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fgkgaf | Non-native speaker here, why is "biannually" considered to be twice a year, but "biweekly" only once every two weeks instead of two times per week? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Biweekly\" can refer to either twice a week or two times a week. The same for \"bimonthly\" (i.e. once a month or two times a month). The issue stems from the prefix *\"bi-\"*, which is inherently ambiguous in that it can mean either **occuring twice** or **occuring every two**. English offers us an alternative with 'annual', as things can either be *\"biannual\"* (twice a year) or *\"biennial\"* (every two years). However, using the word \"biannual\" to mean every two years is also technically correct, and is more often used over \"biennial\". *\"Bi-\"* is one of English's many ambiguities and requires experience with understanding context to decipher its true meaning in a given situation."
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fgue87 | When humans came around thousands of years ago, how did we start developing our own languages and how could we translate what we mean? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I’m no expert but from what theories I’ve read it’s started at a very basic level, for example I’d make a certain type of grunt to signify danger and a different grunt to signify I see potential food. And over the centuries it slowly evolved to fit more things in until we are where we are. We just have complex grunts now."
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fgy60z | Why being watched hinders or boosts your productivity? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I suppose this simply \"depends\". If your productivity is boosted when someone watches, then you are likely a slacker. If your productivity is hindered by someone watching, then you are too self-conscious. And there are people like me that are not all bothered if being watched. (I do remember feeling anxious when the teacher was looking down on my paper while doing exams in school.)"
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fgz815 | Why did it take so long for artists to start drawing realistically through human history? | I don't mean photorealism, but most art throughout civilizations has been highly stylized - each period and culture can pretty much be told apart by the art style, whereas today there's infinite variation between individual artists. Shouldn't realism be the first thing people try since it's all around us? How did seemingly all art in history from different periods and cultures become so homogenic and specific to their eras? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Great question! I am only an amateur art historian, so corroborate my statements here. 1. Plenty of older artistic traditions did focus on realistic human figures -- ancient Greek sculpture, Italian Renaissance painting, the Dutch masters, etc. Other traditions strove for realistic depictions of landscapes or buildings, like during the Chinese Song Dynasty. 2. Art isn't as homogenous within cultures as it might seem at first. Within every tradition, you've got artists challenging and complicating it. However, it's important to be aware that in most cultures throughout history, being a professional artist required some sort of official sanction. You'd either need to be part of a religious order, or sponsored by a rich patron, or you'd be the court painter or sculptor for a monarch; you'd be much less likely to just create and sell your art on the open market. This means that much of the art that reaches us from the past is, in some way, \"approved.\" 3. Most cultures determined the value of a piece of art by standards other than realism. For example, folk art created by the lower classes might be used for religious purposes, in which case its stylization was a way to grant it ritual power. This is one proposed reason for the earliest cave paintings -- people would hit the painted animals with spears and arrows in order to make their hunt for real animals more successful. 4. The easiest way to learn to draw, paint, or sculpt isn't to look at examples of the thing you're trying to depict; it's to look at the ways other people have depicted that thing. Without access to Google, you're mostly going to reference other works that already exist within your local traditions.",
"1. Paint is stupidly expensive. Only in modern times have people been able to access industrially-produced paints at a cheep price, and even more recently, digital art tools. Before then, practicing was difficult at best. 2. A lot of times, the studies of light, optics, anatomy, and such were also unavailable. Most photo-realistic paintings of people come from artists who have a very extensive understanding of the positioning of muscles, bones, fat, skin, etc. and how it all influences the shape of the body. Ancient painters rarely had access to that sort of information and could only copy surface-level details. * The more exotic something is, the less likely the painter is to have an actual reference to work with. That's why you often get such distorted animals. 3. Certain styles were popular. If your patron doesn't care about photo-realism, then why go to that extreme? 4. Humans love symbols. As long as the meaning of a piece of art is conveyed, it is a good symbol. It doesn't matter if it's realistic."
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fhwbeh | Why do so many Catfish, or lead on with fake plans on dating apps? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Insecurity and the fear of actual committal. Plus the lies they told will have to be confronted so that’s a no no for a catfishes.",
"honestly from my past experience: they just are not that into the idea and/or you people follow through with actions when they care"
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fiek47 | What is the difference between bisexuality and pansexuality? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In practice, not much. While some people prefer the term pansexual, as it's more inviting and doesn't imply only an interest in men and women, the overwhelming majority of people who identify as bisexual don't reject non-binary people. It's more that the term \"bisexual\" was invented in an age before we had a good understanding of non-binary genders. Many bisexual people today define it as \"Attracted to both my gender and not-my-gender\" instead. The difference is more or less irrelevant, but it does matter to some people.",
"They basically mean the same thing. Some people have used bisexual to explicitly exclude people who are nonbinary, but this isn't very common. Some people use pansexual instead so that it's clear that they aren't explicitly excluding anyone. Ultimately the meaning of both will vary from person to person, and people will just use whichever term they feel subjectively best represents them.",
"This hasn’t always been this way, but in 2020, most of the folks I know who identify as “bisexual” define it as “I am sexually attracted to people of my own gender and to people who are not.” For someone who identifies as a bisexual man, for example, this could mean “I am attracted to men & to non-men” which might include women & non-binary folks. For a while, “pansexual” was used by some people to mean “I don’t see gender” (problematic in its own right; gender can be really important to a lot of us & has pervasive cultural significance), and for a while similarly, “pansexual” was used to signal “hey, i’m also into trans/nonbinary folks” - which is problematic too, insofar as it might imply that it’s ok to be a trans-exclusionary bisexual. Anyway. Long story short, the terms are somewhat interchangeable, but as we move towards a more diverse understanding of gender, “bisexual” makes a lot more sense and “pansexual” is a bit redundant & due to be phased out; any given person is either your gender or not. You only like people of another gender (heterosexual)? You only like people of the same gender (homosexual)? Vs you might like someone of either: bisexual!",
"Bisexual people like two genders, pansexual people like people no matter the gender, they only care about personality.",
"The labels we wear are complicated things. They're (or least they can be!) deeply personal; they are part of how we view ourselves and also how we define ourselves to others. And because labels are such personal things, one individual's definition of a word might not be same as another person's. Here's an example: Adam is a man who is bisexual. To him, this means he is attracted to other men and to women. He sees bisexual as meaning \"attraction to people who are the same gender as me and the opposite\". Stacy is a woman and she's bisexual too. To her, it means that she is attracted to 2 -or more- genders. She likes women, men, and a lot of other folks who might fall inbetween or outside of the binary (such as non-binary or agender people). Adam and Stacy are both bisexual, but their views on what the word means are different. Those definitions are both accepted these days though. Here's another example: Avery is a non-binary person who is pansexual. They state their sexual orientation as being \"attraction to all kinds of people, with gender being of aboslutely no importance.\" Emma is a woman who is pansexual. She defines her orientation as being \"attraction to people regardless of their gender\". Avery and Emma are both pansexual, but they don't see eye-to-eye on the meaning of the word. The way they identify is personal and it fits them in their own ways. That's totally valid. My point is these words have different definitions so it's hard to give you a black and white answer. And in some cases a bisexual person and pansexual person - might - have very similiar definitions. If I was going to simplify to the most basic of terms and not give thought to the nuisance of it? Bisexual is potential attraction to - 2 or more - and pansexual is potential attraction to - all -. But what it really comes down to is what someone is comfortable identifying as. I am a bisexual man and my fiancé is a pansexual man. While our definitions are almost identical, we wear the labels we think fit us best. I don't know if I did a good job at ELI5, but I hope I'm able to help at least a little."
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fihv5k | What makes translating Japanese to English directly, so difficult? Why are some phrases litterally unable to be translated 1:1? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most things can be explained across a language barrier, but not necessarily briefly. Misogi, for example, is standing under a waterfall. This is a common enough thing in Japan that it requires no explanation as to why someone might do that. It's usually a matter of religious purification, but trying to translate \"religious bathing\" into English gives \"baptism\" but misogi isn't an initiation ritual, it's Shinto, instead of being Christian, and baptism doesn't involve a waterfall. Misogi can be explained in English, but it requires an explanation that wouldn't be required in Japanese. There's plenty of concepts like that in every language, things that take a large part of their meaning from a cultural context.",
"Languages are contextual. For instance they say eskimos have like 20 words for snow while English only has one. This is because snow is more integral to their context. Different contexts require different language creation. There are also many english phrases that cannot be translated 1:1z, usually colloquial, or contextual phrases. They just dont have the same frame of reference, so they have to create a dynamic (thought based) translation rather than word for word.",
"> \"... the translation team said they try to change the translation into something more that \"captures the original meaning\" because a lot of their language isn't directly comparable.\" For some things, like mechanical/scientific instructions, recipes, etc. things can be very easy to translate because you're just finding the right nouns, finding the right verbs, and then just connecting them with the right grammar to make the sentence make logical sense. For other things, like literary works, movie dialogue, game dialogue, etc. there is actually a lot of cultural baggage built into the way that people speak. Idioms and references are baked into speech, and if two cultures don't share a common heritage relating to the coining of a specific turn of phrase then \"translating\" that phrase might not make sense across cultures. Western audiences largely have a shared heritage of Aesop's Fables and The Bible, whereas Japanese people will have a lot more Buddhist or Shinto based idioms in their repertoire. And don't forget that if any rhymes or puns are involved in the source material things can get real dicey in re-interpretation. So, in the context of a game translation team, I'd imagine that \"Press A to Punch!\" would be an easy part of their job, but deciding to translate a Japanese-idiomatic phrase of \"Ten people, ten colors.\" as the English-idiomatic \"To each his own.\" could be a much harder part (especially with religious/literary idioms that might not have a clear cross-over like that)."
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fiicx5 | When large groups of people panic buy something, how do they all know what the item that will be hard to find is before normal people? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They don't, people just panic buy what they think they'll need and a lot of people have the same idea, E.g. Non perishable foodstuffs and toilet paper. Also, when some people see that shops are running low on these things, they'll also start to panic buy.",
"Panic buying is what causes items to be hard to find. Whatever people are panicking around becomes hard to get specifically because a few people are buying all they can get.",
"It depends with the toilet rolls these are a large item which takes up a substantial amount of room on a shop shelf so it takes relatively few shoppers to empty the shelves. Tinned food is heavier and less bulky so there are more of them on the shelves, but in \"normal\" times these are likely to be needed and taken swiftly. However social media is also now adding to the panic, someone shares a photo of empty shelves in one store in Australia and suddenly everyone is worried that they might not be able to get that item so they panic buy even though they are on the other side of the world.",
"They may have been through a similar situation in the past. Perhaps not a quarantine, but a disaster or illness or other thing that gave them insight into what they found important. We don't know that they haven't hoarded other things, too. Those things may have had different volumes, both in size and quantity. Rice, for example, is also getting hard to find in places, as is already bottled water. I think TP is a frequently hoarded thing, and it makes the media because the scale is kind of funny. Today. It's funny today. It won't be funny when we're all out of toilet paper and they've closed all the stores or supply chains don't work."
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fipw4g | Why is Pulp Fiction called Pulp Fiction? What does that mean? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a term from the days when trashy detective and crime novels were printed on cheap pulp paper. It's become a celebrated genre, after people recognised that some great writing was sort of slipping under the radar.",
"Back in the day, there was a whole industry of cheap magazines printed on really cheap paper called \"pulp.\" These magazines published stories written by writers of all sorts, many of them very bad but some actually good. The writers were paid by the word. A \"good\" pulp might pay one cent per word; some of the lesser magazines paid 1/4 cent per word. Many of the giants of science fiction got their start in the pulps: Asimov, Heinlein, to name two. There were pulps of all sorts: mystery, horror, gore.",
"Pulp Fiction comes from the name of a type of cheap story magazine that used to be popular up to the middle of last century. The refers to the cheap paper made from wood pulp that those publications were printed on. The magazines themselves featured stories from a variety of genres like western, mystery, science fiction, but had in common a type of low brow tawdriness. Stuff like scantly clad damsels in distress were frequently found on the covers along with manly heroes. In many ways the pulp fiction stories were the precursors and ancestors of comic books and their heroes. Tarantino however was inspired not by pulps in general but by certain type of pulp that featured mysteries, gangsters, detectives and violence and the movies that the stories serialized in those magazines inspired or were adapted from."
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fiyh26 | do hospitals in the US just let homeless people die because they have no money or insurance to pay medical bills? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's an indigent fund and Medicaid or Medicare depending on their age. The problem is not being poor. It's being lower middle class. Make just enough to get insurance from employer. Insurance has a 20% copay. You fall and break your bone or have a baby. You pay 20% of that cost. There are some insurances with caps that can cap your cost at like $3000 to $12000 depending on the terms. Honestly that will vary a ton but it's at least a guaranteed max out of pocket. But not all have that cap. That cost can be anywhere between $2000 to 2mil depending on what happened and how much saving your life cost. And you have to pay 20% of that. Some people refuse medication in the hospital because the co pay after they get out is too much. They deny necessary medication because of cost. In 2014 I had a c-section go very bad. I spent 9 days in ICU and 18 in recovery. I had 1 major surgery and 8 more minor ones after the initial c section surgery. The final cost was 1.45 million. I thankfully had insurance from the govt and had no copay as a result. But I could have had to pay 20% of that 1.45 million. My daughter is happy and healthy, unaffected by what happened. Other than how much my bill was, these numbers are all hypothetical based on what I've seen offered at my job and other jobs before. 20% overall Co pay is very common, caps are less common from my experience. Edited to add it gets extra complicated when you factor in that hospitals do not all charge one cost and there's a different cost if you tell them you're paying cash sometimes. You have no way of knowing how much anything will be from any one hospital until you get the bill. They can charge as much as they want for some things. One of my line items was $5 for a hotel size bar of hospital soap. Some places now are adding laws that hospitals must clearly state the cost of things to the patient. But that doesn't change that it's a free market when it comes to pricing and people are not often in the position to \"shop around.\"",
"In the US, there are laws requiring hospitals to render emergency medical care to anybody who needs it. They're not allowed to turn you away if you actually need help. They're supposed to worry about the bill later. Sometimes the local government steps in to pay for care rendered to homeless people. Sometimes the hospital just takes the loss on it, and accepts that they're not gonna get paid. However, all of this is regarding *emergency* care, like you're seriously injured, or actively bleeding, or going to die. If you have a chronic condition like diabetes, they're not going to give you the medicine you need for it. If you have cancer, you can't go to the emergency room for your twice-weekly round of chemotherapy. There are some other programs that try to provide care for the poor. We have Medicare, which provides healthcare to all senior citizens and most disabled people. We have *Medicaid* which is for people who earn below a certain amount of money (I think it's 125% of the poverty line or something like that). And there's a few other federal healthcare programs like the Children's Health Insurance Program. All of these are basically government-run insurance. You go to the doctor or to a hospital, and the bill is sent to your insurance. For about half of people, that's private insurance, for the other half, it's one of these government programs, or the 5-10% of people who have no insurance at all. Also insurance often doesn't cover the whole bill. There's usually deductibles and copays and other payments and such. It's a bureaucratic nightmare. I'm happy to go into more detail but this post is already a novel.",
"In theory, almost every hospital is required to provide life-saving treatment and deal with payment later, so the indigent person should receive care no matter what. Then the hospital is stuck with an unpaid (and unpayable) bill. Less severe cases can be turned away (usually referred to other service providers who provide non-hospital care for those unable to pay). In practice, many (most) hospitals do in fact provide some life saving measures, at least to the point of stabilizing a patient. Some fail to do this either by (illegal) direct denial, or by allocating resources in such a way that the indigent person leaves without receiving care (or dies). For the majority of hospitals that provide services to those unable to pay, the hospital and doctors absorb the costs - in a sense the cost to treat the indigent is built into the pricing of those who are able to pay, since they have to cover their costs plus the costs of unpaid services (plus the hospital's overhead and profit)."
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fjjezm | Why is Florida weird? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Everybody has access to files about crimes in Florida so its easy to find weird stuff. In other states/countries you wouldn't even get that info if you asked"
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fjke9c | Why is the media in America being hated on so much during these times? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The American media business is in grave trouble. Instead of funding from a stable source, like the BBC has, US media firms are funded by advertising. In recent years, this system broke down, viewers no longer choose news content for its fact content, like in the boring days of Walter Cronkite. Instead people watch news for its opinion content, from The Daily Show to Fox & Friends. These shows seek to entertain their audience, and share a little news that reinforces their opinions. This is bad, very bad. Many sane people hold media in very low regard as a result. News should go back to news, though this is unlikely.",
"Because, rather than being an uninterested observer as they should be, they are trying to be a part of the news and drive agendas."
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fjndkr | Can someone explain to me in human language what Francis Bacon means by his 4 idols (tribe, cave, marketplace, theater)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Idol of the Tribe: people believe their deceivable sense too much, and fool themselves into believing they are more capable than they actually are. Idol of the Cave: it's different for everyone. Because we're shaped by culture, environments, people, etc, we often become close-minded and unreceptive to new possibilities. Idol of the Marketplace: easily influenced by others' jargon and talk. It hinders our ability to think for ourselves (a mind fog). Idol of the Theater: due to sophistry and false learning. Most commonly built up in theology, philosophy and science as they're defended by groups and accepted without question by the masses. Bacon advises us to stay alert so that none of the four idols overtake our mind."
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fjoxv1 | What is the significance of a country declaring a National Emergency. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"While I can’t speak for other countries, what it does for the US is allow access to emergency funds that wouldn’t otherwise be available, as well as modify or waive different aspects of medical care, which will give people faster access to care by cutting through red tape and reducing or eliminating costs associated with care."
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fjp5lv | What is Stare Decisis | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Stare Decisis\" means \"let the decision stand\" and means that when a court case is decided in one way, future court cases with similar facts and issues should be decided in the same way. For example, in 1954, the Supreme Court decided the case Brown vs. Board of Education, saying that racial segregation in public schools is illegal, even if the two school systems are (or appear to be) equal. This set a *precedent*, or a rule established in a previous case, where if a similar case were to come before the court, it should be decided in the same way. Here are two hypothetical cases where the precedent of Brown v Board might apply: A government bus system has two sets of routes, one for white people and one for black people. The stops, timing, buses, everything are the same, except the race of the riders. If a black person were to sue to integrate the buses, lower courts would be likely be bound by the Supreme Court precedent of Brown v. Board; its a bus system instead of a public school, but its still a government-run public service that is segregated by race. Now let's say a public school district decides that Christian and non-Christian students should be educated separately. They get the same books, same student-teacher ratios, same funding, except the religion of the students in each school. Here, too, the lower courts would be bound by Brown v. Board; the segregation is based on religion, not race, but you have two \"separate but equal\" public school systems. Precedents can be overturned, but its usually only for a very strong, persuasive issue. Brown v. Board itself overturned the earlier case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which established the \"separate but equal\" system. The lower courts ruled in favor of segregation because of the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson, but the Supreme Court ruled against segregation because society and education systems had changed significantly in the 60 years between the two cases, and \"separate but equal\" could no longer be defended as \"equal\"."
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fjs033 | Why were old school superhero cartoons so cheesy? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They were aimed at younger audiences, and at the time the idea was that little kids wouldn't want to watch something with complex and deep dialogue and writing. Superheroes were considered just for little kids, and the idea of writing them so that the parents watching with their kids would also find something enjoyable in it hadn't caught on. You needed a generation of kids who grew up watching cartoons to become writers and producers for that to happen.",
"The Comic Book Code (Comics Code, Comics Code Authority) was a regulatory arm of the Comics Magazine Association of America until about 2011. This commission had strict rules about what was acceptable in comic books, so things like violence, gore, horror, sexual innuendo, and the like were completely censored out, and because of that artists and writers just stopped putting them in. It wasn't until fairly recently that you could sell a comic book without the CCA's stamp of approval, so basically only code-approved content came out until maybe the 60-'s and 70's started the underground \"graphic novel\" industry. It's also why there are basically only four comic book publishing companies prior to \\~1990 (Marvel, DC, Archie, and Bongo) & #x200B; Here's the full list of CCA criteria from 1954: * Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals. * If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity. * Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority. * Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation. * In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds. * Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, the gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated. * No comic magazine shall use the words \"horror\" or \"terror\" in its title. * All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted. * All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated. * Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader. * Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited. * Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden. * Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure. * Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable. * Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities. * Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Rape scenes, as well as sexual abnormalities, are unacceptable. * Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested. * Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden. * Nudity with meretricious purpose and salacious postures shall not be permitted in the advertising of any product; clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morals."
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fqv9cq | Where did the concept of men being expected to pay for dates originate from? Why is it still somewhat expected today? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Women weren't allowed to have jobs. A man would have to pay for the woman's meal if taking her on a romantic date because she couldn't pay for it, and because the man had to prove to the woman that he could financially support her, since if they got married he would have to work and she wouldn't. Even though our society has changed to make women able to work, the idea that the man should pay for the date is still kept by many people who like traditional gender roles.",
"Probably because men made the money because women weren't allowed to work outside the home. Especially during times of courting. It also allows the man to show off his ability to pay for something and show he can provide for a family. Old school rules trickling over into modern times. I say Go Dutch!!",
"Historically, a wife's role was to bear and rear children, they had few options beyond that. A husband's was to earn a living and support them. That meant a man seeking a wife looked for features that suited her role, mostly being young and healthy, which translated into beauty. A woman seeking a man with the means to support her and her future children. Giving gifts and paying for things was a way for the man to show his financial fitness. Society has come a long way since then, but there is still financial disparity and many of these antiquated notions are still embedded in our culture. For good or bad, women are valued for their appearance more than men, and men are valued for their accomplishments more than women. Society expects women to show up for a date with perfect hair, makeup, and designer clothes, men get by with a clean shirt, but are expected to pick up the check.",
"I guess because that it is the way we can demonstrate to our women that we are capable to supply (ensure) our future family financially. It is important for woman to witness it."
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imd5oh | Why do we kiss to express love? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Evolutionary desire to boost the immune system of our partners and offspring, Kissing shares our microbiome with other people, creating a mutual environment to resist illness that either one of you might not have been exposed to",
"Psst - only half the people across the world kiss - [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) however this article has some suggestions relating to smell - presumably non-kissing cultures prefer to get their smells directly [ URL_1 ]( URL_1 )",
"There are a lot of theories I don't think any are 100% agreed or confirmed. You get the whole animal baby parents puking food in their mouths. We are still somewhat genetically programmed for this, so kissing sort of emulates it and releases endorphins. On similar lines when you kiss people your body is sampling their saliva and dna. It's looking for microbial diversity and other diversity. Reproduction wise you want your baby momma to be as different from you as possible. So on a sub concious levels, if they are different enough they \"taste better\" and its pleasurable, basically so you mush your privates together. Another is there are nerve endings there that are stimulated, its mutual stimulation and it creates bonding. Why have people started doing stuff with tasting each others rectums? It feels good for the receiver due to nerve stimulation. Same concept just different orifice. TLDR we don't really know, it feels pleasurable and there are tons of theories as to why.",
"It's learned behavior. In many cultures kissing originally had non-sexual functions (e.g. showing respect or deference) or it wasn't done at all."
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5ld1qa | why does stretching feel good? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"as u/Midnight Rising said, you use your muscles all day long. however you also use them to an extent at night. they tend to tighten up do to this. most people compare muscles to a rubber band, however when you use a rubber band, you cause it to wear down and break. when you use a muscle it actualy tightens. this is usually do to some chemical you release during activities (someone help me I don't remember the chemical). so basically think of your muscles as a rope. and using them ties knots in said rope. these muscles are connected to different things, so having more rope to spare makes it easier to work with. however, by making these knots, you have \"less\" rope and it makes it harder to move. stretching is like untying those knots. you give out \"more\" rope and make it easier to move or do things. your muscles are more free and less inhibited. it's not so much that stretching feels good as it is that not stretching feels bad. it's just the comparison of before and after that makes you feel better. side note, you should stretch often and thoroughly. tight muscles are a pain in that area, however they can cause more pain after a period of time due to the areas they connect. for example my back hurts a lot due to my posture. but many areas of my back hurt due to the knotted muscles pulling on other objects. and for the love of God if I'm wrong please someone correct me in a nice way so I can do better for myself, and forgive any typos. kinda drunk",
"All those little motions you make throughout the day make your muscles tighten up. Stretching helps this, making your muscles go back to normal!",
"After long periods of inactivity, your muscles, tendons, legements, etc., are at rest. When you stretch, your body releases these chemicals called marklar that, much like n-dolphins, help you feel better.",
"Also, a lot of things that are good for you \"feel good.\" It's like nature's motivation. Eating feels good, which is nature's way of motivating you to take in energy. Having sex feels good, which is nature's way of motivating you to reproduce. I think somewhere along the line in evolution, essential tasks/behaviors became intertwined with the activation of reward centers in your brain. So if in some bizarro universe licking your nipples was essential for your survival, that would feel good too, because everybody who hated licking nipples would've died off."
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5ldkl0 | Why blueprints are done on blue paper | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The drawings (before computers) were done on a special kind of paper that was then put into a tube filled with ammonia gas. The ammonia would react with the paper to generate the blueprint. The special paper used was tinted blue by the chemical which reacted with the ammonia and the lines creating the drawing became dark blue.",
"Blueprints are actually [cyanotypes.]( URL_0 ) I work with them regularly at my job at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. There are two cool things about them. They will fade if let out in natural or artificial light, but will become brighter again when placed in darkness, and, for a time, they were used as a cheaper alternative to other photographic processes, so there is a lot of cool photography in shades of blue. At HSP we have a beautiful cyanotype scrapbook of a 1900s bohemian couple touring Europe on bikes. I know some artists still use the process as an aesthetic choice, also cause you can still make them yourself fairly easily. I know they were replaced by [Photostat copying]( URL_1 ). I don't know that much about the actual chemical process and method of creating them, but I hope that helps."
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5ldt11 | What is the significance of prime numbers in encryption? Why are we trying to find bigger ones? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you take one number, let's say five, and multiply it by itself some number of times, let's say three, you get an exponential expression, which we would write in this case as 5^3 = 125 which we say as five to the power of three is 125. If we made the three bigger, the result would get huge very fast. It's really easy for a computer to calculate an exponent though. On the other hand, what if we knew that 5 raised to some power is 78125, can we easily figure out what the missing number is? This is still very easy for computers to do using a function called the logarithm. Remember that when you divide two numbers, a/b, you may get a remainder. We call this remainder the modulo of base b (the denominator, or second number in the division). Sometimes it's just called 'the modulo', for short if it's understood what the base is. We will use base five. What is the modulo of 7^2? 7^2 is equal to 49, if we divide by five there is a remainder of 4. So the modulo is 4. This is still a very easy computation for a computer to do. But what if we know that 7 raised to some power modulo 5 is equal to 4; can we figure out what the mising number is? There's a limited number of answers you can get, so you know that there has to be more than one possible solution. It turns out that solving this problem (called the discrete logarithm problem) is very hard for computers to do. Any computer could handle the given problem easily, but only because the numbers used are really small, it becomes essentially impossible for sufficiently large numbers. So what does this have to do with prime numbers? Let's say you have some known number raised to the power of a variable modulo some known base, and you start plugging in values for the variable, 1,2,3 and so on you will eventually get to a point where the sequence of values starts repeating itself. Every number in the sequence will be between zero and one less than the base of the modulo, but you might not get *all* of these. It turns out that if the first constant is a prime number, you will get every possible value no matter what the base is. This is the mathematical property that public key encryption (the kind that relies on prime numbers) exploits. I mentioned before that crypto systems need to use really big prime numbers. A more honest statement, mathematically, would be that they rely on kinda large prime numbers. The size of the prime number depends on how much computing power it needs to be able to withstand. As computers in general get faster, we need to use larger prime numbers to remain secure. The largest prime numbers that we know are much, much, much, much bigger than the prime numbers we deal with in crypto. Knowing these numbers isn't particularly useful in and of itself. Mostly we're just interested in finding *more* prime numbers because there are still lots of things the best mathematicians can't figure out about them. Because there are just so many of them though, we tend to be interested in the biggest ones we can find (we've known for a few thousand years that there is not a biggest prime number). One interesting property of prime numbers is that the bigger you get, the further apart they become. This means that when a new biggest prime number is found, there's a good chance it will be a fair bit larger than the previous one.",
"Mainly because we have no good method of prime factorization with computers, and the complexity of the problem scales exponentially in trying to find bigger primes. RSA for example mainly relies on multiplying two relatively large primes together. You could theoretically decrypt it if you could find the prime factorization of the very large number used to encrypt it. But that is task still to complex for the world's best supercomputers. Currently the biggest primes are found via mathematical tricks, such as the famous 2^n - 1, which will for quite a few values of n, spit out a prime number."
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5ldw62 | How are fireworks able to make certain shapes while exploding in mid air? Such as a smiley face, heart, star, etc. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the secondary charge is packed in the shape of a star or a smiley and a small charge ignites and inflates the shape before the secondary charge blows up. URL_0",
"That's a good question. I've also wondered about this and other related effects. I'd like to add to this question by asking the following: How do they figure out the angles so that the audience, let's say on a beach, are able to see the shapes as they are intended? Also, are there multiple fireworks needed to make effects...like ink blot art?"
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5lem9z | What exactly does it mean for a system to be 8 bit/16 bit/32 bit/64 bit? Why is it in multiples of 8? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A lot of replies in this thread say that it is because a bit is base two and 8/16/32/64 are powers of 2. This is NOT the correct reasoning. Firstly, each bit is a binary digit that is either 0 or 1 (think of a switch, it's either on or off). Each bit has 2 possibilities. A 1-bit system is obviously not too useful because of the two states it can represent, so we connect multiple 1-bit systems together. So for a 2-bit system, there are 2^2 = 4 representations. 3-bit systems have 2^3 = 8 representations, 2^4 = 16 representations, etc. You might have seen or heard that computers cannot handle numbers larger than about 2.1 billion. This is where the limitation of 32-bit systems come from (2^31 is about 2.1 billion. One of the bits is used to represent the positive/negative sign). There is nothing stopping you from building a 3-bit system, or a 23-bit system, or a 377-bit system (the point is none of these are powers of 2). In fact, this has been done before. There are modern video cards that have 192-bit memory channels which is not a power of 2. I don't know what the real reason is (perhaps someone who works in processor design can better answer this) but I am suspecting that this comes down to convenience and scalability from old to new software/hardware. System with weird bit sizes are usually designed to do a specific task. For example, digital signal processors (DSPs) have used 9 bits, 18 bits, 26 bits, 48 bits, etc. in the past.",
"It indicates the size of a pointer(computers use this to address memory). 32 bit pointers can address up to 2^32 bytes(around 4 gigabytes) of memory and 64 bit pointers can address up to 2^64 bytes or 16.8 million terabytes. It is multiple of 8 because for almost all computers, 1 byte is the minimum addressable unit of memory and 1 byte equals 8 bit.",
"It's multiples of 2, and it's because bits are 2-base. This means they are either 0 or 1. So when we have a number that is 8-bit it means it is a number represented by 8 bits. This can be converted to the regular number system -- decimal also known as 10 base -- by going from right to left along the 1s and 0s and adding. The bit on the right is 1 or 0. The next bit to the left is 2 or 0. The next bit to the left is 4 or 0. The next is 8 or 0, etc. For example, 0110 in binary is equal to 6, because the 1 spot is 0, the 2 spot is 1, the 4 spot is 1, and the 8 spot is 0. This means we have a 2 and a 4, so we add them to get 6. In this example we are dealing with a 4-bit number, because there are 4 bits. In an OS it generally means the size of an integer, and can affect things like the amount of memory that can be used. Interesting addition: 4 bits is a nibble, 8 bits is a byte.",
"Sigh... Computer engineer here, all of the answers in this thread have thus far missed the mark. The simplest and most correct answer is that there is no technical definition of a microprocessor's \"bit width\". They're largely marketing terms that rest on a foundation defined entirely by the manufacturer. Consider for example the MIPS R4000 microprocessor used famously in the Nintendo 64. It's widely known as being one of the first \"64 bit\" microprocessors, and it does indeed have 64-bit instructions. However, most of these 64-bit instructions are implemented in microcode on top of 32-bit harder and involve the sequential execution of multiple 32-bit instructions. Despite its namesake, very few if any Nintendo 64 games used the R4000's 64-bit instructions because they were simply too slow. Consider next the Intel 8086, marketed as a 16-bit microprocessor. It is true that the 8086 has 16-bit general purpose registers and can perform only 16-bit arithmetic, but it uses a segmented address space which provides access to 20 bits worth of memory (1 megabyte). Intel introduced the MMX instruction set extensions with the P5 series of microprocessors. The MMX instructions included the ability to load and store 64-bit values in the MMX registers, perform boolean logic operations on 64-bit values, shift 64-bit values, perform vector arithmetic on packed values (two 32-bit values, four 16-bit values, or eight 8-bit values), but did not include the ability to perform scalar arithmetic on unpacked 64-bit values. Despite having some 64-bit capabilities, they were not marketed as 64-bit microprocessors. The most common reference point for a microprocessor's \"bit width\" is the width of the microprocessor's general purpose registers which is where most of the microprocessor's instructions are executed. Specialised registers such as those used for floating point arithmetic, vector arithmetic, and special functions are not considered, nor is the width of the external address and data busses. The Intel 8088 was an Intel 8086 with an 8-bit external data bus rather than a 16-bit external data bus yet it was still marketed as a 16-bit microprocessor with a 20-bit address space.",
"It means how much memory can be addressed. The bigger the number the more memory. Since computer memory must be a power of two the measure is expressed as such."
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5lemcr | what is a director/maestro doing with his hands? | Everybody has his sheet of music, so what is he doing? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the most basic sense... you have a group of 40 people that all need to start playing their instruments at the same second. Without the director, they'd basically never know when to start, or the start of the song would ve extremely choppy as people are trying to catch up or figure out when to start. Unless someone yelled out \"ok start\" and then began playing. The director is that role. And then, the director keeps tempo and signals coming changes in music. Again, if he wasn't there, you wouldn't know how fast or slow to play. You'd need to just hope that someone is staying on beat and that you can follow them. The director centralizes that. He is leading. Not some random person who should be focused on playing their music.",
"He is controlling tempo or beats per minute. He can also signal a crescendo, an increase of volume, or a decrescendo, a decrease in volume and how slow they should be. He can signal to slow down or pick up speed. Sometimes, he will help emphasize certain instrument or vocal parts. For example, he may wave his hands in time of a particular instrument's parts. The orchestra knows the music and if needed, they could play the whole piece without the maestro, but it is hard to keep a steady pace. The maestro controls how fast they go and keeps them unified during harder parts, such as a slowing down, picking up, growing louder, or growing softer.",
"With the left (usually for right-hand dominant) he keeps time. Upward counts one. Down counts two, left three, right four. The larger the movement, the more volume he wants out of the band/choir. He may supplement with the right if he feels there needs to be emphasis on the degree of change in speed/volume. With the right, he queues in or gestures out the next group or helps adjust speed/volume/execution of the phrase or note."
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5lenlt | What is the difference between a good lawyer and the "best lawyers money can get you" while defending you in a case? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"To put it simply as thus: A good lawyer works within the law to get you the best result possible. They work with the system, and don't break the rules, and so are good all round. The best lawyer money can buy, however, is one who knows when, where, and how the rules can be bent. They know how far the rules can be bent, and which rules can be bent in which situation. And thus, they are able to get a much more favourable outcome that the good lawyer can provide, albeit at a high cost. In addition to this, the best laywers are very specialised in what they do. A top end laywer who defends you in a murder case, for example, may have spent their entire career studying the criminal laws for murder, and cases where the rules have been bent, both successfully and unsuccessfully, and what results came out of it. If you hired this lawyer then, to defend a libel case, or a common dispute, they wouldn't be as good as a different top end laywer who has studied these cases. Think of it like surgeons. Most surgeons are good all round, and they can deal with most types of surgery, with no issues. But for specific and technical surgeries, like organ transplantation, brain surgery, or reconstructive surgery, a regular surgeon is not going to cut it, and you need to hire a specialist to get the job done the best. EDIT: Further clarification."
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5lephi | why do you have to turn your phones off for takeoff and landing in planes | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Aircraft Maintenance here. It does not mess with the navigation equipment at all, despite what they tell you. It is mostly to prevent distractions with the crew during crucial periods of flight for individuals who don't have the courtesy to put it on silent.",
"Here's the explanation given by one of my electromagnetic fields and waves lecturers: The lead time on producing new aircraft is 10-20 years, while the lead time on new phones is more like 5. This means that the EM interference protections on planes are 15 years out of date - still designed, at best, for very early 4G and 2.5G wifi b/g. The actual reason is more of a precaution than knowledge that any particular issue could occur. Mythbusters tested it and showed that it isn't anything to actually worry about."
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5lex5r | why do people cover their mouths/foreheads/faces when they are surprised? | The kind of action all girls seem to make when they are proposed to, for example. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If this is a repost ( it's flaired as such) can whoever tagged it please link up to the repost? There's currently one comment here (besides mine) and it's been removed."
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5lfhvy | how come when waking up with a stuffy nose only one nostril is usualy clogged? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You have something called a nasal cycle, in which one sinus swells slightly, then switching to the other, after a bit of time. Mostly you don't notice it, but when ill and your nose is easier to block, you do notice"
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5lfkm7 | Why are weightlifters fat? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"long-time \"Olympic-Style\" lifter here... (I lift primarily to be strong and stay in shape. I'm not \"competition strong\" nor am I \"super buff\" in the slightest, but I do lift heavy with the goal of increasing strength and muscle.) The way you get stronger and build muscle is by putting on mass. This means you have to eat at a caloric surplus everyday in order to fuel the growth, development, and healing of your muscles. If you do not eat enough, you cannot increase muscularity, and eventually cannot even maintain it. This is because muscles are insanely dense and require more 'food' to sustain. If you don't, and your body starts 'burning' calories, it will burn some readily available fat first, but then eventually begin breaking down excess muscle tissue because it 1) gives more fuel for your body, and 2) is harder to maintain, so it'll burn it off to get you back to an equilibrium based off of what you're eating. Since these competitors are trying to be as strong as possible, they do not balance their surpluses with diets, because dieting will cost them strength and physical muscle in the process. They eat big, lift big, get big. They don't want to lose any muscle. Ever. I can personally say that you will lose noticeable amount of your peak strength if you go on a diet in order to lower body fat and get \"ripped\". For me, I lost roughly 10-15% of my peak lifting after dieting and losing about 30lbs (from 182lbs at 24% BF to 153lbs at 13% BF). 10-15% for me is not much. But if those competitors did that, they would basically lose their ability to compete in Strongman comps. They would probably sacrifice up to a quarter of their lift numbers unless they used steroids in order to counteract the potential loss of muscle.",
"1. Not all of them are. 2. Cutting weight reduces strength, which is the entire point of competing in lifting.",
"Most aren't, since Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting (I'm assuming you meant one of these) are weight class sports, so to get the most muscle and strength in your weight class you'll need to be low in bodyfat. However, there's usually a superheavy class which is something like 125kg+. For lifters in that category, there's no reason not to get fat (until it limits mobility) since it's much easier to gain muscle and avoid injury while on a calorie surplus.",
"As the muscles get larger, a thick layer of subcutaneous fat forms over their [huge] muscles, making them look fat. Without the musculature, they would look like a person of average build. The reason for this is ~~to provide a large supply of ready-to-use energy that the muscle can grab whenever it needs.~~ to protect the muscles from physical damage, and help in hormone production. In addition to this, when they are actively lifting, their stomach pushes out because of the sheer amount of muscle there. Zyndrunas Savickas is a good example of that. He is around 160kg, but is around 18% body fat (average level). EDIT: Further clarification EDIT2: Major correction",
"Different weightlifting goals=different body types. Some lift to be strong, some lift to sculpt the body, to highlight the muscles. You will never see a body-builder enter or win a \"Strong Man\" Competition. Totally different animal. Totally different goals. Body builders have to lift heavy weights but they are far from being as strong as someone training for a Strong Man competition. A typical body-builder will for example deadlift 300 to 400 lbs for reps whereas a Strong Man competitor will deadlift nearly double that for reps while training. Eddie Hall has the deadlift record for \"bar and straps only\" at 1025 lbs. Also, Strong Man competitors eat a lot of food, a whole lot of food, to fuel their bodies. Bodybuilders eat a lot as well but not nearly as much as a Strong Man competitor.",
"Most weightlifters aren't fat. But basically eating a lot (more calories than you burn) helps you get stronger. A common method is a period of 'bulking', eating a lot to get stronger, and probably gain some fat as a result. Followed by a shorter period of 'cutting', eating fewer calories than you burn in order to lose the gained fat.",
"Because you'll never be at your strongest when totally lean, most likely. These guys lift and eat like crazy to ensure their muscles are growing at a maximum, ensuring max strength. This requires a lot of calories, and even if you're eating super clean, you'll gain some fat. Essentially you saturate your body's caloric uptake so that you are your strongest, with some fluff being added as collateral damage.",
"It depends on goals and what works best for you. Some bodybuilders bulk up during off-season and then cut for competition while others remain quite lean year-round and that's just figuring out what works best for you. It's easier to just bulk because your diet can be no as strict and you progress faster but you also have to cut more after that. Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting has weight classes so lifters that want to be competitive choose the best class for themselves. If you're taller/have a bigger frame you'd wanna go to a higher weight class so you can fill out your frame because a shorter lifter at the same weight can carry more muscle and outlift you. Like bodybuilders, some weightlifters and powerlifters cut for a competition or do water manipulation or whatever else they do to get in their weight class. Also if you look at lighter classes you can find some really jacked powerlifters or weightlifters. I've noticed that usually lighter lifters deadlift more than they squat and it's the opposite for heavy guys. All that thickness makes it harder to get down in the position for the deadlift but for the squat you start from the top and when you descend areas of your body push against each other and provide some support (same for bench but probably less). So that's something to consider how your weight affects how you lift."
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5lfw4b | What is the emotional 'awwww' feeling we get when we see cute things? Why does it happen? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is basically the brain releasing neurotransmitters like oxytocin which is normally only released when we are in love or when we feel safe/protected or are caring for children. Allegedly animals we find cute (cats/dogs) were selected for their \"cuteness\" over centuries but what makes them cute turns out to be the ratio/proportion/distance of their eyes and face face shape, which is nearly that of human children. So, in essence only human children were originally meant to elicit that feeling but we have created/found other things that also stimulate that part of the brain and thus sort of tricks us into finding it attractive/urge to protect it from harm. Baby animals are also like this and there have been citations of adult animals caring for young of other species probably also for similar reasons: their brains are sort of hardwired to instinctively care for \"cute things\" which babies of most species are.",
"Can anyone explain why, despite being a human male, I find babies to be annoying and uninteresting but my heart melts like an ice cream in the sun when I see a cute little puppy?",
"Michael from Vsauce explains it amazingly in his video - URL_0",
"I want to know if this sensation is less prominent in people who have had children of their own. Does the stab of awww wane as we have cute children of our own? Does it come back once the children are grown?",
"The important news is that humanity has sunk a lot of resources into giving themselves this response. -Entire species of dogs left effectively helpless, but for their capacity to appeal to human standards for oxytocin release. -Entire subreddits devoted to masturbating this oxytocin release. -Tuning competitive impulses to release *other* neurochemicals whenever we present an \"explanation\" that's really just a cursory view of biological artifacts, rather than any proper effort to deconstruct modern human experiences. The thing that's metaphysically happening is that humans want to connect with everything they can, and there are certain visual cues that make that easier. But we have gifs of buildings falling down, and all it takes is a little face doodle to get us to empathize with them. In the present environment, descriptions of neurotransmitters is just another way to release neurotransmitters, not any proper explanation of a thing.",
"I can understand the reason we feel 'awww' for babies etc (instinct to take care of offspring) but why do we think fluffy animals are so cute? Humans aren't fluffy. Is this because we've come to associate them with pets as we grow up, and not so much a hardwired thought?",
"First off, babies are annoying. They have to be as they need lots of reliable attention to get the care they need to survive. They tune their crying to match the natural resonant frequency of their parents ear canals. This means they also match random other people's ears too. This makes it very tempting to smash them with a large rock. Their parents won't because they are under the influence of oxytocin, but the other tribe members need the awww instinct to prevent random baby smashings. Baby animals trigger it too, because instincts aren't exactly smart. They only need to work well enough for people to survive.",
"Question I have is why do I not feel this way towards anything? I have looked at pictures and videos of babies and animals and felt nothing while people around me did.",
"It's a vestigial hunting instinct. Notice that it's almost always accompanied by a desire to squeeze the thing as hard as you can.",
"Emotions are like memories from our evolutionary history. They direct our behavior without us learning them first, because they are part our genetic code. We respond to certain queues around youth, like a high eye size to head size ratio with a caring impulse. It helps our species survive by making us more likely to care for our young."
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5lgw8l | How does one "waste water" when using it in your home. Doesn't it just get added directly back to the water supply? | Note: NOT in regards to agriculture or outdoor water usage. I just saw a commercial that said something to the effect of not turning off water while brushing wastes like 4 gallons of water. I don't understand this, because according to my admittedly limited understanding of how our water supply works, the water just goes back into the city water supply after its treated. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Wasting water\" really means \"wasting energy\". Not every place on the planet has a nearly unlimited water source (like Washington and Idaho). In places like California, New Mexico, or Arizona, where clean water is scarce, using more water than you need to means that they have to ship more water from other areas and spend a great deal of money and energy to ensure everyone has the water they need. In those places that are totally flush with clean water, like the aforementioned pacific northwest USA, you really couldn't waste enough water to even be a bother. In places like those drought areas, wasting water means higher water costs for everyone, and higher costs for the city.",
"Treating that water on its way out, treating it and pumping it around into storage tanks as fresh water all take energy and machines to make happen."
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5linvd | Can we go below absolute zero? Yes - > how / No - > Why | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can't go below absolute zero because that's where there is no energy and you can't have negative energy.",
"The colder something is, the harder it is to cool it even more, and the more energy it would take. If you tried to cool anything to or below absolute 0 (0 K), it would take an infinite amount of energy. Therefore, you can not cool something to below 0 K the way you would cool something to 1 K or to any other temperature. However, there are cases where a temperature of below 0 K is obtained when you run the maths, but these are actually hotter than an infinite temperature, and you cannot get to below 0 from 0 K by cooling even more. This is a bit harder to explain simply, but I'll try : imagine a bunch of balls on a hill : all the balls will naturally roll to the bottom of the hill. When they are all at the bottom, everything is at its lowest point in energy and nothing is moving, that is absolute 0. If you give a bit of energy to the balls, they start to move a bit higher up the hill. That's the balls \"heating up\". When you heat the balls up enough that they can get anywhere from the bottom to the top of the hill, and are actually distributed everywhere equally, that's an infinite temperature. If you somehow manage to give even more energy to force the balls to stay closer to the top of the hill than the bottom on average, that's when you get to a negative temperature. Hope that is simple enough for a 5 year old!",
"It depends on how you define temperature. For most purposes, we simply define temperature on a macroscopic scale as the amount of heat energy in a system. With this definition, absolute zero is an absolute limit (that you can never actually reach). If you place an object at absolute zero next to an object at any other temperature, heat will always flow to the absolute zero object. However, it is possible to view temperature as involving the statistical likelihood that components of your system occupy different energy states. In this sense, a negative temperature becomes possible by fiddling with the entropy and energy involved in a system. But this isn't a 'negative temperature' that makes sense in the more common definition of the term above. I'm not sure there's any way to explain this second definition at an ELI5 level other than to point out that it exists and will never affect your fashion choices. If you're curious about all the details, I'd recommend /r/askscience."
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5ljkan | Why do we get brain freeze? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a big nerve at the roof of our mouth. When this nerve gets exposed to extreme cold it hurts and sends pain signals to our brain. That's why sticking your thumb to the roof of your mouth will get rid of brain freeze."
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5lnd4v | Why is one currency worth more than another? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's all to do with perspective. Let's say you and two other friends want to trade. You've got oranges, one friend has apples and the other has peaches. If you want a peach, you could just trade one orange for it. But what happens if you think your orange is worth more than a single peach? If your friend with apples really wants oranges too, he might be willing to give you multiple apples for a single orange. If there's a higher demand for your oranges, you can sell them for more. This is essentially where the \"worth\" of a currency comes from. Traders take a lot of things into account when buying and selling currency. Things like having a strong economy will increase the value of currency, by driving up demand (lots of people want it). If traders feel the currency is high risk, there will be low demand which means in order to sell it you have to drop the value. The external value of a currency isn't everything though. You can buy about 10 Norwegian Kroner for one Pound Sterling, but things in Norway cost about 10 or 20 times as much."
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5loclz | The P=NP problem | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"*P* and *NP* are both so-called *complexity classes*. They are basically classes of problems in computer science that can be solved in a certain amount of time (Note: Time here means computational steps, not actual time). Problems in *P* take polynomial time, which means increasing the problem size (for a sorting problem for example the number of keys to be sorted) linearly results in a polynomial increase in computation time. Problems in *NP*, on the other hand, are problems that are guaranteed to take longer than polynomial time. They might take up to exponential time (like the breakpoint construction for buchi automata or the [Travelling Salesman problem]( URL_0 )) in the worst case. The *P=NP* problem is now to either proof or disprove whether all problems that lie in *NP* also lie in *P*. This would mean every problem in *NP* also has an algorithm that finds the solution in polynomial time. That would be a huge step forward for computer science since problems from *NP* are generally orders of magnitude harder to solve for large inputs and take up considerable computation time."
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5losix | Why can't people float on water while a 197,362 ton ship can? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ships displace more water than they weigh. Ships can do this despite being made of metal and being very large, by virtue of being hollow. Even a very large ship weighs less overall than an equivalent volume of water so they float."
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5lqy1a | How does CGI cost so much money for TV shows? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It takes a lot of expert animators working hard to make CGI look good, and then a lot of good hardware to render it. Those people all have salaries. Note that it's a LOT harder and more expensive to incorporate CGI into a live-action show than to just make an entire show out of low-grade CGI. The CGI kids cartoons you see are relatively cheap to make because it's totally fine for things to look like shiny plastic spheres or play-dough blobs, it's fine for them to move in simple ways, and because they only make the characters and most of the environments once,and get to constantly re-use them. Doing CGI for a war sequence in Game of Thrones, where you're inventing totally new things for individual scenes and expecting them to look good incorporated into real-life footage, is a lot harder. A lot of CGI TV cartoons use toys or inanimate objects as main characters because that makes it even cheaper. You don't need to carefully animate good facial movements on talking cars and trains and you don't need Barbie and Ken's skin to look soft and natural. The first big all-CGI movie was Toy Story, and they chose toys for exactly this reason -- it was incredibly demanding to create realistic looking stuff, but if you made the characters toys, the fact that they looked like plastic or wood was actually an advantage!",
"When you are good at something never do it for free. And render times are long, you need lots of high qualified people for these nice Hollywood cgi effects. This all adds up"
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5lrj4e | How much power does a President have. If Presidents come and go, is there a fundamental long term plan that can't be altered by each new leader? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The president is the leader of the executive branch of government. Duties and responsibilities include things like: - Appointing people to serve in the cabinet and other high-level government positions - Establishing and maintaining diplomatic relations with other countries - Deciding if/when to bomb another nation (e.g. in retaliation to an attack) - Providing guidance with respect to how federal laws should be enforced and how to prioritize government resources - Approving or vetoing legislation/bills that are passed by congress - Creating executive orders (basically a temporary law/policy put into place by the president, but which is only enforceable to the extent that the executive branch of government has the constitutional power/authority to institute such a law/policy) There is nothing that a president that can do, by himself, that will be guaranteed to survive his presidency (i.e. continue on to the next presidency). However, laws passed by congress can be difficult to repeal later on and unlike an executive order it cannot simply be undone when the next president gets elected into office. So, the president can encourage lawmakers in congress to pass legislation and, if successful, that legislation will likely remain active for many years or decades after they leave office. However, if the president does not have the support of the majority of senators and representatives, then it becomes very difficult to pass legislation. Edit: as others have pointed out (and I should have mentioned), the constitution provides a long-term framework for how the government should operate and what powers and authority each branch of government has. In that sense, it's a long-term plan that cannot be altered by each new leader."
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5lrqbl | If atomic interactions mean that objects never truly "touch" each other, then why do "collisions" produce sound (e.g. clapping)? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends on what you mean by touch. The atoms get close to each other, interact with each other, there is a mechanical impact, the atoms will not pass each other, etc. So it is all the things we relate to touching. It is these interaction between the atoms that cause vibrations in the materials that creates sound. If you do not consider atoms to be touching each other when you clap your hands together then I wonder what you consider touching. It is unlikely that any particles have any size at all but are defined by their interactions with each other. You have to draw the line between touching and not touching somewhere."
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5lsfog | When my phone doesn't have signal it says "emergency calls only." How can I still make emergency calls without service? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Its a legal requirement for all wireless carriers. Even if you do not have a valid contract/service plan with a carrier, they _must_ accept 911 calls from your mobile device. Imagine if you have a pay-as-you-go and you're in an accident and need an ambulance. But wait, your pay-as-you-go account has $0 balance! It would suck if you had to call your carrier, give your credit card number, I'm sorry you didn't press a valid entry, please call back and try again meanwhile IM BLEEDING TO DEATH OMG! other side note of interest - when you call 911 your phone goes into emergency call mode - all apps get dumped, the phone app gets highest cpu priority and regardless of how many bars you may or may not have, transmit power is boosted to 11; meanwhile aggressive power management kicks in to maximize battery life to maintain your emergency call for as long as possible; usually your phone will go to 1-2% then power itself down - in emergency mode your phone will run itself until the battery has 0. Meanwhile on the cell tower side, the system will reserve a channel exclusively for your use, kicking other calls if it has to."
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5lvavv | If cardio is good for your heart health because it speeds up your heart rate for a period of time, why isn't cocaine also good for your cardiovasciular health? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"When you work out, an elevated heart rate is part of a much bigger metabolic system based on needing to send oxygen to places your body normally wouldn't normally require it or as much of it. Your blood vessels will relax among other things and your body will work together in unison. When you do uppers, increased heart rate is simply a by product of the drug where your heart is off doing it's own thing regardless of how else the rest of your body is acting. This conflict is what prevents it from being a good thing since your blood vessels will actually contract, one of the main things that make it a health risk."
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5lvokp | Why do you see weird shapes like tv static when you close your eyes and press on them? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"You are stimulating your retina from the outside. You'll notice if you press on the bottom-outside of your eye you see a spot in the top-inside of your vision since that part of your retina receives the light from the top-inside of your visual field.",
"Light hits the retina, which sends signals to the brain for interpretation. The random stimulation that is caused by squishing your eye is just that: random. However, your brain still wants to make sense of it, so the randomness is interpreted into something you already know, like TV static, or lights flashing, or colorful geometric shape patterns.",
"The phenomenon is called \"phosphenes\" and the cause is still unknown when this occurs without applying pressure to your eye. When you rub your eyes you see light because the photoreceptors ( light receptors or the thing that recognizes light in your eye) are modified mechanoreceptors (receptors that perceive pressure or touch). That means when you push on your eye you can make this receptor think it's seeing light by applying pressure."
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5lymsb | Why are there so many screw drive types (phillips, hex, etc)? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Originally the companies had different types so that you would have to buy their size and shape tool for a premium. Not prevalent anymore, but it's a practical thing. i.e hex keys are simple and cheap yet effective, so that's why they are in flat packs.",
"Slotted heads were first because of simplicity and cost. The biggest downside is they cannot be torqued very high and are prone to stripping. So other head designs were made to increase the amount of torque and to prevent stripping. The next evolution came in making them tamper proof. Think about the ones you see in bathroom stalls. The other step in creating different heads was for proprietary/monetary reason. If you are a car manufacturer and can make a special bolt that needs special tools to work on then people have to use your dealerships for service. This also applied to the tool manufacturers who would gladly try to engineer a new design as it meant they would be the only company you could buy the tools from needed to work on that component."
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5lz4kl | Why do American corporations have the same constitutional rights as citizens? Isn't this the reason they are able to become so corrupt and able to get all their power and control? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First, as pointed out below, corporations do not have the same rights as people, but they do have a certain legal personhood, which includes some rights. Why? Well, it's sort of the point of a corporation. The while idea, since they first came into existence, was that the corporation existed as a distinct legal entity from the people that owned or ran it. And, in some ways, it's a benefit in the legal field. That a corporation is a person means it can be sued, that it can own and have responsibility for property, that it can be taxed, etc... The controversies have less to do with the idea of corporations bring people than with the extention of particular legal rights to corporations, like free speech rights or religious rights, where there's less clearly a historical basis.",
"> The basis for allowing corporations to assert protection under the U.S. Constitution is that they are organizations of people, and the people should not be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively. In this view, treating corporations as \"persons\" is a convenient legal fiction which allows corporations to sue and to be sued, provides a single entity for easier taxation and regulation, simplifies complex transactions that would otherwise involve, in the case of large corporations, thousands of people, and protects the individual rights of the shareholders as well as the right of association. Source: Wikipedia From the same source, it is clear corporations do **NOT** get all the same Constitutional rights as individuals (such as the 5th Amendment)."
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5lzfp8 | What is Common Core and why do some people hate it so much? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Common Core was an agreement between state departments of education on a common set of standards for primary school education. It defines what will be taught, at the concept level. There are two kinds of people that don't like it: A) Anti-Federalists - These people think that schooling is a local matter because it's paid for with local taxes (usually property taxes). They think that local school boards should be making these curriculum decisions and the more that distant government entitles (particularly at the federal level) are involved, the less it will match local needs. B) Traditionalists - These people want to be able to help their kids learn, and they think this would be a lot easier if their kids were taught the same way they were. This is particularly a concern with primary math (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). Older people learned these math topics through memorization, like flash cards. In the intervening years, educational psychology experiments have discovered that this is not the best way to teach math because it does not scale to algebra. Thus the Common Core (informed by these studies) defined that math would be taught in a more abstract way. This makes many parents \"knowledge of how to learn math\" obsolete, even though math answers have not changed. These two groups can sometimes be allies, for example when the Common Core teaches evolution as science and local school boards would like to teach that there are many possible explanations for animal diversity - including a religiously founded one."
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5m2uv9 | Why do we get "goose bumps"? What actually are they? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"I was always told it also ties to your fight or flight reflex. Same reason why dogs hair will stand up when they are threatened. Heat and cold tied into the body being threatened in an evolutionary type of way",
"We get goosebumps usually because we're cold. They are from when we were covered in hair. It raise the hair trapping in the warm air/heat. Ever wonder why a cat or dog is fluffier after being out in the cold. It's because they have goosebumps to keep the heat in."
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5m3c0d | Why does cold water from the sink feel warm if my hands are freezing cold from snow? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's all because you are incapable of feeling temperature. You can only feel a change in temperature. Heat always flows from warmer things to colder things. If something feels hot, it's because you are getting heat from it. If something feels cold, its because you are loosing heat to it. If the skin of your hands is colder than the water, the water will feel warm, because you are receiving heat from it."
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5m60xt | Why does moving forward or backward on a bike make it easier to balance? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When the bike is moving, turning the handlebars causes the front wheel to move sideways, which gives you a way to correct a fall. When the bike is stationary, that doesn't work any more."
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5m6k0z | How does national debt works? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> How does national debt works? A country (in the form of its Finance Ministry/Treasury) will issue bonds and sell them on the open market. These bonds are obligations by the country to pay back the purchase price, plus interest, after a set number of years. Then after that time has passed, the holder will come to the Finance Ministry, hand in their bond, and get cash back. > And is it possible for a country to pay all of the debt back? Absolutely. It could cover all the outstanding bonds in the regular way and just not issue any new ones, or it could buy all of its bonds back early and cancel them. > And what are the usual interest rates? Depends very much on the country. From fractions of a percent to maybe up to 5% or more for very risky countries like Greece at the height of the Euro crisis. Very respected economies can even issue negative-yield bonds, like Germany did at some recent point I think - when the bond is handed back in, the holder gets less than the bond's original sales price. This is because people trust the German government more than they trust a bank where they would normally deposit their money. > And why do countries take up soo much debt? Sometimes for political reasons (they need to pay for something that they promised their voters). But in general, as long as the interest rate is lower than your economic growth rate, it makes sense to borrow money for investing in things like infrastructure that bring long-term economic benefit. Say a country borrows a hundred million euros today to build a new power station. It's a stable, rich country, so the bond yield (total interest rate) over ten years is 1%. In ten years it will have to pay out a hundred and one million euros, but its tax revenue over those ten years has increased more than 1% - as a share of its budget, 101 million euros today is less than 100 million euros ten years ago. Plus the power station has been powering new homes and factories all this time, which is a great benefit! Generally, if your bond yields are lower than your economic growth, then you can just keep rolling the debt over - borrowing money again to pay off the recently expired bonds. That's how countries maintain debts for very long periods. Because of the economic growth, the burden of the debt actually decreases over time, and it's worth keeping it rolled over. **This, incidentally, is why the enormous US national debt is not too scary.**"
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5mbj4a | Why do lights that are far away have a "twinkling" quality to them? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes, heat & particulate (ice, dust) distortion in the air. That's why cold air provides clearer views, especially for astronomy."
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5mcc0v | Why does pornography become unappealing, sometimes even gross, after you have finished "using" it? | I have never understood why seemingly the most attractive woman in the world very quickly turns into someone I wouldn't look twice at walking down the street. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I read from somewhere else that when we are aroused, it overrides the disgust. But it is over-simplified. Edit: spelling",
"I don't have the sources at hand but here's the gist of it: 1. When you're horny you override some feelings of disgust in your partner. This is to better facilitate passing on your genes. 2. When you \"finish,\" you don't want to keep pumping because your penis acts as plunger and pushes everything out. It's designed that way to push out other's semen but not your own. That's why your body gets hit with chemicals to instantly shut the thrusting down. This is where the disgust comes back, it's part and parcel with the chemical dump and the initial disgust if there was any.",
"When u bust a nut, you're experiencing a quick high due to dopamine being released. It goes away after a few seconds and you have a hard come down, just like coming off cocaine. The come down makes you feel depressed and down and that comes with feelings of regret (subconscious) so you look at it and it's not appealing anymore. We like busting nuts not only because it feels good to our schlongs, but it gets us a little high for 2 or 3 seconds.. that's the chase and the come down off that drug is looking at the big bootied chick on your screen with a scowl instead of fervishly choking your chicken to her voluptuous body a few seconds ago",
"Because porn is Like eating fast food , you have a craving for it but once you got what you wanted , it is less appealing . Why? Because you don't need it anymore . In the mind the objectif was \" i need something that feel extremely great , a peak of fun !\" After that the mind is satisfied \"task completed\" . Now you are there thinking \" what was i thinking ?!?\" And the cycle continue!",
"I mean, it is kinda gross, in every way except people having sexy sex. From a film-making perspective there's usually not a lot to recommend porn - crappy sets, bad acting, kinda unappealing people. When you're horny, hey, all cool because sexy stuff is happening. Once you're done, you're just watching a bad movie with way too many tasteless sex scenes.",
"Sex seems mean, selfish, and unsanitary when you remove the context of sex drive and horniness. While horny, everything gross seems hot and kinky. Then you cum and realize you probably did some regretful shit.",
"Culture plays a part here too: promiscuity and desire have been deemed suspect when attached to certain genders or situations. Pornography is not ethically neutral. We aren't just talking about the mechanics of sex. We're also talking about the vehicle used to deliver the payload.",
"My understanding is that when sexually aroused the human brain inhibits disgust. Disgust is a very useful emotion to make us avoid moldy bread, parasites, contagious diseases and so forth. But if we were disgusted with our own reproductive activities all the time, the species would not have lived on."
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5mcd6z | How is soap still a "cleaning" product after touching many dirty things? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Okay so some of the dirt and grime on your hands etc will dissolve in water (like sweat and salt), and some may be washed of just from the force of the water (like actual soil). However some stuff like bacteria can stick to your hands, and things like oil won't dissolve in water. Soap contains a \"surfactant\". What a surfactant molecule has, is one end that \"likes\" water (hydrophilic end) and this will dissolve in water; and another end that \"hates\" water (it likes oil instead, this is hydrophobic). The surfactant molecules can stick to your oil dirt, and help to take them into the water by forming layers around them. They can arrange themselves so that there is a shell of the molecules where on the inside it's all \"water hate\" and the outside is all \"water love\". These layers can form bubble like structures called \"micelles\".",
"Soap \"dissolves\" into water and then creates little \"bubbles\" around the dirt/grease and is then left behind in the water as you remove your hands.",
"Well your question is asking several things. As you wash your butt with your raw bar of soap (I know you don't use a wash cloth you animal) the outer layers of soap disolve into the water and fats that are on your skin, and the water rinses it off. Each time you use your bar, layers come off of it. It may seem like a lie since hairs stick to it - but it happens. The rate of stuff deposited on your bar is less than what is rinsed off - generally. Also, your bar of soap is a great emulsifier. This means that it disolves organic solvents (fat, oil, petrol) as well as polar solvents (water, some alcohols etc). One side of each soap molecule likes fat, and the other likes water. In chemistry there is a phrase \"like likes like\" meaning that similar molecules will dissolve in similar molecules. Soap just happens to have ends that act like each of the extremes of chemical solutions, so its all good. Soap is made by reacting a strong base (OH-) with fat molecules. Its a relatively easy process developed by pioneers and their ancestors long ago. In short: lye + fat + perfume + mixing = soap. This means as you wet your body and the soap, the soap molecules have a chance to strip away all the fat and organic material from your skin, as well as become absorbed into the rushing rinsing water. Your skin is resilient and alive and connected to each other so it doesn't get taken away (although given a high concentration it would definitely dissolve too) but all the crud on top of you does. In our world, most things are separated into polar and non-polar molecules, and soap dissolves them both. Rinse off the dissolved solution of soap+crud and you have \"clean\" skin. Cleaning your skin with soap also kills beneficial bacteria. Tis a symptom of \"cleanliness\" I suppose."
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5mcslm | As short-sighted person, when looking at a mirror without my glasses, why do things in the background appear blurry even though I'm standing at a distance where I could normally see things clearly? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Great observation! (No pun intended) Because a mirror doesn't give you a view of what it 'sees' but merely extends what's called the 'light field' by the same distance that you are away from the mirror. Therefore to be in focus for you an object must be a distance from the mirror whose distance, when added to YOUR distance from the mirror, equals your focal distance.",
"Mirror doesn't hold a picture of anything. It merely bends and, well, mirrors rays of light. Shortsightedness is inability to focus rays of light that come from far away into separate points within retina. Retina being the back of your eye where picture is formed. As far as mirror image is concerned, light rays essentially behave the same as looking at an object that's behind the mirror, at equal distance. You can contrast mirror image with something like computer screen. Computer screen holds a picture of whatever its showing you. I once forgot my glasses for a lecture, and used camera of my phone to see the writing on the blackboard. Fun times."
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5mcwq4 | What is net neutrality? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's the concept that your internet provider is not allowed to discriminate between websites. If you try to visit Netflix, they should treat your network traffic the same way they'd treat it if you want to visit Google or Reddit. In other words, they are not allowed to, for example, have a policy that \"when you visit Netflix, we'll slow down your connection, because we have an in-house video streaming service that we want you to use instead\". Under net neutrality rules, they are required to treat all of your traffic as equal. The reason this is a big deal is that: - it prevents the ISP from upselling you different plans (you're currently on the Google plan. We can see you'd like to stream music from Spotify as well. Would you like to be upgraded to our Streaming+ service? It'll only be an additional $20/month\". - it helps competition. If ISP's were allowed to discriminate against specific sites, then they could, for example, run their own streaming service, and then slow down your bandwidth when visiting competing services and suddenly Netflix would be in trouble. Or Microsoft could enter a partnership with your ISP whereby your ISP would give Bing priority over Google's search engine. Any time you try to use Google, they could slow it down a bit, and when you use Bing they might give that traffic priority. Something like that could easily be used by big sites to prevent competition. Say you wanted to start up a new social network to be the new Facebook. Unfortunately, Facebook has *a lot* of money, and they might just go out to the big ISP's and say \"here's a bag of money. Please give our site priority over this new upstart\". Users then get a worse experience visiting your new site, so they stop using it."
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5mdzm5 | The Lehman Brothers Collapse/ Subprime Mortgage Crisis | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A Mortgage: Somebody borrows money in order to buy a house. The taker of the loan now has a house. The owner of the loan now has steady rate of income from this loan until it is paid off. A subprime mortgage: A person with a low income who can't afford a house takes out a mortgage. This is a high risk for the lender, who therefore requires a higher interest or some other compensation. Asset swap: An investor buys a rate of capital from another investor. E.g. Investor A gives investor B $5mill for loans that will pay back $10mill over 10 years. Investor B gets money now. Investor A has more money later. Asset bubble in Lehman Brothers: Somebody goes out and buys an awful lot of loans for real money. Then claim they are really rich. Bubble bursts: Suddenly everyone realises that these loans are not going to be paid back. Suddenly these loans are now declared worthless. Lehman Brothers now has no money, all they have are worthless loans. Scandal: Banks like Goldman Sachs have been instructing their own customers to buy the loans from them that Goldman Sachs themselves have been buying. Thus Goldman Sachs made a fortune. Their customers lost a bundle. Consequences: Poor people lost their houses. Mid range investors lost money. Goldman Sachs got even richer."
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5me57w | Doesn't Guaranteed Basic Income just cause crazy inflation? Is there any evidence that GBI actually works in the long term? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Why would it result in inflation? Inflation would only occur if you increased the total money supply too rapidly compared to the total value of goods and services available in the country. If you just redistribute some of it (presumably you transfer the money from other government programs) then there shouldn't be inflation. The two main causes of inflation aside from printing new money are from increased demand outpacing production or from increased costs of production. I don't think providing people a GBI would cause such an increased demand for goods and services that the demand would outpace production. At least I've never seen any studies or numbers that indicate that. There's also no reason GBI would increase production costs. Increasing minimum wage might, but that's because the wages are paid out by businesses. Edit: Of course it depends on the amount, but I'm assuming something reasonable like $5k - $20k. If you give such a high GBI that people quit their jobs en masse or the government has to print money or cancel important programs to pay for it you'll have inflation and other issues. It should also be noted that Alaska already has a GBI of $2000/year, but there are quite a few things different about Alaska from most places like it's small population, climate, and location."
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5mek5w | Why do humans forget most or everything that happened before 5th or 6th birthday? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The best theory I've heard so far is that it's based around language development. Until a person has the words and cognitive concept, it's impossible to remember. Some things like walking, eating, sleeping, etc are so innate that we don't need words to learn them. Other things like 'friends', 'birthday cake', 'presents', 'birthday' are more complex. A person doesn't remember something because they don't know that it's something to remember."
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5mext2 | Why do we count seconds, hours, days, and weeks in weird terms like 60, 24, 7 and 52 but once we get to years we go into base ten (decades, centuries, etc.)? | Seems odd. Never thought about it until now. Edit: Thanks for all the input! Had no idea our system for timekeeping had so much history from so many cultures behind it. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Putting 24 hours in a day came from the ancient Egyptians who split the day into 2 parts. Daytime was 10 hours with an hour of twilight on either side and nighttime was 12 hours. Nighttime was 12 hours based on 36 stars called \"decans\" that the Egyptians used to keep track of time based on when they rose in the sky. 18 decans would be visible at any given time of the year, but 3 were assigned to each side of twilight, so there 12 leftover for nighttime hours. The 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute comes from the ancient Babylonians who liked to split things in base 60. They had a thing for the number 360 because they thought that's how many days there were in year. They also like 60 because, like 12, it can easily be divided into several other whole numbers (2, 3, 4, 6). The 7-day week came up independently in a few ancient societies. It's unclear why exactly, but most likely because it's 1/4 of the lunar cycle. It just so happens that about 52 weeks fit in a year. People didn't start keeping track of years in their current form until significantly later on. The first person to start counting years from Jesus' birth was a Scythian monk named Dionysius Exiguus in 525 CE (and his system didn't become widespread until sometime later). Before that most people would count the number of years of the current king or other relevant ruler. So it would be something like the 10th year in the reign of King Virgo911. In Rome they would also sometimes count the number of years from the founding of the city. Most cultures around the world did this (counting years from a significant event or based on the ascension of a ruler or dynasty) and, in fact, that's what the current calendar does (counts years from a significant event, i.e. the birth of Jesus). We do it in base 10 because we're simply counting years from a reference point. Edit: Since this is picking up some steam, more fun facts. The Romans used an 8 day week during the Republic. They switched over to a 7 day week during the Empire (and officially adopted it in 321 CE). The Mayans had two different length weeks. One of 13 days where the days were just numbered and one of 20 days where the days were named. I'm not really sure how that works in practice. The Jews had a 7 day week because of the creation story taking place over 7 days. It's unclear where 7 came from. The French tried to implement decimal time shortly after the French Revolution, but it never caught on. In decimal time there are 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour, and 100 seconds in a minute.",
"I just want to emphasize that some of these divisions are physical; that is, that's just how they are. The length of the day is fixed -- it's how long it takes for the Sun to move *all* the way around the Earth. At noon on day 1, the Sun is at its highest point. At noon on day 2, the Sun is again at its highest point. The length of the day is the time between these two. How we measure it is another matter. Notice that I didn't say that it's the time that it takes for the Earth to spin around its axis. That's because it actually takes less than a day to do that. It's just that, by the time it has spun around, it's also moved a bit in its orbit, so the point that was directly facing the Sun is now a little bit behind. Also, since the Earth's orbit is elliptical, the length of the day we use is really more of an average. The other physical quantity we use today is the solar year. That's how long it takes for the Earth to go all the way around the Sun. The year is actually *not* exactly 365 days but a bit longer, which is why we add a day every four years or so (the rule for leap years is that we add one day whenever the year is a multiple of 4, unless it's a multiple of 100, in which case we add it only if it's a multiple of 400). Nobody thought, hm, let's make the year 365 days. 365 (and a bit) is just how long it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun. The 7-day week is just something that stuck with us from ancient cultures. The ancient Israelites, for example, used a 7-day week, in which the 7th day was the day of rest. In the Abrahamic traditions, that 7-day week was kept, though Christians and Muslims both changed the position of the day of rest within that week. Other cultures had different weeks. The Mayans, for example, had a 13-day week and a 20-day month, making a 260-day ritual year (that obviously didn't line up with the solar year; they used a different system for that). It just so happened that the 7-day week is the one we use today, thanks in large part to the spread of Christianity, and the fact that there are 52 weeks in a year (plus a day, or two in leap years) is just coincidental. Another physical quantity we use, but a lot less often, is the lunar month. This is how long it takes for the Moon to make its way around the Earth, kinda. Just like with the length of the day, the actual measure is how long it takes between new moon and new moon, when the relative position of the Sun, Earth, and Moon are the same. This is some quantity between 29 and 30 days. Many cultures use it, including the Jews, the Muslims, and the Chinese; the phases of the moon are a fairly reliable way to mark time. Have you ever seen those moon calendars that tell you the phase of the moon on a given day? These are completely unnecessary in lunar calendars -- you always know the phase of the moon because it's the same every month! (The word \"month\" is even derived from \"Moon\" in English!) At some point, the Christians moved to a solar calendar, and they got rid of the lunar months. The thing we call a month now is kind of arbitrary. The fact is that there are a few days less than 12 turns of the Moon around the Earth in one turn of the Earth around the Sun, so they split the solar year into 12 non-lunar months like we have today, each one with 30 or 31 days (I don't know why they made February have fewer), and they no longer line up with the Moon. But the cultures that still use the lunar calendar have to work out ways to deal with the difference. The Muslims simply don't. Their year doesn't line up with the solar year at all and they're OK with that. The Jews, on the other hand, insert a leap *month* 7 years out of every 19, and there are a few other months that get an added day in some cases, mostly in order to make various holidays not fall on various days of the week (the 21st day of the 7th month, Hoshana Rabah, isn't allowed to fall on Saturday, for example). The main impetus here is to make sure that the 1st (Biblical) month is actually in the spring (note that long, long ago, Jews switched to a calendar that begins on the 7th month, which begins in the fall), so a month is added if the 12th month ends too early. In addition to this, I should mention that the division sexagesimal (meaning 60) division of minutes and seconds isn't *actually* from the Babylonians. Before decimals were invented by [John Napier]( URL_0 ) in the late 1500's/early 1600's, people actually measured everything in fractions of 60. This included degrees of a circle and parts of the hour. So a time might be 4 hours and a bit. How much was a bit? 26 60ths and a bit. The first 60th subdivision was tiny so it was called a minute subdivision, and the second subdivision was called... well, they ran out of fucks to give so it was just the second subdivision. So the time could be 4 hours, 26 minute subdivisions of an hour, and 5 second subdivisions of an hour. Of course, you could also have third subdivisions of things and fourth subdivisions and so on, but there wasn't much reason to use them once decimals caught on. On the other hand, hours kept their subdivisions because they were in common use by regular people, and degrees kept theirs because they were used in navigational star charts and such. The only number I haven't explained here is the 24 hours in a day, but I think other people already have so I'll leave it at that!",
"364/5 is defined by orbital mechanics. The rest is courtesy of the Sumerian-Babylonian astronomers and mathematicians. Their commoners had rituals centered around the 7-day week but at the same time the mathematicians used a base-twelve arithmetic, creating favour for 5*12=60 minutes per hour. Whereas the roots for \"decade\", \"century\" and \"millennium\" all come from Latin, and Romans used baseless mathematics but favoured multiples of ten. \"Century\" for them basically meant \"a hundred dudes\", such as a unit of hundred Legionnaires led by a Centurion.",
"Another fun, somewhat related fact for you. I was told that if you take a look at deck of cards, then that represents a year as well. 4 suites - 4 seasons 52 cards - 52 weeks.",
"24 and 60 are more easily divided into smaller amounts. With 10, you can divide by 5 and 2 but that's it. We don't count anything by 52. It's just approx. How many weeks are in a year.",
"Somewhat random comment: The calendar should be 13 months of 28 days each (364 days). Leap year should simply add a free day between December and January that isn't in a month. Just a free day for everyone. But no, 31, 28/9, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31 is way easier and much more logical.",
"A lot of people have great historical information, but are missing why some of these cultures used non-base 10 systems. \"They liked a different base\" is insufficient. 24 and 60 are both [highly composite numbers]( URL_0 ) which is a number that has more divisors than any other number smaller than it. 24, for example, has 8 divisors (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 24), more than any lower number, such as 20, which only has 6 divisors (1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 20). The advantage of HCM's is their usability is better for general use due to their divisibility. You can divide an hour in half, or quarters, or fifths... in fact, you can divide it into up equal parts 12 different ways (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60). The Imperial Number system also uses a large amount of HCM's. Using the Imperial System to build a shelf with equal sections is much easier than building a shelf in the metric system with equal sections. Some one once challenged me on this by trying to go to base 10 \"What if the shelf is 10 feet, that doesn't divide evenly into 3 parts!\"... it does, 120 inches is a HCM!",
"Solid top explanation. Sixty is divisible by 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30. You divide an hour into 60 smaller, more 'minute' equal time periods (minutes), and then do it a second time into 60 (seconds).",
"The Babylonians used a base 60 system, so to them that was a very natural number, like 10 to us. Once you define a week as having 7 days, which has been considered a special number for a very long time, 52 is just how many weeks are in a solar year, so that number isn't really an invention.",
"Days to years is pretty obvious. Days to weeks, and weeks to years makes sense because it's an easy to subdivide portions of the year so that they divide nicely with both the solar (year) and lunar (monthly) calendars. Seconds, minutes, and hours are all a function of Babylonian and Sumerian timekeepers, who liked base 12 and base 60 number systems. For whatever reason, we never really tried to move on from that until the French revolution, when Metrification started, and when they tried to include a concept of metric time. It failed miserably, although the rest of the unit system *did* end up working.",
"Technically, the Second isn't even based on astronomical observations and movements anymore. Officially, the SI second is now 9,192,631,770 transitions of a cesium atom, which pretty closely approximates 1/31.5M of the time between vernal points ^(known on Earth as the First Point of Aries.... which is actually in Pisces currently). Additionally, the current time of day (TAI) is measured by the number of those seconds or fractions thereof, averaged across ~400 atomic clocks, since some semi-arbitrary point in time that we call January 1st, 1977. We apply a number of leap seconds to that (currently 37) to get UTC time, then we can apply a time-zone correction, and that's how we know the time and date today, technically speaking. While seemingly pedantic, this method actually is critically important to a variety of things. For instance, computers and machinery use it to coordinate events and in some cases motion control across systems. In radio communications, it can be used to synchronize the transmissions of multiple transmitters to allow for proper operation (both cell phones and LMRs make use of this in some situations). Typically it's either determined through a GPS receiver, a local high precision clock, NTP, or PTP, or a combination of those."
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5miliq | How does RAM on computers work | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It likely uses the same 4GB over and over. The 'random' in its name means that it supports 'random access' as opposed to 'sequential access'. Random access really means something like 'arbitrary access': you can access individual bytes of RAM quickly even if they're stored far apart, as opposed to a spinning hard disk, which can read bytes stored together closely very fast, but takes a longer time to access a byte that's further a away. edit: A good analogy is kind of like having papers around on your desk as opposed to filed away in drawers. If you need something on your desk, you can kind of just go straight to it. But if it's filed away, you need to take out the file and go through it until you find the paper you were looking for.",
"RAM (random access memory) is so named because it is (nearly) just as fast to access one chip as another. As such, as far as I'm aware at least, no OS will prioritize any specific memory locations- an application asks for a block of memory, and the OS reserves whatever it stumbles across that is free first.",
"RAM stands for Random Access Memory, meaning that any individual chunk in memory could be accessed at any time. So that 4 GB could be located within those 16 GB, and it doesn't have to be in a continuous chunk. However, since RAM Chips are slower (but much much cheaper) then the memory caches and registers built directly into your CPU, larger continuous chunks of memory are copied into caches, then smaller chunks are copied into registers. After a certain amount of time, the modified chunks of data are copied back into the caches then back into RAM. This process is fairly slow, and if the computer needs to refer to a piece of data located outside the cache, it will have to copy all the data it has modified back to RAM, then reload the cache. Fast operating systems will do their best to make sure that data used by specific programs are generally located fairly close together, so that it will reduce the number of cache misses. So your RAM will generally be fairly spread out with fairly dense clusters of continuous memory being used by a single program."
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5mll09 | Why did Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to United States President Barack Obama for his \"extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples\". The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the award on October 9, 2009, citing Obama's promotion of nuclear nonproliferation and a \"new climate\" in international relations fostered by Obama, especially in reaching out to the Muslim world.",
"It's a complicated matter but Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 2009 because the committee said that him and his administration did a lot to reach out to the Muslim world and his work with nuclear nonproliferation (not producing as many nuclear weapons) Needless to say, this did have mixed reactions.",
"After the Bush administration, which pursued a very unilateral policy, it was thought that Obama's foreign policy would emphasize international cooperation and less militarism. It was awarded \"for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples\". The Nobel Institute recently admitted that the award didn't really have the effect they had hoped for.",
"Officially he won it for the reasons others have listed. Unofficially it was a FU to George W Bush. President Obama had only been sworn into office about a week before nominations were closed so he had no time to do anything to promote peace. Maybe it was a few weeks. I forget when the nominations were actually closed, but it was a relatively short time. If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency in 2008 they would have given it to her. The committee that awards the prize is appointed by the Norwegian government so there is naturally some political motivation involved."
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5mlxwk | When a piece of music is "remastered" what actually takes place? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"they take master stems of old songs and add post production effects and processing that is popular at the current time of remastering. listening to original black sabbath albums you can really hear how muddy everything sounds because they lacked proper equipment, time, and money to do things such as recording each individual instrument, vocal, drum head which is fairly common now. a lot of bands back then ONLY had a 4 track recorder and had to make that work in one way or another (look into how fucking arduous recording queens vocals were, seriously) this sound is IMO better than the remasters. the remasters sound very crisp, you get a lot of high end popping out in things such as cymbals and guitars tend to cut through a little bit more. low end on kick drums is usually emphasized as well since people today LOVE them some FUKIN HARD HITTIN KICKS. this is all done with modern eq's, compressors, and a whole variety of effects that weren't available back then. i even think theres a sample delay used on the harmonica for The Wizard because its very, very wide on the remasters. all of these things are neat and all but dont necessarily fit the image or tone of black sabbath i feel, since that muddiness kinda made that era of music what it was. those in charge of the remasters are still very talented though and i'd wager that a lot of people in charge of mastering are just given a check they cant refuse from some of the huge labels that own the rights to that music. hope this helps!",
"When music is recorded, it is normally recorded as multiple tracks. These tracks are then mixed down to the final recording you hear on the media you buy. 'Remastering' means that you take those master tracks and remix them to create a different final mix. In the modern day, remastering is also sometimes used to refer to taking source material and digitally re-processing the sound. For example, if you've got a recording from the 30s it's unlikely you'll have useable master tapes to reproduce the song as above. So instead you take what recordings you do have and send them through digital filters to remove artifacts and change the overall sound of the recording."
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5mnf5l | The basic relationship between Christianity and Judaism, and their respective holy books | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So around 3500 years ago, a tribe of people began to exist in the middle east, and they began to create a holy text. This text gradually became what is now called the Old Testament of The Bible. The oldest parts of the Bible date from that time, but new parts continued to be added. This people eventually came to be known as the Jews. Among the holy texts was the idea that one day, a special savior would come along--the anointed one, the messiah, the christ. Every once in awhile, some Jewish guy would claim to be that person. This particularly happened when the Jews were in a bad situation. About 2000 years ago, at the time that the Roman Empire conquered Jewish lands, it was an especially bad time, and there were multiple men who claimed to be the messiah. Jesus was one of them. Some Jews thought he was the messiah, most did not. Eventually, the group who thought he was the messiah broke off from Judaism and formed its own religion, Christianity. They used Jewish holy books, which they now called the Old Testament--texts pre-dating the arrival of the messiah. They also created new holy books, which they called the New Testament, which they see as superseding the Old Testament laws. The Jews continued along with their own religion and own texts. Jews don't believe in proselytizing, so Judaism stayed a small religion primarily composed of the descendants of Jews from generation to generation. Jews continue to believe that one day a messiah will come, but that belief is only a very minor part of what Judaism is, so it's not something most Jews talk about or spend many prayers on. Christianity believes in proselytizing, plus eventually gained the adherence of the leaders of the Roman Empire, resulting in Christianity growing tremendously. Jews continue to use the Old Testament as their holy books, but of course don't call it the Old Testament, because that's a Christian designation. Plus the Jewish Old Testament contains slightly different texts than the Christian Old Testament does. And different Christian denominations have selected somewhat different books for their Old Testament, anyway. Like, one book, the Book of Esther, is part of the Old Testament for some Christian denominations, and not others, for example. And for Jews, the most important of the holy books is the Torah--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Those are part of the Christian holy books, but not as centrally important as they are to Judaism.",
"Jesus was a Jew. The first half of the Christian Bible, the Old Testament, is pretty much the same as the Jewish ~~Torah~~ Tanakh.",
"Judaism predates Christianity by many years (thousands). Jesus was, in fact, Jewish. The Jewish holy book is referred to by Christians as the Old Testament. Christians believe the New Testament, which is basically the gospels of the life of Jesus, takes precedent over the Old Testament. Christians believe that Jesus was the long-promised Messiah. Jews believe he was just another false prophet."
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5morer | What happens when your foot "falls asleep" | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The simple version is a nerve was temporarily pinched, preventing full feeling from reaching the rest of the nervous system. The nerves that innervate your muscles are different than the nerves that innervate your skin which is why you can still move your foot, despite not having full feeling in the skin."
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5mpgo0 | what is it about eggs that make them so useful in baking? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They stick things together. Try making mince meat burger patties without them and they just fall apart. Also the whites are great for lightening mixtures; just beat them up until they're a light foam and fold the result into a cake mix to make more much more air inside the cake. The extreme is meringue which is essentially egg whites and dissolved sugar baked hard.",
"You know how when you crack an egg it's all gushy but when you cook it, it gets hard? Eggs work the same way in cakes, so when you mix them into batter & bake it, the eggs turn solid & give your cake structure. There's also fat in eggs, which adds flavor/richness the same way butter & cream do in food. Now I want cake.",
"Took culinary courses. Eggs can act as an emulsifier, to prevent seperation in certain dishes and desserts. It is also used to help provide support in pastries and desserts as well.",
"Apparently its the stickyness. It helps hold the pastries together and not fall apart. That's what I was told from a friend."
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5mqthp | How does youtubers gets money from videos they uploaded? Does it per view? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"On average YouTubers get paid $2-$3 per 1000 views. However, most YouTubers have other sources. The first one is sponsored mentions - a YouTuber will use a product from a certain company and the company will pay them for it. The second method is merchandise. This is when they have T-shirts, hoodies e.t.c. they'll sell and the money is split between the YouTuber and the website they are selling their items on. Finally, they have is affiliate links. This is where a company which sells items online will give the YouTuber a link for a product or possibly the site. Whenever something is bought using that link the YouTuber gets paid a certain amount."
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5mupr7 | Why are there no parachutes in planes as a security measure? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"because it's kind of hard to have 300 people that don't know jack about putting a parachute on try to do it with the plane falling out of the air. and it's pretty lethal to jump out of an airliner going 500mph, even if you're a professional skydiver. and if the pilot was in control enough to slow the plane down to under 100mph, when it's safe to jump out....he might as well just guide it in for a landing.",
"Because they'd be completely useless in any real emergency. The vast majority of accidents take place during takeoff and landing, at heights too low for parachutes to work (and happening too fast for anyone to even put on a parachute in the first place). For an accident at a higher altitude, parachutes will still be useless for anything catastrophic involving sudden cabin depressurization, because you'll pass out if you leave your seat (since you'll have to take off your oxygen mask). The only time a parachute might be useful is a situation where you have enough time to get everyone in the plane to put them on and exit the plane, and for a couple of hundred people (including children, infants, the elderly, and the infirm), none of whom have ever parachuted before, that's probably going to take a couple of hours, minimum. There's no situation I can think of that both takes a couple of hours, and is also safer to parachute out when you have no idea what you're doing with a parachute. Passengers are much safer staying in the plane as it attempts a controlled landing. And that's all ignoring the cost of carrying around all of that extra weight. Ticket prices would probably double, and almost no one would fly.",
"It would be heavy, meaning added fuel consumption/expense for every single flight. It would be expensive to implement and expensive/time consuming for maintenance. It would take up a lot of space on the airplane. Passengers are not trained in their use nor could reliably be trained for various emergency circumstances in a short period of time. Commercial airlines fly too fast and too high for practical use of parachutes. Most accidents happen during takeoff and landing, when parachutes are useless. **TL;DR:** Impractical and expensive. Very unlikely to make any difference.",
"This has been on TIL. Most accidents occur during takeoff and landing, where parachutes are useless.",
"Most accidents happen during take iff and landing. Neither of those scenarios allow enough time to use parachute properly."
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5mvmhy | Why is your body more sore two days after a workout instead of the day after? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"DOMS is delayed onset muscle soreness and goes back to our survival backgrounds when hunting would mean exerting our bodies for days at a time and so we wouldn't feel the muscle soreness until a while after so that we weren't likely to be in a dangerous situation."
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5mw5z1 | Why do giants in movies always seem to move so slowly compared to human sized characters? | You always seem to see characters under the shadow of a giants foot but they somehow slip away because the giants foot comes down so slowly. Surely they should be able to stomp down just as fast as us stomping on an ant? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"By the square-cube law the bigger an animal is the more it has to work to move. The amount of mass to move increases much faster than the number of available muscle fibers. Additionally, can you imagine what it would do if it could? If you've ever picked up a light object after lifting weights for a while you know how much harder you can swing things around when you're suddenly using more force than you normally would. A hundred foot tall giant putting his foot down as relatively hard as a human would be like dropping a bomb. The only thing I've seen take notice of that well is the old Prototype games, where your suddenly superpowered character cracks pavement when he runs."
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5mxdop | how can a single speaker diaphragm create an unlimited number of sounds/frequencies at the same time? | I understand how it can vibrate at a single frequency, but they produced 10's if not hundreds at once, voices, guitars, pianos, all in crystal clarity. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Look what happenes when you add multiple to another. The result is yet another wave. For many of the resulting waves the speaker can produce a wave that is close enough that we can't distinguish them easily. URL_0",
"Sound is all just waves, right? When waves interfere with one another, they combine to [an average]( URL_0 ). Each possible sound ever, can be expressed mathematically as the combination of its component sound waves. So, we give the speaker the ability to produce a range of waves, then tell it the mathematical function for the combination of the waves. It then produces the average wave for your listening pleasure."
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5myvxn | Why do Auctioneers speak the way they do? | I assume it's to give the buyers a sense of urgency, but are they even saying anything? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The heart of the auctioneer chant consists of two pieces of information. Piece of information #1: The current amount bid on the lot in question. Piece of information #2: The next highest bid increment. If you want the item, you have to offer that second number. When someone does, that becomes the new #1 piece of information, with the next increment being called. Styles vary from place to place, but the stereotype auction chant includes a lot of 'filler', which is really just there to make it feel like something is happening, when really the auctioneer is just trying to keep dead air from happening while waiting for someone to make up their mind and raise their card. Some try to make this filler more useful, like dropping information about the item, reminding people if remote bidders are still in or out, and things like that, but really it's just to keep awkward silences from forming.",
"I assume here that we're speaking of the [auction chant]( URL_0 ), yes? Individual auctioneers develop their own style and patter, but it's still immediately recognizable as auction chant. Yes, the reason they speak that way does have to do with \"urgency,\" but it's *not* just about artificially creating an atmosphere that the auctioneer hopes will encourage people to bid. There are far more practical things going on. The auction chant is all about delivering just two pieces of information, distinctly, as quickly as possible: the current bid, and the next bid. All the rest is basically filler. It's okay that it's almost impossible to understand the filler as long as the *numbers* are distinct. Why do things that way? Because it's the best way to move as many lots as possible, as quickly as possible. This is particularly important in commercial auctions (e.g., livestock, cars), where there is often a truly *staggering* amount of goods, both in volume and value. Also, in many cases, simply getting all of the buyers and sellers together in one place can be a real trick. For things like livestock and other commodities, simply getting everyone together in one time, at one place, so that transactions can be completed on the spot, is a *huge* logistical undertaking. Every day a buyer/seller spends at the auction is a day they're *not* spending on whatever business brought them there in the first place. If everybody can only afford to be in town for a day or two, the auctioneer had best be able to move *everybody's* inventory in that day or two. Further, the auction chant has kind of become a thing in its own right. It's how people *expect* auctions to be conducted, even if it's only a single-item, (e.g., public sale of a house with no contents, etc.). The people have come out to an auction, and darn it, they wanna hear the auctioneer do his thing. So tradition has a lot to do with it, particularly in smaller auctions. Of course, none of that applies to auctioneers at *very* high end houses like Cristie's, Sotheby's, etc. Those guys seem to make a point, as a matter of class/style/whatever, to hardly speak at all. As they don't really have to: there are only a few items up at any given time, and they're of sufficient cost and/or uniqueness that the items themselves generate all the interest/urgency needed. Also, that godawful, plebian yelling is just *so* unsophisticated. What is this, a fish market? /s",
"I worked as an auctioneer as well as went to auctioneer school. It is about creating excitement and in retail auction it can have a significant effect on how much you get for an item. As an example of showmanship making a difference, I have done auctions where you are required to sell everything from an estate (often times because there is in fighting between heirs). So nearing the end of the auction you have crap like a box of stuff that was under the kitchen sink. You can't get anyone to pay a dollar, keeping asking for it is going to kill the mood. You pair it with a few more boxes of crap and ask for a dollar. The crown is dead, you are loosing them. I take a dollar bill out of my pocket, throw it in the box and now you will get a chuckle and the very same pile of boxes will bring five bucks. More importantly you have won back the crowd. That is increases what you get on subsequent boxes.",
"It seems to be confined to certain types of auctions and places. Here in the UK, for example, you'll hear something akin to the sort of thing I assume you're talking about (continuous, near-incomprehensible gabbling) at, say, some cattle auctions - but go to the average general or fine arts auction, and you'll get something very different; much clearer, with the auctioneer often working the room with comments, observations and even jokes to get the best price (of which the auction house, naturally, takes its not-insignificant cut; good selling = more profit). I can see why you might want to keep talking without saying much when, basically, you're selling the same item over and over again (\"Oh look, it's another bullock!\"), and need to fill time; outside of that, though, personally, I can't help feeling that the US-style incomprehensible auction drawl is often basically a \"traditional\" affectation that serves little to no purpose _per se_.",
"I once saw an auctioneer who couldn't talk fast enough so after every increment he'd go grluuuuuuh (he'd roll his tongue on the 'l').",
"I'm guessing because an auction is a fairly fast-paced event so they need to be quick and not linger on bids for too long. And it keeps the excitement alive.",
"As many have said, it's about adding urgency, avoiding silences, and generally keeping people engaged and therefore more likely to bid. But the auctioneer-speak has also become somewhat of an art form in and of itself. My granddad used to run a dairy farm, but even after retiring he'd sometimes take me to bull auctions to watch the auctions and listen to the various auctioneers. A lot of people would go for the same reason; it was almost like going to an auctioneering competition as much as it was going to an auction. Also, it's so they can sound lit as fuck over a good beat: URL_0"
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5mz37c | How does salt melt snow and ice? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Think of water molecules as shoeboxes. When they're thrown around haphazardly, that's liquid water. When they're stacked together neatly, that's solid ice. The thing is, these shoeboxes are vibrating. The warmer the temperature, the stronger the vibration. If the temperature is too high, that nice orderly stack of shoeboxes gets shaken apart into a disordered pile - it melts into a liquid. Now mix in some salt - throw a bunch of golf balls into your pile of shoeboxes. Now when you try to stack them together, there are golf balls getting in the way and causing the boxes to slide around. It's much harder for them to stack up neatly, and even a tiny bit of vibration is enough to collapse the stack. In order words, mixing salt into the water makes it much harder for the water molecules to line up into solid form. It therefore lowers the melting point of the ice below 0 degrees Celsius, and the solid crystals of water collapse back into liquid form.",
"Salt is composed of NaCl. When NaCl meets with water, it forms a compound with a much lower freezing point that the freezing point of water. So, the new pseudo-ice compound melts."
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5n0mij | What language are computer programming languages written in? What was the first programming language written in? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Modern computer programs are written in a huge variety of languages depending on the purpose. Examples are Java, Python, C, C++ etc. All of these are essentially sets of instructions that tell more basic bits of software what to do. This cycles all the way back to \"machine code\". Machine code is literally the 1001 0101 binary that you've no doubt seen before. This essentially tells specific bits of the physical computer hardware whether to be on or off. This has certain outcomes such as sending a bit of information to your screen."
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5n2vwx | The controversy surrounding GMO's and why are they so stigmatized. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is no controversy around GM crops outside of anti-science and conspiracy theory nuts. The scientific consensus on GM crops is more solid than on climate change.",
"So far, no one has answered the question, so I'll try to play advocate for the anti-GMO people: - Being genetically modified, some people are afraid that consumption of GMO crops will have as yet unknown health impacts or cause allergic reactions. - Farms will be even more at the mercy of big corporations, if they are forced to buy seed with copyrighted DNA from Monsanto etc in order to stay competitive. - Reduction of diversity: There is a fear that crop diversity will be further reduced by the introduction of GMOs, opening up the risk of widespread crop failures if a new disease comes along. - \"Normal\" farms operating next to GMO farms might get sued for using copyrighted DNA because the GMO plants have spread to their farmland. - Making crops more resistant to pesticide/insecticide through genetic manipulation could lead to farmers spraying more of these poisons on the crop, which isn't all that great for consumers or the the ground water. So, these are the main arguments stated by the opponents. Did I miss any? I myself am not anti-GMO, but I felt this thread was a bit one-sided with everyone circle-jerking about how everyone with half a brain HAS to be pro-GMO",
"So, the short answer is that, from the perspective of the fearful, a GMO is a novel product and should be treated as such. With traditional foods, there's a long and extensive history where we've evaluated them for their nutritional benefits and costs, but with foods that are genetically engineered, there can be a large enough change between the base food and the GMO that we can't safely assume they have the same benefits and costs as their base organisms. But, quite frankly, those GMO foods are potentially dangerous enough that they triggered those reactions in some tremendously smart people well before the general populace was exposed to them. They have been more rigorously studied for short an long term side effects than any other foodstuffs available to our populations. To the best damned ability for us to figure it, the ones allowed for human consumption are completely safe. And, quite frankly, the anti-GMOers have a(n accidental) point. The foods we eat deserve a much more rigorous study than they've received. Without multi-generational double blind studies, there's no way to completely rule on how safe any given food is for humans. And those studies have never, and never can be, done.",
"Whether or not the GMO food itself is safe or not isn't really the issue for me. One of the biggest concerns I have is (let's take corn for example) that these crops have been engineered to withstand the haphazard application of more and more toxic pesticides. Also Bt corn which produces it's own toxins to kill certain insects. Problem is that we are seeing these insects developing resistance just a short time in and also having possible adverse effects on non-harmful insects. Bottom line, don't worry about whether or not the food itself is going to hurt you. Worry about the side effects from the development of these crops and monoculture in general. Sorry it's late, I'm tired and rushed through this.",
"Here is a short list of reasons why people are against GE crops, followed by an explanation of why they are not legitimate. All of them are “manufactured” – they are the end result of concerted efforts to discredit biotechnology. Organic farmers have a financial incentive to convince consumers that \"GMOs\" are bad. • Patents: Seeds have been patentable since the 1930s. Many non-GE crops are patented – odds are you have grown patented strains in your garden. • Monoculture: Most non-GE crops are grown in monoculture, because higher yield can be obtained. • Diversity: All seed developers cross GE traits into multiple strains of crops. GE crops have the same amount of diversity as their parent strains. • Corporatism: The seed market, by all accounts, is highly competitive overall. A few giants (DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta) have cornered the market on certain crops (corn, soy, cotton, sugarbeet, canola), but there are dozens upon dozens of seed companies operating in the US and Canada to choose from. Also, these companies all sell organic seeds as well – so labelling/banning GE crops doesn’t actually help anyone avoid products from big corporations. • Unnatural traits: Essentially every crop has been modified to the point where it is “unnatural” – food crops are further, genetically, from their pre-historic relatives than Shih Tzus are from coyotes. • Hurting small farms: The argument that genetic engineering hurts small farmers doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Farmers are not obliged to purchase GE crops. Small co-ops still dominate the North American market, and farmers in developing countries report great success with products such as Bt cotton."
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5n3o78 | How bad is global warming right now? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This question has been discussed in [this]( URL_0 ) thread recently. Going through those posts might answer your question.",
"It's mostly referred to as global climate change AFAIK. For good reason too. Just one instance of evidence would be climate and weather patterns becoming more 'extreme' worldwide, not necessarily temperatures rising universally. More frequent and more severe droughts, floods, forest fires, tornados happening where it never occurred before. It's pretty bad but probably manageable if world leaders cooperate."
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5n3y0t | Why are GMOs supposedly bad for you? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Seems most people here haven't really read your question. I'm pro-GMO, but these are some of the arguments I often encounter. 1) It's not natural. Basically,a general belief that humans shouldn't meddle with things that are part of nature, and that nature is simply better than anything we can accomplish. 2) It's new. Basically, the general belief that because it's relatively new, we can't have studies it's effects over many decades, because they didn't exist yet. 3) Association with the agro-industrial complex. Basically, GMO's are often part of the big agro industry, with pesticide use and heavy cultivation of fields. 4) Bad science. Though the scientific consensus in favor of GMO's is strong, there are contrary studies, of varying quality and thoroughness. Think the Seralini affair and all that.",
"Quite simply, they aren't, so the people *claiming* they're bad for you are either lying or misinformed and spreading misinformation and fear-mongering. Eating GMO foods does not cause ill effects. The food DNA doesn't recombine with your own any more than non-engineered food. In fact, GMO foods can often be *better* for you than non-GMO foods, such as the nutrition added to golden rice using genetic technology.",
"There is nothing fundamental to genetic modification that makes food dangerous. It's important to understand that humans have been genetically modifying plants and animals for thousands of years - practically all food that humans eat are genetically modified. The difference is that genetic modification used to be carried out through selective breeding (a slow and indirect process) whereas we can now carry out genetic modification that is faster and targeted by directly modifying the genetic information of plants (or animals). But the result is pretty much the same as the genetic modification that humans have been carrying out for thousands of years, it's just more powerful. That's not to say that there are absolutely no risks with GMO. It is of course completely possible to modify an organism to make it harmful, just as it is possible to modify an organism to make it beneficial. There are also some environmental and socio-economic concerns that some people have with GMO. But none of these problems are necessarily intrinsic to genetic modification."
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5n4crx | How do computers read binary if thats all their software consists of? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because computers aren't just software, it's hardware too. The CPU contains circuits that are hardwired to decode the software instructions and execute them. For example, lets look at the simple CPU instructions `ADD r1 r2` which means \"add the value stored inside register 2 into the value stored inside register 1\". This instruction has some binary representation. The CPU has a circuit that interprets this command as \"ADD\" according to that binary representation - it signals one circuit that it should take the values that are currently stored inside registers 1 and 2 and send them to the Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU). It signals the ALU that it should perform the addition function on its two inputs. Then it signals another circuit that it should take the output value from the ALU and store it back to register 1."
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5n5rlc | The difference between a psychopath and a sociopath | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sociopath and psychopath aren't official medical terms and so don't have a clear, explicit definition, or a direct mapping to a medical concept. The way they're used can vary depending on the person using them. Usually they'll either be used interchangeably, or 'psychopath' will be used to mean an especially severe or violent sociopath. There are *some* professionals who use them to mean different things; Robert Hare, a criminal psychology expert, uses 'sociopath' to refer to a condition you develop as a result of abuse, neglect, growing up in an extremely harsh and uncaring environment (eg being a child soldier or slave), and 'psychopath' to refer to a condition with similar symptoms that is more concrete and innate. But even he admits this is just a convenient way to talk about things in his writing on criminal psychology (where he's an expert) and not necessarily a hard neurological truth. The medical concept is called Antisocial Personality Disorder. Antisocial, note, does not mean introverted or shy or lonely, that's usually called being *a*social. Antisocial means more 'against society.' Antisocial Personality Disorder/'sociopathy' is defined by an inability to conceive of other people as actual people, extremely muted social emotion, exaggerated and uncontrolled nonsocial emotion (eg something that would make a normal person mildly irritated will make them seethe with rage), and usually attributes of narcissism (\"everything other people say and do is secretly about me, if anything bad happens to me it was other people being jealous and malicious because nothing is ever my fault\").",
"These are all great answers, but I would like to underscore the first point in the top comment: These are not official or clinical terms in the field of psychiatry. A person can't be \"diagnosed\" as a psychopath. Rather, these are social labels that people use to define abstract concepts of complex personalities. Naturally, that means that they overlap a lot. A lot of people have mentioned Antisocial Personality Disorder as mirroring cultural ideas of sociopathy, but I haven't seen anyone mention Conduct Disorder. CD is probably the closest clinical relative of psychopathy, like APD is to sociopathy. It's your basic toddlers-drowning-kittens type of thing, and only presents from a very young age. Like most personality disorders, this is also not something that can be easily handled by medication. I would *heavily* hesitate (Edit: flat out refuse) to relate general psychosis (ie. schizophrenia) to psychopathy, since the two definitions just don't overlap enough. Doing so only increases stigma on an already vulnerable group, who are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Just my input as someone who has worked with these populations.",
"My shrink told me the following once: A sociopath thinks what he's doing is right, even though it's considered generally wrong by society. A psychopath knows its wrong but doesn't care or doesn't think there really IS a right or wrong in the world. A psychopath thinks of people as furniture to be moved out of the way on any whim, which leaves them prone to climbing the corporate ladder, which is why so much of our commercial society is fucked up.",
"The distinctions between 'sociopathy' and 'psychopathy' has been widely debated in the field of Psychology due to the very issue surrounding whether 'sociopathy' is an officially diagnosable term. Psychopathy is firstly recognized as the neurological imbalance and lesions within the amygdala, the part of the brain that controls fear and judgment. With that in mind, those diagnosed with psychopathy primarily lack general empathetic abilities; the ability to understand and comprehend hurt, grief, love, and affection, as well as the desire to experience thrill-seeking emotions, often to 'compensate' for the lack of other 'basic' emotions that they lack. Psychopaths are often greatly misunderstood due to media accounts of serial killers, manipulators, liars. Whilst they most certainly have the ability to deceive and manipulate, only a very small fraction of diagnosed psychopaths are dangerous. Generally speaking, psychopaths may live their lives without causing pain or harm to others, although can be masters of manipulation due to their lack of empathy, guilt, or fear. Bankers are currently statistically rated to have the most psychopaths in its profession; as well as thrill-seeking tendencies, money, achievements, status, ego, and power are often viewed as a desire for those with such traits. They are able to reach goals through the lack of hesitation and perceived fear. Now, onto Sociopathy. Again, is it an officially diagnosed term? Or is it a pseudo-scientific, watered-down variation of the term, 'psychopathy'? The current DSM categorizes psychopathy as a variation of an antisocial personality disorder prevalent to biological factors. 'Sociopaths' are often vaguely described as similar in traits, although its root causes are based on environmental factors (such as levels of childhood trauma/abuse/grief, etc) in which cause, could also then be contributed to such disorders as 'post traumatic stress disorder', which also causes the same perceived traits as 'sociopaths'. In which case, psychopathy is more clearly definable in terms of the DSM, as a form of an antisocial personality disorder, whereas Sociopathy is often confused with a byproduct of past environmental trauma. Whilst there is a rather clear difference between the both disorders, with a rather similar outcome, I believe there needs to be more extensive theorized studies in order to strengthen the legitimacy of the term, 'sociopath'. Hope this helps.",
"Although Psychopathy and Sociopathy are often used interchangeably Psychopathy is not regarded as the same as anti social personality disorder in psychpathological/forensic/psych literature. ASPD shows a pretty common pathway from ADHD to Conduct Disorder to Substance Abuse to ASPD. It also seems to have a much bigger nurture component than Psychopathy. Take a super impulsive, poorly self regulating kid put him in a terrible home life and your likely to get ASDP in the adult. Psychopathy on the other hand seems less determind by nurture. Psychopath born in a bad environment = jail, Psychopath born in a nurturing environment =CEO. The main difference between the two are what's known as low prosocial traits: callousness, lacking empathy (although not the theory of mind kind which can be impaired in autism), lacking remorse. ASPD folk can often report feelings of guilt or shame. Interestingly although the DSM doesn't recognise Psychopathy in adults as seperate from ASPD the most recent edition DSMV does aknowledge a subtype of conduct disorder in teens (the usual precursor to an adult ASPD diagnosis) which is characterised by low prosocial traits. So they're kind of aknowledging the difference.",
"The short version from my psych professor years ago: A psychopath doesn't know right from wrong. A sociopath knows, but doesn't care.",
"While not medical terms, psychopath and sociopath are used differently: Sociopath is generally someone who is particularly uncaring toward others. Often a master manipulator who only views other people as tools to get what they want. Experiences extreme feelings and emotions, but acts on them in antisocial ways, often violently. Psychopaths are people who genuinely are incapable or have extreme difficulty feeling. Like a sociopath, they have no problem using other people to get what they want, but unlike a sociopath, they have only a cerebral understanding of human emotions, and do not actually feel them. A perfect example of the contrast is Tony Soprano (sociopath played by the late and great James Gandolfini) vs Valerie (psychopath played by Beau Garrett) from Season 6 Episode 12 of \"House\". Edit: more clarity on my examples. Also, Dexter (psychopath played by Michael C Hall) would be another and slightly less obscure example.",
"A sociopath is somebody with anti-social personality disorder. This personality disorder involves a complete lack of empathy - the ability to understand other people's feelings. Sometimes murderers are sociopaths, but definitely not all murderers, and not all sociopaths are murderers. Psychopathy is less clearly diagnostically defined, but generally it means someone who is not in touch with reality. A psychotic break is an event where a person does not understand the reality around them, this might include delusions or hallucinations. Someone who is psychotic might sometimes understand reality and sometimes not. Edit: since people are whining, yes, I am aware I defined psychotic not psychopath because *there is no clinical definition of psychopath*. You can't be diagnosed as a psychopath. I alluded to this in the first sentence of my second paragraph. Source: psychology post-grad student",
"I have been waiting for this forever! I've studied this inside and out for about a year. They both are covered under a diagnosis of AntiSocial Personality Disorder, but they definitely have some differences (although, like other users have noted, people sometimes use them interchangably, which is not correct). Criteria for an ASPD diagnosis can be found [here]( URL_0 ). A note: regarding the nature versus nurture debate, psychopaths are generally considered to be formed by 'nature' and sociopaths are considered to be formed by 'nurture'. Psychopaths. I've met one, been abused by her, and escaped. Not fun. Psychopaths are completely remorseless. They view other people as rungs on a ladder to climb in order to gain whatever they want- money, power, etc. They will pretend to be affectionate with you while you are useful and discard you when you become a liability. They don't give a shit how they hurt you- and if they hurt you, they are aware of it. They are the ice to the sociopath's fire. They can mimic emotions and love with extreme accuracy, making them nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. They don't feel nervousness or anxiety- they are unflappable. Due to their lack of conscience and their view of other people as tools, they are extremely manipulative. Speaking from personal experience, they can make you believe that left is right. They tend to have an extreme sense of self- preservation (some will say otherwise, but the psychopath will not risk their neck). In terms of serial killers, psychopaths tend to be the organized killers. Sociopaths, on the other hand, *tend* to be made through circumstances that cause them to become this way. They're very reckless, and tend to be adrenaline junkies. They're the type of person that other people view as unhinged. Their negative emotions tend to be cranked up to ten, so pissing a sociopath off is an extremely dumb thing to do. Unlike psychopaths, they have the capability of having a conscience, but it's a pretty small one. Correct me please if I got anything wrong!",
"A great book I read called the \"Sociopath Next Door\" details stories of some sociopaths. One that stood out to me is the sociopath driving to an important work meeting then realizes he forgot to feed his dog and his dog will likely die. The pure calculations the sociopath creates to justify his actions of not stopping this meeting or even contacting a friend (Sociopaths dont have true friends) to help sent chills down my spine. My friend was married to a sociopath. She found his Chrome history of gay hookup sites and confronted him with it. His response? I only got married and had kids to put a picture on my desk at work. All successful people have families.",
"By no way do I work in this field of psychology or anything. I always thought a sociopath was a individual who did violent things from years of abuse neglect Things of a physical nature from society groom that person into violent. A psychopath was a individual who would do violent and obscene things that are rooted from not being able to grasp \"normal\" concepts of things like moral, love, (emotional response) because their perception is on a completely different means of compression.",
"Lotta smart folks on this thread. I have a question: is it possible to simply grow out of a severe personality disorder? I was an abused child, over the top discipline from an angry Father, years of beatings, and I became detached from reality by the time I was 14. I knew something was wrong. Anyway, 18, can't take care of myself, failed relationships, ostracized, jailed, homeless for 6 years, thief, liar, con artist, drunk, lost, hopeless, trapped all the way to the age of 29/30 and then....and then clarity, somewhat, a light at the end of the tunnel to walk towards, no psychological help, one foot in front of the other, quit drinking (cold turkey, solo), been with the same wonderful woman for 24 years, honorable, stable, generous, empathetic, sane (though I hear a screw rattle at times). How did I go being public enemy # 1 to being HOA president?"
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5n75zd | Why school buses don't have seat belts. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"School buses are already remarkably safe due to their height and weight and kids are unlikely to use seat belts correctly on them anyway. Instead, school buses rely on putting seats close together and covering them in foam so if the bus does get in a wreck, the kids will hit the foam in front of them. Adding seat belts would cost money and require more room, which means fewer kids per bus. Misuse could also result in more injuries than injury prevention. Even if we did want to put seat belts in, who would get ticketed for kids not buckling up? In a family car, the parent can usually exercise some authority over their own children and make them buckle up, but that's unreasonable to expect from a bus driver who has to drive dozens of kids around.",
"The school buses I was on as a kid always had them. The kids however never actually wore them.",
"In Texas there is [no money]( URL_0 ) for seat belts. $500,000/$10,000,000 actually spent on lap belts from the lap belt budget. Edit: an excerpt... \"Parents and others fighting to protect children on school buses celebrated in 2009, when Texas lawmakers earmarked $10 million to equip the vehicles with seat belts. Yet six years later, the money is gone - with less than half a million dollars ever awarded to school districts for the devices.\"",
"School buses are already much safer than regular cars. Seat belt laws vary by state. In NY, they are required to be present, but not be used."
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5n94gh | What changed in technology to allow for ubiquitous quadcopter drones? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a few things. Batteries are one of the big ones. Cell phones have really pushed the development of high capacity, long life, lightweight batteries. They've also pushed the development of low power CPUs, which are essential to keeping a drone flying. Thirdly, thanks to things like the Nintendo Wii controller, tiny gyroscopes & accelerometers are also widely & cheaply available."
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5nano2 | why is the QWERTY keyboard configured the way that it is? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mechanical typewriters have a bunch of arms that stamp the paper when you push a button. If arms too close together are pressed in rapid succession they'll collide and jam up the typewriter. The QWERTY layout avoided this by putting commonly placed together letters on opposite hands and ensuring you hit adjacent buttons as rarely as possible.",
"Layout is based on old typewriter (Sholes and Glidden) and became popular due Remington N.2 because it included upper and lower key letters. After this it became industry standard. It was created in 1870s and was trying created by trial and error trying to mimic most used letter pairs far away from each other when typing in English. There is even field of study that is focus on bigram (letter-pair) frequency that may have influenced the development of QUERTY keyboard."
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5ngzhf | Where does "lost" weight go? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Fat is basically made of carbon and hydrogen. It gets combined with oxygen to make carbon dioxide and water, which you mostly exhale. This process also produces energy, which is used to power your muscles, brain, etc. Ordinarily, your body runs on glycogen, which is a starch-like compound that stores energy and is kept in your muscles and liver. Your body makes it when you consume sugar (or things that can be broken down into sugar, like carbs and fats and proteins to an extent). It gets broken back down into sugar and \"burned\" (combined with oxygen to release energy) in your cells all over your body. When you run out of stored glycogen - because you are burning more energy than you have consumed recently - your body will start to break down fats in a similar way."
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5nls51 | Why when we see a video of a computer monitor, usually you see white lines moving across the monitor? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most likely you are [referring to moire]( URL_0 ). Your camera uses pixels, your display uses pixels, if you use the former to record the latter, the pixels won't match up perfectly, and if your camera is close enough to see the pixels, then you will get that effect. Also, if you try to display a picture of another display on your computer, you will also get this effect; also, if you use your phone display to view your recording of the computer display, you can also get this. If you are not referring to this, then you are referring to the fps of your camera not capturing your entire display's frames at once. Also, most consumer cameras are CMOS, meaning they don't record a frame all at once, they record from top down, this can cause the top of the frame to capture a different computer frame than the one at the bottom. Also, a complete mismatch of fps to Hz also will cause imperfect recordings."
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5nm9hb | why can't anyone/ thing go faster than the speed of light? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Technically, there's nothing that prevents anything from going *faster* than the speed of light, you're just not able to go *exactly* the speed of light, unless you have no mass. (There are hypothesized particles, called *tachyons*, that travel faster than light. They've never been observed and may not/probably don't exist, but they're not against the rules, as far as we can tell.) The reason why you can't go *exactly* the sped of light is all due to relativity. We know that light has a constant speed in a vacuum (called *c*). We know that because we've observed it, it's just a built-in fact of the Universe. So, think about how speed works in classical Newtonian mechanics: If I'm traveling at 50 MPH toward you and you're traveling at 50 MPH toward me, we each see the other going 100 MPH. But what if, while I'm traveling toward you at 50 MPH and I shine a light at you? Do you see the light I shine at (speed of light)+50 MPH? Nope, you still see it at *c*. This has been shown in countless experiments throughout history, and in fact things that we use every day like GPS depend on this property. For the speed of light to be constant for all observers even when they're moving relative to each other, means that things have to \"squish\" along their axis of movement (called \"length contraction\"). This is separate from the feeling you get of being pushed backwards when you accelerate. This contraction means that, in your moving inertial frame, an inch on a ruler would still be an inch to anyone else in your reference frame, but might be longer or shorter to someone else moving differently from you - and the difference would be exactly enough that if you measured the speed of light (as distance/time) using that ruler, you'd get the same results. The other person's ruler would likewise look longer or shorter to you. What's really fun is that it's not just rulers, it's clocks too. If you measured a second, it would still be a second to you, but to someone moving differently it would be longer or shorter (and vice-versa), again just enough that all measurements of the speed of light would be identical for both of you. (This leads to a bizarre feature of the Universe, the relativity of simultaneity: two different observers can disagree as to the order of two events happening, one would see event A happen before event B, while the other would see the opposite...*and they'd both be right*.) So now you know that rulers shrink when you travel. Now, to simplify things further, go back to normal driving. Say you're driving to work. If you double your speed, you get there in half the time. If you quadruple your speed, you get there in a quarter of the time. If you went the speed of light, you'd get there at the same time you left, because your ruler would be shrunk to the \"unit\" length. (And if you went faster than the speed of light, you'd get there before you left, because your ruler would go \"negative\", which has plenty of its own problems.) Remember that mass and energy are the same thing. The faster I'm going (relative to you) when I hit you, the more energy is conveyed: I hit you harder going 20 MPH than I do going 10 MPH. As force is equal to mass * energy, we can view this as me getting more massive the faster I go relative to you. The amount of mass I gain relative to you grows and shrinks in the same way as the clock and the ruler, such that people traveling the same speed and direction as me see me have the same amount of mass I always have, while you (because I'm hurtling toward you) see me having more. Additionally, since mass takes energy to accelerate, as I gain mass, I need more energy to accelerate, and then I gain more mass, so I need more energy to keep accelerating... Because the speed of light is constant in all reference frames, the mass thing also varies like the rulers and clocks do, such that if I were traveling the speed of light, I'd have infinite mass (because I would appear to be traveling in at the speed of light in all reference frames). So it turns out that if I'm going the speed of light, I have infinite mass. Moving an infinite amount of mass takes, you guessed it, an infinite amount of energy. So you can't go the speed of light unless you get an infinite amount of energy (impossible) or have no mass (i.e. you are a light particle). This is grossly simplified, and is also drawing on decades-old memories of school, and I'm most certainly not an expert, but I think I'm vaguely right in the generalities."
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5nmdws | Why is the speed of light the fastest speed anything could ever reach? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not like the laws of the Universe say \"Ok, Light's pretty fast, let's make that the harsh speed limit\". It's the max speed because photons have no mass, once you have any mass, you would need infinite energy, which isn't possible. Anything with photos move at light speed, such as radio waves. The starting velocity of the light source doesn't matter, as photos are always travellijg at that speed, they aren't accelerating to it, under normal circumstanses. Also, we right now are moving over 2,000,000 mph, take that in. Also, due to reletivity, time dilation, etc., the light from relative to P is the same as a light coming from P, so that doesn't matter."
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5nmret | Why is is easier to sneeze when looking into a bright light? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccp690"
],
"text": [
"If this happens to you, you probably possess the [Photic Sneeze Reflex]( URL_0 ) also known as (ugh) ACHOO. It's similar to an allergic reaction to bright light."
],
"score": [
3
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"text_urls": [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex"
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|
5nnfjf | Why does e^pi*i + 1 = 0? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccv499",
"dccv6p6"
],
"text": [
"Probably can't explain at an ELI5 level, but here's the gist of it: e^angle*i is a rotation of a point in the complex plane (just pretend it's typical \"x is horizontal y is vertal\" for the moment) angle=0 degrees means the point (1,0). angle =90 degrees means the point (0,1) angle=180 degrees means the point (-1,0). *Pay attention to this one* angle=270 degrees means (0,-1) angle=360 degrees means (1,0). You're back where you started. Here's the deal. In the complex plane, x means \"real numbers\", y means \"imaginary numbers\". so for example (2,7) would mean 2+7i. So (1,0) means 1+0i (or just 1)....(0,-1) means 0+-i (or just -i) and so on. What is 180 degrees in terms of radians? Well, it's just pi. So e^ pi * i = e^ 180 x i = (-1,0) = -1+0i (or just -1). So now you have e ^ pi * i =-1. Add 1 to both sides of the equation, I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.",
"[this]( URL_0 ) is a great video that assumes you only know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and actually ELI5's it (with pictures) the best I have ever seen, for this question. Mathematically: the function f(x) = e^(ix), when x is a real number, maps you onto the unit circle (the circle of radius 1 centered at 0+0i) on the complex plane. When x=0, e^(0) = 1, as usual. Travel π around the unit circle from there, and you get to -1. Hence e^(iπ) = -1."
],
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[],
[
"https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-dhHrg-KbJ0"
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|
5nno9t | How was the speed of light measured? I know it had to do with light and mirrors and mountains but after that I'm completely lost. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd5rlc",
"dcd1jvd"
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"text": [
"Leon Foucault (of \"Foucault's pendulum\" fame) measured the speed of light to a very high precision in the 1860s, using a variation on this experimental setup: He used a lantern instead of a laser, obviously, but the principle is the same. URL_0 Take a mirror that's rotating at a known set rate, and shine a pulse of light at it. The light bounces off the rotating mirror, out to a stationary mirror a long way away, and back to the rotating mirror. In the time it took the light to bounce out to the stationary mirror and back, the rotating mirror rotated a little bit, so the pulse doesn't end up bouncing back to the original laser/lantern. Instead it bounces a little bit off to the side. The distance between the laser/lantern and the final reflected beam can be used to calculate the time it took the light to bounce between the mirrors, and thus the speed of light.",
"The idea that light had speed (rather than being something \"instantaneous\") gained momentum with observations of Jupiter. The orbits of Jupiter's moons were established for quite a while, and some astronomers started writing out tables forecasting the time each [Galilean Moons]( URL_0 ) in the same way we forecast Moon/Sun rise and set times. Once the tables were established, an odd discrepancy was noticed. The tables were off, but were off in a very distinct pattern. The times would range from being spot-on, to being late (or early) by up to (about) a quarter-hour. By some clever geometry, it was eventually worked out that this was due to changes in the distance between Earth and Jupiter as the distance between them changes due to the planets' movement in their orbits. Newton made a good estimate of 7-8 light minutes between the Earth and the Sun, for example. It was not until later that we worked out the size of the various orbits and could measure the true speed (and not just relative transit time), but that was the beginning. The experiment you are thinking of used a wheel with a series of little windows. The idea was that a lantern was set so that the light could shine through the gap each time the wheel spun and the gap was in front of the lantern. A second wheel ten miles away could be set up in a similar fashion, blocking a mirror. Noting the RPMs of the wheels each time the \"signal\" (light) remains steady (rather than flickering) against the mirror allowed the scientists to work out possible speeds of light--that is, the speed or speeds that would be necessary in order for the \"signal\" to behave as it did (blocked or unblocked). Eventually competing teams were able to come to within about 1000 miles per hour of the correct speed, this is no small feat considering their only tools were lanterns, spinning wheels, and land-survey equipment (to measure the distance between the wheels). If memory serves, one team used two wheels, the other used a wheel and a spinning mirror, but my memory may be off in that regard."
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"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Speed_of_light_%28foucault%29.PNG"
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[
"http://lasp.colorado.edu/education/outerplanets/moons_galilean.php"
]
]
} | [
"url"
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|
5no9ff | What is a computer server? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd1j8g"
],
"text": [
"A computer. It's a computer that has a whole lot of storage space and a really sturdy processor. It also runs specific software for specific tasks. An office's file server, for example, would be a totally normal computer except it would have, say, four terabytes of storage. That computer goes on the local network and is made accessible to, and from, any computers on that same network. The employees then use said server to exchange files. They will also use Windows Server (or the equivalent) rather than Windows 7/10 due to software features."
],
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|
5np58o | Why exactly does our perception of time change as we get older? (Years and days seeming shorter, life going by faster) | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd98uj"
],
"text": [
"When you're 5, a year is 20% of your life. When you're 10, a year is 10% of your life. When you're 20, a year is 5% of your life. When you're 40, a year is 2.5% of your life. And so it goes on."
],
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3
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"text_urls": [
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|
5nu3ot | Why are drones widely available and popular now? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcebtft"
],
"text": [
"Battery technology improvements allows for longer flight time. Also 3d printing technology along with better plastic materials makes it easy to create very efficient and durable propellers not to mention can be made cheaply. That's pretty much it."
],
"score": [
3
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"text_urls": [
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|
5nuu8z | Why are the planets so bright? | I understand they reflect light, because, well, they are matter, but why do they seem so much brighter than the stars? The light from the stars are farther away, of course, but once they get here, they're here? Is it merely an illusion due to the distance difference? Is it possible some of the "stars" I see are actually super-huge planets? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcehvf8",
"dcejcv5"
],
"text": [
"No the star you see are not super-huge planets. But you might have mistaken on of the our 5 planets that we can see with nake eyes for a star. It's really only the difference in distance. Take venus for exemple. At it's closest to earth it's only at 38 million km. The closest star is at 4.24 light years away. That's 10.5 millions times farther aways.",
"So as you know, light radiates out in all directions from a star. This means that the energy a star puts out is spread out across a sphere with a radius equal to the distance from the observer to the center of that star. For the Sun, even with the added distance of traveling to a planet and then traveling back, is much, much, much, **much** less than the distance even to the closest star. Since the entirety of the energy spreads out over this entire sphere surface, the amount of light intensity that reaches us from other stars is much less than what reaches us reflected from planets."
],
"score": [
9,
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"url"
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5nvaxa | Why is cold drinking water more refreshing than warmer water? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcen76t"
],
"text": [
"While learning to sail our crew would always have lots of water, everyday we would offer our instructor a nice cold bottle of water from our cool box and everyday he would accept but then leave the bottle on the side till it got to room temperature, after a few days I asked him why and he explained that when you drink cold water your body has to heat it up which takes time and energy, and when you drink hot water your body has to cool it down which again takes time and energy, he explained that the best way to hydrate yourself is to drink room temperature water. Although it doesn't answer the question I wouldn't be surprised if this was in some way connected to it."
],
"score": [
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|
5nwdx6 | Why can some computers run videos of a game when they cannot run the actual game itself? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcesyx5"
],
"text": [
"To run a video of a game, which is the same as a PewDiePie episode or a SpongeBob episode.. all your computer has to do is play back the video using whatever player and codec. To actually play the game you have to render a scene, calculate lighting and graphical effects, calculate AI and what not and read player input. Most of these 60 or 30 times a second. Simply put, it's like buying a shoe compared with making a shoe?"
],
"score": [
11
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|
5nxvvm | Why do you have to 'safely remove hardware' before removing a USB flash drive. What exactly is happening and why is this step necessary? | I've always followed this procedure but I never really understood the actual pros/cons of completing this process or not. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcf2icc",
"dcfamde"
],
"text": [
"Writes can be cached to memory to speed things up. This step is making sure the write cache is flushed. There's a slight risk of losing or corrupting data if you don't follow that step.",
"The file index structure must be updated, not just the file itself, that is added, changed or erased. Interrupting this corrupts the file system so it's read-only next time or maybe even unreadable. Then you need to use a program to repair the file system."
],
"score": [
5,
5
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5nybbe | Why do black lines appear over screens when you try to record them/take a picture of them? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcf6fxx",
"dcf7j7e"
],
"text": [
"It has to do with frame rate and rolling shutters. Your camera records one line at a time - *really damn fast* but only one line at a time. Your screen also has a refresh rate, and the light behind the pixels also has a cycle rate. Normally this is far too fast for your brain to perceive. If your screen refresh rate is different than your camera's frame rate, there will be moments when the screen is in the middle of refreshing and the pixels will be black, and the camera will record black pixels. Since your camera is going one line at a time, it creates a weird rolling lines across the screen. [Relevant Standupmaths]( URL_0 ), and [relevant Tom Scott]( URL_1 ).",
"This was usually a problem with CRTs. Modern digital flats have higher refresh rates making the black lines effect more difficult to capture with a consumer-grade camera. Some flats may also apply GIF-like technology, changing only what needs to change, which can remove the black lines effect entirely."
],
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"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GJUM6pCpew",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzP8FFKpwQ0"
],
[]
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} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
5nyyid | If waters boiling point is 100 degrees celsius, why does it still evaporate at room temperature? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcfb6cw"
],
"text": [
"Rate of evaporation is depends on temperature. At 100 C, evaporation is very fast. At Room temperature, evaporation is slow. At freezing temperature, evaporation is extremely slow. Tl;DR: Water evaporates at all temperature."
],
"score": [
7
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"text_urls": [
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} | [
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|
5o0akc | Why does TV almost never "lag", and why can't internet to not lag the same way? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcfmdor",
"dcflqa6"
],
"text": [
"Replace film with text. Internet works by writing it on separate pieces of paper, then taking a piece to each of your neighbors one by one. TV works by writing one large poster and hanging it out of your window for everyone to see. TV is faster (especially if you walk very slowly and have a lot of neighbors), but on the internet you can send different messages to different people (on TV we all get the same thing).",
"When you use the Internet, sometimes it lags because of shared bandwidth. You and your neighbors share a connection that has a finite speed; and then the customers of you ISP in your town will share one or more outbound connections, also with finite speed. As a result, the amount of bandwidth actually available to you at any given time varies. With broadcast television signal, it doesn't have to share bandwidth. It operates on what's called \"licensed spectrum\" meaning only that television station has the right to broadcast on that frequency in your area. As a result, the TV station has a very predictable amount of bandwidth to work with. Think of it like driving home on a highway, then to your house where you have a long driveway. You can't ever be 100% sure how long it takes you to get home because traffic might be heavy or light. But you always know exactly how long it takes to get up your driveway because there's *never* any other traffic on it."
],
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"text_urls": [
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|
5o5v97 | How do candles work? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcgt4ai"
],
"text": [
"A candle consists of wax that is used as the fuel, and a wick that is used to transport the wax to the flame. The wick starts infused with wax. When you light the candle, the wax in the wick melts, and then turns to a gas, and then the gas burns by combining with oxygen in the atmosphere. That produces heat, which melts the wax near the wick. The melted wax is then pulled up into the wick via capillary action, vaporized by the flame from the wax that is already burning, and then burns itself, continuing the cycle. And since a standalone candlestick has no sides to hold in the wax, some of it will flow down the sides of the candle rather than into the wick, and be wasted rather than burned. Candles in jars don't have this problem."
],
"score": [
3
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"text_urls": [
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} | [
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|
5o5xxa | How did accents become a thing? | I'm very curious on how accents became a thing(i.e. British to American, and a southern to northern). Curious on all accents from the world also. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcgtltw",
"dch0394"
],
"text": [
"Language is always changing, and language in distinct, rarely-interacting groups of speakers changes in different ways. Normally they're distinct because of geography, but there are also \"sociolects\", differences in how different social classes speak. When the differences between two groups are small enough we say they're speaking dialects of the same language - when you need serious translation effort for one to speak to the other we say the dialects have diverged into separate languages. You can imagine it like [a tree, growing new branches indefinitely]( URL_0 ).",
"From another thread of the same question [–]DiogenesKuon 6 points 3 years ago Languages tend to change slowly over time. People in the same area will tend to pick up these changes together, but those in a different area will be changing in a different way (as long as their isn't heavy spoken interaction between the two groups). Over time these collection of changes start to be noticeable, and it gets called an accent. Wait a bit longer and the changes start to be large enough that it might start to be difficult for other people to fully understand the accent, and then it becomes a dialect. Wait further still and the speech becomes mostly unrecognizable, and we start to consider it it's own language. [–]the-uncle 2 points 3 years ago I would add to that the argument by Robin Dunbar he makes in his book: accents help to quickly recognize if someone else is part of your in-group (family, community, region, etc.). As such, accents are deemed to be a mean to establish trust between people on a certain level. [–]DiogenesKuon 2 points 3 years ago By the same token, accents also have a long tradition of being used to ferret out spies or enemy soldiers, by forcing them to pronounce words that are pronounced differently locally. [–]RikoThePanda 0 points 3 years ago Why do they develop the way that they do though? [–]DiogenesKuon 3 points 3 years ago It's mostly just small random changes that often start out as a mistake. Someone moves which syllable gets accented for a word. The word is still understandable, so it's not like it's something that must be corrected, so the error continues. More people hear that alternate and copy it (either consciously because they are unfamiliar with the \"correct\" pronunciation, or subconsciously). A large number of these build up in a geographic area, and now you have an accent."
],
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"http://www.sssscomic.com/comicpages/196.jpg"
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5o7oar | How were languages first translated? | I mean in terms of more modern times, so -for example, German to English. Not how did cavemen understand each other. How did they decide which words meant what? -if that makes sense... | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dch8yhx",
"dchmigz"
],
"text": [
"Imagine teaching a child how to speak. You point at a chair and say \"chair.\" Then you point at a dog and say \"dog.\" Same thing with simple verbs, you could walk or run and say the word for what you're doing at the same time. Since you'd be doing this with an adult, they'd learn a lot easier than a child, and once you've gotten a bunch of words across, they can ask you things and you can start explaining how to express higher concepts. Of course, they'd be teaching you if you wanted, and the more you each learn the faster you can explain things to each other.",
"Language is something that has developed in all civilizations independently. When cultures came together physically making translation necessary, both cultures already had their own words for things. For example, water is the same thing everywhere but has different names like agua in Spanish, wasser in German, etc. it was just a matter of learning what other cultures called the same things. Some things may not exist in both places, for example, kindergarten is a German word that means garden for children and was imported by the US as a model for early childhood education. The word was adopted along with the philosophy. Sometimes, such as in the case of Algonquin, one of the primary languages spoken by people indigenous to North America, the \"winner\" in translation is about cultural dominance, in that the white settlers set up schools to re-educate Indian youth away from native languages to assimilate them. Many Algonquin words were lost in this forced translation. Sub-cultures and oppressed groups can also use language to rebel against mainstream cultures by re-labeling and/or reclaiming language used to dominate them such as queer, bitch, or fat and attaching an empowered translation of these terms."
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