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mz4tyo | How does hypnosis work | I just find it mind boggling how someone can say/do something, and it makes someone elses brain switch off | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Hypnosis is basically conditioning someone to respond to stimulus. The conditioning is done in a way that's rewarding; in a clinical setting, the patient is made to feel safe and relaxed. On an entertainment setting, the \"reward\" is having fun and/or being the center of attention. Basically, anything that gets the brain to release the \"happy chemicals\" (dopamine, seratonin). A hypnotist will do their best to make the hypnotic trigger or suggestion coincide as precisely as they can with the release of the brain chemicals. Humans brains are basically reward-seeking machines; for example, eating releases the happy chemicals, so we eat. (If something is wrong with your brain chemistry, you might eat less or stop altogether because your brain doesn't give you any incentive to do so.) So the brain \"learns\" that the trigger or suggestion is rewarding, and does it's best to continue getting those rewards. Different individuals are easier or more difficult to hypnotize depending on how well they *believe* hypnosis works and how receptive they are to suggestion (a stage hypnotist will usually pick a few candidates and \"test\" them to see how receptive they are, and cherry pick the most receptive volunteers). And it's almost impossible to get anyone to do something they really don't want to do (such as murder someone -- unless they *already* kind of wanted to murder someone).",
"This explanation is for theraputic hypnosis or hypno therapy not stage hypnosis. Hypnosis is guided relaxation. We have two parts to our mind, which are the conscious and sub conscious. The conscious mind is your active questioning my mind of the every day. The sub conscious is the part of the mind that has retained every memory, and thing you see hear or smell since you were born. (all of your senses) A Hypnotist will guide you to focus your conscious mind onto one point or thought. (like meditation) When your mind is completely relaxed and knowing that you are safe and in a safe place your body relaxes and positive suggestions can be given direct to your subconscious. Your conscious mind doesn't argue or question, because your subconscious will always try and protect you. The fear people have is that they will be made to do something they don't want too. Unless you have a psychological issue, your conscious would not allow that. And so that suggestion would be ignored. But if you're given a positive suggestion ie confidence or to stop smoking, your subconscious knows that this will benefit you and it takes it as how you feel. Yes hypnosis cannot be replicated time after time in laboratory. But it does work. And if you don't allow yourself to be relaxed (hypnotised) then obviously you won't be hypnotised. Hope this helps?"
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mz4u55 | Rolling Over Debt | Theoretically, why can’t the US govt just roll over their debt (buying back old bonds by issuing new ones) indefinitely? I don’t really see the problem with the national debt except when the interest exceeds real GDP growth. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That's what they do! Bonds do mature and new ones are issued all the time. The issue with the debt expanding is that they issue more new bonds than they have old ones mature."
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mz6hm6 | why do people’s mouths instinctively drop open when we see something surprising? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's an acquired social response they develop from watching those around them. We, as a society have settled on that as the expression of this particular emotion. You could train yourself not to, or to express it some other way."
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mz6ndv | How are derivatives and integrals related | I know that a derivative is the slope of a function at any time, and that an integral is essentially the area under a curve, but I was wondering how are they related, since I often see people say they are “opposites” Thanks | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The derivative of a function is its change over time. If the derivative is, say, always five, then every time it will increase by five. The integral of a function is (loosely, this is eli5, so don't get on my ass mathematicians) the sum of all its values over a period. So, if we add together (integrate) all of the changes of a function (the derivative), then we are effectively back at square one: the function itself.",
"Not really advice or answer on the topic so my apologies beforehand.. But if you really want to understand this part of mathematics I'd suggest to look up the channel 3blue1brown. He explains stuff so wonderfully",
"You might have heard of an indefinite integral, which is where you integrate but without using any limits. This is technically the antiderivative. If you take a function and integrate it without limits then you’ll get another function, e.g if y=x, it’s integral is y=(x^2)/2 +C. If you then differentiate this you get y=x back. Basically taking the indefinite integral (antiderivative) is take the function ‘up’, while taking the derivative takes it back ‘down’. This fact is so important that it’s called the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. Acceleration is the rate of change (derivative) of velocity, and velocity is the rate of change (derivative) of position. This means that position is the integral of velocity and that velocity is the integral of acceleration."
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mz6usj | why were dinosaurs so big but most modern animals aren't? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most dinosaurs weren't all that large, maybe 1~3 feet tall or so. It's just that the ones that have entered popular consciousness are notable in some way or another, usually because they were big. Dinosaurs during the Triassic were actually fairly small. Some species grew larger in the Jurassic and Cretaceous. After the K-T extinction event, many of the ecological niches that the larger dinosaurs occupied were filled by mammals. So some mammals got larger (whales, giraffes, elephants, giant sloths...) while others didn't. If you compared sizes, you'd probably find a similar distribution in size between varying species of mammals and dinosaurs during their heydays. Today, we've killed off most of the megafauna. Large mammals are rare, but were much more common before humans came on the scene.",
"Earth used to have significantly higher oxygen content in the atmosphere, which makes it easier for a creature to grow larger. That’s what we have fossils of insects that were like a meter long, but nothing even remotely that big now.",
"There were plenty of small dinosaurs, but big dinosaurs are cooler, so they are what you learn about as a kid. In addition, if you compare the animals alive today to all animals that existed over a period of millions of years, you'll find more extremes in the extinct animals because there are more extinct animals than animals alive today. Imagine you had a million-sided die. Every day for a year, you rolled the die and wrote down the number you got. When you roll the die today, it's a pretty low chance that today's roll is the biggest roll you ever got. The biggest roll is probably a roll you did previously in the year, simply because there were 364 of those rolls and only 1 roll today. Similarly, if you look at all animals that existed for hundreds of millions of years, that's a lot of animals, and you'll probably find some big ones."
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mz72yn | Ive looked it up but i still don’t get it, what exactly is an NFT? Why do people pay so much for some? What does it have to do with crypto? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s a non fungible token. Fungibility is when things are exchangeable and nothing is different. For example my one dollar bill is the same as all other dollar bills. Non fungible means this token is not the same as another token. People pay so much for some because either they are super rare or the buyers are stupid. Cryptography is used to make non fungible tokens exist."
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mz7hvd | Why do knives cut through things more easily when they're moving faster? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well long story short it's not technically any easier, it's just *faster*. If you can imagine a saw. You can put X amount of effort onto slowly dragging the saw across the piece of wood. Eventually, you'll get through. If you decrease the pressure and increase your speed you'll get through it faster. Either way, the friction is the same."
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mz7ldt | What happens when someone with healthy hearing wears hearing aids? Is it equivalent to what happens to your eyes when you use binoculars? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's what happens when someone with healthy hearing takes a speaker at say, 2/10 which sounds comfortable and cranks it up to 6. Painful and damaging. Hearing aids nowadays tend to be calibrated to people's range-specific hearing loss though. So if it were properly calibrated, it would... well, just be off if they had perfectly normal hearing.",
"Tried my father's hearing aid once. It was very loud and really boosted the mid-range frequencies - the frequencies we use for speech. So it was like a really harsh cheap telephone sound and painfully loud."
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mz8d3e | How do new words get added to sign language? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The same way words get added to any language. A small community start using a new word for something relevant to them, and it gradually spreads. It's worth noting that there isn't one single sign language. There's British Sign Language, American Sign Language, and there are based on German and French sign languages. Within each of these, there are regional dialects, slang, etc.",
"Deaf people make ‘em up, they become widely used, and then they’re a real word. Just like every reasonable language that doesn’t have an official _list of allowed words_ (_SPANISH_)"
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mz8ss8 | Where does light go? | So if you have a completely dark room, you turn on a lamp and turn it off again, where does that light go? Does it get sucked back into the lamp or does it fizzle out into nothing? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Light moves at 186,000 miles per *second*. When you turn the lamp off, the light that it previously emitted continues to zoom away at that ridiculous speed. Within a room, it bounces off of every surface, being partially absorbed and partially reflected on every bounce until it's either been completely absorbed or has escaped the room. Since it bounces around faster than you can imagine, it reaches that point of \"completely absorbed\" so quickly that it's essentially instant as you see it, so the room becomes dark \"immediately\".",
"Because we cannot create or destroy energy the light does ‘go’ somewhere. It bounces around the room briefly to fast for us to process so we just see a light room. But every time that light bounces of a surface some of the light energy is absorbed as heat into the surface. After a few bounces that light is entirely absorbed as heat by the walls and anything else it touches. This all happens to fast for us to see so we experience is as a briefly lit room before returning to darkness.",
"I think this might be easier to explain with an analogy. Every object absorbs some light and reflects another part which enables us to see colors, but how we see colors isn't relevant right now. Let's say that this absorption is a small drainage hole in a sink. Now, the light bulb is the tap. Turn it on, and the water (light) gets partially drained (absorbed) and partially stays in the sink (reflected) because not everything gets drained. Turn the tap off and eventually all the water drains from the sink. Since the speed of light is much, much faster than the speed of water draining from a sink, this happens in a fraction of a second, which makes it look like the light just disappears.",
"Light is constantly being absorbed by everything it hits. It mostly bounces off of white things and is mostly absorbed by dark things, but everything absorbs it at least a little bit. The only reason lights \"stay on\" is because they're constantly creating new light and some of that light is being absorbed by your eyes before everything else in the room takes it all. When you turn off the light, it means the bulb stops producing new light. The light already in the room very quickly (although technically not instantaneously) gets absorbed by everything around it. When you turn the light back on, it starts generating new light again.",
"I think it's important to take a moment to really appreciate just how insanely fast light speed is. Light travels at (roughly) 300,000,000 meters per second (or about a billion feet per second). If you are in a room that is 5x5 meters (~15x15 feet), then a photon will take 0.0000000017 seconds to travel across the room once. This is 17 **billionths** of 1 second. The human brain perceives things on the millisecond scale (not sure how fast visual information is processed though). Light is about 5 orders of magnitude faster than our brain can process. This means light would have to bounce around tens of thousands of times for us to perceive it dimming. Our best mirrors can't even get close to that. Light is so fast that it's difficult to even fully intuit just how fast it really is. So, what everyone else said: It gets absorbed instantly as far as your brain is concerned. Edit: a sentence, a word, a letter, and a number",
"It doesn't \"go\" anywhere, in the sense that it leaves the room, it just gets reflected until all the rays are absorbed by stuff they hit. A purely white room would probably be illuminated a bit longer than a purely blue or purely red room, as blue and red absorbs some of the wavelengths, and reflects some more by changing it (sometimes) imperceptively, until it can get absorbed. That energy then becomes another type of energy, usually thermal, though sometimes kinetic (as seen from solar sails, for instance).",
"This is a very simple question, and despite the incomprehensible speed of light and complexities of quantum electrodynamics, it has a very simple answer (albeit with a few skipped steps for clarity.) Light is a photon. That lamp emits 'em. When a photon strikes the wall, the very first atom of it, it knocks an electron loose from it. The photon itself undertakes a conversion and eventually becomes the electron it displaced. So that stricken atom is happy. The very first loose electron it knocked out hits the next atom in the direction of the original light beam, and it causes it to emit a photon this time. Now this chain reaction continues in the direction of travel until it can't anymore, photon > electron > photon > electron, etc. In a pane of glass, that last atom emits a photon and you see the light on the other side. The original photon that got sent from the lamp isn't the one that got received. But if the material wasn't see-through, this reaction stops after a few layers and you never see the light on the other side."
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mza4id | Can plants be “overweight” if they produce too much food in the similar fashion to how animals gain weight if they eat too much food? | When animals eat too much food, they gain weight. What happens to a plant that produces too much food via photosynthesis? Can plants be overweight? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Plants can get overloaded with fruits. In a year with plenty of water and sunshine, they can produce so many fruits that weigh itself down, which end up bending or snapping their branches. Other plants can grow too big for their environments. A side branch growing towards sunshine may overextend and can break when stressed in wind or when covered with snow.",
"“Feeding” plants too often with fertilizer can cause what’s known as “nutrient burn.” The plant’s body can’t use all the nutrients that it’s absorbing and the chemical overload can cause it to lose leaves, have stunted growth, wilt, or even die. EDIT: Some helpful people have pointed out that this actually doesn't have anything to do with the plants processing nutrients, but rather that many of the nutrients in fertilizer are chemicals and salts that affect the roots' ability to absorb water, and this is what causes the affected plants to appear \"burnt\". It's less like diabetes and more like choking on your food.",
"Former commercial horticulturalist here. While my input might not be as sound as a biologist, from real world experience we basically supercharge the plants to the peak of what nutrients they are able to receive just below the threshold of toxicity. If they receive over the threshold they'll begin to die, in specific ways depending on the nutrient. This allows the plants to bear (things) at their maximum weight, to the point that they need to be tied or else they'll snap. My experience in aquaculture is pretty much the same, but obviously the plants don't gain weight, they basically suffocate if they become too dense because co2 can't properly circulate.",
"I feel like a lot of people are misunderstanding your question and focusing on the plant being physically too heavy (with fruit/flowers etc). Unless ***I’m*** misunderstanding I think you mean is it possible to harm a plant by giving it more nutrients than it requires for survival. The answer is yes! Over feeding a plant makes it look superficially healthy, bigger, bushier etc but the plant will be weaker and harder to keep alive. The pots of herbs you buy in supermarkets are blasted with fertiliser to make them look bigger (and often it’s not one plant but 4-5 crammed together in too small a space). As you might have experienced yourself, those supermarket herbs die pretty quickly, even in the hands of people who know about plants. Sorry to go off on a supermarket herb tangent but you can keep them alive by unpotting them, carefully separating out the plants from each other and putting them in their own pots with good quality soil. And laying off the plant food. Hope I’ve answered your question!",
"In a way yes. It's common for marijuana to get too heavy for it's stems and snap in the flowering stage, I imagine other plants can too. Although that's not really the same thing as animals being overweight.",
"Plants can get \"fat\" if you are wondering, look at potatoes and ginger, or any other tuber, they do that to store nutrients and energy for the future, so in a sense yeah, plants do get overwheighted, you just need to find a big potato",
"No. But they can experience intumescence, where they have absorbed so much water that their tissues engorge and get covered in these little bumps. EDIT: I was thinking about tree bark. But yes, as others have pointed out, it can also result in ruptures.",
"One of the saddest facts about cherrys is that they can absorb a hell of alot of water quickly so when they are about to be picked if it rains too much they will all split . Ruining them all",
"The only weight stress that occurs to plants from weight is on the branches holding them. Plants don’t become overweight, but, their fruit can become oversized if it isn’t harvested as needed.",
"Yes, absolutely. Fruit trees need to be regularly thinned, so instead of more of smaller fruits, they produce fewer, bigger fruits. Also, if you don't do this they can end up producing only every other year. If you mean in terms of weight and weighing down the whole plant, I'd say that issue comes up much more with fruiting vegetables like tomatoes, pepper, and eggplants. I've never seen those vegetables not needing to be supported by posts",
"Not similar. Most plants don't create storage for excess energy based on just nutrient consumption. They are efficient in that all nutrients taken up will be put toward growth or fruit. The exception would be biennials perrenials, though their energy storage mechanisms are usually subject to environmental cues rather than just nutrient uptake. Onions will bulb out based on the amount of daylight they receive, and will then use the bulb as an energy store over winter. Most of your flower bulbs behave similarly. Trees will create large stores of sugar as daylight hours shorten and the weather cools. This not only feeds the tree, but the sugar and some proteins act as a sort of antifreeze to keep its cells from rupturing due to ice formation.",
"Have you seen cacti? They are obviously bloated with sap for storage.",
"on a related note plants can grow too fast from overfeeding. if you go to your local supermarket and look at the plants there you'll see that their stems are all quite stringey and not very strong looking. thats because they've been pumped full of feed like a chad on steroids, but unlike chad who only suffers from an explosive anger and erectile problems, the plant instead puts all this new found energy into growing rapidly. so it grows quickly without being able to proper establish itself, almost like building a skyscraper without any internal support. when this happens the plant will often collapse under its own weight a few days after purchase and likely die. its not used to having very little food and comparitively little light. look at the flowers in your local supermarket the next time you go, and then look at the same flowers in a good garden nursery and you'll instantly see the difference in quality",
"this is only semi-related to your question but that is one way herbicides work, by mimicking the chemicals that signal growth and basically causing a plant to starve itself trying to grow.",
"Something I haven't seen mentioned is a weed killer called [2,4-d]( URL_0 ). The process kills weeds by making them grow at an unsustainable rate. The plants grow until they die due to not having enough nutrients or energy. The process is very efficient and 2,4-d is one of the most popular lawn care chemicals for weeds. It is also extremely controversial not only as a herbicide but because of its usage in the chemical weapon agent orange.",
"It probably depends on the plant. Some can store starch that can be used later, a bit like adipose tissue in mammals. Things like potatoes will store it in their tubers.",
"If you give cannabis plants too much nitrogen they'll keep prioritizing leaf and branch production into the flowering phase at the cost of its own flowers/seeds. Im assuming this could happen to other plants too",
"Not the same I guess but there's a herbicide that kills the plants by causing it to grow so quickly it will kill itself because it can not possibly get enough water to keep up with the demand that the growing puts on it so they will dehydrate.",
"It depends, some plants can store excess energy as humans store fat (tubers, bulbs, rhyzomes). If a plant can do that, they will (potato plants will make more and bigger potatoes, plants, like onions and liliums, who have bulbs will make their bulbs bigger). Plants which don't have those organs will do different things. Take for example, trees: most trees will choose to make and grow more stem and leaves instead of flowers (which causes problems), some plants, for example, can store excess nutrients on themselves (which is a grave problem in things that we eat) without any noticeable changes in size. This is called \"luxury consumption\" and it's a problem. This is overly simplified because it's eli5 but you can ask if you want clarifications on any item. Source: I'm an agronomer and my life is plants and plants accesories."
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mza5qr | If blood travels our body through our veins, why does blood rush out from a shallow cut? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So, if veins are like highways and arteries are like super highways, capillaries are like roads and streets - and they are \\_everywhere\\_. So when you cut your finger, there are capillaries that you just cut through to make it bleed. But if you cut very shallowly, you'll notice you can cut some skin and \\_not\\_ have blood - because you haven't hit any capillaries. This is also why your fingers can turn blue when you pinch them - you squeeze the blood out!"
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mzawt6 | Why do televised Canadian NHL games still have blackout's in effect when no one is able to attend the games? Wouldn't they want the increased revenue of added viewers? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I can’t say if this is exactly what is happening with you, as I’m more familiar with US sports rights than Canadian, but it’s highly likely. Sports TV are generally sold on a regional basis. For things like NHL, NBA, MLB, in the US, they sell the region split into two areas: 1) the local area of the team and 2) the rest of the country. For people in the local area of the, a local channel will buy the rights to be the exclusive broadcaster there. No one else can show the game to people in the local area. Just them. End. For everyone else, not in that area,they can view it on a national level broadcast, but the people who are in the teams area cannot view it on this, because their local channel has exclusive rights to the area. This is what most blackouts are. You can’t watch your local team on the national broadcaster— you must watch it on your local channel."
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mzb6vs | How/why do magnets mess up electronics? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Electrical currents produce magnetic fields and magnetic fields can produce electrical currents. Electronics depend depend on precise states of electrical components to operate correctly. Strong enough magnetic fields can interfere with that.",
"For the most part, they actually don't. Most electronics these days are very small and go mostly unaffected by even larger magnets. However, some components (like large inductors) may pick up a relatively large voltage from a powerful nearby magnet moving past. Additionally, some components use magnetism to their benefit (like hard drives) and a nearby magnet may falsely trigger whatever effect the magnet is being used for.",
"Old style (CRT) monitors (and TVs) used electrostatic or magnetic fields to direct an electron beam to the individual \"pixels\" on the screen. A magnet held near to a CRT would deflect the beam, causing at a minimum color shifting, and worst case an unviewable display. If part of the CRT was left magnetized, it'd have to be degaussed (de-magnetized) to fix it. Floppy disks, and to a lesser extent hard disk drives, store data by recording a signal in a thin magnetic film (very like cassette tapes). A magnet held too close could change or blank the data. Additionally, some hard drives used pre-recorded \"servo\" tracks to locate the data. If any of the servo data got damaged the disk, or at least part of it, became unusable. Other than those parts, I'm not aware of electronic parts that can be affected by ordinary magnetic fields."
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mzbky4 | Why aren’t hats allowed to be worn in public schools? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For the US, two reasons come to mind. It is/was considered rude to wear hats indoors in many parts of the US. Hats can, or are beloved to, be used to signify gang relations.",
"Because hats tend to conceal eyes and teachers need to see the eyes of the students at all times to know if: 1. They are awake 2. They are paying attention 3. They aren’t cheating"
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mzbu4w | Can somebody explain in simple matters the phone call scam where they try to get you to say “yes” to then use that recording for personal use (?) ? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There is absolutely no evidence of this ever actually happening anywhere, to anyone. The much more likely explanation is that they're searching for active phone numbers of people who actually answer spam calls, and selling that list to other spammers.",
"Pretty straightforward. Once you say \"yes\", they can simply save that audio clip and splice it into another recording, like: Okay, < name > , do you understand the terms and conditions of the contract I've read to you, and you consent to being billed monthly for this obscure service? < Yes > The recording enables the scam to withstand legal scrutiny to some degree- it's harder to deny your voice on the recording and proving that it's been altered can take a long time.",
"If they have a recording of you saying the word yes, they can snip that 1 second of audio to use for verbal consent over phone transactions and stuff"
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mzckb6 | What causes your body to convert emotions into crying/tears? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw11ibu",
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"text": [
"We humans are at best average when trying to evaluate the emotional state of other people. Some (socially important) emotional states have evolved to show signs that are unmistakeable for others, for example crying, screaming, or laughing. It was not important that all people in your neolithic clan immediately knew when you were in a bad mood. However, it was important to let them know when you are in pain and require assistance.",
"It seems that a few reactions are sort of \"hard coded\" in humans. For example - when we get physically hurt or injured - we scream \"aaahhhh\" or \"ouch\" or whatever in our language. When we put our hand in hot water - we pull our hand out instantly and shake it. These are physical reactions which are hard coded. Similarly there are non-physical reactions also. For example - we see a loved one in joy - and we smile. We lose someone dear to us - irreplacable - we cry. This is a hard coded reaction to a certain \"strength or intensity\" of an emotion. Most humans will behave this way - but there will always be few exceptions who will not. Why is it hard coded like this - mostly to let others know (visibly) as to what's happening inside us emotionally."
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mzcov8 | why aren’t all online video games cross play? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw00u4y"
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"text": [
"Because the console manufacturers don't want it. Thats really about it. Sony has been particularly oppositional to any sort of cross play for the most part."
],
"score": [
17
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mzdzt1 | Why (or how?) did mint become the ‘gold standard’ for oral health? | How did we, humans, collectively decide (for the most part) that the mint leaf was the ideal flavour or substance for oral health? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw07ax5",
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"text": [
"Toothpaste has tin in it, and tin has a bad metallic taste. To overpower that, it takes a strong flavor, like mint or peppermint. Other than cinnamon, there aren't many low cost flavors that will cover the tin taste.",
"[Mint was added to toothpaste to leave a lingering clean sensation.]( URL_0 ) Cinnamon has historically also been used to flavor toothpaste, and it also ads a lingering sensation, but its popularity waned long ago. As to why, mint is more popular than cinnamon, we can only speculate, but mint likely \"feels\" cleaner than cinnamon."
],
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"https://www.marketplace.org/2018/03/16/mouth-full-mint-cleaner-teeth-no-thanks/"
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| [
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|
mzegu8 | Assuming bell curve distribution of adult male height and weight, why is it vastly easier to find Big And Tall clothes rather than Slender And Short? | Virtually all mainstream brick-and-mortar stores with men's clothes offer tall/long sizes, but nothing for short/athletic/stocky. Got an inseam less than 30 inches? Good luck with that. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw09qha"
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"text": [
"Because your assumption of bell curve is incorrect, at least the way you’re applying it. I work at an apparel manufacturer and I can assure you that if there was a market for shorter slender fits, there’d be as much supply as there is demand. The relatively low volume leads to less assortment too- fewer styles and colors-which makes it appear to be even smaller supply. There is, in the case of jeans and pants, the ability to take them up or in, which further reduces demand. TL;DR no one buys those fits so no one makes them"
],
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6
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mzfl3v | Dose a helium tank “get heavier” as it gets emptied? If not, why? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw0g3b6",
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"text": [
"It depends. If you’re replacing that helium with air, then yes. If you’re not replacing it and just sucking it out, then it will get lighter. Helium is less dense than air at the same conditions; it doesn’t have negative mass or anything. And for storage, most gasses are stored in a compressed form, increasing their density. So that **compressed** helium is lighter than equal volumes of **compressed** air (which is why replacing with air will make the tank heavier) but is still heavier than equal volume of **uncompressed** air around it (which is why the tank’s buoyancy will increase/weight will decrease as you remove the helium; mass is being pulled out of a constant volume).",
"Putting helium in something does not make it lighter - it makes it heavier. Making something *bigger* makes it more buoyant in air. So, how do you make something bigger without making it heavier? You inflate it with helium. A helium tank is of a fixed size, and so removing helium from it does not change its buoyancy, but it *does* remove that weight of helium."
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mzhc1z | Why are stretch marks purple? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw0xzuz"
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"text": [
"It’s the skin repairing itself quickly. It creates scars. If you cut yourself deeply, the healing process will leave the scar purple for a long time - eventually it might fade to white. Stretch marks are actually similar, but instead of cuts, it’s rips. The skin needs to stretch faster than it can regenerate properly, so it makes scar tissue where it must. Stretch marks are just scars, that’s why they’re purple. Eventually, they fade to white. I’ve got white ones and purple ones, from different times I’ve put a lot of weight on quickly."
],
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5
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mzhiu1 | Why is it that when we fall asleep with a fairly loud background noise, we sleep through it. But when you turn it down and turn it up again a few minutes later, it would wake you up? | My wife falls asleep on me playing a game on my computer with the sounds fairly loud. I would realize that shes asleep and then turn my volume down. I don't turn it back up cuz she has woken up before from me doing that even though she fell asleep with a louder volume in the first place. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw0scga"
],
"text": [
"Because her brain isn't going \" he's playing games loudly then quite, oh now it's loud again\" It just hears a loud noise and goes \"oh shit wake up\" Would be worth investing in some headphones."
],
"score": [
9
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mzhq1e | How did historians arrive at the number 6 million for the amount of people killed during the holocaust? | You hear it all the time, 6 million people killed. But if they were killed and cremated and records burnt, how did historians arrive at the 6 million number? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"There were a lot of records. Tons and tons of records. If anything Germany were quite good at keeping records. The purpuse of this was to document that they had actually done their tasks properly. So there were multiple records of all the Jews and other minorities and unwanted documenting all their details going through the concentration camps and their eventual fate. And even if a lot of these records were burned there are still plenty of remaining records to document what went on.",
"Basically by counting the number of jews before and after the holocaust. Population numbers don't randomly half over the course of 12 years. So 6 Million is a rough estimate. Could be 5, could be 7, but we know it's not 2 million and not 10 Million",
"While it is a stretch to say that most of German society at the time supported the details of what happened, the broad strokes of the policy was not a big secret or hidden. This isn't ancient history and the German society was a modern one of the day. This wasn't the action of a few \"rogue\" German soldiers done in huge secrecy over a short period. The horror of this is this was official government policy. They built camps, railroads, transported and housed millions of people. Before that, there were things like gathering information, making the Jews wear identifying marks on their clothes, seizing property etc etc. This was done openly. The people doing this weren't trying to hide in shame, these were people going on with what they felt were appropriate activities doing their jobs. Like any bureaucracy, records were kept, forwarded on to superiors, goals and objectives set and people were supposed to show that they met them through reports. These were actions taken over many years.",
"Basic population statistics and data. They knew populations of cities and towns prior to WW2. They knew how many identified as jewish. Germany was not a backward country. They kept excellent records overall. Its no different to how they count and do basic population statistics today. Its not that long ago. My parents were born in 1922. They had good systems and well run governments and society. It wasn't the dark ages!!!"
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mzi8z5 | What is NFT ? Why is it buzzing all of a sudden ? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw0wnmj"
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"text": [
"NFTs are a digital title that declares you the owner of of a digital asset. The asset can be anything from art, music, nba cards, video game items etc. The reason why it’s getting popular is because it introduces scarcity to digital assets, which has driven prices up for some things greatly. For example, if I’m an artist and I release a song online, people can buy and download the song, but what each person downloads and owns is identical to what everyone else owns. However, if I make an NFT of the song, only one person can buy and have ownership of that NFT, which increases its perceived value. There are other potential use cases for NFTs but for now they are basically exclusive, limited edition, digital collectibles."
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mzic8q | How does using contactless debit cards reduce fraud? {Please read below} | In my ICT class, my teacher said that using contactless debit cards reduces fraud as less money is taken out (less money taken out because contactless cards have a limit, for example: $50, every time you withdraw). She said that, because of that limit, if someone wants to withdraw $150, they have to withdraw 3 times if the limit is $50. But how does this reduce fraud? If the card is stolen, the one who stole it can still make 3 withdrawals and get $150. Plus, I don't understand why there is alimit in the first place, I searched online, and it said that the limit was because there is no way to identify that the user of the card is the owner, but it doesn't make sense, since even if the card is stolen, the one who stole it can still withdraw multiple times, like the owner. Thank you :) | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw0wwbd"
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"text": [
"It may be different in other countries but in the UK you can't directly get money with contactless. It's only used when purchasing goods. In your example the thief could go buy something that's $50 but they couldn't get something that's $150. If the purchase amount is over the current threshold (£45 in UK right now) then the machine refuses contactless and requires a PIN. The limit then is there just to gate that access. The outcome of there being less fraud is because thieves would want the big ticket items they can resell rather than lots of low value items."
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mzih8c | why do we feel so cold on the outside when we have a fever? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw0wm15"
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"text": [
"Think of it like your thermostat gets turned up. Instead of being set at 98-99F, it gets turned up to like 103F. So now you're below your thermostat temp, and you feel cold, and your body starts to produce more heat to match the thermostat."
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mzihuu | how does noise cancelling headphones actually work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Sound travels as waves, and those have a shape that dictates what sound you actually hear. Simply put it has properties called *frequency* which controls the pitch and tone, and *amplitude* which controls the volume. If the total wave reaching your ears has 0 *amplitude* you don't hear anything because it's silent. What **proper** noise cancelling headphones do is they measure the sound waves around you and play an \"upside-down\" copy of that wave shape that cancels out the incoming background noise. They essentially subtract the background noise from itself, so all the *amplitudes* cancel out to be 0 across the whole background sound wave.",
"Noise-cancelling headphones listen carefully to the sounds around you and try to figure out the pattern. Once they've got it down, they play the opposite into your ears, cancelling the recurring noise. What I mean by this is that since every sound is a pattern of pressure waves, rippling through the air, the headphones line up a peak for every valley and a valley for every peak. The result is nicely flattened out. This is also why they can't do a damned thing about irregular noises: there's no way for the headphones to predict the sudden crash of someone dropping a bottle, and thus no counter-sound they can work out to play in sync with it."
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mzj858 | why do loggers often leave one tree standing? | I see this a lot in my local area. We have mostly pine forest and they often leave just one tree standing in the middle of the logged area. Why do they do this? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"They are often required by law in order to provide housing for several species of birds and insects. These species depends on dead trees to make their nests and to find food. However a well mantained forest will not have any dead trees as they are all harvested before they die. So the loggers leave a few trees behind after harvest, these trees have no chance of surviving on their own without the rest of the forest to support them. So they will be able to provide a healthy habitat for the insects and birds that require this.",
"It's a seed tree ( URL_0 ). The idea is it spreads seeds for new trees to grow. While they will plant seedlings, they may die, so the seed tree provides a backup method to grow new trees.",
"It really depends on what the land will be used for, how it was logged, and what species of trees are on the land. For instance, if the land is a tree farm, there likely would be no trees left standing, as the trees will be planted again in lines for future harvests. If the land is going to be used for development, it is possible that the owner's want a few trees left standing in particular spots. It takes a long time to grow large trees, so if you are building a house or development, it is a lot better to keep an old tree standing than to cut it down and try to replant it. If the land was just forest that someone wanted to log once a generation, there are a variety of reasons you may leave a few trees. For instance, I have land that is in a forestry management program, we only are cutting one species of tree in the forest, and so trees that are sporadic or more rare get left behind after logging. In some cases, this ends up looking like we just left 1 or 2 trees behind after logging because the area was primarily a single type of tree. Although all the area by you is pine forest, there are significantly different varieties of pine, and so while everything may look the same, they may be leaving a specific species behind. Another poster mentioned seed trees, which is also definitely a reason, especially if you are trying to \"cheaply\" change your forest type. Most forests will go through cycles in which different types of trees are dominant, and so by leaving one or two behind, you can give that species an advantage where logging may have changed the forest type otherwise."
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mzjguz | How does a Computer know, how long a second lasts? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw10z4i",
"gw13njs"
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"text": [
"The computer (and every digital watch/clock) has a [crystal oscillator]( URL_0 ), a tiny crystal that vibrates at a constant rate when electricity flows through it. By counting the vibration and dividing by the number of vibrations per second (which is a known, fixed number) you get the number of seconds that passed.",
"The same way your digital watch does. It uses a quartz crystal that will oscillate at a certain frequency which can be used to create an electric signal at that frequency. It is not entirely unlike a clock that uses a pendulum that swings back and forth at a set frequency or how mechanical watches work. The difference (or at least one difference among many) is that a pendulum will swing back and forth at a frequency of once per second or 1 Hz and mechanical watches work at frequencies like 4 Hz, while quartz crystal can be made to oscillate thousands of times per second. The ones use most commonly in computers and devices and watches are set to a frequency of 2^15 Hz, this is very convenient as computers calculate and count in powers of two and two to the 15th power is something very easy to deal with for electronics. One problem that you may already have thought of is that watches and digital clocks use batteries and don't work without electricity. Your desktop computer will keep the time even when turned of and even when unplugged though. How? Because the watch part in your computer has a tiny button sized watch battery to keep it going. If that battery ever runs out and you turn your computer off it will ask you on your next boot what time it is because it doesn't have any idea. Of course computers and devices connected to the internet have the ability to check their watch component against the time they get from other computers on the network and adjust if they are behind or fast by a bit. The official time usually comes from Atomic clocks that are much, much more precise than quartz clocks and that tell everyone else what time it is over the internet or long wave radio."
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mzkgov | When you are sick and have a cough how does the body stop coughing and allow you to fall asleep? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"You do not stop caughing, you continue to caugh in your sleep. Your body is able to do a lot of things in its sleep including all the reflexes associated with caughing. It is only if it is not able to clear your throat itself that it will wake you up so you can do more drastic measures. So even if you are sick and caughing you will fall asleep and continue to caugh but may wake up in the middle of the night if your cauching becomes too bad."
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mzl4n8 | how do the cameras work that can see through clothing? | I recently found out that these cameras exist and I'm curious how that works. I understand how X Ray imaging works and how MRI works but I don't understand how you could see through clothing with a camera (and do they really show a naked body or just the shape of your body?). If someone could help explain it to me that would be awesome. Disclaimer: I'm not at all interested in buying one or making one. Just confused how it works. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw18snr",
"gw18tnw"
],
"text": [
"The ones I've seen use infrared. The wavelength penetrates your clothes (which are uniformly dense) and hit your skin. Different areas of skin will reflect the wavelength differently so it's possible to get a rough image of what's below the clothing",
"These cameras are sensitive to infrared light. IR light is not visible to humans, but certain cameras can pick it up. Certain clothing is good at blocking visible light (so it looks opaque to a human) but does allow IR light to pass through relatively unhindered, so for an infrared camera, the clothing is slightly transparent."
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mzlabq | If the brain signals for moving your hand and thinking of moving your hand are the same, what is the physiological difference that causes your hand to actually move? | Edit: In a Tom Scott video, he was describing an experiment on a zero-g flight by some neuro researchers testing their CBIs in zero-gravity. One of the researchers said the brain signal for moving your hand and thinking of moving your hand is the same hence my question. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The main reason thinking about moving does not move your arm is the 'strength of the signal'. Ie that you just *thought* about it is not enough for movement. The signals (electrical messages) your brain have to reach a particular threshold for actual movement. What is really cool is that there is growing research into computer technology that can help with this eg for people with spinal cord injuries. They can move robotic prosthetics by just *thinking* about moving them.",
"When you imagine moving your arm, your brain sends out a second signal that blocks the thought of moving your arm from actually causing movement."
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mzmgrh | Why do we sometimes get unnecessarily angry over little things? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw1gavq",
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"text": [
"Because we take ourselves too seriously and haven't developed the correct coping mechanisms to de-escalate when we feel that way.",
"The brain chemistry of anger and aggression are still being studied but it appears in part to be related to serotonin levels in the brain (from articles summarizing studies that appeared in Science Daily). Stressors in your life or a brain chemical imbalance will cause serotonin levels to drop. So at that point something you'd normally take in stride can become the final straw that causes you to call the coffee table you stubbed your toe on an a-hole. There are natural ways healthy individuals can boost seratonin, like laughter or eating chocolate, and medications that do so to treat medical conditions like anxiety or depression. Personality and learned coping skills would also likely play a part."
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mzmifh | Why can unborn children get addicted to heroin from their mother, but not for example caffeine, nicotine, alcohol etc? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw1guvm",
"gw1flb7"
],
"text": [
"Unborn babies absolutely can be addicted to all those substances. The reason you dont hear about addiction to alcohol and nicotine in babies is that smoking and drinking do so much damage to the unborn child that their addiction is the least of your problems. The birth defects from either one are absolutely tragic and often result in early death. Conversely, you dont hear much about caffeine addiction in babies because the withdrawal symptoms are pretty mild in compairson and hard to recognize in a baby that can't talk. Any substance that affects the mother will affect the baby. There is a direct pathway from her blood to the baby's blood.",
"They are all harmful to unborn babies. They are addictive substances and babies can be born with addictions or symptoms of withdraw"
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mznbp5 | Why do obese people sometimes find it hard to breathe? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Do to the added weight, their heart must work harder to deliver enough oxygen to their body. Also, since they are obese it is very likely (not definitive though) that they do minimum cardio exercise, thus leading to a weaker and more out of shape heart. People which partake in regular cardio exercise have a more \"well tuned\" heart, which is able to deliver oxygen easier and more efficiently.",
"As ppl said above, cardio vascular health is likely to be poor but also the heart and lungs just have to work harder. There's more body to pump blood around and more oxygen needed. So even with good cardio health, the heart and lungs have to work harder to achieve the same thing.",
"Also, the lungs are air bags which need room to inflate properly so if there is a layer of extra weight (fat) squeezing the lungs and putting pressure on the lungs, they cannot inflate as they should. Obese people are literally squeezing the life out of themselves. That's why they often need CPAP machines at night...when they lay down, the abdominal fat squeezes the abdominal/chest cavity so they cannot draw the air in that their lungs need. More fat = less room for lungs to inflate.",
"A few reasons. Obese people tend to have poor cardiovascular health because that system is strengthened by exercise, which obese people typically don't engage in, so even mild exertion can cause them to get tired and struggle for breathe. In addition the system has to struggle against the added weight of the fat so it's has to work harder when used. The also includes various muscles in the sinus and throat so when obese people sleep, for example, those muscles can go overly slack and cause snoring and sleep apnea which are closely linked to obesity and lead to other detrimental health effects. Even when conscious the breathing passages can be constricted due to weak muscle tone leading to the [\"fat person wheeze\"]( URL_0 )"
],
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mzpd4b | What is an Oligarchy and what are some examples of countries that function as one? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw1wy7b"
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"text": [
"Oligarchy means \"rule of the few\", so power isn't held by a single Dictator or King, but also not by everyone (I.E. fair elections). The most outstanding modern example is the Russian Federation. There are many extremely rich and powerful people, some directly involved in the government, some only indirectly. Putin himself isn't an all powerful dictator, but also not elected fairly. He is in power because the (other) Oligarchs support him."
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mzpicv | Whitening toothpaste. How does it work, is it effective, and does it damage your teeth? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"gw23c9r"
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"text": [
"all toothpastes \"damage\" your teeth to some degree. The idea is that toothpaste is a detergent mixed with a fine abrasive powder and flouride to wash your teeth, the abrasive powder is designed to be too soft to damage the enamel on your teeth but excessive brushing will cause damage. Whitening toothpaste has added in baking soda in to it, which is a weak bleaching agent which in some conditions can whiten your teeth. Normal healthy teeth should be mostly unaffected but if you have sensitive or damaged teeth, it might have some negative effects."
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mzq366 | why do clocks both tick and tock? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The mechanism inside mechanical clocks the regulates their speed (and hence time) is called an “escapement”. There are many designs but they all have a common design of releasing one tooth on a gear (“tick”) and then allowing the gear to turn exactly one tooth then catching it again (“tock”). The sounds are the escapement catching and releasing the teeth. Edit: useful illustration. URL_0",
"Aside from the answer explaining the design of clocks, there's also the grammar rule that explains why its tick then tock but not the other way around. \"Reduplication in linguistics is when you repeat a word, sometimes with an altered consonant (lovey-dovey, fuddy-duddy, nitty-gritty), and sometimes with an altered vowel: bish-bash-bosh, ding-dang-dong. If there are three words then the order has to go I, A, O. If there are two words then the first is I and the second is either A or O. Mish-mash, chit-chat, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, tip top, hip-hop, flip-flop, tic tac, sing song, ding dong, King Kong, ping pong.\" From URL_0",
"I seem to be able to make it go tick- , tick-, tick-, or tock-, tock-, tock-, just by trying to hear it so",
"And why don't they just click and clock?",
"The same reason the sound doesn't keep going up. One movement is building pressure, one is releasing it.",
"There is also a phenomenon by which two ticks with all equal properties are PERCEIVED as tick and tock (or some other entrained rhythm ) URL_0",
"It is amazing to mean how a good mechanical (automatic) wrist watch can run 24/7 for decade without service. Imagine idling your car for decades without ever checking the oil let alone changing it.",
"Is this a riddle? “Sit down, Batman, and take stock. Why do clocks both tick and tock?”"
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mzqj40 | Do orally ingested medications like Tylenol and pills deposit in your kidneys over time to contribute to bad health? | My mom always told me that taking pills for life is bad because they build and deposit in your organs. That is why she also chooses not to take her ADHD medication and only takes Advil and Tylenol kinds of stuff when she feels really bad. But when I looked online I didn't find anything. She also didn't really explain how it works either. She did however study to be a nurse a long time ago in Russia. My mom is a smart woman and not superstitious, but I feel like she might be wrong. If you give me articles or videos about this topic I will be thankful 🙂 | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No, not remotely, that isn't how it works, it makes no anatomical sense. I really don't know how to explain this in enough detail to be a suitable answer for ELI5, because it just isn't true and is frankly ridiculous. Chemicals filtered by your kidneys don't stay in your kidneys, they get removed in urine. A small handful get removed by your bowels, and a few chemicals are fat soluble (LSD is one) and can be stored in body fat, until that fat is broken down for energy, and then they get excreted as normal.",
"Hi! The question you are asking is about *pharmacokinetics*, the movement of drugs through the body. Generally speaking, everything you eat that gets absorbed (generally anything that is small and soluble) goes through metabolism, in which it is broken down, and excretion, in which is is removed from the body. Where a chemical goes to be metabolized depends on the chemical. For some, it happens in the blood. For others, it happens in the kidneys. For others still, it happens in the liver. Where a molecule is metabolized depends on which place in your body has the right enzyme for it. It also depends on what size it is (larger things generally go to the liver, but there are many exceptions, like alcohol). Let’s track the metabolism of Tylenol. Tylenol’s proper name is acetaminophen and it looks like [this]( URL_1 ). As far as molecules go, it’s pretty small. After getting crushed up by the stomach, it happily gets taken up into the bloodstream, mostly by the small intestine (which is devoted to absorbing nutrients from your food). Before entering general circulation, all the blood containing absorbed food will pass through the liver in order to remove things that aren’t nutrients. Our acetaminophen falls under the list of not nutrients, so the liver tries to destroy it. It does this using enzymes, biological tools that fit onto a very specific shape of molecule. Here is a [difficult to understand diagram]( URL_0 ) showing what happens when to acetaminophen when it enters the liver. Essentially the enzymes are all working to break the acetaminophen into pieces or to bind other molecules onto it in order to inactivate it. [90%]( URL_2 ) of the acetaminophen is bound by the liver to other molecules called sulfates and glucourinidates. These molecules are very readily picked up and excreted by the kidneys into urine. Out of the rest of the acetaminophen in a normal does, 8% undergoes a different pathway which causes it to bind to glutathione, another molecule easily excreted by the kidneys. Only 2% makes it into your circulatory system untouched! The mechanism of action for Tylenol is not known, so what it does after that to stop pain is a mystery. It will continue to pass through your liver slowly (not all of your blood goes through the liver every cycle, kinda like a random security screening at airports) until it is almost entirely gone. This is why you hear about drugs having a half-life: they undergo “decay” at a predictable rate that is a percentage of how much exists in the body. This description has obviously been an oversimplification, as there are plenty of other metabolic pathways that happen, even just in the blood with no other organs participating. To summarize, when you ingest Tylenol, all of it goes to your liver, 98% of it tagged for excretion via the kidneys before it ever even enters the blood stream, and the rest escapes unscathed until the next time it runs into the liver. There’s no getting stuck in the organs over time, and most of the Tylenol you take never even reaches the kidneys without being chemically modified to make it easier to excrete. The pharmacokinetics of each drug is different and varies by dose. Your enzymes can only process so much of a drug at once, which is why overdosing is dangerous: suddenly, that 2% can quickly become the 98% once capacity runs out. However for safe doses (and the ones available over the counter are well, well within this range) there is no characteristic of most common medicines to “accumulate.” This is absolutely not to say that drugs can’t have chronic effects: many do. This is ESPECIALLY true of illegal and prescription drugs. Over the counter drugs at the recommended doses are usually a pretty safe bet though."
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mzqmxq | What's the difference between a cashier's check and a money order | And which one do you think is a more secure way to pay rent? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A cashier's check is a check written on your behalf by a bank that certifies that the funds are available. They'll typically hold the funds in the meantime to keep this guarantee. A money order is similar except you prepay. So a cashier's check for $200 doesn't technically *actually* take your $200 until it is cashed, but a money order you give up the $200 beforehand to get it. Either way is fine and frankly a bit overboard if you have personal checks. But a money order would be easier, you can get them from a Western Union place for just a dollar and they come with a receipt also showing the amount and date you got it so you can keep a paper trail just in case."
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mzqp9v | As soon as my head touches my pillow after a long day which makes me tired and sleepy, I suddenly feel awake. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That's because it's the time where you're truly free to do whatever you want, I think. Knowing that nobody is gonna require your attention. That's how it is for me anyways, I feel so much better after 7pm because nobody bothers me past then usually.",
"You may have trained your brain to think that being in bed means it's time to wake up. This often happens when people lay in bed while they wake up in the morning. Start getting out of bed as soon as the alarm goes off, set your alarm for the same time every day, even on weekends, and don't lay in bed to watch tv, read, or do anything but sleep and have sex.",
"During the day, even doing a menial task like sitting on the couch uses a LOT of energy! Your body is exerting energy to not flop over or \"ragdoll\". As the day goes on, your body starts \"producing\" less energy, but you're outputting the same amount - this is when you feel *tired*. As soon as you lay down and relax in bed, your body realizes it no longer needs to exert energy to maintain posture - the demand for energy goes well below the supply. This is also why as soon as you start moving, or sit up, you feel tired again - your body is suddenly using more energy than it is currently producing.",
"As a kid I found out how easy it was for me to fall asleep after my workout on the floor so I took away my pillow and I've slept soundlessly for almost 20 years now. That is until my work got stressful of course",
"Revenge bedtime procrastination” describes the decision to sacrifice sleep for leisure time that is driven by a daily schedule lacking in free time. For people in high-stress jobs that take up the bulk of their day, revenge bedtime procrastination is a way to find a few hours of entertainment even though it results in insufficient sleep.",
"As has been mentioned a big problem is non-sleep-inducing associations in bed. You might have spent too much time in bed during wake-time. It's usually recommended that you try to sleep for 30 minutes. If you don't, get out of your bed/bedroom until you feel tired, then retry. Rinse and repeat until successful. Ofc general sleep hygiene rules apply. Take stock of caffeine consumption, it will affect sleep quality and sleep onset time."
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mzqsig | How/why do changes in atmospheric pressure or other weather changes cause migraines? Is it the same or different for daily on-ground/sea-level changes rather than high-altitude/airplane headaches? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're caused by the same effect, though I would imagine the daily pressure swings at ground level wouldn't cause migraines in a otherwise healthy person. The body is built to deal with a certain pressure range. If you're uniquely susceptible to migraines then any change in pressure could cause them by changing the liquid pressure of the blood. The lower the external air pressure, the easier it is for the oxygen and nitrogen in the blood to free itself into a gas. The extra pressure in the blood vessels are what cause the headaches/migraines. (Nitrogen gas pockets in the blood are a major problem for deep sea divers for the same reason)"
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mzqybp | why do planets orbit instead of just being pulled into the sun | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The planets are in constant free fall towards the sun. However, their sideways motion is so fast, that they perpetually keep missing the sun.",
"Think back to the old cannon ball analogy. You’re on a hill with a cannon. If you fire the cannon, the ball will travel off into the distance and eventually hit the ground. If you fire the cannon harder so the ball moves faster, it will hit the ground further away. If you fire the cannon even harder, the ball will fly over the horizon and out of sight before it lands. Fire it hard enough and you’ll theoretically hit yourself in the back of the head. All orbits work like that - the objects are moving sideways so fast that they “miss the ground” while falling and just circle back around. In the vacuum of space with no air resistance you can do this forever."
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mzrwin | Why is it easier to "hold" urine when you're walking around as opposed to sitting or standing still? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Urinating is both a conscious and a subconscious “action”. When our bladder fills, it sends signals to our brain, and the brain interprets those signals into how badly we need to pee. But, if we don’t need to go immediately, and we are preoccupied with something, then the brain will ignore those signals and the feeling goes away. If you wait longer and longer eventually it will stop ignoring the signals because you’re getting to a point where your bladder is really full and needs to be empty or it could get dangerous, which is when you get that “I really have to go right now emergency” feeling. This is beneficial because 99% of the time waiting to go to the bathroom isn’t a dangerous decision, so the brain ignores those signals when it is preoccupied with something else, like walking or running, which to our ancestors could be foraging for food or running from danger. The brain ignore the signals so as not to interrupt something that is possibly really important With something unimportant like going pee. This is also why when you walk up to your front door you suddenly REALLY have to go to the bathroom, your subconscious brain noes that it’s not at a place that it can rest and be safe and stops ignoring those signals.",
"Huh, anecdotally I find it easier to hold when I'm sitting. The second I stand up it's like \"all hands to battle stations, this is not a drill\"",
"Your brain is too busy thinking of other things, like how to walk, do the shopping, do your work, take a call, etc that it \"forgets\" it has to pee. When you're not moving around, the extra stimulus is gone and it has more focus on the signal that your bladder is full."
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mzsrmj | Why can’t you spend dirty money like regular, untraceable cash? Why does it have to be put into a bank? | In other words, why does the money have to be laundered? Couldn’t you just pay for everything using physical cash? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can, as long as it's \"everyday people\" sums. You don't have to launder $2K. But if it's millions, people will get suspicious about how you can afford the stuff you buy, no matter how you buy it. And then you better have a plausible explanation, which is exactly what laundering aims to create.",
"Because if the money isn't laundered and the government starts realizing you suddenly own a mansion and a dozen Ferraris, and your tax returns for the last five years say you earned $20,000 as a janitor, then there are going to be some *serious* questions about where the money came from. Extreme example of course but that's the general idea.",
"If you only use the dirty money to buy groceries or clothing, then it won't matter. You will probably want to buy a house or a car, if you have all that money. The person or business selling them to you will be reluctant to accept cash for such a large transaction. Hence, you will have to deposit it. If you deposit all that cash at once, it will raise a flag to the IRS, who will know, from your past income tax reports, that you do not make that much money. They will investigate to see if you have been withholding money from the Government, or if you are involved in shady businesses. As a matter of fact, the bank manager will be requesting proof of origin of the money, unless they are crooked, too. The bank can get into trouble if they aid in money laundering. Edit: another Redditor confirmed that the deposits are reported to FinCen, not to the IRS.",
"Back in the late 1980s my dad owned 5 or 6 laundromats, so it was pretty much a cash-only business. Lots of quarters and paper money from the change machines. We had to collect the money and deposit twice a week. Unfortunately, we'd always be over the $10k limit and we had to fill out all of the paperwork every single time. If we were just a bit over, my dad would just pull a few hundred dollars out to stay under 10k. It was really annoying, and everyone in the bank knew who we were and that the business was legit.",
"Cuz if you appear to be living above your means, then there's something possibly illegal going on and the government may not be getting their tax on your illegal income. Breaking bad has a pretty popular explanation on why money laundering is necessary, URL_0",
"You could pay for everything in cash, but the government gets wise to that when you are filing taxes for $60,000 and you own a Ferrari. Drug dealers used to do that in Miami in the 80s, dealers would buy expensive cars with suitcases full of cash. It is significantly more challenging to do that today. A better strategy is to set up a company, preferably a legit company, where you can launder your money through. This could be a literal laundromat. Any type of company where you move a lot of money through and it can be in cash receipts. Construction is good for this, you set up a business, then you buy lumber from them and they charge you a reasonable price. Something that won't look wrong. So you pay them double or triple the cost. Except, that person works for you, and after taking a cut they will hand you back the money in cash or goods or services. This is why you hear of businesses that have 'two sets of books' and why people work at legit businesses and never realize that the company is laundering money. In order for this to work only a few people have to know about it. This is why the mob loved construction and the concrete business; you only need to 'own' a couple people in the chain in order to move ill gotten gains through unnoticed. People who did notice often found themselves thrown off the top of whatever building was under construction. Meanwhile, the construction goes on as intended because the contract is legit. Nowadays, if you want to 'pay cash', you will find few people willing to accept suitcases full of crisp bills. You use a wire transfer or an ACH transaction. Something where an electronic record is created. You can travel with suitcases full of cash, this is a legitimate business sometimes, you hire someone who specializes in it and can produce the necessary documentation to customs.",
"Imagine you have stolen a piece of candy and you need to get rid it it. You can eat it, easy. Now imagine you've stolen several boxes with several pieces of candy, amounting to a big truck of candy, and you need to get rid of it. You can't eat it all, because you'll end up in hospital and have explaining to do. You need to get your friends involved, start moving candy around, and eat it slowly or change it for other things so that the doctor doesn't notice you're overdosing on illegally held candy. You also don't want the doctor to notice that suddenly you have a new phone and a new TV that you've bought with candy, because the doctor will start asking you difficult questions. That's why.",
"In the words of Marty Byrde: “Okay. Money Laundering 101. Say you come across a suitcase with five million bucks in it. What would you buy? A yacht? A mansion? A sports car? Sorry. The IRS won't let you buy anything of value with it. So you better get that money into the banking system. But here's the problem. That dirty money is too clean. Looks like it just came out of a bank vault. You gotta age it up. Crumple it. Drag it through the dirt. Run it over with your car. Anything to make it look like it's been around the block. Next, you need a cash business. Something pleasant and joyful with books that are easily manipulated. No credit card receipts, etcetera. You mix the five million with the cash from the joyful business. That mixture goes from an American bank to a bank from any country that doesn't have to listen to the IRS. It then goes into a standard checking account and voila. All you need is access to one of over three million terminals, because your work is done. Your money's clean. It's as legitimate as anybody else's.”",
"Say you have $30k a year \"legal\" income and $100k additional illegal income. Do you want to live a life like a $30k person, or a $130k person? If you want to present as the latter, you need to convince the state you're legally earning that money, hence laundering.",
"If you're using it in small amounts, you can. You can go to a grocery store and buy yourself some chips and pay with cash and it's fine. But if you want to buy a car, they're not going to accept a pile of cash, they want to fill out documents of the entire transaction showing exactly how much was paid and that everything is legal and legitimate. Same with a house, or a boat, or your electric bill, or a fancy swimming pool. Companies don't usually accept giant piles of cash in exchange for expensive goods, because if they did then people could agree to buy something and then refuse to pay afterwards claiming that they did pay with a giant pile of cash, and there would be no proof of whether they did or didn't. The company wants everything recorded so they can prove exactly how much each person paid or hasn't yet paid. Therefore, anyone with dirty money who wants to buy large expensive things needs clean cash in a bank account that can be used in official documented transactions. And therefore they need to have an official source for this money so that they can explain where it came from and pay taxes on it.",
"You could get away with it if you supplemented a visible means of support and did not get greedy such as paying for meals and clothes and furniture and household items with cash. One of the top reasons criminals get caught is because they get greedy. You could not live a million dollar lifestyle if you make 50k a year.",
"I used to live below a handful of college kids that where running one hell of a drug ring. Every one of them had a crappy part time job so they'd have traceable income with the IRS. Making zero income is suspicious.",
"Let’s say your allowance is $2/week. Meanwhile you have a side hustle down at the school selling stolen school supplies back to the kids in your class. At the end of the month you go to the candy store and come out holding $100 in chocolate bars. Mom and Dad are going to be very suspicious how you bought all that candy off of $2/week. So instead, you set-up a lemonade stand. It doesn’t matter if people aren’t buying your lemonade: you don’t need them to. All you need is a plausible excuse for where that $100 you made selling stolen trapper keepers came from. Mom and Dad ask how you bought all that candy. “People have been thirsty!” you reply and your Dad compliments your entrepreneurial spirit. Your side hustle starts to boom as you hire a few more kids from neighbouring schools to expand your operations, and suddenly that $100 turns into $1,000. You can’t keep $1,000 under your mattress - Mom’s going to find it and start asking questions (or worse, some snitch is going to let on about your stash and someone might swipe it from you). So you ask Dad about opening up a bank account to keep your money safe and he compliments your financial savvy, taking you down to the local branch all smiles at his lemonade-selling prodigy. Now your money’s getting deposited as computer code and when little Timmy goes crying that you have his $5 bill with his My Little Pony doodle on the back, there’s no evidence to back him up. You run a legitimate lemonade stand, after all - and all your money is clean. Sure you may be shelling out $200 on lemonade supplies, but if it legitimizes your $1,000 it’s a price you’re happy to pay. That’s why.",
"U could buy everything with cash but buying big ticket items with cash will set off alarms at the irs. They will then go digging into your tax records realize you haven't claimed any of your ill gotten goods and now you owe the irs tons of money. Really the only reason to launder your money is to keep the irs off your back. Most of the mafia bosses werent busted for their crimes but for not paying taxes. There is only two things you cannot escape in this world death and the irs",
"Eventually, you're going to want to buy something with all that money or invest it. And, if you can't prove the source, there could be a serious problem. If you make $60,000/year working in an office job and suddenly you put $500,000 in a mutual fund, the IRS is not going to understand where you got the $500,000. They'll have no records of it being gifted, inherited, paid, gained from investing...and while you can find $5 on the ground and nobody bats an eye, $500,000 in cash can only really and truly come from something illegal (theft, trafficking, etc.). So, you have to find a way to \"launder\" it. The car wash in Breaking Bad shows a good example of this. Skyler has to do a bunch of extra fake transactions in cash. Let's say each wash is $20. For every fake wash she does in cash, she can take $20 from the dirty money pile and put it in the clean pile. It would be difficult for the IRS to prove how many cars went through the car wash unless they actually sent somebody to look at the business and then compared how many cars went through versus how many car washes were charged. For the IRS to actually do that, they would have to be really suspicious of fraud for some reason (anonymous tip, or some kind of absurd revenue figure that's atypical for the business).",
"There's a good movie A Simple Plan, where three guys find a plane in the woods, but there's a million dollars and a dead pilot, and it's clearly been there for awhile. So they just take the money. The rest of the movie gets kinda neat in to it... these guys aren't huge criminals, but definitely don't want to lose the money, so they don't want to answer questions. Always stuck with me how I'd handle the situation. Basically... you'd still have to work. But like the anti-money launderer guy was saying, you could spend it in smaller sums. So if the tickets don't get too expensive, you could do smaller vacations, always pay for groceries, physical things like TVs and shit... then your \"job\" goes towards things like cars or investments or getting a pool installed. Without a believable cover story you're relegated to \"living more comfortably\" not a bad compromise. You could also start going to the casino and praying for a big win that you could legally report and then spend, but that might just be silly.",
"It only works for much smaller amounts of cash (which I think is what you're referring to?) So you can spend 100 dollars a week of dirty money and not be noticed, but don't be expecting to make any big purchases with that cash without being spotted.",
"It's not about spending the money it's about proving it's source. If you never buy durable tangible things then you're ok but when you have a million dollar home, people are going to want you to pay taxes on it, and they're going to want to know where the money comes from. So for example let's say you're a criminal and you've got 1 million dollars of money from crime. So you open a storefront that claims it's a mattress store that made 1 million in profit that year, in reality the store barely exists. But on paper you now have a justifiable reason for having that money.",
"Here's a random example: There used to be a reality/documentary-style TV show on, idk, hbo or something called \"gigalos\" which followed around a group of male escorts in Vegas. They made quite a bit of money. One guy kept wanting to buy a house, but every time he'd go to the bank for a loan they wouldn't give it to him because he couldn't report all the income he had. He had enough money to get a house, but it's almost impossible to actually complete the transaction without people finding out where the money came from. And if your money didn't come from a legal source, the government gets super interested. You could probably get by spending a couple thousand here and there of untraceable, illegally-sourced cash... But as your material possessions add up, there comes a point where some agency here or there is gonna ask questions and you need to have answers. Much easier to launder it so you can just spend it like a normal person (assuming you get away with it).",
"This is why Tony Soprano flipped out when they tried to take away his job at the waste management company. He needed that W2.",
"Just remember you can and should declare your illegal income to the IRS. There is a form for that and that is usually the easiest thing to get you on. The IRS only cares that they got payed",
"Because we've set up a system where we're looking for dirty money and avoiding that tracking creates suspicious behavior likely indicative of criminal activity. You will be investigated. A good system of regulations on any potentially dangerous activity will not only put tracking systems in place for normal activity, it will also flag abnormal activity as suspicious and investigate. In order for this to work, though, the vast majority of the participants must stick with the normal behavior and accept the monitoring of their activity. If the society doesn't agree to the it, the laws and regulations will be useless. It only works because the vast majority of people don't want to do business with large sums of cash.",
"To the tax and fraud experts here, why wouldn't one of these work?: & #x200B; 1. \"Sell\" your own personal artwork for $100k per piece. Claim it all, pay the taxes, tell any auditors that you don't know who the buyer was or where he got his money, he just paid you in cash 2. Walk into a casino with $100k, convert it to chips, gamble lightly for a little while, then cash it all out and claim it as winnings. Again, claim it and pay taxes",
"Large sums of dirty cash are essentially free groceries, gas, dinner, and smaller purchases like tvs and video game systems. You wouldn't be able to hide the cash if you tried to buy a house way out of your price range because that would raise a red flag with the IRS",
"If you do anything with that money through the banking system, the bank is required to file a suspicious activity report (SAR)....which end up going to the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Now you in trouble....",
"well, let's just have Saul Goodman explain it to you: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )",
"[Here's a video where a professor talks about what Hollywood gets right or wrong about money laundering.]( URL_0 )",
"I like how a lot of people watch some TV shows or movies, suddenly they're money laundering experts. As if some nobody on Reddit can think of something that the IRS hasn't already thought of. I'm sure there's tons of high rollers raking in dirty money with nothing better to do than post about it on Reddit.",
"My boyfriend and I are currently watching Breaking Bad for the first time, and my boyfriend turned to me in the middle and was like, \"why are they complicating this laundering process so much? Just buy a house in [insert name of Canadian city we live in which the prices have jumped 43% in the past year and the average shitty old house is well over a million].\" 😆",
"Imagine you work at a bank. You see a customer once every 2ish years. A slow but steady increase in wealth every year. Average by all means. The boom, the guy buys a 2 million dollar yatch, and a 2 million dollar villa, along with a few sportscars. And you cant see how he affords it. You're gonna start asking questions. And when things don't line up. You're gonna report it. (If the money has been cleaned) But wow, you missed that the guy created a company that brought in crazy amounts of money by selling bulletproof vests for squirrels. So you investigate the company, and it looks legit. And you drop the case. Cleaning money isn't a 100% safe thing. If the numbers of said company look weird, they're gonna dig deeper. And eventually, they're going to figure out where that money came from. Sketchy things could be like if no one goes to your store, but on paper you're bringing in millions per year in profits.",
"Sheer volume of paper. Sure you could launder 1k-5K pretty easy, once or twice. \"I sold my old truck!\" but not repeatedly, i mean how much stuff you got to sale. You cant buy a house with cash, or even put in a down payment. It is too much paper, it is too hard to count, it is too easy to steal. Even if you paid cash for every day normal stuff like groceries, dining out, gas, entertainment, that is tops 30-50k a year and that is really spending money. You cant buy a new vehicle with cash. They wont take it. It is too big a liability for them, it it became know the local dealer had 1000's of dollars in cash laying around every 2 bit crook in the area would try to knock them off. To make big purchases you have to be able to get it into a bank and now you're trackable. \"So and so deposits 10k a week into a bank account but works as a bus driver. What bus does he drive? What company? Why aren't they claiming his pay as a tax write off. Why are they paying him more than a normal bus driver makes?\" Banks report large cash deposits to the IRS, once or twice not a big deal. Maybe he sold an old family heirloom. But do it often, and now someone is paying attention. So you need a method to bring it into the banking system that isn't suspicious, and that is the hard part. If you figure it out...well then there are lots of people on both sides of the law that would like to talk to you.",
"You can pay for most things with cash but when it comes to things like houses and cars you generally have to pay via the bank.",
"At my job at FutureShop in Vancouver in the early 2000s we were just down the street from the Hell's Angels clubhouse. One of our sales guys was making sales of $20000+ every single day, in cash. All the boys knew to go to him and that he wouldn't ask questions or report the unusual spending. The management was making mad bonuses, so they didn't care either. But that cash never ended up in a cashier's till, the only non manager who knew was the guy doing the deposits at the end of the night (me). The sales guy cleared $160k in commission four years in a row - next highest in the company was 85k. What the HA did with the stuff I dunno, probably made fake purchase invoices and sold it in a front business. So you can launder cash without a bank, but something like this scheme probably won't work for tens of millions of dollars.",
"Because you can’t purchase big ticket items with cash. Can’t make a payment on your house/car with cash, can’t invest in the market with cash and so on. Sure you can buy all the beer and weed you want but if you want something substantial you are going to create a paper trail.",
"Some funny comments in this post. Folks not declaring 50k you managed to scam in cash, and spending it on groceries and nice clothes is NOT money laundering. You are just cheating on tax. Money laundering involves millions in cash from large scale illegal activity - usually drugs - and is a huge challenge for those involved “legitimising” that money.",
"It looks suspicious and tacky to pay for many things in cash... especially things like jewelry, cars, houses, deposits into investment accounts. It's also increasingly harder to do so for things like travel. It also helps connect dots between income and spending... because income is reported and taxes paid, you can show how you afforded that nice house and Escalade vs. having no/low income but a high end lifestyle.",
"Accountability. When you buy your $100million home, fast cars, jet skis, Gucci and Supreme Brick with ‘dirty’ money then the tax man comes and asks: ‘where did you get all that money to buy all those sweet things, sir?’ And your income doesn’t match the cost of the things you brought... RED FLAGS start waving and the tax man will audit you. And when he finds out that you used illegal ‘dirty’ money to buy all those nice things; he gonna take it all from you and throw your stupid ass in jail. ‘Laundering’ money is the process of using fake businesses complex bank transfers or other means (casinos) to pretend that you *earned* that money through legal means. A front. Fraud. Et al. So like I began; you need to show proof (accountability) of your earnings and make sure they match your (legitimate) income. That’s why taxes and auditing is so strictly enforced. The government need to make sure expenses don’t exceed income.",
"what will happen if I deposit my dirty money in a foreign bank - a shady one who doesnt care and wont ask questions. start streaming on twitch/ open gofundme / patreon and get all the money back with donations and subscribtions?",
"I know a lot of drug dealers will work a job and put almost all of their salary into their savings while using the cash they earn dealing for every day stuff. Savings account fills up fast like that and you still living a good life.",
"You open up a business of any kind, hire a couple of employees, and drum up a bunch of fake business to turn all of your dirty money into clean money. Casinos are the best for this if it's a large and continuous flow of money. You can spend dirty money in small amounts and it's untraceable. You cannot spend it in large amounts without the government taking notice. Dirty money is basically(but not exclusively) untaxed money. All legitimate money is taxed by the government, so when you have more things than your yearly salary could possibly afford, people start taking interest. Like yachts and fast cars and fancy houses when you only make 60k a year.",
"Because if you buy a $500,000 house but your tax returns only show you made $45,000 last year, you’re going to get audited",
"Al Capone. Depending on on the amount of money, you probably can get away with it. If you're living well, and come under suspicion for other crimes, even if you avoid punishment for the other crimes, you may be prosecuted for tax evasion. That's what happened to Al Capone in the 1920's.",
"There are plenty of ways to launder large sums of money. The global drug trade is full of examples. URL_1 If you want to buy real estate, former President Trump's condo schemes are a very well known as a perfectly legal money laundering organization. They cannot be the only one. URL_0 No doubt, it's not an everyday topic. Done with care, you too can live in a Trump branded condo!",
"A friend of mine has been flying under the radar for years now. He routinely works under the table, cash only. Sometimes large amounts a month (8-9k) but uses a Mexican prepaid card service to put smaller amounts on with different cards. Has never paid a dime in taxes. I have told him it’s going to catch up to him since we were in our 20s, but he’s almost 40 and has never had a problem. Rents a house through cash. Bought his cars with cash. The last time he filed taxes was 20 years old. I mean, if it works, you can’t judge it lol.",
"Today you have 10 dollars and you want to buy lunch for yourself. No one cares. Tomorrow, you have 100,000 dollars and you want to buy lunch for everyone on the lunch room. People start caring. In order to maintain wealth, you take that 100,000 dollars and you run it through another (legitimate) business to show an income from. The people that care, now see that you got 100,000 from ABC laundry mat that you either own or are a part owner of. This money has been 'washed' and looks legitimate. You are buying the entire lunchroom lunch to celebrate. To build wealth, you take the 100,000 and you invest in stocks slowly or you buy into a partnership of a company. You slowly take a return on your 100k investment over a long period. This 100k of illegitimate money becomes washed and has now grown to 1 mil due to your investment.",
"lets say you have 10 million in cash.. and you want to buy a house and a porsche. sure you can pay for them with a suitcase full of cash.the dealership wont blink. but when it comes time to do taxes someone is going to start asking questions about how you paid for the property/assets.everyone has to do taxes,and you cant hide houses and cars. as for the porsche,when you register it at dmv it becomes a registered asset under your name,so tax man knows about it. they know about your legit income,if you have one, and if it doesnt make sense people ask questions. eventually someone will look into it, and the more things you've bought over years without a legit income to support it will end up as evidence against you most likely in a drug investigation and it all seized until you can prove how it was paid for. Im sure you could rent a normal apartment and pay cash,drive a honda civic , open a bank account and deposit just enough to pay bills that you cant with cash, live a modest lifestyle no one will notice for a long time. basically you have 10mil and really cant use it for anything is the problem. if you open a laundry mat that magically makes 10k/day in profit then you have a 10k a day minus expenses of a legit income. you can buy houses,sports cars,invest without questions. you will want your money to make you more money also because where ever the cash is coming from it wont last forever so you need clean money to buy businesses/invest.",
"I will tell you how organized crime groups do it. There are multiple ways. For small amounts of cash (less than $100,000), you can get away with just buying everything day to day with it. Think groceries, gas, entertainment, tuition, and dining out. Any major or frequent purchases over $5000 are out of bounds -- the government will come knocking. This level is usually a person who has their own grow business or small dial-a-dope operation. Once you get into higher amounts, you can setup smurfs. These are trusted people who are given cash and deposit it into multiple bank accounts in amounts less than $5000. This won't set off any alarms, but you need to trust your people. At amounts closing in on $500,000 to $1,000,000 plus, the storage of the cash alone becomes an issue and to limit the number of smurfs in your group, it's time to open a business. Cash businesses like landscaping, construction, and small retailers like coffee shops, gyms, and restaurants work great. You pad your cash income at the end of the day and make sure you pay your taxes. Charities are another method. You can setup a legitimate charity, give cash to a whole bunch of people, they dontate tens of thousands of dollars at a time, you give them a tax receipt, and then pay out yourself a hefty wage as an administrator. As you approach tens of millions, you're going to have a lot of businesses to look after. It becomes a headache. Now you've got literal tons of cash. It's time to park it in two major concrete goods: art and real estate. You can be an anonymous buyer at an art auction and purchases millions of dollars in paintings. These paintings are easy to ship and store and you can then sell them on behalf of an anonymous seller (actually you) and then take a major commission. This commission is then reported as legal income and you pay taxes on it. Real estate is another great way to put massive amounts of cash in a tangible asset. You have your businesses going, paying employees (usually at really high wages) and you can sell them a decent house or apartment at a ridiculously inflated price. A shady real estate agent and a shady private lender are all you need. You'll be working with them regularly. The idea is you give your buyer (employee/smurf) a massive down payment in cash, they buy your place for a vastly inflated price, then you pay their mortgage each month. In hot real estate markets, some sucker legitimate buyer will come along, maybe even make you money, and then you no longer have to pay the mortgage. Rise and repeat. These are the different levels of it all. As you move up, you'll be using a combination of all of them. You'll being expensive accountants, lawyers, real estate agents, and financiers the higher you go. You'll also be seeking different markets that have different reporting requirements.",
"You can if you are dealing with small amounts, but when it becomes millions and you want to buy property, vehicles, stocks, bonds etc then you need to deal with banks and government.",
"I believe a business by law has to report to the IRS any purchase made with all cash that is over 10k. I bought a wedding ring once for 14k and they made me fill out IRS paperwork because I paid in cash.",
"One thing a good bunch of people do is that they go to betting places and ask for reciepts of bigger wins of other people that they didnt took with them. That way you have \"proof\" for the bank that you won a large amount and it wouldnt get flagged. Of course only if the betting place dont care but with a little bribe they dont.",
"You should watch the Ozark on Netflix. He explains it really well. Basically if you have money you can't explain you can buy things like groceries and gas but not much more than that. One of the FBIs main jobs is to find people who are spending more money than they should have. So if you buy a house for 100k cash but you only made 16k last year, that's gonna pop an investigation.",
"As others have said, it’s tough to spend cash on big ticket items without raising the eyebrows of the tax man. In most cases you could manage purchases up to an OK car if you’re lucky, along with day to day purchases, but even for things like bills it’s tough to pay cash if you aren’t going into the physical store every month. Buy a house with cash and you’re ripe for a tax audit. TLDR; Anything that would be actually worth using large sums of illegal cash on are gonna have the tax man come knockin’ and you’re a tax audit waiting to happen.",
"It's not the money itself, it's that if you're doing something illegal and have a lot more money than your day job pays, people get suspicious. So if you've got dirty money coming in, you make it look like it's coming in from something legal, then that income from the legal thing looks legitimate. For example, say you're doing crime, doesn't matter what but it's something that pays. You buy a laundromat, because people would mostly pay you in cash and there's not a lot of overhead, and because you don't really have any expenses that cops could look at to prove you're not actually doing as much business as you say. You then take the money from your crimes, and *say* that they're from your laundromat, and then you've converted illegal crime money into seeming-legal laundromat money.",
"I think Saul Goodman gave a great ELI5: Money Laundering to Jesse in Breaking Bad. Here’s a link to the scene: URL_0 You can spend your money from your illegal activities just like any money you receive from an aboveboard job. However, the government wants you to pay the taxes you owe; So you have to report the money you make so they don’t think you’re a tax cheat. If they can get Capone, they can get you; boom you’re in jail. Also, writing down “drug dealer”, or whatever your illegal occupation of choice is, on your taxes when you are reporting that income is essentially an admission of committing a crime and could be used by other agencies than the IRS to put you in jail. So you have to launder it so as to provide a clean source of income that can be reported to the IRS while not admitting to other agencies that you’ve earned the income through illegal actions.",
"Other people have answered this better but you'd be amazed at how suspicious cash is to people.",
"May I recommend a very short video clip of a very talented and chrismatic CRIMINAL lawyer explaining this concept in day to day true ELI5 English? [What's a billion times worse than being a drug dealer?]( URL_0 )",
"Fun fact, there is a reason all the coin operated machines were made in Chicago. Pinball machines, gumball machines, coin operated laundry, soda and chip vending machines, skeet ball, pool tables, etc. One of the easiest ways to launder money.",
"Also, keep in mind that cash in large amounts is *extremely* heavy, voluminous, and dangerous. Trafficking networks keep numerous stash houses full of cash for this exact reason. Especially since dirty money is rarely transacted with mint $100 bills, imagine the sheer volume and weight of cash in the millions/billions made of 1, 5, 10, and 20s... Pretty sure sellers of valuable assets would be hesitant to accept payments in physical cash for similar reasons.",
"Because the IRS and state revenue agencies are on the lookout for tax evasion, and will get suspicious if you start throwing money around like MC Hammer without filing tax returns to indicate where you got all that money. The law says that you have to pay taxes on all income, even if it's illicitly earned, so the IRS can and will audit and investigate you if you act suspiciously rich. But of course, you can't just pay the taxes straight up, because then you'll be admitting to the authorities about the source of your income, which will then be used to investigate you on that source. So instead you have to manufacture a fake way to legally earn that income, often through cash heavy businesses with little to no paper trail. That way, you just look like a successful entrepreneur, pay your taxes accordingly, and nobody bats an eye. If you don't launder your money, you either can't use it on being conspicuously rich, or you risk getting caught in multiple crimes in multiple jurisdictions.",
"You can’t pay bills with cash. I’m a random vaguely upstanding citizen but I can confirm that most thing you need to live in the U.S. require a credit or debit card to pay for. Back when I used to waitress I remember having to take take a stack of bills from tips to the bank every week because I couldn’t use cash to pay most of my bills. My rent, my water and power bills with the city, my car insurance, my rental insurance, my health insurance, my car payments, my student fees, my medical bills, and even my student loans all had to be paid from an account. Even my car mechanic won’t take cash, since he didn’t want the added expense of keeping a safe in his business and doing regular bank runs. I am just guessing here but if criminals wants to buy anything more than something at the supermarket or a round of drinks at a bar they must need money they can use on a card. Any time money goes into a financial institution it is traceable, hence why criminals launder money coming from dodgy sources.",
"your regular drug dealer doesn't give a shit about laundering money, because at best, he gets a couple thousands a week, and that's it, it's literally your everyday life, and as long as you're not banking your money, there's absolutely no way anyone would know about it, unless you get caught by the police, because assuming you're on your own, you should already have an explanation to your expanses, and no one really cares anyway, but if you're starting to make dozens of thousands each week, then it starts being harder to balance it up, first of all, what do you do with your money ? If you keep it in your apartment, in pocket money, it's gonna take a lot of space, and it's gonna be really hard to hide, it's also gonna be really hard to use it without drawing attention, and it's gonna be really hard not to be distracted by it, basically, there's many variables you don't have control over, once the amount gets too high, so, everything is better in a bank account, it's safer, it's not in your apartment, less stress, you have an everyday life that isn't solely about selling drugs to lifeless people, and it forces you to keep everything in check, because a single mistake in your things, and you're in jail for years."
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mztkxa | How does Aloe Vera assist in reducing the symptoms and help heal sunburns? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are a lot of different things that happen in your skin when you apply aloe vera. It stimulates collagen production, helps bind moisture to the skin, it's an anti inflammatory, and it's even an antiseptic. In the case of sunburn, this all helps your body's immune response to be more effective, while protecting the skin from more irritation."
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mztqjz | How did scientists create GMOs? | Whats the actual process | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends on how you define Genetically modified. Our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago would always pick the best plant from the crop and take the seeds from that to propagate or they would allow the best pig to live the longest as a breeder etc. But GMOs still havent changed that much. They take the plants or animals isolate the best properties and try to replicate that in the subsequent species",
"There are multiple different methods of modifying the genome of an organism. The first was selective breeding and we've been doing that for thousands of years. Then we figured out hybridization, chemical modification, and use of radiation to cause genetic changes. Now we have even more refined, safer, and more reliable methods like gene splicing and direct editing (CRISPR) if genetic sequences."
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mzu7h2 | Can someone explain an Existential Forgery Attack against RSA Digital Signature? | Hi everyone! I am in cryptography class and I'm having a hard time understanding the Existential Forgery Attack and the textbook isn't helping either. Can anyone explain it to me? I appreciate any help or examples you can give me! | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The attack is just a means of producing something with a technically valid signature. However what that \"something\" is, well, it is essentially garbage most of the time because you're forcibly constructing something with a valid signature out of parts with valid signatures. What you get in the end will be effectively random. In most cases it would be a case of \"Look, he signed this document!\" \"This looks like something produced by an infant who'd never seen a crayon before.\" \"Yes, but he signed it, and I can prove it mathematically!\" The math is fairly simple. RSA signatures are essentially done by raising a number to an exponent. EncryptedText = OriginalMessage^e (modulo N) and the decryption process is OriginalMessage = EncryptedText^(d) (modulo N). For signing you just swap e and d, and replace EncryptedText with SignatureOfMessage. e is the public exponent and d is the private exponent in both situations. Now modulo arithmetic can often be treated as simple integer arithmetic and then apply the modulo at the end rather than at each step in a long calculation. I can do all the math without considering of the modulo and then fix it at the end. So I can really just abuse the usual rules of multiplication and exponents to build a technically valid signature by combining 2 (or more) other known signatures. SignatureOfMessage1 = Message1^(d) and SignatureOfMessage2 = Message2^(d). Not knowing what d is but having the originals and signatures of any old messages, I can still combine these into a valid combination, SignatureOfMessage1 * SignatureOfMessage2 = Message1^d * Message2^d = (Message1 * Message2)^d = A valid signature for message Message1*Message2 (modulo N) In most situations this isn't very useful, but you have technically constructed a new message and its valid signature without breaking the private key."
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mzu9m2 | Why do we like to sleep with warm blankets, but not warm pillows? | The head likes cold, but the body likes warmth? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your whole body actually prefers to sleep a bit cold. Studies have shown that keeping your thermostat at about 65 degrees Fahrenheit is optimal for the deepest sleep. Also, apparently keeping a cool head allows your body to expel heat more effectively (understandably). Since keeping your body warm takes energy and sort of defeats the purpose of sleep (that being to rest), we can imagine why we want to expel this heat. The body temperature we keep while awake is such because our chemical reactions and electrical signals in our body happen most efficiently at these temperatures. We don’t really need to be think and act while asleep, so this conservation of energy while resting makes sense. So body saves energy and rests easier by being a bit colder. Keeping a cool head is important to expel heat. Aome anecdotal notes: Actually, for me I quite like my body at the same temperature as my head, it just makes me feel safe and relaxed to be covered, so I continue to sleep with a blanket. Additionally, my hands and feet are often *colder* than my head, so I also sometimes use my blanket to warm them up to the comfortable temperature my head is at, not past it to be warmer. My really quickly gathered sources I’m not an expert I just made a quick google search to back up my ideas: URL_1 URL_0"
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mzuaar | What would happen if a normal happy and healthy person were to take antidepressants? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nothing, except it might mess up your serotonin or norepinephrine balance, which is not pleasant.",
"Depends on the type of antidepressant. Most likely nothing would happen, with the possibility of experiencing the side effects of the antidepressant, e.g., lower sex drive on an SSRI (like Prozac)."
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mzuffp | Why do you sometimes forget/misjudge everyday mundane things? | For Example, I use a software application almost everyday for my job. It requires me to type in the password, its a very easy password to remember. I will randomly have a moment every once in a while where I completely forget the password and have to look it up. Or sometimes just try to shut my mind off and hope muscle memory figures it out. & #x200B; Why is that? What is happening? I would assume its a similar effect to when you look at a word you write very frequently and one day it suddenly looks like its misspelled even though its not. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So this is actually a pretty well documented phenomenon, it even has a name: Wordnesia. Unfortunately, there just isn't a good way to reproduce it in a lab setting because it happens so randomly, so studying it is difficult and experts can really only guess. A possible explanation: Usually reading and writing these sorts of words is automated, and when you try to do it manually you find that the path you usually use to get to that information hasn't been documented for the manual part of your brain to use. You can't switch from manual to automated on command, so now you're stuck not knowing where to look for the information in your brain library. The info is still there, you just don't know where right now."
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mzuktx | Why does stomach acid not dissolve all the good stuff like minerals, protein and other things we need? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It does. But being dissolved in acid does not “destroy” on a molecular level, it only breaks chemical bonds, and only certain types of bonds at that. Our body is designed to take in the broken-down bits of nutrients you get post-acid. Like a strawberry smoothie. It’s the same exact stuff before or after you blend it. But blending sure AF helps you drink it with a straw.",
"It does, that’s kind of the point. We can on my absorb those necessary nutrients once they’ve been broken down."
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mzutb3 | What exactly makes muscles fail to perform during exercise? Ex: being able to do 42 push-ups but not 43. | Bonus follow ups: why does waiting a moment usually let you do another rep? Why do your muscles quiver when reaching the threshold? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Muscles require energy to perform. Some of this energy comes from oxygen we breathe in. Muscles use up that temporary energy quickly, which is why we breathe heavily after. Our body is trying to get back the oxygen it used up. This also explains why muscles stop performing after a certain point. Not enough energy. And why after a few moments of breathing they can perform again. But energy also comes from other sources that cannot be replenished just by breathing. If you can do 42, but not 43 pushups, you may be able to do 10 more after taking a few minutes to breathe, but likely not another 42 of them!",
"What you experienced is called muscle fatigue. We can basically say the reason it happens is lack of energy. But it actually involved a whole bunch of other stuffs like nervous system, vascular and respiratory system, nutrition... Basically, the way your body use energy varies in accordance with all these factor. Per exemple, the ambient temperature can influence how well your body uses energy, your diet can influence how long your body uses energy, your mental state can influence how much your body will use energy, the number of muscles to do an exercise can influence the performance of that one muscle you want to train... So, I can train harder in cold environments and make my body to get used to it thus whenever I train on warmer environments my body will have an better performance than someone who’s always trained in warm ambient. I can squad 270lbs, In the other I can leg press 720lbs. One uses more muscle than the other, thus getting more muscle fatigue. When I used to train 30min after I took my supplements I would have a lesser performance than when I trained 1hrs after eating."
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mzvtvq | Why is it difficult to pee with an erection? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's an internal \"valve\" that connects the urethra (pee tube) to either the testes (for semen) or the bladder (for urine), but not both at the same time. For hopefully obvious reasons, you don't want to mix the two. Normally, with an erection, it's set to \"semen\". Biologically, we're not setup to pee with an erection. That's why it takes a while and conscious effort to pee with an erection, the \"valve\" needs to reposition. When that happens, you've got a different fluid traveling through the erection than it was intended for and the fluid mechanics are all wrong because the tissue around the urethra is still engorged and pushing/distorting the urethra away from it's normal flacid shape. Basically, the penis is still set for \"semen\" but you're running urine through it. Semen is \\*way\\* thicker than urine, so it behaves definitely exiting the urethra.",
"I don't really find it difficult to pee with an erection, I find it difficult to pee where I'm supposed to with an erection.",
"Also, it is bloody difficult to aim when your John Thomas is standing to attention. So you need some time to calm down to be able to do anything other than imitate a fountain."
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mzvuy5 | Is possible to do a water wired computer? | I asked to my stepdad if, since the water cunduct electricity, is possible to reduce computers costs by making “water-wires” instead of copper ones. He said that isn’t possible, but I’m not understanding why! He said that electricity travel from - pole to + pole. So why with water doesn’t happen the same?!? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Theoretically it would be possible l, but there a numerous reason why it wouldn't be practical: Even though water does conduct electricity (especially salt water) there is a lot of resistance, which means that much more power would be required, which would make it more expensive to use. Additionally the high resistance of water means that the pipes need to be larger, which would make a computer much larger and heavier. Water is cheap, but pipes are expensive, which are needed to keep the water in the computer. A possible leak could break the computer. Copper wires are much more reliable. Additionally the price of copper wires is cheap compared to the price of the computer chips, which are made out of silicon.",
"Firstly computers aren't expensive because of wires. That's a tiny fraction of the cost. Semi conductors which are special materials that can be made to react in different ways with electricity conductivity are really where cost comes in. You can't make those out of water as far as I'm aware so you've not saved on any cost that way. Pure water itself is a very poor conductor of electricity. You need to add things to water (such as salt and other chemicals which disperse into ions) to get it to conduct a current in any meaningful way and even then it won't carry a charge very far. If you're in the middle of the sea when a thunder storm starts unless it lands right next to you, you're probably going to be totally safe due to how poor of a conductor it is.",
"Water doesnt conduct electricity. Impurities in water conducts electricity. Also, as a liquid, even if it did conduct electricity, it wouldn't conduct it in one direction.",
"Under the right circumstances, water can conduct electricity well enough to build \"water wires\". But because water has a much much much higher resistivity than copper, your wires would need to have a massive diameter. And even at that, there would likely be a large signal attenuation through the wire, requiring larger power consumption. So, in theory, you could build a \"water wired\" computer. It would just be really expensive because you would need to built large pipes between each of the transistors. And you would need a dedicated power plant to run the thing because of all the energy lost due to the electrical resistance of the water. Also, you didn't ask about the speed of such a computer, but it would be slow. Very very slow.",
"This is a bit tangential of an answer, but you could make a computer [with the flow of water instead.]( URL_0 )"
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mzw9ik | how do cigarette filters work and what would happen if you smoked a filter? | And, for instance, if someone lit the wrong end of a cigarette and proceeded to smoke through the burnt filter, how would that affect filtration? How dangerous is it? Cellulose acetate is supposed to be a plastic, but I cannot find a straight answer to what smoking it directly would do to you. | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cigarette filters don't work. What's astonishing is this isn't even a secret. The filter has almost no impact on filtering \"tar\" or nicotine, and won't filter light weight molecules like carbon monoxide. They filter at most, and being generous, 25% of nicotine. But wait, I just said cigarette filters don't work, didn't I? *Filtering* 25% of nicotine sounds pretty effective, no? No. Because cigarette filters weren't designed to filter nicotine, they were designed to make smoking cigarettes safer, and they don't. You still get tar, you still get nicotine and... I'm just going to go on a tangent here for a moment and comment: why would you want to remove nicotine from cigarette smoke? No really - THAT'S THE ACTIVE INGREDIENT. That's what, in tobacco, gets you high. That's the source of your buzz. This is why tobacco smokers smoke. It just so happens to be chemically addictive. I mean, if you just wanted to smoke without the illicit effects of nicotine, flavor, and *ash* in your lungs, you could smoke literally anything else. ...So what happens is with the filter, with the reduction of up to 25% of the nicotine, you get less buzz. Which means you smoke more. And since it doesn't appreciably filter out particulates, you're just getting more tar in your lungs, killing you faster, as you pursue that buzz you've been craving. They make smoking no less dangerous, and in fact increase instance of smoking, increasing your risk. They exist for three principle reasons: First, that; that they make you smoke more. Second, they're a filler, cheaper than tobacco. So the manufacturers can stretch out more product and make more cigarettes. Third and finally, it's the perception - so long as the smoking populace wants to willfully believe this myth that filters do anything, so be it. They won't tell you you're right, but they won't tell you you're wrong. Otherwise, the filters are by and large weakly flammable, which is why they're used as filters, they're non-toxic, and hypoallergenic. They're made from organic molecules and are no more dangerous than smoking any other organic compound you'd find in your cigarette. Being a plastic, they aren't biodegradable. How they're made is from cellulose, which is dissolved in some organic solvents. The solution is then spun in a hot air environment, separating the solvents and forming spun filaments. It's not like they're taking cotton and treating it, then stuffing treated cotton into the cigarette. Most cellulose acetate is made from wood pulp, not that it makes a difference. But it is a plastic.",
"Lol I can't tell you the science behind it but I can tell you exactly what it feels like when your drunk and you light your cigarette the wrong end First it doesn't drag properly no matter how hard you suck, drunkenly confused about why it's not working. It doesn't burn the same way tobacco does, it just smoulders, and goes out very quickly. You feel lumps of tobacco in your mouth then start to cough, inhaling some of the leaves causing you to cough more. The original cough was from pulling on the cigarette and getting nothing. No air or smoke. The second is from choking on tobacco bits. When turning it round and smoking from the filter end, it gives it a very burnt taste but usually you realise your mistake before the filter becomes so burned that it is unusable. In straights (pre rolled, orange butt) the filter extends further than you think, into the white paper. The main issue I see with burning the filter is that its going to get blocked, the burnt end will form a seal and stop air flow through the filter. A partially burned filter maybe less effective the same as any type of filter like an air filter. But smokers generally don't care about our cigarettes being ?healthy. Smoking plastic will cause more immediate damage to the lung, the same as smoke inhalation like from a house fire where plastic in fibres gives off toxic black smoke. I don't think filters are to make cigarettes safer in anyway so it doesn't really matter what material they're made from. They're for comfort, to stop you eating lumps of baccy and soak up some of the tar that leaks over your fingers."
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mzwri7 | How do aquatic animals avoid swallowing tons of water with their food? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Simple answer is they don't. They either have similar salt concentrations inside their bodies or they are really good at being able to remove the salt from their bodies"
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mzwsvu | why does the remote work after you slap it ? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Slapping the remote can slightly reposition the batteries on their contacts, which can make a more solid connection. It can also scratch the oxide layer and allowing the electricity flow again. Rolling the batteries on their housing or simply taking them out and putting them on can accomplish the same thing"
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mzwx6h | Why won’t your body allow you to do things like hold your breath too long, but you can ingest enough alcohol to poison yourself or overeat? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Overeating is a very new concept. Until recently, there was not a constant surplus of food for most people. Your body wants you to overeat, because it expects there to be a famine or food shortage at any moment. Your body will stop you from drinking too much alcohol if it can - that is why you start to vomit. The problem is that when you drink, it has to go down your throat and into your stomach, then into your small intestine and be absorbed into your blood. By the time your body knows there is a problem, you might have done a dozen more shots. This lag is what lets a person poison themselves if they’re quick on the draw.",
"You can hold your breath as long as you want. Eventually you’ll pass out and your autonomic system will kick in to take in breaths. Breathing is performed by this system all day. You can hold your breath if you like but the system is designed to run on its own without the conscious mind interfering. You can drink a ton of alcohol but eventually your body will begin to reject the poison and vomit. The body has a way of regulating itself in both of your examples. Your body will eventually reject food if you were to overeat. Eventually you’ll vomit.",
"Because breathing is an automatic process and you do not have conscious control of it. Eating and drinking are not."
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mzx1q3 | what’s on the other side of the belly button? How exactly do babies in utero get food from there? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"While in the womb (and obviously shortly after) the belly button is where the umbilical cord from the placenta is attached. Inside the cord are a couple of arteries and vein through which blood and thus nutrients, oxygenated blood, deoxyenated blood and waste products circulate between the foetus and the placenta. After birth and after the cord is cut it dries up and falls off leaving the visible belly button. After this the veins and arteries that were behind the belly button become ligaments - one attached to the liver and one reaching down to the bladder and pelvic region. If you stick your finger in your belly button this is the reason why you can feel a sensation in the pelvis region.",
"It's just a couple arteries that carry oxygen and nutrients, and a vein that carries waste away. The food you eat travels to the baby via your blood."
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mzxbb1 | Why does “North” = “Up” and when did mapmakers all decide on this? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some early Egyptian maps put south on top, while in medieval Europe, Christian cartographers tended to give that distinction to east, since you had to turn that way to face Jerusalem. Others placed east on top because of the rising Sun (that’s why we *orient* ourselves). And early American settlers sometimes used maps with west on top, because that was the direction they were often heading. In the 2nd century, Claudius Ptolemy wrote the influential *Geographia*, which featured a “global” map with north on top. No one’s positive why he positioned it that way, but it may be that the Library of Alexandria—where he did his research—simply didn’t have much information on the Southern Hemisphere. it was *then*, now it follows the *Magnetic North* which was not located until 1831. On an expedition to Arctic, British explorer James Clark Ross discovered the pole—the spot where a compass needle on a horizontal axis points straight down—on the west coast of Canada's Boothia peninsula. it's just by convention (mutual agreement) that North is the top of the map The word north is related to the Old High German nord, both descending from the Proto-Indo-European unit *ner-, meaning \"left; below\" as north is to left when facing the rising sun. Similarly, the other cardinal directions are also related to the sun's position. ___ shamelessly stolen from [1]( URL_1 ), [2]( URL_0 )",
"So oddly enough, \"oriented\" actually originally meaned \"aligned to the east\" so East was commonly used as the top of maps. When we started using compasses for navigation though, it became inconvenient to always turn 90° from your compass, so we had to align with north-south, and the northern hemisphere has 90% of the population, so it won the battle to be on the top. As for \"up in space\" no, there is no \"perfered direction\" at least on any small scale. The animations you see are 2D representations of a 4D phenomenon, so there are inaccuracies to them, one of them being that in the animation, you have to define a direction perpendicular to the plane of curvature while in reality it is spherically symmetric.",
"Not all maps are oriented north. In Japan it's common for maps to be oriented in what ever direction most efficiently displays the desired information, which can be quite confusing when you're use to up always being North!",
"I learned once that in medieval times maps had the east on the upper side and in the middle the city of Jerusalem. Eli5-Edit: Jerusalem is in the middle because it was the most important city for the most people in Europe, western Asia and Northern Africa back then due to religion. And the East was good because the sun rises there.",
"In antiquity East was often up. The sun rose up there and it became the “Orient”. Even today the far East is sometimes called The Orient. Once celestial navigation started catching on, people noted that the stars at the North of the celestial sphere were the most useful for navigation and that became the orient on navigation maps. Since most of the land, population, and navigation is in the Northern Hemisphere, nearly all maps today still have the North at the top. There is no universal “north” in space, but stars and galaxies do have rotational planes that can provide local coordinate systems."
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mzxqvy | How do 3D printers work? And what are their limitations? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"3D printers are conceptually relatively simple. First, you have an arm, that using a mix of gears, belts, or pulleys. Is able to be programmed to move forward, backwards, left, right, up, and down. How big you can 3D print something is determined by how large of a frame you put this system on. Then, you run a feed to that arm that carries your medium, usually plastic, these thing strands of plastic are then run through the arm where they are heated to the point of melting just as they get pushed out onto the item being printed. Or alternatively you might here people “3D printing a house” where instead of using plastic they use cement on a much larger scale. That’s the basics of how it physically functions, belts moving around an arm/pointer that deposits plastic. Now integrate that with 3D CAD software that gives the printers instructions on where to deposit plastic and where not to deposit plastic, and you can print out items.",
"Ones you can buy for home use melt plastic and use motors to carefully place the melted plastic on a build plate. It builds the object one layer at a time, stacking the plastic on top of the previous layer. You can almost always see each individually when you look closely at something 3d printed. There's another type of home 3d printer where it uses UV light to solidify a layer of resin on the build plate. It works basically the same as above, but instead of melting plastic it uses a tiny LCD screen to stack the individual layers of solidified resin. You can scale up both of these methods - for example, you can use the first method to make 3d printed chocolate, clay, cement (even things as big as entire houses). You can scale up the second method to create parts in metal - picture a sandbox of metal dust and a laser scans a layer of the part sintering together the metal it hits, then it spreads more metal dust on top and repeats. The limitations is a little more difficult to answer. You are limited in materials - for the first type you need something liquid that can stack without squishing itself apart. Additionally, the strength of the thing you print is also limited and not usually as strong as other manufacturing methods. Most industrial uses of 3d printing use the printer to make a mold which then they use in traditional manufacturing."
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mzyfhe | Why do bugs swarm my face? | The one place I absolutely do not want them, perhaps hinted at by all the flailing, screaming and running. What don't they understand? I do not want you near me. Shouldn't they be running away from danger!? I'm a human! One of the biggest (literally) dangers to them! But no, they're all like "HmM hOoOo I tHiNK thAt GiANt IdiOT MOnStER THInG WaNTs mE tO COmE ClOsErRRr" | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are attracted by the warmth and moisture from your breath (think mosquitoes near a lake in summer).",
"Those little annoying flies most likely are gnats. gnat is always searching for moisture and salt, which are found in sweat and tears. Unfortunately, the pests are vectors for pink eye. They are also drawn to the smell of bad breath and to the carbon dioxide people expel when exhaling."
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mzyjay | Why does everything seem funnier when you're tired? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That's a good question because in order to figure out why things seem funnier, you have to first figure out why things seem funny at all. There's a lot of theories of humor - this isn't what we would call settled science. The one I find most convincing right now is benign violation theory. According to BVT, all humor requires two components: (1) you perceive that some expectation or social structure is violated; (2) you perceive that the violation is benign. That's the psychological component; it's connected to a physical component, involving brain chemicals and connections. (I don't have the expertise to explain that part in detail, certainly not at an eli5 level). Psychologically, when you're tired, you're thinking more slowly and in a more limited context. So things that are not normally a big context switch become more noticeable - hence a bigger \"violation\" (the violation of context). It's easier for something to be \"unexpected\" when you're tired. And if they wouldn't have been violations normally, then those things are very likely to be \"benign\". Physically, when you're tired, there's a bunch of chemical changes in your brain. Exact details vary highly from person to person and even day to day (and are also not fully \"settled science\"), but in general your mood-chemicals are different. This makes you more susceptible to view things in a different way than you \"normally\" would. The tiredness chemicals involve some of the same chemicals that make you happy, which you usually associate with things like humor. From this perspective, you have psychological and physical elements combining to increase the chance that you find something \"funny\".",
"Probably because you don't have the energy to overthink or analyze stuff. Same when you're drunk or high. You're too busy trying to keep up with yourself to stop and think about why your dog farted onto your cat."
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mzyq1o | what is a lumen and are higher numbers good or bad to look for in a flashlight? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lumens is *not* the same as intensity. Lumens measures the total light output. Some flashlights are like floodlights: they spread their light widely and evenly so there is no bright \"hotspot\" right in the middle. This illuminates a wide area. Say this flood flashlight has 100 lumens: if we were to narrow the beam to illuminate a smaller area, that area would be lit even more brightly, even though the flashlight is still 100 lumens. Taking it further, let's focus that light into a narrow beam to illuminate a very small area. Still at 100 lumens, that little spot will be much, *much* brighter than when we were flooding. It gets even more complicated because most flashlights have a center hotspot that is surrounded by a dimmer halo, called \"spill\". So it's really hard to make apples-to-apples comparisons when different 100 lumen lights have larger or smaller hotspots and larger or smaller spill. All this is to say, a 50 lumen flashlight that has a tight beam can illuminate something more brightly than a 150 lumen flood light. So if you want to know how bright a light is, you also need to know the beam width of the hotspot and spill.",
"A lumen is a unit to measure the output of light. More lumens means more powerful/bright beam of light. I've noticed alot of companies like about how many their product puts out.",
"Lumens is a measurement of how much light is coming out of something. The more lumens, the brighter the light, the fewer lumens, the dimmer the light."
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mzzic2 | Why can’t we use the most powerful computers to solve the hardest math problems? | So there are currently tons of unsolved math problems such as The Collatz Conjecture, The Riemann Hypothesis, Goldbach’s conjecture and so on... I get that they are so hard that being good at mathematics isn’t enough, but why can’t computers solve them? Or at least solve some parts of the problem, getting a chunk of the work done for the mathematicians that work on them? Will computers be able to eventually solve this problems in the future as we’ll develop better technology? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You're thinking of \"Math problem\" in similar terms as the problems you'd find in a high-school textbook: neat equations with a definite answer that can be found if you just rearrange and calculate them. Academic mathematics seldom actually works that way. Mathmatics ask abstract questions that often involve little to no actual calculation to do in the first place. Questions where brute force simply doesn't work. If I ask you \"Is there a largest prime number, and if so what is it?\" then you can't just go try and calculate the largest prime via brute force because for all you know the answer could be \"no\" and you'd never stop finding prime numbers. However if you go calculate as many as you can be bothered to find and then go \"Ok, I've found a lot, there are an infinite number of them\" you could just as easily have stopped three primes short of the final one. We have examples of patterns that go on for millions of members before just abruptly stopping. Computers are good at one thing: following instructions really quickly. That's great if you know what instructions to have it follow, but for things like the Collatz Conjecture we don't even know that. We can't write a program for a computer to find the answer because we don't know what that program would look like or if it even exists.",
"They aren’t problems that can be solved by just crunching numbers. For a mathematical proof to be valid, it has to be valid for all numbers and you cannot possibly check all numbers because there are an infinite number of them! It is true we have programs that can generate proofs for some sorts of problems, but they aren’t necessarily better than the best people (certainly faster in some cases).",
"Imagine you ask computer \"Do purple swans exist?\" It can find the local park and check swans there - nope, they're all white. But that's not ALL swans. It can check the local zoo, and find some white and black swans. But that's still not all swans. It can check every zoo on the planet, and every lake on the planet, but even if it doesnt find purple swans that doesnt mean purple swans dont exist. Just means it hasnt found one yet. A computer can check zoos a lot faster than a human would - but it still faces same problem. Just because you check a billion lakes, doesnt mean you have checked ALL locations where a purple swan can be found. Maybe there's a purple swan hiding on mars? A computer is powerful because its fast. It can do number operations really fast - imagine a human who can run between lakes much faster, or a human who can see further distance away to check swans from further away. But that doesnt solve the problem of figuring out if Purple swans exist.",
"This is actually being done and there are a number of famous math problems which have been solved by computers. One things that can work to prove some problems is to just use computers to search for numbers to prove or disprove the theory. But this means that there needs to be a solution within the numbers that even our computers can search. And a lot of these problems might require a computer to search more then is physically possible in our universe. Another approach which have been researched a bit is to have computers do the logic calculations that is involved in some of these long proofs. A computer can apply logic reasoning much faster then a human and can find logical fallacies much faster. So you can program the rules and definitions of mathematics and logic into the computer and have it search through until it can find a logical reasoning that either proves or disproves a theorem. This technique have been used a few times and have produced extremely long logical reasoning for the proof it presents. A computer is able to write hundreds of pages of new theories and mathematical proofs that will eventually end up with a conclusion. The problem is that these are generally very trivial on their own as the computers is not able to come up with completely new concepts and techniques. The algorithms are being made better and better but they still lack the same abilities for critical thinking that humans have. And although the techniques being developed for these computer generated proofs can be very useful on their own, for example being able to give a computer a program and then ask it to prove that it works or eventually how it can fail. They kind of miss the point of these math problems. They are usually not interesting on their own and have no real world applications. However in order to solve them we need to come up with new ideas and concepts which themselves are very important. It is not the destination that is the goal but the friends we make on the way. For example the discoveries within exponents, prime numbers and eventually elliptic curves that were done while trying to prove Fermat's last theorem is the foundation of modern asymmetric encryption that allows us to communicate safely and securely today. A computer could not have come up with all these new concepts on its own.",
"First of all, many of the fastest supercomputer have been used to solve math problems, that’s what a computer does! But they are the problems that the people who own the computers are interested In solving. It may not be these “unsolved” math problems, they may be more interested in near term real world applications They may be working on wild stuff such as weather modeling, molecular modeling and analysis, testing nuclear weapons, aerodynamics, cryptography, and others."
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mzzl5t | Why do we only get syrup out of Maple trees? What would happen if we tried the same thing with Oak, Larch, Birch, Ash, etc? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can use other trees, for example from a [black walnut]( URL_0 ). It's going to taste different though, and it will be less sweet. We like to use maple because of the sugar content.",
"All trees produce syrup. It is usually not the same as the syrup from Maple trees. However traditionally we have been harvesting syrup from both birch and palm trees. Different trees have syrup with different tastes and different levels of sugar content. A lot of these syrups have therefore been mostly used to make spirits."
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n009yn | Why cant people use artificial hearts for the rest of their lives? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One of the big problems with artificial hearts is throughput. An adult typically needs 5-7 liters of blood pumped per minute while at rest. During exercise, you may need 3x to 4x that amount. The only [artificial heart with commercial FDA approval]( URL_0 ) can pump up to 9.5 liters per minute, and achieving that pace requires wearing a backpack with equipment inside.",
"They can! Most do. But I think what you're really asking is \"Why is the life expectancy of people with artificial hearts shorter?\". There's a couple of challenges with artificial organs. Once is that, unless you're very careful, the immune system tries to attack them as a foreign body (because it's a foreign body). This can be OK for things like artificial joints...the bones growing over the joint anchors is actually a desirable thing. But for things with complex moving parts like a heart, this can be more problematic and can lead to immune system reactions or part failure. Then there's wear...we just don't know how to build machines with moving parts as complex as hearts that can run 24/7/365 for decades without maintenance. Real hearts can heal, essentially doing real-time continuous maintenance, but we don't know how to do that with machines. All artificial implants with moving parts eventually wear out. And then there's a problem unique to hearts...blood clots if it's not moving. It is extremely difficult to build a rigid pump with \\*no\\* places of stagnation. As a result, artificial hearts are much more prone to developing clots than real hearts, and sending clots into your blood stream is not good for longevity. You can fight clotting with drugs, but that has a whole other list of associated complications that might be worse than the heart."
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n00aps | How can scientists recreate entire skeletons of extinct animals with only a few bones found? | I was studying sauropods like Argentinosaurus and found that palaeontologists have only discovered partial remains of the dinosaur, just a few femur bones and spinal columns. How do they recreate the entire dinosaur based off just that? Has it happened in the past that they “attached” the bones to other bones they believed belonged to the same species but really didn’t? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They use the skeletons of related dinosaurs to make an educated guess on what the new skeleton would look like when completed. And yes, it has happened that they made mistakes. Many times, in fact."
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n00n01 | Why are collectible rookie cards so valuable instead of cards published in the year they won MVP or won the championship? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cards are considered valuable if they are rare compared to the interest in the player. Rookie cards tend to be rare because at the time they are released the player is not yet famous. That means people tend to take less good care of those cards, or don't keep track of them as much, and therefore many of those cards are lost, while the cards for the years something happened are, at the time they are released, already known to be \"valuable\" which means they are kept in good condition in large numbers which decreases their value. Of note, since production rates are so large and collecting is still popular enough, almost no new collectables are increasing significantly in value. Collectible cards, comics books, etc, there are just too many of them produced for them to every be worth much. Exceptions to that are things like Walking Dead #1 (#1's being effectively the rookie card of comics), where it was an indie comic with a low print run that later became extremely popular. There are few enough copies of that in good condition that it still has value.",
"Basically boils down to the fact that the cards for those rookies is that you don't know they're going to be an MVP when they enter the league or association. Kind of like finding that rare talent and being the producer that got them to the top. By the time they get the MVP, we already know they're good. That devalues those years; whereas the rookie card being the awkward freshman year photo. Hope this helps."
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n02cw7 | Why do most animals have exactly two eyes, a nose, two ears and a symmetrical face shape? I know zero about nature/the animal world and I always asked myself this question. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Two is the minimum needed for 3D vision, hearing and to some extent smell too (two separate nostrils).",
"It's just the most efficient pattern, so multiple lines of evolution went down that route. Two eyes for three dimensional vision. Two ears for stereo hearing. Millions of years ago, microscopic creatures would have existed which had other configurations. But they didn't do as well as the two-eyed creatures for whatever reason, so two eyes won out. The face is symmetrical because that's also easier. It's far simpler to do \"now grow two sides that are mirrors of each other\" than to do \"now grow two distinct sides with different features\". Looking at nature can be interesting, because evolution is self-selecting. If you look at, say, a giraffe and ask yourself \"why is their neck so long?\", you already know the answer. The answer is \"because long neck was the most successful configuration of proto-giraffe, so it's the one that survived\". Any animal trait we can see today is a result of that trait having been the best, most successful configuration of traits.",
"The earliest vertebrates, more than 500 million years ago, had that body plan, and all their descendant species have inherited it.",
"Because that specific organization is what has allowed most animals to be successful in the world. Genetically, the traits that encourage survival are the ones that are selected for, and that very basic organization is one that has been successful enough to become ubiquitous.",
"Because all vertebrates evolved from a common ancestor: fish. Fish had all those things and none of the animals that evolved from them have had any evolutionary reason to get rid of them",
"I’d guess it boils down to efficiency. When animals were evolving, nature figured out that two eyes work better than one, but three eyes is probably too much. Plus it’s easier to make information for the right side of the body and just flip it for the left half than to have two totally different sides. However some birds have differently placed ears for better hearing, (check out owl skulls.)"
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n038x5 | Is it Loud Inside Our Bodies? | ELI5: Weird question but the body does a lot of cool things, while eating for example, but just in general keeping us alive, pumping blood and oxygen around it. It just kinda made me think, if we were inside our bodies, would it be loud or just kinda quiet, I don’t know if there is a scientific explanation. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So there are some people that have a malformation in the inner ear where they have a small hole in the bone and they state that it’s like being on a busy street all the time. (It’s called canal dehiscence syndrome)",
"They sell noise machines to settle newborns. These machines replicate the huge amount of noise in the womb (and sometimes the thump thump of a heartbeat), so yes, it's noisy.",
"Newborns are soothed by very very loud shhhhh-ing sounds, because this is similar to what they are accustomed to hearing from inside the womb. When an infant is crying inconsolably, you’re actually supposed to match the shhhh sound to the intensity of the crying so they can hear it properly and feel safe. It’s why vacuuming, hairdryers, and loud road noise in the car also tend to soothe a baby to sleep.",
"In thinking about what it sounds like if you rest your ear on someone's abdomen, then it stands to reason that yes, it probably is pretty loud inside the body.",
"Our intestines also make noises, Bowel sounds are sounds made by moving food, fluid, and gases in the intestines, most of the time you use a stethoscope to hear it, but it can be louder. In fact if they don't make noises for 5 minutes or longer it's a bad sign for possible fecal impaction, blood supply blockage to the intestines or other issues. All of which need to be seen by a doctor asap, to avoid permanent damage or death.",
"I know the brain makes a noise, we can't hear outside our bodies. When my mother had a biopsy on her brain due to brain cancer. They drilled a hole in her skull. When hopice would come to clean and change the bandage if you were sitting close you could hear a noise, like a faint ticking type sound. When my son asked the nurse what the noise was, she explained to him it was the sound of brain activity coming out of the biopsy hole.",
"After sleeping next to my wife fir 20 years I can say with certainty that yes, body’s are loud. And that’s comforting.",
"Before modern imaging technology a stethoscope was the best way for a doctor to know what’s going on inside us without cutting us open. Doctors obviously still use them, but the ability to make sense of all the various noises our body makes used to be a central part of medical training. If you’ve ever listened to any part of your body with a stethoscope you know that we are indeed super noisy inside. Source: The Audible Past by Jonathan Sterne",
"I mean it’s loud, but loud because you would have your ears directly against it (or rather in it) just like headphones can make loud music even though it sounds pretty quiet in terms of “a thing you walk past or sit next to”.",
"It varies, but it's not quiet and also not as loud as a rock concert. Consider that your perception of loudness varies by how close your ear is to the source, and that human skin/tissue is highly reflective over audible frequency range. I'm struggling for a good analogy, but imagine putting your ear right next to a running stream in a small underground cave / echo chamber."
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n03aga | Did premodern cultures have versions of veterans affaire/PTSD treatment for soldiers? | I know they didnt have the literal psychological tech we have but simple observation would have made them aware that people who saw combat would come back changed. Did any culture recognize this and do things about it? I heard one interpretation that the ancient Hebrew law made anyone who killed in battle wait outside the city for ten days, so stuff like that? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Many ancient cultures had \"purification rites\", which homecoming soldiers could or sometimes even had to go through before re-entering their old, civilian lives. For example in ancient Rome, homecoming soldiers were bathed by the Vestal Virgins (basically a mix between priestesses and therapists). The Vestal Virgins scrubbed the soldiers physically clean but they also listened to their tales, gave them a motherly bosom to dig their heads into while crying etc. Similarly, many native American tribes had a sweat lodge rite. After a battle, soldiers would sit into one of those lodges, oftentimes with a shaman and a few other important individuals from the tribe. They would then sweat all the misery and pain out of themselves and the stories they told to other people would dissolve into the air with the rest of the hot steam/smoke. The lodge was also a clearly defined location, where you could \"leave\" your trauma instead of carrying it back to the village. The shaman would help veterans to \"clean\" themselves, either by purely psychological means (asking questions, listening), by spiritual means (chanting, praying to spirits for forgiveness) or even physical means (ingestion of substances). In medieval Europe, every knight who returned from battle was required to do penance. That means: confess your sins, receive holy absolution and perform certain actions that demonstrate your remorse. Warriors had to do this even if they hadn't killed anyone but if they had killed someone, their actions post-war were scrutinized especially carefully. So, confessing your sins or doing a little pilgrimage or helping other people wasn't simply meant to get God back on your side. It also had the purpose of seeking atonement for your own peace of mind; to feel less guilty about the horrible things you have done because you can now do good things and show people that you're not all bad. The act of confessing your sins also has a touch of Freudian psychotherapy: a good priest does not judge or scold you about the bad things you've done. He simply lets you talk, listens attentively and then tells you what you must do in order to be forgiven. Rites such as pilgrimages also had the advantage that they gave a veteran a lot of time to think and re-structure the mess in his mind/heart.",
"PTSD is significantly worse in the modern day than it was for pre-modern cultures for a few reasons. First, men in pre-modern cultures are much more acclimated towards violence than men in modern cultures. It's not remotely unusual for a man to reach military age in the modern U.S. never haven gotten into a physical fight. Going back more than a few decades and this would have been a rarity - much less going back to pre-industrial times. This familiarity with physical violence protects against PTSD. Second, people in pre-modern cultures lived in far stronger communities than they we do today. Most people lived with the same group of people their entire lives. When they went to war, they went to war with that same group of people. When they came back from war, they were surrounded by the same people who had experienced the same things for the rest of their lives. Living in these sorts of communities protects against much of what we consider 'mental health problems' in the modern day. Third, war was considerably less intense. In a modern war, you're often continuously engaged for months or even years. Even behind the front lines, you potentially still at risk. On the front lines, you're subject to the constant threat of death from enemies you often can't even see. In contrast, pre-modern war involves relatively brief battles where you can see your enemy in front of you, you're shoulder-to-shoulder with all of your lifelong buddies and when the battle is over you can relax.",
"Herodotus talks about soldiers who went blind and lost the ability to speak after battles in the Persian Wars in the 5th century BCE. While they didn’t talk about it in modern terms, there are reports of what we would now call PTSD. I’m not sure about any society doing anything about it in any systematic way though."
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n03d4z | Why is plastic easy to tear at some angles but virtually impossible at others? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"During the production process the polymer chains can be aligned in certain directions. If you're tearing parallel to the chains it'll be a lot easier than against them. Same reason it's easier to tear paper (and toilet paper) in certain directions, basically."
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n03hvf | Do root vegetables regrow themselves, and if so, how? | I mean, don't you take the whole root out of the ground when you harvest, for example, a carrot? Do you have to replant every single carrot you harvest? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The whole plant is harvested so yes, a new one needs to be planted if you want more. If you put a carrot from the store back in the ground though, it will actually start to grow again. Same with potatoes, onions, and even above ground plants like lettuce. If you let them grow long enough they'll eventually flower and produce seeds too, so you can grow more."
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n03xgh | Why do gas prices include the extra 9/10 cent on the end? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That is an ancient consumer marketing technique. A very long time ago, people in marketing figured out that consumers perceive a price of, say, $1.99 to be significantly less than a price of $2.00. Of course, those prices are not actually very different, but people tend to round down to the nearest significant digit rather than rounding up when they are purchasing consumer goods. The same is true for something like refrigerators: buyers will look at a fridge that costs $1199 and one that costs $1200, and they will express a preference for the slightly cheaper one regardless of any benefits the slightly more expensive one may possess. Psychologically, that $1 difference between 1199 and 1200 is very impactful. Now, let's change the prices of those refrigerators to, say, $1286 and $1288. Now people will look at the two refrigerators and perceive them both as being essentially the same price (which they are) because the significant digit - 2 - is the same. For that very same reason, both refrigerators could increase in price to $1289, or even $1299, and nobody would even care. If the price creeps to $1300, the significant digit has changed and people start to think they're being hornswoggled. The 9/10 thing is related to that behavior. Consumers ignore the 9/10 and focus on the pennies because that's the significant digit in a gasoline price. This effectively allows oil companies to charge an extra .9 cents per gallon of gas without you even realizing it.",
"It’s a marketing trick. Let’s them charge more without you realizing it. Kind of like other things that are $19.99 sound significantly cheaper than $20.00. Basically, people are suckers.",
"Because it enables the seller to essentially charge 1¢ more per gallon while the part of the price that people actually look at appears to be less. It's the same reason a lot of items are priced at \"$X.99”. It looks cheaper."
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n043j0 | i’ve never understood slope since the 5th grade and i’m an adult. | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"* You have 2 points. * Draw a line between them. * The slope is the rise/fall of the line. * Don’t overthink it.",
"Between 2 points it’s the difference in y value divided by the difference in x value. You can find the slope of any line by just picking 2 point on it. If it’s a flat line then y doesn’t change so the slope is 0. If it goes up fast the slope is a big positive number. If it goes down fast the slope is a big negative number."
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n05oed | why are calf births pulled out instead of letting nature take its course? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Normally ranchers will only pull them when the cows are having trouble doing it naturally. And it looks rough cuz the cows usually aren’t really docile, they are panicked by the ppl being close and the situation Also, cattle are bigger than they used to be because of breeding and hormones, so they have more trouble than they did before domestication. Edit: spelling was terrible",
"99% are born without assistance, the shows where they're pulling a calf are done for dramatic reasons. A show about veterinarians would be boring if they didn't have anything to do, so they won't show a natural birth.",
"In most cases cows can handle their own birth process just fine. Intervention is needed when it doesn’t go right. This is mainly for 3 reasons: it’s the cows firth calf, the calf is not position right, too big or malformed, or the calf is dead. Some breeds were selected to make cows so big their birth canal became too narrow to allow for a calf to come through. Those breeds usually require standard C sections because the risk of a vaginal birth is too high. They would indeed have trouble if left to their own devices in the wild. First callings can get complicated because the pregnancy tends to be slightly longer. Most of the calf’s growth occurs during the last trimester of pregnancy, so one extra week can be enough to make the calf too big to pass without assistance. Dead calves are also harder to pass as they have no muscular tonus, so you have to rely solely on the cows uterine contractions to pass the calf. There are a number of reasons for a calf to be stillborn, including but not limited to taking too long to pass. Once the head is engaged into the birth canal, the chest is compressed by the mother’s pelvis so the calf can’t breathe. But on the other side, the calf has advanced far enough to pull on the umbilical cord a little and restrict blood flow. So the calf is getting neither air nor enough oxygenated blood. Positioning is also an issue in younger cows mostly. If the calf fails to pass front legs first and with its head tucked between them, it can be physically impossible to pass through the birth canal without intervention. In most cases intervention is a last resort. Farmers check on their calving cows often and once they start giving birth they are right there to make sure everything goes right. If not, you need to get the calf out as fast as possible to avoid injury to both cow and calf. Source: am vet student and have helped with many a cow birth"
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n08ckt | Why do fuzzy radio signals become a lot clearer when stand in front of or grab the end of the antenna in you hand? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"While standing near the radio you are messing with something called multipath fading. Radio signals bounce, they bounce around inside your room, off walls etc. These Various reflections combine at the receiver, and depending on their phase the result can be amplification or dampening. (See answer by captain-carrot for a good explanation of this) It's also worth mentioning that with an FM radio source around 100MHz you as a human are about half a wavelength tall. This means that the human body is very effective at changing the 'multipath'. (The why is probably too complex for Eli5) The result of all this is that a bounce off you will almost always have a notable effect on reception Physically touching the antenna is a different phenomenon, you become an aerial extension Owners of older models of TV with set-top antenna will be familiar with both of these in action",
"Radio signal is a wave. It goes up and down. The signal bounces off all sorts of things, like walls, furniture, people and and so on, so the antenna actually receives multiple versions of the same signal at once, like an echo. If those versions line up - so the peaks and troughs of the waves are hitting at the same time - it boosts the strength of the signal. This has a scientific name: constructive superposition. If those versions don't line up, it messes up the signal making it weaker and can even cause the signal to cancel out. The scientific name is destructive super position. The wavelength - distance between peaks - for FM radio signal is about 3m. Because your body can affect the signal, moving around within this distance of a radio can effect the strength of the signal either boosting it, or blocking it."
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n08jd7 | why do guys wake up every single morning with boners? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One reason, is to maintain elasticity of the skin. If the penis wasn’t to get erect every so often the skin would tighten around the penis making any kind of erection very painful. Hence why it’s a good idea for trans women who plan on getting bottom surgery to play with the skin to keep that elasticity for the future surgery This is only one use of it and some other people can give you more"
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n08s8h | if ammonia and chlorine cannot mix, then why do we clean toilets with bleach? | human waste contains ammonia and although we flush it all away, surely there's some residue so why is this not a danger? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ammonia is soluble in water, and it's also very volatile, so by the time you throw the bleach in, there is no more ammonia there. But let's say you didn't flush the toilet and threw the bleach in, there isn't that much really in your pee to make a big reaction and it could be dangerous if you were to put your head in the toilet at the same time, but throwing bleach in the toilet with your head in it wouldn't be safe regardless of the ammonia Mixing bleach with a cleaning solution of ammonia would be an other story since it has a fae greater concentration",
"Trace quantities aren’t a huge issue. There isn’t that much ammonia in urine to start with and the VAST majority is diluted away by the flush. What’s left, when combined with dilute bleach solution for cleaning, is a pretty small quantity of nasty stuff. That said, don’t put your head in the toilet bowl and sniff deeply. On the other hand, do NOT mix bulk ammonia and bleach... that is far more reactants (like orders of magnitude)."
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n096xp | How is thirst satisfied almost instantly after drinking something, even though it takes the body some time to absorb the liquid? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It takes very little time to absorb water. You absorb it right from the time it hits your stomach, unlike a lot of food which has to pass through to the small intestine before you can start to absorb it. It’s also very easy to absorb it. You have special holes in your stomach and small intestine for water to just mosey through, unlike most things which need to be frog-marched through by an escort. This makes water absorption very, very fast. As soon as you start absorbing water, your blood volume increases because that is where water goes. Increasing your blood volume increases your blood pressure. Increasing your blood pressure tells special sensors in your blood vessels that you are no longer dehydrated. This message gets sent to your brain neurologically, and your brain stops releasing the “you are thirsty” hormone.",
"Because you can take in a lot of water fast, and because it is dangerous to drink too much water (you dilute your blood too much), our body's detection of thirst is quietened by the sensation of water in your mouth. The body also releases reserves of water, say, from muscles or the digestive system, knowing that those reserves will soon be refilled. If it didn't do this, a thirsty person who reaches water would drink several litres quickly, well before the level of hydration caught up, then there'd be a huge whack of water to come. That would be deadly.",
"Your brain is always predicting the future. (See: *Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett). Its experience is that when you drink water your thirst will go away, so it anticipates that and makes your thirst go away.",
"Your brain is telling your stomach to chill. It's a hard wired pavlovian response. Our entire existence has programmed that switch to our lips rather than anywhere else."
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n09nws | Why is eating enough protein considered to be crucial in order to build muscle as human while a lot of animals with huge muscles in fact don't eat any protein? | Depending on the source you are being told that you need to eat 1.5 to 2 grams if protein per kg of body weight / 0.8 - 1grams of protein per lbs of bodyweight. Protein sources are meat, fish, nuts and oats and milk and it's products. Now have a look at elephants, rhinos and even gorillas as they are somewhat similar to human. They eat grass, plants and fruits. This nutrition provides little to zero protein. How can these animals maintain and even build their muscles? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Protein and the building blocks of protein exist in plants, but human tummys are not super efficient at acquiring them. We also can't eat a lot of food without getting sick. Herbivores have digestive systems that are designed to breakdown plant material and are much better at acquiring those nutrients than we can. This is why cows have several stomachs and herbivores have longer small intestines than carnivores. They also eat a far larger volume of vegetation than what humans could manage. On top of that, most herbivores will actually eat meat when they can get it.",
"Those things - meats, nuts, dairy - are high in protein but actually everything has protein. Proteins are the literal building blocks of life - including plants. Herbivorous animals specialise in extracting protein from plants, so are able to get enough protein despite eating low protein foods. Cows for example have four stomachs and rely on gut bacteria to extract the amino acids (building blocks of proteins) from the grass. Humans are not as good at getting protein from plant matter which is why those who choose not to eat meat have to ensure their diet contains enough protein rich foods (such as nuts, grains, pulses, tubors) to be able to get enough protein. This is also why we don't eat grass - we are just unable to exract the level of nutrition required from them.",
"Their digestive systems are different to ours, and can process the small amounts of protein in vegetation better. But they still need to eat vast amounts of raw food material. They spend almost every single waking minute of their lives eating. Whereas a single large meal of meat will sometimes last carnivores a week or more.",
"Your misconception ist that only animal products have protein. Also vegetables have protein. Depending on the vegetable the protein percentage is higher than in animal products.",
"legumes (beans) and grains (including wheat) have significant quantities of proteins, in fact the amino acids deficient in one is commonly abundant in the other. This is how such a large percentage of the earth's population of humans can subsist on a diet of rice, some beans, and very small quantities of meat.",
"A cow doesn’t eat grass. A cow eats bacteria, which grow on the grass that it ferments in its stomach. The reason that a cow eats grass is to provide a food source for its real meal — the bacteria. It’s the bacteria that break down the hard-to-digest cellulose in grass and convert it into a plethora of different amino acids, which in turn become the building blocks for creating a 1,200 pound animal. In fact, this means that a cow is rather similar to a beer brewer; both creatures put plant material into a dark, wet, fairly anaerobic (oxygen-starved) environment, with the end goal of growing microbes and producing a tastier and more nutritious end product. - Sam Westreich PhD"
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n0a620 | If dark color absorbs more light and light color reflects more than shouldn't people living in cold climate have dark pigmentation to absorb max sunlight? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People living in places with more direct sun developed more melanin in their skin because it helps to block light from penetrating deeper, because some of the ultraviolet wavelengths can damage the underlying flesh. In darker climates it's not as important so people's bodies don't need to expend the extra energy to create the melanin and allowing more light through aids in generation of vitamin D. It's not about heat. It's about UV and vitamin D.",
"Skin being darker is to protect against the harmful effects of sunlight, not to preserve heat. Lighter skinned people living in very sunny places get skin cancer a lot more. Darker skinned people living in less sunny places need to be eating sources of Vitamin D, because their skin can't produce it as well from sunlight.",
"Light pigmentation (less melanin) allows people to absorb sunlight and convert it to vitamin D, as you get near to the poles there is significantly less power to the sunlight meaning without a lighter skin vitamin D shortage would be critical. Nearer the equator light skin burns easily and the number of skin cancers increase leading to an increase in mortality."
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n0abkw | What is algebra? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So, there's an elementary-school answer and a university-level answer, and they're *kinda* the same, and kinda different. Elementary school first. Algebra is a system for keeping track of true statements about numbers. It is a language for writing those statements down, and it is a set of rules about how we're allowed to transform these statements into different statements. Importantly, it lets us use symbols, called *variables*, to stand in for numbers whose values we don't know, or don't want to specify. Like if my friend says, \"I have a number, and when I add 7 to that number, I get another number.\" I can decide \"OK, I'm gonna name those unknown numbers x and y\", and then write down my friend's statement as an equation like this: x + 7 = y And now, by following the statement-transforming rules, I can deduce all kinds of other facts about my friend's 2 mystery numbers, without actually having to know what they are. Here are a few transformations which we're allowed to make, in standard algebra. x + 7 = y x + 7 - 7 = y - 7 x = y - 7 And then, if I've followed my rules correctly, I can tell my friend: \"If you *subtract* 7 from your second number, you'll get your first number again.\" If the first statement about the two mystery numbers is true, then this statement *must* be true too! This is guaranteed because the rules of algebra guarantee it. It's possible to prove all kinds of interesting \"if this is true, then that must be true too\" type facts about numbers, by manipulating equations in this way. Now, what is algebra when you get to university? It's kind of the same thing, except that instead of keeping track of true statements about ordinary real numbers, we're keeping track of statements about all kinds of wacky structures, like matrices, tensors, manifolds... super abstract stuff. But nonetheless, it all comes down to having a set of rules for writing down equations, and a set of rules about how you're allowed to transform them into different equations.",
"Using symbols usually letters to represent known or unknown numbers in a formula or equation where the presence of other numbers or letters enable you to work out what any missing figures are."
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n0afs7 | what do atoms look like? | Do the neutrons, protons, and electrons in atoms have color or texture? The atoms shown in most textbooks are just for basic visual representation but they have to actually look like something right? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> but they have to actually look like something right? They don't. In fact, individual atoms *can't* look like anything. They're too small. The smallest thing the human eye is capable of seeing is a blue photon with a 400 nanometer wavelength. Anything smaller than that is utterly invisible. And atoms are over a thousand times smaller than that. We can still *visualize* things that a smaller than that by using an electron microscope that uses electrons instead of light, but that's all it is, a visualization. Any colour in it is entirely false. As for texture, that depends on what sort of texture you're talking about. A video-game style texture with different colours isn't possible since the colours are all too large. A physical bump map texture isn't possible since nothing ever touches subatomic particles (except other subatomic particles in nuclear reactors/detonations). Protons and neutrons do consist of varying amounts of quarks but... well, when I say varying, that means quarks are constantly being created from nothing and disappearing to the same, so even if you could see them (which you can't without destroying what you're looking at) you wouldn't be able to use that to tell subatomic particles apart.",
"Descriptions of what something \"looks like,\" really boil down to descriptions of how that something interacts with light. And, well, at the scale of single atoms, light itself acts in a very... blurry way. So it's not entirely clear that there *is* anything for stuff to \"look like\", when that stuff is too small to produce any images in light wavelengths we can see. Color and texture are properties which matter only really starts to have in any definite way when it piles up a bit bigger. (eta: well, single atoms can have color. Smaller stuff like electrons not so much.) Quantum models of atoms represent the electron orbits as soft-edged probability fields, and so far, our observations give no reason to doubt that that's what's \"really\" happening down at that scale. We tend to want to apply our normal sensory experience to try and understand these things - like a particle is just a rubber ball but tinier, and if we shrunk down to a nanometer tall we could see and interact with it like one, and see exactly where it ends and the empty space around it begins.. But this doesn't appear to be the reality. Physics *itself* doesn't seem to commit to one definite answer about where the particle ends and the empty space begins. Stuff is just kinda fuzzy.",
"All this while my dumbass actually thought those clumps of balls with rings around them were legit representations of what atoms look like under microscopes.",
"The problem is that in order to \"see\" something, a photon has to bounce off of it, which we then register and assign color according to the wavelength of the photon. How this actually works is that the photon hits the outer hull of the atom, vanishes, its energy gets absorbed by an electron, which briefly gets into an excited state, then reverts to the equilibrium state and thereby releases the delta energy in the form of another photon. So even if you managed to actually hit an atom with a photon, and see the resulting photon, you would only \"see\" the delta energy of the outer hull electrons. So you wouldn't see the individual neutrons, protons or electrons, just the generic outline of its hull. When looking at a macroscopic object, light of all kinds of frequencies hits billions of atoms, a few of them \"reflecting\" a mix of some wavelengths, which we then perceive as color. In that sense it should be possible to also assign a color to each atom (but not the individual components of that atom), as it can only \"reflect\" certain wavelengths of light."
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n0apiy | Energy Drinks | Whenever I drink an energy drink instead of feeling hyped up and feeling like I could run a mile I just feel like I could sleep, why is this? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are a variety of possible reasons, but one which you maybe should be aware of, is ADHD. Quite a lot of ADHD folks report that they have an insensitive or even 'backwards' reaction to caffeine. Another thing is that some research indicates that caffeine's stimulant effect becomes dependency-forming over time, and that for many daily coffee drinkers, their alertness on caffeine is roughly equal to what their baseline level was before they got addicted. So if you've been using it on a very regular basis you might find it only gets you back up to 'normal' now."
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n0b83a | Why do flipped images of others look normal while our own ones look weird or often lopsided? | So when I look in a flipped mirror (so a true mirror, how I look irl), I look very weird and lopsided, even though the people I know say they don’t see that being the case. And that’s right, other people’s faces still look very normal even when flipped but they themselves might think otherwise. I’d see them how they’d see themselves in an ‘everyday mirror’. Why is this? And do people perceive me looking weird and lopsided as I do, or do they perceive how I see myself in an ‘everyday’ mirror? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Other people see you loopsided, so not how you see yourself in the mirror, but they are used to it just as you are used to seeing yourself in the mirror so it doesn't look wierd. Almost everyone feel they look wierd in a flipped mirror because they are used to seeing themself in a normal mirror. As for others seeing normal even flipped is just because you don't notice the differences in others as easy as on yourself. We aren't perfectly symetrical."
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n0b9rn | How much does a woman's weight change over the month? | If a woman ate the same things every day and burned exactly their maintenance calories, how much would their weight change over the span of a month? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Maybe a kg either side of her start weight. Hormones can influence how much water your body holds at particular points. It tends to be you're recommended to weigh yourself in the morning after peeing for that reason. You should be at a similar level of dehydration every time. But even then it will fluctuate slightly."
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n0bds3 | Is human-on-human violence "unnatural" when compared to other species, or can we feel justified in blaming our violence, abuse and killing of each other on our animal-side, or on nature? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nature doesn't justify things because it has no morals. However, many other animals show aggression towards others of their species with little restraint. We just have extraordinary means for it. So i would say that it is \"natural\" but that doesn't justify anything.",
"I've seen nature docs where Chimpanzees attack, kill and eat other chimps. They even go to war, so to speak. A big gang of chimps will invade territory next to theirs and try to kill, and eat, as many chimps from the rival gang as possible."
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n0bq0q | Why do they say a tick must be feeding for over 24 hours before transmitting lyme disease? | Ticks are especially bad this year and I always wondered why it takes so long for them to transmit a disease when you are bit. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This article contains a pretty good explanation: URL_0 Basically, the tick needs to land, hook himself and then start feeding. Once they're done feeding, they'll release saliva into the wound, which is when the disease is transmitted."
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n0buv9 | Why is light produced when an underwater bubble collapsed/destroyed with sound wave ? | But I want to know why/how this happens ... [Water bubble-Light ]( URL_0 ) | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its called sonoluminesence. Its when a bubble of gas appears underwater due to a change in pressure as liquids cannot condens3 as easily as gas so when pressure changes happen submerged beneath yhe surface of a liquid any dissolved gas in the liquid can be \"squeezed\" out of being dissolved in the liquid (cavitation) And if that change in pressure was caused by a significant enough sound wave, and the gasses dissolved in the liquid are the right kind & ratio (made up of mostly noble gas, oxygen, helium, argon, xenon, neon, uhh maybe a few others nitrogen i think)then the pressurized gas bubble will phase transition into plasma for a moment and emit photons. Its not really well understood the exact mechanism that causes this but google sonoluminesence and lots if info will come up. Fun fact pistol and mantis shrimp species when attacking their prey produce these plasma bubbles underwater and supposedly the plasma inside the tiny momentary bubbles is hotter than the surface of the sun"
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n0c6hk | how is it possible that humans share 99% of theirs DNA with chimpanzees but only 4% with Neanderthals? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your premise is wrong according to the interwebs: \"99.7% of the nucleotide sequences of the modern human and Neanderthal genomes are identical\" [ URL_1 ]( URL_0 )"
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n0ejxo | Why do airtags need to be special Bluetooth tags to track instead of smartphones tracking any Bluetooth device? | With airtags on iPhones and smart tags for Android becoming common now for tracking objects I don't understand why they need to be attached to electronics. Why can't I track my headphones, smart watch and other Bluetooth things through the same tracking apps? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some of the features on the AirTag have been around on different devices for a long time. Things like activating a sound, blinking a light or showing the name and phone number of the owner. They are usually not killer features of things so they are not included unless it just involves a small software update. If AirTag proves to be a success then it might be something that can be integrated into more things quite easily at just a small increase in hardware cost. One of the innovations we have not seen that often before is the way the phone can locate the AirTag. This can not be done with Bluetooth though and requires modified Bluetooth tranceivers that is capable of switching from Bluetooth mode into a wideband locator signal. This is an old technology which have been used for a long time in purpuse build locator devices however they have not been built into a Bluetooth transceiver before. But it is something which might become more common over time as we see new hardware being developed for it."
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n0ep47 | How is baking soda good for brushing your teeth? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Baking soda is a very mild abrasive which helps scrape off layers of plaque and staining. Since it's slightly alkaline, it makes it harder for bacteria to grow in your mouth."
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n0fdy9 | Why do our bodies sometimes twitch when we fall asleep? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I assume you’re referring to something called a hypnic jerk. No one knows for sure why we do it. It’s just an involuntary muscle contraction just as you’re about to fall asleep, often described as a feeling of falling. Some think it’s an old/lost reflex to keep our ancestors from falling from trees while sleeping"
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n0fgi5 | Why is inflation so important for the economy to go? | I meant Grow* | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It encourages you to spend/invest as if you hold cash it will decrease in buying power. If zero inflation then decreased incentive to buy/invest.",
"Ultimately, money is just counters is a world wide game. Like poker chips at the casino. Because of the constant efforts of human labour and exploitation of natural resources to produce finished goods, the total value of the entire system goes up over time. So as the economy grows, you have to create more counters to keep track of it. But to encourage the growth of the economy through human labour and investments, you need to add slightly more counters than the current economy size. Another reason to deliberately create inflation is deficit spending. If you are spending money you don't really have, you still need to create new counters for those transactions.",
"Inflation is the decrease in \"value\" of any single piece of currency. This is represented by increasing prices; since a \"dollar\" is worth less next year than last year, a loaf of bread (worth some relatively fixed value) will cost more dollars next year than last year. Inflation is caused by increased money supply; more physical (or digital) money moving around in the economy. This is what makes the money worth less; since there are more dollars, each dollar is worth less. This is helpful to make the economy grow because it encourages people to spend their money. If you have 100 dollars now and can buy 100 loaves of bread today, but the same money next year can only buy 90 loaves of bread, then you are \"losing\" money each year (actually, you're losing \"value\", but it's six of one or half-dozen of the other). To reduce this \"loss\", you should spend your money now instead of next year. This can either be to buy things (eg. a book won't lose value like money will) or to invest in things (investing in a business may make more money for you than you would lose, so you'd net-gain money). Making money/value move around is what the economy is. Investing money into new businesses, technologies, and/or education improves our capability to make things, which grows the economy, as it increases the \"value\" that we have access to.",
"I would call inflation more of a side effect of growth rather than a precondition. No one that wants to encourage growth would recommend that everyone simply raise their prices. What ends up happening is that the tools used to fight inflation — tightening credit, raising interest rates, etc — end up slowing the economy down. Central banks will do this! But they will only do so much of it. They will slow down an overheated economy to prevent high inflation, but they won’t grind the economy to a complete halt just to get zero inflation. The sweet spot is usually low but non-zero inflation.",
"Inflation encourages spending, because the longer you hold on to your money, the less you can buy with it. Spending grows the economy by putting more money into circulation. You buying that tv allows the store to pay their workers and suppliers, the workers take that money and spend it on things they need, the suppliers pay their workers, etc. Deflation encourages saving, because the longer you hold onto your money, the more you can buy with it later. However, if no one is spending money, then money isn't circulating through the economy, meaning businesses aren't making money and can't pay their workers, who then can't pay for the things they need, etc.",
"A couple of reasons; 1. As has already been mentioned it's a tax on holding onto your money that incentivizes people to either buy things or invest their cash rather than sticking it under a mattress. 2. Getting out of a recession frequently means people taking a pay cut. People are pretty understanding about not getting a raise during bad economic times but will flip out if their employer actually tries to cut their pay. Inflation acts as a \"phantom\" pay cut during bad times and this tends to moderate the boom and bust cycle of the economy. 3. Deflation is much worse for the economy than inflation, and we can't really control inflation perfectly so building a little bit of inflation in as a safety cushion makes sense. We're a lot better off with an average of 3 percent inflation that fluctuates between 0 and 6 percent than we would be with an average of 0 percent that fluctuates between 3 percent deflation and 3 percent inflation."
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n0fq5b | Why is it when you go to take a crap, even if you didn't have to pee when you went in, you always pee when your done crapping? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you go to poo you activate the “rest and digest” side of your nervous system as opposed to the “fight and flight” side. That rest and digest side sends nerves to the muscles that control both pooping and pissing. If you go to poo, as a biproduct you also loosen up the muscles keeping your pee in",
"Is this something peopke universally 'always' do? I don't think it is."
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n0fqnh | Why is there no video quality setting for the 500-600 range? | So we all know 144p, 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, and 1080p. But why is there no setting for something like 550p? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"You will notice that these go up roughly (in most cases exactly) in a 1:1.5 ratio. In other words each jump improves horizontal resolution by 50% So an extra resolution between 480 and 720 would be an anomaly.",
"PAL DVD video is at 576i or 576p and so is PAL digital television that is in SD and not in HD. Generally the vertical resolution will always be something divisible by 96 for digital TV and media standards. Computer resolutions are more varied but usually are in some way derived from old time 640 × 480 or 320 × 200 monitor resolutions. If you trace things back far enough you will find that IBM punch cards came with enough room to leave 80 x 12 holes in them, which ended up leading to text-based interfaces having 80 or 40 characters per line and each character being made up out of 8 by 8 pixels. The common shape of TVs made for the 4 by 3 ratio and those constraints let to early display resolutions and newer once are just those multiplied by a certain number in size and adjusted for the 16 to 9 or similar ratio in modern wide screens."
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