now don’t forget, we borrowed the shares from somebody else so we have to give those back. Alec’s hedge fund manager goes to the New York stock exchange and buys 10 shares @ $15 and returns those to the lender. Alec’s hedge fund made $50 on that trade total (this is called “PnL”). So the full life cycle: - *Borrowed 10 shares from “bob”* - *Sold 10 @ $20 in the market* - *Bought 10 @ $15 in the market* - *Returned 10 shares to “bob”* Total profit = (10 x $20) - (10 x $15) Okay.... so now onto what is actually happening with GameStop. Let’s keep the example the same. GameStop has 100 total shares outstanding. Now a bunch of hedge fund managers all think the exact thing that Alec’s hedge fund manager thought so they all short the stock with the expectation that the price will “downtick” in the future. Here’s the thing.... someone on Reddit pointed out that despite the fact that GameStop only has 100 shares available at any given time, there were actually 125 shares on loan to cover short sales. I know this part is confusing, which it should be. That doesn’t make sense mathematically. How can you have more shares loaned out than available? I’m going to gloss over those details and just say that it is possible, and does happen on occasion. Now when you have a stock that is over shorted like this, you have one major risk, which is called a “gamma/short squeeze” . It does not occur often. In a gamma/short squeeze, there are more shares loaned out than available. That is because all of those hedge fund managers thought the price would go down and got greedy and tried to make as much 💰 as possible and over borrowed assuming they would be able to cover it. But, someone pointed that out on Reddit, and was able to get that information to go viral. Now with all of these new people buying the stock, it forced the stock price up, very quickly (supply and demand). Just like in the example, these hedge fund managers had to return the shares to the lender... the problem is, the stock price has gone up so much that if they have to “close their position” they’ll lose a fortune. - *Example: I sold 10 @ $20 = $200* Instead of going down; the stock price went up to $400. I have to return the stock to the lender and the only way to do it is to go buy it back. So: - *I buy 10 @ $400 = $4,000* - *PnL = +$200 - $4,000* instead of making money; I lost $3,800. This is basically what is happening with GME on a much bigger scale Edit 1: Lots of people asking about the “loan”. It’s not really a loan in the way that you’re thinking. When you execute an order to sell a share, you are required to Mark it as either “long” or “short”. What this really means is, do you “have” the stock right now in your bank account, or are you “able” to get it easily. So theoretically, everyone could be marking their orders as short sales, assuming the shares are easy to borrow and readily available, except, as the price goes up, people panic and start buying them all up and there aren’t enough to go around. This in turn drives the price up further. Hence the “squeeeeeeeze” Typical settlement of a trade occurs t+2. In other words, you’re required to deliver the shares you sold short to the counter party within two business days of execution Edit 2: for those asking about option expiration: An option as like a coupon. It gives the coupon holder the right to buy or sell stock, at a given price, on a given date. Think about it this way. If I think that the stock price of GME is going to go up in the near future, I can buy a coupon (technically a call option) that gives me the right to purchase the stock for a set price at a later date. So if GME is @ $20, I may buy a call option that gives me the right to buy GME stock for $20 per share exactly one month from now (expiration). The idea is that within that time frame; the gme stock price will increase, thereby making my coupon valuable because it allows the owner to buy at a discount. On the other side, you have someone who “writes” the contract. Essentially sells you the coupon. Let’s say GameStop is trading at $20, and you buy that $20 coupon. Well now, GameStop is trading at $400. So if your expiration is tomorrow you can “exercise” it, and the writer is required to deliver your shares for the agreed upon price, $20. To do that, they’ll probably have to go out and buy it at these exorbitant prices",
"Okay let me get this straight I’m Wall Street and I - borrowed a pillow, have to give it back on the 29 - sold the pillow for $100 thinking I can buy it back for $50 before the 29 - reddit bought the pillow I borrowed and now I can only buy it back at $3000 - tomorrow is the 29 and I don’t have $3000 - I’m screwed?",
"How does buying and selling stocks work? . I own an orange factory. I want to raise money for building a new navel orange machine, so I issue orange stock. I make a special orange that you can buy for $1. I issue 1 million oranges, and raise $1 million. You now own an orange for every $1 you gave me. That's all you get. If you're lucky, I might give you a fraction of how much I make with the new orange machine every year. But you buy the orange share because other people will want it later, when my company is big and successful, and you can try selling the orange share for more than the original dollar. . What is short selling? . You have 100 of my oranges. I come up to you Monday and say, \"If you loan me those 100 oranges, I will give you $2 and your oranges back Friday. You agree, and I go off and sell your oranges for $1 each. I have $100 and owe you $2 and your oranges back. I hope your oranges will be cheaper Friday, and if they are only worth 50 cents, I buy 100 oranges and give you them and $2, and I am $48 richer. . What is a short squeeze? . Someone saw me make the deal on the oranges, and then immediately sell them. They know I have to have 100 oranges on Friday. So the go buy up all the oranges, and on Friday, when I try to buy oranges, they are standing there with a sign that says \"oranges for sale $20.\" Anyone who wants to sell oranges is selling them there. I have to buy from them for $20 an orange. Now I have lost $1900 dollars buying the oranges back, and still owe the $2. . What is stock manipulation? . When I buy the 100 oranges, I go around and talk about how bad oranges are. I tell my friends not to let anyone buy oranges so demand drops. I go on CNBC and talk about how I bit into a nasty orange and threw up. Now oranges are 25 cents. How wonderful... I can buy my 100 oranges for $25, and now my profits are $73!",
"Melvin is in 5th grade. He goes to a school where kids sell different kinds of candy to each other on the playground. Melvin is friends with an older, bigger kid named Essie-C. He makes sure that all the candy sales on the playground happen fairly. If a kid doesn't pay for the right price for the candy, or if the kid selling the candy just takes the money, Essie-C beats them up. Teachers at the school let this all happen because the kids like candy, they are better behaved when they have it, and Essie-C is generally a pretty trustworthy kid who is feared by the bad kids. A delicious new candy called Chee'umee has come out, but it's only available in Japan. It's the perfect candy in every way, EXCEPT that many of the batches spoil very easily. The candy is so good though, that people still buy it, even with the possibility that they might end up with spoiled batch. Normally the wrapper of the candy is bright metallic green, but when it spoils, it turns black. Melvin is friends with Essie-C. One day, Melvin has an idea and pulls Essie-C aside. Melvin: Hey Essie-C! Have you heard about this new Japanese candy called Chee'umee? Essie-C: Nope. Melvin: Well, it's really good and I want to sell it to the kids on the playground, but I don't have any with me. My dad is going on a business trip to Japan next month, and he can bring some back for me. Would it be cool if I sell the other kids IOUs? Then when I get the candy, They can exchange their IOUs for the candy! Essie-C: OK Melvin: Well, there's one more thing. The Chee'umee might spoil before the kids get to exchange the IOUs for it. If that happens, is it okay if I keep the money they paid for the IOU? The kids I'm selling to will need to understand that we might get a spoiled batch and their IOUs won't be worth anything. Essie-C: Sure. But you'd still have to give them the spoiled candy, if they want it. Melvin: No kid would want the spoiled candy! Essie-C: Them's the rules. Melvin: Fine... On the playground, Melvin follows this plan and sells 140 IOUs, which are little slips of paper to all the kids on the playground. He makes a lot of money that day. Later that evening, Melvin talks to his dad, Sid Atell, at dinner. Melvin: Dad, when you go to Japan, do you think you could bring back some of that Chee'umee candy? Sid: Sure, son! How much do you need? Melvin: Well, I was hoping for... 140 pieces? Sid: Goodness, son! That's a lot! I don't think I can bring that much back. I can bring back, oh about 20 pieces. Would that be okay? Melvin: Sure I guess. Here's the money for the 20 pieces. Melvin figures he will just tell the 120 kids that their candy got spoiled on the trip back from Japan. But this is great for Melvin, because he only had to pay his dad for 20 pieces of Chee'umee! A month later, his dad returns from his trip to Japan with 20 pieces of candy, and all but 5 turned black. Melvin takes all the candy to the playground and exchanges all 5 of the shiny green metallic candies for IOUs. The 5 kids who got the green candies are excited and the candy is as delicious as advertised. The other kids are quite annoyed that so much of the candy spoiled. 3 kids, Wally, Sam and Betty, are a little suspicious of Melvin, so they ask for their candies anyway. Melvin hands it over. Wally, Sam and Betty open the candy and eat it. To their amazement, the candy is just as good! Better, even! The wrapper just turned black, but the candy itself is just fine! Wally, Sam and Betty tell all the kids on the playground to use their IOUs and get the candy even if it's in a black wrapper. Melvin is now in a tough spot. He goes to Essie-C for help, but Essie-C reminds him of the deal. All IOUs have to be exchanged, if the kid wants their black-wrapped candy. As a last ditch effort, Melvin goes to the playground teacher, Mrs. Robin Hood to tell her of his predicament. All these kids have IOUs and they really want the candy, but he can't give it to them. & #x200B; Edit: Holy cow thanks everybody for the awards. Cleaned up some grammar.",
"I just wanna know what happened with gamestop. Edit: I've received so many good answers and I thank you all. I've never recieved so many good answers before.",
"Jordan Belfort said this was basically a [modified pump and dump]( URL_1 ). Why or why not is that an accurate description of what's going on? People aren't buying GME because they believe so much in GameStop (at least I'm pretty sure of that), it's purely a money making scheme, and they have to sell all these shares at some point to make their money, otherwise it would be a pointless exercise (or is the actual goal to bankrupt the hedge funds?). So they get everyone excited, stock shoots up, the smartest people sell at the top, everyone else gets screwed. Isn't that what's going to happen here? EDIT: I've gotten a bunch of good explanations and conversations on this, basically, the action looks similar to a pump and dump because the price is being forced up, but it's really about screwing the hedge funds that were shorting stocks and overselling. So it's not an effort to hike the price and get out quickly, but to hike the price and force the hedge funds' hands. It's not about making money off of it. Of course, plenty of people will make some money, and lots have been talking about everyone getting rich off of this, though I don't really see that happening for *everyone*. BONUS EDIT: I want to clarify that those are the purported reasons for why this is not a pump and dump. It's hard to say the real motivations of the people that started this whole thing without actually being in their heads. Everyone should have some critical analysis of complex situations like these. SUPER EXTRA BONUS EDIT: [Check out this video]( URL_0 ) from way back in July by the man that (apparently) started it all (AKA u/deepfuckingvalue). This guy has been in on GME for a long time because he seems to have actually believed in GameStop. I'm still not completely clear where the shorting/hedge funds come into play (I haven't fully watched the video because it is quite long) but it seems like its a real mix of different things coming together at the right time for this crazy shit that's happening right now.",
"Why is the \"shorting\" of a company necessary, or even legal? Wouldn't the top elitists just manipulate the market and cause the failing company to get smashed into oblivion, ergo gaining more money from it? How is this beneficial for anyone but the top investors? Is the system rigged?",
"What will happen if the Melvin hedge fund cannot buy back the GME shares? Can they file for bankruptcy, as an organization? Or should each individual associated with the fund do that? If they declare bankruptcy, what will happen with all the shareholders who lent them their shares? Will they lose them forever?",
"Message I wrote for a friend explaining the situation: on reddit, about 2 million people saw an exploit they could use in the stock market, the exploit was this: as a hedge fund, (businesses with billions of dollars), their job is to short the market, (see if a stock is going to drop, then if they think it will, they bet on it and if it drops they make a ton of money, but if it goes up, they have to pay the dividends.) For example, if Tesla is at $500 per share (stock), they could bet it’s gonna drop to $400. If it does they make money, if not, let’s say it goes up to $600, and they bought 10 shares, they have to pay ~5,000 ish dollars, because they bought ten shares and it went up. Their job is to do the opposite of investors, so they try to bet the market will go down instead of up. Anyways, people on r/wallstreetbets saw that hedge funds were betting that GME (gamestop) would short, (go down). So, they decided to get all 2 million people on that subreddit to join them in buying GME stocks. The idea is, if you buy a stock, the price goes up super slightly, and if millions of ppl buy a bunch of stocks, the price per stock will skyrocket. So, WSB (r/wallstreetbets) did exactly this. GME was valued at $27 per share, and hedge funds began to bet that GME would short, so, WSB bough a TON of GME stocks, and forced the stock to skyrocket. GME hit $500 per share last night, meaning that multiple hedge funds had to pay BILLIONS of dollars. All of this happening, and people are becoming millionaires everywhere. If you bough ONE share of GME at $27, and sold at the peak, ($500), you would’ve made ~$441 profit, but people bough hundreds of thousands of shares, so they made millions. This means hedge funds went bankrupt. The rich people lost all their money, and the poor became rich. For the retards on snapchat, this is where the story ends, but there’s a lot more to it. Super powerful people saw this, and didn’t like they were losing money, so, they got in bed with brokerages, and made them get rid of the “buy” option for GME and a couple other stocks. Meaning that they took away everyone’s power of their own money, just because they lost some of theirs. GME crashed today, but there was no volume behind it, meaning that nobody sold, so there is no reason it should’ve crashed. This means that somebody powerful manipulated the market and made it crash, which is EXTREMELY illegal. So, WSB are the actual good guys here, and the government, along with many billionaires are in deep shit for removing the people’s freedom of finance and manipulation of the market, which basically means they toyed with peoples money. Edit: I just want to clarify, I am in NO WAY an expert. Some of this may be inaccurate, this is just my take, and how I explained it to someone who didn’t even know what a stock was. Take it with a grain of salt.",
"GameStop explained - Remember the toilet paper shortage we went through? GameStop is the toilet paper. Melvin Capital is the price gouger who borrowed a bunch of TP from Charmin (broker) at “future” normal post-pandemic prices ($1) and sold it to the public at current prices ($5). Pandemic over, Melvin has to return TP to Charmin buuuuut Reddit decided Melvin bad and toilet paper good and bought all the TP forcing Melvin to buy it from them for new price of $50 or pay Charmin extra for collateral. Melvin’s friends got mad that Reddit acted like Melvin and they closed Charmin’s doors so Reddit couldn’t buy anymore TP. Now AOC and Trump Jr have joined forces and are having lunch discussing ways to punish Melvin’s friends so that Reddit can put all the toilet paper in a rocket ship.",
"How does a Hedgefund even 'borrow' 140% of available shares of a company? What does that paperwork look like? How was this part of the events even possible?",
"Can a professional explain, how is lender being paid by the borrower for borrowing the stock?",
"Ok, i'll try my best to explain. Buckle up. this is going to be long. There is no ELI5 Version. Buying and selling stock is done through a stock exchange via a broker (Interactive brokers, E-trade, robinhood, etc...) If I wanted to buy let say 10 shares of apple. I would place a bid at let's say $100 per share so I would need $1000 Capital. You put this request in and once it's accepted you now own 10 shares of apple. 2 years down the road, I want to sell my apple stock which is now worth 200/share. I will simply place the bid at $200 for my $10 shares and gain a profit of $1000 (2000-1000 initial investment). SHORTING: Now brokers usually have settings that enable users to OPT -IN (Default Setting)/ OPT OUT for lending your shares to others. So using my example of apple shares. If I OPTED IN - a hedge funds, an institution can \"Borrow\" my 10 shares to sell to other people and pay back lets say in a week or so. **NOTE: THEY DON'T PHYSICALLY BORROW THE STOCK, BUT IT IS DONE THROUGH THE BACKDOOR- MOSTLY NAKED SHORTING AND BROKER MARKS IT ON A PIECE OF PAPER THAT JOHN SHORTED 10 APPLE STOCKS. TYPICALLY YOU SHORT ABOUT 20% OF A STOCK AND THAT IS A LOT AS WELL, ANYTHING HIGHER WILL GET YOU IN DEEP TROUBLE IF THE PRICE MOVES AGAINST YOU. YOU NEED A LOT OF MONEY IN ORDER TO DO THIS AS IT IS VERY RISKY. GAMESTOP WAS SHORTED 140% FLOAT, which means they shorted more than the available numbers of shares on the market (100%). THEY CAN'T BUY BACK ALL THE SHARES AND HAVE CORNERED THEMSELVES.** Why would someone do this you may ask? This is so they can sell the shares of apple continuously to drive the price of the stock down and cause panic and selling event, then come in later to scoop up the shares at dirt cheap prices and pay off the borrowed shares. Continuing our example, lets say 1 week later, Apple is now trading at $50/share. Well the Hedge fund now can return my 10 shares, but it only cost them $500 instead of $1000. So they made a profit of $500. They can do this as many times as they want and will make money AS LONG AS THE PRICE GOES DOWN. **what about if the price goes up**? **This is where RISK MANAGEMENT comes into play. Theoretically, their loss is INFINITE, which is what we are witnessing as GameStop stock price keeps going up and they are adamant in lowering it.** **Now lets switch gears and dive into GameStop. As mentioned previously, it was shorted 140%. The people on Wallstreetbets found this out and recommended that hey, take a look at this, this isn't right, the company isn't doing bad. The recent sales of PS5 consoles went great, I think GameStop has potential and is undervalued. I'm not telling you to buy the stock, but hey this is where it could go. THIS CAUGHT ON FIRE and everyone bought GameStop shares only because \"It's a good company, and we like this stock\"** This is where it gets interesting. Now our old friend JOHN who shorted the apple stock, also shorted 140% of GameStop. How do you close your short position? You have to buy back the stock. Well the stock went up. So John has to buy at the higher price in order to close his position, but remember he can't close all of his position because there is not enough available shares for him to buy back. Also his loss is infinite because the price can theoretically go to infinity, If John had a million dollar short position, he's not on the hook for more than a million, he's on the hook infinite amount technically. **THIS IS THE GREATEST TRANSFER OF WEALTH WE ARE WITNESSING.** SHORT SQUEEZE: Our Friend JOHN can choose to close his position only if the shareholder of GameStop agrees to sell to JOHN. If someone agrees to sell to JOHN at $100, then great he can close some of his positions, but what if they refuse? John must go to the next seller at $200 and buy the stock at $200/share. What if they refused? Next person at $300 and so on and so forth until he can close all of his position. This is where the price is being squeezed higher and higher by buyers refusing to sell their stock of gamestop. I could type more, but I'll stop here. THE RICH GOT CAUGHT WITH THEIR PANTS DOWN AND THEY ARE ON THE HOOK for BILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO THE AVERAGE JOE LIKE YOU AND ME.",
"For people that don’t understand **shorting**; here is my best explanation at it (this is heavily inspired by a YouTube video)… **Shorting is when you think a company is going to do badly so you borrow that company stock from a broker and promise to pay them back later.** Here is a Non-Stock Example: Imagine that you thought **apples were going to go down in value** and they currently cost **$1.** You go to a shop keeper and ask if you can borrow an apple which you will give back later. You borrow the apple from him and sell it someone for $1 and then wait for the price to change. If the price goes down to 50 cents then you can buy 2 apples for a dollar. You go back to the shopkeeper and give him back the apple. **He has an apple back and you have an extra 50 cents.** **In stock market terms you have shorted them apples**. Now replace the apples with stocks and you hopefully get the idea. 2 other things worth mentioning about short positions f**irst you have to pay an interest rate** **on your short positions** because you're borrowing something. Secondly, **short positions can be greater than 100% of stock.** **Let’s get to GME** GME is a brick and mortar video game company, after Covid hit Gamestop **unsurprisingly** has a couple of bad months and revenue falls. GME falls to about $4 per share. Largely because of this many **big international investors essentially thought Gamestop was going to go bust and therefore shorted GME.** Hoping to see it collapse, they didn’t see that there was some good news coming Gamestop’s way. Firstly in **Mid August our saviour Ryan Cohen started buying GME shares.** By December Cohens company had bought about 9 million share (13% GME). Then in January Cohen and some other CEOs were appointed to Gamestop’s board. This gave Gamestop a huge advantage as **now they’ve got a billionaire investor who’s experienced with running ecommerce companies** which is exactly the business model Gamestop needs to shift to. Secondly in **November PS5 and Xbox series X was released starting a new console cycle** which is good news for Gamestop. Thirdly Gamestop **signed a deal with Microsoft which gave them a share of all of Xbox’s digital revenues** So, what happened to the stock? Firstly, the institutions that were shorting GME bought more short positions to try to supress the stock price. This chart shows that for example on January 11th **there are massive 4 million short positions** taken despite the fact that this was the day Cohens board appointments were announced. 📷 In total 71 million short positions were taken even though Gamestop only had a float of 69.75 million shares. Remember you can have more short positions that actual shares. This gets crazier because about 20% of Gamestop shares is held by insiders like Cohen. Insiders can’t sell easily because of regulations. 📷 There is the same amount again owned by big institutions who don’t normally trade either. 📷 **So that leaves between 20 to 30 million actively traded stocks and 71 million short positions who all need to buy stock** That is a lot of demand and not much supply. Wallstreet Bets realized this and determined that if they bought the stock and **held** they could force the price up which triggers a **short squeeze.** Where people with short positions desperately buy into a stock and try to cover before the price gets too high. These people are losing money but covering now prevents them from bigger losses. **However because there isn’t enough stocks to go around the price of each stock jumps spectacularly**. Remember it costs money to shorter position forever because of interest **so they want to act fast** which is exactly what happened to Volkswagen in 2008. Where it breifly became the most expensive stock in history. **Which is exactly what is happening with GME right now!** 📷 Ulitmatly Redditors made big money and **if you hold for longer you will make more.** The 2 big short sellers who lost big money is **Melvin Capital and Citeron Resarch.** **You can tell that they are panicking because 2 days ago Melvin Capital had to be bailed out by 2 big insitutions which isnt good for them.** **There is a lot of short postions to be covered if you hold for longer the price for each stock will increase.** Secondly if you've seen anything about this in the news it's often spun as mental reddit investors ruin the market **there's three things worth saying here**: Firstly, wall street bets doesn't actually **hold much sway over the market itself as WSB is an internet forum not an institution**. Secondly, it's not as if the market was rational **beforehand it's just that only hedge funds used to be able to manipulate** it and this wasn't even clear manipulation obviously some of GME's rise is a function of speculation but there's a good argument that it was undervalued and over shorted to begin with. Thirdly it's fundamentally a good thing that people are able to get into the stock market and make **money off GME as it might make things more volatile and harder for hedge funds.** But fuck Wall Street. tl;dr: Melvin Capital and other big short shellers were caught with their dick in the cookie jar when they overshorted GME making GME shares go to the fucking moon. If you hold GME you could be able to go to fucking Alpha Centuri and bankrupt big short shellers",
"Here's my explanation that I told to a friend. There's a way called \"shorting\" to profit off of dying companies. (Consider + as profit and - as loss) Short Procedure: 1. Borrow a stock that is expected to drop. ( - small borrow fee) 2. Sell it for current price. ( +Original stock price) 3. Wait for it to drop. 4. Buy it back much cheaper. ( -dropped price) 5. Then return the stock to the owner. Total Profit = original stock price - dropped price - borrow fee Risk: If the company's stock rises instead of falling, you will sustain losses. Loss = Inflated Price + Borrow Fee - Original Price. This is hence considered a risky practice. Back to the story, In lockdown GameStop was suffering major losses and it's stocks were dropping, so many big businesses and a large number of people decided to short it. If you look back at the short procedure, there's a long waiting period. The status at this waiting period is that you owe the original owner one stock. (The stock you borrowed and then sold and are now waiting for it's price to drop) Now suppose another person wants to short GameStop. This person may borrow the stock that you just sold, from the person that you just sold it to. (In other words, this person will borrow one stock from the person who brought one stock from you). Notice the problem here. There only one stock, but there are two people who owe someone that stock. In other words, two people think they own a stock but there's only one stock available to own. Soon, there will be more people who owe a stock to someone, than the total stocks that are there. This happened to GameStop, where 140% of it's stocks were sold as short. But there's not enough stocks for this many people to own. Now imagine the stock price goes up instead of down, (say the company did something great), people will panic and try to buy back the stocks they sold so as to not sustain losses. (Why do they buy back? Because they need to return the stock to the owner.) But there are not enough stocks to go around. This will increase the demand of stocks and supply will be short, further increasing it's price, this cycle will continue and the stock price will keep on increasing because of the high demand and low supply. Note that this didn't happen yet. (Btw why are there not enough stocks? Imagine the story earlier, after noticing the rise in price, you decide to buy back the stock, but instead of asking the person you sold to, you ask the person currently owning the stock, now you return the stock to the original owner and you're relieved, but what about the person you sold the stock to the first time? There was only one stock which has returned to it's owner, there's still one guy who owes someone a stock and one guy who thinks he owns one stock.) Now comes reddit, Note: If many people buy a particular stock, it's price will increase because of the increased demand and shortened supply. The small investors on r/wallstreetbets decided to take advantage by buying GameStop's stocks and increasing the stock price, this will start the chain I explained just now, where the people who have shorted will buy back to avoid losses, but due to the lack of stocks, it's price will further increase, and more people will pull out of the short and the price will increase again, and so on. Before lockdown, the stock price was $4 apiece. Recently it reached $147, and one day later $345. The price is skyrocketing. The big investors and billionaires that decided to short and take advantage are losing money in billions, while the small investors are making loads of money. But GameStop is not as valuable as it's stock price, so this inflating bubble will burst, and the prices will crash. When this happens, if you invest by looking at the rising prices, you will lose a lot of money, but you can profit if you short at the correct time. Sigh.",
"Right, let's see if I can explain this. Obligatory am not a stock broker, so please take what I say with a grain of salt, and I definitely welcome any corrections for things I get wrong. ----- ##Stocks and Shares Let's say you have a company called CORP, and that company has a board of directors. Now CORP wants to become publicly traded, so they announce that they will sell one seat on the board for $20. Alice hears of this and thinks that's a pretty good deal, so pays them the money and now gets a small say in what the company does and in return CORP gets a little bit of extra money. This seat is a **share** in the company, which can be traded in something called the **stock market** (where people can buy and sell their stock in a company). Now as the years go on, CORP becomes a global company and now everyone wants to be at the table. Suddenly Alice's seat becomes really valuable. If Alice wants she can sell her seat for $100 now, or keep her seat and hope that CORP does better and sell it for more later on. Even though right now Alice doesn't have any more money in her wallet than she did originally, she is still worth more money because the seat she owns is now worth more. Importantly, when Alice does sell her seat, even if she sells it for $1000, CORP doesn't actually get any of that money - they already sold the seat to Alice a long time ago for $20. However, later on CORP might apply for a loan, and the broker might look at the price of the seats at their table (their **share price**). If the price is really high, that must mean the company is doing well for themselves so the loan is more likely to be approved. Also, if anyone ever owns more than half of the seats at the table, then that person also effectively owns CORP. So CORP really wants the price of their seats to stay high. ##Short Selling So what if CORP starts doing poorly? Well Bob 'Shorty' McScrooge might see this and see an opportunity to make money off of CORP's losses. So what he does is he goes to Alice and asks her if he can borrow her seat. She reluctantly says yes, as long has he promises to give it back in a month. He takes this seat and sells it to Joe for $100. As the days pass, the price of a seat at CORP goes down. When the end of the month comes around, Shorty buys another seat back, but now that the price has gone down he only has to pay $20 (meaning he effectively made $80 since he originally sold the seat for $100). Let's say now that after Shorty borrowed Alice's seat and sold it, CORP finds gold and now everyone wants to buy a seat again. Well now Shorty is in real trouble. At the end of the month, he still owes Alice her seat back, but now seats cost $1000 to buy. If Shorty can't find a way to make the seats cheap again, then he might go bankrupt. --- ## GameStop This is pretty much what happened with GameStop (aka GME). They were doing really poorly and their share price was going down, so lots of billionaires borrowed stock (seats) and sold them, expecting the price to drop resulting in them making even more money at the cost of GME. Reddit realised this so bought all the stocks causing the price to soar, meaning the billionaires are going to have to spend lots of money to buy back their borrowed seats (costing them billions of dollars). Of course, losing billions of dollars is something billionaires would very much like to avoid. ## Robinhood App Robinhood is an app used by a lot of everyday people to trade stocks, and was the tool used by a lot of redditors to make GME's share price get so high. No matter what the billionaires did, more and more redditors started using Robinhood to buy more GME stock, causing the prices to get even higher (meaning the billionaires would have to pay *even more* to return their borrowed seats). So to try to drive the price down, Robinhood said it would no longer let people buy GME stock, and that they could only sell now (remember, the seats at the table are only worth something if people are able to buy them). This is illegal and has been widely criticised by US representatives from both parties as well as basically everyone who isn't a billionaire. ----- EDIT: Added Robinhood section EDIT 2: Formatting and typos",
"Imagine you have a warehouse of bikes. Now, I have a buyer that wants to buy a bike for $300, but I think that next week there will be a big discount and I can go buy a new bike for $100. I ask you if I can borrow a bike to sell to the buyer and you agree, so long as I can replace that bike in a week. I sell your bike and wait for the next week. Sure enough, the discount kicks in, I buy a new bike, and give it to you + a small fee for borrowing it. I make money and you have your bike plus the fee. That’s a short-sell. But what if instead nobody is selling any bikes next week? The price goes WAY up because everybody who short sold NEEDS to buy. That’s a short squeeze.",
"Lets start with a baseline: there is a city, and in that city people are **trading apples**. > How does buying and selling stocks work? If you want to buy an apple, you can walk up to a shop (a middle man, a broker) and ask them to buy an apple. The shop owner then gets apples from the farm or from someone else and sells them to you at the price that is agreed upon. If you want to sell an apple, you can set a price or agree to a price that the shop owner wants to buy your apples at. If more people want apples, the price goes up, as there is more demand and fewer apples. The sellers can ask more money. If less people want apples, the price goes down because they might be stinky apples no one wants. > What is short selling? You have an apple. Its worth $10 in your city. I walk up to you, and I tell you, let me borrow your apple. I will pay 1$ to lend it for every week I have it. You agree. As soon as I get it, I sell it for $10. I now have money and no apples. One week later, the price of apples goes down to $5. I buy an apple at $5 and give you your apple back. I've made $4 profit (since I paid $1 to borrow it). I have shorted apples. I have made money on the price of apples going down. If the price went up instead, and I was wrong, I lose money when I have to buy the apple back to give back to you. > What is a short squeeze? If tons of people in my city are shorting apples, but the price actually goes up (I was wrong) they are in trouble! The price could technically keep rising and their risk is infinite. Now if demand goes up, and people suddenly LOVE apples, those people that shorted get really really nervous. The higher it goes, the more it costs to buy back the apple (cover). When the first person that shorts breaks, and buys back apples, the demand raises, and the prices goes even higher! Now suddenly shorters are racing for who can buy back first, making the price explode like a bomb. > What is stock manipulation? People doing funky things with apples to wrongly give the illusion the apples are worth less. For example, they can lend out apples that they just borrowed from someone else, or say that there is a worm infestation when really there is not. Or they can close apple shops altogether, which would be really bad and illegal. > What is a hedge fund? Its like an apple king in your city, they have a lot of apples and/or move a lot of apples, making a lot of money in doing so. They have a lot of power to influence the price of apples to their benefit.",
"What is short selling and why did/does it work in the first place? I saw some explanations but I still don’t get it. If you sell something you own, it drops, then you buy again doesn’t that mean you lose value?",
"What happens if you fail to return the borrowed stocks? Like you sold the borrowed stocks but everyone else bought it and now there are no stocks to purchase. What then? Also how do you *borrow* stocks? If you sold it then doesn't the stock's ownership change?",
"ELI5: please explain the whole GameStop thing... should i be trying to buy a share? How are they “sticking it” to Wall Street?",
"> How does buying and selling stocks work? Buying and selling stocks is quite simple. A stock in a company has a certain price. The more people who buy that stock, the value of the stock goes up. Demand is increased, so price goes up. Conversely, if a lot of people sell a certain stock, the price goes down. > What is short selling? Short selling is what you can do if you think the value of a stock is going to decrease. Here's how it works. Let's say you think stock XYZ is going to decrease in price within one month. You, through your broker, can short sell it. When you short sell, you \"borrow\" a certain number of stocks from someone who holds them. Let's say you borrow 100 shares of XYZ at $100 per share with a total value of $10,000. Once you borrow them, you sell them at $100 per share for $10,000. If a month later the price of XYZ goes down, let's say to $50 per share, all you need to do is buy 100 shares of XYZ at $50 per share for $5000 and give it back to the person you borrowed from (minus a small principle). You get to keep the difference between the price you sold it for ($10,000) and the price you bought it for ($5000), which is $5000. However, if the price of the stock does not decrease, you are still required to return the same number of shares you borrowed. Let's say XYZ doesn't decrease in value but jumps from $100 per share to $150 per share. By the end of the month, you are required to buy 100 XYZ shares for $15,000 in order to return them (minus the principle you owe). You have now lost $5000 in your short sale because the stock increased in value. > What is a short squeeze? A short squeeze is when the price of a stock is driven up (by purchasing the stock) in order to cause people who short sold the stock to lose money. The most popular short squeeze at this moment is GameStop or GME. A bunch of hedge fund managers short sold GME, which was trading at ~$20 per share at the beginning of the year, anticipating that it would drop in value. People at r/WallStreetBets saw this and decided to coordinate to buy GME and drive the price up. Currently, GME is trading for $350 per share. That means people who shorted GME at $20 per share, must now pay 17.5x what they borrowed in order to return the shares to whomever they borrowed them from. > What is stock manipulation? By definition, \"Market manipulation is the act of artificially inflating or deflating the price of a security or otherwise influencing the behavior of the market for personal gain.\" You could argue that what r/WSB has done is market manipulation, as they have driven up the price of a stock (GME) that has nothing to do with the value of the company or any natural market forces. Conversely, you could also argue that what Robin Hood did when they banned users from purchasing GME was market manipulation, as they took actions that affected the price of a stock regardless of what the market was indicating. > What is a hedge fund A [hedge fund]( URL_0 ) is \"a limited partnership of investors that uses high risk methods, such as investing with borrowed money, in hopes of realizing large capital gains.\" It's basically a bunch of investors using money that is not theirs in order to make money in the stock market.\" It's basically a bunch of people getting together, pooling their money and telling a fund manager, \"You can trade with this money we've pooled together to either go long if you think the market will rise or short if you think the market will go down.\"",
"My question would be: why would certain people want to lend out their stocks of GME? I thought it was pretty clear that gamestop was failling. Why would they want to keep a stock they know is going down. (Pre wsb)",
"Isn't what happened with GameStop (and other company stock such as Nokia) exactly the sort of risk that is inherent in hedge funds? Aren't hedge funds typically supposed to be rich enough to just eat the loss and move on? What makes this particular issue such big news?",
"How did anyone know that over 100% of GME was shorted in the first place? Is this just public information?",
"Easy way to think about it... You have 100 shares of company G stock that currently sells at $100. Your friend thinks the price will drop to $50 in one week, so he borrows your 100 shares with the contractual guarantee to return the shares back to you in a week. He immediately sells those shares for $100. Now neither of you own those shares. But your friend still owes you the shares, so he’ll just buy it back from the market in a week when it drops to $50, return the shares to you and pocket a $5000 profit. Only, the stock price doesn’t drop, it goes up. To $200. Your friend owes you 100 shares of stock, so he has to buy it from the market for $200. He return the stocks to you and has lost $10000. Now bump the numbers up. Assume there are 1 million shares of the stock available, so he makes agreements to borrow all 1 million from the owners, yet somehow also manage to borrow about 500,000 shares that simply don’t exist. But since it’s a contract to borrow shares, it doesn’t matter...they’re just paper shares, and he’ll make a fortune when the stock drops. Except the share price doesn’t drop, and he owes people 1.5 million shares, but there are only 1 million shares on the entire market. So not only does he need to buy 1m shares at the new inflated price, he’s also got to somehow but 500,000 shares that are nonexistent. So in order to pay back those borrowed shares, he needs to buy them back from other owners, who are more than happy to sell them back to him at an even higher price than the day before. In short, the attempt to buy back all those shares that he owes but that don’t exist only pushes the price of the stock higher and higher and the losses just keep growing and growing. If Melvin hadn’t gotten greedy and dumb and bought sell options that exceeded the number of shares in the market, they might have taken a big loss, but now they’re caught in a self-inflicted feedback loop where their losses only keep growing more and more as they try to fill their obligation to pay back all the shares that they owe. This is why derivatives (assets “derived” from the value of actual assets) can be such dangerous bets...they basically were created to hedge risk, but Wall Street traders tend to just treat it like gambling. And...they not only gamble with the money, they borrow tons of it issuing the investment as collateral...and gamble with that. They think it’s an easy bet, so borrowing isn’t a big deal...unless they miscalculate the risk, which is how it can all blow up in their face. Which is exactly what happened in 2008. They had $100, decided to bet it all on black at roulette...but though the chance of red coming up was < 1% so they borrowed another $9,900 to put on black. A dumb bet because they didn’t properly determine the risk of the bet.",
"Short squeezes in a nutshell: Imagine you want to make some quick money. Your dad is on vacation for a few months and you decide to sell his stash of gold for $1,000,000. You have a hunch that the price of gold will be going down, so you can just buy the same amount of gold for $800,000 later and pocket the rest. But instead of the price of gold going down, it goes up- way up. Before you know it, you're forced to sell many of your belongings just to buy back the gold for $1,200,000. You can't bear the risk to wait any longer- if the price continues to go up you could lose your house! And you *have* to buy it back at some point. This is pretty much a short squeeze. Just rather than \"borrowing\" gold from your father, you borrow stocks for stockholders. And as the price goes up, you eventually are forced to buy at an inflated price or else risk losing everything.",
"Take the advice of people that answer here with a grain of salt. I'm seeing so many people answer questions that think they know what they are talking about but I can tell they literally just learned it themselves 4 minutes ago.",
"This was posted in another thread: I’m just going to paste the answer I’ve been giving: 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 $345. 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.",
"Will this have any effect on regular people?",
"What are stocks and what do they do?? Also what are shareholders? Hedges?? I don't get economics at all",
"What is keeping a hedge fund that shorted GME from just waiting until this bubble pops? What is how does this short squeeze force the hedge funds to pay billions today if soon this will all be over?",
"Admittedly, I do not have a very sophisticated understanding of this whole GameStop stock shorting situation, but if making a ton of money on the stock market is as simple as finding a stock that has been extremely shorted by hedge funds, and then getting thousands of people to put their money into it, how come this hasn’t been done earlier? The internet has been around for decades and even r/wallstreetbets has been around for years. Why is this idea taking off now when it seems like a simple enough premise? Am I missing something here?",
"Does anyone know the first post that called for buying GameStop? Just curious for some historical perspective on how this all started.",
"Quick ELI5 on what \"Short Selling\" is: Imagine you want to buy a car. You agree with a seller and write a contract to buy the car for $10 000 **no matter what**. Now two things could happen: 1. While driving to the delivery point, the seller gets into a car crash and totals the car, making it worth $1000. But you're still under contract to buy the car **no matter what**, so you're paying $10 000 for a car worth 1000. 2. While driving to the delivery, the seller is pulled over by a car enthusiast who says \"holy shit, this car is amazing. I will pay 100 000 for it!\" But the seller has made a contract to sell it for 10 000 to you, **no matter what**. When a trader \"short sells\" he's betting that the car will crash, and so he offers to pay sell you a car for $5000. Which would be a great deal for a $10 000 car, but a terrible deal for a $1000 wreckage. The trader wins if the car crashes. Inversely, a trader can bet the opposite, that the car is actually worth a shit-ton more, and offer to pay $50 000 for it. Also a great deal for someone selling a car for $10 000, but a terrible deal if it's actually worth $100 000. The trader wins if the car enthusiast pays 100k for the car. What happened was that the hedge funds bet GME would crash and only be worth like 20$, so they wrote a contract to sell it for that. Reddit and casual traders decided that the GME stock is actually solid gold, and drove up the price to $300+. So now hedge funds are contractually obligated to sell a stock worth $300, for $20.",
"GME just went up 61% after hour tonight. How come it is legal for brokerage firms to block customers from buying a certain stock but big investors like the said brokerage firms can buy in after hours after they manipulated the price by removing demands during the day? As a retail customer, how can I trade after hour?",
"This is about more than personal profit at this point. If you want to actually make a tangible difference in the system then buy and hold AMC, GME, or NOK. I won't lie, you may lose your money but it's about sending a message and making them hurt. If you have the money to spare and want to make a billionaire cry then buy.",
"I really don't understand this. I keep reading that if people hold GME, then the stock price would go very high like $5k or more due to short squeeze. I feel like at that point, wouldn't the hedge fund just declare bankruptcy instead of paying such high prices to cover their shorts? At that time, won't the folks holding the stock, end up having to sell it for less since regular folks won't be able to pay such high prices to buy the stock?",
"Here's something that was never 100% clear to me- what's the actual process that takes place when a share is purchased or sold that makes the price go up/down? For example, John owns a single share of Random Company, currently being traded at 100 dollars a share. John decides to cash in and sell his share. He would then approach the stock exchange where the trading takes place (well, his broker in real life, but whatever), and state that he owns a single share of Random Company and would like to sell it for $100. The end result of that is John gets $100, and the price ticks ever so slightly down. My question is concerned with why does it go down, and who/what decides that. The economic mechanism of supply/demand is clear to me, but since this isn't really a marketplace where bartering can take place, it's not like potential sellers would see that John has just sold his share and would therefore adjust their offered price- it all happens independently from the traders. So what happens there? Does the stock exchange's algorithm adjust the price because more shares are now available for purchase? Something else?",
"Short selling is a promise to sell. What you are doing is saying “I will give you this stock some time in the future for the price it is at right now.” If a stock is worth $10, you will collect the money with the promise that you will give that stock in the future. If that stock’s price lowers to $5, then you will be able to buy the stock at $5 to fill your promise, earning the difference between what you received for it and what you paid for it. However, should that stock’s price rise, you must still fill that promise. If the stock’s price becomes $20, you must then buy stock you promised to give, even if you only got $10 for it in the first place. What’s happening is these people collected their $10 per stock with a promise to sell, and now they have to fill their promise. But they don’t have any stock on hand (since they were expecting to buy it when it got lower), so they have to buy stock for more than what they received for it. Still more difficult, *there aren’t any stocks available for them to buy*, but they still have to fill that promise, no matter how expensive it becomes.",
"join the battle folks. we at wallatreetbets are holding the line like the movie 300 right now",
"Oh this is funny, i asked about this 2 days ago and it was removed because \"this sub is not about contemporary events\"",
"People are saying these Wall Street guys have been manipulating the market for years, can someone explain this? What did they do and how?",
"How could they short stock more stock, than there exist? I can't process this. Also, shouldn't an automated system detect these 'additional' stocks and someone would start an investigation on this?",
"we're not even in it for the money anymore (but we will still get a lot of it lol). It's about sending a message. We are buying into a piece of history which will probably never happen again in a very long time. I know a lot of people in r/wallstreetbets that have borrowed tendies from their wife's boyfriends to invest in GME. I have also invested in GME. Remember '08. & #x200B; This is not financial advice, I simply just like the stock very much and encourage others to do their own research on GME.",
"Is this the right post to ask for an ELI5 about the mayhem at r/wallstreetbets? What I think I understand is this: These people are actually playing with real money. They are spending their own hard-earned cash, right? What I don’t understand and want to is this: These people saying they’re now sudden millionaires; can they actually stop at any time (notwithstanding addiction to the game) and have real millions in their actual bank accounts? Or are they paying real money to a broker for a promise that if it doesn’t come true the only person who comes away with any real, spendable profits is the broker? From what little I understand is happening, it seems like the plot of the Mel Brooks movie “The Producers” where if it all goes to plan, the only people who profit are the producers of the play, not the writers, backers, actors or venue.",
"Does the massive increase in stock price benefit GameStop, the actual company, in any way? Like they’ve obviously been struggling for a while, does this fiasco actually help them stay afloat, or is the health of a company completely disparate the price of its stock?",
"The only part I’m confused about is why hedge fund bros and actual Wall Street professionals think what WSB did was illegal or criminal? Why did Robinhood suspend all trading? Didn’t WSB play by the rules of the game, even if they screwed over some powerful people? Edit: added last question",
"For the people or institutions who \"lend\" their stock shares to short sellers, what's the incentive? I understand that the stock lenders are paid interest until they get their stocks back, but if they know that the short seller's goal is to have the stock drop in value wouldn't the lenders be losing money on the stock price when they get the devalued shares back?",
"Does any of this mean anything for me? (the common person who knows nothing about any of this)",
"Hedge fund managers are coming out and saying what r/wallstreetbets is doing is price manipulation and illegal. My question is, fundamentally what is the difference between thousands of people working together to influence stock price and one/a few billion-dollar hedge funds doing it? Do hedge funds do something else in tandem that mitigates risks to the economy in any way?",
"I'm learning more about economics just reading this thread than I learned in the year I took economics at school.",
"How do you know when stocks are being shorted?",
"All these specific eli5 questions and here I am just looking for the general \"eli5 what the hell has happened?\" lol",
"How can 150% of a company's shares be shorted at once? How can MORE STOCKS THAT EXIST be shorted at the same time? And does it have something to do with \"[naked short selling]( URL_0 )\" and 'ghost stocks'? Or is it just the same stocks being shorted multiple times? What does that look like in practice?",
"My family member lost about $8000 today on her investments (which are all considered low risk), is this due to temporary destabilization that will go back to normal in a few weeks, or a more permanent serious issue? It's really scaring her because we're not rich nor do we have fun money to be flippant with, it's her retirement fund and if it gets a lot worse she might be in trouble. I want to be able to reassure her but I don't understand this and she doesn't want to pester her financial advisor who is probably super busy right now. edit: got it, thank you my dudes you've been helpful",
"A **stock** is like a piece of company. You can see how good they are, what the profits are, how risky it is, and say \"I want to own some of it - split (already made) costs, share future profits\"... So you get a stock. The price of the stock in an ideal market reflects how much profit you estimate it makes. In a **real market**, a single company has only so many stocks - think number of left backs and quality of left backs. So **supply and demand** plays a big role in determining price. There's also people in the market that will hold out on their pick and refuse to sell them cos they \"like the underdog\" or for other more human, less profit driven reasons. And if the only left back that Pep wants is Cancelo, then you can hold out for 60m£ and that's that, regardless of how much he's actually worth. And like sport, there's **side betting** - \"I bet this guy wins the Champions League\" or \"gets sold for less than 5m\". So bets can be binary or based off how far from an arbitrary threshold you are. And bets can have odds (prices reflect that). The good thing about a bet is you don't need a share in a football club to profit off an opinion. You can put far lesser money... Or leverage - \"Every million above 5m, I get you 100 beers. Vice versa for below 5m\". And just like the beers, some bets have limited upside, lots of downside. called **derivatives** - cos they derive from the share price but don't need a share. Others involve a handshake to go \"I'll get a share from you for this price, and sell back to you at market value in six months, and since you think Arsenal is on the decline it will be cheaper then and you'll make a profit\". Called a put option (or a **short**) Funds - like hedge funds - use these trading and betting strategies to make money. This has been a growing component in the market - right now there are companies that if they lose a big bet, can drastically affect the market - like a mafioso betting on Pogba transfers with a billion dollars. Trading will be suspended sometimes. In the news recently, a hedge fund punched in numbers on a stock (happens to be GameStop) - and pledged to short - i.e sell X stocks they didn't have and buy back later to return to settle sale - hoping to drive down price. The problem was X was 140% the number of total stocks for that company. People in /r/wallstreetbets noticed that. And bought up some stocks - to hold out like Cancelo. They knew the hedge fund would need to buy in the next few days. And they knew it needed every last stock. So they spread the word, and the price went up as more people bought it. And the hedge fund's bet went really bad. This is a **short squeeze**. You know the hedge fund has this short position, that they're desperate for the Cancelo, so you hold out for 50m (price increase). There's a lot more nastiness, politics, slander behind the scenes, but strip them away, and this is just a bad bet, and people who took advantage of that mistake. And it happens every day. (Edited for formatting)",
"Is it legal for Robinhood to block trading of Gamestop stock?",
"How does one short a company by 120%? That sounds to me to be 20% more than what is possible. And 10% more than what football coaches think is possible.",
"I just hear about the class action lawsuit But can/shouldn't Game Stop/GME sue Robinhood and the others too? I mean they have biggest damage from getting their stocks frozen/manipulated, right?",
"Another thing needed to answered is what a gamma squeeze is. I’m too drunk to fully write it out but it’s something that needs to be addressed because the shorts have hardly covered, if at all. Which means the short squeeze is still in play",
"Why can’t the hedge fund people just buy other stock? Why does game stop stock affect the entire market? Like why do they want/need this one so much? I know it’s currently valued high but is there more to it than that? ETA: please literally explain like I’m 5, I’m so brain dead at the moment",
"Isn't Elon Musk a market manipulator considering his influence on stock prices and such? Is this ok?",
"Why does someone lend his stock to a short seller? Does he gain anything? Sounds like you just end up with less bang for your bucks",
"Watching the big short starring brad pit, Ryan gosling, Christian bale on Netflix after learning about the stock market and shorts was like a completely different movie. Absolutey amazing movie",
"Do the short squeeze wall street brokers pay now? This is what I don't understand. Or like everyday they have to pay? If the stoke will fall eventually don't the brokers just have to wait and they will win? When do they have to pay the billions I see people say they are losing? I really don't understand when the shorting brokers have to pay. I keep seeing they are losing 70 billion but if they have lost that, when do they have to pay? Edit: Ya'll are Champs! I get it now lol. Thanks alot this part just didn't make any sense to me. You guys have a good day screwing them over!",
"Relating to the GameStop scenario, a lot of people here have explained why these large corporations are losing a lot of money by shorting the GME stock and expecting the value to drop before they buy the shares back to return to the original owner. My question is: who are they borrowing from? Are they just stockholders who has shares of GME in the first place? What of they don't want to lend it, do they have an option of saying no? I'm confused what's in it for the people lending these mega corporations shares if they aren't the ones making money by loaning out their shares. I'm new to this so forgive me if I'm not asking the right thing here.",
"Do the rich really loses money or do they loses GAINING money?",
"Ordinary people are called “retail traders”. So, the top hats get to trade wholesale?",
"Can someone please explain how you make money borrowing a stock and betting it will go down?",
"Oh this is funny, i asked about this 2 days ago and it was removed because \"this sub is not about contemporary events\"",
"I'm so glad this is here, because the answers are so helpful. My question is: Can a common person short-sale shares, or only hedge funds and the like?",
"Imagine there was a horse that had 1000:1 odds. Imagine someone saw the future and that the horse would win. Imagine everyone putting their life savings on that horse. Imagine as the horse was about to win, the race track had a sniper shoot it. That's not quite what happened with the trading apps stopping people from buying GameStop but it's the closest analogy you can get.",
"Make shorting stocks illegal. Betting (oh yes it’s gambling) against companies to fail just feels wrong. I know it goes against the norms of trading but I don’t think you should be able to hope for failure. The stock market was supposed to be that you put your money in the company and share in their profits. I know it’s a naive thought but isn’t that what it was supposed to be?",
"How does after-hours trading work? I mean, I see the price (I'm watching GME like everyone else) changing, but if the price can change them what's the point of declaring the market closed? If you really aren't buying and selling during the night, and instead are promising to buy and sell later, how does that work with a volitile price like this one? If I try to buy a share right now at say $300, do I actually own a share or does it only \"happen\" when the market opens? And if so, how do price changes between my purchase and the market opening get recognized? It's all too confusing for my tiny brain.",
"As a mentor of mine from the finance industry used to say, what we are seeing here with the short squeeze is “too many fat arses looking for the same thin exit.” During the GFC, large fund managers learnt a very painful lesson about liquidity (being the amount of shares traded on a daily basis). If you own a lot of stock with low liquidity, you can’t exit your position very quickly, causing your eventual losses to be much larger by the time you sell. Many fund manager went under because of this, and most funds have strict minimal liquidity requirements before they will buy into a stock. The failure here is by a number of hedge funds seemingly not learning this lesson, and quite frankly they deserve to go to the wall because of it. Greed + stupidity is a dangerous combination.",
"Think of 2 football games: 1. The Football Championship Game in a huge professional stadium, to take place in a giant warm weathered city (The Big Game). The stadium fits 20 Million people. 2. An exhibition game in a tiny high school stadium, in a small arctic town (The Small Game). The stadium fits 20 thousand people. Everyone wants to go to The Big Game, and prices for a ticket are $1,000 and rising. However there really is no reason for anyone to attend The Small Game. Tickets are $10 and there is no reason to think they are going anywhere but down. A short sale is an agreement to sell something for a future price. So a person, lets says call him 'Shmedge' might 'short' the Small Game by saying \"OK I promise to sell 20 thousand tickets to the Small Game, for the current price, $10. Shmedge's thinking is that by the time the game starts, people will be pretty much giving away tickets for $1, on account of no one having any interest in going. Shmedge's grand plan is to buy all the tickets for $1, sell them at the agreed upon $10, and make a cool $9 on each ticket. He does this for all 20 thousand tickets. Now imagine some more facts come out about the Small Game. The stadium operator announces that they will be handing out free beer. It turns out it will be an unseasonably warm day that day. Two professional teams take the place of the high school teams that were supposed to play. A major airline starts operating flights to this small town. All of a sudden the Small Game is now **THE GAME.** At this point, **EVERYONE** wants a ticket to the Small Game. However, since the stadium is so small, ticket prices rise fast. The diehard fans already have their tickets to the game, and fully intend to be there for kickoff. Since the stadium is so small to begin with, the ticket availability dries up fast. Now there are **no tickets** left to this once meaningless game. To try to get a ticket is to stand outside the stadium and ask all the people in the parking lots if they would consider parting with their golden tickets. \"Hey! You paid $10 for that ticket, what if I double it, give you $20? Nope? $40? $200? $400? Still nope? What do you mean you won't part with it? OK, well I'll keep saying numbers and you tell me if there is any number that will make you budge.\" In the meanwhile, remember Shmedge? Well he still has an outstanding promise to sell 20 thousand tickets for $10/each, and kickoff time for the game is only drawing nearer. GUH. TL:DR If you 'short' a valueless item, and that item then quickly picks up value, you are still on the hook to deliver that item.",
"If I own stocks of a company, do I have any financial responsibility to that company?",
"In a short sell who is taking the other side of the bet? Where does the money that the short seller wins come from?",
"Will GameStop benefit from suddenly having a lot of shareholders who pumped money into it? Would they be able to actually improve their business by using this money?",
"Why are hedge funds allowed to exist? Do they contribute to society or the health of financial markets in any way? Or are they just a way for rich people to gamble with large sums of money. EDIT: Thank you all for the helpful replies and expanding my understanding.",
"Okay so if I'm understanding correctly, GME is deemed \"artificially\" valuable because more than just the stock price affects a company's valuation. Got it. The whole \"artificially valuable\" thing sounds bad, BUT why is it such a bad thing (from GME'S position) to have this influx of purchased shares of its stock? The whole purpose of a company selling stock is so that it can gain additional funds needed to grow the business, fund operations, purchase assets, etc. So why can't GME just take all this new money from stock purchases and buy itself a plan to get out of its operational run? Hire the best of the best R & D team, advertising agency, etc to rebrand itself and recreate a dying business. Then with time, it'll hopefully earn itself a legitimate high valuation. What am I missing? Edit: Thanks so much guys! Got it now...makes sense.",
"How do we replicate what happened to game stop to bring the whole stockmarket and modern crony capitalism down?",
"How did no other hedge fund see the same markers for over shorting, but individual buyers were able to?",
"What happens to people who decide to HOLD e.g. GME when the hedge fund short positions expire if the hedge fund cannot afford to pay?",
"What are the odds GME hits its target goal of 1k per share? WSB has proven they can hold the line and buy the dip so in theory it sounds possible.",
"ELI5: What's preventing hedge funds from buying shorts at the current (possibly?) inflated prices, and wait for the share price to drop again? Can't they potentially earn more money with the (artificially) high prices?",
"I’ve read that the portion of teacher pensions invested in hedge funds has been increasing over the last few years. Are any teacher/firefighter etc pensions held in any of these hedge funds that are going bankrupt? Or is this purely only screwing the villainous billionaires?",
"What is the end goal for WSB? I understand that they want to make money. But when they keep saying buy and hold, if everyone buys it now and sits on it then won't the bubble burst and everyone who bought it will lose money. Are they purposefully sacrificing money just to stick it to hedge funds now or are they trying to make money in a way I'm not understanding?",
"What I don't understand, is what's in it for the lenders of a certain stock (under normal circumstances) when a short is occurring? Don't they know the borrowers are betting on that stock to lose money? And if that's the case, why wouldn't they just want to sell it themselves before the stock price drops and get a bigger return? Or are they betting on the price to go up? Or are they planning to keep the stock long term anyways and they don't care, so long as the stock is returned?",
"Okay so my question is pretty simple. Why are there statements from analysts saying this sets a dangerous prescendent? It seems like the average Joes banded together and did something with collective capital, that individual funds with huge capital do all the time? They lost out, which I guess would normally be a smaller amount spread out between a lot of average Joe's instead of a huge amount on few funds? Isn't this only setting a prescendent that stocks are high risk which should have already been known? I'm trying my best to look at all of this objectively but it really looks like a huge glaring proof of wealth inequality. I'm super keen to see some point of views from the opposite side of the fence if anyone has it, I.e people who think this is a bad situation etc. Edit: really appreciate the replys all. What a complex situation... I'm not going to pretend I fully understand what's going on but I'm really enjoying learning all this and better understanding it as I go.",
"I'm genuinely curious about a few things given the recent GME news 1. If a hedge fund or some other financial entity (I know so few technical terms) where to rally fellow institutions to all buy a single stock, would it be seen as illegal market manipulation? 1. Assuming the above is market manipulation, would it still be illegal market manipulation if they instead, went on the news or went to reddit to advertise a competitors short position to short squeeze? I guess my question here is: > would it have been illegal for a financial institution to do what wsb did? Or is the only distinction (and reason why it isn't illegal) being wsb actions being taken entirely by private citizens? Note I am not asking what is moral, etc I just want to understand why institutions are so butt hurt over the situation Are they upset because they would get put in jail for pulling the same kind of stint? Or are they genuinely upset purely because the public organised in a way that's perfectly legal that they couldnt replicate even if they were not in breach of regulations?",
"I currently use Robinhood should I switch? If so to who?",
"What if shortseellers do not have the money to buy stocks back? Is that even possible?",
"Since robinhood blocked buying stock but still allows the selling of stocks, who gets the sold gamestop stocks?",
"How can you tell that a hedge fund is shorting a stock?? Like where do you go to find that information?",
"Will the *rest* of the stock market be seriously affected? Like, us regular people who have our savings in basic index funds?",
"Are people who have zero experience with trading able to somehow contribute to the further downfall of these rich wallstreet pigs? If so, how?",
"Could WSB have done this with any cheap stock that wasn’t shorted? Did it matter that it was shorted so hard, besides screwing the hedge funds?",
"who exactly changes the price of a stock? (Not WHY do they change it, I understand that is based on ”supply and demand”), but I mean who litterally looks at the “supply and demand” and DECIDES that “hmmm, seems like there’s a lot of demand for this stock, so let’s say it’s 50$ a share....” is there a person that does this? Is it a computer algorithm? What Or who litterally changes the digital numbers on the screen telling me the new price of a stock?",
"As someone that's worked in investment banking for over 5 years I'm astounded by the amount of misinformation that is spread around in the media and social media. I would be very careful trusting what people post in threads like this. As someone with a reasonable amount of knowledge on the subject, I am able to spot when someone is misusing industry terms or has just read a few pages on investopedia and thinks this makes them an expert on the financial industry. However the people that this thread is targeted at won't be able to do that so please take care with the information provided here.",
"If I owned stock in something that was failing, what would motivate me to let someone else sell it and make money on it and give me back my stock when it's worthless? I guess what I'm asking is, why does short selling even exist when it doesn't seem to benefit the actual owner of the stock? edit: I gather that the stock's owner gets paid a bit for the use of their stock. But that just raises a further question. If the short seller can make so much money that they can both pay these fees and make a profit, just by selling this stock right now at its current price, why wouldn't the stock's actual owner just sell it themselves and keep all that money for themselves?",
"\\*Hedgie Strategy Today\\* & #x200B; First off, I don’t know what I am doing and this is not financial advice. & #x200B; This is a really important day. The hedgies are going to be out for blood and this is what I would I would do if I was on the other side of this trade. We know from yesterday that the brokerage accounts all feed our information to the hedge funds. They know where our autocalling positions are, how much we are driving the price up with our buys now that we can and have placed long positions before the market open. & #x200B; We also know that they were able to buy at the bottom of the market yesterday and some of us even had positions close at this point without our consent. & #x200B; Finally, we know that Steve Cohen was forced to shut down SAC Capital due to insider trading allegations in 2014 and they have given the hedge funds $2 billion which they would’ve used to take a long position at the market bottom yesterday to help cover their short position. They have insider information on all of our positions. They know the battle ground and will be planning accordingly. & #x200B; If I was a hedgie, I would also drive the market up when it opens, taking profit as I go. I would then get to a point where we have set off a lot of auto calls and I would sell out of my long position. This would drive the market down and I would then sell out of my short position. & #x200B; Since we have been given the ability to jump back in, we're all charging into the market now that we can buy again. As we know from what we've found out today, Robinhood along with the other brokerage accounts give the hedge funds information on our positions, autocalls, and all investments we make. I think what might happen is we're gonna drive the market up when it opens, and as the hedge funds know this they will buy long positions and also drive the price up. The point of this is to hit our autocall positions so that we sell out. Just as we hit our autocalls, the hedge funds will sell their long positions and create a massive sell off between our autocalls and their sell offs. This will drive the price down to a point where they can sell their short positions which are calling today. We therefore need to remove our autocalls so as to continue to drive the price up. Continue to sustainably buy throughout the day so that they can't take advantage of any dips to close their short calls. They fucked us yesterday and created a dip so they could buy long positions. They bought this dip and drove the price up to 230. They have a lot of firepower to be able to do this from Point72 and Citadel. & #x200B; Tldr: Remove your autocalls and continue to buy sustainably throughout the day and we'll all be eating meat in Valhalla by evening. & #x200B; This is not financial advice and I do not know what the fuck I'm talking about. Do whatever the fuck you want.",
"What about Gamestop itself? As a company, does it benefit from these events or is it bad news?",
"Question: is there any way things could go wrong for wsb holders, now or in the near future, regarding their GME/BB/etc stocks?",
"If I understand correctly, it's now forbidden to buy but it's still allowed to sell. But then, WHO buys? (Not a Native English speaker and definitely uneducated about stock market).",
"A big issue that is being raised rn is that people on reddit have manipulated the market by investing money individually into GME. But dont hedge funds do the same? They collect money from various investors and through the power of this massive amount of money, bet on the market which has the side effect of changing the market. How is one considered manupulation and the other fair business practice?",
"Is there evidence (other than the GME/Robin hood-case which is ofcourse to recent for there to be any research done yet) that market manipulation by \"big money\"/hedge funds/big investors actually happens? Edit: I phrased myself poorly, I was specificly looking for cases of market manipulation where big money had manipulated the price of a stock *LIKE* in the GME-case. Essentially what I want to know is if this is as commonplace that it happens and goes unpunished by \"big money\" as some friends want me to believe.",
"**We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in the market, we shall fight on the exchanges and on trading platforms, we shall fight with growing autism and growing retardation in the air, we shall defend our tendies whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on our phones, we shall fight on our PCs, we shall fight in the reddit threads and in the tweets, we shall fight in space; we shall never surrender.** - DeepFuckingChurchill NEVER STOP HOLDING, TO THE FUCKING MOON BOYS",
"Basically it’s like gambling. You buy a stock for cheep and you can sell it for more if the price rises. The more people the “rare” the stock is cause there’s less in circulation. You can do option trading which is based on contracts that you pick and this is called puts and calls. Instead of buying shares you buy a contract and depending on the type (whether is put or call), you hope the stock price goes up and down. Hedge Funds shorted or (bought puts) on GameStop, they bought so much in fact that there wasn’t even enough shares in circulation. People noticed this and realized if they drove up the price the hedge funds would loss a lot of money because there betting the stock would go down. Now with contracts there legally obligated to “buy back” what they promised. (They borrowed shares they didn’t have and now they have to pay them back). Unfortunately they borrowed more then was actually in circulation so now they owe a ridiculous amount of shares. Once they pay everyone back they’ll be bankrupt and we’ll have all there tendies(money).",
"Essentially, imagine looking at a price. Let's say $5.00 If you spend that $5.00 on a share, you raise the value of the next share purchase. If someone else sees that price and buys before you, you have lost the opportunity to buy a share for $5.00 It now raises. If someone sells their share (which may have been purchased at a lower or higher price) during the time you are looking at this $5.00 price, it will lower the cost of the share. It now falls. High market velocity is \"surfed\" on the backs of foolish plebs who have purchased their shares after you. Your enemy is the people selling. You want to sell before them, because when they sell, it lowers the prices. Notice you are both these parties. In essence, the stock market is a digital manifestation of hype. Because you can now purchase fractions of a share and crypto currency \"Huh, I'm interested in that, I'll click like.\" Is the way to go. Think early facebook where you \"liked\" every thing you were into. Replace \"like\" with \"put a dollar or a thousand into assuming other people will like it\" and you essentially have the formula to success. These days, people are sending droves to the market from a single tweet. If you liked it before it was cool, you're more valuable.",
"There are a lot of questions as to whether Robinhood and other brokerage firms can stop the trading of stock. I'm not here to argue right or wrong, but I want to present the facts. Any broker at any time for any reason can stop trading (brokering) any stock. You actually see this a lot with stocks on the pink sheets. Many brokers can and will stop trading for a variety of reasons. One example would be the company is under scrutiny by the SEC for funny books. The brokerage firm feels that brokering that stock for it's customers is a danger to them, and the firm itself, so they will shut trading. They can also shut down trading for retail investors on the stock and keep it open for institutional investors. They can do this because they are the broker. They decide how they operate. Just like you can choose one of your friends to loan $10 to but not the other because you don't trust the second to pay you back. Again, this is legal and allowed. In the wider view just because Vanguard doesn't allow you to trade shares in XYZ doesn't mean you can't go over to TD and buy XYZ through them. Each broker is independent and can choose what trades they allow through. Again, is this morally right or wrong? That's for you to decide.",
"Why does Elon Musk say shorting is a scam?",
"What's the difference between buying a stock and buying an option?",
"How can a company short more stocks than there are available?",
"Is there a possibility this will lead to a global market chrash or is it just contained in the US?",
"Why is Friday a deadline, what forces the short sellers to cover their position, other than accruing interest? Don't they decide when they buy back?",
"Is there really a big room like in the movies where a crowd of people are yelling stuff and what are they yelling and to whom?",
"I was too young in 2008. Can someone explain why/how the financial crisis happened and how did the wall street contributed to it if they did any?",
"ELI5: does this intended attack on big finance really only affect the 1 percenters or does it also affect average Joes with retirement accounts and 401ks with these firms?",
"Can someone more clearly explain day trading regulation to me? Why can't I buy during dips and sell during peaks all throughout the day? Or can I? How does the process work?",
"When a buyer buys a share at $20.00 then the next buyer has to buy it at $20.05 Why does this happen? Who changes the price? How is the change in price calculated? Why $0.05 and not $0.10 or $1.00?",
"What will happen to the stocks and stockholders if the company go bankrupt? Can the price of GME keep going up if GameStop declares bankruptcy now? Can the price of GME keep going up if GameStop no longer a company?",
"Can someone explain what happened in general? A bunch of redditors bought stocks? Why is this special? What sub did this originate from? Are the redditors now rich? Edit: Thank you to all the kind commenters writing leangthy and thought out explanations for me!",
"I bought stocks for AMC (~$215) and NOK (~$164) using Fidelity around 11:50 pm. It says it was a \"day order\"? Just wanted to see if I did something stupid or if i'm good :-/ should I have wanted until the market opens again tomorrow...? Thanks in advance :-)",
"I get what a short is. You borrow a stock from a broker, sell it, hope its price goes down, buy it back at the lower price, return the cheaper stock to the broker, and pocket the difference. ELI5 how it is legal to borrow more of a stock than exists \\*in the world\\*.",
"Isn't what is going on classed as market manipulation. I have no sympathy for hedge funds im just curious since WSB are using a large audience too manipulate the price. Also iv seen people say its the reverse of what hedge funds usually do. How do they usually unfairly make money, they obviously have massive finacial leverage but how do they use that leverage to make more?",
"Hi! I always wanted to buy a stock but now with this going on, I just want to fuck the riches haha Sooo, can someone explain me how to buh stocks, and in a safety way? For information, I'm from Mexico, here is more difficult to get into this, but I'm willing to make my part if someone helps me Also want to know how to buy dogecoin haha",
"AT & T has $551.7 billion in assets, $201.9 billion in equity and $181.2 billion in revenue in one year. WWE has US$992.2 million in assets, US$275.3 million in equity and $960.4 million in revenue in the same year. **Why is WWE's stock price (\\~$57) nearly twice as high as AT & Ts (\\~$28)?** **Why is Telsa's stock price (\\~$835) four times higher than Facebook's stock price ($265)?** It seems clear it doesn't have to do with the actual value of the entity so what's the heck is going on here?",
"I need an ELI negative 5. What are those apps(?) people keep mentioning(robinhood, gne, etc). How do stocks work? Who’s money are the redditors taking? Do you just sit in your ass all day and watch your computer stats go up and down? Why are people saying “hold”? And why until 5000(I think)? What exactly are they buying and how? how much money will they get away with? if everyone is saying hold, why are some selling? and who tf is going to space? Also, what dies Elon have to do with this?",
"(Copy paste from my previous answer somewhere else as to why people are mad at Robinhood): Citadel pays Robinhood a lot of money for market orders to go through them cause they want to know how millennials invest (RH has a super young user base). Citadel also took a large short position in GME and were presumably losing billions. Citadel (and supposedly the White House (allegedly, ok) and some other important people) have been scared shitless so they pressured RH and other brokerages like Webull and TD Ameritrade to stop the purchases of stocks like GME that were losing them billions as well as doubling (tripling? Quadrupling? Idk lol) down on their shorts right before stopping retail traders access to the markets ([source 1]( URL_2 ), [source 2]( URL_1 )). People are up in arms over this on Twitter, and has even united AOC, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump Jr (lol) [(source)]( URL_0 ) on this issue of the idea of a “free and fair” market being a thinly veiled lie as soon as the big boys start losing. RH is now supposedly also [automatically selling users shares without their permission]( URL_3 ) in order to “minimize risk” but everyone knows that they’re full of shit. When you go to the stock you get a message saying you can only sell, not buy, meaning the average retail investor can’t average down or help push the price back up and are at the mercy of the hedge funds who are doing everything in their power to push the price down including (illegal but will never be punished for) naked short selling. Considering over half of RH users own GME you can see why this would be a big deal. Me personally I got fucked over by them doing the same thing with BB (BlackBerry) but a lot of what is happening is you’re seeing RH act in order to save themselves, which completely goes against what they previously [said]( URL_4 ). Long story short, the markets are and always have been all about market makers and the biggest hedge funds while retail investors continue to get fucked over, it’s just now there’s worldwide attention to it.",
"What are the possible consequences after this Gamestop event is over? Aside from billionaires losing money?",
"Is there still time to buy stock in GME *without* losing money? Is it still viable?",
"Why are so many people wanting to crush this one particular hedge fund? / anti hedge funds",
"Anyone willing to explain how this ends through a series of scenarios? Really curious about how far this could go.",
"Can someone borrow stocks from my portfolio with out my permission? If so, can I somehow lose money from it?",
"Can someone explain why they call themselves autists and retards? Do they think that’s actually funny or are they intentionally being offensive?",
"What's happening with the stocks of AMC, NOKIA and BLACKBERRY? I heard a lot of discussion surrounding these stocks too along with Gamestop's.",
"I'd like to know how this effects GameStop. Did they profit from this? Or is there company simply currently valued higher than before?",
"How did the folks at WSB see that GME was being shorted? Is the # of borrowed stocks publicly available on some investing website?",
"Does the gamestop company have any legal course of action they can take against the investment companies that restricted the purchase of their shares?",
"How long do the common people need to hold before the hedge funds have to buy the stock at the inflated price to complete the short?",
"So if these Hedgefunds are making bets that GME will go down. GME is going up. When do the Hedgefunds that put the bet pay that difference?",
"So, the hedge funds have lost $70 billion. Did that money actually go anywhere? Is it gained by anyone? Or is it just on a theoretical balance sheet?",
"How did the hedge funds let it get this far? Why didn’t they close their positions earlier, when the GME price increased from $5 to $30 instead of $300 now?",
"So is this a moment where society tries to \"eat the rich\" and they get stomped out again? Will this have lasting ramifications where the separation between the rich and poor furthers?",
"So my friend asked if Gamestop is actually benefiting from the stock price being sky high. My assumption is that they can benefit by selling stock at this price. Do I have that right?",
"So theoretically, if I bought up as many GameStop stocks as I could before all this started, and sell them all now, would I basically be fucking loaded with no risk of losing it?",
"This is u/DeepFuckingValue's first post on WSB. Can someone explain how he purchased these stocks and why his \"bid-ask\" spreads are ridiculous (at least that is what the top comment said): & #x200B; [ URL_1 ]( URL_0 )",
"From a legal point of view, is it acceptable to coordinate your actions with intention to manipulate stock prices like guys from Reddit did? In general, what documents define what's legal and what's not in this type of trading?",
"How can you \"borrow\" stocks ? That sound shady as fuck to me Edit : I get the short thingy, what I don't get is : why sould someone lend his stocks to someone else ? They get paid ?",
"Say I want to sell my $GME at $10.000. My limited knowledge in economics tells me that if I want to sell something, someone else has to buy it. So who is going to buy my $GME shares at $10.000 a piece?",
"How does anyone buying GME make actual cash off of it? Sure the value of the stock is increasing but it's not real money until you sell it. Won't the prices crash back down when the bubble pops and everyone wants to sell?",
"Why would a hedge fund ever get a bailout (as people seem to be discussing this possibility in anger), isn’t a hedge fund a private fund for the ultra rich? Why would they need a bailout? What purpose are they serving the general public?",
"How reddit (since most sources point out here) have managed to pump up the price of stocks to over 1000% over last 2 weeks? Was is completely artificial value based only on demand? When I looked up GameStop it looked like it's in a huge decline in value in past years.",
"I may have missed it, but what happens if the hedge fund has to buy the shares at the high price and they go bankrupt? I heard that the banks are on the hook? What effect does this have on the NYSE and will it affect the entire market? In what way?",
"Am very inexperienced with stocks but let me see if I got it right: WSB banded together, through whatever means to buy GME stocks (with knowledge that hedge funds were shorting GME). WSB's \"bet\" worked in their favor. Hedge Funds/Billionaires are furious because they are being beat by their own games(?) Did I do good?",
"So, I read that there is a difference between \"market value\" and \"actual value,\" and that while GameStop's market value is great right now, that doesn't mean the company is doing well. I mean, the reason the hedge fund was shorting them in the first place was because they were doing so poorly. So what happens to GameStop the company? Why does their market value not have an impact on the business itself? And what happens if GameStop were to declare bankruptcy, let's say tomorrow?",
"I think I've garnered a reasonable understanding of how shorts work, but the thing that isn't clear to me is what the benefit for the lender is. As I understand it, the Shorter borrows stocks from a Lender, presumably at some form of interest, sells them, and then banks on the stock going down so he can buy them back more cheaply to return them. This seems rather disadvantageous to the Lender, unless the Lender is reasonably confident that the Shorter is wrong in their assessment of the market. Is this just a zero sum game in which the Shorter and Lender are basically betting against each other? or is there some other benefit to the Lender that I am missing?",
"Why is a trading agency or whatever allowed to block fair trades?",
"Can someone ELI5 what is going on? (I’m not familiar with wallstreet.)",
"Why HOLD? Isn’t the point to buy on the low and sell on the high?",
"Why aren't hedge funds joining WSB in buying GME? Wouldn't they profit just like anyone else?",
"1. What are Puts, Calls, Options and Margins? 2. Is a stock and a share the same thing?",
"Can someone explain how the “big cats” are manipulating the market in their favor after screwing up trying to short GameStop?",
"What is the composition of the capital contributors to main hedge funds? In particular, are there significant contributions from people's retirement funds/pensions?",
"Is there any advantage to, or difference between, buying GME stock during market after hours and waiting to buy at markets opening?",
"Can someone explain why short sellers can't just hold onto their position for longer (months) until the situation calms down and the bubble bursts?",
"How is shorting bad? It doesnt seem like scamming at all. edit: Wont the company gain value again when the stocks are bought back?",
"Are these big companies actually at risk of dying off? Or just astronomical losses? Both possibilities excite me, but one excites me more is all.",
"So the hedge funds need to buy back the stock they owe. What happens if they run out of money and can't buy back the stock?",
"At what stage do the hedge funds actually lose money? Can’t they all just ride it out and wait for the bubble to burst and stock prices return to normal?",
"What's so special about the GameStop scenario? Why hasn't it ever happened before? Why does it work? Why do some people want to change the laws now, to make it illegal?",
"What effect will this have on GameStop the company? Does this all mean they have loads more money? or does it set them up for a major loss in the future?",
"I haven’t seen this answered yet, sorry if I missed it. What happens if no one sells? If lenders want their stocks back and those who shorted can’t provide them, then what?",
"How many shares are created when a company goes public? Can you see this number for every stock? Can the amount ever change or is it fixed? Does a single entity own every share when a company initially goes public?",
"One question I have about shorting shares is if I borrow from someone and I buy the share at a lower price than what the borrower gave me why would the borrower want it back if it’s at a lower price?",
"So from what I understand, some redditors let some rich people fall into their own trap through Game Stop. But what exactly is this trap? How did they controll the market before? My stock market knowledge just goes as far as animal crossing teached me.",
"Can someone please explain to me the legal/ethical ramifications of Elon Musk tweeting #Gamestonk or #Bitcoin and then those markets seeing huge rises. He clearly wields a significant influence on the market - what is stopping him from going all in on something - tweeting everyone to jump on board and then make bank?",
"I have questions regarding how this might affect trading in the future. Say down the road, will it be possible for a hedge fund to CLAIM that they heavily shorted a stock, triggering a squeeze when in reality the bought / placed calls on the stock to capitalize on the price increase? Or are shorts / calls of that magnitude generally reported for all to see?",
"1. If I have a fidelity account and bought stock today, but it came out of my 2021 Roth IRA contribution account... can I still buy more stock tomorrow and add more money to just a regular trading account? 2. If I sell the stock I bought today some point tomorrow, can I then buy more of that stock again later on tomorrow? Or do they not let you sell then buy the same stock within a certain period?",
"Total noob here: What happens if a hedgefund looses this much money? 30B? 70B? Will it not have adverse effects on the rest of the economy / society? Is it not similar to what happened in 2008? I am personally delighted to see the average people fight back, but what if by doing so, we create a huge vacuum in the economy, and the banks and money-people will be bailed out again, with the rest of the economy collapsing again, resulting in the same crisis we had in 2008?",
"Again, i know nothing about stocks. But why is the concept of a hedge fund not illegal in itself, specialised buying powers and a pool of people buying at once sounds sketchy. Also the idea of shorting, making money off companies going under. Why is that a thing, or is it just a by product of having a market? Should there not be a cap on the amout of shorts as percentage otherwise its incentized that businesses fail, not for the businesses themselves but for others. Big fish eats the little fish.",
"In the case of GME, what is so significant about tomorrow(Friday)?",
"Who do y'all think you're fucking over by buying stocks, and how?",
"What happens when the hedge fund cannot buy back all that it's borrowed?",
"Isn’t Wall Street just making a killing off this anyway regardless of what happens?",
"What's the difference between a naked short and a short that covers up its tiddies?",
"Why are most brokers stopping the trade with popular stocks now? Shouldn't they make tons of money with it?",
"Here a link to investopedia. It’s like a dictionary for stock terms. If you have questions, this may help. URL_0",
"If a hedge fund fails to buy back a shorted stock because there are none for sale (‘failure to deliver’), what happens?",
"If I buy shares, can I lose more than the money I invested? Edit; Thanks for the replies. If I can, I'll invest today.",
"Are there any consequences to a company whose stock gets massively shorted; could they go bankrupt because of this? If so, why? Or why not?",
"What is a stock? Is there a reason to buy a stock besides selling it later or doing something else with it to make a profit?",
"Does it make financial sense to jump on the GME bandwagon now? Like what are the odds of it rising to 10,000%+ if we all hold?",
"what is gamestop? is gamestop benefiting in anyway? who are the ones losing and are the people who bought gamestop going to get / getting tons of money?",
"Could some people go to jail for blocking the purchase of GME shares yesterday? Allowing people to sell but not to buy feels illegal. Are there rules about this?",
"At this point I think I understand what is going on with GME. But what about BB, AMC, NOK? Are they all in the same situation? Just to a lesser extent?",
"Is there any reason these folks at wallstreetbets couldn't do something amazing with tradable medical debt? This is a vague question because I have almost zero understanding of what is happening.",
"When I press the sell button on stocks I have, does it normally sell immediately at the price it was shown when I pressed the button? Who buys my stocks? Other people?",
"I was reading about “hedging” on the other thread. Do people ever short stock that they already own? Like, that way, maybe they could make a profit whether it goes up or down?",
"Who are the investors in these hedge funds? I know that sometimes retirement funds and other government funds also use hedge funds, is there a chance that regular people are losing money/their retirement in this situation?",
"What happen if you buy stock after the market is close? I know the transaction will be proceeded the morning after but if the stock closed at $10? Will it be at $10 in the morning?",
"Everyone is adding the disclaimer “this is not financial advice” in their comments but does the average joe need to make that disclosure? I would think that only a broker needs to add that disclaimer in there. Thanks for the answers everyone!",
"I see a lot of people saying they are doing this to \"help\" Gamestop? How does the share price skyrocketing help the company? Also, cant the hedge funds hold out too and wait for the price to go back down after all the hype?",
"What actually happens if the hedge fund broker cannot make margin call and just goes bankrupt while still owing shares? Who does he owe shares to, and what happens to the entity that loaned the shares for the short instrument and what happens to the market?",
"Wouldnt it be logical that the price will stop going up now because its reched the point redditors wnt be able to afford the price of a share or can a very small part of a share be bought meaning the price of share wont stop people buying in?",
"Could this short squeezing hurt ordinary people. I see everyone celebrating that billionaires are losing money, which they took the gamble and knew the risks. If they lose 10 million and have to sell there 6th mansion, I couldn't care less. But could this be hurting peoples pensions, modest investments, 401ks etc.",
"How does this affect the company itself? Do they have more money now? My basic understanding of stocks are originally they are supposed to be a way for a company to raise money, right? I guess this is less about stock, but more about this situation, but nobody seems to be talking about how the Gamestop itself is affected.",
"As someone who has almost zero knowledge on anything regarding trading but is interested in what is happening, can someone fill me in? I just recently found out about this and I'm interested in anything that makes the news. I have no intention in wanting to learn how to trade or anything, just want to know what the situation is.",
"Short selling is betting on a stock going down and you keep the dividends. It is buying a stock but in reverse. If you you sure to stock at $100 and it drops to $30 then you get $70. Basically hedge funds got f***** over because they shorted more stock than what was available and the prices climbed. If you bought it a hundred and it goes to 130 then you owe them $30, that is how shorts work.",
"U.S. Citizen, when I have made a capital gain on the sale of a stock, when and in what manner do I make sure the IRS properly receives the appropriate amount of tax? What is the appropriate amount of tax in such a situation? Am I within my legal rights to purchase and/or sell stocks on my own time and money while in possession of a Roth IRA retirement plan, 401k offered by my employer, or such like it?",
"So I want to start investing, and plan to soon. What I am concerned with is me messing something up and owing money somehow. My question is if I put lets say 2k into fidelity and buy stocks there is no way I can lose more than 2k initially? I see people on Wallstreetbets who look like they owe money somehow, I don't understand it lol. All I really want to do is buy and hold stock, maybe sell months later if I made a few bucks. Edit: Thanks for all the informative replies!",
"Do you still pay taxes on the money earned from stock?",
"What happens after the hedge funds are forced to sell? Will these new millionaire's... just be millionaire's now?",
"ELI5 What would happen if consumers all teamed up and decided to buy their next gen console from GameStop.",
"How does buying and selling stocks work? What is short selling? What is a short squeeze? What is stock manipulation?",
"What is the incentive for someone to lend someone else a stock? Do you not owe them a stock plus interest?",
"Have these hedge funds who shorted GME lost money already, or will they only lose if the price stays up for X period of time?",
"Serious only please, how do we see the End Game of this historical event playing out? Can this cause a negative or positive impact on the economy going forward?",
"Why can't GME just issue new stock? They can raise a lot of money this way, especially knowing that the current high prices are unlikely to remain for long.",
"Could legal action be taken against the apps that are preventing people from buying more stocks? Wouldn't this be favouring the hedgefunds? Crazy theory, I know. Just want clarification",
"I would like to thank all of you for your explanation of this situation. Using other examples of how all this happened made it easier to comprehend for the Average Joe.",
"What's the deal with renting stocks? Didn't even know this was possible. What incentives does a company have to rent out a stock versus just selling it? Very confused about this.",
"My question is (using this example) is if there are 100 shares available and 125 shares have been short sold, how is it that we can still buy shares on the market?",
"This is the still confusing part for me: What happens if the shorts are not bought back in time? is there a penalty? Can I short a stock and hold on to my short indefinitely?",
"When trading Calls....how do you determine the optimal day to choose for expiration? On Level 2 market data when the selling side is higher than the buying is that indicative of a falling share price?",
"GME - How does a hedge fund buy to close out a short position of more shares than the stock has available? Is it possible to close out a stock short of 140% of the available shares?",
"When short selling a broker lends an investor stock which the investor sells and buys them later when they're cheaper and returns them to the broker for profit for the investor. How do brokers who lend the shares profit?",
"Perfect explanation thank you. In my mind I thought of I as I sold my 'debt' or 'loan' to someone else , but I am still on the hook to pay you back for the shares you originally sold me.",
"How is naked short selling possible? Wouldn’t you have to have some proof that you have a stock to sell before you sell? Especially since naked short selling is illegal. Tried google for answers but couldn’t get a clear explanation :(",
"Are GameStop employees going to get caught in the crossfire? When this madness ends and dust settles, is there a possibility that GameStop can run out of business because of this stock market fluctuation and lay off it's employees? Edit: Cheers for all these quick responses!",
"Through all of this, wallstreet is getting bent over, and the masses are becoming educated on it. If you do happen to buy GME, or already own it, don't forge to to keep those diamond hands strong. Hold the stock and the shorts can't cover.... in theory.:)",
"Even without the current buying frenzy, how will a stock shorted over 100% been bought back and returned to the lenders by short sellers? What were they thinking when over shorting it or did that happen unintentionally and they would have gone on borrowing and shorting ad Infinitum?",
"Last night I was listening to LBC, and they had people explaining what had gone on, to which I understood most of what they had to say. The one thing that confused me is when they said that they were shorting more stock than the company had, stocks that don't exist, how is that possible?",
"I'd appreciate if someone could ELI5 what determines the number of shares a company has. Say you have a $100,000 company. That could be divided into 10 shares worth $10,000 each, or 100 shares worth $1000 each, or into 100,000 shares worth $1 each, or even 2 shares worth $50,000 each. Who determines that division, and how?",
"It seems pretty apparent to me that the worth of $GME is not being affected by the tangible real world worth and assets of the company, but rather based on the perceived worth of those using the markets. What are the implications of stock prices not necessarily being tied to the actual profitability and assets of a company? How can GameStop benefit from this?",
"Suppose someone \"borrows\" your stock and then fails to return it (because it costs them too much to replace, or isn't for sale at any price). They simply don't have as much assets as they owe, and they go bankrupt. Is that a realistically possible scenario? And if it were to happen, are your \"borrowed\" shares permanently lost? Or are the borrowing contracts secured somehow? (And if so, _how?_)",
"Can someone explain what “buy the dip” means and why WSB wants people to both buy the dip and hold? If WSB wants everyone to “hold” (aka not sell?), then how can anyone “buy the dip” if nobody is supposed to sell? Who is selling right now? At some point, the “holders” will sell, right? To cash out? Is this a problem where right now, everyone is united in holding, but the floodgates will open once a small-ish critical mass sells?",
"1. Is there a way to further limit the available short positions for the hedge fund guys? Like, can I explicitly say to my broker to not tap on my existing shares when someone wants to short that stock. 2. I read that closing the positions above 100% basically involves buying and returning it twice. But, how did it got there in the first place? Hedge fund A borrows from a broker to short, then Hedge fund B borrows from A to short? Is that right?",
"Have you ever played craps? The dice game. There's a come bar and don't come bar. You can bet with or against the roller. There's plenty of other bets(options), but I'll focus on just these two. You want a \"7 come 11\", initially. Snake eyes and 12 busts, and do not come wins. 3,4,5,6,8,9,10 result in the 'come' you need to reroll this 'come', and then you win the come. Basic 2 to 1 odds, you either lost or doubled your money. Rolling a 7 busts you after the come, which is statistically very likely. 1,6; 2,5; 3,4.... It's literally gambling, on the scale of trillions of dollars. It's responsible for economic crashes, and never booms. It's like casinos always win, just replace casino with hedge funds or billionaires. They designed this shit. They control it. If you're bold enough to hold GME or AMC, gl hf. That 7 to bust you is more likely than anything else happening, unless you're shorting (do not come), which is, more or less, equally likely. Either could happen. It's unpredictable. And that's where manipulation comes in. The press seems to be blaming reddit for what's primarily been orchestrated by competing hedge funds, which have profited billions.",
"So will my 401k and IRA be okay?",
"Which trading app I should use in UK?",
"What does this all mean for GameStop and its employees?",
"Soooo, can I buy any still or not? And should I?",
"Robinhood restricting buying of Gamestop shares - is that shady /market manipulation?",
"How do I get karma points so I can talk with my fellow retards?",
"How did people know that citadel was 'shorting' GME in order to 'squeeze' the short?",
"Which apps will let you still buy GME right now? And is it available worldwide?",
"If a company's stock price goes up, how is it better for the company's finances?",
"Why did the hedge fund invest so much in one company? Is it just laziness?",
"How big does my business have to be before the state forces me to start selling shares?",
"What is a naked short? I tried looking it up but the available explainations are a bit misty.",
"Did anything really change? Did this whole thing made a significant impact on the future of stock market? Edit: how?",
"When or what is the goal to hold until? Why is it not just a waiting game for hedge funds",
"Yeah please do..reddit has been flooded with stocks related questions and Elon Musk did say something on twitter too regarding stocks.",
"How can someone borrow more stocks than there are on the market and why wasn't this a problem (for them) until now",
"So I can't just go and buy a stock at any time? The market is only open during certain times? If so, why?",
"How does one figure out short positions? How are people speculating that a random firm has so many shares that it has shorted?",
"Why were these hedgefund guys investing so much into gamestop and amc anyway? These companies have been in decline for a long time haven’t they?",
"How do investors know that there are still a lot of short positions for a given company, doesn't that information come out only 1-2 per month?",
"Whats the reasoning behind loaning shares from a macro perspective? Why is that allowed? How does it create value to the company / the economy in general?",
"I understand that people are rallying behind $GME because hedge funds are shorting it, but why are people rallying behind some other stocks like $BB, $AMC etc?",
"Is there a certain deadline where the hedge funds have to give their shorted stock backs and actually take the huge loss? Right now it's just hypothetical, right?",
"Is trading of GME stock allowed on TD Ameritrade currently? I've already put money into it in anticipation for tomorrow's open but I'm afraid that I'll be restricted from buying tomorrow morning.",
"What is the realistic reality of these rich assholes actually loosing their money? That’s what I want to know - seems like someone always comes along and bends a rule or bails them out.",
"So what makes short squeezes an unreliable strategy in playing the stock market? Is it simply hoping there is enough holding to cause an uptick and trying not to be the last one to sell?",
"How could this affect the rest of the market? A lot of people say this is isolated, a lot of people say it isn’t and that their stocks that have been traditionally relatively safe are going down",
"I though this was an interesting read...based on a conversation I had with someone in this thread. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) Hope this kinda helps to explain why Melvin is so screwed by shorting more stock than available.",
"Just saw a talking head say the platforms are shutting down trading liability. Apparently, In his opinion, Reddit banding together is collusion (I.e., fraud) that the platforms should have caught and protected the market from. Any reality to that position?",
"What causes the stock market to crash and how does that affect jobs? Also, why would it be bad for the middle class to make thousands from their gamestop stocks? wouldn't that help stimulate the economy like stimulus checks do?",
"Say I wanted to join in and buy a stock. Is there a certain website or app? Not asking for stock advice about what’s a good idea, I just want to know how to buy one because fuck rich people",
"Is this going to hurt a regular person's pension or 401k? My uncle and I were talking and he said that to me. My wife and I both have 401ks and not a lot of money outside of that saved.",
"I understand that we've gotta hold hold hold, but at what point do we sell so we can maximize profits? What is a reliable (or as reliable as it can be) indicator that it's time to sell whatever we've put in?",
"I don’t really understand the stock market, so why don’t people do this more often, just get a group of people to buy a stock en masse and sell when it gets high? Is that illegal? If so, what makes this time different?",
"Question: Theoretically, when buying gme right now / holding it, isnt it guqranteed to give you a positive return? Because the hedge funders habe to buy up the stocks they owe and have to pay whatever price to get them right? Or am I missing a point and it has a risk to it?",
"Is there a risk for amateur investors to lose more money than they have? Or the risk is limited to the amount of stock you borrow? Edit : what about the interests to pay for the broker? If i lose the money i invest i still need to pay the broker for the interests",
"I am hearing on news politicians and hedge fund experts saying hedge funds losing is going to affect us and our retirement funds too. Are retirement funds hurt by this GME fiasco? Are retirement funds hedge funds? Can retirement funds invest in hedge funds? Can retirement funds use high risk investment methods and tools like hedge funds do?",
"I understand this after a few days but there is one missing piece of the puzzle to me. What incentive do institutions/ businesses have to lend the shares to hedge funds? It seems they just lend them, they disappear, and get them back at a lower value after X days/months. What benefits does this bring the original lender?",
"Why is Friday 1/29 being thrown around? How did the price get this high? If a company was shorting the stock at 20 bucks and it rose to 40 bucks, why wouldn't they get out at 40 bucks and just take the loss? Who is still in their short position from a month ago when GME is at 350-450?",
"Guys, is it illegal to make a gofundme, ask people to donate 5 bucks each, and then that money gets used to buy GME stocks under one account? Then all the money would go towards charities that do the most work for impoverished communities. Proof of every transaction to charities and countries will be public. Is there any way that's illegal?",
"Why is everyone treating gme like its super risky? This seems like one of the least risky investments for the average investor over the short term that has ever existed as we know that a company needs to buy them back at the cost that are demanded? Unless another company offers them a bunch of stocks at far below market price.",
"Unpopular opinion: All these people chanting \"buy\" and \"hold\" to these newcomers who know very little about stock and who are just joining and riding the bubble aren't doing them any favors. Engaging in all of this is a risk, and for the \\*majority\\* of people who are not informed consumers, they could lose their shirts and no one's really warning them, through all the hype.",
"Explain something. I've seen some comments that say somehow shares that don't exist are being shorted. So I understand the concept of borrowng someone's share, selling it, and then re-buying it later at a lower price, giving their share back, and keeping the profit. How can you borrow a share that doesn't exist, and who are you giving the share back to after the price has dropped?",
"ELI5 - What would happen if the regular person no longer accepted cash and moved to crypto. I have a feeling there's going to be a bailout with what's happening with the GME situation. The little guys getting into investing and getting screwed over again and again. What happens if we've had enough. Give the cash to the government's but have the everyday person transact In digital currency.",
"ELI5: How is priority on selling/buying on the stock market decided? What \"terms\" can/should you expect as a normal citizen entering the stock market? Where I'm comming from: from my very limited understanding, there are hedgefunds and other entities who are trading at a \"milisecond\" rate, while ordinary people have to go through brokers who might take hours/days to execute \"the trade\". Is this correct in any way?",
"Not really about stocks, but i figured i'd give it a try anyways. Why can banks grant such huge loans with such a small interest. Wouldn't they gain more by placing them in something like the sp500? I understand that they are sold off as bonds to others, but again wouldn't they also be better of with the sp. When the rent is below 2% they actually lose money because of inflation, right?",
"If a hedge fund has short sold 1000 shares, why can't they just buy one, return it, then buy it back, return it again, and repeat 1000x? In the same vein, if two hedge funds have to return 1000 shares tomorrow, why can't one buy 1000 shares, return them, then the other buy those same shares and return them? If they can do those things, why does it matter that redditors are HODLing lots of shares?",
"I don't get how if you are buying losing stocks to resell, who's buying them back and why? That's the only part I don't get. In the hope they'll be back up to par? That seems unlikely given the pandemic, sounds like a bad bet. Edit: In retrospect, I guess there are good betters and bad betters. Like that's the whole point, right? I guess I figured it out? Some are betting that GME will rebound, some aren't.",
"Can someone explain what the endgame is for the different players in the game? Q1) How does it affect GameStop as a company? Does the bubble burst and share price come down? Q2) what happens to the Hedge funds? Do they go bankrupt? Q3) What’s the advantage of holding on to the GME stocks? When do you sell if at all? Q4) what is the best case scenario for each of these players? Hedge funds, redditors and the company?",
"I don't understand how shorting a stock works. If A borrows n shares from B, sells them, buys n shares at a lower price and gives them to B, isn't B getting the short (heh) end of the stick here? Why would B give his shares away? And is B somehow hoping the stock price would go up again so his n shares would be worth as much as they were when he had initially lent them to A?",
"So, explain to me like I'm five this question: I'm glad the hedge funds got screwed at their own game, but who ends up profiting from creating this hype to buy Gamestop shares? Not the person who buys today at a ridiculously inflated price. This seems a lot like bitcoin -overhyped crowd-sourcing of investors, many of whom lose out by joining the rollercoaster at the wrong time. It seems like there is a crew of cynical profiteers who're not really that different from the hedge fund guys, because somebody is going to lose their shirt when this show is over.",
"Is it worth buying any shares (if there are any available at this point) and if so, how many shares does it take to make money? If I were to buy 1 share and hold on to it, is that enough to have any effect? or are we talking buying in the hundreds/thousands of shares? Thank you for any answers, I hope I worded these questions right, it’s late where I am haha Edit: thank you everyone for your fantastic answers and thank you for dealing with my wording haha. I really appreciate it and my itch has been satisfied, I think I’ll leave the market for the more savvy at this point; however it is nice to know that a few shares is enough to work with. Happy weekend to y’all and good luck to those with shares and market prowess!!",
"as for the current situation A squirrel gets a nut then another squirrel gets a nut, after watching more squirrels join to collect nuts. A merchant walks buy thinking \"hehe stupid squirrel\" thinks that, When squirrel collects lots of nuts they will become worthless in squirrel's eyes. Just like one hair band is useful but hundred hair bands are worthless. \"hey squirrel want a nut\" he borrows a nut from a seller from a shop (\"i will give you back because i know nuts are cheap and worthless \") and sells the nut to the squirrel for 100 dollar. squirrel buys the nut and goes away, but merchant promised the seller to give back the nut. He goes back to squirrel can i buy a nut for 50 bucks,you have so many. Squirrel says no, 100 no, 200 no, \"fuck you\" i am not selling my nuts they are mine. Merchant is unhappy and makes a rule no one collects nuts only give back nuts, but squirrel says fuck off. Merchant :(",
"Can anyone explain exactly what is supposed to happen when the short options expire. My very very basic understanding is they bought short options which is a commitment to buy stock by certain date after borrowing it immediately then they sell it on hoping to buy it at a lower price and they lose out big if the price goes up instead. So a bunch of people bought and the price went up and the options are due to expire today causing them to have to buy at current pricing. Two major issues come up here, what happens if a hedge fund simply declares bankruptcy and can't cover it, is there some kind of insurance/cover somewhere that decided hey this bet is safe and if it fails we cover it? More than that, if people just choose not to sell then what happens then? At this point also what happens if people don't sell today, do the options not expire then the stock crashes because it's not good, why are people saying to hold. Isn't the only reason it's high because of the options that expire, or is this because only some of the options expire today. Is it more a case of the hedge funds involved can easily cover it but they don't have the cash meaning to cover the buys they have to sell a shitload of other stock to be able to cover it. It's just, if people aren't selling then how do the hedge fund buy the stock at higher prices?",
"What dictates the number of shares a company has?",
"What is after hours trading? How is that legal?",
"Is it possible for hedge funds to prevent this from happening again?",
"Can you explain Options Trading? What is a call, put and sell etc?",
"It sounds like shorting is kind of sketchy, so why is it allowed?",
"I know it’s a lot, but can someone explain 2008 like I’m five?",
"Is GameStop significantly benefitting from this? Who are the hedge fund folks losing money *to*?",
"Seeing as Robinhhod is now out of the question, where would one go to try and invest?",
"Why are some Exchanges called Security Exchanges (like the ASX) but others are called Stock Exchanges (like the NYSE)?",
"Is there any way these brokerages can come after my realized gains from GME? It’s something I’m genuinely worried about",
"Question: can't someone make an open source, non profit donation based app like signal which has the same functionality as robinhood?",
"What's the difference between going long and going short? & #x200B; Edit: Is there a difference between short-selling and going short?",
"Who do these hedge funds represent? And why do I feel it's teacher and firefighter retirement funds these guys gambled with?",
"I’m just so happy and proud this has happened, just wanted to say bloody well done to all those involved in this.",
"Can someone explain when the situation is and how it became what it is? I have no idea what's going on Edit: when=what",
"ELI5: How a clearing house works and what it does? Specifically, how are their fees set and how/why did they hike fees on GME today?",
"Why do people let other people borrow their stocks? So if the people borrowing profit, what do the people who let them borrow it gain?",
"How did this all start? As in, how did people know that these hedge funds were short selling and why did people start buying stocks?",
"Who exactly are the hedge funds? Is it more than one group? Also are we able to tell that they are doing the short selling?",
"For someone who wants to start trading, what are some good resources for learning how to do so intelligently? Is there a user-friendly app besides Robinhood?",
"google says diamond hands are people who are willing to hold until the bitter end - does that mean these people will hold until the stock is worthless again?",
"What happens if short positions are not able to cover (bankruptcy or whatever reason), what happens to the shorts that are not covered, does anyone else foot the bill?",
"What happens if the whole world never sells? Can someone please give good dd on this because this is where we are now at. We are committed to Valhalla.",
"Now that there’s a hold on buying GME and others, how is this situation likely to play out in the following days? edit: cheers all for the extremely speedy responses",
"What is a float? I’ve heard that term passed around about shares “floating” what does that mean. Also if someone can explain the $39,000 theory like I’m 5 that’d be great.",
"What is the realistic reality of these rich assholes actually loosing their money? That’s what I want to know - seems like someone always comes along and bends a rule or bails them out.",
"The real question is how much will the early investors/miners sell off and once they sell off will there be a new floor of buyers who are willing to step in and kept the price afloat.",
"For the new people wanting to buy doge, don't put in any more than you're willing to lose. The ATH will be gone faster than you know it and in no time you will see red.",
"This is a little late but, when I go on google and look up the current stock price of a company. What or who determines that price at the moment? Is there like a formula or something?",
"Can someone explain how calls and puts are different from a regular stock purchase? Reading a lot of comments on wsb they talk about calls a lot and I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around what it is.",
"Everyone refers to short stocking as borrowing a share from someone, selling it, waiting for the market price to drop, and buying it back again. So, who exactly are the borrowers and who are the lenders in this situation with GameStop?",
"What's the connection between a company and its shareholders, after it's no longer the company who sells the shares, but the investors among themselves? How does the company affect shareholders and share prices? How do share prices and shareholders affect the company?",
"What motivates the people who loan their stocks in short selling? If they just get their stocks back two days later, assuming all goes well for the short seller and the price of the stock goes down, what is in if for them?",
"A key thing to note here is institutions short sold GME stock on leverage, to a point of shorting 140% of GME's shares. How can you short more than 100% of shares? Leverage has something to do with this. What is leverage in this context?",
"Would it be possible for Citron/Melvin/etc to somehow manage to get the GME price down and buy it back without a loss? If so, just what is the likelihood of this? I'm gonna spend a few hundred on GME tonight, but I'm just curious about the possibility of this happening...",
"From what I understand, companies don't list their entire stocks on the market. Only a percentage of them. & #x200B; Practically speaking, is there any downsides for a company if it's stocks go down? I don't see how it effects the parent company since it's something that they don't own.",
"So If I understand correctly hedge funds were selling borrowed stock and buying it back at a lower price to return it. But who was buying the stock of GME from them before WSB started all this and why would they do that if they know that it's only gonna decrease?",
"Just a general question Are hedge funds allowed to cover their old shorts with new shorts? e.g I borrow 100 stocks from A which goes bad. Can I open a new short position of 100 stocks from B at a higher price and return them to A? This must be illegal somehow...",
"I understand that you buy stocks low then when they increase in value you've made money, but isnt it that you only make 'actual money' when you sell the stocks for real money? But then who buy stocks at such high prices? Wouldn't it just mean you have money in theory but not able to convert it physically?",
"What is/was preventing the hedgefunds from buying GME options / stock very low yesterday when the retail traders were frozen out to help cover losses from previous days knowing it is going to soar in value when retail traders jump back in? Surely they gain to make more money than anyone in a squeeze with their ease of access? Edit: thanks for explaining!",
"The way I've had shorting explained is that someone (a hedge fund) borrows stocks, sells them, and buys then back later when they need to return them. My question is: how does this borrowing work, and why is there financial incentive for somebody to lend their stocks like this? Perhaps phrased another way, where do hedge funds get access to the stocks they short sell?",
"There is a lot of talk about how the US government will introduce legislation to protect hedge funds from events like this in the future. How could legislation like this be realized? As far as I understand it, nobody did anything illegal or anything that the hedge funds themselves weren't doing already. Would it be possible to lock out \"private\" traders from the stock market altogether?",
"From my understanding a Short is You Borrow someone's stock sell it and then buy when it is cheaper and give it back to them. What I don't get is why the original owner of the share would do this. I get that they make interest on the share but they still end up with a net lose right? Say it is 5% interest. If stock drops more then 5% then they lose money.",
"Two questions hoping someone can clear up: 1) how are the euros trading on GME after the US market closes? Is GME listed on the German market as well as the us (eg dual listed?), I'm in Aussie and can only buy when the US market is open so I don't quite get it! 2) What happens if the original owner of a shorted stock wants to sell the stock before the shorter has returned it?",
"How do we know that these hedge funds are actually losing lots of money? Eventually the stock price will return to “normal”, can’t they just wait this out? Is there a hard deadline for them to return shares? Could they renegotiate their position and such that they returned shares later? It seems from what I’ve read that the increased stock price is in theory very damaging to these short positions, but how will we know that they really are causing billions in losses?",
"I have a question. I see references that the hedge funds sooner or later will be forced to buy back the stocks they shorted and then the stock will skyrocket and they have to buy it at an arbitrary large value the sellers decide. Why is that? Who is forcing them and why do they have to buy right there and then to an arbitrary value? What happens if they can't? (I am a swede and don't know that much about stocks so I am sorry if I used the terms wrong)",
"1. Everyone keeps saying the number 130% (shorts) since last friday. Haven't they offloaded some of them since now? Isn't it reasonable that a lot of people closed their positions asap, especially during the dive today? 2. Do all shorts need to be bought? According to this site URL_0 (I may be interpreting things wrong), but there is a short volume of 9,606,123. How is *everyone* going to be able to sell at \"squeeze price\" if only 10m need to be bought? The volume traded is was over 50M today and higher other days.",
"Who decides the price of the stocks now? If they're in a point where they cost 400$ and there's only for example 1000 stocks mostly owned by casual people of Reddit, the hedge funds who has to return their borrowed stocks have a limited time (and normally in those contracts how much time is?). What if all the companies who borrowed stocks have only 1 month to return them? What happened if they don't do it on time What if the redditors decide the stocks will not be sell for less than $5000 but nobody is buying or selling but the companies have to return in a month their borrowed stocks, can the price mantain without selling or buying those stocks just waiting to the companies to run out of time to returned their debt?",
"Trying so hard to understand this. Here's what I think I've got. Johnny wants to short AA for $5. He gives Molly that money for the stock. Molly tells Johnny he has until Friday to complete his short. Meanwhile Billy and his friends buy AA stock for $5. Now AA stock shoots up to $300 by thursday soon to be $1000 on friday. Johnny is fucked and doesn't have $1000. Molly is confused as fuck and is afraid she's going to be on the hook for this. So she halts buying AA, but allows everyone to sell. That way johnny still buys his short stock before it gets too high that he CAN'T buy it and some off Billy's friends can get some gains. Because if they let it go to friday, johnny wasn't going to be able to buy AA, therefore NO ONE was going to buy AA and the stock was going to plummet to $5 again as Billy and Co were desperately looking for buyers. Where am I wrong here?",
"What are shorts? What is a hedge fund?",
"How do you find other stocks this is happening with?",
"CNN: Robinhood raised $1 billion after halting GameStop purchases. URL_0",
"how does the premarket / aftermarket work? why doesnt the exchange operate 24/7?",
"How did people buying gamestop stocks cause a pool of money to crash?",
"who is benefiting from what’s happening? GameStop? People who bought and managed to sold?",
"Where can I buy dogecoin? I've looked for it on etoro but can't find it.",
"Many people are buying stocks right? Does that mean Gamestop has an unlimited supply of stocks?",
"What is the best app for the normal Joe to use so we can buy stocks?",
"Can someone explain to me what exactly Robin Hood is and what the heck happened? Thanks",
"Can you move stocks straight from one broker app (Robinhood) to another without selling and rebuying?",
"So did average Joe's make money or did average joe's loose money so that billionaires loose more money?",
"What are signs that it truly is the largest short squeeze/gamma squeeze and probably time to actually get out?",
"Why is short selling perceived as evil? What is gamma squeeze and how is it different from short squeeze?",
"So a hedge fund is a \"fund\". Whose money is it losing when it goes bankrupt like in the current scenario?",
"Could the Hedge founders just not buy? I mean they would break their contracts but wouldn't they lose less this way?",
"What is the best move here? How does a regular Joe like me make the best of this once in lifetime opportunity?",
"Why is Robinhood forcing its user to sell? I read they make money off “payment for order flow”. Can someone ELI5 this idea?",
"Which trading platforms are best for people who don't want to do lots of trades. Preferably one that is also available in germany?",
"Did I miss the chance to make tons of money? And how/where exactly do the people who invested in game stop get more money?",
"Where can i even buy the stocks. My bank, \"Swedbank\" says \"technical problems\" to mask the \"fuck you\". Plus 500? Can't find AMC there...",
"How does shorting stock \"squeeze\" companies and make their stock price go down? In other words, how does betting against their stock value ACTUALLY make it go down?",
"How is it that GameStop is listed at $197 but when I try to buy it's priced at over $380 per share? Where does that price difference come from?",
"Aren’t hedge funds the ones responsible for company’s being publicly traded in the first place? Wouldn’t it be in their best interested to keep all companies that are publicly traded afloat?",
"Why are people buying GME and now additionally buying DOGE coins? (And how can i hop on the wagon? Ive never played or even known how to buy stocks or coins)",
"ELI5: what are the end scenarios for this? What’s next if people sticks to their stock or it continues going up? And what if the opposite, people freak out and start selling?",
"As hedge funds have come in using fear tactics to lower GME’s share price, what are the backend mechanics of finance that cause the ticker to fluctuate, and how does time play into that?",
"How likely is this to change the way the Stockmarket works now? Will people be more aware of funds short selling stocks in the future and if so, will it stop this, or force regulation?",
"I have a slightly different question. Do we have a link to whoever started this? I can understand the GME thing, I’m wondering what one should have been looking at over wsb to see it coming.",
"I understood that hedge funds are desperate to buy BME stock because they sold options for it. But what is the alternative? If the option is due and they simply don't have the promised stock, what happens?",
"How many people are benefiting from this short squeeze (how many people have GME)? Is it actually a significant part of the population or is it still more of a niche thing with wealthier individuals owning large portion of the GME shares?",
"Hi there! I'm a new investor. Some friends told me to look into something called DOGE Coin which is apparently a \"crypto currency\". Can anyone explain to me in simple terms what a crypto currency is? Also how do crypto currencies gain and lose value? THANK YOU!!!",
"Apex clearing originates trades for alpaca, webull, etc. How is being able to limit trades not monopolistic control? Is there a way to go around them as a developer? Another api? Also how are the nyse themselves not considered monopolies when they themselves could do the same at the source?",
"If I owned a GME stock at $5 before this whole thing went down, and my stock had been shorted, would I just be waiting to have my stock returned before I could sell it for the (now immense) profit? Or could I sell it while its also already lent out?",
"Whst becomes the breaking point eventually? If this infinity squeeze last for months and the price balloons to 50k/share, what has to eventually give? How does the hedge fund get out of their shorts if there are more shorts existing than shares? Basically, what causes the good times to eventually end? Government intervention?",
"Why is 'borrowing' stock a thing? I thought it was either sell or buy. Edit; to everyone explaining to me what shorting is, I know. I want to know about borrowing. Or is it only ever done when shorting? Why would anyone ever loan out their stocks if they knew they'd be shorted?",
"I think I understand the basics of shorting, one thing I can't wrap my head around is what's in it for the first person who lends out their stock to only receive it back when the short expires? Do they charge a fee for loaning out their share? Why don't they just hold it the whole time?",
"Do the investors who have shorted shares have a time frame in which they need to pay back the lender? Why can't they just wait for the shares held by WallStreetBets users to be sold and let the market return to normal before buying back those shares and returning to the lenders so they don't incur such grave losses?",
"How is it possible for the short position to be closed if over 100% of the total shares have been shorted? I know this is what has given rise to the term “infinite short squeeze” but I don’t understand how. Surely the position has to be closed? Sorry if this has been answered somewhere already I couldn’t find it",
"What sort time scale is that happening. Obviously theres interest to pay but is the interest something they will be losing alot per day or is something the hedgefunds can wait out? I assume the main risk being that nobody will sell for months and they will be paying higher price.What is the timescale that the shares have to be returned, is that information available?",
"Who are the people who actually lend shares? I could understand that some companies simply have a portfolio of shares they're hanging on to with some algorithm to sell them, but they'll only be a portion of the market. How are the hedge funds borrowing more than 100% of the company? Surely that means someone is buying shares, purely in order to lend them to someone who fully expects them to lose value.",
"Who is letting hedge funds borrow their stocks? Also, what is to stop hedge funds from simply... waiting it out until the hype dies out and for the stock to (I would assume) lower in value from decreased trading? Who's asking them to return their shares for their possible $billions in losses? If WSB folk just hold out, why can't hedge funds hold out in returning their borrowed shares? I think my questions make sense.",
"I don't understand the concept of borrowing stocks in the first place. There are a lot of replies that explain that stocks are borrowed but that just doesn't make any sense to me. Once you pay someone for them why aren't they your stocks? Why wouldn't they be transferred? Why would someone want to lend them out? Is it the company lending them? Also if there aren't enough stocks since this is all made up stuff in the first place why doesn't the company make more stocks?",
"Can the hedgefunds that shorted the stock repay their debt behind closed doors? i.e. they short person A who is their friend 10 stock, they buy 3 stock back, give to person A who then sells right back and gets handed the 3 stock again then sells them right back again to keep the profits going to just friends and make it so others cant buy up the stock making it go higher. Or do they Have to sell on the open market? Or do they Have to return the stocks all at once?",
"Executives at GameStop couldn't possibly have just been twiddling their thumbs and watching this play out without doing anything, right? If a company can split shares or increase available supply, wouldn't a drastic increase be the best time to do this, and avoid a trading freeze? I feel like I've heard nothing about what the company itself is doing about the situation. They must have been well aware of the 120% short (in which case they would not want to provide more shares), but could they at least have settled the dramatic rally by offering more shares to cover options contracts and avoid the present situation?",
"There are 100 cows. A hedge-fund believes that the milk consumption will go to zero, so they borrow the 100 cows for one month and sell them for $1 each. Then they borrow them again, and sell them once more for 90c. Certain that they will worth $0 at the end of the month A Redditor notices this. She knows that in a month's time, the hedge-fund will have to buy 200 cows, and there are only 100 available. Her plan is simple. Buy all 100 cows, and at the end of the month, when the hedge fund will have to buy the cows back(twice), she will be able to dictate the price. Hedge-fund cries foul. Doesn't like being beaten in its own game. Milk consumption doesn't even matter.",
"Wall street guy wants to borrow your beanie baby that's worth $100. He'll give it back, and pay you $10 to borrow it. He pawns it for the $100. Pays you $10, and hopes the price drops to nothing... Buys it back for maybe $10, Pocketing the difference.. Normally the most you can lose, is how much paid. But now that beanie baby is worth millions and he has to give it back... Now what? This is normally illegal except if you are wall street. Also another was street guy borrowed from the pawn shop to sell on eBay... Now 2 separate people owe the same beanie baby back worth millions.. (It's actually worthless, but no one will sell them theirs.. So they tried to ban anyone else from buying, and only selling on eBay or pawn shops)",
"One thing to add to the other explanations: Options are extremely volatile. If you buy aggressive options on the right day, the option may be up 200-500% the next morning. You can also lose 80-90% overnight. This is why options should be bought very carefully. Instead, some of the autists on wallstreetbets put all their money on in options on one stock. To make it even more unstable, institutions and individuals sometimes invest on margin, or borrowed money. This is how these large $13B losses occurred. Normally in a short squeeze (as others have described), once the shorts start to lose serious money, they bail out and sell at a loss. This time, the shorts held their positions and doubled down, risking even more money, betting they could break the back of the Redditors and eliminate their losses. Rather than just take windfall profits, which is what any sane person would do, wallstreetbets poured even more money into GME calls trying to drive the price into the stratosphere. That is what caused the rise from less than $5 up to a max of $360 yesterday. GME opened up at $400 today and lost 50% by the afternoon, but made up most of those losses by close. So it looks like the Redditors are holding the line at this point. It is astonishing to see [these guys]( URL_0 )^(\\*) successfully facing down hedge funds. ^(\\*The board is private now but you can see the front page here.)",
"Looking for good penny stocks apps, any suggestions?",
"ELI5: How does Robinhood make money on free trades?",
"Where do I buy dogecoin? It’s not in webull",
"What's the difference between a short squeeze and a gamma squeeze?",
"Why doesn’t GME issue a shitload of shares right not to cash in?",
"Wtf is the difference between market maker, broker/brokerage, clearing house, and stock exchange?",
"Does this whole thing do the companies whose stock is involved any good?",
"What if ur 16? Can u invest in the stock market and how?",
"Can someone advise on how to get started in partial stocks in the UK?",
"Important thing, shorts don't expire. They have potentially infinite losses the longer you hold them.",
"This might be of interest - how stock markets started and how they work. URL_0 [on Spotify]( URL_1 )",
"What is preventing gamespot from issuing more stocks? Why can’t they issue more stocks and make money off this chaos?",
"ELI5: Who loaned the Hedge fund the stocks in the first place? Are they going to make bank from this squeeze?",
"Ok, so they burrow the stock and sell it. But from whom do they borrow and where do they pay interest?",
"How does all this effect Gamestop? Do they earn money from all this short? Or are they going under because of it?",
"Wouldn’t this have adverse effects on other stocks/overall stock market since people probably have to sell stuff in order to buy back these shares?",
"Why is pump and dump strategy considered manipulation ? Like im using my money to make some more money whats wrong with that ?",
"As much as its great to stick it to a sketchy hedge fund, did regular people get screwed out of their retirement savings because of this?",
"if more people are buying stocks in the stocks are going up then when the millionaires millions just be multiplying how are they going bankrupt from this?",
"What dictates when a stock goes down or up and by how much? Is it sale listings count vs buy listings count? If so, why isn't mass-shorting considered manipulation?",
"Why can shares be borrowed? What function does that serve, and why should it be legal? Do hedge funds need to exist? They seem pretty deleterious to the world in general.",
"Can someone explain the scale of all of this? I've seen memes saying 70 billion were lost so far , some compared it to 2008 , is any of that true?",
"Can anyone guide me to an explanation of the potential conspiracy theories surrounding this situation? I'm just trying to understand it. I guess any theories and anything anybody has to debunk them",
"What scenarios could happen that would result in the situation blowing up in the face of anyone that buys GME tomorrow? Is the gamma squeezes and the short squeeze not a sure thing?",
"I'm new at this but I'm using cashapp due to what I read late yesterday about Robin hood. Why is cashapp not allowing me to even look up GME or search for gamestop?",
"How does this sudden uptick in price affect the companies whose shares are being traded? Does any of the money from this surge in transactions actually make its way to the company? If so, how?",
"Should I bother to buy any GME stock now knowing absolutely nothing about anything but having a thousand bucks to gamble with? Does anyone actually think we would make something off this? Or should I just watch.",
"What happens to stocks at over 100% float come dividend time? Do company pay out over 100% of their shares dividend? Do the 'market makers' who somehow created all these extra shares end up paying the dividend amount?",
"Did anything similar to the current short squeeze happen in the past? Is it legal to do that? If it is legal, why only until now people start doing it? Will people able to pull that in the future?",
"I've understood most of the situation, but can someone explain how you can short more than 100 percent of a company's available shares? Edit: Thanks all who replied, I think I understand how this works. Appreciate all your replies!",
"I don't get own thing? If they have to sell back their shares, why can't they just wait until the stock naturally goes down? Why do they need to buy return those shares right now while the stock is high /rising?",
"Question: In general, why would somebody buy stocks in a company when it appears that they have reached their top price? If lots of shareholders sell their stocks to cash in, who are they selling them to? Outside of the short selling situation.",
"GME stock has gone through the roof!!! To expensive for a small time guy like me to afford now, is there anything else out there that would be a good purchase to make some money on to help get through these trying times??",
"How can the normal people involved in this become rich? Once one person sells the stocks for a high price they get a lot of money, but wouldnt that mean the price will fall? And so the other people wouldnt get that much money?",
"How do you safely buy/invest in dogecoin if you're from the UK? And is it a good idea, only wanting to put £50 max into it, is that a good idea? I'm very very new to this idea so sorry if this is a stupid question.",
"How does borrowing happen in a short selling? Is it a contract or what? Why would someone lend their stocks? How does making a profit happen for the lender? I can't fathom why'd someone lend someone a stock if they're not going to benefit from it.",
"Can someone explain to me what is going on from the start? I don't much about stocks, all I know is I \"buy low and sell high\". Is there any way I can profit off of this? I barely understand the situation as to what is going on.",
"what are the benefits of selling shares of one’s own company? why sell shares and not just keep your company out of the stock market? guess what i’m asking is what is the point of the stock market and what would it be like if the stock market never existed?",
"A funky question here, but I've gotten really interested in the stock market and would like to know if there is any game that simulates the effects of supply and demand pretty accurately? Though I don't want to get into actual stock investing yet (even if it's with fake money)",
"What does 'losing 70 Billion dollars' look like? It's difficult for me to imagine what 70 Billion looks like, let alone what it means to lose that much. Can someone prove some perspective? Like maybe a comparison to other companies or celebrities? If Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos lost that much would it actually make a dent?",
"Questions I usually never hear are: How safe are trading/stock sites? How good is their cyber security? What steps do they take when it comes to protecting your personal information, data, money, etc? Can you only add money via linking your bank account? If you don't want to link your bank account what other options do you have?",
"I have some money in a global (so a large part in American market) index fund. Is there any real cause for concern for me, or is this a drop in the ocean? I can't quite seem to figure out if this is blown way out of proportion, or if the financial world is coming down in flames.",
"What is going to happen to the rest of the market once the shorters start closing? Do they have money to cover it or will they need to sell the rest of their portfolios driving other etfs' prices down? (And consequently, other people will sell the same etfs even if they don't need the money now, just to avoid ending up with low-valued etfs if I get it right...)",
"I don’t really expect to understand the overall situation, but I’d like to understand the morality of the two sides. Were the hedge funds being immoral in their previous practices (before the whole fiasco started)? Was what WSB bets immoral? Was anything either side was doing illegal? My main stake in this right now is that shutting down the ability for the “common people” to buy is immoral, but I’m confused about the morality of everything that led up to this.",
"The part I'm most confused about is the holding part. They sound like they want to hold forever. I would have assumed that waiting until an extremely high price and all collectively selling would hurt the most? The plan is to eventually sell right? It sounds like they want to hold the stocks forever and never actually sell. Would holding indefinitely not just mean that the \"short\" will never be forced to be repaid as its never being sold? So basically a stalemate.",
"ELI5: can you place an \"either buy on $x or $Z, whatever comes first\" order? This week is all about shortening. Let's say I want to shorten, but have a limit in gains or loses as I don't have all day to watch the stock evolve. Can I shorten on stock Y that is at $10 and then place an order to buy again at $8 or $12 and whatever comes first cancels the other one? Is cancelling only one way also an option?",
"Thank you so much for starting this! I’ve been trying to explain it to friends and I want to make sure I understand it correctly. Ok, so I watch, idk “Macy’s” all the time, it’s my job. I watch them so often I familiarize myself with their product lineup and sales and I’m really good at predicting when and how much things will be on sale. Right now plaid tunics are selling at $100. I know that they’re going on sale in a week, so I “borrow” (put 100 tunics on layaway) and sell them to Jenny for $100. Next week they go on sale and I finalize my purchase (pay for my layaway that I already sold to Jenny) at $50 thereby profiting $5000. One day I do this same thing but plaid tunics got featured in a Cosmo article or some ish and so now they’re not on sale and in fact they’re $500 because Bob bought them all and it’s going to take awhile for them to get more in stock. I already borrowed them and sold them so I either have to pay $500 to Bob or extend my layaway with weekly fees until Bob stops buying them. Except Bob is taking all the tunics with him in a rocket ship never to be seen again. Is this correct?",
"Answer: If someone thinks that a company is overvalued in the stock market they can \"short\" the stock, this means they borrow a share from their broker (the platform where they buy and sell stock), sell it at the current price and hope to buy it back later in the future at a cheaper price to return it to the broker and keep the profits. For example, you think XYZ is too high at $10, you short it, sell it at $10 and 1 month later it is at $6, you close your position by buying it back and you made $4 per share. The thing is that your maximum possible earning when shorting, is the price you short at, so if you short a stock at $10 and then it goes to $0 the maximum you make is $10, but the stock can go up and it can go up way more than $10 so the risk of shorting is higher because your losses can be very big. Now if you shorted XYZ at $10 but the next month it is at $50, the broker will be asking you to \"cover your position\", you will need to place $40 as collateral (per share) or they will close it, because you borrowed from them, and also this loans can have interest to make things worse. Some hedge funds saw that some companies were failing and the pandemic made things worse for them, so they started to short those companies, but the problem is that they shorted more shares than exist (it sounds weird but stocks are weird and reasons are complicated, like why does someone in WS NYC can make money from oil futures?), as i explained before, to profit from this shares they have to buy them back (hopefuly cheaper) and return them to the brokers. Some people found out that they were shorting more than a 100% of the shares and decided to start buying and holding shares (going long). If enough people does this and nobody is selling shares (or very few are selling) the price starts to go up and then the brokers start pressuring the shorters because, remember, they have to cover their positions. So at some point they will have to buy shares at ridiculous prices or keep covering their positions with billions of dollars that they have to pull from other investments or even the cost of covering is bigger that what the fund is valued at. This is called short squeezing, it happened in 2008 with VW where some funds did it to other shorting funds and at some point they were trading for $1,000 per share. In the current situation, normal, regular people are the ones holding, mostly coordinated from wallstreetbets, which is very strange because this had always happened between mayor WS corporations but this time, lay folks got the upper hand and it transformed into a movement where they are not trying to get some quick bucks and get out but instead force wall street to suffer what they have done in the past.",
"How does short selling affect a company ?",
"Should I buy GME right now on Robinhood?",
"How exactly do people know a stock is shorted?",
"So how was Reddit involved in making this happen?",
"What happens if RobinHood blocks you from selling your stocks?",
"What determines the total number of stocks a company has?",
"What are short positions? Edit: thanks to everyone who replied!",
"Who is this Robin Hood that everybody is talking about?",
"Is there a way a non-american/non-canadian can get in on this?",
"Is there any hard evidence that hedge funds have manipulated GME?",
"If the companies are borrowing stock, who are they borrowing it from?",
"What would happen if we stopped the whole stock market for ever?",
"What determines the price of a stock when it opens in the morning?",
"How do hedgefunds make money when the price of the stock goes down?",
"What investing apps are y'all using? I was on Robinhood but quitting them.",
"Why do political figures like AOC and Ted Cruz even care about this event?",
"Can someone explain what's going on assuming I have no knowledge of the stock market",
"Whom can I sign up with for this action? Robin Hood and others are out.",
"Is the stock market completely made up? And how did something so convoluted actually start?",
"Is there a limit on how many shares of a company a person can buy?",
"Ok, so I think we're all wondering.... When are we gonna sell all these and it all be over?",
"What is a lender in the stock market? What is their role and how does the layman interact with them?",
"What will exactly happen to the hedge funds? Those billionos of dollars they're losing, do they go back to the investor?",
"Is any legal action being taken against the ongoing alleged market manipulation? Who can take action and what can be done?",
"So stock prices go up if hella people invest? Why don’t hella people invest in another company then to make more money?",
"Why and who lends the shares to make shorting occur? What benefit would I have lending you my shares in X company ??",
"I've been seeing it all over reddit, Gamestop stocks, trading etc, and I've no idea what it is but I've heard you can profit from it ELI5?",
"Can someone explain how the interest that a short seller has to pay is calculated? And why the stock’s value necessarily causes the interest to become onerously high?",
"So is it anomous who the hedge fund investors are. How likely is that some billionaires can lose most of their forune here. The loss is potentially limitless right?",
"When create a short with another person, is there a contract made outlining when the shares need to be paid back? What happens if they don’t honour that commitment?",
"If someone sells their stocks that they “made” 85k on, do they get the money? From comments i see around the internet, I gather that they wont? But why?",
"How are investment firms and hedge funds losing so much money off of this? Did they have a lot of money in GameStop? Can’t they just stop investing in it???",
"Where to learn about the market and stocks and investing from as a teenager? What are some reliable learning sources and tips? And what are the best apps for investing?",
"Can anyone recommend me a good documentaries / movies / TV series related to stock trading or event similar to this in the past? I have only watched wolf of wall street.",
"I've seen a lot of people suggesting opening a brokerage account with someone like Fidelity. Is an account that you would use for personal investment different from like a 401k? Is it specialized I mean.",
"Why is the whole dogecoin thing seem to be a bunch of new accounts pushing it? I'm asking here because too many bots on the dogecoin subreddit. I don't know it just seems super sketchy.",
"I heard that the hedge funds managed to borrow ~130% of all available GameStop stocks, by doing something called a \"naked put\". Can someone ELI5 whether this is true, and if so, what a \"naked put\" is?",
"Who owns those stocks that have been shorted? Could they accept money from those who shorted instead of insisting to get their actions back? They would make a lot of money over this instead of the WSB folks.",
"I'm glad I found this thread, I had no idea what the hell was going on other than some vague thing about reddit users planning and going through with pushing share prices up, and Ted Cruz mouthing off about something related despite not many people wishing to hear from him.",
"So deepfuckingvalue who bought I believe call options almost a year ago and has been posting updates ever since, are those the same call options he originally bought? From what I've read online call options are usually made for about 30 days ahead. So how does his value keep going up?",
"Who would be responsible for \"selling/loaning (term?)\" Melvin capital all those naked shorts? I believe naked shorts happen when there's discrepancy between paper and digital trades so it it sounds accidental ,something Melvin could have and tried to take advantage of while pleading innocence (they should have questioned ownerships (term?) of 100% of shares but kept trading more.",
"I'm sorry if this is breaking the rules on speculating, but I got a free game stop stock when I made a Robinhood account a year or so ago. Was the fact that it was free in any way related to prices being so low? Unrelated, but I guess I'm glad I sold it a few months ago 😏",
"How do the \"collateral\" works when people do a short sell? If someone is short selling a stock that is currently at 20 USD for example, do they have to put 20*X? what prevent ordinary people going crazy at short selling and saying afterwards \"whelp i can pay, bankrupcy\"? how can the opposing party of the short sell secure the money after?",
"Literally just tried to ask this question (not nearly as thoroughly worded as yours however) but it had gotten deleted so im glad someone else was able to ask in such a way because I was hugely curious as well. So just in case no one else has said it THANK YOU for asking in a way it didn't immediately get deleted!",
"Relatively new to trading and finding it difficult to understand what a Limit vs Stop Limit is when selling. If I have a share that is $5 and I want to sell if it hits $10, do I put a stop limit or just a limit? I believe I would need to put a stop limit, with the stop being $10 but not sure what the limit would be....",
"I know nothing about stocks but why is this not easy to make money on though. . For example, in this situation the price is being artifically inflated at the cost of the hedge funds people buying them knowing that the hedge funds have shorted too many. Too make a profitable decsion surely you would only have too look at the percentage of shorts still in the market i.e how many of the hedge funds have cut there losses. If theres still a big percentage of shorts you buy and wait for the hedge funds to sell. What the flaw here?",
"Okay, cannot get these basic q's resolved: 1. Back in the day I could have my stocks mailed to me in paper certificates and hold those physical shares for myself. Is it possible to have stock transferred out of a brokerage and into my own hands? 2. Is there a broker or trust that my retail brokerage can transfer my holdings to, one that will just hold them and not loan them out or sell them or ultimately use them any way they can? 3. Edited/revised: Can retail brokers ultimately do what they want with my stock, merely because it is held by them, similar to how our money is when we put it into a bank.",
"Why are shortsellers buying back the shares at the inflated price right now, as there is a chance the price will drop long term? (once the storm has passed?) My understanding of shortselling is: you lend a share, you sell it immediately, and you need to return it (buy it back) sometime in the future. Say you shorted the gamestop stock in december 2020, and you need to return it this summer (2021): why would you buy it now as a shorter? Sure, you could reason: by the summer the share price would even be higher, so I will limit my losses by buying back now. But why don't the shortsellers take the risk that the price will \"even out\", and go back to their original december level?",
"Everyone on WSB and wherever articles are being posted are being heavily critical of investment firms, Robinhood, etc. Many are acting like they are finally sticking it to irresponsible people with a lot of power and a lot of money to fight back. Is there another side to this? Are the investment firms really evil and irresponsible? Is there some more nuanced piece of information here that makes this situation more complex or is really just a bunch of rich assholes being angry that retail investors managed to pull a fast one on them and now they are in a bad position with respect to their clients and their firms in general? Note: I know the very basics about the stock market and have read up on short selling now and get the gist of the situation already."
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"https://twitter.com/traesop/status/1354856069961539589?s=21",
"https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315?s=21",
"https://twitter.com/primordial_oops/status/1354865278111404036?s=21",
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7conk
|
Why can our bodies not process everything we consume?
|
I understand why us humans need to visit the restroom due to consuming junk food and food products that have little nutritional value, but if you were to eat a super healthy diet with nothing unnecessary you'd still need to go number 1 and number 2. So my question is why can the body not process or find a use for certain elements of what we consume, even when we are consuming what is necessary to survive?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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],
"text": [
"I think you might have a misunderstanding of what urine and feces are used for. They have multiple purposes of course, but... Lets take urine. You aren't peeing because your body ISN'T using the water. You are peeing because your body IS using the water. Your body needs water to remove the toxins from your blood that are the result of your body working. Your body is like a machine in a way. It uses the food you consume to do all sorts of chemical and mechanical things. As such, it produces waste. In the case of urine, your kidneys take this waste out of your blood and combine it with water in your blood and make urine. Then ship it off to your bladder for holding, until you go pee. Feces is also a combination of things. Its some food waste, that your body didn't use, but it also is dead blood cells and a bunch of other chemical waste stuff that your body produced while doing what it does - living. That waste has to go somewhere, so it's deposited into your intestinal tract and comes out as feces. All things produce waste. From the smallest insect to the largest animal. And it all has to be gotten rid of. All man made machines produce waste of some sort also, even if indirectly. So all that waste has to be gotten rid of.",
"One big reason is that things very much do not appreciate being eaten, and build proteins and other structures to make them harder to be eaten. One great example is the cell wall in plants, which is made of cellulose. The cellulose makes the plants stiff and hard for many microbes and other smaller organism to get into the tasty squishy cell bits inside. Even for larger organisms (like us) we have to spend a decent amount of energy chewing and grinding (and cooking) just to open up the cells to get at the good bits. Cellulose is made of long chains of sugar molecules stuck together. We just don't have the right enzymes to rip them up into the single sugar molecules we can use. Building them takes energy, which the plants have plenty of (because of photosynthesis). Ripping them apart also takes energy. Building the enzyme to rip them apart takes energy. Animals like cows have adapted to this by having several stomach chambers and a long intestinal tract to allow the plant material to digest for a very long time, so the cellulose can be broken down. Humans don't have these adaptations, because it just isn't worth it for us. Our adaptation is to have big brains that let us do things like cook our food, which breaks down a lot of those things that we *do* need, and eat animals like cows that do a lot of the digesting for us. There are a number of different molecules that we could conceivably use, but it just isn't worth the energy to do so. We don't need them or we can get them from somewhere else for less energy. Feces is also a useful way to eliminate molecules that are outright harmful to us, like deactivated viruses or bacteria. We produce some harmful byproducts as part of our metabolism that need to go *somewhere*. One example of that would be urea, which contains ammonia. Ammonia quickly becomes toxic at higher levels. There's no good way for our body to use it for anything - we get our nitrogen from the plants and animals we eat. Moreover, it would take more energy to break up the ammonia to get the nitrogen out of it than we would get from it, in the same way that a perpetual motion machine can't work. It's like trying to burn ash: it's already burned, the energy has been used. There are organisms that use these byproducts, but they often have sources of energy that we don't have (like photosynthesis).",
"It \\*can\\*, the question is whether that's a good idea. Everything has a cost...if we evolve the ability to metabolize (usefully process) something, it needs to confer some advantage on us that outweighs the extra \"cost\" (energy, complexity, fragility, whatever) of that ability. Evolution pretty finely tunes that balance...we can extract all the energy and nutrients we require to survive from our diet so it's not an obviously deficient system. A change would have to increase our ability to survive/procreate enough to be worth it. Many things that we don't seem to be processing still have value. Could you evolve to not need to pee? Yes. But you'd need to evolve an entirely new system to metabolize all those waste products, when it's much more overall efficient to just use some water and dump it \"overboard\". Similar process applies to most waste products."
],
"score": [
14,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7dbwi
|
Why aren’t Humans shedding their Skin like Snakes?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl623o5"
],
"text": [
"1) Our skin is a lot more flexible, made of stretchy fibers that include collagen. That means that we grow, our skin can stretch with us. Reptile skin doesn't have that stretchiness. The benefit for them is that it's like hard armor that protects them from many things. Mosquitoes, for example, won't be biting them. However, since it doesn't stretch as they grow *at all* they have to shed more dramatically. 2) We do shed our skin, just in tiny bits at a time. Dead skin flakes off and/or is eaten by mites and bacteria living on and in your skin constantly. Our skin has several layers so as skin flakes off of the top it only exposes the layer underneath. All of the layers of our skin are able to stretch and fill gaps left by the tiny bits flaking off."
],
"score": [
12
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7dc0b
|
do animals that wait for their prey to come to them, also get 10 percent of energy from the animal that they eat?
|
In school I was taught that you when you eat something on you only get 10% of the energy because 90% percent is used, looking for the food or other things. If this is wrong an explanation would be awesome.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl62322",
"gl64p2g"
],
"text": [
"The 10% vs 90% thing is really just a basic guideline, and honestly a little misleading. Everything that we take into our bodies becomes energy in one way or the other. A better analogy would be a gas tank. You fill your gas tank with a big meal, but if you have to drive all over the city to find your next meal, then your tank might he close to empty again before you fill back up. Ambush predators, on the other hand, use far less energy, and as such dont have to eat as often. Some large snakes, and lizards can eat a large meal, and then not have to eat again for weeks, because of how stationary their lives are.",
"That is generally pretty true when you look at the caloric intake at each level of a food chain. Say we have a simple food chain of some grasshoppers, a carnivorous rodent, and an eagle. Say the eagle needs 1000 calories per week to survive. In order to get that, it eats those rodents’ meat. Let’s say each rodent only has 100 calories of meat to eat, so the eagle has to eat 10 of them per week to survive. Now here’s where that 10% comes in. Each rodent has to have eaten enough grasshoppers to grow to the size it did. For each calorie of meat it has, about 10 were eaten to get there. So a 100 calorie rodent has probably eaten 1000 calories of grasshoppers. And each 10 calorie grasshopper has eaten 100 calories of grass. So in this example, an eagle are 10 rodents to get 1000 calories. But that pack of rodents ate 10,000 calories of grasshoppers get to that size. And the swarm of grasshoppers had to eat 100,000 calories total to get to the size needed to feed 10 rodents for their lifetime. It’s inefficient, right? That’s why there’s so much hubbub about cutting meat out of our diets; for every 100 calorie serving of beef, the cow that it came from ate about 1000 calories worth of feed. (For me, I reduce my meat intake in order to reduce the waste. But... They’re just too tasty to cut out entirely.)"
],
"score": [
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7divh
|
How does square rooting actually work?
|
I understand how it works i.e sqrt(36)=6, but how does a calculator process that 8.307²≈69... Is there a process behind it that us humans can also figure it out or?
|
Mathematics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl63xyc",
"gl62pi0",
"gl650vb"
],
"text": [
"Here's a simple algorithm you can use: Say you have an upper bound and a lower bound on the square root. For simplicity, you can start by setting the lower bound to 1 and the upper bound to the number itself, i.e. 69. - Take the number `X = (L + U) / 2` exactly in between the lower and upper bound. - Compare its square against your target number `N`. - If it's too low (`X² < N`), then make `X` be the new lower bound. (`L := X`) - If it's too high (`X² > N`), then make `X` be the new upper bound. (`U := X`) - Repeat until your desired precision is reached. Incidentally, this algorithm can find the inverse of *any* monotone function, as long as you have some lower and upper bound",
"There are many algorithms that different calculators use. Generally they make a guess, then look at the difference between that guess squared and your number to make a better guess.",
"The interesting thing is that every computer ever, has been programmed by humans. Layers and layers and layers of programming, adding complexities. But without the programming of the 80’s, the tech of the 90’s couldn’t have happened. When you program something now, you often use software that “simplifies it” but that’s just adding previously written stuff in tools that you then use. There is absolutely nothing that a computer can do, that a human can’t. However, when you’ve got a computer with a 2.5GHz processor, it means that you’re watching it do 2,500,000,000 sums a second. (Every single operation a computer does, ultimately comes down to adding things together or taking things away). We can’t compete with that speed. So ultimately what computers do is simplify things down, then work things through reaaaaaly fast. But you can learn to do any individual operation that any computer can do. It’ll just take you ages. The programming into squaring (or square rooting) numbers that are awkward, basically makes it think - “Well, 8x8 is 64. And 9x9 is 81, and 69 is in the middle. So it’s between 8 and 9. Then it does 8.5 squared, and you can work out 8.5 squared, you just need a pen and paper and a minute. (It’s 72.25). So then you do 8.25 squared.... etc etc. Just split the difference every time and eventually you’ll get it. People are SMARTER than any programming. Like, I can give you a problem that you’ve never seen before, and you can go away and read some stuff and work it out. A computer needs every tiny variable of everything programming. If you don’t tell it everything in painful amounts of detail, it’ll just get stuck. You can’t compare the two things directly though, because the brain and a CPU work so differently that it’s like trying to compare a shark and a mushroom. Computers are fast. Brains can do complex solutions. (And sometimes, those complex solutions are far simpler than you think, computers are really not very good at dealing with unknown variables.) I know that that’s a rant, hopefully your answer is in there somewhere."
],
"score": [
11,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7dpts
|
What happens physiologically to people that causes them to lose their appetites when they are sick?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl69hqq",
"gl6drbv",
"gl6rpjb"
],
"text": [
"Eating takes a lot of energy and, in the natural environment our responses are adapted to, is often the way you get sick in the first place. So low appetite is one part of a broad behavioral change seen in sick animals called [sickness behavior]( URL_0 ), which also includes reduced grooming (probably to keep others away because one might be contagious) and more sleep (which conserves energy). The direct cause of all this are molecules called cytokines that are released during infection or other inflammation in the body. Those cytokines act directly on the part of the brain that controls appetite and other urges.",
"Note also that getting sick often includes nasal congestion, and the nose is a critical part of the ability to taste. With less ability to taste, folks aren't as eager to consume food.",
"Congested sinuses lead to a sore throat (which means that you won't want to eat, cause it hurts to swallow). It's the snot travelling down the back of the throat that causes some of the pain - so when you think about it, having a belly full of snot can mean that you feel \"full\" even without eating anything."
],
"score": [
12,
5,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickness_behavior"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7e0je
|
Why do dried fruits and such last longer than their fresh counterparts?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl65qd6",
"gl660iz"
],
"text": [
"One of the ways fruits go bad is by growing mould. Mould likes warm, damp environments. By drying the fruit, you remove the moisture that the mould needs to survive.",
"Bacteria thrives in water, so if you take all the water out then it is very hard for bacteria to reproduce. If you would like to test this try leaving a piece of bread in a container with some water and see how much faster it gets moldy compared to a dry piece of bread."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7e4cu
|
This may sound dumb, but why can’t a phone charger take more electricity from the outlet and charge your phone faster?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl666d8",
"gl66ilp",
"gl676kz"
],
"text": [
"The charger isn’t the problem, the charger can supply plenty more power if designed to. The battery is the main problem, the battery cannot charge faster without causing degradation.",
"Mostly it's because of the battery, if you charge a battery too fast it will break. And that can be as mundane as \"it don't work no more\" all the way to \"it exploded and then burned down my house.\" If you got rid of the batteries and use capacitors, which are a completely different type of technology that can also store electricity, you would be able to charge a phone nearly instantly. But capacitors simply can't store that much electricity without being massive.",
"Think of electricity like a water hose. There's voltage, or how big an opening your hose has, how \"thicc\" it is. And amperage, or how fast the water is moving. If you have a really small hose but the water is going ***really*** fast, it will break apart anything it hits, like how a Power Washer works. You don't want that to happen. So you get a really thick hose, but the fast water is *still* too strong. Now you have a fire hose. That's bad, too. Now, picture a battery as like a bucket. You want to fill the bucket, but you don't want to spill. Spilled water, in our example, means something gets damaged or destroyed. Electricity going somewhere you don't want it to is *bad*. If you try to fill up a bucket with a thick hose of fast water, you'll knock the bucket out of your hands and down the block. If you try to fill up a bucket with a thin hose of fast water, you'll bore a hole through the bucket, spilling everywhere. If you fill it with a thin hose of slow water, you can fill it easily- it just takes some time, sure. If you use a thick hose of slow water, you can fill it faster- but it'll be harder to not *overfill* your bucket. EDIT: got my terms switched. It's fixed now."
],
"score": [
10,
10,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7eh3r
|
Why does a bottled beer explode out when tapped on top by another bottle?
|
I’ve been afraid to ask this even though it has happened to me several times in my life. I just laugh and try to alleviate the mess where I can.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl69qp0",
"gl6owwb",
"gl6a59e"
],
"text": [
"Mark Rober has a great video explaining it on YouTube, essentially a vacuum forms in the bottom then collapses 10 times quicker than it formed creating a shockwave that cracks the glass.",
"The phenomenon is called \"cavitation\": the bottle suddenly moves downwards while the beer inside doesn't (because of inertia), this causes the formation of a vacuum on the bottom of the bottle. Beer contains CO2, which is a gas, and it is immediately forced out of the liquid to fill the vacuum; now, gases don't need much space when dissolved in a liquid, but once you force them out of their solvent, they start to push (gases always tend to expand as much as they can) and that's why beer starts coming out of the bottle. If the gas in the liquid is not enough to fill the vacuum, the liquid violently collapses back in its place. The force of the implosion can even shatter the bottom of the bottle.",
"Not a scientist, but from what I understand , tapping the top of the bottle causes The bubbles further down in the beverage to activate far more than they normally would, causing it to foam up . If you've ever noticed, the fishing over usually only happens when your bottle is full or nearly full. Try it on a bottle with only 1/4 left, and it'll rise some, But won't overflow."
],
"score": [
8,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7elwn
|
how is it the brain can be attracted to anime characters or cartoons when they don't look like the real thing ?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl69uv9",
"gl6tdew"
],
"text": [
"Certain traits are hardwired into our brains. Things we think are cute have features you will find in infants (which we want to protect and care for), so big eyes relative to heads like you'd find in a lot of cartoons and teddy bears. Body shape (eg breast size, hip curvature etc) tells our brain that someone would be a good breeding partner. Put it all together and your software gets fooled.",
"Sexual attraction is kind of a buggy process. Between wires getting crossed in the brain (such as the \"horny\" and \"scared\" wires, or the \"horny\" and \"ashamed\" wires, each of which has its associated kinks) and the ability to Pavlov ourselves into being turned on by things by the power of association, people can end up getting their rocks off to all kinds of weird shit. For furry stuff specifically, you'd have to ask them to be sure, but I'm given to understand that it's usually some combination of 1) enjoying something that's kind of weird and taboo (because of the aforementioned \"shame\" wire crossing), 2) the combination of familiar, desirable humanized features with the psychological safety of something that specifically *isn't* a \"real\" sexual situation, 3) enjoying the comfortable acceptance of the community and gradually developing a taste for the smut through repeated exposure and community behaviors, and/or 4) a genuine weird-brain sexual attraction to something non-human by what seems to be a fluke of evolution."
],
"score": [
31,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7f1hj
|
Where coal powerplant smoke goes to?
|
Hi, around 20km away from where I live there is a coal powerplant. The "smoke" coming out of the chimney is dense and white, which suggests that it's just steam, and for all I know steam doesn't pollute. There is no darker smoke around the powerplant, it doesn't even smell like it's coal burning there. Where does all the smoke go?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl6bise",
"gl6h6bq",
"gl6bmlw"
],
"text": [
"Coal plants are required in many countries to have traps in their chimneys to filter out most of the ash ([\"fly ash\"]( URL_0 )) they emit. This was (and is) a major source of pollution in places without such laws.",
"The big cloud you see is steam coming from the cooling circuit in the plant. Coal power plants work by boiling water and using the resulting steam to turn a turbine, but the whole system works best if you use expensive, purified water in the boilers and then have a different stream of water that's just pulled in from a nearby river or ocean to condense the steam coming out of the turbine back into water so you can boil it again.",
"They install \"Scrubbers\" in the smoke stacks. They the smoke out of the air, and capture it in what basically amounts to a massive filter. The chemical process used actually allows them to retrieve a recyclable form of gypsum from the filters, which gets turned into dry-wall for home building. Basically go look at the air-intake filter for your house's HVAC system. The filter is a scrubber, and the dust is \"smoke\"."
],
"score": [
12,
8,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7fzzv
|
Why is there said to be a higher risk of birth defects in children who are a product of a consanguineous marriage?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl6k3hx",
"gl6jrbt",
"gl6jwae",
"gl6m3wy",
"gl6kpa6"
],
"text": [
"One of the reasons is there are some genetic conditions that need two carriers to produce the condition in offspring. Two carriers meeting and having kids might be pretty rare in general. Two people from the same gene pool are more likely to both be carriers and therefore increase their odds of having those birth defects or genetic conditions.",
"Because of hereditary recessive gene mutations (mutations which need two copies of the mutated gene to cause effects) and deleterious genes (usually recessive genes that persist despite natural selection) are more likely to be passed on to offspring of consanguinous couples. More likely that both of your (related parents) have inherited a recessive gene mutation, upping the chance that two copies are passed on to you.",
"I can’t find the xkcd, but it’s basically the equivalent of doubling your genes. The problem is, that includes rare, dangerous, recessive genes. So then you might be fine, but your child is sick or dead. There’s degrees of this, and I think studies have shown a first-cousin marriage in a family with no other history of first-cousin marriage is fairly safe, as are most second- and above-cousin marriage. But since such first-cousin marriages rare, just don’t marry your cousin, don’t marry your sibling, etc. to be safe.",
"It's not a guaranteed thing and it's not for every type of birth defect. It's based on how some types of genetic traits work (this is very simplified). You get two copies of each gene, one from your dad and one from your mom. Some of these genes are dominant and get expressed every time you get one copy, regardless of what the other copy is (again, simplifying). Others are recessive, meaning that you need two copies of the gene in order for it to show. This means that if you have a copy of a dominant gene and a copy of the recessive gene, you only see the dominant gene but you still have a copy of the recessive one and can pass it to your kids. An example of this is blue vs brown eyes. Brown eyes are dominant, and blue eyes are recessive. Let's say parent A has blue eyes and parent B has brown eyes. The kid will have brown eyes, but there's a 50/50 chance on whether the kid can pass them on to their kids. If the two kids have kids, they're more likely to have blue eyes than two unrelated kids. It works the same way with diseases, but since they're rarer, this amplification can be more apparant. I'll use my family an example. My dad has a genetic blood condition. About 10% of the population are carriers based on a quick google (although that might be high). So two random people off the street have a 0.25% chance having a kid with the condition. I'm a carrier so my chances of passing it on to my kid with a random person is 2.5%. But If, say, I had a kid with my cousin, it's 12.5%. That's way way more likely than random people and way more likely than me having a kid with a random person. \\*Math done quickly and without full consideration for all factors.",
"Children get one copy of their genetic material from their mother, and one from their father. Alot of genetic mutations/defects are 'recessive'; that is, they require BOTH copies of the child's genetic material to be defective. Both the mother's and the father's copy must have a mutation that causes the same negative effect, for the defect to occur. The chances of both copies being defective are much higher if both the mother and the father are related."
],
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18,
10,
7,
4,
3
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"text_urls": [
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7gqek
|
Why does bopping your foot up and down when concentrated while seated help improve focus?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl6xv0n"
],
"text": [
"I'm not about to drop citations cuz I wanna give a quick answer. But from what I've read it's about giving your brain a rythm-tempo from which each thought feels more measured. This has the effect of not deviating as easily from the primary focus because the brain is partly occupied by that voluntary movement (or sound if your listening to repetitive brain stimulation), so there aren't any \"back-thoughts\" moving into the front. But for this reason it can be JUST as annoying as it is beneficial if there is some other non-voluntary noise like someone chewing gum with their mouth open, or tapping their shoes because if the rythme isn't voluntary then it breaks the primary thought, repeatedly."
],
"score": [
16
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7hbi4
|
Why it’s impossible to let go of a stretched rubber-band with both hands at the same time
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl6veqk",
"gl80ali"
],
"text": [
"I'm not a professional, but mostly just because we're imprecise creatures and we can't perfectly position the rubber band in our fingers the same on both sides, so when we let go there is different amounts of friction on each side so one may still be lightly attached to your finger by the time the other is released.",
"Newton's laws of motion. Specifically, regarding inertia, and the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration. The amount of force you normally apply to a rubber band is pretty high compared to its mass. It's very light, but you can stretch it pretty far, and it will fight you exactly as hard as you stretch it. When you try to let go, that tension is released, and the force of the rubber band contracting will accelerate the parts that are extended. However, since it is so light, it's very quick to accelerate, meaning it's probably going to travel right along with your hands the entire way. Because of this, you would have to be incredibly precise to let go with both hands at such a close time together to have the rubber band \"let go\" from both hands. & nbsp; Now, take the extreme of this situation. Instead of a rubber band, what if you had a slinky, long enough so you could tape one end to the other in a loop? This is much heavier than the rubber band (has more mass), and the force it will fight back with is much lower (as long as you're not stretching it to the point where it can no longer be called a slinky). If you pull on two sides of the slinky loop, this is essentially the same situation as with the rubber band. But because of the difference in mass, as well as the force, it is much easier to let go \"at the same time\", just because the slinky can't accelerate as fast as the rubber band could."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7hmzf
|
Why did CRT televisions have curved screens?
|
I was born in '99, so I grew up in the last age of CRT TVs. I'm wondering why they were built to have curved screens. It's not like flat screens weren't a thing, because films were projected onto flat screens in movie theaters until IMAX became a thing. But I wonder what about cathode rays made curved screens a necessity until plasma, LCD, and LED televisions came about.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl6u5qq",
"gl6sd2c"
],
"text": [
"There was a combination of factors. First, spheres are stronger against implosion. A totally flat screen would be too weak to hold vacuum. Second, maybe most important, the electron beam is more like a water hose than a laser beam. An electric field focuses it to a point, and that point needs to coincide with the CRT inside surface. The focus electronics is simpler for a spherical surface because the beam length stays constant. Thirdly, for a similar reason, the scan/sweep electronics had to account for non-spherical beam lengths in order to maintain a constant transverse speed. Interestingly, they could also have moved the beam source farther back from the screen so the beam length was more constant. In other words, larger spheres have flatter surfaces. However, the market wanted thinner TVs they could set closer to the wall.",
"Because they were lit by a beam of electrons, and the aiming mechanism is a powerful magnet. Having the screen equally distant from the beam point was the best way to get it focused on the screen. I realize this isn't \"ELI5\" ish, but....I couldn't think of a way to explain it better."
],
"score": [
12,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7i4h3
|
How were video games in the late 80s/early 90s animated before huge digital advances were made? Additionally, how was music added?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl6u2fi",
"gl6xsdd",
"gl7ik3w",
"gl7byax",
"gl7ez8h"
],
"text": [
"they had very little resources to use, so the resources were used sparingly. Mush was 8bit and limited to the notes they could use. Graphics were re-used (for example, in Super Mario Brothers on the original NES, the clouds and the bushes were the same graphic, just some were green and some were white.",
"So adding onto the other comment, shortcuts like that were used a lot. Any and every way to save a little space was often used it they could get it to work. Music is an interesting one. So how it used to work, was, if I’m remembering correctly, actual hardware made for making what we traditionally associate with 8-but music. The midi sounds. Instead of having an entire audio file, which could take up a lot of space, the game instead had directions for the hardware which allowed it to output the music without having an entire song saved. Soundtrack files are a HUGE component of what takes up space in a lot of modern games nowadays. An entire symphony worth of musicians and more. Lots of long, complex pieces, etc. You can’t just tell the game to “loop X sounds until Y action/part of map” or whatever the same way we used to.",
"In case you're interested, there are some incredible resources for making 8 bit games on retro systems available for free. Arcade Game Designer (AGD) for the ZX Spectrum is particularly fun. Highly recommended!",
"Earlier games like Pong and Elite used vector drawn lines to create the scene, but in the late 80's early 90's, a lot of games were made on custom workstation PC's that were purpose made for graphics workloads. Sprite editors were pretty far along by then though, so not all game graphics required these advanced workstations. As to music, prior to digital sound and the CD-ROM based multimedia revolution, most music used MIDI files. FM synthesis was also used by most sound cards of the time period for sound effects and some music, but MIDI was easier to work with. So to answer your real question, the types of computers the developers of those games used were not the same as the ones the final game ran on. They were a lot faster and purpose built for the task of creating graphics, or music.",
"Game consoles of the 1980s and early 1990s didn't have lots of storage or processing power to handle large amounts of data, so there was a strong focus on making everything as efficient as possible. In many early consoles, such as the NES, graphics is stored as small tiles, with each pixel in the tile only having a few options for colors, to minimize the amount of data required. To produce images, these tiles are combined together in groups, and to produce animations, the tiles were moved around or replaced with other tiles. That's why backgrounds and objects tend to look similar or have repeating patterns. Lots of strategies were used to minimize the amount of tiles required; [this video]( URL_0 ) shows some some of these strategies. For music, rather than storing an audio file containing the music, the game would store instructions for playing a song as a sequence of notes on a few basic audio channels. The limitations of hardware greatly restricted the complexity of music; the NES can only play up to 5 notes at a time for example."
],
"score": [
13,
5,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7iwhx
|
How does an EMP work, and why does it disable only certain kinds of electronics but not others?
|
I'm deeply curious about how EMP's work (I'm hoping to learn more for a story I'm writing), but I don't really understand what they do or how they do what they do. I'd also be very interested to know what kinds of technology they affect and which kinds they do not, as well as the extent to which said technology is disabled (and for how long). I tried searching for a lot of these answers on Google but I couldn't find anything adequately specific enough or clear enough to get into my layman's head, so here I am!
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl6ze79"
],
"text": [
"Electromagnetic Pulses are bursts of energy radiating out from a high-energy event, like a lightning strike or nuclear detonation, or even just switching on a strong enough power source. Just throws Electromagnetic energy out everywhere, messing with magnetic fields and electrical circuits. EMPs don't temporarily disable things, they break them. Wires and circuits are made to handle a certain amount of energy. If the pulse is strong enough, it simply overloads the conductor and burns it to a crisp. Your tech stays down until you can replace the wires/solder contacts/whatever. Equipment can be shielded from an EMP by surrounding it with conductive material that directs the energy away from the vulnerable equipment."
],
"score": [
14
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7iyx1
|
How do album singles work and why are those the only ones that get played on the radio?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl6zk15"
],
"text": [
"A single is a song that an artist has chosen to release as promotion for an upcoming album that the single will be featured on. It could also be just a song that didn’t fit on any album or a song they made to tide people over until they start working on their next album/ Ep/ Lp/ whatever. The single is usually chosen because it is one of the center-pieces of the album: it’s the most catchy, most interesting, most emotional, or whatever adjective you want. Artists pick the song that they think will get the most traction, which is why they get played on the radio all the time. Artists also pay to have the songs played on the radio when they’re first released to, again, create excitement for an upcoming release or just to give the artist some fresh sounds"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7ma0l
|
How are piano players able to memorize every note of a long song?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl7m7s8",
"gl7x2fy"
],
"text": [
"It looks like a lot if you approach piano as 88 unrelated keys. But when you're playing, the music has a grammar the way language does. You can memorize a poem, monologue, or lyrics because it's not a string of random words, there's implications of what should come next by the words that have already been said. With music, you're playing within a certain key. Well that limits what notes you're going to use. Based on what notes you have available will determine which chords will be present. Then within a musical phrase, there's orders to chords that make sense and orders that typically don't. Much like with poetry, certain phrases get repeated or have similarity to others; you have verses, choruses, intros and outros, bridges, A sections, B sections, etc, etc, and they all inform each other. There are also common patterns for song structures, so if you know one song, there's less to memorize to learn another with that pattern. And then you top that off with lots and lots of practice, and a dash of improvisation, and you can play an entire song from memory.",
"The same way one gets to Carnegie Hall: practice. There are several ways to tackle a complex and/or lengthy piece of music on any instrument, but the one that works best for me (this summer will mark 25 years I've been playing guitar and bass, I've been a pianist since 2007, and I've been recording and arranging my own work since 2001) is finding at least semi-accurate sheet music/tablature, then practicing at a slower tempo and gradually increasing the bpm on a metronome until it matches or exceeds the original piece. Also, if I make a mistake, I've learned to go back to the beginning of the bar I was learning instead of the beginning of the song. And to learn from those mistakes, like where I need to pause and work on a particular run of notes until I get that section down pat. And muscle memory plays a huge role, but mostly when performing live or recording. That's when I use muscle memory to play on autopilot so I can focus on singing too."
],
"score": [
19,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7mk82
|
Why does the sound of filling up a water bottle change the higher up it gets?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl7jv0m",
"gl822cq",
"gl859hc"
],
"text": [
"Because as the bottle fills the space the sound is bouncing around changes. When you're filling up an empty bottle the sound is coming from relatively far away, as opposed to the top where it's moving a small distance and thus has a different frequency (sound). It's similar to putting your finger on a closer to further hold on a wind instrument, but with water.",
"Water running produces noise, which is basically a bunch of different tones at once. Now, a tone can be represented by an arc, the length of two of them being the length of the wave (a wavelength). The wave is thus made of a knot and hill. Imagine the wave starting inside the bottle with a knot at the water's surface. If a wavelength exits the container at a length where it exits as a \"hill\" then it becomes amplified. As the height of the water changes the wavelengths that get amplified change as well. That produces the unique sound. Of course there's also a lot more at play, but that's the main fist of it without diving into acoustics.",
"I think I will piggy back this question with another similar one: Why does hot water sound different than cold water? If you ever noticed: Cold water sounds more metallic and tingy, while hot water sounds more silky and smooth when poured."
],
"score": [
33,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7mm8n
|
Why does spicy food make my eyes water and nose runny?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl7okgf"
],
"text": [
"I only know that chilles developed a chemical called capsaicn as a deterrent to animales who want to eat. Capsacin reacts with a receptor ment to regester heat which in turn makes your pain receptors freak out. Maybe your just more sensitive to it? Dont quote me on any of this i am almost positive im wrong. I just reasearched tear gas and learned a bit of this"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7mzfo
|
When it rains, is there a point that you could go to that the rain would fully stop? Could you stand a few yards away from an area covered in rain and watch it? How does that sort of thing work?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl7mgdo",
"gl7oevg"
],
"text": [
"Yes, the wind might carry it a bit from the cloud edge but there is a cut off, otherwise when it rains somewhere it would be raining everywhere across the world at the same time. Rain basically falls straight down from the cloud so wherever isn't under cloud won't be getting rain until the cloud moves there (again, barring wind factors) One time it was cloudy and raining in my backyard but my front yard was still sunny and dry as that's just where the clouds happened to be. It didn't last long as the clouds moved over and covered it all but it was a good 5 minutes.",
"It's not going to be an extreme difference at the edge of the rain. It will be a gradual change and towards the end the rain will be very light. It's not rare at all, every single rainstorm has multiple edges and they move with time"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7n6n3
|
Why do many professional sportsmen end up retiring in their mid to late 30s?
|
Whilst there are some exceptions, the average cricket, rugby, and soccer player retires in their mid-30s and a lot barely play towards the end which gives them an indication that they should retire. I know that it must be hard to get good offers to play when they reach their mid-30s but what are the body changes that take place when one is in their mid-30s? It also seems like the athletes in these sports mainly peak between 27-29.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl7nqpn"
],
"text": [
"It’s not so much the age, as it is the mileage. Essentially, professional athletes put wear and tear on their bodies unlike pretty much anything in history, and often quite unevenly. The body’s like a finely built machine, for this comparison, and if you use it normally, with a decent load balance, it can go a long while with minimal maintenance, but if you keep putting intense loads on the same three parts for a couple of decades straight, those three parts will wear down faster, and we’re not yet at the point where spare parts are as good as the original components. Which is why a lot of professional athletes retire in their thirties to spend their remaining years with their remaining functional limbs, etc. Keep in mind, AFAIK, retiring from sports doesn’t mean *retiring* retiring - I know old footballers who work as youth sports organizers, coachers, mentors, and the like, for example.."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7o3rd
|
What is the meaning of "Proactive" ? I never understand its meaning, some says "Taking action in advance. and the other says "To respond instead of react" What exactly does that mean?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl7rri5",
"gl7ryjp",
"gl7s889"
],
"text": [
"It basically means to act before something happens, rather than waiting for it to happen then acting afterwards.",
"I’ve always understood it as meaning “solving problems before they happen” Google results are also along those lines",
"The literal meaning is to take action in advance. However this may be extended to things such as preparing for incidents before they happen. So if you are proactive you will rather respond rather then react. But in that case your proactive moves are to think through the possible scenarios, make decisions about them and prepare so that you can respond to the events instead of having to react to them where you need to make decisions on the fly."
],
"score": [
7,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7o41n
|
Why do multiple similar sounds put together become louder? Example: An audience clapping.
|
Do the sound waves build up with each other somehow? Thank you!
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl7sxkb",
"gl7sgvr"
],
"text": [
"You can look at sound like water for this case, if you wave your hand at the surface the displacement from your hand will make a wave that gets smaller as it travels, now if you wave your other hand right underneath it in the same manner it will build it up again, if you do another wave at the opposite direction of the first, the turbulence will be destructive and both waves will cancel each other. In the case of people cheering they are all doing the same sound more or less so they are building it up. Noise canceling headphones use the opposite thing, they will make destructive turbulence that cancels the ambient noise.",
"Yes, the sound waves build on each other. The more \"waves,\" the higher the sound. Think of it as pushing someone on a swing. If you push them in the direction they're already swinging, they'll go higher."
],
"score": [
17,
12
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
l7o7vx
|
Why do homo sapiens keep asking questions they can literally find the answers by doing a simple Google search?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl7sxxg"
],
"text": [
"Why did you ask this question on reddit and not on google, the answer to that is the answer to your question."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7od7l
|
What is neocolonialism and Predatory Lending?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl935vu"
],
"text": [
"Neocolonialism and predatory lending is, rather than in the past when a powerful country actually colonized a developing country and controlled it politically, to control a developing country through economics. Say Wealthy Country A would like secure access to Developing Country B's coffee exports. They might suggest Country B really needs to build a massive hydroelectric dam to create sufficient power for their country. The developing country will need to borrow $10B from the wealthy country, but \"the economic growth will easily allow dam to pay for itself!\" but the project takes longer, and costs more than expected, and the developing country's currency weakens in the meantime making it even more expensive... they cannot possibly pay back the loans and don't see the economic gains they were sold on. The government has to cut back on services to its citizens just to make debt payments to the wealthy country. But then the wealthy country comes in and basically offers to forgive or reduce the debt if the developing country will exclusively trade coffee exports with them, on the terms they set. So the country, facing the spector of reducing spending on education and healthcare, or giving up control of its coffee sector chooses to agree to the coffee deal. This may have negative consequences on the coffee growers, coffee traders, etc."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7oj44
|
Why does rubbing your forehead when you’re tired feel good?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl7vfpw"
],
"text": [
"Natural reflexes to mimic the feeling and action of resting your head onto something like a pillow."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
l7pctv
|
How can the person on speaker phone not hear themselves?
|
When on speaker phone with somebody the sound of their own voice that comes out is not heard by them. How can the device known not to send their own voice back to them? This even works when you are speaking at the same time. They will hear you but will not hear themselves. How is this done? How does this work? As I type this it begins to sound more and more dumb so ill end here. Please explain.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gl7zkoj"
],
"text": [
"This is one of the big problems in any sort of amplification circuit (speaker phones are a good example). This problem is called feedback. Any time you have amplifiers, it has a tendency for the output to \"feed back\" into the input, get amplified and so on. This results in an unstable system, if you've ever heard the screech from the speakers of a badly set up concert stage, this is feedback gone wrong. Now, feedback is useful if controlled and this is what engineers design for in many situations. But it can be difficult to manage and this is almost an entire branch of study in engineering - that of control systems. In modern digital speakerphones, there is software in the phones designed to eliminate the sound coming from the microphone to be amplified back to the speaker. This is sometimes called echo cancellation. It doesn't happen \"naturally\", this HAS to be designed in for the speakerphone to work effectively. What essentially happens is that the phone \"remembers\" what came into the input and removes this signal before sending it to the speaker. This gives the effect that the person talking does not hear themselves amplified back to them on their speaker."
],
"score": [
13
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
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