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675pn5 | How do we build a tolerance for spicy foods as we eat more of it? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As we expose ourselves to more capsaicin, the chemical responsible for the \"burning\" sensation in chili peppers, the taste buds lose sensitivity to it. It's kind of like exposing your hands to gradually hotter temperatures. Your hands will become less sensitive to heat, but there's a limit."
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675zkd | When a person is diagnosed with a terminal illness how does a doctor figure out how much time the patient has left? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Hospice RN here. We get asked this all the time. Doctors and other medical personnel can prognosticate (make an educated guess) about how long a patient has left, but it is not an exact science. We don't usually given a exact answer; we would tend to say \"several months\" or \"several weeks\" or \"days to weeks\" or \"a few days\" or the absolute worst \"minutes to hours.\" Here are a few things that affect that educated guess: 1. How advanced the disease is. Cancer only in the lungs isn't as bad as as cancer in the lungs, bones, brain, and liver. Other diseases like COPD and heart failure are evaluated on how bad the symptoms are and how frequently they happen. When the symptoms happen all the time at rest (no physical exertion.) 2. The overall health of the person. If someone was a healthy marathon runner in their 50's diagnosed with the same terminal cancer as someone in their 80's with uncontrolled diabetes, high blood pressure, and general advanced age, guess who would live longer? The marathon runner is likely to live much longer. 3. Loss of functional status. How quickly is the patient physically declining? If someone was able to fully take care of themselves (eat, bathe, drive, pay bills) three months ago and now is bed bound and cannot perform any self care and is mentally out of it, they likely don't have long. If that same decline took two years, the patient likely has more time because rate of decline is slower. It's not an exact science and patients can surprise us. Sometimes the disease can cause sudden death - cancer patients are much more likely to throw a blood clot and die suddenly - cancer makes the blood hypercoagulable - basically more sticky. If a cancer eats into a major blood vessel or cuts off circulation to a major organ, it's lights out pretty quick. Likewise, heart failure makes the possibility of a heart attack much more likely. On the other hand, patients can live longer than expected - sometimes people's bodies are more resilient than we can quantify. tl:dr - it's not an exact science but we evaluate the overall disease progression and health status of the patient.",
"By comparing their diagnosis to other, similar cases. Also, doctors rarely say \"you have six months to live\". They typically say things like \"About 50% of the time, patients with this diagnosis do not survive more than 6 months\".",
"Back in the day, doctors sort of...guessed. Studies have shown their predictions were not very accurate. Nowadays, we have much more data and evidence because we track disease and outcomes overtime. Let's say you have cancer. Doctors will look at what specific type of cancer you have (for example, anaplastic astrocytoma vs glioblastoma multiforme vs low grade glioma). In some cancers they might look at what genetic subtypes there are, etc. They will also look at where that cancer has spread. For other diseased, such as cirrhosis, they might look at what residual liver function you have left which they can determine from laboratory testing. If you have a bleeding disorder or renal failure secondary to the cirrhosis, that has a poorer prognosis than not having those things. Based on that information they look for published data from studies which might show that for patients with similar cases the median survival is 2 yrs, meaning half of all patients live longer and half live less than that. They might also find that overall the survival at 5 years is less than 10%, meaning 90% of patients die within 5 yrs. Depending on the stage of the disease there might be a lot or there might be very little variability in terms of survival. So while patients might say \"doctors gave me only 2 years to live\" the doctor *probably* didn't say that but that might be what the patient comes away with anyway. It's a lot to absorb being told you're going to die and patients often like a number.",
"There are also computational tools we use to give us a good estimation. For example: lab values in patients with liver failure can be used to estimate likelihood of dying in the next few months."
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678ctj | What is an API in programming | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a complicated word for a simple concept. It stands for Application Programming Interface, but it's barely worth remembering. It's just a promise or a contract. Like 'if you give me a number A and then a number B, I'll give you A+B'. This kind of thing is used EVERYWHERE in programming, including that exact example. The word now tends to be used to refer to a handful of Web technologies, but the premise is the same - a promise that if you give me X I'll give you Y."
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67eagg | If swelling is the body's natural response to some injuries, why do doctors generally recommend doing things to reduce swelling? Isn't the swelling response there for a reason? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[Recent relevant SciShow]( URL_0 ). Sometimes your body goes too far and the swelling becomes more harmful than helpful as too much blood attempts to rush into the injured area to bring resources, and as a result it gets clogged up and at the very least is no longer being helpful. Ice reduces the swelling, allowing the fresh blood to flow better - until your body sends even *more* blood to warm that area back up. So you get more of the resources your body is trying to bring you. With modern diets, medicine, and activities you're not losing much by reducing the swelling, even if you were losing some of the beneficial effects. In the mean time, swelling is often inconvenient: it hurts, it makes it hard to use that limb, and most things that reduce swelling (like ice) also help take some of the pain away."
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67fqqu | what causes the growling noises your stomach makes when you're hungry? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The short answer is that you are feeling/hearing fluid (swallowed saliva, digestive juices, liquids you drank recently) and small amounts of air (swallowed or produced by bacteria or chemical reactions) in your stomach and intestines being pushed around when the muscles of your digestive tract contract. These events become noticeably rumble-y when the muscle activity increases. One reason that happens is because when you're hungry, you naturally think about eating, so your nervous system tells the muscles in your digestive tract to start working since soon there might be food to digest and move through it. Being nervous can also cause muscle activity in your digestive tract to increase, so you might notice that your stomach growls more than usual during a first date or an important meeting."
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67gme3 | Why do mirrors only flip the image horizontally and not vertically as well? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mirrors don't flip images, the mirror is displaying exactly what is in front of it. For example when you stand in front of the mirror you see your right arm on the right. That is because it is directly in front of that portion of the mirror. So...when you are standing in front of the mirror your head is at the top, because it is directly in front of that section of the mirror.",
"I think this has come up before, but anyways; mirrors don't flip left and right, [they flip front and back]( URL_0 ).",
"They don't flip anything. The orientation of the reflection is directly across from where the object is.",
"Mirrors don't flip things at all. You're comparing what you see in the mirror to what you would see if you walked in front of yourself and turned around horizontally. Alternatively, if you stood on your head, the view would be reflected vertically compared to what you see in a mirror."
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67k8dy | Pharmacists, why does it take 15-30 minutes to fill a prescription like pills, even when it's not busy? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Just because you're the only person physically there doesn't mean you're the only person getting a prescription filled. Prescriptions are transmitted directly to pharmacies from doctors offices, prescriptions are dropped off for later pick-up, and refills can be requested via certain pharmacy apps given the script used allowed for refills. A pharmacy tech will have a workload and while a person there waiting might get dropped in for more immediate filling, if you're standing there wondering why it's taking so long, you're not an emergent situation."
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67ml9d | Where do banks keep their money? What stops them from just adding a 0 somewhere? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Government or a Government Empowered Organization makes sure by Auditing the Bank. They check through the records of how the money came and went and how interest was payed out to make sure nobody accidentally or intentionally messed up the numbers.",
"But clearly they don't have a bunch of physical money. If your account has 100k it's not like they have 100k sitting around. (X thousands of people's balances). It's all numbers on paper/computer (how did they keep track before computers?)"
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67qr3o | Why can humans get Vitamin D from sunlight but not from artificial light? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The lights need to emit ultraviolet B rays in order for your body to create vitamin D. Unfortunately, too much exposure increases the risk of skin cancer, so you generally do not want to have standard lights that emit that ultraviolet light. You *can* get specially made artificial lights that emit ultraviolet B rays for people that live in areas without too much sun, but they usually have a timer on them to auto shut off after a time and a warning against too much exposure.",
"You get vitamin D from ultraviolet light, and there isn't much ultraviolet light emitted by everyday light bulbs. You can use a tanning bed or other source of artificial UV, though."
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67s1jm | Why do women's menstrual cycles sync up after a while when living together? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They don't, it's a popular misinform. Am a woman, get periods and have had many female roommates over the years"
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67ueww | 64 and 32 bit, and the differences? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"32 or 64 Bit describes the length of numbers in binary the processor calculates with, which means there's a maximum number the processor can handle. For 32 Bit that is 2^32 - 1 so about 4 billion. 64 bit means bigger numbers, bigger calculations. 64 Bit can handle 2^64 - 1, which is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. But one of the bigger reasons to use 64 Bit is that the memory is also limited by that number length. 32 Bit means up to 2^32 Bytes can be adressed, that's roughly 4 GB of RAM. In today's age that is not much. With 64 Bit the processor can adress 2^64. So you could have up to 9 Exabyte or 9 billion GB of RAM. If you have the money that is :P Source: I'm studying a combination of CS & EE Edit: I'm sorry that seems more like an age 10 explanation. Edit2: As an addition: You also can see the 32 Bit limitation on flash drives with older file systems because they have the limitation that a file may not be bigger than 4 GB, because the file size only has 32 Bit."
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67uyjp | Why the numbers Eleven and Twelve not follow the same naming convention as the teens? | I was just wondering why eleven isn't firsteen and twelve seconteen? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most western societies used to use base 12 as its counting system. To understand what that is would be an ELI5 in itself, but basically rather than consider things in blocks or multiples of 10 like we do, they consider it in blocks or multiples of 12. So 11 and 12 weren't thought of as being part of the same group as the teens. France, under Napoleon, instead started adopting the decimal system. It caught on, but not until after our language had already decided on what to call those numbers.",
"Depending on how you think about it, humans either make complete sense or they are completely illogical. A dozen used to be an important unit of measure. So, counting to twelve was important kind of as an alternative to counting to ten. And multiples of twelve (dozens) made sense. It is sort of like how our clocks use a weird mix of 24 hours and 60 minutes and 60 seconds to mark out a day made sense once, so we just sort of stuck with it. Notice that 24 hours is just twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night."
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67v6nx | Why are birds and bees associated with talking to kids about sex? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Usually the first thing you learn about procreation is that of plants (flowers). The German expression is, appropriately, “Bienen und Blümchen”, which translates to “bees and flowers”. There are male and female plants, and the pollen is the equivalent to sperm, while the blossom is the equivalent to the female parts, leading the pollen to the egg cell. Some plants are pollinated by birds instead of (or in addition to?) insects. So “talking about the birds and the bees” (or the bees and the flowers) is a euphemism for talking about procreation/sexuality.",
"I could be wrong but I think it's because birds lay eggs, women have eggs. Bees pollinate things, sperm pollinates the eggs.",
"I believe the closest answer i ever found to this question was the female is represented as the bird, and the bee represents the male because of it's stinger (penis). Not really sure why the female is a bird though",
"I always took it to mean the way birds and bees gather nectar from flowers. Then again, if you've ever seen a bird swallow a worm...",
"I believe it's a reference to the 50's song. I forget the name. Singer might have been Sam Cooke. \"Let me tell you 'bout the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees. And a thing called love.\"",
"The idea of fertilization (which is the most important step of reproduction) is easily explained without using body parts by using flowers. It was usually taught this way, explaining how pollen is spread and how seed works. Birds and bees assist in this process and became the unofficial mascot of the conversation.",
"I thought it was coz birds and bees are prevalent in spring time and thats when everybody in nature is mating"
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67x1ze | Why, when speaking on the phone, do I have a compulsion to walk in circles and touch random things around the room? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Here's an answer courtesy of u/jambola2 [This mentalfloss article summarizes a lot of points on why we pace while we think, and I think it likely applies to while talking on the phone too.]( URL_0 ) Studies have shown that people are better at thinking of creative solutions while pacing about. Studies have shown that performing repetitive actions (like moving up and down in the same way) often has a destressing effect. Another study talks about how pacing about may be a somewhat involuntary response to stress and anxiety.",
"Another possible theory is that (face-to-face) communication usually involves body language, gesturing, etc., and when you're on the phone you still feel the need to do something with your body while you communicate.",
"Here, you go broseph. Search is your friend. URL_0"
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67xrwc | What is Voltage? | I get that it is a unit of electrical energy (Volts, also Joules per Coulumbe) but conceptually I don't get it. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's sort of like gravity, except it only works on charged particles (whereas gravity works on everything). So, charged particles operate in this weird world where there is another kind of \"gravity\" that pulls them in various directions. Make sense?"
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681sqt | How did salt and pepper become the primary seasonings of choice? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sodium, which is a major component of salt, is needed by the body for a huge number of biological processes. So, salt is pretty obvious as a favorite seasoning. Pepper became popular when people figured out that it could be used to cover up the taste of semi-rotten meat. Source: URL_0"
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684bpz | Why do laptops have "waves" going across the screen when looking through a phone camera, but they are not seen by our naked eye? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's called aliasing, or more exactly moire pattern: both camera sensors and LCD screens are made from pixels. Pixels are not contiguous but are made to either display (LCD) or capture (sensors) specific color, like red green or blue. Now when you focus your camera on laptop screen, the individual pixels on the sensor do not match the pattern of pixels from the LCD - you get a piece of adjacent red or blue pixel or even uneven number of LCD pixels projected onto sensor pixel - that causes unevenness of light exposure and thus a Moire pattern, which you call \"wave\".",
"Imagine that you are looking through a fine net, like one of those nets to prevent small bugs from getting in the house. You can see no problems through the net but if you add another net, it is harder to see. You will also see these \"wave\" patterns when putting the nets on top of eachother. You can say that the holes in the net are pixels, and when these two layers are on top of each-other, the vision or quality of the video is lowered and you will see these wave patterns.",
"It's called a moire pattern, and it's caused by the regularly spaces pixels in the camera not aligning perfectly with the regularly spaces pixels in the LCD display. Your eye doesn't use pixels, for this and many other reasons, so you don't se the effect with your eye."
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68902h | Why does for instance, fans, make the air feel cool on your skin even though it's circulating air of the same temperature? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The air movement increases the rate of evaporation from your skins surface. Because of waters high latent heat of vaporisation, evaporation uses a lot of thermal energy so your skin feels cold"
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68aji7 | Why is collecting rainwater illegal in the US? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its only illegal in some parts of the US. I live in the Eastern US, where water rights are not fought over, and I can collect all the rain I want. If you go to the western US, water rights are very important. Lakes and streams are fed from runoff rain water. Think of it this way. If my neighbor downstream has water rights, I can not build a damn and cut off his access to water. In the same way, there are places that rely on runoff water, and if everybody were to collect it, places downstream would have no water. Often a small rain barrel is not an issue, but if everybody started collecting thousands of gallons of water, there would be problems.",
"It is illegal in 9 states, not the whole U.S. On top of that, most of those states where it is regulated allows a homeowner to collect it from his roof. So a blanket statement of \"it is illegal to collect rainwater in the U.S.\" is wrong.",
"It is only illegal in a couple states, and usually for safety reasons. Additionally, It's usually done by local governments, not on a large scale. In those few states, it's not, for example, having a bucket sit out that collects some water for your flowers. It's having a shit ton of barrels sit out to collect large amounts of water and/or fucking with dams/water manipulating devices without a permit from the state/local govt. One person doing this wont hurt many people, but if 50% of the people in the town do it, it can start to cause ecological issues. More Reading: URL_0"
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68bvga | Why is day divided in 24 hours and not some other number? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its easily divisible. Decimals are a fairly new mathematical concept so having numbers that divide into a lot of things easily makes things easier. 24 into half, thirds, fourths, sixths, and twelfths.",
"Do [the numerous previous answers here in ELI5]( URL_0 ) help some?",
"People used to have bad math education and no calculators and didn't really standardize everything into base 10 like we do so having things be really easily divideable was the most important thing so lots of olde timey stuff is base 12 or base 60 or some multiple of that. Like a modern person, even one that is terrible at math has had years of schooling to not freak out when a third of 10 is 3.33333 repeating, but if you are some guy in the year 1200 then that is way way beyond you so you'd rather a third of 12 be 4 or a sixth be 2 or normal people numbers you can write without fancy ideas like decimal points."
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68d7zy | Why male and female adults get attracted to each another? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"To my understanding, it started out as a biological need to reproduce. A long time ago our sole goal in life to was reproduce so our bloodline continues. Our bodies would attract us to the other sex (and typically more towards someone \"hot\") because you would deem them worthy to carry on your bloodline with."
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68dj11 | Why does everyone hate Comic Sans so much? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think because it simply got way over-used, in many contexts it wasn't designed for. It's casual, playful, and has a fun name, so a lot of people started using it for everything. Folks got tired of that, because it's annoying to have a sign in the breakroom with a serious message but a playful font, and the anti-comic sans movement was born. Remember Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter? How annoying it is that she's always smiling despite the context, and how much everyone hated her? Comic Sans is kind of like that."
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68en7x | Why do small language differences exist, as in "color" and "colour"? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In that particular case it's because someone in America made a conscious effort to reform spelling to make it more simple and distinctly \"American\". So they took the unnecessary 'u' in colour out, as well as turning 'centre' into 'center'. But in other cases it can't always be traced back to a specific thing. Sometimes words fall out of use in one place, or get replaced with new words, or they start being pronounced differently for no obvious reason. These changes will happen differently in different places when people who speak a language are separated."
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68k80o | How do music makers know if a melody has been taken or not? | If say a song you thought up just happens to have the same melody as another song you've never heard of that's already been published and copyrighted how would you know before you make a mistake of using that song? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"you don't. basically, copyright law is against *copying*; if you come up with the exact same melody by yourself, then it's fine, as long as you can prove that. to prevent people from abusing this, there's a rule that if you've had access to (heard, for example) a previous creation (in this case, the song) and your work is similar to that previous creation, then it will be presumed that you did copy and you have to prove you didn't (not easy). you can also be found to have \"subconsciously copied\". balancing this is the rule that if you didn't *intentionally* copy, you won't be required to pay damages, only enjoined (ordered by way of injunction) to stop infringing the original copyright (so you can't sell your song etc.) so if your song sounds similar to a popular one, you probably will be stopped from doing much with it even if you didn't consciously copy, but you won't have to pay crazy sums or anything unless you obviously intended to copy and profit from the original. edit: there are some other replies that say you can't copyright a melody. this is untrue; there is one copyright subsisting in the lyrics and another in the melody. this is why song credits list the songwriter/composer separately. second edit: the first edit is true in the UK and Australia. there's a comment somewhere here which apparently says that that's not the case in the US, but I can't tell for sure (don't know much about US IP law). third edit: some people are asking \"what about beats/chord progressions etc.\" basically, there's this concept of an idea-expression dichotomy in copyright law. copyright protects expressions, not ideas. to illustrate, if I told everyone to write a love story, they would probably come up with fairly different things. the idea here is \"love story\", but each writer has come up with a different *expression* of that idea, and each individual expression has its own copyright. the simpler an expression, the closer it is to the idea, and the more difficult it is to prove infringement of the copyright protecting that expression. the reason is that if you protect the idea, you basically give the holder of the copyright a monopoly over *every single expression of that idea*. so, in my love story example, that would mean that if I had copyright in it, I would be the only person who could ever write love stories, or allow anyone to. stuff like chord progressions and beats are very, very close to ideas. for example, the simple I-IV-V-I can be played slow or fast, loud or soft, on the trombone or the glockenspiel, in A Major or F# Major, etc.. when you step so close to an idea, you would have to copy someone more or less wholesale to be liable for copyright infringement.",
"This is a pretty real worry for a lot of songwriters, who have to consider carefully if they've actually come up with something new, or if they'e suffering from cryptamnesia where they've simply forgotten where something came from. Paul Mccartney famously spent weeks shopping his melody for 'Yesterday' around people in the music biz, seeing if anyone had heard it before. Even if it does happen, there are ways for them to amicably handle any claims through the music industry's crediting and royalty system.",
"There are actually a lot of musicians, songwriters, and producers who won't accept unsolicited music from people because of this. If they take your demo then sometime in the future they make a song that sounds similar to something on that demo it might be hard for them argue that they had never heard your song before (even if they just tossed your demo in the trash).",
"As a songwriter, I'll just say that it's more difficult than you might imagine to accidentally create the same melody as someone else. This may be surprising since many of the most popular songs in the world use the same 2-3 chord progressions. There's a comedic team that does a medley of all the songs that use the Canon in D progression, and it's striking just how different the melodies are from one to the next, but they all work perfectly with the music. Now, sometimes you will get a similar melody for a few notes, sometimes you'll notice you're doing it, sometimes you won't. It wasn't until after I recorded a song for an album that I realized our chorus had the same three notes from the line \"Take On Me.\" A few people joked about it but mostly not, because the rest of the song is so totally different, and it's three notes. It happens. Even if you wrote a chorus with the exact same chord progression and tempo as another song, the chances of accidentally writing the same melody even for a few notes in a row is astronomical. If two songs sound similar enough to be copied, they probably are. The thing is it can be unintentional. I heard a song in a store yesterday, no idea who or what it was, but it was hip-hop. The hook was catchy. 30 mins later I found my brain writing a song in another genre around that chord progression, though I had forgotten what the melody sounded like. I decided to forget it just in case more of the melody I was dreaming up was from that song than I meant it to be, and even if it was, nobody would have ever put the two together if I'd released it. One funny story though, in regards to music and not vocal melody, Back in about 2005 I wrote an arpeggio riff that I played with guitar tapping; it was a breakdown-outro to a song. We recorded a demo of it but ended up leaving the song off the record we were writing because the rest of the song wasn't very good. Fast forward 11 years and the first half of that riff is now the theme for the Daredevil show on Netflix. I still plan on using that riff in a song though, because it's good, and I wrote it first, dammit. But do I think the composer copied me? Even if we'd released the song to the public, no, I would not think that. Here's my riff: URL_3 Here's the Daredevil theme, in the same key, no less: URL_1 Edit: funny thing, I heard the same melody from the beginning of this part in a classical song on the radio today. Edit 2: I just remembered another funny story, tangentially related. While writing that same album I mentioned, I had decided that [Escape from the Bomb House by Less Than Jake]( URL_0 ) was a great song and I would just rip it off. This happens fairly often too, and what I mean is that I liked the vibe of the song, I liked the chord progression, I liked the way I felt when I listened to it, and so I wanted to try to get as many of those same things together in a new song. This would probably mean using the same tempo and maybe some of the same chords, but that I'd fool around using that song as a base and eventually it would turn into something new. This is often how songs are written anyway, I'd end up writing something new while learning something else, so I decided I would do it on purpose this time. Well anyway I get my guitar out and start figuring out how to play the song and am surprised to find that we had already written a song with almost the exact same chord progression from start to finish! [Stitches by Much The Same]( URL_2 ) It's not exactly the same and it's in a different key, but if you're musically inclined you'll hear that if you removed the vocals and put it in the same key, the chord progression in the verses and choruses are almost identical. The reason this is related is because despite these two songs being similar, and me being a big fan of one as we wrote the other, the melodies are worlds apart. Of course I could not try to write another song with almost the same progression for the same album, so I dropped that idea. That brings us to now, when we are writing our newest album, and it turns out that two of our new songs, written by the same guy, are almost the exact same chord progression as each other, in the same key, enough that as we're learning them I keep getting them mixed up. Like so similar the way those two Nickelback songs can be played on top of each other. But they're both really good in their own way, and nobody would be likely to notice the similarity unless they tried to learn them on guitar, so whatever. =)",
"Sometimes they don't. Sam Smith's song Stay With Me basically uses the exact same ~~chords~~ melody as Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down, which was written decades ago by Petty and Jeff Lynne. Sam Smith had no honest idea that the two songs shared that similarity, and no one had actually noticed until some lawyer/manager/whoever realized that the songs were similar enough to warrant some sort of royalty. So Smith went ahead and gave them both songwriting credits to avoid the legal headache that would've surely followed. EDIT: I get it, I get it, it was the melody. I'm sorry. Shit.",
"I am a professional musician, and I have an issue with Deja Vu where I often believe the things I write or play, I've heard before. The thing I and my mates have found is that there is always a 90% chance someone has played the same progression of notes, chords, or rhythms, but rarely the combination of the three. So it is highly likely that there are chunks of songs that sound really similar all the time. But most of the time, the connection is never made, nor do people WANT to make it made. Much like politics, it's not illegal to be unaware. If it looks like you are copying large chunks of lyrics and music, there are unwritten rules about whether or not you get sued; like when Van Halen was informed that their song \"Jump\" sounded really close to an Australian 70s band, they just said \"Well, oops.\" The pursuit of any dispute was tossed because \"Jump\" is a million times more famous and popular. So, technically, if you do accidentally copy a riff note-for-note, just become the most popular version of the song. There is a website that makes a list of a lot of \"Suspiciously Similar Songs\" and most of them make no mention of lawsuits. URL_0",
"In some cases they even copy themselves without knowing. A case brought against Andrew Lloyd Webber claimed that a song from Phantom of the Opera (1984) copied another artist's work from 1978. Webber eventually won because a music expert proved that he had written the same melody in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat during the sixties. URL_0",
"They don't, and it happens often. The same thing happens in literature as well - Isaac Asimov once wrote a short story very similar to one which existed, and it so happened he had that book in his personal library although he may have never read it. Generally speaking the done thing in this situation (and the only legally sound thing, unless the other person is kind rather than greedy) is to give royalties despite the fact that you've done nothing wrong - which is what Asimov did, and many other artists who've been in that situation. This is similar to how people have been punished for plagiarism for having accidentally typed a sentence which has been typed before - it does happen, although in that situation you're kind of fucked.",
"This post and the subsequent replies made me think about the near-lawsuit similarity between \"Ice Ice Baby\" and Queen's \"Under Pressure\". I think Vanilla Ice said it wasn't plagiarism because he tweaked the iconic beat (barely), but he still ended up having to pay up and tarnished his reputation in the process.",
"[Down Under vs Kookaburra]( URL_0 ) is an example of this. Down Under came out in 1981, whereas Kookaburra Sits in an Old Gum Tree is from 1934. The original author of Kookaburra died in 1988, and the song Down Under is so iconic in Australia that it's difficult to imagine she hadn't heard it. Nonetheless nobody really noticed or talked about it until [it came up in a TV show in 2008]( URL_1 ) and the copyright owners pursued the case and succeeded, resulting in the flautist who played the riff on Down Under committing suicide.",
"Some people do it intentionally but steal melodies that are in the public domain. I'm aging myself a bit here but the first example to come to mind is \"Groovy Kind of Love\" recorded by Phil Collins. The song (which Collins didn't write\" was a slowed-down version of the rondo movement of Sonatina in G Major op. 36 no.5 by Muzio Clementi, a composer from the late 1700's.",
"They don't have to really, melodies and tunes are the same a lot of the time, you just don't notice it until it is pointed out. If you want a fun example of this check out \"The Axis of Awesome 4 Chords\". Shows the crossover of songs using the lowest common denominator. URL_0",
"Isn't this exactly the problem that Pied Piper was originally going to address?",
"John Fogerty got sued by his old label for making songs with his new label that sounded too similar to John Fogerty.",
"Been writing music since I was nine. I can say at this point, I have learned not to worry too much. As long as I'm not ripping off some song note for note, it is all good with me. Fuck, I even rip off my own songs from time to time. Good music only has so many possibilities and thats why most of everyone's favorite songs all share the same melodic premise (firsts and fourths all day). To me, music is more about compounding knowledge and ideas to grow individuality by listening, studying, and enjoying music rather than trying to make it out of thin air in hopes to be something different. Posers are sick. I've also noticed even when you think you've came up with something original, it's actually partially (or sometimes fully) a song from your subconscious or already a song by like 92719 different people lol.",
"The way they taught us in music comp is that you follow the 8 chord rule. Basically, an 8 chord progression would be considered a melody, and your progression has to be different by at least 1 chord. Almost all pop songs follow the same chord progression though, it just varies on the key, major/minor, etc.",
"That just happened to Led Zeppelin for the arpeggio from the opening sequence to Stairway To Heaven. Someone claimed Zep stole it from them. They lost. Apparently it's been used dozens of times through history. Interesting stuff. Edit: Context + Embarrassing spelling mistake for a big Zep fan. ;)",
"I'm seeing a lot of uninformed answers on here. People are misunderstanding a key difference. Melody isn't the same as chords. You have harmony and then melody. You cannot copywrite a harmony. (There are only 7 chords in a diatonic scale, and any other chord is outside of the key.) All of pop only uses 6 of the 7 chords. I,ii,iii,IV,V,vi. No matter what order they are in, you cannot copywrite that. The thing you are thinking of is melody. Melody is separate from harmony. You play chords and then a melody of the chords go on top. The reason axis of awesome does that is to show the harmony is the same. The melody isn't.",
"I listened to a lot of emo music as a kid (yes I know) and I remember noticing a massive similarity between a Lostprophets song and an All American Rejects one. Both albums came out at roughly the same time, and the choruses are virtually identical. I always wondered how that happened, if it was just coincidence, or what. Edit: Not in any way supporting Ian Watkins. This was long before that news came out. Just noting the similarities between the two songs.",
"For a good example of how these things can happen you can view this URL_0 The guy accidentally wrote the theme song to the office.",
"Coincidently the song My Sweet Lord by George Harrison was playing on my computer because Spotify was promoting the Guardian of the Galaxy soundtrack. I looked up the song on Wikipedia to see WTF it was about. Apparently, that song was the center of a lawsuit that established the legal precedent for your question. I know it's just the Baader-Meinhof phenomena but it's still a weird feeling when that happens. Anyways here's the [link]( URL_0 ).",
"There is nothing new under the sun. There are 12 proper notes on a guitar, piano...western tunings. Don't know about sitars and all that. There are lots of ways to play and arrange those notes but it's still just twelve. Amazing really.",
"As a musician you will regularly re-write some of the dankest hooks ever written. I still feel the pain from the time I realised I had written Euthrymic's \"Sweet Dreams\" melody... about 20 years after they had.",
"musicians steal from each other all the time. its practically a standard industry practice.",
"Pied piper! It is a proprietary middle out software that allows you to search for copyright infringement developed by richard hendricks",
"Spider Robinson wrote an award-winning SF short story about this decades ago. [Melancholy Elephants]( URL_0 ) discusses a future where all the creative works have been staked out.",
"You don't... You rely on everyone you play the song to (before its release) to tell you if it sounds like something else. Even then stuff slips under the radar: URL_0 URL_1",
"Very basically all music is the same. There isn't any new chord progressions there aren't any new notes. What makes each piece of music different than any other is how it's played and how it sounds overall. Think of those compilation video on YouTube where the band plays the same chord progression over and over again and then just does different parts of different songs that use that same chord progression. Technically they all have the same notes but what makes it artistic is how you present those same notes.",
"They don't and it happens more often than you think and quite often there is no issue between the two creating artists. One of my fav examples URL_0",
"Think of it like a book. All books that are in the English language are made up of 26 letters but they all tell a different story. It's just what you make of it",
"I have a question regarding melodys and chords. I seem to remember someone telling me that you can copyright a melody, but you can not copyright a chord progression. That being said, i composed a song with a unique set of chords that obveously is based off of a melody that everyone already knows URL_0",
"This is actually one of the [many] hazards of our absurdly long copyright terms. There's a pretty good chance that the melody has been used before, it's very difficult to find this out, and this problem is only going to get worse as more and more stuff gets copyrighted. There's a fantastic short story (in regards to this, combined with clinical immortality), but I can't find it :/",
"Have you heard of this new app called Pied Piper?",
"Would it be possible to play your melody into something like Shazam and see if there are any hits?",
"My music producer friend says \"When your body starts tingling after you finish the melody, then you know that the beat is OG in your heart\".",
"This actually happened w/ Guns n' Roses 'Sweet Child of Mine' and some Australian band who released a VERY similar sounding song years earlier. Somehow I don't think 80's sunset strip rock bands were listening to Australian pop music in the pre-internet era with easily accessible music, however take a listen and see what you think: URL_0",
"On the flip side of some of these responses, which show music similarities, here's a melody you know that you won't recognize: URL_0 Don't spoil it for others please (Reddit now has spoiler tags, use them if you must), but you have heard this melody before. It's also cool as it's a one-time thing, you also won't be able to \"hear\" the video the same way once you learn what it is.",
"I'm no musician, but I bet you can find precedence for most melodies in classical music which isn't copyrighted now. No, I didn't copy you, I copied Pachabel from the 1600's :-)",
"They don't. I've heard people \"sample\" melodies before. Just the notes or a few notes were reused. But honestly it's hard not to use songs that you like in music you make. It's where we draw inspiration.",
"As a band-member we usually write a riff or a full song and at some point either somebody asks \"Hey wait a second, isn't that how *so and so song* goes?\", or they don't and we never really think about it.",
"Well they generally don't. But we used to play a game where we would write a riff. Then we would play it to the app Shazam and see what it would come up with, in an effort to create a unique riff.",
"Would asking Siri help? \"Hey Siri what song is this\" and if it detects the melody as something familiar it will tell you the name of the song. Then you can compare it to your melody and see if it's the exact same",
"Theoretically speaking how likely is it that a corporation could publish and copyright music algorithmically via a formula to copyright-squat on a likeness? I imagine all music is or will be owned by a few conglomerates and change their business model to a tiered license fee for would-be musician. How likely I this to becoming reality if it isn't already?",
"I remember hearing Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates say Michael Jackson told him he got his idea for the bass line in Billie Jean from Hall & Oates' \"I can't go for that\". Daryl just said great, I'm flattered and left it at that. Didn't even think about a lawsuit. Good for him. The beats are similar, but not note for note.",
"back when I was a student, I thought of a plan to write a computer program to create all possible melodies and put a snip of it on a website. doo dee doo. doo doo dee. dee doo doo, etc. Then I'd sue anyone who ever made a song. I was going to branch out and also make all possible word combinations, and sue about lyrics.",
"There are not enough combinations of notes and chords to make the huge amount of music that we have now (and will have in the future) musically unique. See this track by the Axis of Awesome to demonstrate that sharing chord progressions is something very common in popular music: URL_0 Most song writers will know which chord progressions create certain emotions and reactions within people, and design tracks to embody this. Beyond changing the rules of music theory or the frequencies assigned with each note (for example) you wouldn't be able to guarantee uniqueness in tonality. This is why tracks have to be unique in other ways, such as lyrics, sound design, tempo, etc.",
"I've got a fine example of that. Here is a moombahton track by Nadastrom, a project of Dave Nada, called [I!!]( URL_0 ). It was published in 2011, but went largely unnoticed. A few months later, Skrillex released [Bangarang]( URL_2 ). Guess what. It's pretty much a different song but with the same core. Did Skrillex hear and copy the track from Nadastrom? My guess is that unconsciously, he did, but probably he isn't even aware of it. What he made of that same core, is totally different, so even if it may have the same core, it is an entirely different piece of art. And that is what matters: it was *not* a copy. Did Skrillex get in trouble over this? Nope. Nor should he have been (IMHO). In general you'll only get in trouble for releasing similarly built up songs, if you're *very* successful, as in the case where [Led Zeppelin was sued over \"Stairway To Haven\"]( URL_1 ). And in that case, the similarity was *extremely* superficial.",
"This metaphor isn't completely accurate, but melodies are like quotes. The quotes are made up of words in a particular order, just as melodies are made up of notes in a particular order. Even more, the quotes are made up of little phrases which help to make a coherent whole. Take the quote: \"say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved\". You can say that maybe on the whole that the quote is original, but it is comprised of two very common phrases (\"say what you will\", \"to have been loved\"). How does someone know that they aren't coming up with a quote which has already been taken? They don't. The words they are using are shared by everyone else. Even more so, they are using common phrases. The simpler and shorter the quote, the more likely someone else had said it. The longer and more nuanced, the less likely it has been copied, or at least copied in its full extent. Though there are an infinity of ways to combine words, only so many of them make sense. You can make any mish-mash sentence which is unique, and it is only unique because nobody else would really want or care to say it. With melodies, many can be seen as a variation of a more simple melody. Anyway, my argument is that the less complex a melody is, the more likely someone else is to have come up with it themselves. The more complex a melody, the more likely it is unique. It being unique doesn't necessarily mean it is wholly original, as it likely shares a lot in common with a lot of other melodies. Even more so, most melodies are made of common phrases, and none of the phrases are original. It is the arrangement of these phrases which creates something more unique. It is an impossible question to really tackle because there are so many simple ideas out there that anyone could stumble on. Stairway to Heaven is a common example of a song that was plagiarized with the opening arpeggio, but opening isn't that hard to stumble across. Almost any Metallica song is like that. So many of the riffs are such that a novice guitar player could have made them (take Nothing Else Matters), but it just so happens that Metallica found them and realized their brilliance. I am of the opinion that originality ought to be less valued, and composition and delivery ought to be more valued. It isn't a problem that musicians come up with similar or even the same ideas, but it is how they execute those ideas that matters."
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68lhok | Why do we look for life in earth-looking planets only? Couldn't other forms of life generate in other environments? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"While it is highly likely that life completely different to what we have and know about on earth could exist somewhere in the universe, it is a lot easier to look for things similar to what we have on earth, as we know for certain that all life we are aware of is carbon based and at least requires food and water. We're already venturing into the unknown looking for life in space, so we can cut out a lot of variables and make the process a lot less random if we just look for life similar to what we have here on earth. It makes it less of a complete stab in the dark if we already sort of know what we're looking for EDIT: TL;DR: We know it works here, chances are it'll work somewhere out there too",
"I believe it is because we have proof that life on earthlike planets could exist, since we are here, but no proof of life on any other kind of planet (yet). Looking on those planets should then, theoretically, increase the chances of finding it, since we \"know\" some kind of life form would be able to survive there. In my opinion, you are not wrong in thinking that other life forms could have wildely different criteria for survival, however some people do believe that for life to be formed, it needs water and oxygen like here in earth.",
"When looking to duplicate results you look for as many similarities as possible in order to maximize your chances of success. We know with 100% certainty that earth can sustain life and so the greatest chance, with the knowledge we have, of finding another life form is on a planet identical to our own. From there you create allowable variances using information we already have (min and max temperatures we know life exists in, min/max pressures etc) to find similar but not identical planets in order to generate a list of candidates to investigate further. Once those have been exhausted you expand your tolerances to include more planets until you find what your looking for(or don't find anything). If we ever discovered another planet with life than whatever conditions that planet was in would be used to further refine our search criteria. Edit: here are too many planets for us to investigate all of them at random and the information we get too limited to not use a frame of reference like earth to compare against. However, we are searching for like or signs of life in nearby planets and moons in our solar system and if found would drastically change our search criteria."
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68lqpp | What makes some melodies "catchy" and others not? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically it depends on how easily one can sing the song. Composers will choose easy intervals and simple rhythms to make it as easy as possible for the audience to remember what was played or sung. This goes back to Mozart and even farther. You would most likely remember a Mozart tune better than you would a Wagner tune, because Mozart wrote easily singable melodies, and simple rhythms. Listen to a song you think is catchy one time, then sing it back. We remember catchy music because we don't have to pay attention to it. It's just there and it's easy."
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68n3zz | Why is prostitution illegal? | Commonly called the oldest profession in the world, prostitution has been around as long as people have formed societies. Unlike legalization of drugs or alcohol the use of it puts no ones lives in danger. In fact it may be able to save some. So what is the problem? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's too hard to tax. The government doesn't want people getting off without giving them a little reach around.",
"That's where many people don't realize the extent of sex trafficking. Many prostitutes are forced into it either through extortion for money, or trafficked into it (happens to a very high extent in Asia and Eastern Europe, even in the Americas). This is a violent, drug-filled, exploitive, unhealthy, and utterly immoral trade to engage in. To discourage this, it was made illegal, but some countries realized that it might cost more to prevent all of it than to allow it under strict regulations.",
"> it puts no ones lives in danger. Because, in many instances, this statement is blatantly false. For that to be true, it assumes complete agency on the part of the sex worker. I.e. the sex worker is voluntarily selling their body. In many scenarios, this is not the case. The sex worker is frequently forced or coerced into prostitution through threat of violence or other forms of control (drug addiction, control over someone's passport, etc.) Even in scenarios where the sex worker has taken up prostitution on his/her own, it's a private, physical act that carriers with it health risks for both parties, as well as the risk of violence from one party against the other (particularly since it occurs behind closed doors). Those risks may be deemed by society to be too high or impactful to allow the activity to occur _at all_, and so it is made illegal (I would personally argue that you can better mitigate those risks by *regulating* the activity instead of banning it, since banning it drives it underground and _increases_ such risks. There may be less of the activity overall than there would be if it were legal, but the remaining illegal activity that does occur is of much higher risk to the parties. It's basically a trade-off between ubiquity and harm.) And, of course, there's the moral / religious argument, which is only valid so far as all parties involved agree with that moral / religious basis."
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68snxt | why does 70 degrees inside my house feel considerably colder than 70 degrees outside? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Air conditioners also dehumidify the air to a degree. So any humidity that would make it feel warmer outside is reduced drastically. 70 degrees with no humidity will feel cooler than 70 degrees with 30% humidity."
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68t7ii | What caused the recession in 2008? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This one is a bit complicated, but at the core, this is an issue with **confidence**. When a Bank loans you money, they do it in the hope that : a) you pay back the loan you have taken (like if you ask for 100 000$, you pay back 100 000 dollars), and b) you pay back interest upon the sum of money they lent you The amount of money a bank gain each month is Benefit = Sum_lent x interest_rate. As a bank is a company, their role is make a benefit, pay their employees (and other bills) and give back dividend to their shareholders. So they want to make more benefits. And there are three ways to do that : A) Increasing interest rates, which an work, but if you ask a interest rate too high, a customer will try to get a loan elsewhere. So its not very sustainable. B) Lending more money. But most people asking for money and able to easily pay back already get the amount they asks. The only way to do this is then to loan money to people which could have difficulties to pay back the loan. It's not especially a good thing, since if a guy default on his debts, the bank **loose** money. SO they have to get a higher interest rate to compensate the risks, and people probably would want a credit too expensive. That's where the **subprime mortgages** comes. The prices of housing was growing regularly, and at a relatively high rate. Banks decided to create a loan which was available to relatively unsafe borrowers ate the condition it was used to buy a house, and that the house were to be taken by the bank if the borrower could pay back. On the paper, it was extremely safe : if a borrower pay back, the bank made money, if the borrower don't, they get a house worth about as much as the money they lent (which they could then sold), and all the payment already made. On the other side, it was relatively nice for unsafe borrower (called **subprime borrowers**, usually poor people) to be able to buy a home, at a moderate cost (since it was relatively safe for the banks, they used a rather low interest rate). The issue came when the a lot of these subprime borrowers couldn't pay. The banks seized their homes and tried to sell them. At this point, the price of houses was high because people expected to be able to sell their homes at least at the price they bought them, probably more. And as people were expecting to be able to do the same, they kept buying. That's a **price bubble**, where rising prices of something make people buying this stuff to sell it later with a profit. But when the banks tried to sell them, there were not enough people trying to buy house to buy them all. In order to avoid loses too high, banks tried to sell them a little bit less than their value. It made the **bubble burst** as people were thinking \"I'm not sure I can get a profit anymore, better wait a bit to see what happens\". And then, everything went to hell, and no wanted to buy at the market prices for houses, forcing banks to sell at a lower prices, which in turn made people wanting even less to buy... And since the houses were a mean for banks to limit loses, they weren't able to avoid taking HUGE losses (think billions of dollars). They lost so much money that the debts the banks contracted were higher than the market values of the banks. Therefore, banks were on the verge of bankruptcy."
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68tkky | Why is Reddit's search so bad? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Conspiracy answer: It's intentionally busted, because if the search works well, you might find that your \"clever awesome post\" has already been posted a dozen times, and you won't share it. If you *can't* find that you're reposting something, you'll post it, get views, get comments, get traffic, and make Reddit feel like it has more content than it really has. Probably the real answer: Making a great search system is very complex, especially when it's searching through an enormous amount of posts, comments, links, etc. Keywording is really important, and most reddit users don't know anything about search engine optimization. Posts aren't really made in a way that allows them to be catalogued easily. So even if you're searching the exact title of a post that you saw 10 minutes ago, the search is still barreling though 10 years and billions of posts from tens of millions of users to try to find something, and it's going to struggle, a lot. One of the main reasons Google is our overlord today is because they came up with great (proprietary) search equations. It's very hard to do."
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68v8y4 | Why can a company ship me a package from Sweden to US for free, but if I try to ship it back to their address it costs me $100? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nothing is \"free\". The cost is covered by you. You've paid shipping, it's simply buried in the cost of the goods you purchased.",
"So two things. The company pays for the shipping, they're just including it as part of the price of the item you're paying for. Large companies can get really good deal on shipping because they buy it in bulk. Individuals can't get those deals. Likewise, large companies often are able to save money on international shipping by loading up shipping containers with their products, which then get shipped locally. You can't get that sort of deal as an individual."
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68zqb8 | why does tensing your legs help you reach orgasm? | E: holy shit 6k upvotes. E2: just a note, I did my search beforehand and apparently I didn't do it correctly. Move on. E3: reposts should be considered on a case by case basis. Or somehow allow archive posts to be marked active again or at least commentable. New information can be discovered by simple conversation in a short time period. You can't expect people to get an answer to things from the past if the previous post either didn't answer the question or is outdated (not saying that's my case but just makes sense for others). | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Best ELI5 Answer from the previous thread - An orgasm is, partly, an uncontrolled muscular spasm. By tensing up your legs, you're tensing up other things, and by other things, I mean your ass, since it's hard not to when you're tensing your thighs. When you tense up your ass, you also tense up everything in the general pelvic area, including the muscles involved in the orgasm. In this way, you're helping those muscles reach the point of necessary release faster than they would on their own, leading to a quicker pay-off. It also seems more intense because you're involving more of your muscles in the process, combined with the relaxation of everything once you finish.",
"Has some interesting answers to this repost URL_0",
"You're not flexing just your legs, you're flexing your quads, glutes, and kegels as well. Tensing these pushes your pelvis forward, which is the best position for insemination. In females, the height of this flexing straightens the vaginal canal and aligns it with the opening of the cervix. In males, the height of this flexing also creates the greatest pressure of ejaculation which results in deeper insemination, and more ejaculate being released in total. Prior to climax, you're not just flexing and holding, you're flexing and then relaxing repeatedly. Flexing forces more blood into erogenous zones, giving nerves the oxygen needed to keep sending pleasure signals from activity. Relaxing allows deoxygenated blood to drain from the erogenous zones. This process of pleasure reward for optimal reproductive actions is a product of evolution. You flex because it feels good. It feels good because it works (i.e. successfully encourages reproduction).",
"I'm sure this is buried, but just in case you read it - consider posting to AskScience, which limits the answers to only fact-based ones. Lots of speculation in this (and the linked) thread.",
"I have a feeling this has been answered already... But, from my perspective as a urologist... The muscles involved most directly during an orgasm have closely linked nerve roots/nerves to those innervating the muscles of the upper leg. Specifically, these will be the adductors of the leg (the muscles that allow you to close your legs). As an example, in men... the obturator nerve, that controls the adductors, runs alongside the prostate gland and innervates the muscles around it, too. When the leg muscles contract, those around the prostate do as well (a bit more complicated than this, but that's the gist), and that *squeeze* feels good during, or before, an orgasm.",
"Anyone else here have trouble cumming when you jerk off standing up? I don't know why but I just can't jerk off standing up, like in the shower. It's way too much effort. If I lay down, I can crack one off quickly if I have to.. say my wife's out in the garden or something, but if I'm standing up it takes forever.",
"Tensing your legs bring more blood to your pelvic floor area, thus increasing sensation and the urge to orgasm. If you are a guy trying to achieve a \"normal\" orgasm without tensing your legs, try tensing your balls instead. It will have the similar effect of forcing more blood to your pelvic floor area.",
"Man, i think i am the only one here who when i tense my legs, i lose my boner. So it does the opposite of what OP is saying. Pretty cool trick when you are out in public , like on the bus, and you need to lose your boner quick.",
"Tensing your legs helps increase venous return of blood to the heart by literally milking the blood in your veins towards the heart. This increase in blood volume to the heart increases cardiac output, stroke volume, and therefore increases mean arterial pressure. That means more blood is flowing out to your body and in this case, to your sexual organs. Increased blood flow helps you achieve orgasm. Source: Anatomy and Physiology class I'm taking right now. We just finished heart and blood vessel physiology.",
"I can't get even get close without tensing my legs. I thought it was just me. It may have to do with forcing more blood into the torso and contributing to engorgement.",
"Blood flow in that area man.. ever hit legs at the gym after 4 days no whacking it and using a test booster like d-aspartic acid? It aint only two legs that get a pump.",
"Holding your breath also helps a lot. That's why people wind up choking themselves with belts and dying. I always figured they were related. Tensing up your muscles burns oxygen in your body.",
"Because you don't know how to kegel and when you flex your legs it activates those muscles.",
"It may not be the legs as much as you accidentally doing kegels as well. Those really help you finish quicker.",
"Works both ways - to last longer, relax your lower body and legs when you think you're getting close. Wish I knew this trick years ago.",
"Because tensing your legs facilitates greater blood flow to your genital region, and then this greater blood flow facilitates tumescence (swelling) of the genital tissues, which is instrumental in orgasms. Similar to how compression stockings work to prevent blood clots.",
"This is... a thing? Never heard of it.",
"I do that when receiving head. Had a mind blowing orgasm once. Felt like a wave building from my fingers and toes, and eventually through my dick. Was awesome.",
"It's a learned behavior - if you did this during your first orgasms ever you are likely to continue using it and then orgasming without it becomes difficult or seemingly impossible. But it's reversible through some focus and exercises. You may have to train your patience while practicing cause it's not a speedy process. I SERIOUSLY recommend checking out work of Dr Betty Dodson, sex educator who taught many people how to overcome this. She answered this question on youtube. She's inspirational and more people should be aware of her work. Tensing your muscles stops the easy flow of orgasm wave through your body and feels like an explosion or implosion while tension free orgasm lasts longer and feels like multiple waves you can ride with practice. Also sounds like a song compared to tension grunts.",
"I believe it isn't as much the tensing bringing the orgasm as the orgasm bringing the tension. When you orgasm, for both men and women, muscles tense and cause an explosion of, well there isn't really a sciency word for it, sexual excitement. Now my answer is somewhat wrong as it is believed that it is the tensing of muscles around certain glands that cause this release, but in reference to the leg tensing I do believe that it is a product of the orgasm as opposed to a cause. If you would like to think of it this way an orgasm is commonly thought of in stages, there is the build up when you first scratch the edges of orgasm, the plateau where almost maximum pleasure is achieved (usually where you begin to feel the tension in your legs), the release where the maximum pleasure is commonly achieved (usually when you find that tension at it's max or releasing) , and then the fall (or the afterglow as some call it). Some stages can be enhanced by a change in pace or motion or can be skipped over all together depending on the person. For males the orgasm tends to be shorter and more focused, and for women the orgasm tends to be an all over experience, although this is not solid fact as orgasms and sex are fairly hard to research reliably due to sex being a rather personalized experience and hard to generalize."
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691ykn | Why exactly is it that 2 negatives make a positive? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"because the first one is negative. The second one reverses the first one. A car is blue. A car is NOT blue. A car is NOT, NOT blue. < --- so, the car IS blue then.",
"A good analogy from another thread on this was a car on a road. Assume a North-South Road with North being + Car can face North (+) and go forward (+) = travel North (+) Car can face South (-) and go forward (+) = travel South (-) Car can face North (+) and go reverse (-) = travel South (-) Car can face South (-) and go reverse (-) = travel North (+)",
"In English, they don't. It's just that back in the late 1800s, a number of English speakers started trying to import Latin rules into their English in an effort to make their English sound more \"proper\" than that of the unwashed masses. Whether or not one acquiesced to this change signaled how submissive one was to authority figures. English was divided, into those who spoke \"properly\", and those who spoke the way English had always been spoken, with \"improper\" speech becoming grounds for prejudice. It's possible you ain't never heard of nothing like that before. It is *impossible* that you needed to count the negatives in the preceding sentence in order to understand the meaning (assuming, of course, you are a native speaker). Sometimes negatives counteract each other. Other times they accentuate each other. It isn't difficult to discern which case is which, and the only reason to argue otherwise is pedantry motivated by a desire to assert one's superior class.",
"The negative is the additive inverse. That is, if you have a number and you add another number to it, you can add the negative of the second number to the result to get the first number back again. An inverse is literally just the same thing in reverse. Imagine it like turning 180°. If you do it twice, you're facing the original direction again.",
"~~You've got ten dollars in the bank. You have a debt of 5 dollars to the bank. The bank offers you a coupon which cancels your debt. Equation:~~ ~~(+10) - (-5) = positive 15~~ You are taking away a debt. It's as if you have harvested 20 apples, but you need to give 10 of them to your robot overlords, which means you would have 10 to keep yourself. Suddenly, the robot overlords die inexplicably or no longer require apples to function. You no longer owe those 10 apples, therefore you now have 20 apples to keep yourself. EDIT: crossed out the idiotic parts",
"if you're willing to follow a little bit of silly but not at all too complicated math: (1 + -1)^2 = (0) ^2 (because 1 + -1 is 0) (1 + -1)^2 = (1)*(1) +(-1)*(1) + (-1)*(1) +(-1)*(-1) (Quite a few 1's, but it's just the distributive property) 1*1 is 1 1*(-1) = -1 (by the definition of 1, anything multiplied by 1 is itself) so with some cleaning up that gives 1 + -1 + -1 + (-1)(-1) and this equals 0 by the first line. so then the 1 and first -1 cancel: 0 + -1 +(-1)(-1) = 0 and then solve (-1)(-1) = 1 and from here it should be clear why it works for all negative numbers, take -5*-9 = (-1)(5)(-1)(9) and you just collect the -1's to get 1."
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6933lj | Telling people not to sleep and to fight loss of consciousness after a serious injury | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Having people stay awake is mostly for diagnostic purposes. Whether they can stay awake is a data point, and if they are awake you can ask questions. We naturally want to sleep so the body can repair itself, sleep on its own is actually okay in most cases."
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693b8l | - If camera lenses are circular, why are pictures rectangles? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The lens is not what actually captures the image. The lens focuses the light and allows it in to whatever type of sensor you are using, such as a CCD for a digital camera, or chemically treated film for an old camera. It's the shape of the sensor that determines the shape of the photograph.",
"They can be circular the shape of pictures has to do with the media receiving light from the lens Typically film is either on a strip or a plate, but you could expose a round negative, or with digital the I believe CMOS sensor is typically rectangular but there's probably no reason you couldn't make it round or any other shape.",
"Many people have answered that the sensor is rectangular, but this, in my mind, just brings up other questions. Like: why would the sensor be rectangular? As far as I've understood this is because the human field of vision is more wide than it's tall. There is a post on stackexchange with a bunch of details and a short paragraph explaining below them. URL_0",
"Because the photo sensor is rectangular! If you take a lens constructed for an APSC sensor and mount it on a camera with a full frame sensor (which is larger than an APSC sensor), the picture will be circular but the image itself (like the file on the camera or your pc) will still be rectangular. That basically shows the effect of the lens and the function of the sensor :)"
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693ycc | sometimes when I'm falling asleep I'll jolt myself awake and feel like I tripped over my feet and was falling, my co-workers say they experience this also. Is there any explanation? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's called a [hypnic jerk]( URL_0 ) and apparently happens to lots of people. I like the possible explanation that the primate part of your brain thinks you're about to fall out of your tree."
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695pz8 | How did bigbang happen and where did the stuff before bigbang came from? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There currently is no known answer to these questions. There are a bunch of theories, but scientifically, we know little to nothing of the moment of the big bang and anything that may have happened before it.",
"I think the best explanation I read of it so far was: \"In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.\" basically for the time before the big bang you have to switch off your common sense, as the big bang seems to have been the time when universal standards like time and dimensions came into being. So there was no before, because there was no time before.",
"I have always liked the big bounce theory, the gist (to my understanding anyway) is that the universe expands to a point where it can't sustain itself, collapses in on itself and once it reaches a point of infinitesimal smallness and density re-expands into a new universe, perhaps with new laws of physics, rinse and repeat for eternity. Maybe the energy from the collapse of the old universe transfers to the new universe allowing the expansion. A new question is raised with this theory is how did it all begin and if this theory is correct how many universes have there been before?"
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696mtt | Why do some sounds make people shudder/cringe? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I believe that would be because of [Sensory Overload.]( URL_0 ) Where when one of the body's senses gets so overwhelmed by stimuli, it is unable to handle what it's processing. Some people have sensory processing disorder, where this sort of feeling can be easily caused by other things, such as a crowd of people talking, or the sound of fabric scraping against itself."
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696trn | How does my phone/laptop measure what percentage of its battery's charge is left? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Let's say a there is a battery with 2V. This battery may be full at 2V and 1V when allmost empty. Your phone or your laptop will take that voltage reading and will calculate how much power has left to your device. This is the way where you calculate the percentage by measuring the voltage. To be more specific your phone uses a fuel gauge ( Coulomb counter ) which measures the consumed current , then it compares it with the battery capacity and shows you the percentage. This cant be totally precise because of the way some batteries work. LiIon batteries which operate at low temperatures can lose some of their power and the counter isn't able to calculate it. Also batteries after some years lose some of their \"health\" due to overcharging, damages or other issues. This has as a result of inaccurate percentages from the coulomb counter."
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699i59 | Why do we enjoy and have emotional reactions to music? | Why do I get a tingling sensation down my spine when certain tones in music play? Why do certain a songs make me cry? Why do I play songs on repeat when I'm exercising intensely because it seems to give me more energy? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One of the many reasons(I'm not claiming to know them all btw) is that music is made up of fundamental frequencies. What's interesting about this is that our brains naturally resonate with fundamental frequencies and from this we feel something from the music. However this idea isn't just limited to music but it is limited to frequencies below our hearing range. For example say if somebody was to play a sound whose fundamental frequency was 11hz(not entirely sure if this is the right number) and if they did it loud enough, it would hurt the listeners eyeballs because the eyeballs themselves have a fundamental frequency of 11hz. In a nutshell because songs are made up of a number of different ones, utilising different timbres, across different instruments they resonate with our own fundamental frequency. I'm not entirely sure if If I've got all of the science correct(amateur music producer) but it's roughly there."
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699vyg | What is the difference between fascism and communism? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That's not really an apples-to-apples question. Communism is a set of economic systems that share certain characteristics - mostly that the workers (manifested as the communist government) owns and operates the means of production. So, ostensibly, the people who make shit are in charge of what happens to that shit and how it gets distributed. This is pretty much as far Left as you can go. There is no private property - all property is held communally, but this in practice means the government runs everything. Karl Marx had a phrase that summed this up: \"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs\". Strictly speaking, communism is economics only, and all other baggage with that (say, in Soviet Russia, or Mao's China, or Cuba) is not really part of communism per se. Typically communist governments devolve into totalitarianism before too long, but it's important to note that this isn't really part of communism as such. Fascism is a very loose term that can apply to many different situations. The terms as we use it comes from Mussolini's Italy, and basically it's a super-right-wing nationalist ethnocentric militant government (in rhetoric or violence) that puts the nation state above the individual. There's not *really* any specific economic system associated with fascism, but usually it starts with free market capitalism and then the state will take over businesses or co-opt them to work for the state, so in that regard it can resemble communism a bit. As you might be able to tell, extreme sets of ideologies break down the Left-Right spectrum of politics, as they kind of wrap back up on each other. There are other interpretations of the political spectrum that account for this, such as the [Horseshoe Theory]( URL_0 )."
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699zc4 | Why are there two different screwdrivers (Phillips and Flathead) Wouldn't it be much more useful to just only use Phillips head? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Slotted screws have been around for centuries. Phillips head screws came about in the 1930's. The Phillips head was better for assembly lines because it works better with power screwdrivers. With a regular slotted screw, you have to line up the screwdriver in the slot just right. You also risk overtightening if you keep applying torque. With a Phillips head, if you get the tip of the screwdriver anywhere near the center of the slot it will slide into place. And since the slot is more shallow, if you keep apply torque after the screw is tightened, the screwdriver will slip out of the slot. Both of those things were important for power screwdrivers since it could be a pain to line them up perfectly with screws on a fast moving assembly line and because it was easy to overtighten with them. Slotted screws still have some advantages, though. The slot can usually be deeper, which helps it resist stripping. And if you do strip it, you can always make the slot deeper on your own. A Phillips screwdriver requires machinery to make and strips more easily since the slot is shallower. Also, you can use almost anything to turn a slotted screw if you don't have a screwdriver on you, whereas you need a Phillips head screwdriver to turn a Phillips head screw.",
"There are lots of different types of head, each with their own benefits. A flathead for example is very easy to machine compared to others. Other screw heads may be less likely to cam out, or be *designed* to cam out so as to protect against stripping the threads. Still others are just obscure so as to discourage unauthorized or unskilled persons poking around where they shouldn't.",
"There's actually a lot more than just these 2 types, and it's mainly all about application. The slotted screw head was one of the most common because it's cheap to make and can be easily screwed in by hand, but it was prone to the screw driver slipping out or being off center, so someone created the Phillips head, where the screw driver would self center and have a smaller chance of slipping out, so that's one of the most common now. But with these 2 types, stripping the head was a common issue in higher torque applications, especially when an electric driver is used, so other kinds were invented, such as hex bolts, used with sockets. Allen/hex heads, for example, were made to be used in tighter/smaller areas."
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69a3t8 | When your nose is blocked, why does each nostril take it in turns to block/unblock depending on what side you're lying down on? | Why can't they decide? I have a cold :( | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Actually the answer to this question is a little known fact about the human body. Our noses have cavities. These cavities are the tubes that bring the air we breath through our nose into the lungs. Rather than being clear tubes where the air can just pass right through, our nasal cavities have inward projections called turbinates which serve to narrow the passage and increase the overall surface area of the cavity. Why is surface area important? Our noses act to humidify the air we breathe so it does not dry out our lower airways and the increased surface area allows more of this humidifying to occur. Now, what most people do not know is we have something called a nasal cycle. This cycle happens every day, automatically, and it serves many purposes. What happens during this cycle is the walls of the nasal cavity fill with blood in one nostril and they decrease blood in the other nostril. This effectively narrows one of the cavities and opens another one. This happens every day but usually we don't notice it because both cavities still remain open. When we are sick, the walls of the cavities are already inflamed and narrow so when the cycle fills one side with blood, this side becomes even more narrow and eventually blocked. For more info look up nasal cycle."
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69c2zi | Why is it if you pick up someone when they are limp (dead weight) it feels heavier than when they're not? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When being picked up you subconsciously shift your weight. If you are unconscious, then you aren't an active participant anymore, this your weight isn't being shifted to assist the person picking you up"
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69c9ze | What's the difference between a 32 bit and 64 bit computer? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Inside the processor are chunks of memory that hold a single value, called a \"register.\" In a 32 bit processor, the registers are 32 bits \"wide\", meaning they hold a 32 bit chunk of data. In a 64 bit processor, they hold a chunk of data that's 64 bits wide. A special register, called the \"stack pointer\" holds onto an \"address\" which holds the location in memory of data that the processor uses to load things into its other registers, or to store the data when it's done. Each possible value of the stack pointer is the address of a single byte (8 bits) of data. If the processor has a 32 bit wide stack pointer register, that means it can access up to 2^32 different bytes of data in memory. That's just over 4GB of memory. Plenty for the vast majority of applications, but it's a limitation. If the processor has a 64 bit wide stack pointer register, it can access 2^64 bytes of data, which is around 16 exabytes of memory (16 million terabytes). Clearly that's a winner. In addition, decimal numbers are commonly stored as 32 bit values. With some trickery, you can use a 64 bit register to hold two 32 bit values and process them at the same time. This can speed up some calculations. I should mention that accessing more than 4GB of memory is possible with modern computers, which use some extra tricks to get around the issue. In addition, modern Intel based processors have a few 128 bit wide registers that are used to process four 32 bit numbers or two 64 bit numbers at the same time. If you see a piece of software that requires \"SSE\" support, that's what it's referencing. Lastly, highly optimized software manipulates the fact that values are stored as 32 bits on older processors. Without the processor manufacturing offering backwards compatibility with the new hardware, or the developer reworking the software, it won't necessarily work on a 64 bit system if it was designed to work on a 32 bit system. This is more rare than you would think, because most people aren't manipulating bits at the processor level. It still pops up in some multimedia software.",
"The value refers to the size of the processor's registers. A register is simply where the processor stores a value for computation. So a 32 bit processor can compute values up to 2^31 or 22,147,483,647. Why not 2^32 you ask? Because the last bit is used to encode the sign + or -). A 64 bit processor can compute values up to 2^63 or 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. This has implications for memory limits as well. A 32 bit processor can only address around 4 Gigabytes of memory where as a 64 bit processor can address around 16 Terabytes! Of course no PC exists that has 16 Terabytes of RAM, but the old 4 Gigabyte limit was a serious impediment to personal computing, which is why all personal computers nowadays use 64 bit processors."
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69dnkf | What is the source code of a game? Why was the golden disk so valuable? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"TL,DR: A source code is a recipe to a cake. The final game is the cake itself. It's far harder to change an ingredient after* baking the cake and finding what ingredients are in a cake given just the cake can be difficult. There are three questions here: 1. What is a source code? 2. Do we as consumers not get the source when we get the game? 3. What is a golden disk (or a master copy) starting at the top: A source code is the actual human-readable code that the developers write and maintain. It is in plain text, often well commented for clarity and well structured for appearance. Given the source code anyone with programming knowledge can change the game, and even release their own version and potentially profit (illegally). Two: While the source code is understandable by humans computers don't know what to do with some letters in a file. What you get on your game disc is compiled, which describes the \"code\" the computer can understand. This sequence of numbers can be understood by the computer, but is just a string of numbers and thus humans usually can't understand or modify it. Even if you use some program (called a decompiler) to turn the byte code back into some human source code it will usually loose all structure, have generated and non-descriptive variable names, and have no comments, making it a pain to read (not mentioning that decompiling a program usually is against the terms of service.) A master disc (a gold disc) is the final version of a games source code, when a game goes gold the source code and executable is printed onto a disc to indicate no further changes are to be made to the game and it is ready for production. This dates back when albums where pressed on a gold vinyl before publishing: all further records would be copied from this gold master record. In summary: this is a source code as we would see it: //this is a comment, This is ignored by the computer. #include < iostream > using namespace std; //This is a program that prints \"hello, world!\" int main(){ cout < < \"Hello, World!\"; //Prints hello world to screen. return 0; //Exit. } While this program might look like this to the computer when compiled. 0x00 0xff 0xaf 0xaf 0x00 0xab 0x14 0x15 0x16 0xab 0xff 0xf3 0x00 ..... you get the idea Which isn't really easy to change. If I wanted the program to also print the name of the user I could add that change into the source in less than 20 seconds. I'd take a lot lot longer to even begin to find where and what bytes to splice into the byte code.",
"We dont actually get the source code when buying software in general. The Files distributed are actually just executives protected by DRM, or in common language, software protection. Lets take the starcraft example, The programmers made the source code, the pure code as-is, this is raw code, not protected, nor encrypted, and plainly readable/editable/copyable. If this code would be stolen, the perpetrators could make changes to this code and release it as their own. They could also learn the secrets and mechanics other people have worked hard for and simply just copy or use this in their own project. Now, When a game/software gets released, this source code gets protected, built into executables, DLL's etc. this is obfuscated code and nearly impossible to reverse-engineer without going to great lengths and in best case only achieving limited success. Without these measures there would be stolen software and code everywhere.",
"But my question is: why would it be valuable to them NOW? Sure, if he returned it to them years ago before they had to write a new one - holy shit yeah. But now? They already started over and completed the game...so what's the big deal?"
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69e4ca | - how does antibiotic resistance work? | I understand antibiotic resistance is a major concern, but if it's random mutations that cause the resistance, wouldn't these happen anyway, making the bacteria resistant without ever coming into contact with the antibiotic ? Or is there something else that allows them to build a resistance, like humans and chillies; if you eat them regularly you can build a resistance. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So you're taking an antibiotic. It's helps kill bacteria. But in that population of bacteria it kills off the weakest first (the ones without this mutation for resistance). You keep taking the antibiotics and the bacteria keep dying. Except those with the highest resistance. They're still around and now they have the freedom to multiply. So now when they grow and a new population is formed, they're all clones of this highly resistant bacteria forming a population of resistant bacteria",
"It's evolution really. Since bacteria replicate so fast, their evolution is way faster. The problem with resistance is not that it exists, but because if you use antibiotics the wrong way, for too little time or for things that don't need it, the few resistant bacteria will survive while the others dont, leaving all the food to the resistant ones, whoch will then become even more resistant and multiply, no longer harmed by antibiotics.",
"Your right because it's a random mutation a bacterium could become resistant to an antibiotic even if it never encounters it. But the important question is whether this bacterium will multiply and continue multiplying fast than its dieing. For example if a bacterium becomes resistant to a antibiotic but also become less effective at gathering food as a trade off in an environment where there is non of that antibiotic then that bacteria will likely die off because being resistant to that antibiotic doesn't benefit it in any way and those bacteria that can gather food better than it will reproduce fast taking up more food till there isn't any food left for the antibiotic resistance bacteria. But if it was in an environment where there was that antibiotic then it wouldn't matter that is was worse at gathering food because all the other bacteria would be killed off so they don't have to compete for the food. (Not my area of expertise please correct me if I've got something wrong)",
"A very short and non-technical explanation I remember from a microbiology course is this: You killed everything that wasn't resistant to the antibiotic so the ones that were are all that remain to reproduce. You do this enough and nothing will be able to be killed by the antibiotic in question. . . as you've already killed everything that could have been. The whole \"the strong survive\" thing. The people not taking the entire course of antibiotics is a problem too because some of the bacteria aren't COMPLETELY resistant to the antibiotic, but a bit stronger than the rest. If you had taken all your pills they would have died too but since you didn't they get to live and make more bacteria with the same and/or more resistance to that antibiotic. Edit to add: Some microorganisms can also pass their genetic info laterally (like to it's \"sister\" and not exclusively to the \"children\") so the DNA that encodes this resistance can be spread among current generations as well and not limited to offspring.",
"So today you have 1 billion bacteria we need to get rid of, so we give you amoxicillin, which we determined is able to kill it. We took a sample so we know for sure. Unfortunately, of the 1 billion bacteria, 1,000 of them randomly got a thicker cell wall. One in a million chance. It didn't show up on the culture because only one in a million have this thick wall. So you take your amoxicillin. And it works great. Let's assume ideal conditions and it killed 100% of the susceptible bacteria. Let's also assume your body is totally incapable of killing the rest. Now you have 1,000 bacteria in your body, 100% of which amoxicillin cannot help you. It grows back. You are back to 1 billion bacteria in your body. Your friend comes in contact with you and gets this new bacterial infection. Now you both need stronger antibiotics. Except, randomly, .0001% of those billion messed up making their sodium pump, and now it expels the new drug... Obviously the mechanisms of defense will be different, the body will play a large role in killing the infections, and the percents won't be as clean, but that is the general idea.",
"Everyone else has the \"kill the weak, save the resistant\" side explained, but we havent really explained the \"why wouldnt they just become resistant evem without antibiotics\". Its simply because evolution/natural selection selects for what is better than what came before in a given environment. Without antibiotic flushing, antibiotic resistance just isnt terribly useful, so while its not deleted from the gene pool, its just not going to propagate because it has no discernable benefits.",
"> I understand antibiotic resistance is a major concern, but if it's random mutations that cause the resistance, wouldn't these happen anyway, making the bacteria resistant without ever coming into contact with the antibiotic ? Yes, but without the antibiotics in the bacteria's environment there is nothing to promote that mutation over any other, so that resistant bacteria will just be one in billions, insignificant, it will be as likely as all the others to reproduce and survive because there is in their environment it has no advantage, and it's genetics will continue to be insignificant. If the antibiotic is present that bacteria will stand out - survive and reproduce, while the non resistant will die. sooner or later all surviving bacteria will be descendants of that first random mutation that happened to resistant. It's not really that simple actually, resistance isn't black or white. some mutation may give some resistance and multiple mutations over generations may be needed to develop sufficient resistance. If there isn't the antibiotic around all the required mutations would not happen do develop on the same bacteria, so none would be sufficiently resistant."
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69eihe | Why fish meat is vastly different to all meats from land animals | What I mean is fish is pale and flakes apart whereas most land animal meat doesn't flake and is a lot tougher to eat and cut, what is it that causes this difference as they are both just muscle tissue I thought? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> fish is pale Most fish is \"white meat\" (even salmon, which is pink because of fish diet, not because it's made of \"dark meat\"). This is because these muscles are used for occasional movements and not for constant swimming. The most common exception is some tuna meat, since tuna are very active swimmers. > and flakes apart The flakes you see are [myomeres]( URL_0 ), bands of muscle tissue in the body that allow the fish to swim with a fishy wiggling motion. Most of the meat you eat from land animals comes from the limb muscles, and isn't segmented like this. You can see the remnants of such segmentation on the body (eg, ab muscles) but even there it's not set up in the same way and doesn't provide the flake.",
"There are a few reasons for the difference, the main being the difference in lifestyle. The muscles of a fish are adapted for swimming, whereas muscles of mammals are adapted for moving on land. This means animals need larger, thicker muscles to combat gravity to walk around on land, instead of having natural buoyancy from the ocean. Therefore the muscles are flakier and less dense.",
"With regards to colour, mammals have red muscles because of the presence of myoglobin. This protein is absent in the majority of the muscles found in most fish. Myoglobin is an oxygen binding protein that is found in muscles (Similar to hemoglobin in blood). In fish the majority of the muscles (white muscles) are used for bursts of speed and are anaerobic (do not require oxygen). Due to not needing oxygen, an oxygen binding protein is not needed. The grey flesh of the fish near the skin, is the muscles it uses to swim constantly. URL_0",
"No one has mentioned gravity in these answers. Fish have a much finer skeleton and different muscle mass mainly because they are supported by the water against the effects of gravity whereas land animals have to fight gravity using their muscles to support themselves in an upright position. Fish muscles are therefore used in a different way. This is why pound for pound, farmed fish add mass far quicker than farmed land animals",
"if you've eaten frog, you'll see that their meat is like a cross between fish and land animal meat.",
"Nobody has mentioned whale meat, which looks a lot like how beef would look if cows evolved to swim."
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69eyst | Why can we eat certain food raw (or almost, i.e. steak, sashimi) but not others (chicken, pork)? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's due to food poisoning (bacteria) and parasite risk. All sashimi-grade fish are flash-frozen to kill off any parasites that may be in the meat. In addition, most sashimi fish are from salt water so it is less likely for the parasites to survive in our non-salt water bodies. Certain fresh water sashimi like mackerel (Saba) have to be pickled beforehand to get rid of fresh water parasites that have an easier time living in our bodies. Steak can be eaten nearly raw because of the large pieces of meat. If you have a large piece of meat, only the outside can be exposed to bacteria. If you cut out the inside, it is generally free from contamination. However, if you ground the entire piece of beef, the grounding mixes the outside with the inside, increasing risk of contamination. Chicken and pork end up carrying a lot more possible food poisoning issues (salmonella and parasites) than beef or sheep. There's also an issue due to the way we raise huge numbers of them and slaughter them which raises the risk of contamination in general (also applies to beef but as stated before, you can get larger cuts of meat from cattle). This is why cooking chicken and pork thoroughly is highly recommended."
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69f9f0 | How does Gerrymandering occur for the borders to be drawn up. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"States are allowed to draw up their Congressional lines, meaning they get to decide where the boundaries are for their Congressional districts. These boundaries constantly change because people move within the state and the population of the states change and with that change the number of districts they have to carve out causing a complete rework of the boundaries. Previously the Supreme Court has ruled that states have to *gerrymander* their districts to provide African American/black voters a Congressional district when possible. The idea behind this was that they wanted to increase black representation in Congress. So you're not allowed to draw your Congressional lines in such a way as to reduce the impact of black voters, in fact, you often have to draw them in ways to increase their representation. Now this gets weird, because some states can easily carve up their black populations neatly (or not neatly) into one or two Congressional districts and basically give away that seat to Democrats while reducing their voting block for the surrounding districts and help ensure they remain Republican or give Republicans a better chance at winning them. So if they do that, the courts can rule against them for race based gerrymandering, which is a very contentious issue because the Supreme Court has already mandated that they have to gerrymander in ways that discriminate against non-black/minority voters. So those rulings and legal battles get very interesting where they have a very tight line they have to balance on and intent is typically the deciding factor and needs to be proven the court. Historically, most of the challenges to gerrymandering has been in regards to these race based lines. Either too much preferential treatment towards minorities, or not enough. The Wisconsin case that is going to the Supreme Court is a little more unique because the judges ruled that it isn't a racial thing, it's a party affiliation thing and that they intended to disenfranchise voters of a particular political party. They are saying this violates the 1st and 14th amendment by drawing lines based on presumed party affiliation. If this is confirmed by the Supreme Court we can assume that the minority party in many states will file suit against their state for politically biased districts since essentially every state's majority party who gets to draw the lines does this. And Republicans happen to have the majority in the most states so it could have greater impacts on their ability to hold seats in the House of Reps. It could also have some impacts on the highly influential Congressional Black Caucus who have been reaping the rewards of gerrymandering for some time now. The interesting thing about gerrymandering is that Democrats win the majority of the most gerrymandered districts. But, Republicans are more likely to have drawn those lines. As an example, check out one of the most gerrymandered districts: [NC 12th District]( URL_5 ). This district was drawn in such a convoluted way which gave advantage to a black female Democrat like [Alma Adams]( URL_1 ) to win this seat and she sits as the chair of the NC Legislative Chair of their Black Caucus. Black Americans make up ~20% of NC, but they make up nearly 50% of this district. Is this district highly gerrymandered? YES. Was it illegal or where they just following the guidelines by the Supreme Court to give advantage to black representation? Up to a court to decide. But if this district is redrawn you'd potentially lose Alma Adams, the Black Caucus chair and people would say Republicans were racist for changing it. As you can see this can be hotly debated and quite fascinating in my opinion. Another great example of gerrymandering is the Louisiana 2nd district. This district was purposely gerrymandered to great a \"majority-minority\" district to protect against race based gerrymandering in the 1980s. Ironic, yes, but that's the law and what was done. This seat is occupied by Cedric Richmond. He is the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus for the federal government. If the Supreme Court decides against Wisconsin and Democrats start attacking Republican gerrymandering to their benefit, will Republicans attack districts like Cedric Richmond's which was purposely gerrymandered for race/political biases to get a black politician elected? And if they do, what would be the race relations from such a move? Again, high stakes and tremendously interesting. Some more race based gerrymandered districts: Brenda Lawrence - [Michigan's 14th]( URL_4 ). CBC Secretary. John Conyers - [Michigan's 13th] ( URL_3 ). CBC Member, Dean of House of Reps Elijah Cummings - [Maryland's 7th] ( URL_0 ). CBC. Ranking Member of Congressional Oversight and Reform Committee Sheila Jackson Lee - [Texas 18th] ( URL_2 ). CBC. Thinks Neil Armstrong planted a flag on Mars, complains Hurricane names are too white, thinks the constitution is 400 years old, thinks Congress writes Executive Orders for President Obama, etc.",
"There are two types of Gerrymanders: \"Packing\" districts and \"cracking\" districts. For packing, district lines are drawn so that a disproportionate amount of voters from the minority party are in a single district. While this hands that district over to that party, the surrounding districts now have very few members of the minority party, and so will be easily won by the majority party each year. When districts are \"cracked\", lines are redrawn so that, rather than members of one party having a vast majority in one district, they are dispersed across multiple districts. This gives that party a slight majority, enabling them to win congressional seats."
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69fd5j | Why do CGI use the color green for their background? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"so what these programs do is take any color you want, and remove it from the shot. You can then overlay other things on top of that color. By that definition, you can use any color you want, as long as the live elements of the shot that you do want to keep don't also have that color. Green has the least interference with things like human skin. If you were to use reds/oranges, skin would start to flicker because there's a bit of those colors on skin. Blue was popular in the early days for this, but green seems to be what reacts to skin the least.",
"Because green is the farthest color away from any natural hair or skin tone. If you were to use another color, it'd cause really bad clipping. So, using green is the safest bet."
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69fd6j | How do batteries work? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Electricity, as you may know, is the flow of electrons from one place to another. So in a battery, you put two different metals in there. One of them has extra electrons that it wants to give, the other one is missing electrons and wants to take them. We call this an electrochemical reaction. Electrons flow from the anode (the negative end) over to the cathode (the positive end.) Eventually the anode stops being able to give up electrons, so either the battery is dead and you have to chuck it, or else you have to apply external current to reverse the flow of electrons (in a rechargeable battery)"
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69fype | Why do MRIs cost so much in the US compared to India | I recently had a minor ankle injury and the doctor wanted and recommended an MRI. I'm in Ohio and I was quoted $2100 by the hospital to get an MRI on my ankle. I have an HSA so this would have been all out of pocket. I already had a work trip scheduled to India so I waited it out for 2.5 weeks until I got there to find out how much an MRI procedure cost. I was quoted $110, after converting the Indian Rupee to USD, for the MRI. The MRI machine was a Siemens machine and looked fairly new. I went ahead and had the MRI done in India and brought the images back to my doctor in the US and he was able to make a diagnosis and was shocked at the price I paid for the MRI. I know the fee I paid was not subsidized. Can someone please explain to me why the US pays soo much more for the MRI then our Asian counterparts when the results we get are the same? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not just asia. Compare US prices to those paid even next door in Canada. This is the same for almost all medical care - in America you pay much more for the same thing. In all 3 of those countries an MRI machine costs a lot of money. In two of those countries that MRI machine will be utilized to the fullest because of market forces; India doesn't have enough rich people to pay inflated rates so they need to recoup the cost in smaller increments, in Canada the government who is paying most medical bills is a strong negotiator so again they must be efficient and productive to make a profit. In the US however you simply have sick people who are in no position to negotiate - the consumers overwhelming desire to continue *living* removes the choice of the free market, creating the conditions for an easy monopoly even among a number of 'competing' entities. In such a position the MRI machine owner has a choice - operate the machine 24 hours a day at $500 per patient, or operate it for 6 hours a day at $2000 per patient. Sure many patients can't afford those rates but since you only need to serve a few to make the same gross (and a higher profit once operating expenses are subtracted) it's actually better to serve fewer patients. Sure that means 3 out of 4 people get no care while the one who does might go into bankruptcy but it means more money in the pocket of the MRI owner.",
"1. The US has a culture of lawsuits and so, the cost of these is priced in to the cost of treatment, which India does not. 2. The profit motive is stronger in the US than other countries. I live in Spain now, but used to, until fairly recently, live in the US. My wife was diagnosed with stage 0 breast cancer a few years ago here. Total cost of her treatment was 90 euro (around US$100). I shudder to think how much the treatment would cost in the States. It would be higher even though she has US insurance."
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69fzuk | Why do hangovers worsen with age? | For instance, why are my hangovers worse at age 18 versus 25. I know part of it is just getting old, but it can't be the only reason. I'm very hungover right now. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dh6a2dh"
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"The biggest factor is your liver. As you age your liver doesn't produce antioxidants as well as it used to, the alcohol stays in your system longer than it used to, and you get more hangovers. Given you seem to have been drinking since you were 18, you've also probably fattened up your liver a bit (alcohol = calories, those calories usually don't get fully utilized = fat in liver), further decreasing how well your liver can cope with bursts of drinking."
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69gs28 | Why haven't we developed an immunity towards the common cold and flu? | I mean most people will get either one or both every year...why haven't we as species developed an immunity against it until now? Wouldn't our bodies know how to fight it the moment we get it? Edit: if it mutates all the time how are medications working? How would they be able to fight different mutations..known and unknown and our bodies cannot? Edit: does it mean then that if I am already sick and wash my teeth on theory I shouldn't get sick again for reusing the same toothbrush as I should have developed an imunity to this strain? Why do we have to change toothbrushesh after being sick then? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dh6g32y"
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"The problem with the flu is that it is one of the diseases that mutate the most, it may be very simple, but it mutates so often that as the body develops resistance, the flu is already changing to infect another human in a different way :)"
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69gwum | What is a source code? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dh6hjl1",
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"text": [
"Programmers create code by typing in instructions such as [this]( URL_1 ), and that is the \"source code.\" The processor chip on your computer doesn't understand that; processors only understand 1's and 0's, so after the \"source code\" is typed, they apply a program called a \"compiler\" to translate the words and human-readable instructions that you see in the source code into 1's and 0's that the processor understands. So when you get the installation disk for a program, say Microsoft Office, if you look at the files that are included in the disk, you'll only see the binary executable files that the computer understands. The disk doesn't have any of the source code. And because the disk doesn't have any of the source code, you can't read through to check if Microsoft has put instructions in their Office program to steal all your data. Companies usually don't give out the source code for their programs and apps, because it's proprietary and they don't want the competition to steal their coding ideas and make a better program. However, some programmers and some companies do provide the source code; this is called \"[open source]( URL_0 )\" (as in, anyone can open and read it if they want to), and it's usually done to show that there are not hidden tricks in the code.",
"Computer programs are constructed of sequences of binary values that, when run through computer circuits, perform various logical operations. Obviously this would be extremely difficult to write by hand when making more complex programs such as games, so to try to make things more friendly \"programming languages\" were developed. These languages allow logical sequences to be constructed with human-friendly terms and then to be \"compiled\" into the actual binary code of the program by a specialized program. \"Source code\" is the human-friendly language for the program before it is compiled. Once it is compiled it is a hopelessly dense and confusing mess, but the source code is easy to read, understand, and change."
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69iez6 | What material form is fire? is it solid, liquid or gas? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dh6tzz2"
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"text": [
"Except for very hot fires (which can be ionized (charged) enough to become plasma), fire is just very hot gas being created by the process of combustion, and moving up rapidly and cooling because it's far more buoyant compared to the much cooler air around it. The light is \"blackbody radiation\", which in simple terms is the same reason stoves glow red-hot, or metal glows when it's heated, or stars shine as they undergo nuclear reactions. The reaction of burning creates heat, and being hot gives off light. Our own body heat gives off this same light, actually, except it's at a lower wavelength than visible light, and this is what infrared cameras see."
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69isdt | Why is Africa so underdeveloped and has not kept up with the rest of the world? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dh6wqcv"
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"text": [
"It's catching up now pretty quickly. The reason they're underdeveloped on average is because they got screwed by Europe and weren't allowed to develop the proper way due to that. Once they finish recovering it's fine. You see similar patterns in several other regions too."
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69jr26 | What are the differences between communism and socialism? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dh75q7y",
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"text": [
"Socialism is when the government owns or regulates parts of society that could be a privately owned businesses. For example, the police, firefighters, roads, post office, public schools, public parks, and military are all examples of socialism. Some may say that socialism is the opposite of capitalism, but socialist systems and capitalist systems (privately owned businesses) usually go hand-in-hand. Every modern government uses a combination of both. Communism doesn't really fit in the socialist/capitalist model. The idea of communism is that you don't have to have private owners, or governments, deciding who owns what. Instead, society divides everything up based on who needs stuff, and everyone works as hard as they can to make everyone more stuff. It has sort of worked on very small scales, like in hunter-gatherer tribe or in little communes (hence the name.) Some may say that communism is a more extreme version of socialism, but this is not the goal of communism. In the past, when people tried to build communism, it didn't work, and the government devolved into totalitarian socialism. This gave people the idea that communism *is* totalitarian socialism. But this is kind of like saying \"anarchy is people killing you for your shoes.\" That's certainly one possible outcome of anarchy, but that's not the outcome anarchists are trying to achieve.",
"Communism is effectively a more extreme version of socialism. On paper (as in practice many socialist and basically ALL communist governments we've had throughout history were anything but!): * Basic Idea Under Communism, classes make no sense. Even top country leaders should be seen as nothing more than workers, and should have no more privileges or wealth than the lowliest cashier (truth be told cashiers deal with some seriously f**ked up sh*t though). Under Socialism Everyone should have access to the methods and means by which they can self-actualize, but how far you go remains mostly up to you. Nevertheless, the profits and returns from innovation and industry SHOULD benefit society as a whole. Most property is common, but small parts beyond the minimum can then be split off and owned by individuals once the needs of the population have been met. * Profit Under socialism, profit should be redistributed in accordance with the value of your work. Everyone benefits, but someone whose work was more important gets more. A goalie would be paid more than the right defender. The head programmer for a piece of software would be paid more than one of the ten marketing guys. Under Communism the profits are 'removed' and turned into more stuff. You get the prestige and glory of your position, but the janitor can have the same nice couch and widescreen TVs as the project manager. Any advances in production technology in particular are to be used to up *everybody*'s quality of life as soon as possible. * What did that mean? who owns what? Communism: Nobody. Technically everything including your shirt is just assigned to you as the user - often 'permanent' user. You need a house you get a house. You need a car you get a car. But when you die, your car does not become your son's second car: he needed a car he *got* a car. Your car is going to someone else who's about to need a car. Because it wasn't yours, it was everyone's. But if you needed something, you got it. Socialism: Individual luxuries and items are the individual's. That's your shirt. That's your bicycle. That's your glasses. That's your house. But any means of production or infrastructure, those are the state's to control, for everyone. The appartment building, the factory, the hospital, the school; all of those are \"everybody's\" and to be run as such. You don't get to own factory workers. You don't get to lord massive profits over them. But you CAN use the money you make for your hard work to buy yourself a nice dinner or a new watch. * Just one last thing: To be very clear, while we have had governments call themselves communist, not once in human history have we ACTUALLY had an ACTUAL communist country. North Korea's calling itself a Democracy too, after all. I think Star Trek's Federation is one, or somewhere in between Socialism and actual Communism depending on how you view the fact that when you die they'll probably just chuck everything into a replicator and turn it into other people's stuff."
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69kh26 | if video can be measured in frames per second, is there an equivalent unit for audio? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Yes, it's samples per second aka the sampling rate of an audio signal. When you convert analog sound to a digital format it is done by sampling the analog wave thousands of times a second to convert it into a number like a voltage. The higher the sampling rate, the greater the frequency in hz that can be represented. It ends up needing about twice the sampling rate, to correctly sample a specific frequency of sound. For instance if you need to record a 20,000hz analog soundwave, you need to sample it at 40,000 times a second or 44.1khz which is what music on a CD is sampled at. The other factor is the size of each sample which effects how many levels of sound it can encode for each sample. This is analogous to how many colors an image has. An 8 bit sample allows for 0-255 levels of sound, or 256 colors if it were photographic data. Where as a 16 bit sample allows for 0-65,355 levels or voltages, or 65,356 colors if it were an image. So a 16 bit 44.1khz wave file encodes 65,356 discrete \"loudness\" or voltages in each sample and it samples (or does it) 44,100 times a second.",
"Several people have mentioned that the sampling rate of a digital audio signal needs to be at least twice the highest frequency you want to accurately capture. This is called the Nyquist limit, and [I whipped up a quick graphic to explain why here.]( URL_0 ) The gist is that to produce a faithful representation of a continuous periodic function using finitely many data points, you need to have at least two points present in every period, or you won't have enough information to recreate the original signal. Real audio signals have many component frequencies, not just one like the pure tone in those images, so you need to decide what the maximum frequency you want to capture is, and then sample at least twice that often. For most people, human hearing really drops off past 20-25 kHz, so sampling at 40-50 kHz will sound good, hence the CD audio standard of 44.1 kHz.",
"For digital audio there is the sample rate. Audio is recorded in digital form by taking the amplitude of the sound wave at regular intervals. CD quality audio does this at 44.1kHz, in other words 44100 times a second."
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69l9nd | How does the Higgs field impart mass? | Sean Carrol uses the analogy of a crowded party where a physicist and Angelina Jolie show up and both try to get to the bar. Angelina finds it difficult to cross the room because everyone wants to meet her. She has much mass. The physicist has little trouble getting to the bar. He's a lightweight. The Higgs field he describes as something like molasses and particles with an affinity for the Higgs field get stuck in it and this appears to us as "mass". OK, this analogy has some rather serious flaws: For example, Newton's laws: *an object in motion remains in motion* (Even a heavy object does not stop once it is set in motion in space, especially a heavy object.) High mass only resists acceleration, not motion itself. The two analogies above treat the Higgs field like some kind of friction force. Moreover, mass generates gravity. The more massive the particle, the more gravity it puts out. So is the Higgs mechanism intimately tied to gravity? So a better layman's explanation is needed ... How does the Higgs field impart the quality of "mass" to other particles? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dh7h01u"
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"text": [
"Okay, so the way he describes mass is meant for people who don't care about the little details. The Higgs field makes it harder for particles to *accelerate*, not just slow them, which is where your understanding is correct. The analogy can't be really good because there's not much intuition behind anything quantum. As far as gravity goes, it turns out that gravity isn't based on mass, but on energy and momentum, the former of which can be intuitively derived from E = mc^2 and the latter can be intuitively derived from the actual equation Einstein gave, which takes into account relativity: E^2 = (p c)^2 + (m c^2 )^2 . So, the Higgs field links energy and momentum to mass. Edit: Whoops, forgot to mention, E is energy, m is mass, c is the \"speed of light\" constant, and p is momentum, which can be calculated with p = gamma m_0 v where m_0 is the resting mass, v is the velocity, and gamma is the Lorentz factor as given by gamma = 1/sqrt(1 - v^2 / c^2 ) where v and c are the same as above, velocity and \"speed of light\" respectively."
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69n62k | Why are toilet seats shaped like '0' at home and 'C' in public restrooms? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The cut out in the C shaped toilet seats is right where genitalia would touch if it was O shaped. The cut out prevents people from smearing their dirty crotch on the seat and transferring grossness to the next person. The cut out is NOT for males to try to pee in between.",
"Contrary to the top comment, the space is definitely there to counteract drops of urine. Since that is the area where urine most commonly drops while the person urinating is finishing it makes perfect sense for there to be no seat there thus eliminating the need for a person sitting down on the toilet to have to wipe up another person's urine.",
"[Uniform Plumbing Code]( URL_0 ) > “Water closet seats shall be properly sized for the water closet bowl type, and shall be of smooth, non-absorbent material. Seats, for public use, shall be of the elongated type and either of the open front type or have an automatic seat cover dispenser.”",
"Public restrooms are usually more industrially designed to allow a lot of people to do their business while making as easily clean-uppable a mess as possible. So unless the place is posh, they don't use toilet lids and the seats are C-shaped. Intent is for you to get your stuff done and get out, without making extra work for cleaning staff. Plus, one less thing to bang and break and have to replace. Home washroom toilets are designed with lids for a number of reasons: appeal, because they generally get a lot less traffic so there's not as much cleaning and wear-and-tear, and because you don't want to drop stuff that you use and store in your (usually smaller) bathroom in them accidentally.",
"I have done some research and the best I can come up with is the open c shape got adopted as code in many municipalities and the trend just continued to today. The c shaped seat doesn't seem to have any real commercial advantage and some even say they are a less robust design for a commercial use. Could be a case of, well that's just how we've always done it. Shoulder shrug."
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69q9zy | Why water spirals down the plug hole, and why it is spirals the other way in the opposite hemisphere | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dh8k1o1"
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"text": [
"It doesn't spiral the other way in the opposite hemisphere... That's a misconception. It just spirals whatever way it wants depending on how the water flows into the drain and other external factors etc. The rotation of the earth/gravity isn't strong enough for it to affect the direction water spirals into a drain."
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69u69k | why is removing your flash drive from the computer harmful and how does hitting eject on your computer make it safe to remove it? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dh9dnbg"
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"text": [
"When your flash drive is plugged in/mounted, your computer is accessing the files. When you hit the eject button, that is telling your computer to put everything back where it found it because you're about to remove the device. If you just pulled it out, there is a chance that your computer was modifying a file on it that could now be corrupted."
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69uuhm | Why are we not boiling thousands of gallons of seawater and collecting the steam? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The energy required to boil that much water would be pretty immense, and would leave a lot of salt residue behind. And, I mean, why would we?"
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69vq99 | Why do FM radio stations only end in odd numbers? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dh9qxj1"
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"text": [
"Radio station frequencies that have a .1 MHz difference would interfere with each other if they were in range of each other. Generally a difference of .2 MHz or greater is ideal so to reduce any interference."
],
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69xkhb | why do you get goosebumps when you hear someone sing well? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The answer is we are not sure and there are many theories Goose bumps start in the part of the body called the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system sends signals from your brain to your skin. Goose bumps usually happen when you get cold or feel certain powerful emotions, such as fear. When you feel certain powerful emotions, a part of your brain called the hypothalamus sends a message via your nerves to the muscles in your skin to tighten up. When the skin on your body gets tight, your hairs stand on end and goose bumps form. **You're probably still wondering exactly how goose bumps are related to music.** As you may have experienced before, goose bumps can occur when you hear a love song, a classic song, or a passionate version of the Star Spangled Banner. A theory about why people get goose bumps from music is that People can feel intense emotions, like sadness and passion. When people feel strong emotions, their brains release the same chemicals that tell the skin to form goose bumps. *More details for nerd 5 year old -* About 50 percent of people get chills when listening to music. [Research shows]( URL_3 ) that’s because music stimulates an ancient reward pathway in the brain, encouraging dopamine to flood the striatum—a part of the forebrain activated by addiction, reward, and motivation. Music, it seems, may affect our brains the same way that sex, gambling, and potato chips do. Strangely, those dopamine levels can peak several seconds before the song’s special moment. That’s because your brain is a good listener—it’s constantly predicting what’s going to happen next. (Evolutionarily speaking, it’s a handy habit to have. Making good predictions is essential for survival.) But music is tricky. It can be unpredictable, teasing our brains and keeping those dopamine triggers guessing. And that’s where the chills may come in. Because when you finally hear that long awaited chord, the striatum sighs with dopamine-soaked satisfaction and—BAM—you get the chills. The greater the build-up, the greater the chill. You can feel chills from any genre, whether it’s Mozart, Madonna, tango, or techno. It’s the structure—not the style—that counts. Goosebumps most often occur when something unexpected happens: A new instrument enters, the form shifts, the volume suddenly dims. It’s all about the element of surprise. **But there are competing theories.** Neuroscientist [Jaak Panksepp]( URL_0 ), for example, discovered that sad music triggers chills more often than happy music. He argues that a melancholy tune activates an ancient, chill-inducing mechanism—a distress response our ancestors felt when separated from family. When a ballad makes us feel nostalgic or wistful, that evolutionary design kicks into gear. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Source 1 - URL_1 Source 2 - URL_2",
"It's depends on the person, but I recently read a study about people who get intensely pleasurable experiences, like \"chills\", from listening to music. They noted that when this happened, the same parts of the brain are active that 'rewards' itself by releasing dopamine from things such as sex, eating, and even opiates. [Here]( URL_0 ) is a link to that study, for the curious."
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69xlgb | Why do game companies charge the same for a digital download as they would for a hard copy? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because that's what the market will accept a game is worth. Cost of shipping is a very negligible part of the cost, printing a disc costs a few cents and the middle man won't impact the cost of a single copy to a significant degree. Most of the cost is from the actual costs of development. Even if we assume there is a significant difference the market is willing to pay the same price for a game. As soon as the market decides it isn't worth the cost the prices will start to drop."
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69ya0b | How do carrier pigeons/ravens know where to go? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"they don't go elsewhere. they only go home. if you wanted to send a message to city A, you have to have a pigeon that was homed in city A. if you wanted to send a message to city B, you have a pigeon that grew up in city B. once you send that message over. then you have to send a messenger by horse to bring you another pigeon from that location to where you are."
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69yf86 | How does the weight exit your body when you're losing weight? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The vast majority of fat is lost through breathing. Since fat is stored as long hydrocarbon chains, the body can break it down for energy, then the leftover bits are carbon which is shuttled to the lungs where you breath it out as carbon dioxide.",
"Awesome question: you breathe it out! This has actually been known since at least the 1950's. In part, you will lose a small amount in urine, fecal matter, sweat and so on - but mostly it is breathed out in the form of carbon dioxide.",
"It gets converted into water and CO2. The CO2 is carried into your bloodstream and is exhaled out the lungs, and you sweat or pee out the water.",
"Some of it leaves in your breath. You breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Other amounts leave your body as other waste material, urine and poop, or as sweat.",
"The vast majority of the weight leaves your body by breathing--specifically, exhaling CO2. But please don't take this to mean that the way you're going to lose weight is by hyperventilating. Exhaling is just the mechanism for your body to physically lose those carbon atoms, you still need to exercise to make your body burn the fuel in your body first."
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69ytru | How is time the 4th dimension? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"There are different types of dimensions, spatial and temporal. We live in three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. And time doesn't \"exist in first-third dimensions\" quite like you describe it. Think of dimensions like coordinates; how much information do you need to precisely describe any point in the universe? If the universe were 1-dimensional (like a ruler) you'd need only a single piece of information—length—to pinpoint any location. All points would be just a different amount of distance away from one end of the ruler. In a 2D universe, like a map, you would also need width. Both longitude and latitude are necessary to know your exact location on a map. And in a 3D universe, you also need to know depth. If you stand on a globe, height is important because otherwise you could be underground or in orbit. Those are the three spatial dimensions, xyz. However, in our 4D universe, we also need to know _when_. Any point or event occurs at a specific time, which is why people often talk about spacetime as a combination of the four dimensions. Often just dealing with what and where is not enough, but you also have to take into account when and for how long. When people talk about fourth dimension being unfathomable, they usually refer to a hypothetical fourth _spatial_ dimension. Likewise, a second _temporal_ dimension would be utterly alien to us. What would it even mean if time had that sort of \"width?\""
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69zn5q | If there is no mechanical storage to read or write on, where and how is data stored on SSD? | There are players that claim that there is no movement of mechanical parts in SSDs, and that leads to better performance (?) Energy efficiency And less heat. If this is true, then how is the data stored? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Just imagine a giant prison, billions of rows deep, wide, and maybe 64 stories tall. In SLC, the good fast kind, if there are three electrons in the cell it it is a zero. If there are five electrons, it is a one. Then you just use two conductors (prison guards) to measure the charge inside to get the value, and to change the value you let every electron in a given prison block (512 byte cluster) out into the yard (cache) and then put them back in with the desired number of electrons (lockdown). After you write enough times to one cell, the door hinge breaks and that cell is retired. Extra unused cells are held in reserve for this eventuality, Enterprise drives with less capacity are just reserving more cells because they expect more writes. In tightly packed TLC prisons, a third value of seven electrons can be used to finagle some extra info out of the same cell, increasing density.",
"> If this is true, then how is the data stored? It is true. The data is stored in solid-state chips which use semiconductor switches to direct electrons into insulated \"cells\" that will trap the charge and store it long-term. This allows binary data to be encoded in a very small space and be retrieved without any mechanical movement."
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6a4nnj | Why do specific words start to sound foreign to us after hearing/seeing them too many times? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhboa8a"
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"text": [
"It's a phenomenon called [semantic satiation]( URL_0 ) in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds."
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6a5tph | Diplomats diplomatic immunity and why are they considered "above the law"? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically it's to protect them from political retribution from their host country. Imagine a diplomat to a dictatorship. Every time that dictator was mad at that diplomat's country, he could invent some bullshit crime to imprison/execute the diplomat. With the existence of diplomatic immunity countries lose any reasonable pretext to imprison diplomats, meaning that if they do so anyway it pretty much can only be interpreted as an act of war. Now, countries can expel diplomats that they don't like/want and the country of origin for a diplomat can still prosecute them for any crimes they have committed, so it's not like they're totally exempt from the consequences of their actions.",
"basically they have immunity from being prosecuted by the host country, this doesn't make them above the law. In the event they commit a crime the host country will inform the home country and the home country will decide to either take the diplomat home for punishment, allow the host country to punish them, or take the diplomat home and not punish them. This is useful because it deters nations from making absurd laws only to punish the diplomat and the concept is protected by the Vienna conventions on diplomatic immunity and if broken would open the host country up to a whole host of issues with other countries possibly no longer respecting their diplomatic immunity."
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6aakgs | In music, why do we perceive minor keys as sounding sad? | I've noticed that writing in any minor key (Cm, Fm, and Gm being especially harsh) evoke emotions of sadness, loneliness, and depression. While this may not be the case the entire time, it seems to be that way most of the time. Why is it, that as humans, we perceive the minor keys as sounding "sad" or not happy? Obviously, there are not very many happy songs that are centered around a minor key, so why is it that they are used to evoke these emotions? Does it involve the way we process the sound, or is it because our ears were trained since birth to associate intervals with sadness? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"ELI5 answer: It sounds like sad voices. More detailed answer: Research into this shows that it is not purely cultural. Scientists have played Western music to tribes who have never heard major or minor scales and identified minor as being sad and melancholy by comparison. Further research shows that the minor key mimics the tones we use when we sob, cry, moan, wail, and groan. > We reveal that the minor third also occurs in the pitch contour of speech conveying sadness. Bisyllabic speech samples conveying four emotions were recorded by 9 actresses. Acoustic analyses revealed that the relationship between the 2 salient pitches of the sad speech samples tended to approximate a minor third. Sad voice study: URL_0 Tribe study: URL_1",
"If your interest has been piqued, Oliver Sachs wrote a great book relating to all this called 'Musicophilia'. It can be a little heavy at times, but for the most part, it's a simple and engaging read."
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6aaw13 | Why do you get startled/feel a rush of a adrenaline if you catch yourself falling asleep? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Are you talking about hypnic jerk (sometimes called hypnagogic jerk)? That feeling where you jerk suddenly back awake sometimes when you're falling asleep? The prevailing theory is this is an evolutionary holdover from our earlier primate days, and is a danger response so our ancestors didn't accidentally fall out of trees."
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6aazvy | How do EMPs work? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Electricity and magnetism have a direct relationship. A magnetic field induces an electrical field and vice versa. For instance this is how turbines work. Magnets spin around a conductor, and the electrical field they induce gets pumped through wires allllll the way to the device you're using to get onto Reddit. Now imagine you exploded a GIANT magnet, in the sky. The field it emits will be conducted by anything...well anything conductive. In practical application this would take the form of an air burst nuclear device. The thing is, electrical fields, and magnetic fields are actually types of minor radiation. As part of the nuclear device's huge destructive instantaneous decay, and all of the dangerous ionizing radiation it gives off, you also get a massive amount of electromagnetic radiation. That's your EMP. Now you might ask \"how does that actually screw with my electronics?\" Well, you're talking about integrated circuits with lots of semiconductors, transistors, capacitors, etc etc... they're only able to handle so much current and voltage. So when antennas, power lines, or wiring get hit with this massive EMP, they conduct the fields into electricity which can overload the circuits. How can you protect stuff from an EMP? Good question. Your answer is something called a Faraday cage. Basically, you create a conductive envelope which effectively insulates the material inside from the outside environment, as electricity will simply flow through the cage and thus around the object.",
"An EMP is a massive burst of radio waves. In a similar way to how an explosion shockwave is a sudden burst of sound. The effects of an EMP are to induce an electrical current in anything conductive in the area. This results in electronics frying as huge voltages suddenly appear in the middle of circuits, where they are not supposed to be. Large metal objects will heat up significantly due to the current. There are many ways to create an EMP, a large radio antenna attached to a magnet and some explosives is one, the other common way is a nuclear bomb in the upper-atmosphere. The nuclear bomb generates an EMP by ionising the air, kicking out lots of very fast-moving electrons. These electons zoom through the Earth's magnetic field, causing them to bend their path. A moving charged particle changing direction causes radio waves to be emitted. A nuclear bomb detonated in deep space would not cause an EMP, it is the Earth's magnetic field and the ionised electrons from the air which cause it!"
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6abeh6 | How are we able to detect hundreds of incredibly distant exo-planets that are lightyears away from us, but we are still unsure if there really is a ninth planet orbiting our sun? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's nighttime. Here, have a telescope. See that building way over there? You can pick out details in the rooms that are lit, maybe even see people, what they're doing, etc. Now using the telescope, in your own dark room, find your car keys.",
"Because the ninth planet, if it exists, doesn't end up between its star (our sun) and us. The data we have on exoplanets typically comes from them moving in front of their star and dimming its light in specific ways. This means they have to be orbiting in a way that allows us to notice this dimming. The ninth planet wouldn't do this for us.",
"We gave several exoplanet detection methods, but the main ones boil down to \"a planet coming in front of a star makes it dimmer\" and \"the gravity of a planet orbiting a star makes it wobble, in different directions depending on where the planet is in its orbit\". Both methods are biased towards planets close to their star, and to a lesser extent large planets. It's very hard to detect planets far from their star, as they don't affect it very much. Any undiscovered planets in our solar system are dozens of times further from the Sun than Earth is, and are almost certainly much smaller than Earth too. There's one other issue. A \"planet\" has to meet some criteria that dwarf planets don't. Detected exoplanets are usually large enough we can be confident they'll meet such criteria, although perhaps some won't. It's not so clear whether any undiscovered objects in our solar system will qualify as true planets. We actually have quite a few dwarf planets, perhaps too many to definitively count; but there's no guarantee any true planets remain.",
"Imagine your sitting on the 50 yard line of a pitch black football stadium. A ninth planet would be the equivalent of a golf ball on the 40 yard line. Sure it's close to you, but it's still black on black. A exoplanet that we can see would be the equivalent to a golf ball in the end zone. The only difference is that there is also a flashlight in the endzone (the star that is orbiting). Every now and then you will see the object in the endzone because there is enough change in light to detect them regardless of distance."
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6ace50 | Why do we get bags under our eyes? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are multiple reasons - **Aging** With the aging process, the ligaments underneath your eyes that hold back fatty tissue begin to weaken, and the tissue can fall forward to form under eye bags. **Tiredness or Sleepy Eyes** Fluid accumulates into the skin under the eyes as gravity drags it downward whilst you are upright. So when you lay down to sleep the fluid is able to drain away into the nasal passages. There are drains that connect the nose and eyes and allow that fluid to move back and forth between wake and sleeps cycles. If you notice that you have bags under your eyes early in the morning but they're generally gone by noon, it probably means they're being caused by fluid retention. You might be able to reduce their appearance by simply using an extra pillow to elevate your head while you sleep. **Heredity** One of the biggest reasons people get bags under their eyes is because their parents have them. It's in your genes, and -- aside from plastic surgery -- there's not much that can be done about it. Some other reasons - - Sinus infections can cause them as well, by constantly stretching the skin beneath your eyes. - Swelling (adema) or other infections."
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6ad7jc | Why do people in cars have to wear seat belts, but people on buses can just stand around in the aisle? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Several reasons, but the main one is because historically there are so few fatalities on board buses that transport regulation organizations don't think its necessary. (Most injuries and fatalities related to buses come from pedestrians or other cars being hit by them, not being inside of them.) Buses are much more massive than the average car, so in an accident they probably wont deflect as far in an accident. This means passengers would likely suffer less from an impact than if they were in a hatchback. Bus drivers are well trained and know how to drive defensively, making sure the vehicle is kept safe. Another factor is belts would be inconvenient for bus users to have to put on and remove frequently. Passengers with large loads like groceries would find it awkward, and might slow down the getting on/getting off part, and bus drivers need that precious time to stay on schedule for their route. The belts would also require inspection and maintenance, because unlike regular car safety belts, their service life would be much harsher, even compared to safety belts on military transports. An average commuter would only be buckled in for a few minutes, and might not use the belt correctly. This means the belts and buckles would wear out faster, meaning more breakdowns on the belts and buckles, and replacements. Which is expensive. Lastly, there's no way to enforce people wearing them. If some kids decide they don't want to wear them even if they were present, the bus driver can't force them because he has driving to do."
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6adfg6 | How do nature documentaries get so close to dangerous animals and also get several angles without affecting their natural behavior? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"They zoom in and stay onsite for days to get a bunch of varying footage and patch it all together later (pretty seemlessly) and also add their own sound effects."
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6ajho6 | What was the cause of the American Civil War? | I would like to point out first of all that I am from the UK, where we are not taught ANYTHING about the subject. I have been interested in the Civil war from some time, and I am currently dating a girl from Arkansas. Everyone has been pretty biased on one side or another, so I am looking for an unbiased description of the events / cause of the American Civil War. Thank you for reading and for your time. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Slavery. A bit of background: There was tension between slave and free states since the revolutionary war (and before really). There was a balance of power between the two groups in the senate since there was an equal balance of free and slave states so neither side could dominate. As new states were admitted, there was a lot of jockeying to decide if this would be a free or a slave state which would give one side or the other more power and upset the status quo. The solution to this was the Missouri compromise. This meant that states would be admitted basically two at a time, one free and one slave state. Sometimes this meant cutting prospective states in two to achieve the desired result. This compromise broke down in 1854 which also destroyed one of the major parties of the time: the whigs. From the ashes of the whigs arose the GOP, the republicans. The GOP were a strongly anti-slavery party and in 1860 this fledging party won the presidential election giving the world Abraham Lincoln. The support for the GOP was almost exclusively in the northern free states and it had almost no presence in the southern slave states. The issue of slavery was critical to the 1860 election. It was the dominating issue of the time: would slavery continue? Lincoln was aggressively anti-slavery and so the southern states split off to make their own confederacy and then in 1861 you have the civil war. So slavery was absolutely central to the civil war. Sometimes this is framed as \"states rights\" - what should be the balance of power between the federal government and the states, but this turn of phrase hides the fact that it was a *states right to have slaves* that was at issue.",
"Slavery, State's rights(to have slaves), and cultural differences. Slavery composed a key part of the southern economy, famously in cotton and other crops. The abolitionist movement had been gaining power in the north for decades, and the election of anti slavery president Abraham Lincoln made the southerners fearful that he would abolish it, which would be disastrous to their economy. On the states rights side, like I said, a lot of it was about the state's rights to maintain slavery. However, the south had been less inclined to participate and accept the federal government for a long time before that. One significant event was the nullification crisis, wherein South Carolina refused to accept, or \"nullified\" federal tariffs, claiming that states had the right to nullify federal laws. This, of course, would shatter the federal governments authority, so the president eventually resolved it. But the south has always been smaller in population, giving it a disadvantage in government. TLDR: Slavery, state rights(to own slaves), as well as longstanding refusal to accept federal power and dislike of perceived control by the north.",
"For an in depth answer, check out this [wonderful post]( URL_0 ) in r/AskHistorians."
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6ajyw5 | Why is nuclear war generally considered to be the end of the world, when hundreds of nuclear tests have been performed around the world for decades and we're all still here and doing fine? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Hundreds of people fire guns in shooting ranges and no one is injured, this must no one will get injured in a gun fight.",
"Hundreds of tests in isolated areas across decades is very different than a thousand or more in one day in places like cities and military bases which will in turn burn for a long time.",
"The human impact is much worse than nuclear tests in unpopulated areas (obviously). It might not kill every human but would be tragic. Also, the world is a very interconnected place and if a nuke went off in New York for example, financial exchanges, corporate offices, and a wide variety of internet services would stop working. Not to mention electrical power, etc, though that would be somewhat more localized, while somebody in China would immediately notice those other services stopping. It might not end the physical planet, but it would alter or destroy the structure of civilization as we know it.",
"It isn't the first launch that is as worrying as the second through the hundred and twentieth, leaving very little to no land that isn't irradiated and unsuitable for living.",
"\"Nuclear War\" implies that 2 or more sides of a conflict are armed with and have used nuclear weapons. Nuclear tests are conducted in isolated areas, with no inhabitable human population on one's own soil. Nuclear war would mean dropping a nuclear bomb over a (probably) densely populated area on someone else's soil. That country would then in turn drop a nuclear bomb over one of your densely populated cities. As retribution you would then drop a different nuclear bomb on a different densely populated city in their country. Eventually other countries become involved and come to the defense of each of the original 2 countries at which time nuclear bombs are dropped on THEIR densely populated cities...... So along with mass extinction of the human race among the warring countries, there is also the economic impact and uninhabitable land, nuclear fallout, irradiated soils, poisoned food and water supplies..... War is much different than tests."
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6ak32i | How do car horns lower in pitch as the car honking gets closer then farther away? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"This is due to something called the Doppler Effect. The pitch of a sound is determined by its frequency - how close together the waves are. If you imagine a speaker pumping out a solid tone, the waves are coming out at nice even intervals and the tone sounds the same. Now imagine that speaker is rushing towards you - the interval gets shorter and shorter as the speaker moves closer to the last wave it sent out, so the sound is higher frequency and thus higher pitched. As the speaker moves past and away from you the opposite happens - the waves get farther from each other each time, and so the sound lowers. This happens with all waves, including electromagnetic waves like light. We can tell that galaxies are rushing away or towards us because their light is shifted towards the red, lower frequency, end of the spectrum as they rush away - hence the term redshift."
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6amhqe | Memory Leaking | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Leaking\" is a metaphor. It actually refers to a situation where a program tells the computer \"I need to use some memory\" and then forgets to say \"I'm done using that memory.\" Over time, the computer allocates more and more of its memory to this program, making it hard for other programs to run."
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6anoht | If cancer is an uncontrollable division of cells in the body, how does this cause harm to the body? Why is it such a bad thing that cells divide uncontrollably? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Masses of these uncontrolled cells grow and grow. They grow into large clumps which are called tumors. These tumors can push against vital organs or against your skin, creating blockage and ripping tissues. The worst thing that can happen is that it gets in your blood, meaning these tumors can start growing all over your body, including your brain. Its like masses of cars started crowding in the street. If there were enough, they would crash into buildings and block the roads. Also, most cancer cells don't function like regular cells, making them, to you, essentially a dead-alive mass. Zombie clumps growing in you.",
"Because those cells can't die by natural ways. They keep dividing without any control and expanding it's size, pushing the organs and muscles (tumor). Also, when a organ is affected by a cancer, it's function is compromised, causing N complications to the organism."
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6aorma | how are hummingbirds able to hover and fly in any direction? To clarify, what is going on aerodynamically that allows this to happen? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pretty much in the same way as a helicopter, except the wings don't go all the way around, but move back and forth instead. While flapping they generate lift/thrust, which supports the bird in the air. There is a lot of aerodynamically interesting stuff going on around the wings, and the birds make small adjustments to the wing angles to control themselves, but that is rather beyond eli5. Just ask if you want more details."
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6ap7tv | Why does unplugging and plugging back in a device work so well with troubleshooting? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Unplugging a device is like flushing a toilet instead of trying to scoop the shit out by hand. If you don't hold the handle long enough the shit doesn't get completely flushed down, but once everything is flushed out you got nice clean memory to shit in again.",
"With many devices that have a computer chip inside, unplugging them clears out the memory cache, which is often clogged up with some error. So when you plug it back in, the memory cache is free to operate as normal again. With laptops and smart phones, it's often some poorly coded program or website that's eating up a ton of resources and running in the background. When you reset your computer or smartphone, those background apps usually don't start again until you tell them to. Pro-tip: with your laptop go into settings and deselect half the programs that automatically start up when the computer is turned on. It will load way faster and your system won't be as clunky. Edit: Clarifying, I meant that half the programs that are set up to open automatically when you start up your computer are probably bloatware or unnecessary, so you can set it up so that they do not start up when the device is powered on.",
"Imagine you're playing a game of chess and in the middle of the game you realize both bishops are on the same color. You don't remember which piece was which, and you don't know how many moves to go back to fix the problem, so the only solution is to return all the pieces to their starting positions and start again.",
"For computers, RAM is probably a term you hear tossed around a lot. It differs from, say, a hard drive in some pretty major ways. You can think of RAM as the work bench where a computer places files it's using immediately, while the hard drive is storage space. (Trust me this all comes back around to the plug eventually.) So, when a computer is running, it generally loads a file from the hard drive into RAM, then performs its operations on the RAM copy. There's a bunch more technical stuff to explain, but to answer your question that's pretty much the big thing to know going forward. So, sometimes when something is going wrong with an electronic whatever, there are messed up programs or files being run out of RAM. And this is where the most important part of this explanation comes in- unlike a hard drive, RAM is impermanent. It relies on a constant supply of electricity to operate, and does not retain its data when its shut down. So, much like how you can lose a big document you haven't saved in a while when your toe hits the power strip, when you unplug a device, it loses the supply of power to its internal memory. At this point, any data loaded into RAM vanishes once it's discharged, which happens pretty quickly. When you plug it back in you're essentially forcing the device to reload its files back into RAM, which generally fixes the problem unless you've royally mucked up the files on the device's permanent storage.",
"Did you ever think, \"maybe it would be easier to just move house rather than maintain the one I have\"? That's basically what happens. Computer software has a lot of things to keep track of. It does a bad job of this, because the guy who wrote it assumed everything would always work and no errors would ever occur, and therefore any error that in fact does happen causes the whole system to get placed into an unstable state. So if you reboot the thing, it's like moving into a nice new clean house, ready for you to fuck up all over again over the next few years.",
"There are several reasons why unplugging and plugging it back works so well, as it addresses several modes of failure in hardware at the same time: * The original connection may be loose. The unplugging and plugging back procedure reseats the connector to a reliable, tightly coupled state. * The connector may suffer from contact corrosion. The unplugging and plugging back procedure scrapes some corroded material, which is often an insulator, off the contact. * Dust may have accumulated in the connector over time and partially shorted out the wires. The unplugging and plugging back procedure shook or blew the dust off the connector and restored the insulation between signals. * The attached hardware may have locked itself in an undefined state. The unplugging and plugging back procedure [removes and reapplies the power to the device]( URL_0 ), forcing it to a known, reset state. * For computer peripherals, the driver on the host computer may also suffer from a state lockup. The unplugging and plugging back procedure forces the driver to unload and reload its state, restoring its functionality. This is akin to force exiting a locked up application and restarting.",
"In addition to some of the other good answers regarding memory and such, electrical contacts in switches (i.e. relays) can stick together once they have electricity flowing through them. So, even if you try to put the switch in off, it stays on. By killing power, you stop the electrical flow which is keeping the switch from turning off. Before computers, electronics were mostly a bunch of switches.",
"It either powers down the device, releasing it from the state it was stuck in, or plugging it back in retriggers the initialization logic, which resets the device.",
"Lets say you are playing a video game. You are on your adventure in game, but have not hit a save point yet. This means that your data is not stored. But your data is temporarily held in something called RAM. (Random Access Memory.). If you cut your game off, you will lose your progress. This is because the save points take your data and copies them to your Hard Drive. Your game pulls from your hard drive for an initial start up. and if your progress wasn't written, the when you cut it off, your RAM loses everything. There is way more to it involving caches and getting down to the electrical side on transistors, but that's the most ELI5 that I could think of.",
"Imagine being tired at the end of the day. Your head is filled with stuff you did during the day. You go to sleep and in the morning your head is clear again and you're ready for a new day. When a computer or device is having issues it often is just very busy doing stuff. When you reboot it you clear out the memory and you stop all running processes. When the device restarts it's fresh and clean and ready for operation, unless there is a bigger issue going on of course.",
"Imagine that you are writing on a piece of paper. When you get to the end, you go back and erase everything, and start writing again. After a while, the paper might get all smudgy with stuff that the eraser couldn't get. Or, maybe your mind wanders, and you start doodling all over the page, filling it up. Now it's just too much to erase. The best option at that point is to start over with a fresh, clean sheet of paper.",
"There are many good answers here that talk about clearing memory and starting over. There's another piece, temperature. Many devices like routers and modems overheat as a result of their position. When a CPU overheats, it often performs the wrong operation which crashes everything. Resetting the computer not only recovers from the crash, but gives the device time to cool off. You're also likely to change the device position or remove dust in the process. This helps prevent future crashes. LPT, if you find that you are constantly having to reset your modem or router, try changing where you keep it and/or blowing compressed air into it to clear the dust.",
"ELI5: Computers remember things. Sometimes the things they remember is confusing to them -- maybe so confusing they get stuck. If they could forget everything, they wouldn't be confused anymore, and they wouldn't be stuck. The best way for them to forget everything is to have them start over from the beginning. That's what the unplugging does. \"When in doubt: reboot.\"",
"Imagine you have a sink. The plumber didn't install it perfectly and it leaks ever so slightly. In the beginning, it's nothing. A couple drops in your sink doesn't affect much. But over time it adds up. Soon enough, you have a sink full of water. It makes it hard for you to wash your hands or do your dishes. What do you do? Unplug the drain and let all the water drain away. We call these memory leaks in computers. Software isn't perfect. Occasionally, you get programs that declare objects and forget to free up memory when it's done with the objects. The computer doesn't know that the program is done, so it keeps that space reserved. Over time it adds up and becomes a problem. The solutions are to stop the program so all the space it took up is freed, or restart ether computer and everything starts clean.",
"Most of these explanations are terrible. It's not helpful to explain things in terms of RAM, hard-drives, and CPUs. That's all detail. What's really important is that modern electronic systems are incredibly complex and imperfect state machines. My attempt at an answer: Electronic systems are incredibly complex, and generally imperfect. It can get itself into a bad state, especially if given lots of time. It's far easier to develop a system that starts up correctly, that to develop a system that never goes wrong even if it runs for hours. This is why turning a computer off and on again tends to fix things. It also works in miniature when you reload a particular program without rebooting the whole system. Analogy: the longer you go walking in the forest, the more likely you are to eventually take a wrong turn and wish you could start over from the beginning. Imperfect systems eventually take a wrong turn. Fortunately, consumer electronics tend to be quite simple to reset back to their 'starting point'. (If it's something like an air traffic control system then of course you don't get to reboot it at will, but that's part of why critical-systems development is rather hard.) *Edit: Others are right to point out that sometimes the physical act of plugging something in might be what's important, such as in the case of a bad electrical contact.*"
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6awb3b | How do Macy's and other dept stores come up with their continual, seemingly random sales? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dhhxzsc"
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"text": [
"Math, markups, and customer data. They have numbers to predict spending habits based on seasons and they know that people tend to spend and buy more when they are getting discounts on items. Sometimes the discounted ticket prices are based on an inflated MSRP that no one will ever pay full price for anyway, so the \"sale\" is essentially bringing the price down to a normal sales price (this is done with virtually all home furniture). Additionally, interest on store credit cards can wipe out any savings after a month of carrying a balance. Rest assured, those stores are selling at a net profit"
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6axoqs | In this day and age, why do we still need two seperate machines for washing and drying instead of having some sort of 2-in-1? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"We don't - combined washer-dryers are a thing. However, they often have lower capacity than a separate dryer, and if you've got multiple loads to do then separate machines let you wash a second load while the first is drying.",
"There are many combined washer dryers on the market, however combining the two in the one machine does increase costs and complexity and you can only do on thing at a time."
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6ay8u0 | Why do animals love to be pet/rubbed/scratched? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dhickcz",
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"text": [
"What do you not like being petted and scratched? Seriously feels amazing. They also can't really scratch themselves well so that's another reason.",
"Some animals have a specific sensory nerve endings on their skin and hair follicles that activate with deep pressure and petting. Activation of these receptors (called MRGPRB4+ neurons) increases the release of endorphins and oxytocin (pain relief, relaxation, and bonding chemicals). This leads to decreased heart-rate and aggression and puts the one being petted in a state of \"pleasure\". One suggestion of why mammals evolved to enjoy caressing suggests that stroking hair encouraged good hygiene through social grooming. It may also explain why certain hair-covered areas of the human body are more sensitive to touch or associated with pleasure. URL_0"
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|
6aytt5 | Why does black absorb sun rays so much? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhig2pz"
],
"text": [
"Colors we see are perceived by light rays (certain wavelengths) that are reflected. Meaning the object doesnt absorb that color. For example, apples reflect the color red. White reflecting all colors essentially and black reflecting no colors. Since black is absorbing these colors and light rays contain energy it heats up faster. Hope that helps. I may be a bit off on the details but the gist is correct."
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6b0ox7 | Why do sharp things cut? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhiuo8f"
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"text": [
"Pressure is force divided by area. The sharp edge of a sharp item has a tiny surface area, thus a force being applied across the area will result in a very large pressure. Lots of items have a pressure threshold that, if exceeded, results in the surface being broken. Sharp things can break that threshold more easily than other items because it takes less force to get that pressure."
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6b1tco | that if global warming is a hoax like some people suggest, then what is the motive behind propagating such a lie? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhj41zq",
"dhj49e1"
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"text": [
"The main argument is money. Some people are under the odd impression that scientists profit handsomely from their research. Others claim there are individuals and businesses who will take advantages of policy shifts for profit (somehow). There isn't really a creditable argument for who benefits from it being a hoax (which it isn't).",
"Population management and tax revenue. Climate change is real. Has been for eons. The only thing in question is the impact of civilization on climate change. If humans are not the root cause then TPTB can't demand change and generate revenue. This comment will self destruct in 10 down votes."
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|
6b1wck | How do TV channels know how many people watch TV shows? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhj4t4v"
],
"text": [
"Certain households have a box that tracks what and when they watch, and the results are extrapolated give a hypothetical number of viewers. The exact figures would require everyone to have a box."
],
"score": [
3
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|
6b3r4a | why do minor chords give us that sad feeling? | Is it a genetical thing or is it something we get used to associate while growing up? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhjkby9"
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"text": [
"The major triad has a consonant or pleasing sound because the frequencies all blend -- they are in the proportion 4:5:6. The minor triad frequencies have the proportion 10:12:15. So for the 3 notes of a minor chord, the bottom note vibrates 10 times for every 12 vibrations of the second note and 15 vibrations of the third note. But why the multiple proportion 4:5:6 would be heard almost universally as bright and happy, and the minor triad as more sombre and serious or sad is still unknown. It stands out though, that the major triad is a much *simpler* ratio than the minor. Possibly it has something to do with the ease of difficulty in which our brain/mind can resolve these vibration ratios and find patterns of harmony and order within them. (Or perhaps feelings/emotions themselves have frequencies/waveforms that share a commonality of shape with the wave patterns in sound, and our brain triggers a match which ignites the emotional sensation!) But surely it must have something to do with these ratios, and the brain as a pattern-identifying machine, and as emotions themselves as somehow linked to these basic patterns, whether genetically or through cultural associations."
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6b3yf9 | Why do pigeons bob their head back and forward when they walk? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhjlkmc"
],
"text": [
"Pigeon's eyes are positioned more on the sides of their cute heads rather than in front like big human. This causes pigeons to be unable to see as clearly as humans do. When pigeons run, their heads will actually push forward as far as they can, stop at that spot while their bodies run past the head till the head is as far back as it can stretch, and then push forward again to repeat the steps. This makes it look like the pigeons are bobbing their heads, and produces a frame by frame motion picture that will allow them to see better. It is like comparing two almost identical photos and looking for differences between them. In this way, they can spot predators, which are usually fast moving or stalking them. Next time you start chasing a pigeon, they will run away sideways from you with one eye looking back at you."
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|
6b5392 | How/why does a limb "fall asleep"? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhjtj03"
],
"text": [
"Your limbs receive blood, oxygen and nutrients via blood vessels. They also communicate to your brain via nerves. Think of the blood vessels and nerves as roads. Sitting in weird ways puts pressure on these blood vessels and roads, resulting in a traffic jam on the roads. The blood vessels cannot bring things to the limbs, and the limbs cannot transmit signals to the brain. The traffic flow doesn't always stop 100% but stops moving smoothly. When your brain realizes that it's not receiving proper signals, it prompts you to change your position and relax your limbs so that the impending nerve damage can be stopped. When you do that, the traffic starts moving smoothly again and things go back to normal."
],
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6b606a | why is it important to finish a full course of antibiotics, even when you're feeling better? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhk0zcl",
"dhk16d5"
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"text": [
"TL;DR: antibiotic resistance We take antibiotics for wiping out bacteria, whether it is a bacteriostatic agent (slows the growth of bacteria so that our body's immune system can take care of the bacteria naturally) or a bacteriocidal agent (the antibiotic directly kills the bacteria). Bacteria, however, can develop a resistance to these antibiotics. Let's say you have a 5-day course of antibiotics. You have 100 bacteria causing the problem. After 3 days, you wipe out ~90% and feel better! So you stop taking the antibiotics. Those 10 bacteria might have had a gene that made a protein that provided some resistance against the antibiotic. This genetic information is usually in the bacteria's special circular DNA, called the plasmid (as opposed to its linear DNA). Plasmids have this antibiotic resistance information that can be passed from bacteria to bacteria (via bacterial conjugation), and sometimes across different strains. Eventually, they will thrive again and you might become symptomatic for that infection you thought you got rid of. And then you'll pass that antibiotic-resistant bacteria to someone else, and the antibiotics you took for that will not work as well for the second infected person. They'll take stronger antibiotics or antibiotics with a different mechanism of action. However, if they don't finish their dosage, the story repeats. Until we get something like MRSA. So finish your antibiotics!",
"It's actually extremely important to finish taking the whole course. The bacteria causing you to feel sick starts to die off from the antibiotics, but not all at once. Just like people, bacteria comes in varying degrees of strength and endurance. The weaker bacteria die first leaving the stronger bacteria alive. So even if 80 or 90 percent of the bacteria that was making you sick are gone, what's left are more resistant to the antibiotics. These resistant ones will breed even more resistant versions making it harder to kill off later. If this happens enough times in enough people, eventually a strain might develop that isn't effected by the antibiotics at all making them useless."
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6b8lgx | Why do fast spinning objects, such as wheels, sometimes create a pattern as if it's slowing down in the direction it is spinning and then speeding up in the opposite direction? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhknye8",
"dhknpn3"
],
"text": [
"It is only when you're observing it via something with a refresh rate like a video camera. The most common occurrence is under fluorescent light, which turns off and on really fast (60 cycles per second for the US). Most energy efficient lights have this property these days. There is no eye refresh rate. You won't notice the phenomenon in natural sunlight.",
"It have to do with the \"refresh rate\" of your eye. Like a movie, which is a series of images that give you the illusion of continuous movement, you can imagine the wheel like a series of static images of a static wheel in different angles. If the wheel have a particular rotational speed it seems spinning backwards"
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