q_id
stringlengths 6
6
| title
stringlengths 3
299
| selftext
stringlengths 0
4.44k
| category
stringclasses 12
values | subreddit
stringclasses 1
value | answers
dict | title_urls
listlengths 1
1
| selftext_urls
listlengths 1
1
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
mnsq9f | How are ancient texts translated if there is with no way to contact the original writers? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gtzhza6",
"gtzipyc"
],
"text": [
"[The Rosetta Stone]( URL_0 ) Basically you decipher the language by comparing ancient translations. With a bit of intelligent guesswork added on top you can then read those languages.",
"Sometimes you can find the same material in different languages, one of which you know, a code book of you like. The Rosetta Stone found in Egypt has partial versions of the same text in Ancient Greek which was known, heiroglyphs and Egyptian script. That gave enough information to work out how heiroglyphs worked and to decipher other Egyptian inscriptions."
],
"score": [
10,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnt0y5 | How is it know for certain that no two people have had the same fingerprints? | There are/were bajillions of people and only so many swirly patterns. Also, same question but with snowflakes. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gtzjz1f",
"gtzkgtu",
"gtzkknd"
],
"text": [
"\"Only so many swirly patterns\" is the false bit. I'm not quite sure how they did this analysis, but the odds of having a match is [1 in 64 trillion]( URL_0 ) or almost precisely 0. The trick is that while they look similar when not actually analyzing them, in reality they have a bunch of different variables like angles of swirls, where a ridge stops, where a split happens, etc. This makes an incredibly chaotic system that doesn't repeat much.",
"Well, the fingerprint thing is actually not true. Two people can have the same fingerprints [(this guy from Oregon was falsely convicted for a terrorist attack in Madrid, because his fingerprints were functionally identical to those of the actual bomber)]( URL_0 ). It's not common, sure, but it's not impossible. You're right in that there are so many people on the planet that we couldn't possibly get the fingerprints of everyone. However, I think the issue is that you're interpretting the fingerprint/snowflake rule as a hard-and-fast... well, rule. Truth is, there's nothing saying that two fingerprints/snowflakes CANNOT be identical. It's just that there are so many factor and variables that go into the creation of each, that the odds of two snowflakes or fingerprints developing in the exact same way to form an identical final products are extremely extremely small, and usually not even considered.",
"We can't know for *certain,* that's sort of the thing with probabilities. But we can sometimes use statistics to show that something is *so unlikely* that it's probably never happened. There's a simple example that I like to use - imagine you take a deck of cards, and take out only one suit - we'll say spades for this example. So you have 13 cards - A-K, all of spades. How many different orders can you put these 13 cards in? It sounds a little crazy, but there are actually over 6 *billion* possible orders, just to put these 13 cards in. That's over 6 billion possible combinations, using 13 specific options. Expand it to a whole deck of cards, and you'd get an absolutely enormous number - something close to 8 followed by sixty-seven 0's. If you shuffle a deck of cards right now, it's almost certain to be in an order that NO deck of cards has ever been in, *ever.* When you look at fingerprints, there are so many possible loops, swirls, arcs, etc. that are possible to show up over your finger - way more than 13 options. Note: there are arguments about exactly *how* unique fingerprints are, but even taking those into account, there are an enormous number of possibilities. And with snowflakes, there can be dozens or hundreds of facets that could freeze and shape differently. Start multiplying those together, and you'll get a number significantly larger than the order of our suit of cards - on the order of trillions, or even significantly higher. So when you consider that there have been a few tens of billions of humans living throughout our history, is it *possible* that two of them have had the same fingerprints, if we use a low estimate and assume that there are trillions of possible identifiable prints? Sure, just like how it's possible that your lottery ticket wins instead of millions of others, but on a probably larger scale. But it's so very unlikely that we can say it's nearly impossible - and even if it were possible, it would be incredibly unlikely for those pairs to ever be identified."
],
"score": [
14,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-chance-of-identical-fingerprints-1-in-64-trillion/#:~:text=The%20Chance%20of%20Identical%20Fingerprints%3A%201%20in%2064%20trillion%20-%20Scientific%20American"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mnt8im | why does something economically rise in value (for example a diamond) only to drop its value after a week or so? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gtzqmq7",
"gtzmk1n"
],
"text": [
"I want to buy a ball, you want to buy a ball. Normal price of the ball is $10. I see that it's a last ball the seller has and Isay I will pay $12 because I really want it, then you offer $15 and finally I manage to buy it for $20 because I want it now and it's the only one left for now. Next week the seller receives shipment of balls and you go and buy it for $10 that is normal price. I paid more because I wanted it more and I wanted it immediately.",
"Value is a measurement of how much something is desired at a specific point in time. As the desire for it changes, the economic value shifts to reflect that."
],
"score": [
8,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnu9ux | what are offshore accounts and why do people have them? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gtzrgo1"
],
"text": [
"Money kept out of the country to lower the tax bracket they fall in and various other tax reasons."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnugdi | why does espresso feel stronger than a cup of coffee even though it technically has less caffeine? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gtztjc1"
],
"text": [
"Caffeine is bitter, but so's coffee (because of lots of other compounds). There's no real flavour difference with and without caffeine, that's why decaf coffee (mostly) tastes the same. Espresso feels stronger because it's got \\*waaaaay\\* more coffee compounds by volume. Espresso roast is very dark (lots of strong bitter flavours), espresso grind is very fine (maximum flavour extraction), and espresso machines use pressure and high heat to extract as much flavour as humanly possible with a small volume of liquid. Espresso is literally more concentrated coffee flavor that normal drip. That has nothing to do with the caffeine content. Edit: typo"
],
"score": [
10
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnul93 | If you're dehydrated and then you drink water, how long does it take to get where it needs to go? How does it get there? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu05lfd",
"gtzxj0e",
"gtzwu08",
"gtzxwq1"
],
"text": [
"When you drink water, it gets absorbed through your intestines (like food), gets into your blood, and then travels to where it needs to go. If you drink water on an empty stomach, it gets the green light to go to the intestines right away. It starts entering the bloodstream within 5 minutes of drinking it. Half of it is absorbed into the bloodstream by the 11-13 minute mark, and the rest is absorbed within 2 hours. Drinking water at the same time as eating food changes the timeline. It's the stomach's job to make sure everything is ready to be digested (all squished up and mixed together), and food takes way longer to get ready than water does! The water has to wait patiently while the food gets ready to go. When everything in the stomach is ready, the intestines open up and things start being absorbed. (The time it takes food to get ready in the stomach varies, but it's somewhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours.) Hope that helps!",
"Coffee has proved to me that the window for liquid absorption on an empty stomach is about thirty seconds from when the cup touches my lips. lol",
"It's pretty much within 5 minutes or so if you're on an empty stomach. Water basically bypasses the stomach entirely and is absorbed by your intestines into your bloodstream. There's nothing to digest in water, your body can pretty much use it as is. The cells of your intestinal lining are directly connected to your bloodstream where the water is transported over your entire body.",
"[here is some information on dehydration]( URL_0 ) > According to a recent study from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, your body can alleviate mild dehydration in 45 minutes with 20.3 oz (600ml) of water. > If you are severely dehydrated, it’s likely that you will be hospitalized and put on intravenous hydration for up to 24 hours to rehydrate your body, or until you’re able to drink oral rehydration fluids yourself. > At less severe dehydration levels that are still serious, it’s possible that you’ll only be drinking oral rehydration fluids. CDC guidelines for those suffering from dehydration through Cholera recommend drinking up to 1 liter of ORS fluid per hour for an adult, and children 20ml / kg of body weight."
],
"score": [
44,
22,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.drinkhydrant.com/blogs/news/how-long-does-it-take-to-recover-from-dehydration"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnv9e9 | Since Autism is diagnosed as a result of multiple symptoms, and many of these symptoms are resultant of other conditions such as ADHD, what’s the difference between having autism and having a bunch of different medical conditions that each have Autism - adjacent symptoms? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gtzymu3",
"gu08zoo"
],
"text": [
"There isn’t. Autism isn’t really a specific disease so much as a collection of symptoms. Once those symptoms are attached to other diseases however, it isn’t diagnosed at autism anymore as autism is defined as idiopathic.",
"They’re not necessarily resultant of adhd if autism is present Autism can create symptoms that are similar to adhd but ultimately not related to dopamine regulation so stimulants don’t really help. However, autism can (probably) also coexist with adhd and then the inattentive or hyperactive symptoms are more dramatically impacted by stimulants Edit: additionally autism is a broad spectrum that is still ultimately poorly understood. As we significantly improve understanding of neurology and genetics we may define that spectrum with more granularity (eg “autism spectrum” becomes several different diagnoses or more levels are added to the current criterion). although there will always be blind spots and in between areas"
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnw5t1 | How can Taylor Swift re-record her classic songs without violating copyright laws but she cannot perform them live? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu05vqj"
],
"text": [
"That’s not quite it. The master recordings of her first six albums were bought by someone else after she had been trying to buy them for years, and whoever owns them has the right to release them, re-release them, make money off them, or whatever, without Taylor Swift’s permission. So, she’s re-recording her old stuff so she can own *those* recordings. Presumably, she (or a company she’s affiliated with) still owns the copyright to the songs themselves. The rights to a recording and the rights to the song that a recording is of are two different things, and a popular recording can be worth a lot of money. If someone wants to license a song to use in a commercial or a movie, paying for both the song and the recording can be costly, so it’s common for the production company to have someone record a cover version so they can own it and use it. The movie *I Am Sam*, for example, is full of cover versions of Beatles songs because licensing the actual Beatles recordings costs an obscene amount of money. The band Devo are known to make new recordings of their songs for use in commercials so they can make more money; they own the songs but the classic recordings are owned by their old record company. They re-recorded “Whip It” as “Swiff It” for a Swiffer commercial a few years back, for example. A few years later they re-recorded the original “Whip It” for a Pizza Hut ad."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnw7jw | how does water evaporate if it doesn't boil? | How does evaporation occur when the temperature of the water never exceeds boiling point (aka where liquid water becomes a gas)? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu04oko",
"gu06x8p"
],
"text": [
"Ooh this ones fun! Think about how you can add salt to water, but after a certain point no more will dissolve. It’s the same with water in air. Air likes to have up to some water in it, and if there’s less then water can evaporate to make the air happy. The technical term is partial pressure (pp). The pp of water in air is dependent on temperature, and the colder it gets the lower the pp which is why you’ll see your breath when it’s extremely cold out.",
"The temperature of an object is the average of how much kinetic energy each atom/molecule has. In other words, it's how fast those atoms/molecules are wiggling, spinning, or flying around. So if I have a pot of room temperature water and stick a thermometer in it, I'm measuring how fast those water molecules are jiggling around in the pot on average, but that doesn't mean that every molecule is jiggling at the same speed. The molecules in there are all sliding around past each other and bouncing into each other, so every once in a while some molecules at the surface will have so much speed/energy above the average that they can escape from the pot as a gas. A side effect of this is that all the most energetic molecules are the ones leaving the pot. That means that the average energy/speed of the molecules left in the pot gets lower. It's like if all the smartest kids in the class skip ahead in the year, then the average intelligence of your class goes down, since it's only the average people and the dummies left. So as the water evaporates from the pot, the remaining water gets colder. This is how evaporative cooling works."
],
"score": [
22,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mnw94f | why does a tv show/series have a different director for each episode? | Specifically in regards to the "flow" of a show, wouldn't it be beneficial to feature one director per season, if not for the entire series? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu04yec",
"gu05e9v"
],
"text": [
"For shows with multiple episodes a season, having multiple directors allows them to work on multiple episodes at a time, each in different stages of production.",
"For each episode, they have pre-production, shooting, and post-production, so they’re usually working on at least three episodes at a time. While episode 1 is having its scenes edited into its final format, episode 2 is filming scenes and episode 3 is getting ready for props, makeup, scenes, and the shooting schedule. The director is involved with all of the stages of the episode and can’t do all them all at the same time. So director A does everything for episode 1, director B does episode 2, etc."
],
"score": [
8,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mnwe0w | is "neurodivergent" a categorical replacement of the term "mental illness(es)"? | Neurodivergence is an inclusive term that has gained popularity in recent years. I especially see it used in reference to ADHD and autism, but I've seen depression, obsessive-compulsivity, and schizophrenia also included under the new term. Do the professionals using the term use it for a subset of previously-called mental illnesses, while still using mental illness for other subsets? As a blanket replacement for mental illness? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu08834",
"gu082w7",
"gu0886p"
],
"text": [
"It's a neologism that seeks to de-pathologize neurodevelopmental disorders in favor of a social model of disability. Or, in more ELI5 terms, some people with autism or ADHD or other \"mental illnesses\" don't like the implication that something is \"wrong\" with them. They believe that (some) people with these conditions can be functional members of society and do not need to be \"cured.\" In other words, they don't want to be seen as \"disabled,\" they want to be seen as \"different.\" To my knowledge this is pretty much entirely a social science thing. As far as I know the psychological and psychiatric community still use the terms \"mental disorder\" and \"mental illness,\" although that could change.",
"I'm sure there's a technical definition that I don't know. But the difference in connotation is huge, and a large reason why it has gained traction so quickly in today's speech. Saying someone is mentally ill implies that there's something inherently wrong with them; that they're bad at thinking. \"Neurodivergent\" implies that someone doesn't think like a typical person; not necessarily worse, just not typical. I am most likely mildly neurodivergent. (No diagnosis, but holy hell, hearing autistic people explain how they think resonates with how I think.) I perceive and interact with the world different than neurotypical people do. Not uniformly better or worse, just different.",
"I’m not sure if it’s used by professionals but I have ADHD and I’ve heard the term used plenty. Usually it’s used as an attempt a describing how our brains work outside of the context of normal societal expectations. Like I’m in college now, all of my professors have been happy with my participation in class discussions (like I was even asked to be a TA by one professor) and I know the material backwards and forwards. I do so much reading and research on my own, I stay after class to talk with my professors about things we didn’t get to in class, I talk with my friends and girlfriend about my field all the time. But... that’s not how classes are graded. Classes are graded by what homework you do by what time. Classes are graded based on the easiest method to grade how well a typical person is interacting with the material. They’re not graded on how I or people like me interact with the material. It’s not that we can’t do these things, it’s that the metric were graded on doesn’t really work for us. It’s not a disability as much as a poor measure of ability. That being said, I’m not one of those people who think having a weird brain is a super power. I think those people fail to account for how hard it is for people with more severe symptoms. And obviously other mental illnesses/disorders/whatever you want to call them are their own forms of complex. I’m only speaking from my own experience and what I’ve heard from other people with ADHD."
],
"score": [
12,
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mnwf8b | How does rubbing alcohol kill what is harmful while not hurting the living body? | Experience breeds inquiry. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu06w2f"
],
"text": [
"Alcohol will indiscriminately kill cells regardless of whether they are good or not. It works by dissolving the cell membrane which will result in cell death. Your skin, for example, consists of many layers of dead skin cells. If you get rubbing alcohol on your skin, you won't notice much happening because the cells the alcohol comes in contact with are already dead. If you were to pour it on an open wound you'd notice how painful it feels - that's because healthy cells are dying. You may also notice a similar effect when drinking strong alcohol since the cells lining your mouth/throat/esophagus are not (as far as I know) comprised of layers of dead cells, and so health cells are directly in contact with the alcohol."
],
"score": [
16
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mnwirb | . Why do our hands tingle when we think of things like looking over the edge of a cliff or seeing someone fall on a video? Does it have something to do with our bodies sending some “Hang on tight buddy” to our hands? Can someone can explain the scientific biology behind it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu06xg4"
],
"text": [
"Its basically your brain preparing for a fight or trauma. The body will go into shock where it diverts blood from your extremities to your vital organs. Basically your \"core\".. the middle of your body. This could cause your feet and hands or arms to tingle. You would also loose temperature there. I would bet your pupils dilate as well, to take in more light and give you as much advantage as you can get to see an incoming threat. Human stress response has not evolved much from the days of running from predators in the wild."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnwmkr | How does the body know it's too hot/cold? | How does the human body detect temperature? I understand the hypothalamus sends signals to dilate blood vessels but how does the body know it's too hot in the first place? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu0l0pc"
],
"text": [
"In peripheral nerves, we know there are some special ion channels in sensory neurons that get triggered to open by temperature changes. I don’t think we know exactly how it works in the hypothalamus, but I imagine it’s similar."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mnwov6 | Pollen gives most people “allergies”. But what about pollen are people allergic to? The powdery nature of it? Or is there something in it that causes the allergies? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu088b2",
"gu11xm5"
],
"text": [
"The DNA in the pollen is seen as \"foriegn\" by the body's defense systems. It's not the particle size, it's the material.",
"We don't really understand allergies very well, so the *why* question that you've asked elsewhere in this thread doesn't really have a clear answer yet. Something - we don't really know what - causes your immune system to identify the proteins in the pollen as a foreign threat. So, your immune system is mobilized to fight the \"invasion\". Now, pollen isn't like a virus. It doesn't spread itself throughout your body. It just sticks to the inside of your nose & throat, and to your eyes. So the immune response is (normally) localized to those areas, which is why you develop swelling or itching in those places, or why you get a runny nose. Pollen allergies are often acquired at some point during childhood or adolescence. I didn't use to have hay fever until my late teens. Then I got it, along with a nice bonus of oral allergy syndrome to some of my favorite fruits & nuts (which contain proteins that are similar in structure to those in certain types of tree pollen). Once your immune system has (incorrectly) identified the threat, it will tend to keep responding to it. That being said, sometimes allergies can extinguish over time. My dad used to be highly allergic to animal hair, but now has no problems any more and is a cat owner without taking any medicine. In principle anything could cause an allergic reaction. At least anything organic, containing molecules that your immune system could possibly recognize. Clearly, though, some allergies are more common than others. Hay fever is one of those (although this is really a collection of allergies to various kinds of tree, grass and flower pollen). Why some substances are more likely to cause allergies than others, we also don't really know (as far as I'm aware). Ultimately what it comes down to is that the immune system is very sophisticated, and very complicated, and for that reason our understanding of it is far from complete."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnx8qn | Why does everything look black and white when it’s dark? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu0cn2y",
"gu0cpa3"
],
"text": [
"Your retina in the back of your eye has two different types of receptors that detect light - rods and cones. They’re called that because of their shape. Rods are responsible for seeing things at low light, but they can’t detect color. Cones can see color, but they only work in high amounts of light. So when it’s dark out, the cones in your retina can’t get enough light to activate, and only the rods work well.",
"You have two kind of receptor cells in your eyes: Rod cells and cone cells. Cone cells allow you to see colors, but aren't too sensitive, so they don't work well when there's not much light. Rod cells are much more sensitive and allow you to see when it's dark, but they don't let you see colors."
],
"score": [
15,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnxu6f | how can temperament be hereditary? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu0l49i"
],
"text": [
"Short answer: we don't know exactly, but from animal studies we can see that it is true Long answer: a lot aspects of our personality depend on a lot of different things. Broadly speaking, there are 3 big categories: life experience, neural structure/arrangement and hormone/neurotransmitter levels. Life experiences are, obviously, not genetic, but it only accounts for 1/3 of the picture here. Hormone and neurotransmitters are something that we know to be genetic. If you are predisposed to producing more testosterone that someone else, you're more likely to be more aggressive than them, or if you are predisposed to producing less serotonin you're more likely to have issues with depression. There are a lot of substances the body produces that can affect mood and temperament, and it is likely that genetics is heavily implicated in issues with deficiencies and/or overproduction of these substances. Finally, we have neural structure. If you have an unusual neural structure, such as, for example synesthesia, this would affect how you perceive and respond to life experiences, and would as such affect your temperament. This sort of thing can be genetic also. At the end of the day, all of these factors are so broad and interact with each other so much that it can be difficult to say where temperament comes from exactly, and while some aspects of it may be genetic, not all of it will be"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnxx7a | Why do tires need to be reinflated periodically? How does the air get out? After they inflate the tire, can't they just permanently seal it off so air doesn't get out and it always stays inflated? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu18wut",
"gu18u5j",
"gu19v2g"
],
"text": [
"“Air can escape from solid material like rubber, and that happens due to permeation, which is actually the diffusion of molecules through a membrane. This is a natural occurrence, and one of the most possible reasons why your tire loses one to three PSIs over the course of a month” URL_0",
"It’s the aspects of rubber and it’s properties. When a tire is rolling, it gets hot, increasing the pressure, as it cools, the pressure gets lower. You also have valves with the tire (which can’t be permanently sealed as different people need different tire pressures). Sometimes they can leak, the rubber breaks down and it, with the pressure changes, will slowly lower the tire pressure.",
"Not many seals are truly perfect, and not many materials we use to seal things are completely impermeable. When temperature changes, so does the pressure in the tire, this never ending flow of temperature is causing the pressure in the tire to change. The air always wants to escape, and it will, slowly. Consider the valve as the weakest point of the system too, it's most likely escaping there."
],
"score": [
13,
4,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.autodeal.com.ph/articles/car-features/mystery-debunk-why-do-tires-lose-pressure"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnza4h | Why are rockets not launched from a barrel like a bullet from a gun? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu0ny1b",
"gu12lsz"
],
"text": [
"Because to reach orbital velocities ( multiple kilometres per second) without destroying the payload would require acceleration over a long time, meaning the barrel of your gun would need to be 100’s of kilometres long. It would also need to be almost a complete vacuum or air resistance would destroy the payload again. This is the concept behind a mass driver, and it might be a good idea for the moon when there is no air and getting to orbit is easier, but it would require a massive investment to work on Earth.",
"URL_1 URL_0 They are... it’s a niche form of launch that a few entities still work on. But nobody has yet done the work to successfully have something launched from a gun actually fire its engines to put itself in orbit. Space guns are a good idea but not all ideas are good. Feel free to pursue this line of research. If you’re not scared of being assassinated. A space gun is the most powerful gun in the world at the end of the day. People don’t want even more scary weapons these days..."
],
"score": [
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mnzgxv | Why do professionals need coaches? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu0pi3n",
"gu0q4x9",
"gu0q4xv",
"gu0q5a2"
],
"text": [
"At the professional level, it’s always good to have someone keep an eye on your technical skill as a objective eye. But moreso, just because you can execute well doesn’t mean you have the eye to critique or the words/ideas to improve on specific, isolated areas. Teachers aren’t necessarily great performers, and performers aren’t necessarily great teachers. Two very separate, very different skill sets. Mediocre teachers are sometimes fantastic performers, and mediocre performers are sometimes fantastic teachers.",
"An engineer knows how to build a bridge. It doesn't mean the engineer can build it. A construction worker can build a bridge, it doesn't mean the worker knows how to build it.",
"I'm just getting into sports myself, but I think it's something like this: You're getting advice from someone outside the game. Since they can see the full picture, they can tell you what's what. An athlate can only see so much of what they're doing and might miss a few things, but a coach can see everything the player is doing (as well as other players for that matter).",
"A few reasons: 1. Being a professional at performing a sport doesn't always mean you are a professional at planning what to do in the sport. In the golf example, a coach may be able to advise the player on whether to take a safer swing, or try for a risky play to get ahead. The player is better at taking the swing, but the coach is better at planning it. 2. A coach can be a good second set of eyes during the game. It's hard to play a sport and analyze your strengths and weaknesses at the same time. A coach might be able to tell the player where to focus their efforts or to fix something they didn't know they were doing wrong, and make quick adjustments mid game. 3. It's possible to help someone improve even if they are better than you. Personal trainers do strength training for people who are stronger than they are all the time. Knowing which drills to practice, and identifying areas for improvement are part of coaching, but not necessarily part of playing the sport. You don't need to be better at the sport to be better at being a coach."
],
"score": [
21,
6,
5,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo08bp | If logic is the most natural way our minds think, why is it sometimes so difficult to use it efficiently? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu0t8df",
"gu0w9kv",
"gu1u60f",
"gu0tihz"
],
"text": [
"It's not. It takes intent and practice to be logical. Humans evolved from animals - creatures which are fundamentally driven by emotion and experience - *not* logic.",
"Logic isn't natural at all. Psychology and economics has sub-areas dedicated to showing just how weird humans think. Jk, they just enjoy showing we don't actually follow logical principles. This is actually why we invented the scientific method. Or one reason, anyway. Humans are biased toward confirming their own ideas and will seek evidence out that's consistent. But it's actually pretty important to test out the inconsistent side too. We just aren't very good at doing that naturally. So the reason logic is hard is because it requires effort. You can't just think the way you'd default to. You have to recall and consider all the logical principles you learned.",
"If logic was the most natural way for our minds to think, it would not be difficult to use efficiently, it would be as effortless as breathing. It’s hard to answer your question because the premise, that logic is “most natural”, seems incorrect.",
"I'd say because it's hard to use it, don't underestimate how inteligent and complex our brains are doing a logical deduction is essentialy engaging your problem solving skills to think and make a rational decision based on a variety of factors, to do this with a good criteria is very hard to do, in fact while for example a code acts in logical predictable ways making a robot that has the ability to abstract a situation and use logical thinking and deduction to solve problems sounds pretty hard and it's what animals are, and we are the smartest of them by a great margin. Also our brain is always trying to find shortcuts to use the least amount of energy and think fast, this is a survival adaptation and a lot of our traits are derived from those attempts to shortcut, but this way of thinking can also lead us to falacies and mistakes."
],
"score": [
57,
28,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo0fk9 | Why would an IPS display on a laptop be important if you won't be viewing it from the side anyway? | I understand why it's good for ultra wide monitors, but don't you look at laptops straight on anyways? Doesn't that deny the need for better viewing angles? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu0uhhr",
"gu0uxhm",
"gu17g3w"
],
"text": [
"Because IPS displays are better at more than just viewing angles. IPS displays are better than TN displays at color reproduction. If you want better image quality and don't need fast response times IPS panels are generally better.",
"Your tools should serve you, not the other way around. Do you enjoy constantly adjusting the screen to face you at the correct angle or do you sit perfectly still and never adjust just position? It's just more convenient, especially if you plan to watch movies with someone or even just leave the laptop *somewhere* on your desk without having to reach for it every time.",
"> but don't you look at laptops straight on anyways? Most of the time maybe, but definately not all the time....."
],
"score": [
8,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mo0pl4 | Since light doesnt have mass, how does gravity effect it? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu0vw4b",
"gu142ml",
"gu0x86v"
],
"text": [
"Light travels in a straight line through straight space-time. When gravity curves space-time light will be affected as well. Gravity affects anything with energy, not just mass.",
"In general relativity, we define things a little different, gravity (curvature) in general relativity is caused by a collection of energies and momentums rather than just energy/mass. So why does gravity bend massless particles? Because gravity is caused by “energy-momentum” and light has momentum and an associated energy(photon energy is deeply connected to photon momentum) , so it contributes to and is effected by gravitational effects. Happy to expand in more detail or less detail if needed",
"What we found out with the theory of general relativity is that gravity does not attract things with mass as previous theories was. However gravity bends space and time so that what was previously a straight line now curves towards the center of mass. For most practical applications it is too much to calculate the equations of general relativity so we use classical mechanics for most things. Even though we know it is wrong we know it is right enough for most of our uses. The difference is that we have a special rule saying that gravity applies regardless of the mass of the object even if it have no mass."
],
"score": [
16,
4,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo1fze | What exactly happened to create a gigantic power jump between NVIDIA’s 900 series and 1000 series? Why hasn’t it happened again (yet)? | I was watching some benchmarks on YouTube a few days ago and the power gap between a 980 Ti and 1080 Ti was like 50-70% which sounds just insane. I think most power jumps in the 2000 and 3000 series cap out at 30-40% if I remember correctly. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1ls0s"
],
"text": [
"The process node dropped significantly, but we've stalled out since then You'll always see discussion about 14nm or 10nm as being an important change for a CPU or GPU, and it really is. That \"process node\" is roughly the width of the transistors so going from 14 to 10 lets you fit 2x as many transistors in the same area(0.7 long x 0.7 wide = 0.5 Area), but it also drops the power consumption to 70% of what it was before. This second bit is probably the most important for GPUs are the high end chips are constantly butting up against how much heat they can deal with. The GTX 980 TI was made on TSMC's 28nm node, and normally the next generation would be built on the next step down from this which would be the 20nm node, but instead they were built on a 16nm node which is 1.5 steps down. This meant that instead of a 2x increase in density and 30% reduction in power, it was closer to a 3x increase in density and 40% drop in power. The end result in this was that nVidia was able to go from 8 billion transistors in 600 mm^2 consuming 250W, to 12 billion transistors (50% increase) in 470 mm^2 (22% decrease) and still dissipate 250W. That's a 2x increase in density, and the smaller die results in a cheaper chip. This would be combined with any internal design improvements that improve their performance per transistor Unfortunately overt the last 5 years or so we haven't made a ton of progress shrinking transistors, things got really difficult. 14nm nodes came out in 2014, 10nm should have come out in 2016 but really launched in 2018 and is still having problems, 7nm was supposed to be operational in 2018 but companies are still struggling with yields and its pretty close to Intels 10nm which further confuses things."
],
"score": [
23
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mo1gde | When a body is found and they identify it with dental records - where do they get these records from? Is there a dental database? Or is this just to confirm the identity of a known person? | Many thanks for all the info everyone. As a strange coincidence - I had a tooth xray taken yesterday, so if I ever wash up dead on a local beach after being nibbled on by fish..... | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu0zx46",
"gu11uxj",
"gu2hi3a",
"gu2pktm",
"gu1btou"
],
"text": [
"It's to confirm the body is actually who they think it is by asking the dentist of the missing person (who usually has some xrays and maybe treatments in his archive so you can check if they match the teeth of the corpse) It won't help If they don't have a clue, or the person isn't even missed by anyone in the vicinity",
"If they find a dead person and cannot identify them, then they check for missing persons of the same age who went missing around when the person appears to have died. If they cannot identify easily they move on to methods like dental records. If they don't already have access to the dental records then they find out the dentists of the missing persons and ask them for records. Then they try to match them.",
"Usually, unidentified bodies are only unidentifiable due to decomposition. Most of the time, a body is considered a John/Jane Doe in practice only. If someone is found decomposed in their residence, the medical examiner/coroner cannot simply say, “They were found in the house, so it must be John Smith...” It just simply doesn’t work like that. Once a body is found several steps are taken to identify it. First is fingerprints. Fingerprints records are the most complete and readily available to law enforcement. The prints are taken and run against who the person is thought to be. If it is not a match, the prints are run throughout the FBI database, which takes significantly longer. If fingerprints are unidentifiable, than the next step is dental records. The medical examiner/coroner contacts the person’s dentist and gets their latest charting/x-rays. A forensic odontologist then compares the records against the deceased, and a match can occur that way. Lastly, if fingerprints are unavailable, and dental is unavailable, then a DNA match is attempted. Two close family members of the deceased have a sample taken, and a sample is taken from the deceased. Usually, the Department of Justice will attempt to find a match that way. This process can take anywhere from weeks to months. This is usually the last step taken if no other match can be found. Remember, the body will remain a John/Jane Doe during this process. Until it can be proven who the body is, they have to remain at the coroner/medical examiners office. As for a random body found with no idea who they are, fingerprints are taken and missing persons reports are combed. Usually, family or friends miss the person and report them missing. Then the process described above is repeated. The process is very foolproof and almost all bodies are identified. The long term John/Jane Does usually have some other factor which makes them unidentifiable, such as them being skeletons or being very old. Source: Medical Examiner Investigator",
"My parents are dentists, and I remember seeing questions for identification in their dentist journals. There would be a picture of the dead body, and a schema of their teeth, asking all dentists in the area to check in their recordings.",
"If you are wondering about how that works when you see it in a TV show or movie, well that is where the script writers suspend reality. That also holds true for them having the DNA results back by the next commercial break and tracking someone because there is a GPS unit in their car. Writers assume that the general viewers are not paying attention to pesky details like reality."
],
"score": [
24,
21,
11,
5,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mo3092 | If hot air rises, then unless I put my hand above the heater, how does conviction heat me up?? {P.ease read below} | People say that if I put a heater infront of me, I'll feel the heat because of radiation and conviction. I can understand radiation, but how conviction? If hot air rises, that means what is around the heater is cold air, and so if I dont put my hand directly above the heater, how will conviction heat me?? Thanks!! | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu18g94",
"gu18n7h",
"gu1ar1y"
],
"text": [
"It’s not exactly like you think where the only hot air can be above you. Heat generally follows those rules, but it doesn’t mean it immediately shoots upward and you can’t feel it below. Molecules with more thermal energy will move faster and will bump into other molecules (kind of) and transfer energy. This higher energy air tends to travel upwards, but it will still be heating the air around it until the whole room is evenly heated. Also, I believe you meant convection! Unless you’re talking about heat from the police after being a wanted suspect :)",
"Convection* The air in your room, or anywhere in the earth’s surface for that matter, is turbulent and will forms lots of mixing elements at the slightest of disturbances, such as convection. Basically like what you see while stirring tea except it takes a lot more time to disappear after you stop stirring. In a closed room warm air rises, cools in the colder air above and falls back down to repeat the cycle (as opposed to being blown off by the wind), all the while producing new cycles along the way. So you end up with a sort of circulation of an uncountable number of tiny warm air currents in your room.",
"Your house has things like walls and a roof. This means that the hot air only rises a few metres and then is stopped. The only way for cool air to be brought in is through things like doors and windows which are probably shut. This means that the heater is heating air quicker than it is lost to the outside world."
],
"score": [
8,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mo352a | Why are we attached to toys? | What is it about toys that we like very much? Irrespective of the difference between the country or culture, there are toys being used for kids since ancient times. Why do kids become attached to their toys? Even animals develop an affinity for their stuffed toys, is it something hardwired in our brains? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1mzia",
"gu1q0jz",
"gu19fkc",
"gu1qglj",
"gu1s1hm"
],
"text": [
"For kids - i think it helps focus imagination and play. Fun activities. For adults - Tokens that help trigger memories to simpler times / fun times ... times with no thought of adult worries / stress / anxiety.",
"Kids have so little that is actually Theirs. Only toys fill that need to own something, that they have control over. Kids often sleep with their favorite toy. This may be a skewed view since I grew up fairly poor.",
"We are attached to the great memories using them. I still love Star Wars because I spent a glorious summer with my parents running a promotions company surrounded by it.",
"Positive Emotions. When we, as kids have toys, they give us a non judgemental space where we have full freedom of creative imagination. That freedom and independence gives us a sense of affinity. The experiences, mostly being positive, trick our brains to believe these objects have been a source of our happiness and make it painful to leave them.",
"From what I understand (Im in no way qualified) from day one your trying to learn things through patterns The word food seems to be followed by sustenance etc. This is because through all of your senses you receive a buttload of information and none of it makes any sense just a raw stream of fgdgfdjgdjsfdajydujtfd so you link things that reoccur together and ignore things that prove unimportant. Play is very important. I've heard it being said that kids learn through play but I believe that everyone does no matter the age. By using toys/playing you can act out things that you've seen before linking the actions to the memory but what's even more important is that you can even go beyond that into the what ifs. What if instead of copying mommy putting the dishes in the sink I threw them on the floor? what if instead of adding acid to the test tube you used an alkaline solution? what if instead of x being equal to 3 i tried -2? what if I wrote a story about a medieval romance but it had zombies and aliens? etc When you're just watching or experiencing an event you don't have very much control over what happens but when you're \"playing\" you can rapidly go through a tonne of scenarios and find why it's done the way it is or find a better new way. Meanwhile the links of your actions to the events get stronger and stronger and it's easier to remember."
],
"score": [
22,
14,
13,
13,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mo367o | Where is the line between solid and liquid matter when it comes to things like yoghurt, syrup, peanut butter etc.? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu19bfw",
"gu1bfci"
],
"text": [
"A solid is defined as something that has a defined shape and volume. A liquid is defined as something that has a defined volume, but not a defined shape. There is a measure called viscosity that measures how thick a liquid is, and the higher it is, the more likely something will be able to stand on its own. For example, peanut butter would have a higher viscosity than yogurt.",
"Syrup is a liquid solution that is super saturated, which means it contains more dissolved material than it would normally have at that temperature to the point that it has a very high viscosity, which means that it resists flowing and may take longer to behave the way a liquid typically does, but it still fits the standard definition of a liquid. Peanut butter is a paste which is the suspension of solid material in a liquid. They typically behave like a solid until they come under enough stress to behave like a liquid. Yogurt is a gel, which is a semi-solid. They’re mostly liquid by weight, but behave like a solid because of their 3D structures that often include the liquid locked in place."
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo38z3 | why do heroin users seem to get acne? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu19qf8",
"gu19mo4",
"gu29v50"
],
"text": [
"I mean. It's not really the drug. I work with opi addicts all day and many of them don't have acne. But it could be because they have a higher tenancy to not take care of themselves properly. They may be homeless and therefore dirty because they don't have a place to shower. They could pick at their skin which could damage it and may look like acne.",
"When they're deep into addiction, there is nothing more important than scoring and using dope. There just is no time or money for hygiene. Also there's not just heroin in heroin, it is cut with all kinds of stuff that does not belong in a person's blood stream. Also, an addiction means constant stress for the body, it is really hard to calm down when there's a constant need to use and score drugs.",
"All of these answers are wrong, as what you're really asking is why heroin users have small wounds and scratch their skin a lot. It's Dermotillomania, which can be caused by many things."
],
"score": [
32,
14,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo3nve | Why are the stickers vendors put on products so hard to peel off? | I'm talking on non-consumable items where appearance matters. You know, the stickers that might have a bar code on, a price, an offer or something. More often than not they're really hard to peel off without leaving the bottom layer of the sticker on the item. Surely there's some sticker technology that's easier to peel off? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1fy5n",
"gu1if0n",
"gu1xmkj"
],
"text": [
"Stickers are made hard to peel off, and will often break up when removed to keep customers from changing price tags of items. A checkout person isn't always expected to know the price of every item in the store, and if a customer tries to check out a $100 item with a price tag of $9.95 the store would loose money. If the price tags didn't break up, they could be removed from a cheap item, and re-attached to a more expensive item",
"Sure, there is. They make stickers with Post-it-note glue on the back. The problem with easy to remove stickers is they come off. Two problems: somebody handling the product accidentally knocks the barcode off, now there is a big delay at checkout; or an evildoer takes the barcode off a cheap product and puts it on a more expensive one.",
"A lot of the hard to come off stickers can be peeled off nicely and cleanly with a hair dryer. Usually the colder it is the harder it is for stickers to peel."
],
"score": [
7,
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mo3ok6 | Why are the old borders of the countries are so clunky compared to the modern ones? Prussia would be good example of this, having numerous small "panhandles" and enclaves in it, why? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1br6r",
"gu1it39",
"gu1cnmr",
"gu1ne6z"
],
"text": [
"Historic borders are far more likely to follow a geographical feature. Like river, field, forest, foot of a mountain etc. They also historicallly may follow where certain tribes roamed. \"Modern\" borders that are straight lines were drawn with a map and a ruler. Usually as a country broke up, or following a forceful breakup after war. There are problems with this. I'm not fully up to speed but understabd many borders in Africa were drawn as the British (and others) left following the wars. A soldier used a ruler and a map. The local people weren't consulted. Borders were drawn in the middle of tribe areas. It's causing problems and unrest today.",
"Borders never used to be \"solid\" lines. They were the extend you could project your influence to levy taxes and force. So if you could reasonable hold off an imaging force at a specific town, and were securing taxes from that land, that was within your power. Borders were never a real thing because as long as you weren't an army or a threat, you were allowed to travel through. Everything was a lot more murky. Solid borders didn't become a real thing until the modern era, or at least that's my understanding of it.",
"Colonialism. When Europeans decided to go around causing problems in places like Africa, they didn't care about existing boundaries and made their own that made it easier to keep the native people divided. Causing additional internal conflicts makes divide and conquer a lot easier.",
"Another reason is wars of territory. In modern history, small scale warfare to control certain towns or geography is not common. But in the past it was extremely common. As these wars happened little holes would be carved away from or added to a country's borders, and overtime it can become convoluted."
],
"score": [
50,
12,
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo3qj8 | what does ping and jitter mean when we talk about internet speed | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1ge51",
"gu1k7vn",
"gu1c77o",
"gu1pwvk",
"gu1ifeh"
],
"text": [
"Ping is a tool to measure round trip time (RTT). This is how long it takes for a message to both reach the other side and return. Many other posts are describing ping as one way time which is incorrect. The tool was named ping because the idea is similar to sonar. You send out a \"ping\". It travels out until it hits some thing and bounces back. The time between sending and receiving the bounce back. For those older than 5 who want to understand how to use ICMP to troubleshoot internet issues check out [This presentation on how to properly interpret traceroutes]( URL_0 )",
"Ping time is the time it takes for data to leave your computer, reach a destination and be returned. Many computers on the internet listen for a specific packet and it echos that packet back to the computer that sent it. Your computer measures the time it takes for that specific piece of data to get echoed back to you. That's the \"Ping time\". A single ping only tells you part of the puzzle. It's a single snapshot in time. The next ping could take longer or be faster. A high jitter means inconsistent ping times. Low jitter means more predictable performance. High jitter can indicate network congestion. Think of it like cars on a highway. High jitter is like start-and-stop traffic. Low jitter is like traffic flowing smoothly. It may be going fast or slow, but it's consistent. For viewing web pages, or scrolling Reddit or other social media services, jitter doesn't really matter. But if you're playing a video game that depends on a server, like Fortnite or Call of Duty, jitter can create quality-of-play issues. If you're streaming video, jitter can cause delays and stuttering in video playback.",
"Ping is how fast bits of messages arrive to you. If your friend sent you a stack of post cards in the mail, ping is what we call how long it took them to arrive. Jitter is how different those ping times are from each other. If the postcards all arrive the same day that's less jitter, if they arrive on different days, more jitter.",
"So the delivery man has a package, right? His name is Ping. It takes Ping 30ms to get from your computer to where he's going with your package out there on the internet, and return with the reply. Therefore your Ping is 30ms. The jitter is any external stops Ping has to make on his way. Construction zones, traffic, bad roads all lead to Ping sometimes taking longer than 30ms to get there and back with the package due to bad and unstable connections. Sometimes, Ping has to go through checkpoints or make other stops on his way, depending on where he's going, which can increase your jitter, and oftentimes your ping as well.",
"Jitter is more simply put the variability of latency(ping time). If you get pings consistently in the 30 millisecond range, but suddenly get a ping of twice that (60 millisecond) that’s 30 milliseconds of jitter."
],
"score": [
334,
116,
19,
19,
10
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://archive.nanog.org/meetings/nanog45/presentations/Sunday/RAS_traceroute_N45.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi__avd4PPvAhWxdN8KHdWuCZcQFjAQegQIDhAC&usg=AOvVaw0NcP1faSLvJG2cXUcT8qRl"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo3vhr | If nothing can travel faster than light than why light is unable to escape the blackholes? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1d1dl",
"gu1fdfw",
"gu1eg20",
"gu1f3nr"
],
"text": [
"If you think of space like a big, flat, rubber sheet, then you pinch a part of that sheet and pull it down some, the dip you get in the sheet is how gravity works. That's a \"gravity well\". Now roll a marble along that sheet - that's light. The marble encounters the well, maybe straight on, maybe at an angle, and depending on how it hits the gravity well, the marble may come out straight or it may change course (like a golf ball on a putting green where it clips the hole) Now - PULL THAT SHEET DOWN SUPER HARD. Make the gravity well go WAYYYYYY down. Further away you get a gradual slope but right at the center? A sheer pit. No matter how fast you shoot that marble, it's gonna hit that gentle slope first, so it's gonna angle down. Then it hits the steeper points, and its going down already, so if it hits a deep enough part of the well, there's just no way for it to go back up. It might kinda fly across the hole but its gonna hit the wall on the other side and bounce, and keep going down as it does so. That's a black hole - light crosses a certain threshold and it doesn't matter how fast its going, its going down.",
"You don't need something faster than light to trap it. Gravity works in such a way that everything falls at the same rate, and this also means that if you want to orbit a planet you will have to move sideways at a specific speed no matter hoy heavy your ship is. This speed depends on how heavy the planet you want to orbit is and how high you want to be orbiting, the higher you are the slower you'll need to be moving. This matters because you'll need to be moving faster than the orbiting speed to be able to escape that specific orbit, the problem is that black holes are so incredibly heavy that at a certain altitude you need to go at the speed of light to stay in orbit (this height is what's called the event horizon) if you are at that height or lower you would need to go faster than light to escape the black hole. Since light is affected by gravity as well, light itself won't be moving fast enough either. Note: the reason why nothing can move faster than light is a bit harder to explain but gravity doesn't move to catch anything it's already there",
"Precisely because of that. It can't go any faster and lightspeed is below the escape velocity of a black hole at certain distance, so its path curves inwards.",
"Your statement pivots on a false assumption. What you say is similar to me saying, if nothing writes as permanently as a permanent marker, why can't a permanent marker write on the surface of water. Just because something is the best at what it does, that does not mean that it'll be good enough to do the impossible. Escaping the orbit of something as massive as a black hole simply isn't a matter of speed."
],
"score": [
45,
13,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo47j0 | When seriously dehydrated why do our we start to vomit when we drink water? | It seems counterintuitive. I just had this happen to me. I got over exerted during a workout and spent the next 8 hours puking unable to hold down water. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1icwf",
"gu1hfp0",
"gu1ghl8"
],
"text": [
"Because stimulating the gut when you're nauseated or vomiting will cause reflexive vomiting. People try to chug water as soon as they start vomiting and then they're confused when they keep vomiting. Don't do that. Dehydration takes time. Give yourself a few hours and introduce fluids slowly. Start with ice chips or popsicles. If you do ok with that drink a little water in small sips. If you start feeling lethargic and your mouth and tongue are dry and pale you're severely dehydrated enough that you'll need IV fluids. Go to the ER.",
"If I'm not mistaken, i think you have to give really tiny sips of water at a time to dehydrated folks so they don't get sticker and, in extreme cases, so they don't die. Edit: i think that's why at hospital they give you ice chips instead of full on water",
"Dehydration can make you feel nausea. The issue then is if you then drink water you may vomit it. It's not the water that is causing the vomiting, it's the feeling of nausea that causes you to vomit."
],
"score": [
22,
10,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mo5ldr | Why aren´t we building houses out of molten rocks | In the past we have been building homes and other struktures directly out of stone or bricks and more recently out of concrete which needs a lot of sand. Apperently we are running out of sand and I was wondering why there was never an attempt to melt stone and build houses with it as a substitute for concrete. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1nac9",
"gu1no73",
"gu1vbhd"
],
"text": [
"It takes a lot of energy to melt stone and it is not nearly as easy to work with as concrete is. It would not be affordable or environmentally friendly to build houses out of stone that has been melted. It takes temperatures between 600 and 1,300 degrees Celsius (1,100 and 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit) to do that that he just constantly lost so it would have to be hours for everyone stone made one at a time.",
"Concrete doesn't really need any special type of sand. If we can't get sand, it's still a lot more efficient to grind rocks into sand to make concrete than it is to melt them.",
"INFO: Why do you say we are running out of sand?"
],
"score": [
11,
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mo60zi | How do people in tanks know when to abandon it after a shell hits | Like when a projectile hits the tank, how would you know within a few seconds to know whether or not the tank is really compromised after being hit by a shell before it blows up if it does not kill you instantly. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1pvpd",
"gu1q6l6",
"gu1ytcp",
"gu1qr85",
"gu1va4s"
],
"text": [
"That's not how shells or anti-tank weapons work. If it hits the tank its going off and you won't have any time to react. So to answer your question, if they're abandoning the tank it's because the projectile crippled the tank but didnt kill them for whatever reason. Or it's on fire.",
"Old style tank rounds had a fuse in them but it was very fast, it was set to go off about 1 meter after the shell had passed through the armor so it'd be just milliseconds from the round hitting until it blew up if it was going to blow up. Tanks will only blow up significantly after a hit if there's a fire which causes the ammunition to \"cook off\", but that's going to be pretty apparent inside the tank. Basic rules for if your tank gets hit by a shell Is the tank on fire? No? Stay in the armored box! Most modern tank rounds are kinetic impactors so they don't contain any explosives of their own and instead punch through the armor and send hot pieces of the round and armor flying around inside the metal box, this is again very quick.",
"I was an M1A1 tank commander in the Marine Corps. Many things can happen upon being hit 1) you all die instantly such as being hit with SABOT or explosive rounds, 2) your armor deflects the projectile and you are fine, 3) part of your tank is still operable and you continue to fight 4) your ammo storage is compromised and you have a crew fire. Tanks have a fascinating history and there many different factors in the past that would effect this such as what vehicle was hit and by what round.",
"There's a hole in the tank, other crew members are dead or wounded, you're wounded, the tank commander is screaming for everyone to get out, there's a burning smell, shit is on fire, etc, etc, etc.",
"Many years ago I worked on a site where they modelled tanks, armoury and protection from projectiles (I was just doing some database work). It was just after the 2nd Iraq war where they discovered that they could 'kill' a tank by hitting it with a non-armour piercing shell. The Iraqi troops were so demoralised that they would just get out of the tank and run/surrender even though the tank was fine. I seem to remember the normal shells could be fired further than the armour piercing ones, so it was target practice for the other tanks"
],
"score": [
37,
12,
10,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mo65t5 | why do some medications need to be directly injected into the bloodstream, while others can simply be injected into a muscle? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1ubb0",
"gu1uq18"
],
"text": [
"It depends on the situation. IV meds that go directly into the blood act faster and the dose can be changed easily. These are typically useful for inpatient care. IM injections can be long acting medicines that stay in the muscle and slowly gets released over time. Or it could be something like Haldol where someone is acutely psychotic and it is easier to hit a muscle than it would be to setup an IV on someone who is trying to fight you off.",
"Some drugs are either destroyed by the chemical environment in a muscle, or the drug actually harms the muscle. These drugs can't be given intramuscularly. If seconds matter, we need drugs to act very quickly, and for those we'd also prefer intravenous administration. Sometimes we need a slow release of drug into the system, and for those an intramuscular injection is preferable. Sometimes the drug contains chemicals that can react unfavourably with things in the blood, and they need to take an indirect route - for those an im. injection is also preferred. Sometimes the dosage you need to get an effect is too small/large for one or the other route of administration to be safe. Sometimes the drug is simply too big to pass over into the bloodstream from a muscle, and so we need to get it directly into the bloodstream ourselves. The list goes on. The TL;DR answer is that it depends on **what we want to achieve with the drug** (how fast should it act, how long should it act, etc.), **how much of the drug do we need to give**, **how does the drug interact with the chemical environment into which it is injected** (does it destroy the muscle? does the muscle destroy the drug?), and **many more**. Lucky for us, most medications have more than one possible route of administration, so doctors and nurses can be flexible when the situation requires it."
],
"score": [
95,
28
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo6t0l | Why does a “tilt-shift" effect make a picture look like a miniature scene? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu2hxbf",
"gu1z7mo",
"gu2srrv",
"gu23s2r",
"gu2mgj8",
"gu23krr",
"gu2r7lx",
"gu3nsnp",
"gu3ti8f",
"gu40jgg"
],
"text": [
"Imagine two scenarios: * A: a real-life city with tall buildings, photographed by a drone and * B: a miniature version of the same city, photographed from the same angle to look roughly the same as A. In A, everything would be sharp, because everything is far away from the camera. In B, you could focus on the top of the buildings, making the streets blurry, because the tops of the buildings are so very close to the camera (because it's a miniature and you had to go very close to it). Try it out with your eyes: hold your finger close to your eye and look at it. The stuff behind it will be very blurry. Now look at something further away. The stuff behind it won't be nearly as blurry. So what if you take a wide angle shot of a big, real-life city, and make the tops of the buildings sharp and the street blurry? Well, you can \"cheat\" and trick your mind into thinking that it's tiny. That's it. You can do this in Photoshop or you can do it with a tilt-shift camera. The two will result in a very similar effect in this particular example.",
"It comes down to the depth of field, which is the term for what is in focus in the shot. There is a single point where the image is focused on, and then the depth of field is how far in front of that point, and how far behind that point is in sharp focus, before fading to blurry out-of-focus look. One aspect of a camera lens is called the aperture, which is the size of the opening that lets light into the camera. The aperture can usually be opened or closed, to allow more or less light in, and also to widen or narrow the amount of space that is in focus for the shot. When the aperture is made small, the depth of field gets wider, so a small hole means that lots of your scene will look in focus. Conversely, if you set a wide aperture, the depth of field is much more narrow, which is how photographers get the blurry backgrounds on portraits. Another thing that affects the depth of field is how far away your focus point is. If you point your camera at a building half a mile away, focusing that far away will mean that you have a very wide depth of field, and almost everything in your scene will be very sharply focused. If you leave all the camera settings the same, but simply re-focus your shot on something very close, like a rock in your hand in front of the camera, being so close to you will make the depth of field very very narrow. The rock will be in focus, but things behind it will get blurry much more quickly. That distance factor is what causes tilt shift miniature photos to have their effect. Your mind subconsciously knows that to have a blurry foreground, and a blurry background, with a narrow strip of focus in between and a very quick transition from in focus to out of focus means that you're very close to something, and therefore, if you're very close to a scene, but it has things like buildings and cars and people in it, those must be very very small to fit into the frame, so your brain decides that it's a miniature. It's also worth knowing that this miniature effect is not the intended use of a tilt-shift lens. There is no \"wrong\" way to use a tool to make what you want to make, but the *intended* use of a tilt-shift lens is to help with things like architectural photography, where you want to stand on the ground and take a photo of a building without having some of it go out of focus because the top of the building is further away from you than the bottom of the building. So you can use the clever mechanics of the lens to adjust the plane of focus so that isn't always a flat perpendicular plane from you.",
"Simplified answer - because if you shot a miniature scene from close up it would look like this - blurry (out-of-focus) top and bottom, sharp (in-focus) middle. Your brain 'knows' this, so when it sees sees a picture with this effect, it 'assumes' it's a miniature. If you shot a real-life representation of that scene, you would do so from further away and everything would be in-focus which your brain would take as a sign that you're not looking at a miniature.",
"In every photo, the camera lens has a certain distance range where objects appear in focus, know as \"depth of field\". When taking a picture of large objects, say a mountain range, there won't be a noticeable difference in the focus of a mountain 3 km away compared to another 4 km away. This is because the depth of field is long and far away. When taking a picture of small objects, the camera's depth of field will need to be smaller and the focus will be closer. So if an object 5 cm away from the camera is in focus, another object at 15 cm will be totally blurry. This contrast of focus/blur within a photo is typical in pictures of small objects, and has become recognizable to us as a macro shot.",
"I wanted to add one thing that hasn't quite been fully articulated: Tilt and shift are two different functions that typical come together in one lens. Tilt is the ability to change the angle of the lens so that it's no longer parallel with the image sensor (which normal lenses are). Shift is moving the lens up and down relative to the image sensor (in normal lenses, the center of the lens is in line with the center of the image sensor). They can be used together or independently. The faux miniature effect you're asking about is caused by the tilt function in particular.",
"Classic [view cameras]( URL_1 ) have the ability to not only move the lens in and out for focusing purposes, but to tilt and shift both the lens and the film plane. This gives you the ability to adjust for perspective distortion and have variable focus fields in ways that an ordinary camera could never come close to producing. As one example, an ordinary camera has a focus plane which means that there's a plane in space in front of and perpendicular to the the camera's line of sight where everything is in focus, and anything nearer or farther than that plane will be progressively out of focus. A view camera, on the other hand, lets you change that plane so it's no longer perpendicular to the line of sight. So imagine you're photographing a scene where there's something to the left and near you, and something to the right and far away. A view camera would allow you to put both of those objects into focus. There's a [gallery on flickr]( URL_2 ) that contains some beautiful tilt-shift images. ---- Now a view camera can also be used to create the opposite effect. You could use the tilt-shift features to create an extremely restricted range of focus. By coincidence, when you use a normal camera to photograph miniatures, the camera will also have an extremely limited range of focus. Photographs of miniatures very often have the foreground and background out of focus whereas a photograph of an actual landscape would have everything in focus. Our eyes and brains have seen enough photographs of miniatures that we've learned to associate the limited range of focus with looking at miniatures. So now, when we look at a landscape that was photographed with the above-mentioned tilt-shift effect, it makes us think we're looking at a photograph of a miniature. It also helps a lot to shoot the scene from above, as a miniature would be photographed. ---- Finally, we come to the computer \"tilt-shift\" effect. This is nothing more than drawing a line through the scene (typically parallel to the horizon) and having the computer blur the scene progressively away from that line. And if the scene is animated, you can do other things to make it look like a miniature, such as speeding up the time frame or making the animation a little jerky so it looks like it was generated with stop-motion animation. There's [another gallery on flickr]( URL_0 ) for these images.",
"I wonder if someone who had never seen a photograph before would think the scene was miniature?",
"Because of how perspective works. When you look directly infront of you, you are actually only focussed on one spot, and the area around is blurry and unfocused. Whereas in a wide landscape view, you can see a larger area in clear focus because it's further away. So when you add artificial blur to the latter, it mimics how we would see it if it was right in front of us.",
"There's a concept called Depth of Field (DOF). This is the range of distances where everything is in focus. The closer things are to the lens of a camera, the narrower the DOF gets. The farther away they are, the wider the DOF gets. (Other things affect DOF but we're going to assume they're not changing) Tilt-shift effects are playing with DOF to make it narrow. This makes us think the things in the image are very close to the camera, and therefore very small.",
"Everybody’s talking about how cameras work, but the really interesting part of this is how your brain works: the reason this works is there is a whole visual language that exists nowhere in the world but looks perfectly natural to you because you’ve seen it your whole life in images captured by cameras. There’s no such thing as a “lens flare” in real-world vision, and a picture can’t convey the brightness of a real-world scene, but you’ve seen so many lens flares in pictures that you automatically understand a lens flare *means* brightness. The same thing is true for depth-of-field artifacts. A camera’s focus is not a whole lot like how your eyes experience focus in the natural world, but you’ve again got a lifetime of experience unconsciously learning what the focus characteristics of an image mean. In the past you’ve seen lots of pictures of things you knew were supposed to be small, and tilt-shifting manages to trip enough of the cues you remember from those pictures that it tricks your brain. Honestly I think one of the reasons 3D movies make a lot of people uncomfortable, even give them headaches, is kind of an “uncanny valley” thing. You can see depth, but the focus is still locked to whatever came out of the camera(s), so your eyes don’t quite know what to do. You can’t just focus on stuff in the background and then back on something front-and-center the way you constantly do in the real world without thinking about it. I remember some shots in *Avatar* with a shallow depth-of-field (i.e., a really blurry background) being really distracting because of that."
],
"score": [
3054,
1209,
52,
33,
29,
17,
5,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.flickr.com/groups/tilt-shift-fakes/pool/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_camera",
"https://www.flickr.com/groups/tiltshift/pool/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo6yge | If we’re clean when using our towel after the shower, why should we wash it? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1w227",
"gu1we44",
"gu1w1c5",
"gu2psj0"
],
"text": [
"Well for one your towel is wet after you clean yourself on it. Then you leave it wet to air dry. That allows time for all sorts of things like molds to grow that love being on a nice wet absorbent surface like a towel.",
"We are not 100% clean after we shower or bathe. It's not like we completely disinfected our bodies, even if we did I assure you there would still be bacteria / fungi missed. So yes we are rather \"clean\" I suppose to our own human standards but there are still billions of bacteria and fungi all over our bodies. You should wash the towel since dead skin comes off and stays attached to the towel. Bacteria then grow on those bits of dead skin. In short, wash your towel. Especially if someone is immunocompromised or has a fungal infection. Yeah, reuse your towel for a day or so then wash it.",
"I'm pretty sure it's because all of your dead skin cells, hair, etc. get rubbed off onto the towel, so over time, the more you reuse the towel, the dirtier it gets.",
"I have 4 towels and I wash them once every four weeks. Why? They are the only things I got that is white. I'm not running my washer once a week just to wash one towel."
],
"score": [
113,
61,
16,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo73nw | - (How) does bacteria suddenly appear in an environment that is suited to it? | Where was it before? How was it surviving before the environment became appropriate for it? For example- anaerobic bacteria multiplying in a dead body once blood stops pumping, but where was it before? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu1ww8j",
"gu227r6",
"gu21qgb",
"gu1xnfb"
],
"text": [
"It was already there. Bacteria are everywhere. They're all over you. They're in you. They're in the air. They're in the soil. When you're dead and your immune system thus fails the bacteria can now go to town on you.",
"On and in your body alone, there are 10x more bacteria cells than human cells. They make up about 1-3% of your body weight [yes, really]( URL_0 ) And it's a good thing they're there! Lots of brain chemicals that make us not stressy and depressy originate in the gut. Not to mention they break down foods for us. Microorganisms are literally everywhere all the time!",
"Bacteria are everywhere - what this Covid19 stuff has done for me has shown me how few people really understand bacteria, viruses and all that. Most people want to believe we live in a sterile, clean environment most of the time. They also think \"bacteria = bad, dirty, harmful and must be cleaned up, disinfected, etc\" but that simply not true at all. There are many good and helpful bacteria that are all around us, all day every day. Our mouths are a toxic breeding ground for bacteria - no matter how much you brush, floss and use mouthwash. There's always bacteria in there......lots of them. The thing is most of them aren't harmful to us and/or don't cause us to get sick. But they're still there. They're also in our noses, blood, and most people know they're in our intestines. Did you know there are more bacteria living in your gut RIGHT NOW than all of the people who have ever lived on this planet in the history of this planet? And not by a little - by a hell of a lot. So to answer your questions directly: > Where was it before? Most of the times it was already around but may either have mutated or finally found a food source in sufficient quantities to where it was able to multiply at a rapid enough rate so as to make it more dominant and therefore noticed by humans. > How was it surviving before the environment became appropriate for it? For example- anaerobic bacteria multiplying in a dead body once blood stops pumping, but where was it before? Prior to the time when it became more dominant and therefore detected by humans, it was likely not able to multiply quickly enough before either dying from lack of food source or being handled by our immune system, washing of hands, natural death, etc. Yet it was likely still present.....the conditions just weren't adequate for it.",
"Small clusters or individual bacteria are spread everywhere, in the air, water, soil, in animals. When the environment changes, some species, that are better adapted for the new environment, will propagate at a faster rate and that can be noticed by us on the macroscale."
],
"score": [
70,
14,
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-human-microbiome-project-defines-normal-bacterial-makeup-body"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mo7m8o | Serotonin and Dopamine. What’s the difference and why is it important? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu20z43",
"gu214w1"
],
"text": [
"So in really simple terms, serotonin and dopamine have lots of different roles in the body and controlling mood is just one of those. Additionally, they are released in the brain in response to different things. There is debate around the exact ways they help with mood, but, in simple terms, serotonin stabilises mood and dopamine boosts happiness. There are many conditions caused by having too little of either.",
"So the reality is... we’re not entirely sure. We know that imbalances in neurotransmitters in the brain can create problems. We know that fixing them or adjusting them can improve those problems. We know, as neurotransmitters, how they activate neurons. Beyond that, we really don’t know much. Serotonin is considered a “happy” chemical because it is low in depression and anxiety. Dopamine is considered a “happy” chemical because its used in our reward/pleasure pathway. But both are used in other places in the brain and outside the brain for other purposes"
],
"score": [
9,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo925m | Why are deep-fried versions of food almost always so much tastier? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu2db9b",
"gu35x9o",
"gu2njly",
"gu41eu1",
"gu2e52l"
],
"text": [
"Fat! Sorry that the answer isn't fancier but deep fried food has literally been bathed in fat and the fat then is coating the food (after heat being applied fat is basically fused into teh food). And fat is a fantastic taste 'carrier'. To get a little mor complicated, fat activates certain receptors on our toung that then again stimulate activity in the brain creating the sensation that something tastes good (after some other chemical reactions happen in your body). But essentially it's 'Fat carries taste'",
"I'd deep fry it down to three elements. 1.Good deep fry menus use lots of carbs and fat(humans are literally designed to love this stuff). 2.Temperature and thermal conductivity. (The oil has to be hotter than boiling water and transfers the heat much faster than water or air 3.Malliard Reaction. The reactions between amino acids and sugars at a high(above 100 celcius) temperatures. Basically caramelization.",
"One aspect of it is that frying transfers the heat much more quickly than other ways of cooking, which positively affects the flavor and texture of the food. When you cook in a hot oven, you heat the air and the air heats the food, but air transfers its heat very slowly. That’s why you can reach your hand into a hot oven without hurting yourself (as long as you don’t touch any of the metal, which conducts heat very, very quickly). As an alternative, you can cook by immersing the food in hot water. Water transfers heat much more quickly (which is why you can easily stick your hand in a hot oven for a second or two but can’t dunk it in boiling water). But water can’t get any hotter than 212°F, and lots of food gets soggy if you get it wet, and both of those factors affect how the food turns out. You can get around those limitations by immersing food in hot oil, because oil transfers heat very quickly, but it can reach much higher temperatures than water and it doesn’t soak into the food as much as water does. So it allows you to very quickly cook the outside of something at very high temperatures without overcooking the inside or drying it out, which leads to crispy food. And you get some delicious fat added to the food as a bonus. Air fryers simulate this by using fans to continuously circulate a small volume of very hot air to increase the speed that the heat can transfer (kind like how wind chill makes air feel colder, only in reverse). This achieves similar heat transfer to hot oil, only without the oil.",
"1) texture: we like crisp things, especially when they’re tender within. The contrast is enjoyable to most people’s senses. The high heat cooking process combined with the coating of fat causes a super crisp exterior 2) carbs: human like starches and carbs, especially when combined with fat and salt. Fried food are often starches or starch coated and fried foods are usually heavily salted or heavily sugared. 3) flavor: since it’s a “dry” cooking process (like roasting or grilling) it technically concentrates the flavors of a food since if evaporates moisture from within the food.",
"Except Oreos. Deep-fried Oreos lose all the texture of the cookie, and just taste like fried crap."
],
"score": [
117,
19,
10,
9,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo9ds3 | What's the difference between path tracing and ray tracing? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu2e0gb"
],
"text": [
"Path tracing is a form of ray tracing. Ray tracing is a family of rendering methods based on shooting rays to estimate the path of light in a scene. There are many similar, but subtly different, ways to actually use rays to to render an image. Path tracing is kind of the brutish one. The idea with path tracing is that when a ray hits something, you just generate more rays going out from the collision point and use them to estimate where the light that hits this point is coming from. So you effectively trace the path of a bunch of photons in the scene (although usually in reverse, starting from the camera). The nice thing with path tracing is that the results are always physically perfect, so they look exactly like the scene would look in reality. The problem is that getting good results requires tracing billions or trillions of rays, which is really really slow."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mo9j09 | When your chest feels tight, for example during a panic attack, what causes this? Is your chest actually tightening up or is it purely in your head? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu2em78",
"gu2d4yv",
"gu2xa8b",
"gu2ox31",
"gu2j5sa"
],
"text": [
"Your chest is not actually shrinking (thank god). But it's not just 'in your head'. The feeling comes from a bunch of muscles contracting rapidly (most notably your heart) as well as your breathing ascelerating rapidly (aka your lungs going into overdrive). It's essentially your body going into (often contextually unnecicary) 'fight or flight' action mode but without the apropriate routine what to actually do. That's why slowing/focusing on your breathing often helps. You force your body out of that 'action mode' and actively tell your lungs to stop overreacting 😉",
"Anxiety disorders in a simplistic explanation is your body going through a flight or fight response unnecessarily. Your sympathetic nervous system is involuntary and determines the necessity of Adrenalin in your system (which causes the fight or flight response when you’re in danger). So when you get a panic attack, your nervous system is flooding your body with Adrenalin, which causes your heart rate to raise and your respiratory frequency to increase,and that’s when your chest will tighten up",
"Most of these answers are quite vague so I can add a little context for anyone who is interested. When you enter the fight or flight response, many things happen: 1. You hyperventilate. This causes a large reduction in carbon dioxide previously dissolved in your blood. Since CO2 is an acid, this actually raises the pH of your blood. The relative lack of H+ causes the calcium in your blood to take its place on a protein called albumin, which ends up essentially causing a false low calcium level. This is one reason why you can have muscle, tightening, twitching, etc. 2. Because of the effects of epinephrine (adrenaline) that is released by the adrenal glands during the stress response, blood becomes shunted away from your internal organs and more towards your muscles. This could explain why we develop the 'pit' in our stomachs and feeling like our hearts are in our throats. 3. The adrenaline released by the adrenals also causes tachycardia, or a fast heart rate. This increase in cardiac output may also contribute to a strange feeling in the thorax. 4. Interestingly, the adrenaline also acts as a bronchodilator, which means your airways actually increase their caliber during the response. So the fact that people feel like they cannot breathe during a panic attack could very well be psychological. Source: med student",
"Panic attacks typically induce shallow breathing, so your chest muscles get tight with the faster and more frequent contractions. This is why belly breathing is the #1 thing to do during a panic attack.",
"Long GAD sufferer here. I've never felt the anxiety in my chest, I always feel it in my stomach. It's not a stomachache per say but it feels worse and the discomfort/pain irradiates all over. It's interesting to see how anxiety affects everyone in a different way."
],
"score": [
187,
20,
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moabs6 | How does stuff like superglue or ink not dry up in the container or bottle that it’s in, but almost instantly solidifies once it’s out? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu2hesz",
"gu2o124",
"gu2hifs"
],
"text": [
"For most glues to dry, water in it must evaporate. With a closed bottle, the water can't go anywhere so it stays liquid. The reason it dries in the nozzle is because there's a hole there for the water to go. But once it dries, it clogs that hole and traps the water in the bottle again. Cyanoacrylate, or super glue, works on the opposite process. The liquid glue reacts with water vapor to harden, usually this is the water vapor in the air. The reason it doesn't dry in the bottle is still the same, water cannot get to it after the lid is closed or the nozzle is blocked from dried glue. Ink is also the same way. For ink to dry and settle, the water in it must evaporate. It cannot do this inside a closed plastic-pipe.",
"I'm yet to have a bottle of superglue that doesn't dry inside the bottle. I'm keen to learn what brand you buy :-)",
"If you leave the cap off long enough, it will. With the cap on the solvent (whatever the ink/glue is dissolved in) can't escape and so it stays liquid. Superglue actually undergoes a chemical reaction triggered by water, so as long as it doesn't pull too much water from the air it's fine."
],
"score": [
59,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mob05j | how can flies figure out to get inside your house but not out? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu2njl5"
],
"text": [
"Figure out is a bit of a misconception. Most insects aren’t actively trying to enter your home. They do it by mistake. Once they’re in they can’t get out because they don’t know the way they got in."
],
"score": [
17
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mobfe8 | why can't pregnant women donate blood? | Is there's something about a pregnant woman's blood that makes it less useful? Or is donating somehow bad for a pregnant body? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu2omqf",
"gu2p371",
"gu2r7aw"
],
"text": [
"It's potentially bad for the baby. When you are growing a person inside of you you need all of that iron and nutrients jn the blood to support that growing fetus.",
"Pregnancy is already a considerable strain. Putting more stress on the body is unhealthy for everyone involved.",
"Same reason pregnant women aren't allowed on rollercoasters. It's not that the coaster is less fun if you're pregnant (although I suppose that might well be the case depending on how far through you are!). It's because a rollercoaster/blood donation puts stresses and strains on the body in different ways. Given that growing a whole human being takes a load of effort, it's best not to push things too far in case your body or baby can't handle it."
],
"score": [
21,
19,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mobjkp | How does retinol, glycolic acid work on skin regeneration | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu2qmod"
],
"text": [
"Ok your skin renews skin cells daily. The top layer of skin does and sits on top of your face. Too much of this sitting on your face can cause acne and clogged pores which is why it's so important to regularly get this off. When you use glycolic acid the acid breaks the bonds holding those skin cells together. This let's the dead skin cells fall off very easily. It's just like using a face scrub to remove the dead skin cells except instead of physically scrubbing your face you are doing it chemically. Retinol works on the opposite side of your skin deep below. Skin will naturally produce new cells and push the old cells to the top where they die. Skin renews slower as we age and we produce less collagen. Collagen is responsible for keeping our skin looking plump and moist. With aging and less collagen you get wrinkles, clogged pores from slow cell regeneration, sun damage ect. When using retinol the cells regenerate quicker. This thickens the inner layer of the skin vs making it thinner with exfoliation. Thickening the inner skin structure prevents collagen from breaking down and strengthens the skin so wrinkles are less noticeable or even gone and sun damage is repaired. In a way it does also exfoliate the skin by speeding up cell regeneration and pushing more dead skin to the top. This is why both retinol and glycolic acid should never be used on the same day but it is safe to alternate the two (I have personal experience with this) Since they both work to renew skin and help get rid of the top layer of skin both are helpful with acne and preventing clogged pores. With this in mind, since there is less dead skin on your face and more new skin you will be more likely to get a sunburn. The two biggest rules with either is wear sunscreen every day and always use these at night away from sun and when your skin is in repair mode. Hope this help"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mocaif | How are legislative bills hundreds or thousands of pages long? Can they really not be more concise? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu2vcdu",
"gu35s95",
"gu2uerp"
],
"text": [
"If you read the text of a long bill, they aren’t thousands of pages of coherent narrative. They’re edits to existing laws. Often a seemingly simple change to an existing law requires dozens and dozens of replacements to existing laws. For instance, let’s say the government decided to make marijuana legal. There might be thousands of places in federal laws where marijuana is mentioned. In the US, the DEA has a role. The FBI has a role. The FDA has a role. Countless other agencies and bureaus likely have a role. Maybe there’s a law that drug tests park rangers and even that needs a small edit. So, a seemingly simple change — legalize cannabis — ends up as hundreds of pages of edits to existing law.",
"Depends on the legislature. For example, the most recent Act of the UK Parliament, the Contingencies Fund Act 2021, has [fewer than 200 words]( URL_0 ). Although that isn't necessarily representative; [the Sentencing Act 2020 has over 700 pages]( URL_1 ). Generally it depends on the law, what the law wants to do, and how much of what it wants to do needs to be included in the legislation itself and how much can be done via executive orders or secondary legislation (this may be a big problem in the US where the political situation at the Federal level makes delegated legislation unreliable). Laws in the US also tend to get particularly long because of how much influence individual members of the legislature have, so in order to pass legislation that does one thing, it has to have extra things added on so individual legislators will support it. Plus there are issues with page formatting and so on. Small pages, wide margins and double-spacing leads to long documents.",
"When you write laws, you need to be very very specific so that there's no confusion. If you write a law that says \"People who hurt others go to jail\" then there's questions. What counts as hurting? Does insulting people count as hurting? How long do they go to jail for? What sort of jail is it? Do we punish everyone equally? So, to clarify things, you need to make the laws very long with lots of details so that you explain everything, so that it's very clear about what the law means. This means that many laws end up becoming very very very long, especially because some bills or proposed laws can be trying to handle many different things at once that each need to be defined and clarified."
],
"score": [
27,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/9",
"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2020/17/contents"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mocld9 | / Why are women more sensitive to physical touch on their nipples than men? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu2voop",
"gu3huxf",
"gu33271"
],
"text": [
"Not sure they are? I’ve met men that have very sensitive nipples. More than mine. Don’t really think this is a fact, everyone is different.",
"It’s completely arbitrary and nongendered. I’ve been with men and women who had almost no sensitivity, and others (like myself) who are way too sensitive. As stated, I have noticed differences in sensation depending on my hormones (where I am in my cycle), but it really is individually based. Can’t assume anything.",
"While nipple sensitivity is not gendered, but an individual difference, the hormones involved in periods and pregnancy can make women more susceptible to breast pain overall (during those periods)."
],
"score": [
22,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mod4yp | Language and cultural wise— what are the origins of referring to (adult)women as girls, and (adult)men as boys? Does this happen in languages other than English? | Is this the right sub for my question? If not, suggestions would be very appreciated. Thank you in advance everyone | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3ay3e"
],
"text": [
"How I've most often seen it used is to diminish the person. So referring to an adult woman as a girl makes her more child-like and is sexist. In US, black males were referred to as \"boy\" even when they were elderly. It was an insult, again. I can't answer the last part of your question. The less common way I've seen it is when someone is in a professional or college setting who is in their 40s or older and has a coworker/classmate who is a very young adult. Sometimes it is mentally difficult to view them as an adult so they may call a female a \"girl\" basically meaning she is very young. Usually, they will correct themselves or clarify that they don't mean a minor, but someone who is young. Males seem to transition from boy to guy to man. So a male of the same age would be referred to as a guy. I started using \"guy\" around puberty for my male peers."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
modil8 | Why Can't Ailments Like Herpes And Psoriasis Be Cured By Medical Science? What Makes Them So Complicated? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu338mi",
"gu31vd4"
],
"text": [
"Herpes is a virus. We have cured precisely zero viral diseases...we can treat them, and we can vaccinate against them, but we can't cure them medically. Your immune system can, if you stay alive long enough to let it. That's why virus treatment focuses on managing symptoms. That's why you usually don't get the same strain of a viral disease more than once. We can't cure herpes for the same reason we can't cure the flu, the common cold, COVID-19, ebola, HIV, etc. Psoriasis is a whole other critter, it's some kind of autoimmune disease (where the body's own immune system reacts incorrectly and causes problems). The immune system is \\*really\\* complicated, and we need it (see: viruses) so if the immune system is attacking your own cells we can't just turn it off and it's really hard to get the immune system to selectively stop doing things while letting it keep doing the things we need it to do.",
"I'm not sure where you get the belief that we can cure so many human ailments, but we can't. People suffer every day from thousands of ailments that we have minimal treatments for and no cure. Hiv, diabetes, cancer, flu, als, ms, tons of auto immune disorders, etc, etc. The list is very very long."
],
"score": [
12,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
modv0j | How can my phone contact emergency services, despite signal? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu33osu",
"gu33ui2"
],
"text": [
"Carriers, by law, are forced to accept an emergency call from any device capable of communicating on their network (even if it's not a type of device whitelisted for their customers), regardless if the caller is a current subscriber or not For example, if only a Verizon-owned tower can be reached by someone who doesn't have any active service at all, the emergency call will connect through that Verizon tower.",
"Emergency servic calls can be routed through any and all networks, even from different service providers. So if you're in an area where your Service Provider doesn't have coverage, you won't be able to make normal calls, but if other SP have coverage emergency service calls can be routed through their Network"
],
"score": [
14,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moe2kf | How/why do people end up with astronomical health care bills "after insurance" if they have good insurance and an out-of-pocket max? | I've heard several anecdotes where someone says they have good insurance, yet they are on a payment plan for tens of thousands of dollars. Let's say someone's OOP max is $6k annually, how/why do they end up owing bills larger than this amount? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu357h0",
"gu34yj1",
"gu3829y",
"gu38848",
"gu384th"
],
"text": [
"Insurance companies can bypass that max by claiming that the procedure is \"not in network\" or can decline coverage at their whim. It's all a scam to keep the money in their coffers. It's why we need to join the rest of the civilized world and have a centralized medical plan. Cut out the insurance middlemen altogether.",
"Some services might not be covered by insurance. This might include certain medicines with no suitable alternatives, or an emergency medical service provided by an out of network provider. For example, I was stuck with the full bill from an ambulance a few years ago because my insurance decided the service (transport of a unconscious patient and treating wounds) wasn't medically necessary.",
"Insurance companies work contracts with hospitals and other medical professionals detailing how much they'll pay for specific procedures that they'll support depending on the situation. When something happens to you that requires medical treatment, you may get pulled into a hospital and be assigned a doctor. This doctor's main goal is to treat you to get you well. This doctor may not be intimately familiar with the terms of that contract your insurance company signed with the hospital. As such, the doctor may order tests and procedures that may seem necessary for your situation based off of the doctor's experience and your condition. After you have finished treatment and have been discharged, the hospital will draft up a list of everything that they did to get you well and send that list to the insurance company. At this point, the insurance company will look up the medical issue that sent you to the hospital and compare their list of expected procedures against the hospital's list of performed procedures. If a procedure performed is on the insurance's list, it will be covered. After all this, the insurance company will send you the list of everything performed that isn't on their internal list of expected expenses. Your out of pocket max only applies to covered procedures. This list is what everyone is talking about where they're expected to pay thousands after receiving medical care, even if they have good insurance. The perception that insurance coverage is good stems from the insurance companies advertising long lists of procedures that they'll cover. The issue is that most people have no idea what procedures they'll ultimately need if they end up in a situation where they need medical assistance.",
"Insurance companies can choose your treatment and refuse to pay for the treatments you choose. Example: I'm allergic to the inhaler my insurance approves for me, so I pay for my daily inhaler out of pocket even though I have insurance. Now imagine something like that with a cancer treatment. The insurance company approves something that is not what you and your doc think will keep you alive and give you a good outcome so you have to pay it out of pocket. Worse, as insurance is tied to employment, long-term illness can cost you both... then you have to pay out of pocket without an income. Fun times.",
"If you never go to the doctor, your insurance is paying for sick people. If you get too sick insurance drops you. It is all about profit. Bottom line. Insurance companies are not providing a product to the consumer, they are paying their stock holders with your monthly premium. It is a scam preying on our fears of “something bad” might happen."
],
"score": [
21,
11,
10,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
moe8gf | How can a blanket full of holes (think crochet etc) keep you so warm? | Growing up we had quite a few crocheted blankets we’d use and despite being literally full of holes, I’d often put my toes through them, they were the warmest blankets. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu36b4y",
"gu3av8w"
],
"text": [
"it’s the love they were made with that keep you warm. plus trapping the warm air in the between the stitchings is of assistance. machine made blankets only keep robots warm.",
"Cooling is generally done by conduction and/or convection. Conduction is heat being transfered by traveling through a material like metal or something. Convection is the heat being transfered by the material heating up and then moving (with the heat) to another place - think like a fan blowing on cooling fins of a motor. The crocheted blanket will still keep you pretty warm because the conduction is reduced because at least some of you in insulated by the yarns. But also convection is also reduced because even though there is a hole in the blanket exposed to air, the air cant really move very easily because the yarns get in the way. Since both conduction and convection are reduced...you stay pretty warm even though there are holes."
],
"score": [
19,
12
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
moemz1 | Why do streaming services/websites restrict viewing content based on region? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu38o01"
],
"text": [
"Here's an example... The new Star Trek shows are produced by CBS / Paramount. Therefore in the US, they are only able to be viewed on Paramount private streaming service. However, they don't offer this service in other parts of the world... so they sell the rights to broadcast those shows to Netflix outside of the US where they have no service of their own. Another example it's in the UK, where everybody pays for the BBC as part of their television tax... But they want to make sure that only those were paying get the service. Therefore they don't allow broadcasts of many of their shows outside the UK, other than through services that have paid the BBC for the rights to rebroadcast."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moenui | how come you don’t get pimples on your hand? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3a4xe"
],
"text": [
"There are no sebaceous glands on the hand, or hair follicles. Other areas have these which attract and trap oil and dirt."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mof410 | why are snakes associated with evil in western countries? | I mean as a symbol. I remember seeing a documentary on YouTube by this scientific divulgator guy that explains it very well but unfortunately i can't find it EDIT: yes i know the bible but why the snake? Something like snake detection theory | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu51d6b",
"gu3fdja",
"gu3d0z8"
],
"text": [
"As a counterpoint: the [Rod of Asclepius]( URL_0 ), often confused with the Caduceus, is the symbol for medicine and consists of a snake entwined around a staff. So not all western associations with snakes are negative.",
"Humans don't like snakes. We seem to have a built-in fear/dislike for snake-like creatures, probably an useful adaptation, as snakes can be actually dangerous. This is likely one big reason why snakes ended up playing the part of the baddies in many mythologies, including the jewish one, then inherited by christianity (as everyone is mentionimg here) and islam.",
"Beyond the Christian side, it's rare to meet domicile snakes. Most are territorial and people don't like getting bit. My buddy has Pythons and they're great, but they're primal animals incapable of doing anything for humans outside of being pretty."
],
"score": [
5,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_of_Asclepius"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mof7jr | How does muscle growth work? | I’ve (Male, 16) started working out recently. I’ve realized I have no frame of reference for how soon I should notice muscle growth. I’m most focused on defining my arms, but it’s not like I neglect everything else. I’m not very fit, and I’m trying to change that! So- how fast could muscle tend to develop in someone like me, exercising a few times a week? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3d91p",
"gu3c558"
],
"text": [
"Like Djeff said your muscle fibers tear with every training and they grow back a little bit thicker. As a beginner you will notice the nooby gains which basically means you'll grow in size and get strength improvement pretty easily. I guess after 1 to 2 months consistent training you will notice first differences. Most important factor in steady growth is progressive overload. The easiest way to do this is to increase the weight from time to time if you could handle it well enough before.",
"Muscles break apart, then the space between the muscles form together, making it longer and more steady. Over time, creating more muscle mass."
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mog0y9 | Why do our bodies get so sore/sensitive when we’re sick? | I think I’m coming down with something and the thought of someone/something touching me sends shockwaves through my body. So why does my body feel so sensitive and sore? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3icag"
],
"text": [
"It's your bodies immune response. Your body sends out antibodies to fight the virus and this causes inflammation so you feel sore. There is a dead set war being waged inside your body."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mog9lg | How does squinting help you see better? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3lz98",
"gu3rs4e"
],
"text": [
"The way I understood it was that it makes The opening smaller so only more direct light enters and strikes the retina, you get less light overall, so colors are less vivid, but the image is sharper.",
"Well let's start with something I know about, photography. Sometimes you see pictures where one thing is in focus, and the foreground and background are out of focus. I know that I'm already past 5 years old understanding, but bear with me. Other pictures you see, pretty much everything is in focus. Photographers know that a lens opening that is large allows more light into the sensor, but you have to be really careful about your focus. Large openings let in more light, but the \"depth of field\" (the area in focus) is very small. Flipping that, photographers know that small lens openings let in less light, but that also increases depth of field, so more - if not all - of the picture is in focus. There are other photography factors that contribute to this, but it's what you need to know to answer OP's question. In this sense, the eye works the same way. Now, understand a couple of things about the eye. First, the eye has a \"sweet spot\" in the middle where things are in focus, and things outside of the thing we want are is of focus. But our eye and brain don't care about that. Second, in low light the eye opens up so more light gets in but the eye is really only interested in the tiny spot that we're looking at. The problem with the eye starts when our eyes don't focus because of near- or far-sightedness, or astigmatism (again, outside of 5 year old understanding, but hang in there). So, we're in low light, and/or our pupils are large, and what we're looking at is out of focus. Our pupils are involuntary, we have no control over them. They're letting in a lot of light, but what we see is blurry. BUT, our eyelids are under voluntary control. Squinting decreases the opening of the eye. This makes more of the eye's depth of field have more areas in focus. If you have bad vision, try this... Take a piece of paper and poke a tiny hole in it. Turn out all the lights and look at your bedside clock. Eyes fully open, your clock is out of focus. Squint, and wow it's more in focus. Now take your paper and hold it close to your eye, like touching your eyebrow, and look through the hole with one eye. Your clock will be in focus. Not quite ELI5, but the best I can do. EDIT: fixed spelling and formatting errors"
],
"score": [
12,
11
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moh3az | How do plants know which way is up when they're seeds in the soil | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3pmaj"
],
"text": [
"Gravity pulls cells to the bottom. Once they reach a resting place, they send signals to the other cells saying \"we're at the bottom, if you're going down (a root) head this way\". Those that aren't going down, go up. This is the top answer on Google for your question. I don't mean to demean your question, I've always wondered about this myself 👍"
],
"score": [
13
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moh4vd | The movie 'Alien' had a budget of $11 million, and a box office total of at least $103.6 million. Yet 20th Century Fox claims that the film lost the studio $2 million. How does this happen? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3p6up",
"gu3p869",
"gu3p6bz"
],
"text": [
"Alien is a good example of [how accounting can be twisted to make profits seem a lot smaller.]( URL_0 ) This kind of BS is usually done by creating a subsidiary that holds the IP and paying it a huge amount of \"rights\". This moves all the profits to the subsidiary and allow the main company -Fox in this case- to avoid paying bonuses/royalties that would be indexed on said profit.",
"Hollywood uses several methods to reduce the profit their films generate to reduce taxes/royalties/etc. Essentially the studio will contract out work to companies they also own at inflated rates. So the studio wants to make a movie and the budget is 11 million to make the movie. But then they pay 95 million to a company they own to distribute/market the movie. So the movie \"lost\" money even though the loss was them just paying themselves through a separate entity they own. You can google \"Hollywood accounting\" for more information.",
"That’s probably just the filming and acting budget. There’s also marketing and licensing. And then of course the fees that they pay to a shell company to avoid taxes."
],
"score": [
17,
14,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moheka | How do they make instant coffee that dissolves when ground coffee does not dissolve? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3qryh",
"gu3ql8l",
"gu3w64j",
"gu3tfnv",
"gu3vk32"
],
"text": [
"Instant coffee isn’t coffee grounds. It’s freeze dried concentrated coffee. Basically they brew really strong coffee, throw out the grounds and dry out the liquid. The crust of crystals left over after drying it out is the instant coffee. There’s details like temperature and vacuum/pressure but that’s the basics.",
"Instant coffee is simply coffee that was brewed and the freeze dried to remove the water. Coffee grounds are actually pieces of the roasted and ground beans.",
"If you want a more interesting read, look up how freeze-drying was discovered and first used.",
"Instant coffee is made from the liquid you end up with after you brew a normal pot of coffee. Coffee grounds are already out of the picture at the point instant coffee comes into being.",
"When I worked at Starbucks years ago they introduced the Starbucks VIA instant coffee. They marketed it as “micro-ground” coffee, as in actual coffee grounds grounded up so fine that it dissolves in water. Reading comments in here is making me think otherwise because what everyone else is saying makes sense too, that it’s not actual coffee grounds; then again perhaps this “micro-ground” Starbucks VIA may be their own thing that differs from your standard instant coffee. Hard to say."
],
"score": [
21,
7,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mohutd | How does muscle memory work? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu478u8",
"gu3wock",
"gu48hgf"
],
"text": [
"Myelination is the answer. Each time an action is repeated the fatty sheath around the nerves used to complete the action is reinforced. Over time the reinforcement makes the nerves fire faster and more easily. The end result is that performing the practiced action is easier and more consistent.",
"Dont really know but I think it’s your brain remembering what signals to send to move your muscles in a certain way Ps: basically just you remembering how to move your muscles",
"Imagine the cells in your brain are like little towns connected by dirt roads. Every time a message gets delivered from one town to the next, the dirt on that road gets packed down a little harder, making the trip for the next messenger a little easier. Pretty soon the ruts in the well-traveled roads are so worn in, that your car just follows the road by itself and you dont even have to think about where you're going. This is great for doing a repetitive task, but makes it really hard to \"unlearn\" something like the [backwards brain bycicle]( URL_0 )"
],
"score": [
8,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/MFzDaBzBlL0"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moi4g7 | Why high O2 in the air makes bugs huge, but high CO2 doesn't make trees huge | I've read that in the past, insects used to be much larger due to all the O2. Shouldn't the current situation with CO2 buildup actually do the same for trees? And if so, why is it this way for insects only? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3wdxv"
],
"text": [
"CO2 isn't the limiting factor on the size for trees. Increased CO2 concentrations might mildly speed up photosynthesis but that changes how quickly a tree grows but not the maximum size. The maximum size of a tree is limited by how well it can move nutrients from its roots up through its bark to the tip of the tree. Oxygen is the limiting factor on how big bugs and things without real lungs can get. Higher concentrations of oxygen in the air mean that more oxygen diffuses through their pores into their body so critical oxygen levels can be reached slightly deeper so the bug can get physically larger Similarly for things with lungs, the higher the oxygen percentage the small the volume of the body that needs to be dedicated to lungs to capture enough oxygen."
],
"score": [
20
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
moi5uf | Do different nerves register different sensations such as touch or pain? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3x3bl",
"gu3y7jm",
"gu3ysgk"
],
"text": [
"I can tell you a little bit... I know there are different nerves for temperature and sensation vs. pain receptors. i had an injury to my hand and required stitches... they numbed it with a shot... but I could still feel cold and warm and texture... just not pain.",
"Had to do a little digging cause I haven't studied it but have read about it before. There's 3 primary groups of receptors in your skin, and they're all quite self-explanatory. **Mechanoreceptors** - Responsible for mechanical stimuli - stroking, stretching, vibration, etc. **Thermoreceptors** - Responsible for temperature-related stimuli. **Chemoreceptors** - Responsible for chemical-related stimuli (like histamines or even externally-applied chemicals that cause a response in your skin). Pain is registered by something called a nociceptor - which are special receptors that respond to potentially tissue-damaging stimuli. They are not one of the primary groups because they are often subtypes of the above mentioned groups. So there's thermo-based nociceptors, mechanical-based nociceptors, and chemical-based nociceptors. So yes, there are different receptors (cells/organs responsible for sensing and responding to things), the primary types are touch, thermal, and chemical, and the receptors for pain are a separate type that generally fall *under* the other 3. Beyond that I really couldn't tell you *how* nociceptors respond differently (if at all) to pain vs the other receptors to non-painful stimuli. [A whole lot more info on receptors here]( URL_0 )",
"Yes. To copy-paste my response to your duplicate post: So the way nerves work is pretty clever. Nerves are cells, and cells have membranes. This separates them into \"outside the cell\" and \"inside the cell\". The other piece of information you need to know here is what \"a metal ion\" is. A metal ion is the nucleus of a metal atom, but missing some electrons. This causes the metal ion to gain something called a \"positive charge\". Put a bunch of positively charged metal ions in the same place and they add up to give that place as a whole a positive charge equal to the total positive charge of the metal ions inside it (minus the total negative charge of any negatively charged ions inside it - simple maths). What nerve cells do is they put a bunch of positively charged metal ions outside themselves and get rid of as much charge inside them as possible. This means that relatively speaking, the charge outside the cell is higher than the charge inside the cell - there is a difference in charge levels across the cell membrane. This difference is normally maintained at a difference of -70mV. Now, nerve cells have a bunch of things in their membranes called \"voltage-gated ion channels\". Normally, ions can't move across cell membranes, but they can move across through ion channels. A gated ion channel means that the cell can open and close the channel, and a voltage-gated ion channel means that the gate is opened and closed based on the charge difference its exposed to. If these voltage-gated ion channels detect a smaller difference in charge levels across the membrane than -70mV, then they open. The ion channels relevant here do this at -55mV. When the channels open, a bunch of the ions outside the cell flood into the cell, which has the effect of making the inside of the cell more positively charged and lowering the charge difference. In fact, they lower it so much that the inside of the cell briefly becomes higher charge than the outside (+30mV). When this happens, the fact the difference is now higher than -55mV means that the ion channels next to the ones that just opened open themselves, and the same thing happens all the way down the cell, thereby transmitting the message like a game of Chinese whispers. The opening of one ion channel causes the ion channel next to it to open, all the way from one end of the cell to the other. This is what nerves do when they send a message. You may have figured out where this is going - for a message to actually be created, the first ion channel needs to be exposed to a charge difference of -55mV - the charge inside the tip of the cell needs to be increased by 15mV from its normal resting potential of -70mV. This is where the \"receptor\" part comes into play. The cells that sense particular stimuli do so because the stimuli causes the tip of the cell to gain enough charge to open the voltage-gated ion channels and send the signal all the way down the cell. Different sensations come from different mechanisms of doing this. Touch receptors have ion channels in their tip that open when squished. The pressure changes the shape of these ion channels, causing them to open a bit like squeezing a tube of toothpaste or something. Heat receptors have temperature-gated ion channels, which open when the temperature gets too high (cold receptors do the same but when the temperature gets too low). Taste and smell receptors do it when they come into contact with specific chemicals - sugar molecules for example stick to sugar-receptive ion channels and cause them to open. Light receptors, such as those in our eyes, contain a bunch of molecules called opsins that absorb specific types of light and increase the charge level of the cell when they do this. So, that's how different cells detect different stimuli. Pain is an interesting one though, because pain is actually imaginary. All cells do is they send a message that says \"Yo I'm doing a thing\". That message contains no information about the thing the cell is doing. To decipher information from it, the brain makes assumptions. It knows where that message is coming from and knows how to interpret that message. So when bob the heat receptor says \"Yo I'm doing a thing\", the brain goes \"Bob's doing a thing so the temperature here must be high enough for bob to want to do his thing\". Bob doesn't tell the brain that it's hot, the brain knows that when Bob is doing a thing it must mean that it's hot. This means that if Bob is tricked into doing his thing even when it's not hot, the brain will still assume that it's hot because it thinks that Bob only ever does stuff when it's hot. This is how spicy food works: Spicy food contains a chemical called capsaicin, that sticks to the temperature-gated ion channels and causes them to open even when it's not hot, so Bob the heat receptor does his thing even though it's not hot. The brain also interprets whether or not something is painful. If the pressure receptors in a particular area only do their thing a few times and then stop, or not many of them do the thing, the brain assumes that it's not a dangerous kind of pressure and experiences the sensation as just touch. If however all the pressure receptors are doing their thing constantly the brain goes \"oh hang on maybe this is actually a problem\" and decides to interpret it as \"pain\". There are also some special receptors that have low sensitivity - they only trigger when exposed to a very large stimuli - which the brain interprets as strong indicators that there's something really very wrong going on here, cos if it wasn't that bad, these cells wouldn't be firing."
],
"score": [
4,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wmopen-psychology/chapter/reading-touch-and-pain/"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moi8jf | How do people find digits of graham's number? | Like what the heck how do people know. It ends with 7, but hOw do people even know that? What's the mathematics used to even figure out such a number? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3ya1z"
],
"text": [
"The exact method depends on what kind of number you're trying to calculate, but here's an easy to follow example. Suppose I want to compute the last digit of the number 3^(3723139463824547766) (the exponent is just your username, interpreted as a number in base-36, so it's effectively random). This number is absolutely enormous: the *number of digits* in this number *itself* has 18 digits. But if we think about powers of 3, it's actually relatively easy to figure out. If you write out the powers: 3^1 = 3 3^2 = 9 3^3 = 27 3^4 = 81 3^5 = 243 If we continue this for a while, we notice a pattern: the last digits go **3, 9, 7, 1**, *3, 9, 7, 1*, 3, 9, 7, 1... If we think about this a bit, it's easy to tell why: if you write out multiplication by hand the way you did in elementary school, you'll see that only the units digit of the things you're multiplying ever affects the units digit of the output. So in effect, by multiplying by 3 at each step, we're really computing ...3\\*3 = ends in a 9, and then ...9\\*3 = ends in a 7, and then ...7\\*3 = ends in a 1, and then ...1\\*3 = ends in a 3 again. In other words, if the power is a multiple of 4, the last digit will be a 1. If it's not a multiple of 4, we just figure out how far off it is. As it happens, the exponent we actually have, 3723139463824547766, is 2 more than a ~~power~~ (EDIT: multiple, sorry) of 4. So the pattern around it goes ...1, 3, **9**, 7, 1, 3, 9, 7... In other words, 3^3723139463824547766 ends in a 9. ---- Graham's number is computed through a similar sort of repeated process, so this kind of logic can be applied there too."
],
"score": [
34
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
moi8m7 | What is the chemical/psychological path that flavors get from food > the tongue > the brain and how we perceive it? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu4aykm"
],
"text": [
"Chemical compounds from your brain touch special sensory nerves on your tongue (taste buds) and in your nose (olfactory sensory neurons) (your ability to smell actual at greatly influences how things taste). Those sensory nerves come in contact with the compounds from the food, and then send a signal through tour nerves to your brain. That signal then travels to your parietal lobe, the part of your brain that handles senses. Your brain then interprets those signals and creates the “qualia” or the “experience” How exactly your brain takes in those physical electro-chemical signals and turns them into the taste and smell of cake, French fries, strawberries, and steak, we have no idea. That process to get from the signals to what we actually experience is still not understood, we don’t know how it works, it’s called “the hard problem of consciousness” and applies to all experiences. Here’s a fun video on that: (There’s no such thing as Orange) URL_0"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WX0xWJpr0FY"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moiap8 | how did we distinguish between good and bad things? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu3wopb"
],
"text": [
"I would assume evolution, something dangerous or bad to touch or eat usually smells really bad like rotting fruit for example the smell is a good indicator to our brains to ‘not eat that!’ While good smells are usually sweet or fragrant like a flower again before we figured out a way to harvest and artificially create sugar sweet things were trickier to come by and harvest for most of humans past so we may have developed the liking of those smells too over time because those are smells you desire to smell and are linked to things you want to have or eat."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moimk2 | How exactly do solar panels work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu41cwk",
"gu3zfk2"
],
"text": [
"Solar panels are made of many photovoltaic cells linked together. Photovoltaic cells convert sunlight into electricity. They do this by allowing little particles of light, called photons, to knock electrons free from atoms. When these electrons are knocked free/separate from the atom, this generates a flow of electricity. How this works is the photovoltaic cells are made of semi-conducting material (like silicone. Semi-conducting refers to how well the material conducts electricity. We say “semi” because it isn’t the best conductor nor is it the best resistor, it falls in between, which makes it more versatile). This semi-conducting material is stacked on top of each other in two layers, which together are called the photovoltaic cell. Each layer of the semi-conducting material is given an opposite electrical charge (one positive and one negative), which produces an electrical field (did you ever do the experiment in school as a kid where you took two magnets, one positive and one negative, and tried to make them touch but they pushed back? That was because of a magnetic field. Electrical fields are the same, but with electricity). Now that we have an electrical field, the sun gets added in. Light has a physical form, called photons (light particles). The photons hit the solar panels and the photovoltaic cells that make up the solar panel. When they do this, the photons don’t just go through the panels, instead they knock electrons free of the photovoltaic cells. These electrons get caught in the electrical field and pushed out of the junction of the semi-conductive material. These electrons get forced by the electrical field to conductive metal plates on the side of the solar panel. They are then transferred to wires, at which point they’re like any other kind of electricity.",
"Photovoltaic cells have a sandwich of semiconductors that when light hits them it knocks electrons from their atoms, which generates an electric current."
],
"score": [
20,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mojgcb | Why do people talk different in walkie talkies? | For example, instead of saying "Are you here?" they say "Do you copy?" or "Negative" instead of no or "Affirmative" instead of yes. Why do they do this? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu43urb",
"gu444rt",
"gu481uv",
"gu497et",
"gu44988",
"gu4catv",
"gu49xqn"
],
"text": [
"Clarity! Often times over a radio sound is distorted, so enunciating certain letters helps with word recognition",
"Short words don't go over walkies very well. \"No\", \"yes\", and the like often don't come through clearly. Longer words are far more likely to come through. As for \"do you copy?\" I suspect it comes from the same clarity issue. \"Are you here?\" truncates to \"you here\" or \"here\" both of which can send a very incorrect message.",
"Phonetic reasons. If there is squelch, you may only hear one syllable but still know what it was. This is also why the phonetic alphabet is so unique in its sounds. It's much harder to be misheard or confused with other words.",
"I think a lot of those things were taught for radio operators in the military and made the way into civilian radio use. It's all so that you can be understood if the transmission is not very clear. And to signal that you did hear someone.",
"So there are a few reasons. One is clarity, as the other response said. Hand in hand with that is conciseness. If you spend a lot of time talking then you're taking up the bandwidth for any other comms. One of the best ways to increase conciseness is to increase clarity. If you can get your message across in one word why use two? Or three? Or worse, being unclear and needing to explain, taking up even more words.",
"Another issue is that only one transmitter can be heard on the channel at a time, and you have to “push to talk”, so you need to signify that your done speaking and awaiting response, “over” or done with the conversation altogether, “out”.",
"Put yourself in a combat situation. It's noisy, confusing, and chaotic, right? You need to be sure you're communicating clearly, simply, and quickly. Most of the walkie-talkie talk you're, um, talking about originated with military wartime communications. A lot of what sounds like mumbo-jumbo is shorthand as well - for example, \"over and out\" really means, \"I'm ending my transmission and will now shut off my radio.\" Does that help?"
],
"score": [
47,
23,
15,
8,
8,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mok2rh | Why are micro waves used to heat up food? | Why can't radio waves, infrared waves, or visible light waves be used to heat up food in microwaves? Why are micro waves preferred? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu497oy",
"gu4lz2u",
"gu480hd"
],
"text": [
"This is actually a fairly complex mechanism that many get wrong. Most think it causes vibrations in the water molecule but it doesn't! Instead it causes semi rotations due to the dipole geometry of the water molecule (dipole momentum). Microwave frequency is too low to allow a full rotation of the water molecule so it turns the water molecule about half way in which the water molecule then turns back the other way. This causes intermolecular friction with neighboring molecules and thus heat! So put simply in another way: the microwave causes a little half spin of the water molecules and this creates friction between neighboring molecules.",
"The how has been pretty well covered. The discovery of it is pretty interesting though and deserves a mention. Heating food with radio waves was actually first done with shortwave radio shortly after we developed vacuum tubes that could generate shortwave radio. The more practical heat food with microwaves effect was first discovered by a radar tech working on microwave radar (also shortly after the magnetron was developed that have us the ability to generate microwaves) Dude noticed some chocolate had melted in his pocket. Little bit intimidating when you also note that -he- was getting microwaved a bit. After that he deliberately pointed the thing at some popcorn, and exploded an egg too. After some further tests pointing the microwave radar into a metal box to trap the microwaves with some food they then had what is essentially a modern microwave.",
"Microwaves *are* radio waves. You can use a different band of radio waves, but producing and containing them cheaply and safely at such high power gets more difficult. You also lose penetration depth with higher frequencies - the inside of your food stays cold. This worsens further with IR, visible, and UV, where only the very outer surface is heated. Cooking food in an oven is similar to \"IR cooking\" it."
],
"score": [
11,
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mokq7p | why are simple tasks like re-rolling a toilet roll so hard to get right? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu4cb9b",
"gu4hxw8"
],
"text": [
"The issue here is that simple doesn't imply that it also doesn't require a high degree of precision. It's simple to roll paper onto a roll. However, it requires a high degree of precision to do it properly.",
"Cos you need to git gud. Often when a simple task goes catastrophically wrong, it's because the way the task works amplifies failure over time - fail early on and it'll lead to more failure in future, which will lead to even more failure after that. This can also make it so that you can't figure out why it went wrong. It just suddenly went wrong somehow. When this happens, you're just coming to notice that it's gone wrong. Rolling a toilet roll is a great example. Each tiny inaccuracy in the roll will cause the paper to gain an angle, but that angle will take many more rolls to actually become noticeable. It's a tiny mistake you don't notice until it's already too late to correct it."
],
"score": [
8,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mol0n6 | Why is a person’s first reaction after doing something bad to cover their mouths? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu4gtpr"
],
"text": [
"Our first response to something shocking is to inhale sharply. This is done through our mouths. This inhale reflex is the same whether it’s a physical shock (a sharp pain, a jostle) or a psychological shock. The reason we inhale when we receive a shock is to quickly grab oxygen. It’s a pretty basic survival reflex that links right back to the moment of our birth. We’re born with a shock, we inhale, our lungs inflate, we live. If we don’t inhale in that moment, we don’t inflate our lungs, and we die. Reflexes never leave us, so we sharply inhale with shocks our entire lives. Covering our mouths is a self-silencing move. It’s done unconsciously, but it’s literally the same manoeuvre as when a person holds their hand over a small child’s mouth to silence them. We are literally using our bodies to say to ourselves, “dude, don’t blow this.” We have a lot of body language like this. Self-comfort takes the form of hugging yourself and rocking back and forth. Self-silencing can be pressing your fingers or hands to your lips. Gesturing with your hands can be a ‘go on, go on,’ gesture to yourself. It’s a really interesting area of physio-psychology."
],
"score": [
49
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mola8j | Why does taking photos using the Rule of Thirds produce much more aesthetic images than centering the object? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu4l87t",
"gu4ha4t"
],
"text": [
"The first thing that comes to my mind is movement. Having the subject framed at one of the thirds intersections keeps the viewer’s eyes moving around the photograph. It’s not stagnant. Some photographs are able to be captivating without using this “rule”, but understanding the dynamics of shape, form and movement in a still image generally help when breaking the rule successfully. I’m a professional photojournalist if it matters.",
"I suspect it triggers something about how we look at faces. When dealing with other people, we have evolved to pick up the tiniest hints of movement in someone's face. Especially, the eyes and the corners of the mouth. If you look at an average face, eyes and corners of the mouth are pretty much at the intersections of the thirds, vertically and horizontally. Wouldn't surprise me, if we have a tendency to look more closely at these thirds points in any visually perceived object, and if we find something of relevance there, it clicks."
],
"score": [
15,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
molx9h | Why is the logic in mythology always so nonsense? How does everyone end up agreeing that the story should go like that? | I am not talking about things like "The goddess was born from sea foam.", but "Dig many holes so the dragon's blood will flow into the others instead of the one that is directly below the wound that you just made." You would think that with thousands of people retelling the stories all over time and space, *someone* would go "Wait a minute, that makes no sense." | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu4jda9",
"gu4lqwn",
"gu4l4a8",
"gu4pg7f"
],
"text": [
"Plenty of people probably did recognize it doesn't make any apparent sense. Neither does Santa Claus delivering presents to everyone in the world, or trolls guarding bridges unless you know their true name, or girls breaking into bears' houses to steal their porridge. Ancient people weren't especially concerned with the consistency or sense of the stories, in part because things ancient cultures didn't understand or that seemed weird happened to them all the time. Rituals like \"put a bunch of cow poop on your field before you put the seeds in\" didn't make any apparent sense to ancient people, but by tradition they did it anyway - ancient people lived by traditions, not by scientific principles. Many people today still do. They were concerned with the traditions and norms they passed on, and obviously supernatural beings could break the rules as much as they liked. And culture carries a meaning all its own just because it's *your* culture: the same way a parent in Europe today might feel warm and fuzzy watching their kid listen to stories about Santa Claus, an ancient parent might have felt when their kid came running into their room asking for a bedtime story about Zeus.",
"Not everything that’s true needs to be literally true. Some ideas get repeated and passed on because there’s some benefit to believing that they’re true. Every parent knows that you can tell your kid something that isn’t literally true without the intent to deceive them.",
"A fellow Tasting History fan, I assume? Odds are, everyone (like I did) just figured Sigurd held his shield above his head like an umbrella, or he dug the other holes deeper and connected them to his hole so the blood will flow through his main hole into the other ones.",
"Just look into any religion that people believe in today and you get similar stuff. Why is Eve made from Adams's rib any more believable than a goddess that was born from seafoam? Both are an example of stuff that does not work in the real world so you need to add something that is equivalent to magic to both to make it work. So people believe stuff in the past for the same reason as today."
],
"score": [
33,
6,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mom0dy | Business contracts when a friend offers money to help you reach capital | I don't understand. Are they an investor, a partner in the business....please help, I am 5 :) | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu4lgcm"
],
"text": [
"Let’s start with what an investor is. An investor is someone who gives money to another person or business for the purpose of eventually gaining a profit. It’s not a loan or a gift; an investor wants to put in money to later get much more money. They do this by providing money in return for an agreement that the business or person who receives the money will later pay them (this is not a loan repayment, though). A partner only exists when there is a legal “partnership” of some sort. This means someone who gives money to an S-Corp or a C-Corp, etc cannot be a partner, because those are corporations, not partnerships. There are two kinds of partners in a partnership, a general partner and a limited partner. A general partner is responsible for (meaning liable for if sued) a partnership’s debts and contracts, as well as ALL actions of ALL other partners in the business, unless there’s an agreement otherwise. A general partner’s profit share is based on the percentage they invested in the partnership. A limited partner is only responsible for their own investment. However, in return for this more limited liability, a limited partner can’t make management decisions for the partnership and their profits have to be based on a written agreement, not on the percentage they invested in the partnership. Whether they are a partner or an investor is usually determined in a contract that is written up when the investment is being made. If you write up a contract and call someone a partner or call them an investor, that’s what they are unless the issue winds up in court (there are a number of ways this happens. Depending on the type of business you have, a partner may have personal liability for problems with the company, but an investor would not. Also, a partner would have more rights in the company than an investor would. So whether it’s some outside person or your friend doing the suing, it could be an issue in court where the judge or jury will determine whether the person really is what the contract said they were, or if they took on a role more like the other role). You are going to want a contract where you write all this out. It will make your life much easier. That being said, if you don’t have a contract, it’s more complicated. Here, like with a contract, what you say a person is will be what they are UNLESS it winds up in court. But it’s way more complicated to prove one way or the other. TL;DR: it depends on what you write in the contract at the time of investment, what your business is legally structured as, and how the person acts in their role."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
momh1k | How does gut health affect your skin? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu4sdcn",
"gu4part"
],
"text": [
"One of the major anti-inflammatory substances used by our bodies to regulate inflammation is butyrate (the anion of butyric acid). This, along with other short-chained fatty acids, including propionate, are [made by gut bacteria]( URL_3 ) as they consume dietary fiber, and are then absorbed by our guts into our bloodstream. However, your gut can be unhealthy by being starved of fiber, because if you don't eat enough fiber, you influence the ratios of the various kinds of microbes in your gut, hurting those that need fiber (and produce butyric acid) while favoring others that may produce TMA (trimethylamine), which your liver turns into TMAO (trimethylamine oxide), which is harmful for your health (both cancer risk and cardiac health). Eating insufficient fiber can contribute to inflammation indirectly by reducing the precursors of our major anti-inflammatory nutrients. (I don't know if \"nutrient\" is the right term for this, since we don't eat it; we absorb it from byproducts of our gut bacteria digesting the fiber that we ourselves can't digest.) Butyrate also influences your body's gastric emptying and blood sugar response (any medical experts who know better, please correct me if I'm mistaken), and other things I can't remember off the top of my head. This is why when you eat beans (which are really rich in fiber), you get the \"[second meal effect]( URL_2 )\" where the fiber from your meal of beans influences the rate of blood sugar rise on you even at your next meal after your meal of beans. If you don't have healthy guts (in this specific way—you don't eat enough fiber, which is not unlikely if you're American, since about [95% of Americans don't eat enough fiber]( URL_1 )) you will be more prone to inflammation. So what skin problems are downstream of inflammation? Acne, rosacea, and indirectly increased risk of cancer. Inflammation plays a large role in abnormal angiogenesis. (Angiogenesis means the growth of blood vesselsl.) [Without angiogenesis, microscopic clusters of cancer cells cannot become a tumor and cannot spread throughout your body]( URL_0 ). Because of this, inflammation and abnormal angiogenesis increase your risk of developing cancer. This is not just for your skin; this is a systemic problem, but your skin is part of your body that does not do well when it is exposed to chronic low-level inflammation. In the case of acne, it was thought that clogged skin pores led to a build up of sebum which then leads to bacteria feeding on the sebum, multiplying to the point of infection, causing an immune response, leading to inflammation. However, Nicholas Perricone (who went on to make a name for himself with his own skincare products, if you're wondering why that name sounds familiar) discovered that inflammation at the cellular level actually precedes skin pores getting clogged, since it is the inflammation that makes your skin pores get sticky and fail to exfoliate the dead cells from the inside of the pores properly. Inflammation gets worse at the end of the cycle, but it actually precedes the clogging of the pores, and is not merely the result of it. Addressing inflammation to a large extent helps abate acne from the inside, apart from any face washing and skincare applied to the surface of your skin. So, to summarize, one of the biggest things gut health influences is the abundance of anti-inflammatory short-chained fatty acids, which influences inflammation across your entire body, and inflammation influences the health of your skin in various ways.",
"A healthy gut breaks down nutrients that your skin needs to stay healthy. Therefore, they get absorbed easier into your body, where they are then transported* to your skin. An unhealthy gut has a hard time breaking down these essential nutrients that you consume, making it less efficient to absorb your food. *and usually altered or refined in some way."
],
"score": [
46,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.ted.com/talks/william_li_can_we_eat_to_starve_cancer",
"https://www.vox.com/2019/3/20/18214505/fiber-diet-weight-loss",
"https://nutritionfacts.org/video/beans-and-the-second-meal-effect/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid#Immunomodulation_and_inflammation"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
momoxr | What do animals actually do during hibernation? | Do animals actually 'sleep' for such long periods of time? If so, how do they stay asleep for so long? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu4n90h",
"gu4ng9r"
],
"text": [
"Hibernation means the animal literally just sleeps. It cannot get any meaningful amount of food during the winter so instead he just kinda skips it. He sleeps all the way through to conserve energy instead of walking around and doing stuff, and the fat it put on right before winter is whats being broken down and consumed to keep him alive and fed. He then wakes up again in spring when hunting is viable again.",
"It depends on the animal. There is not a singly type of hibernation as many different animals have developed hibernation independently and does it in different ways. When hibernating there is usually long periods of deep sleep or at least very low activity. But there may be some periods when they wake up for some things. This could be compared to how you might wake up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and then go right back to sleep. Exactly what they do depend on the animal."
],
"score": [
66,
40
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mon365 | . Why do immunizations get injected into muscle. Wouldn’t it spread faster in your body if injected into a vein? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu4p6cv",
"gu4pkgg",
"gu4p7ac"
],
"text": [
"Vaccines aren't meant to spread fast. They are meant to create a local \"infection\" in order to stimulate an immune response.",
"Muscles have better blood supply unlike the fat layer. Muscles can recruit immune cells ,the dentric cells,which can migrate into lymph system. Also injecting vaccines into muscles minimize the side effects. The vaccine that is injected into a vein is more vulnerable to destruction due to immune cells of the blood , before it gets to a lymph node",
"You don't want to to spread fast where it may quickly be identified by immune cells as a foreign invader and quickly killed off. You want it to be injected into the area between cells where it can linger and depending on the type of vaccine either infect a cell to create more viruses or slowly trickle into the blood stream"
],
"score": [
30,
11,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mono5d | Why the lighted area cast by square and rectangle ( See hte linked photo ) looks like circles ? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu4tsch"
],
"text": [
"Mostly because the sun is not punctual but a circle, the shadow of an object is meant to be blurry if the light source is not punctual. It's like a shadow from a large neon light, the shadow will be blurry because it's the superposition of many shadows coming from light emitted from the many parts of the light. The second reason is diffraction, light kind of jumps around edges of objects and. that makes for very slightly blurry shadows."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
monqgn | Why do extreme temperatures (hot and cold) make sore muscles feel better? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu4yh92",
"gu5358z",
"gu52w08",
"gu57bjj",
"gu59hsz",
"gu58xlj",
"gu5dkja",
"gu7f0wx"
],
"text": [
"Your blood vessels constrict ( & this reduce blood flow) when cold & dilate ( & this increase blood flow) when warm. Reduced blood flow tends to reduce swelling (useful shortly after an injury or using muscles). Increased blood flow tends to improve healing (useful once the swelling decreases).",
"I'll try my best for an ELI5: ~~when we do exercise the muscles in our bodies do loads of little burps as they work. These burps can build up and cause our muscles to feel sore. Some people like to get into really really cold water because this can help! When we get in the cold water our brain worries a little bit about how cold it is and so it pulls the blood from our muscles to help keep us warm. But this also pulls the burps out too! Then when we get out of the water the blood goes back to our muscles but without those burps stinking up the joint! Instead the burps have been replaced with good things our muscles need to heal!~~ (Edit: I know it's not gases but kids like burps, hell I'm 37 and I like burps hahaha) Edit 2: thanks for all the love all and to the kind bestower of gold! My very first ever **Edit 3:** well sorry folks looks like I've been spreading misinformation! I'd always thought that lactic acid build-up was one of the causes of pain in muscles post exercise when it isn't. Seeing as this post was created around a false premise I'll strike it. Many thanks to u/brerchicken for the heads up!",
"Source: US DO student Cold numbs pain. When cold the blood vessels in muscles constrict to preserve heat. With less blood flow, the hormones that signal pain take longer to travel and break down before being as effective. Whenever muscles are hurt they release chemicals into the blood that encourage more blood flow to the area to help recover which also increases the pain signal. These chemicals, like milk, have an expiration after which they no longer work. This is because recovery should only take place temporarily as it uses a lot of the body’s limited blood supply Once the pain is bearable heat applied briefly (20 minutes) allows more blood to flow as the quick application of heat allows blood to flow more smoothly and quickly, allows the enzymes in cells to work more quickly which includes hemoglobin releasing oxygen more readily Heat when applied for very long periods may end up heating up the entire body, which results in more blood going to the skin across the entire body in an effort to release excess heat by conduction. A larger portion of Blood is normally stored deeper in the body away from the skin, like hiding under a blanket. Or another way, it’s like holding an ice cube in your fist versus touching with one finger. More blood closer to the skin allows more of it exposed to room temperature. This would limit blood supply to the injured region, though more serious problems such as burns are more likely especially if using heat that’s significantly higher than body temperature such as boiling water in a bag. Also the body region will also sweat and when trapped under a pack for a long period will promote bacterial growth. Edit: Grammar Edit2: Thoughts about heat pack duration added",
"Hot / cold therapy: Cold water makes blood rush away from the area Hot water makes blood rush to the area Using hot/cold therapy increases circulation to the injured area speeding up the healing process.",
"When you workout, for example, your muscles produce a lot lactic acid as a product of burning sugars to release energy. That's why sometimes you can feel the pain flowing to nearby parts of your body. This is when you want to use cold water, because this will improve circulation and help to remove the latic acid from the muscle. After that you want to use hot water, because it will help you muscle to relax. Relaxing helps it to not be so tense and not hurting all the time. The way is more or less like that: hurt? Yes. Go cold. Then go hot.",
"As someone with chronic sciatica, the following works well. After work or exercising with pain ice packs are good, if no pain is there then heat packs are the go to promote blood flow and healing.",
"When you work out or do anaerobic physical activity, your muscles produce lactic acid. Getting in an ice bath constricts your blood vessels and muscles which helps to squeeze the acid out. Heat dilates the blood vessels helping to improve circulation to get it out and oxygen in. It advances the recovery process. The immediate relief comes from what others are saying. It serves as additional stimuli to the nerves which covers up some of the pain.",
"Pain is a signal from your nerves. The signal travels on small fibres. When you put hot or cold on your body other nerves feel this sensation, but send it over big fibres. Both meet up at the spine but the signals that come in on the big fibres are given priority. This is called gate control theory is why both hot and cold work. Other things are also happening. Cold constricts blood vessels, reducing swelling. If swelling is what is causing the pain, there will be less pain. Cold also slows down how fast nerves can send signals. Fewer signals = less pain. Heat lets more blood enter the area. This brings nutrients. Sometimes pain is caused because muscles or structures aren't getting enough nutrients so they 'cramp' up. The extra blood lets them relax, which can reduce pain."
],
"score": [
6219,
471,
313,
66,
8,
7,
5,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mopk50 | Why do chia seeds turn slimy when you mix them with liquid? | Is this a seed thing or specifically a chia thing? If it's a seed thing, what other seeds can I use to make pudding? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu525yw"
],
"text": [
"It's caused by mucilage, which is a gel-like polysaccharide coating common to (almost) all plants, albeit not always in useful quantities. Vinaigrette dressings are emulsified with the mucilage from mustard seeds, for example, while flaxseed mucilage is a common vegan egg substitute. It's also commonly found in plant roots. In theory you could make pudding with almost any seed, although mustard seed pudding might not be particularly palatable."
],
"score": [
24
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mopkc7 | I hear about SAAS all the time but what is SAAS 2.0? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu54cwh"
],
"text": [
"SaaS \"1.0\" are largely fixed solutions, the premise of SaaS \"2.0\" is that they will let you create tailored solutions on top of a provided base, along with the tools you need to tailor it. Software as a Service (SaaS) \"1.0\" is where a company provides a useful service to you (or more likely an organisation). This could be something as simple as office tools (a word processor, email, etc think Office 365) or an accountancy system or a network DMZ, for example something Akamai provide. In each of those cases you get what the vendor gives you with little tailoring. In SaaS \"2.0\", which is just a pundits thought experiment, the idea is that you get a toolkit to build your own bespoke SaaS tailored to your needs. If you want an accounting system that handles single, or triple, rather than double, entry you can build it. Need something to to handle UK-US customs and taxes you can do that."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moqapw | Can brine from Desalination Plant be made into consumable salt? | Desalination process produces a lot of brine as a byproduct, which is released back into the sea. Can those brine be processed to be safely consumable by human? They can sell those brine to the market as sea salt, thus both helps the environment from those harmful byproduct and reduces the cost of desalination plant's operation. | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu5e81f"
],
"text": [
"Yes, you can. That’s basically just the sea salt production system and there’s obviously a market for that. But it does *not* reduce the cost of operation of the plant. Evaporating water is very energy intensive and a desalination plant is producing waaaaay more salt in brine than anybody needs for sea salt. Salt is already really cheap. So you’re talking about producing a huge extra quantity of a product with a very low selling price that costs a lot to make. You lose money. If it made money, you can bet they’d already be doing it. Actual sea salt production often uses sunlight (free energy) but that’s slow. It can’t keep up with the output of a desalination plant. Edit: typo"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
moqc79 | Why does cold air feel "fresh" while hot air feels "gross"? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu568wq"
],
"text": [
"Warm air holds moisture better, so the humidity might be why you don’t like hot air. It could also be your perception of hot and cold. Since the human body is constantly releasing body heat, warmer air would mean that there’s less place for the heat to go. This means the rate that you give off heat is slower and more heat remains in your body, which can be uncomfortable."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
moqy6r | - Why do we lose control of certain body function(s) under stress/anxiety even when the mind is aware of the right thing to do? | example: in life threatening situation, the mind knows running away is vital but the legs are too wobbly to run Slurring during presentation when the mind is trying its best to push the words out accurately | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu6g4xi",
"gu66sxy"
],
"text": [
"I like thinking of the stress response as getting ready for a bear fight. Modern stressors are often confusing for this very ancient and primal response. A hard day at the office, for example, is basically like a bear fight with no bear. > in life threatening situation, the mind knows running away is vital but the legs are too wobbly to run. One of the more common misconceptions is that the stress response is fight/flight/freeze. There is a fourth option, when your mind doesnt see any way out- give up and die. Or merely play dead, perhaps. You can absolutely 'shock out', biologically concede as it were, waiting to see if fate intervenes. > Slurring during presentation when the mind is trying its best to push the words out accurately Nature never really expected that you might have to wow the bear with an effective PowerPoint presentation. The stress response hijacks resources from 'non-essential' brain areas; in this case Broca's area, a part of your brain used to process and produce verbal language. This is why it's common to get 'tongue tied' in stressful situations. Those parts of your mind are experiencing reduced function. Somewhat paradoxically, immediate recall is being boosted- on hopes that previous situations might hold insight to strategically outplaying the bear. So you might think of dozens of mishmashed 'things to say in an urgent situation' but without verbal processing, you're going to struggle when it comes to saying them. This may explain the almost universal experience of [l'esprit_de_l'escalier]( URL_0 ); after the situation is over, and normal function is restored, its suddenly much easier to assemble and imagine the perfect thing to say.",
"It's related to the fight or flight response. When your mind decides that flight isn't an option it tries to keep you as still as possible in order to play dead. That's been a survival strategy throughout the evolution."
],
"score": [
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'esprit_de_l'escalier"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
moqyjr | when a website temporarily "goes down," what is actually happening? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu5c7fh",
"gu5atmq"
],
"text": [
"Many people think of websites like a movie theater, where if you want to see a movie (website) you just go to the theater number (web address) and the movie is being shown there to everyone watching. However, it's much more like the early Netflix model where your movies came in the mail. You request a movie (http request) and its delivered to you (http response). There are lots of reasons you cant get your request met. Maybe there are too many people requesting that movie, the movie is being updated (and for some reason they didnt want the old version to be sent out on the meantime), or maybe your request isnt getting through in the first place. It's also possible that the place that ships the movie to you (a physical server somewhere) has lost power (although this is getting less common as it's really easy to have a backup server in another region). Sometimes if there are large updates to a website, sites respond to all requests with a simple webpage that explains that there is a outage.",
"basically somewhere between the servers and you the stuff running the website stops working Can think of it like, \"why did my car stop moving\" - that's not enough to tell you why, could be gas, wheels, engine, transmission etc. For a website it depends on the website architecture but essentially the same idea, one or more of the components required to get the site to your computer aren't doing what they need to be"
],
"score": [
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mor0wy | How do researchers give mice cancer purposefully? | So I read about a new study on a solution for brain tumors, and they casually mentioned giving the mice tumors in the experiments/trials. WHAT They claim the research turned out very promising. But how is this done? And can humans be safe from whatever means researchers are using to achieve this...odd...goal? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu5f2je",
"gu5h066",
"gu59rex",
"gu5s3vy"
],
"text": [
"Along with the out the answers here mice are just super prone to cancers, so as long as you maintain a large enough breeding populations you’d likely always have quite a few individuals with cancer",
"Researchers order mice from breeders who breed genetic lines that are prone to specific types of cancer that is being studied. This is why mice studies do not model what will happen in humans.",
"A common way to do this is with radiation. You purposefully expose the mice to harmful levels of ionizing radiation which increases their chances of developing cancer. The researchers doing this makes sure that only the mice gets the harmful radiation exposure. The type of ionizing radiation they use have very short range and the irradiated area will be shielded preventing any of the radiation to go outside.",
"> They claim the research turned out very promising. But how is this done? And can humans be safe from whatever means researchers are using to achieve this...odd...goal? Giving the mice cancer is not the goal. Mice are *fairly* similar to humans, so the mice are given cancer and then treated somehow to get an idea of how that treatment would work in humans with cancer. If the research turned out promising, it probably means the treated mice fared better against the artificial cancer they were given for the study."
],
"score": [
6,
5,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mosego | If whales and dolphins breath air like humans do, why then can't they survive on land? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu5i2t1",
"gu5i9f2",
"gu5hsqv"
],
"text": [
"Whales and dolphins are adapted to be immersed in water, meaning evolution got to cut a whole lot of corners. 1. Since they're constantly surrounded by water, their bodies have devoted close to zero stuff to conserving it. So they die of thirst really quick. 2. Since things float in water, they can cut corners on body support structures, or just grow to be literally the largest animals on the planet. Take away that floatiness and it just collapses, because their bones and such aren't up to the task, at very least it stops them from breathing well, their lungs are getting crushed by their own weight. 3. Since their heat regulation systems evolved with the assumption that they're constantly surrounded by water, they don't handle the sun very well.",
"They have a thick layer of blubber to keep them warm in the water but out of water this just tends to overheat them and cause dehydration, also they can drown because there blow holes get covered by the tide coming in. Plus (whales in particular) they basically crush themselves with their immense weight out of water.",
"Because they've grown too big, the force of gravity from their weight if they left the water for too long would kill them (just the whales really), plus lack of mobility would cause them to starve"
],
"score": [
66,
10,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mot153 | How do trees decide where new branches grow and when they sperate from the main trunk? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu62xmf"
],
"text": [
"The plant generates growth hormone within the stalk. When there's enough of it, a new bud is created at the center, and then migrates out toward the boundary of the stalk where it becomes a new branch. As it migrates, it consumes growth hormone. The next bud that forms will head out in a different direction where the growth hormone hasn't been depleted. That's why the first two leaves/branches/petals are almost always 180° away from each other. Subsequent buds will head out at different angles. Vi Hart does an excellent 3-part video series on the nature of plants, spiral growth and the Fibonacci sequence. [Part 3]( URL_0 ) explains the part about growth hormones and such."
],
"score": [
17
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14-NdQwKz9w#t=2m"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mot99n | How do birds keep their nest clean of waste produced by their offspring? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu5of6z",
"gu5sudf",
"gu5qkl1"
],
"text": [
"the mom eats the baby's poop: URL_0 Well that's just one way. But there are many other ways. That vox video kinda cover it all.",
"some birds, specifically woodpeckers iirc, produce mucus around their anus that envelops their shit and piss when they’re young, which creates little shit bubbles that the parents can easily pick up and evacuate from the nest (or eat)",
"As the other guy said. There's an awful lot of poop, pee and vomit eating/licking in the animal kingdom. Though pee isn't relevant to birds exactly."
],
"score": [
14,
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG7OmThrq5g"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mov7mw | When you downsize a pixel based image, how are the pixels that are to be removed determined? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu6974c",
"gu62tpw"
],
"text": [
"That depends on the downsizing algorithm used. Generally where many pixels will be squashed to a single pixel most methods will in a manner find the \"average\" color of the colors being merged. good downsizing algorithms will have more tricks to determine how much weight to put in to different things to make it look the best.",
"Typically a 2d interpolation algorithm is used. The general process is to take each pixels RGB value and pretend that it's a smooth function as opposed to an array of discrete steps. At this point you have a 2d function defined over the domain of the image. You then determine the new size, with a new number of pixels, and calculate the RGB values of the new pixels based on the smooth function that was created by the interpolation algorithm."
],
"score": [
12,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mov8gp | What is the difference neoliberalism, classical liberalism, and libertarianism? | I always hear a lot of leftists toss around the word neoliberalism but they never really explain want they mean by that and when some of them define it it just seems to be the same as libertarianism. I also don't see any difference between classical liberalism as defined by the classical liberals and libertarianism. It seems like all these terms are all the same to me, so could anyone give me an explanation on the difference between these 3 and optionally some reading recommendations | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu60trd"
],
"text": [
"Libertarianism is the political ideal of personal liberty. The stuff that Conservatives love to say they're about, but without the religious fervor or hypocrisy. In a \"perfect\" libertarian society, you can do whatever drugs you want, decide who to support or to remove support from, etc, without the government stepping in. Classical Liberalism is much the same, where the difference is in the focus. Libertarians were against an increasingly bloated government and welfare states. Liberals were against theocracy and oppression. But they agreed on things like \"being able to do what you want.\" Neoliberalism is less similar, focusing only on the economic side of freedom. You can buy or sell whatever you like, but social freedom isn't necessarily accepted. So, your free to sell a cake, but maybe you should not be allowed to refuse service to a gay couple. There are more detailed issues and differences, but that is the quick and dirty."
],
"score": [
37
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
movobk | If strawberries "technically" aren't a fruit because they have seeds on the outside, then what are they and why? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu62hv7",
"gu62tal"
],
"text": [
"They are fruit. They're not berries. They're an aggregate fruit which is just a fancy way of saying \"other.\" They don't really fit into any other subcategories. Thought I'd go further and define \"fruit.\" It's the thing that grows from the flowering part of the plant (squash are fruit). Vegetables are the the above ground parts of a plant. Root vegetables are anything that grow underground.",
"Strawberries are fruits, but they are not berries. Raspberries and blackberries are not berries either. It's important to recognize that labels used for foods in the kitchen may not line up with labels used by plant scientists. A plant scientist (botanist) is going to classify things based seed location, flower shapes who their cousins are in plant evolution (taxonomic classification). A food expert is going to be interested in how things taste, how sweet they are, what foods they go best with. Both of these labels can co-exist, so don't get caught up on all the differences. Botanically, a tomato may not be a vegetable, a tomato is actually a berry! But that doesn't mean that you should make a pie out of it and serve it for dessert! Just try to keep track of whether you are using the terms for culinary (cooking) purposes or for plant science purposes."
],
"score": [
21,
16
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
movq0q | Can plants 🪴 die of old age? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu63znx"
],
"text": [
"[This question has been asked before, actually]( URL_0 )! A TLDR, based on what I read and know: Basically, it's a bit iffy. Half of a tree can be dead, half of it can be alive. You can cut a 10 year old tree in half and have two trees. You can combine two cacti into a Franken-cactus. The leaves on some trees will die in fall, but will come back in the spring. Plants have less \"failure points\" (they dont have organs that can fail, for example), so mutations in those plant cells cause less \"damage\". Its better to think of, say, a fruit tree, as a small ecosystem instead of one plant. The leaves might have a lifespan of one year. The fruit has a lifespan of a month. The roots will continue to grow as much as they can, and when they cant grow anymore, it might start to die of malnutrition. If a plant gets a tumor from some spontaneous mutation, it wont metastasize. They dont have circulating blood- everything stays in one place."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f5m6wf/eli5_do_plants_die_of_old_age/"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
movqvt | Birds not injuring themselves on branches when they fly quickly through trees? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu631ah"
],
"text": [
"Time is perceived differently depending on body mass and metabolic rate, so time passes much more slowly for birds and they have plenty of time to see and plan to avoid objects."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
mowrta | Why do manufacturers still put power supplies on the plugs instead of having a cord with the plug on it come out? | Why are companies still [making plugs like this]( URL_0 ) where the plug is built directly into the box when they could easily make a [design like this]( URL_1 ) where the plug is attached to the cord? Those big box plugs just take up space and make it hard to connect other power cables in the vicinity. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu69jmc",
"gu69gzq"
],
"text": [
"Plug-mounted converters are cheaper to make where practical - it's a whole other cable and connector that is removed from the design. Switched-mode power supplies are coming a long way in removing the bulk from these plug-mounted adapters - many USB phone chargers are barely larger than a normal plug. It's mainly the legacy transformer-rectifier designs that are bulky, or particularly high power supplies.",
"Cost. The second design requires an additional cable and plug compared to the first. You'll see the wall wart design more often for cheaper electronics where they are very sensitive to price."
],
"score": [
10,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
mowtys | Why is it that when you accidentally bite your lip or your tongue while eating, you are now destined to bite that same spot over and over for sometimes days on end? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gu69vju"
],
"text": [
"It tends to swell which makes it easier to bite again and again. It's also more painful, so you're more likely to notice when you DO bite it. Finally, if there's mechanical/habit issues with the way you chew or contributing factors from the shape and positioning of your teeth, you might have a natural predisposition to bite that area."
],
"score": [
22
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.