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6io63e | If standard body temperature is 98.6 why is this an unsatisfying outdoor temperature? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because your body keeps making heat. If it's as hot as you are outside, it's hard for your body to transfer that heat to the atmosphere. Since your body is slower in getting rid of heat, and still making heat, you get hotter, and thus uncomfortable. Similarly, you get cold when it is cold outside because now the difference between your body and the environment is so great that you shed heat faster than you can produce it.",
"Because we're constantly generating heat with our muscles and organs. Our primary means of getting rid of that heat is letting it disperse into the air via our skin. So while we are internally (on average) 98.6, we prefer an outside temperature below that (preferably far below) as it makes it easy for us to get rid of our heat which is being constantly produced. The world is our heat sink.",
"Because \"room temperature\" (around low 70's F) is the point at which heat loss due to the environment is just about equal to the heat generated by your body. Lower than that, and we lose more heat than we are naturally generating, so we start feeling cold. More than that, and we can't lose as much heat to the environment as we need to maintain stability, so we start feeling hot. This set point can vary between people slightly (it's a common office environment between men and women) and notably its different for pets, ex. Cats have a higher resting point which is why they are always sitting around in sunny spots despite the room feeling fine to us."
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6iowpi | How come you can be falling asleep watching TV, then wide awake when you go to bed five minutes later? | Edit: Fell asleep a few minutes after posting this. Woke up to 1,200 replies! I'm not going to get much work done today... | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The brain is like a group of people talking to each other. When you're watching TV, the part of your brain that watches TV says \"Shut up guys, I'm watching TV,\" so you can focus without thinking about cake or math. As a result, the others sit silent, grow bored, and fall asleep, until only the TV watcher part of the brain is left. Left by himself, he too gets bored and falls asleep. When you're in bed, assuming you aren't counting sheep or something, the entire brain is kind of in free time mode, and any part of the brain can speak up if it wants to. They start talking to each other, and even if one of them starts to drift to sleep, the others wake it up either by deliberately talking to the sleepyheads or just being noisy. Eventually more and more of the parts of the brain fall asleep from sheer exhaustion no matter how loud the others are, and eventually the last one passes out and you are asleep.",
"There was a post about this not too long ago. IIRC one of the reasons was that if you're lying on the couch and fall asleep, you're not actively trying to sleep, you just fall asleep because you're tired. When you go to bed, you're actively deciding to sleep, and thinking about trying to sleep actually keeps you awake.",
"Since there's no empirical answer here, I'll throw my non-empirical answer in the mix: **TLDR: It could be many things.** It could be conditioning: You took a couple of naps on the couch with the TV on; now, your brain associates the TV, with just the right amount of fatigue, as sleep time, at the right place. Meanwhile, back at the ranch (when you go to bed), you're staring at your phone, \"doing some last few reddits\" before bed. You have trained your brain to activate before your \"alloted\" sleep time. Chances are, you've done so much internet before bed--your brain does not associate bed time with sleep time. Related: Your bed should be for two things only: Sex and/or Sleeping. This is to make sure your brain and body associate that with sleep, OR Sleep that usually follows sex. Also, digital screens emit blue light. In short, it's a light wavelength that suppresses melanin. Melanin is a hormone that is produced in your body. When Melanin spikes up (usually after some hours of nighttime and sometimes around post-lunch hours) it makes you sleepy because that's the job of Melanin. They also sell melanin at the drug store, but it's always better to rely on your natural sleep cycles as nature intended. The Sun and Digital Blue Light from most electronics today suppress Melanin, making it harder to fall asleep. **THIS** along with not associating your bed with sleep will most definitely fuck up your sleep. Sleep is still misunderstood for the most part (we don't know why we do it, generally), since it puts us at a huge disadvantage in the wild--yet, we **must** do it. This means that even if we don't understand it, it does something right. Studies where people were sleep deprived had slower time reactions, sometimes akin to a drunk person. For example, cell regeneration and healing happen during sleep. The brain, oddly enough, is more active during sleep. There's a theory that \"pruning\" is occurring during sleep--AKA, your brain is getting rid of the stupid, useless information that won't help you survive. This is why \"The First 20 Hours\" method works well for advancing learning quickly seems to do well: reviewing before sleep/reviewing after sleep, in short time frames--so the brain associates that this is needed and doesn't prune it. Another possible reason is that when you sleep, it takes some minutes (60ish or more on normal IF I recall correctly) to get to Rapid Eye Movement (REM sleep). REM sleep is **ESSENTIAL**. A lack of sleep with screw you up, but a lack of REM will really screw you up. So, when you're running on less sleep than usual, when you finally sleep/nap, you get to REM quicker! WOOHOO! LIFEHACK! **NO, it's not**. As stated earlier, sleep has a lot of functions. Anyway, if you're tired and fall asleep while \"relaxing\" watching TV, and wake up 30 mins later, chances are you got some REM sleep. This fucks you up because your body has gotten a little recharge to take you over for maybe, 6 hours? It's like your phone was dying, you charged it for 10 mins and got it to 25%. It's gonna take some time to get back below 10%. Remember those people from the studies? Well, some of them were \"disturbed\" (on purpose) during REM sleep (enough to snap them out of REM, but not out of sleep). The next day, they felt they were fine and had good rest. However, their results on reaction time showed that they were not at full \"normal\" rested reaction capability. Also, there have been many people throughout history that have experimented with various sleep cycles to \"get the most out of their day.\" I think (and I may be way wrong here) it was DaVinci that famously tried the polyphasic sleep (fancy name for \"different ways of sleeping\"), where he would sleep one hour every 4-5 hours. Supposedly it worked, and I don't doubt he got used to it. So, you may have gotten used to sleeping 4-5 hours at night, with a nap right after dinner--and you may not realize that it's a habit now. You may not like it, but you did to your body--your bod is just doing what you taught it. That's all I got. Some of it is scientific, but I did internet research long ago and don't have the patience currently to dig up the sources. If someone wants to disagree or bring up relevant points, or even call me out on wrong info, feel free. This is the internet, not The White House, I can admit I might be wrong. **EDIT:** I want to add that \"humming\" sounds can easily relax the brain. Depending on what you're watching, if it doesn't have much flux, the TV can hum along, much like a quiet lullaby. This is why White Noise or the sound of rain, a fan, Air Conditioner, beach waves, background coffee shop can aid in sleep & focusing. In a weird way, it zens the mind to relax. I looked into it long ago, but I forgot why it is. Probably something with the infant brain associating a smooth sound (singing by mom) that you are safe and not in danger, so you can relax. *EDIT 2** Guys, gals and all in between--I get it, it's melatonin--not melanin. I know the difference, I just have a long-life habit of mixing them up. That's what I get for doing a write-up on a lack of sleep. Happy naps, everyone!",
"I think when you're watching TV, you're typically only passively using your mind. You're just taking in the info. So your brain isn't very active, yet there's something going on to keep it from becoming too distracted. Once you turn it off and try to sleep, your mind is free to wander and actively think about anything.",
"People don't fall asleep, they arrive to sleep! When you were on the couch, you arrived to your sleepy ways because you were probably there for a little bit, comfy, and hadn't moved for a bit! When you moved to a new spot, your body must first adjust to your new spot, then it can arrive to sleep again =)",
"Because when you get up from the couch to go over to your bedroom, you're up and moving again, which makes your body wake up somewhat. Happens to me as well. I'm on my computer late at night, feeling tired enough to go to sleep, but after I get up and go brush my teeth, I feel awake again when I get back to my room.",
"Entering a sleep state while watching a tv show that you have previously viewed, familiar with and enjoy of enables the subject to fall asleep because of the passive distraction of focus principle. When your brain perceives something familiar with a known outcome while keeping a minimum level of attention it is easier for the brain to decrease activity and enter a rest phase. The same applies to highway hypnosis and redditing.",
"The ideal window to fall asleep is actually pretty short. Around 10mn. You'll notice it if you start yawning, your eyes sting a bit. When you fall asleep in front of the TV, you may wake up at the end of that window. Then you have to do stuff to put yourself to bed. And the window is gone. And your body had to wake you up a lot. So you are wide awake. Try actually laying in bed and closing your eyes for 30s next time you catch yourself yawning late in front of the TV. Ez sleep",
"One issue is that while sleeping with the TV on, you're conscious mind is being distracted of the stress and anxiety that you carry with you throughout the day. Instead it's trying to process the words being spoken, and so you don't have the mental chatter going on. The problem is that this then prevents you from getting into a deep sleep - so you're more tired the next day. That and when the sounds are removed, then you have the left-over stresses that you haven't dealt with bombard you all at once, because the artificial distraction is removed. Basically it tricks your brain into feeling better than it is. If you spent time process the stressors instead of watching TV - you'd probably sleep better and not fall asleep prematurely.",
"The sleep cycle has a refractory period* built in that occurs just before the normal onset of sleep. This is designed to keep you entrained to the 24 hr cycle by preventing you from falling asleep a little earlier each day despite tiredness. It is easier to fall asleep both before and after that window. And watching tv is a relaxing sedentary activity. So you might be dosing off, then waking up when your body is resisting sleep. In studies on sleep deprived undergrads (most sleep research is done on undergrads) once allowed to they would fall asleep quickly - unless they were in their resistant phase. * I am almost certainly misusing this term here - I'm going off memory (and this is what my faulty brain keeps insisting on) but I think in the context of sleep research refractory period actually refers to a REM stage and a different term is used for the pre-sleep cycle entrainment stage. Sorry but don't have my sources at hand.",
"Since the top comments seem to be anecdotes, I'll add one too. I've had lifelong sleep problems and I have participated in multiple sleep studies so I've got a decent bit of experience with specialists even though I am not one. The first step to correcting a sleep issue is always behavioral conditioning. You probably often watch tv late at night before bed so you're used to being tired in that situation. Bed is an interruption to your normal routine so it isn't quite as good as watching tv to your brain. If you were more in the habit of going to bed to get tired you'd get tired from going to bed, but it seems you watch tv late more often than heading straight to bed. If you spend a whole day busy and skip tv and go straight to bed, I bet you would get tired easier. I'm sure you've noticed this. If it was a regular thing you'd be able to sleep more easily when going to bed. In my experience with sleep specialists, I've been told to go to bed as soon as I figure out I'm tired to try to make sure going to bed works well.",
"And this is why I drink most nights. Other than the usual \"it's my cure for depression\" episodes.",
"I also want to know why I can be completely tired and lethargic all day, but as soon the twilight hits I'm bouncing off the walls.",
"Wow I never realized this was a thing, and I do it every night. I finally go to bed (and although I fall asleep very fast) I think about how much I fought it (and failed) during a TV show. I always have to ask my wife what happened. The feeling of the fight is something I wish I could feel again once I laid down.",
"This is an evolutionary trait that we never got rid of. Basically if you're about to fall asleep and then you get up for some reason, then your body is going *Well, shit, looks like we better get our asses moving then!* Imagine back when we weren't at the top of the food chain. It would be very necessary for our bodies to fully wake if we had to suddenly run for our lives."
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6iqsvk | Why is it everywhere you go every church is the first? i.e. First Baptist Church. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yeah why isnt there a 632nd church of god??"
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6irnqj | "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is due to car mirror's convexity. It enlarges the field of view, but shrinks everything it captures. Therefore, we can see more things, but they are smaller. Think of it as a mirror.rar ;) Sof if you see something small in a mirror, you will assume that it is rather far away. Thus, \"objects in mirror are closer than they appear\"."
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6isosi | Why is it that when you are laying in bed, just about to fall asleep, you sometimes suddenly feel like you are falling and jerk back up fully awake? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is known as a Hypnic Jerk. It occurs most commonly in people with messed up sleep schedules or heavy caffeine users, but can happen to anyone The prevailing theory on the cause, is a lingering evolutionary instinct from our days as early primates in trees. As your body relaxes, your mind can mistake the subtle shift as a shifting branch, and jerks you awake to ensure you catch yourself.",
"It's pretty common, though it doesn't happen to me as much as I've gotten older, which may be related to me having a better sleep cycle now. It's called a [hypnic or hypnagogic jerk]( URL_0 )."
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6it9li | Why are all baby animals really cute? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because most baby animals look pretty similar. We have a predisposition to care about our young. This is good for our species, given that babies can't care for themselves; we need to have a desire to be around them and care for them else our species won't be surviving very long. Baby animals share many of the visual traits that baby humans have - smaller bodies compared to their heads, disproportionately large eyes, etc. Our innate desire to care of our young isn't all that fine tuned, so we tend to project those feelings onto anything that meets the basic criteria. This isn't limited to just baby animals - we also care about adult animals that meet those criteria and many [inanimate objects]( URL_0 ) that fit the bill."
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6iumeo | What are burns? And how does fire burn people? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most of the fire we see is the result of something called oxidation, meaning that it is energy released by combining oxygen with something other chemical (usually carbon). So, when wood is burning the energy added to the wood allows the carbon in the molecules that make up the wood to break apart, combining with oxygen in the air, turning the wood into ash and releasing more energy to keep the reaction going. Burns are roughly the same thing. You end up somewhere where it's so hot that the molecules in your body start to break apart. Sometimes they just malform, sometimes they actually burn the way that the wood burns. But, either way, the part of you that was burned is no longer the same at a chemical level. The more that gets burned, the more of your body stops working, and the more likely you are to die. Burned skin can't stop infections, burned organs don't work, etc... That said, some symptoms of burns are part of the bodies reaction/attempts to heal. Something like a blister is the body trying to repair/contain the damage from a burn."
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6ivdp7 | Where does gold derive its value from? Is it an entirely human construct? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"All value is a human construct, unless you want to include the supernatural (like God valuing love). In this plane of existence, nothing has any value except because people say so."
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6ivhch | What's the thinking behind not evacuating if there is a fire? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In high rises, they are supposed to be built such that fires are contained to the unit or floor for quite a period of time (here in Chicago, each apartment/condo has to be fire rated for 2 hours, ie. a fire could burn unchecked for 2 hours within a single unit before it would begin to spread). As such, because it's important to get fire crews in and evacuate those that were injured or in immediate danger quickly, orders are for those further from the fire to shelter in place. Imagine firefighters trying to get up the stairs to a fire on the 20th floor while 1000 people are racing down the same stairwells. And really, only 50 of those are in more immediate danger... so only evacuate those at first, then assess. So high rises get evacuated in stages, as necessary based on the fire. I lived in a high rise for 12 years, and in that time we had 4 serious fires that gutted units. They typically evacuated the floor itself, and those directly above and below at first. In fact, in one, my uncle lived on the floor where the fire took place and they just told him to place damp tower at base of door and stay in place unless told to evacuate."
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6iy48y | Why do planes fly high up, wouldn't there be a shorter distance travelled the closer to the ground they fly? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"difference in distance traveled is negligible, they fly about 7 miles high earth is about 7000miles in diameter. circumfrance of the earth is then 21980. add 14 miles to that diameter for the distance the plane flies is 22024. so a full lap around the entire earth would only be 44 miles farther than at ground level. Negligible. flying at height means much lower air pressure, which means less drag, far better speed and fuel efficiency which majorly offsets the slight distance, plus spends less fuel, and it makes less noise pollution for people on the ground."
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6iybw2 | Why does soda taste differently from a bottle, can, and a fountain, when it should be the same drink? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's all about mixing and storage. Fountain soda is the freshest possible mix, right before you drink it. Bottles and cans both provide good storage and consistent taste, but since it's mixed long before it's consumed it doesn't taste as fresh in either of those cases. Besides that, cans for drinks are lined with a plastic barrier to keep the metal from leaching into the drink, and that may still leave a different taste from a bottle or a fountain."
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6iyint | human brain has a capacity about 2.5 petabytes. Hypothetically speaking what would happen if they are filled? Would we stop remembering new things or would we start erasing old memory to make room for new memory? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As far as I am aware, no physiological basis for a hard storage capacity of the human brain has been established - that 2.5PB may be an extrapolation of our current model of how we encode memories, but ultimately the brain stores many different kinds of vastly different data in a variety of ways that remain elusive to us. It's not a hard drive, and a huge amount of data storage and recall seems to happen through associative relations between systems of neurons, not state changes in individual neurons. tl;dr- nobody has ever \"filled up\" their brain. Old knowledge and skills atrophy and become harder to recall if they aren't used, but that's not the same thing as being absolutely unable to learn new information, or \"deleting\" old knowledge, without an external cause (such as dementia or TBI).",
"Here's my take given a psychology background: memories are created in the hippocampus, specifically in the dentate gyrus. This area creates new neurons that can hold information. Assuming this area is not longer able to stuff more neurons in then you'd lose the ability to form new memories. We already see this as it becomes harder to learn new skills as you age. Assuming it was completely full you'd probably suffer from complete anterograde amnesia. Meaning, every time your short term memory empties, you'd forget everything that happened. There's actually a case study on someone who had this known as H.M. He would be able to perfectly recall his wife and know exactly how they met and so forth but, he'd forget every few minutes what had just happened. He had a journal that he would repeatedly write \"I am now fully awake\" and other iterations of this constantly. But, that's assuming that there isn't a cleanup system for neurons.",
"Off-topic: with good compression, and counting about 16-17 active hours per day, you could store an HD video recording of every waking moment of an average life (in POV perspective) from birth to death in about 4 petabytes. Just a neat fact. One thing that's been experimentally verified is that as pattern recognition becomes more attenuated over time, aspects of memories become both more solid and more vague. For instance, if you have a portrait on your wall in a hallway, and you pass it every day, your peripheral exposure to the picture solidifies bold elements like the frame and the face, but blurs elements like the facial features, simply because you *stop noticing it*. That's how you can navigate a well-traveled hall in the dark, but pranks like replacing the portrait with a similar, but different face can go unnoticed for so long. Experiential learning is good at environmental stuff, but bad at details for most people. In addition, the more you access a memory, the more it degrades, and it can be modified or changed if repeatedly accessed. See the stories from people who were convinced they experienced child abuse in the 70s from Satanic cults. ELI5: Memories are fickle, and 'data storage capacity' is not a good measure for human brain capability because the brain is always in flux. Edit: a word.",
"Looking for the specific pieces of the brain that store memory is like looking for the specific pieces of a piano that store music. Brains don't really work like hard drives. In fact it looks like an essential part of learning is deleting irrelevant information. Which of course makes sense. You want to remember stuff that helps you out, like where to find a safe bed or where to find food, or what kinds of animals are dangerous. It's very difficult to figure out what's important if you keep everything that isn't important too. So the answer to your question (as much as it can be answered) is that every part of you consciousness is dedicated to selecting which memories to keep and which to drop, and it starts the day you're born."
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6iymc9 | when is space where there is nothing but emptiness, what do rocket engines thrust against that make them move forward? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The rocket engines push against the exhaust that is being expelled. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It's exactly the same as if you were wearing ice skates (standing on ice, obviously) and holding a bowling ball. If you throw the ball forward, you'll slide backwards. This is not because the bowling ball is pushing against the air. It's because when you push the bowling ball forward, you're also pushing yourself backward. With a rocket, the exhaust from the engines is the bowling ball.",
"The fuel of the rocket being expelled out the back of the rocket pushed the rocket in the opposite direction. Newton's Third Law of Motion in action."
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6iz5mn | The difference between the (US)Marine Corps and (US)Army? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Both organizations seem to be deployed to the same theaters doing the same jobs. The nature of current wars - fighting insurgents on land - is largely why they appear to do to the same jobs. Historically though, the two have served and occupy very different military and political roles. Let's start with the Army. The [mission statement of the Army]( URL_0 ): > The U.S. Army’s mission is to fight and win our Nation’s wars by providing prompt, sustained land dominance across the full range of military operations and spectrum of conflict in support of combatant commanders. The key word there - *sustained land dominance* - is what the Army's mission has always been. They're the force that is designed to take *and hold* land, hence their large manpower in times of war. Historically speaking, the US Army was founded as a small standing force that would be augmented in times of war with militias (the modern day National Guard) and through conscription (as was done in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam). Even today, this tradition still exists: the Army has a majority of its forces coming from the National Guards of each state and the Army Reserve (460,000 active duty Army versus 530,000 reserve + National Guard). Up until 1947, the Secretary of War - a cabinet position - headed the War Department which governed Army (and Army Air Forces) affairs. The Secretary of War was NOT, contrary to popular belief, the predecessor of the Secretary of Defense. He, along with the Secretary of the Navy (which became a cabinet position in 1798), were both members of cabinet and each dealt with their own affairs. Secretary of War was also aptly named: with an army designed to be small until times of war, his purview was in matters of land warfare, a rarity in North America in comparison to European affairs, and which only came in times of outright war. Why do I bring this up? Well, lets contrast that to the Marine Corps [mission]( URL_1 ): > As America's expeditionary force in readiness since 1775, the Marines are forward deployed to win our nation’s battles swiftly and aggressively in times of crisis. We fight on land, sea and air, as well as provide forces and detachments to naval ships and ground operations. *Expeditionary force* and *in readiness* are big key words here. An expeditionary force, unlike the Army, is designed specifically to be sent overseas. In readiness also means that, unlike the Army, they are designed to be in an active state without needing to go through mobilization (the calling up of reserves, conscription, etc.). Ever since the nation's founding, the US Marines have been a part of the Department of the Navy (cue jokes about how the Marines are the *men's* department). That's right, both the Navy and Marines report to the Secretary of the Navy. Why was this? Well, Marines were designed specifically to be naval infantry, as in a ground force serving on ships that could defend the ship during a boarding attempt or board other ships when trying to capture them. And, in the event of needing to put forces ashore, the Marines would be the ones sent in. Remember, until long-range aircraft were invented, ships were the only way to get people across the oceans. Navies might be operating thousands of miles away - and back in those days, months of communication away - from home. Naval warships and the Marines on board had to be self sufficient. Thus, you see the roots of the Marine Corps' *expeditionary* nature. And, since sailing a ship isn't something that can be done at a moments notice (training a crew to fight as a cohesive unit takes time, and leadership takes years to develop), we see that the Navy has always been designed to be an active duty component of military forces, something you find around the world really. (Historically speaking, even in feudal societies, navies would be under the direct control of the monarch - hence the Royal Navy - even while armies would be levied from various lords underneath, because navies needed to be *professional* forces). And since naval infantry can't just be levied from the populace when ships are thousands of miles away from home, the Marines were designed from the onset to be the *professional* ground fighting force that would project power from ships. The portion of forces that are active in the naval services speaks for itself too: Branch | Active Personnel | Reserve Personnel ---- | ---- | ---- US Army | 460,000 | 530,000 US Navy | 323,000 | 108,000 US Marines | 182,000 | 38,500 US Air Force | 313,000 | 175,000 I put the Air Force in there, because they carried on a lot of the legacy of the Army with them (such as their own National Guard... the Air National Guard) while also requiring professional personnel given the technical nature of their branch. The final piece of the puzzle is that of self-sustainment. The [vision, per USMC HQ]( URL_2 ) is: > To be the premier self-sufficient expeditionary force, instilled with a warrior ethos that equates the efficient use of vital resources with increased combat effectiveness. Self-sufficient expeditionary force is why the Marines have both ground forces as well as air forces. They have their own helicopters for transport and combat. They have their own fighter jets and attack planes as well. The Marines have the Marine Expeditionary Unit which consists of ground forces and air forces operated from Navy amphibious warfare ships that can sail around the world and respond to any crisis at a moments notice. They are also designed to carry enough supplies with them to sustain a fight without outside support for 30+ days. Of course, self-sustainment doesn't include the fact that they have to ride on Navy ships (as they have historically done), hence the joke that MARINES stands for 'My Ass Rides In Navy Equipment, Sir' but I digress. In sum: * The Army has been designed to be a large land force that requires periods of mobilization to get it to full strength for warfare * The Marines have been an expeditionary (overseas-focused) force transported by the Navy that is in an active state, i.e. ready to go without periods of mobilization."
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6izh4y | Why do we hear ourselves different when we talk vs. in a recording? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you hear yourself talking normally, you also hear/feel the vibrations of your voice in your own head. You aren't just hearing your voice go into your ears from the outside.",
"Your skull makes your voice sound different to you. The vibrations travel through the skull and change in pitch and tone as a result. What you hear on a recording is the actual sound of your voice to other people."
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6j01qr | What exactly are the moles on your body? Why do we need to go through surgery to actually remove one? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A mole (or melanocytic nevus) is an often benign local overgrowth of melanocyte cells. Melanocytes are the cells responsible for making melanin, a dark skin pigment. That's why many moles appear brown or dark - the large number of melanocyte cells make lots of melanin, which give the mole its colour. There are numerous types, some depending on which layer of the skin the cells are from. Usually you're either born with them or you get them within the first 20 years of life, then they tend to stick around. We go through surgery to remove them for two reasons; either the person with the mole wants it removed for cosmetic reasons, or a doctor suspects the mole may actually be a melanoma - a particularly nasty type of skin cancer. If there's any indication the mole is a melanoma, it's removed, usually with negative surgical margins, which means you cut out an area of skin around the cancer that contains entirely normal cells (so you can be sure you cut it all out and didnt leave any behind). The removed bit of tissue is then sent off for testing to see if it is anything to worry about or not - that's called a skin biopsy."
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6j0boz | Why, when playing a song repeatedly, do we tend to get tired of hearing it, then can enjoy the song again after a break? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The general theory for this is that our brains thrive from predicting. This is why you might not like a song initially, but after a few more listens you start to love it because you can predict where the song will go next. But it also works both ways; listening to a song hundreds of times results in diminishing returns of satisfaction from predicting it, because it's become 'hard wired' into your brain. Then you take a short break, so you can enjoy the song again because you can't remember all of it anymore, and your brain enjoys trying to predict what will happen next again.",
"Three important functions of our brain 1. detect patterns 2, predict outcomes 3, detect change All of these help us to recognize / avoid danger Our sensory systems are designed to respond when input changes- for example, when the thermostat of an air conditioner goes on, we hear the hum. And then when it goes off, we hear the silence. These responses to change need to be noticed- since changing conditions are potentially dangerous After a minute of hum/ silence the receptors adapt and shut off. On a higher level, when we listen to music or see art, we initially make predictions about what will come next. When the music or art is unfamiliar, the next earful or eyeful is a surprise. So we attend closely . Once the information becomes familiar, we can predict its entirety with a brief glance or short sample of sound. It has no novelty and is becomes less interesting. Even just seeing the title on a playlist evokes the memory of the entire composition. We apply our attention to new information. (Source: URL_0 )",
"An equal question is why some songs don't impress us initially, but can grow on us after repeated hearings. I think the predictability plays are part here in opposite ways. Back in the day The Rolling Stone would get prerelease's of albums to review them. Some of the best selling albums in history received poor reviews. Many of them are now on The Rolling Stones top 500 albums of all time. The Beatles often argued about future iconic songs and whether they should be put on an album because the guys that didn't write the songs thought it was subpar. (e.g. As my guitar gently weeps) Also many super hits sit on the shelf for years even tho many hear it and pass on recording. The country song of the year Whiskey lullaby was like this. The Hallelujah Course written and recorded by Leonard Cohen was ignored for years by more mainstream recording artists.",
"I don't listen to the radio much, so I mainly hear new songs and artists through my girlfriend or on weekends at a bar. It's so frustrating hearing a song that has been out for a month and being told, \"This is so old, turn it off.\" Then they play Sweet Caroline or Wagon Wheel and the crowd goes nuts... A song isn't old because it's over played. The song is old to YOU because YOU overplay it/don't switch stations or press next on your playlist!"
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6j0d0b | Supercharging a Tesla takes 20 minutes to 50%. Why does 100% take 75 minutes and not 40? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[Wile E. Coyote is preparing a spring loaded boxing glove in order to catch the road runner.]( URL_0 ) At first it's easy to press the spring back into it's 'loaded' position, but the closer he gets the more effort he has to put forth. As he nears the hook it takes all his strength to move a few inches. The same is true with these batteries. Basically, as it increases in charge it must overcome more and more resistance, so the battery charges slower the closer it reached max charge.",
"The analogy I like, as an electrical engineer, is making a stack of objects of equal weight. Imagine stacking bags of flour from the bottom up. I think this is a pretty accurate analogy, as lifting an object gives it potential energy, the same way charging a battery gives it potential energy. First, imagine you have one bag of flour on the floor. Then to put a second bag under it, you have to lift that one bag the height of the bag below it. Pretty easy! To put a third bag into the stack, you now have to lift two bags to the height of one bag, and put the third under. A bit more difficult. Then for a fourth bag, you're lifting three bags to the height of one bag, and so on. It gets progressively more and more difficult to put an additional bag of flour under the stack, because you're lifting another bag each time. For a bit more accuracy, consider you only have a certain amount of energy per unit time. Like, you can only ride a bike so fast. So let's say you power the flour lift system with a 10-speed bicycle! The first bag is possible to lift in the highest gear, (the one that lets you go the fastest). For the second bag, it's too heavy, so you switch to the next lowest gear. You have to pedal longer to get the wheel to spin the same amount, that is to cover the same distance, so it takes a longer time to lift the two bags. Then you change gear again for each successive bag, so you can pedal at the same speed, but as a result, it takes longer to lift each successive bag. Edit: To those who mentioned the water level/pressure in a column analogy, I fully agree with you that it's a more accurate representation of the system, and it's the way I usually try to explain it to engineering students. So if you're interested in a more mathematically consistent explanation, do check out the comments below! And indeed, the power and energy concepts are not totally consistent here, so if you're an engineer/electrician/etc., I understand if you disagree with the explanation. In the interest of ELI5, I think something more discrete, like stacking objects, and one a child may have held in a grocery store, is easier to understand than a constant-pressure pump with an increase in water pressure at the bottom of a column as the water level rises, as far as RC type circuits and exponential rates are concerned.",
"Batteries do not charge linearly. The fastest portion of charge happens at the beginning. Without getting too sciencey, this is because the rate of charge is based on the difference in charger voltage and battery voltage. The larger the difference, the faster the charge. As the battery charges, that difference continuously gets smaller, so it charges slower. This is demonstrated in the following chart: URL_0",
"Imagine you want to understand how Tesla Supercharging works by reading analogies on Reddit. Reading the first couple of analogies is easy and gives you a basic understanding of the subject. To gain a better understanding you need to read more analogies, however the more you read, the more you lose the will to read analogies, and the harder it becomes to learn.",
"The 5 year old explanation is, imaging you're running in a 100m dash, but at 101m is a brick wall. You run as fast as you can at the start, but start slowing down when you approach the end, as to not hurt yourself.",
"When your Tesla is low on charge, it is very thirsty and drinks it's energy drink very fast. The more it drinks, the less thirsty it is, and the slower it drinks.",
"First, this comment is generic lithium-ion battery information. It is not Tesla specific. It is for safety and for extending the lifetime of the battery. A battery pack can be destroyed and may catch fire if even one cell is over charged. Most Li-ion chargers use two charging methods. First, a constant current is applied until the battery reaches around 4.2 volts/cell. That is the fast charge. Then the voltage is maintained at 4.2 until the current has dropped to a certain level- somewhere around 10% of fast charge. Then charging ends. This second charging method takes longer because as the battery becomes charged the current naturally drops because there is a smaller difference between the charging voltage and the open circuit cell voltage.",
"Tesla owner here. While the top voted explanation is great at being simple, unfortunately it's grossly incorrect. The battery doesn't take more \"effort\" or have more resistance as it fills up. Actually when it's charging near max and going slower, there are less resistive losses due to heat, less energy wasted on cooling fans, and less effort put in by the charger. Here is the correct explanation: Think of a battery as a bucket. I can fill the bucket with a firehose, but only very briefly before it starts splashing out. Once I turn off the firehose, the bucket might be ~%60 full. So I switch to a slower garden hose on full blast. Now I can get the bucket to 95% before water starts splashing out. To get that last bit up to 100% I'll use a trickle from a faucet. Water splashing out of the bucket (overcharging) is very bad for the battery so the charging system deliberately slows down to avoid this.",
"The analogies are terrible. What's the point of answering if it is plain wrong? It takes longer to charge because there is a voltage threshold. Once you reach that threshold, the current gets lower V=R * I. As you charge the battery, its internal resistance rise. Once you reach the limit of 4.2 (it is actually 4.3/4.4), the current will slowly get lower as the resistance increases (V=RI). Lithium-ion batteries don't like 3 things: being over charged, over discharged and stressed (too high current). When charging, you don't apply right away the threshold charging voltage as it would generate too much heat due to the high current. However, the batteries can accept A LOT of energy very fast that way. At the end, you can't ramp up the voltage to prevent damage to the cell. When you charge the battery, lithium ion travel from one metallic plate to the other. There's something in between that prevent the plates to touch each other (very bad, short circuit). When the ions move, they heat every thing around them (good analogy: friction). If you increase the voltage, you make those ions travel MUCH faster. They collide with every thing around them and it can damage the thing preventing short circuit. This is why you try to keep the voltage / current at a specific value that the cell can handle safely. As for over charging (maximal voltage) I believe it is to prevent unwanted reactions. I've read that tiny crystal can form on the plate and it can puncture the thing preventing the two plates to short circuit each other if the cell is over charged.",
"Picture you have 100 boxes that fit perfectly in an enclosure - no extra room. It would be pretty easy to just throw like 60 boxes in there right? But it takes much longer to use up every bit of available space and put the boxes in perfect position.",
"Electrons all have negative charges, and as a result they really don't like being next to each other. When you are charging a battery, you are pushing electrons into a confined space where they are forced to be really close to each other. That's easy at first, but it gets harder as time goes on. It's an exponential curve, which means that pushing in a few electrons makes the next few much harder to push in. You can imagine it like trying to pack stuffed animals into a cardboard box. You can get a lot in there if you try hard, but while the first few will be really easy to get in, they will resist your efforts when you try to put in the next few, and so on.",
"How fast can you fill a pitcher of water up to the rim (without overflowing) using a kitchen faucet? Filling the first portion is easy, turn the faucet on fully. The water will be frothing around, but since there is so much space, you won't spill. However, when you get closer to the rim of the pitcher, you have to slow down the faucet stream to prevent water from overflowing. To get the last 1% of water in without spilling, you'll barely be dripping water into the faucet. Batteries are the same way. 'Spilling water' will damage the battery, hence the trickle charge when the battery is 90%+ full.",
"What everyone says is technically true, but not really the case here when talking about Tesla battery packs, which are a bunch of little battery cells in parallel and in series. The real reason it takes so long is because of balance charging. That's literally the answer to your specific question. When all the batteries are low, you can bulk charge them to around ~4 volts-ish depending on the batteries, their health, and the charge controller. The time has nothing to do with how much energy is being put in and it's potential in this case. The issue is the batteries in series can't just all be charged up to 4.2 at the same time, internal resistance of the battery and the health of each cell determines how fast each individual cell will reach 4.2v. Now, if one hits 4.2 while another is still 4.1, that 4.2 needs to be discharged back down to 4.1 by literally wasting and burning off the energy, which takes time because if you do it too fast, you'll burn up the charge controller from heat build up. Once you get to the last couple millivolts, it's basically a balancing act, literally. The batteries are connected at the different points in the series, and each point gets a different voltage, so you can charge individual series packs of parallel batteries. You have to wait for everyone else to catch up before you can reach that final 4.2v and call it done. That last portion is all charge, discharge, charge, discharge, charge, and probably discharge one more time until they are all balanced. If not, you'll end up with dead cells, or even worse, exploding cells that no longer can keep up with the other cells. But they use very thin wires between each cell, so worst case scenario, the cell pulls too much current and the wire melts on purpose and the cell is now disconnected. They could technically \"fast charge\" the batteries, but at the risk of destroying a $12k battery pack just to be impatient and charge all the cells in bulk. Some will hit 4.2 first and keep going up while the others keep the total voltage below the cutoff. Once the last of the cells get to 4.2, the first ones will already be dangerously high and will after a few cycles be dead.",
"Imagine you are raking leaves. You take one swipe with the rake and get half the leaves. You take another swipe and get more leaves, but there are still a lot left. You take a third swipe and now there are just a few stragglers, and you get those with the forth swipe.",
"So many analogies. So many.... I like the piling into a train in Japan one the best. But the real problem is that once it gets harder to shove people in the train, the battery starts to heat up. A lot. This can, and will, damage the battery. Specifically, it burns up the micro fine wires going to individual cells and as those wires burn up those cells get disconnected and the battery becomes \"smaller\".",
"a battery is like a ball or tire you're filling. the fuller it is, the harder it gets to press more air in.",
"Imagine that the batteries are sponges and you are trying to get them to soak up water until they are 100% full. When you first start putting water into the sponges it soaks in very quickly but then slows down as the water has to diffuse from the outside to the inside. Lithium batteries have a similar pattern when charging where the charge has to equilibrate into the battery.",
"Imagine eating one pizza in 20 minutes. Now try to eat another one in the same amount of time.",
"When you fill a pitcher, do you slam it full speed to the top or do you slow it on down as you get there?",
"Imagine breathing in. You can fill your lungs to 75% in a few seconds. Then you need to swallow small gulps of air to fill up any further.",
"Imagine you are filling up a cup of water. You pour the water into the cup with a pitcher and at first you can pour quick, but as you get closer to the top you slow down because you don't want to make the cup overflow and spill water everywhere.",
"If you imagine the flow of electricity to be water, then you can think of voltage as pressure, and amperage as volume. A low amperage, high voltage line can be thought of like a hose, with your thumb over it. The amount of current is small, but the \"spray\" of pressure can be large. Likewise, a low voltage, high amperage current is kind of like an overflowing sink. Lots volume, not much pressure. Finally, there's one more factor to discuss: impedance. This is the amount of resistance the current must overcome to flow through, or to, a particular device. In our water metaphor, for most things the impedance would be 14 psi (atmospheric pressure at sea level). But for electricity, the impedance can vary, based on the type of material. Now we come to our battery. Think of it like a balloon. At low charge, it has low impedance. There's not much charge in there, so there's little 'push-back' when electrons flow in. As the battery charges, however, impedance rises, increasing the amount of pressure (voltage) required to maintain the rate of charge. If the impedance rises, and the voltage stays the same (which it does, for safety reasons), then the rate of charge will decline.",
"One of the ways you can picture electricity is like water. Voltage would be like water pressure, the difference between simply pouring water down a garden hose and connecting it to your house's water. For the same size hose, or tube you can get more water in the same time with more pressure since it makes the water move faster. Now, imagine that the battery is like a big inflatable pool, and the only way to fill it is connecting a hose to the side. At first there is very little resistance to the water rushing from the hose so it fills fast. As more water fills the pool the water from the hose is being resisted by the water in the pool slowing the flow, so you get less water going in. You can't turn up the pressure or you will damage the connection from the hose to the pool and make a big mess! For the batteries in a tesla, or a laptop, or your cellphone there are some electronics that are responsible for safely charging the battery so that it is not damaged. Batteries heat up as they are charged, for the same reason many other electronics do; they always have a little resistance to the flow of electricity, and that resistance turns some electricity into heat. Also like the pool there is a maximum voltage (pressure) that you can use when charging or you risk damaging the battery. So early on the resistance to charging is low and the battery is cool you don't need maximum voltage to charge fast, but once the voltage reaches the limit (because the battery has more 'resistance' to being charged further) you have to let it charge slower and slower. You also need to slow down the charging if the battery gets too hot so that you don't damage the battery."
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6j11ph | [maths] What are imaginary numbers? How do they work? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Starting with just the counting numbers (1,2,3...), everything is easy But then subtraction comes along and people say, what happens when you take a bigger number from a smaller number? So we invent negative numbers. Then, later we start using division, it's mostly ok, but what happens when we divide two numbers that don't factor into each other? Bam, fractions. Even later when discussing square roots, we realise, huh, what happens if we square root a negative number? Presto, imaginary numbers. Why is this step so different from the others? Just because it has the word imaginary in it? As far as usage, many equations describing electricity and current uses it. And it's a great way of getting patterns that kinda look like 1, 0, -1, 0, 1, etc",
"They are not arbitrary. They sort of \"fill in the blanks\" when doing math. They are also very important for physics and other sciences. It appears in the Schrodinger equation (very important for modern physics). What is the solution to the equation X^2 +1=0? It is a meaningless question with no answers if you stick with real numbers. That is why complex numbers were developed. BTW the square root of negative one is the definition of i."
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6j1nih | If the scope on a rifle/gun is 2-4 inches above the barrel why does it predict where the bullet goes so well, even though it is above the barrel (where the bullet exits from)? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the bullet takes a ballistic arc path. Scopes have to be \"zeroed\" or \"sighted in\" so that certain distances in the scope intersect with that ballistic path. Light travels in a straight line, but a bullet out of a gun is angled slightly up so that that it is rising for the first half of its flight, then falls for the rest. Because of this, there are 2 points for any zeroing distance where the bullet will pass the plane you see through the scope, one on its way up, and another on its way down. If you're shooting at a distance other than these two ranges, you need to make eyeball adjustments on the fly (also known an \"Kentucky windage\") or use the knobs on the side and top of the scope to actually adjust the aiming point of the scope to match where the bullet will be at that distance. [This image]( URL_0 ) shows the basic premise. Notice in the image that the bullet is striking the target at the second of the two intersections, on the downward path of the bullet. The first one is much closer. There are different ranges that one can sight in or zero their rifle two, and with some knowledge of how long the barrel is, what type of bullet is being fired (and some other factors if you want to be hyper accurate, like air temperature, humidity, ground elevation) one can predict what ranges these twe points will be with remarkable accuracy.",
"Because someone took the time to sight it in. There is actually 2 points where the scope will be right on with the bullet path. One where the bullet is still traveling flat or up compared to the line of the scope and another when the bullet falls back into that line again.",
"The internal alignment can be adjusted by the top and side knobs. This is what's called sighting in."
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6j26rb | Why does El Salvador use the $USD as their currency ? How does this benefit either country ? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Stability. Having a weak or volatile economy is bad for business. Business owners what to be reasonably sure what they buy today they can buy for about the same price months from now. If high inflation or a fluctuating currency means they can't do that, they have to be much more cautious, and that slows economic growth. When this gets too bad, businesses and consumers will start to shift to a more stable foreign economy like the US dollar or the euro. If this goes on too long, the foreign currency can become a de facto standard. This starts off as being widely accepted (most of the Carribean), and in some places can be the unoffical standard (Belize, Cambodia). Some countries try to fight it, Vietnam is currently trying to get more people to use the local currency and stop listing prices in dollars. Other countries, like Ecuador and El Salvador, simply give up on their own currency, make the USD official."
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6j2yc6 | Why Liquid Glue Doesn't Stick to The Inside of The Bottle | What's the science behind this? If there is any... | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's because liquid glue doesn't stick to anything. It isn't until the water (in white glue) evaporates that it actually adheres to anything. In a bottle, The water cannot evaporate, so the glue can't stick to the bottle. If you leave the lid off, it can evaporate and the glue will get stuck inside the bottle. Edit: Super Glue (cyanoacrylate) hardens when it comes into contact with water. The CA molecules start to line up and stiffen. When it is solid, it has fully lined up and has cured. With the cap on the bottle, water in the air cannot get to the glue and it can't cure. If you leave the cap off, it will get into contact with water vapor and garden inside the bottle.",
"Some glues need to \"dry\", some need to \"cure\" (which is typically by letting an alcohol or other solvent evaporate), and epoxies need to be mixed with an activating agent (that is they are two parts that set up only when mixed, but usually don't need to give up anything like water or alcohol). If you've ever tried to get the top off of a glue bottle that has been glued shut by accident then you know that glue does, indeed, stick to the bottle. The bottles _are_ chosen for being hard to glue shut using the glue that it contains. For instance \"white\" and \"wood\" glues require pores to work well, so smooth plastic will tend to shed the dried glue easily because the glue cannot \"grab it\" well. So one of the main difference between glues that some are \"filling glues\" and some are \"contact cements\". A white glue is a filling glue. It works by filling the tiny gaps and pores in each of the surfaces and then \"sticking to itself\". White glue basically forms a puzzle piece that is locked into the irregularities the two or more parts being glued. This is why you can let it dry on your hand and peel it off to find a mold of your hand print. If you let that harden fully it becomes quite strong. Basically the body of the glue is \"structural\". Various \"super glues\" are exactly the opposite. They can't stick to themselves well. If you let a drop of it try out the result is brittle and easily broken or shattered. So you want to use as little as possible when you use superglue. If you let a layer build up the joint will not hold. But it works well on \"smooth and hard surfaces\". So it's good for things like sticking glass to metal. It still relies somewhat on microscopic irregularities, but the more perfect the match between the surfaces the better the glue works because it's stronger for being in close contact with both sides of the joint. So glue is fascinating stuff, and picking the right glue is a skill, but lots of glues will work \"well enough\" where \"the right glue\" could have been superb.",
"It either needs water to evaporate from it or air to become solid. In the bottle, it doesn't touch open air so none of these can happen."
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6j5ash | How does Stephen Hawking's speaking software work? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Why not let Stephen tell you himself? URL_0"
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6j62k1 | Why are things blurry underwater? | How are the eyes of marine life different? How does a thin layer of air (goggles) make everything suddenly clear again? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Eyes evolved in the water and in fact when the first creatures went from sea to land in evolution they couldn't see very well because their eyes were not adapted for air. Light tends to bend and refract as it transitions from one substance to another, for instance from air to water and back. This changes the focal point of the light. When water covers the eye it changes the angle the light enters the eye causing a loss of focus. When you wear goggles though they don't let the water touch the eye and so the light isn't bent as it enters and we see clearly. If we still had marine eyesight we would need to wear a mask filled with water in order to see clearly in air."
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6j6gdv | Why Do We Have Squatter's Rights? | What is the argument for them? I've never heard them mentioned in a positive tone. Also, what exactly does the term "Squatter's Rights" entail? Edit: There were a lot of really interesting and helpful explanation, arguments, etc. This has been interesting and enlightening, thank you! | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Everyone's explaining adverse possession but, honestly, *that almost never happens* outside of small chunks at the edge of adjacent properties and, let's be honest, you're not going to call your neighbor a \"squatter\" because a fence got built a foot on the wrong side of a property line. What most people mean when they talk about \"squatters rights\" negatively is the difficulty in kicking out squatters (trespassers) from abandonned property you own. We're not talking about them being there for years and having a legal claim to ownership, just them there a month or two & resisting eviction. Ultimately, this is an extension of *tenants rights*. Now, if you're renting a place & the owner wants you out, they need to go to court and **evict** you by proving you've somehow violated our lease & need to GTFO. Because there's a large disparity in power between the involved parties, legally, the tenant gets to stay until the issue is resolved. People who break into abandoned properties, can use this principle to their advantage. If the cops show up to kick them out for trespassing, all they need to do is provide a minimal amount of evidence that they *might* be legal tenants, and they can stay on the property until a full legal eviction proceeding has taken place. We're not talking about people who've spent *years* on an abandoned property and own it, we're talking people who have been there weeks/months using legal loopholes to avoid getting trespassed. It's not really a legally defined right, just a side-effect of protecting legal tenants.",
"First, the problem there is not the squatters rights. The problem is the claim of an oral contract. Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot: The soldier is living in the house, and then some random guy (RG) shows up with a deed, claiming the deed is dated before the soldier's deed and gives RG the right to live there instead. Should the police throw the soldier out before the deed issue is settled? Second, we have squatters rights because sometimes people buy land and don't use it. Or buy land and lose it in the shuffle of deaths and wills and sales so the land ends up wasted. This was especially problematic in old England, where the rule comes from, since people would buy huge tracts of land and it was hard to know where one property began and another ended. The idea was that, by allowing people to take possession of the land by use, you encouraged landowners to actually check on their land from time to time, and also prevented the descendants of an absentee landowner from swooping in 100 years later and kicking you out of your house. It also relates to how the law works. There's a statute of limitations on the action you take to evict someone. (another thing that made sense in the past when paper records got lost or were stolen or forged). You can't even begin to have \"squatter's rights\" to property until that period lapses, and it's usually 15, 20, or 30 years. Last, in most places squatters rights are really hard to get, even if you wait out the time. So, for instance, if you are there with permission, you can't get squatter's rights. And, in a lot of places, if you're there illegally (meaning you just moved in rather than, say, got confused about where the property line was between your house and the next guy's house) you can't get squatter's rights no matter what. ___________________________________________________________________ [Source from previous thread]( URL_0 )",
"'Squatters rights' means if you're on a property for long enough, even without paying for it, you have some measure of protection against being removed (or claim you do as a defense or justification). You're already there, so you have a 'right' to stay there. It most often applies to rented or empty houses or apartments, but can apply to people staying on private property as well. The squatter often is not ethically, legally or morally correct in saying they have a right to stay on or in the property, and some squatters really abuse it. There are lots of horror stories about often-destructive squatters, sometimes even home invaders, costing legitimate properly lessors or owners a lot of money, sometimes even denying the owner access to their own property. That's why it's usually a highly negative term. However there are laws on the books in many countries, often differing within individual states or provinces, that say \"if you live there long enough and nobody complains, you can legally claim ownership\". Mexico for example has a 5-year law of this sort. It likely exists because it's better to have a person that owns and is doing something productive with some land than have that land owned but completely unoccupied while homeless people that could use it aren't allowed to. Sometimes squatters can't simply be immediately and easily removed by legal or government enforcement because there's a process those agencies have to follow that is designed to ensure the request for removal is not just an abusive landlord trying to avoid regulations about tenant removal. And some 'serial squatters' take advantage of loopholes in the law to get free room and board, in the same way some people try and eat for free at restaurants by habitually claiming something was wrong with their meal. (edit: grammar and to complete a missing point in the answer)",
"It's a doctrine from English common law and better historians than myself can fill in the blanks, but in its most basic form (in the 1600's), there was still empty land in England and Wales and a rumor went around that if you build a cottage and tended to the land it would belong to you. This morphed over time into something much more rigid, but the underlying philosophy is the same .. If you improve unused land and the true owner doesn't affirmatively reject the visible claim of right, eventually the possessor gains an interest.",
"Adverse possession is a legal principle that says if someone lives on or uses a property as though they owned it for a number of years, legal ownership can revert to them. This serves two purposes. First, it encourages landlords to maintain their property...if vagrants are allowed to live in it, they obviously aren't doing a very good job. It is less of right for squatters, and more of a penalty for landlords. Next, it protects those who acquired land informally or in a way they cannot prove. If I had a large property, and I offered a small chunk to a friend on a verbal agreement, years later when I passed away my heirs could not take it back. Beyond that, squatting is illegal and squatters have very few rights. Adverse possession takes a long time, seven years is common, and squatters can be removed from a property at the last minute and have nothing to show for it.",
"One thing that hasn't really been covered yet is to look at it from the perspective of the government/law enforcement/the courts, and you'll see where tenant's rights/squatter's rights come from. You have two parties to a dispute over property. One side says that they are the landowner and nobody should live there; the other side says they are tenants and are legally residents. A court is going to have to decide who is right and who can prove what they've claimed. Before the court can see the evidence, something has to be done with the property. Both sides can't get their way. So the law has decided that the least bad thing to do in that situation is to allow the people claiming tenancy to remain there. Yes, it denies the owner use of the property until the court rules, but that is considered less bad than throwing someone out of their residence. This decision to protect legal tenants from getting thrown out by malicious property owners has the side effect of protecting illegal squatters from getting easily tossed out.",
"Without going into the technical details of the law here is an argument why squatters can be a positive contribution to society. I'll compare it to a car dealership to make it more clear. Car dealers own a building in which they store cars but sometimes they will park a car on a public parking spot. Parking a car there is completly legal and it is OK if there are enough parking spots. Now if a cardealer thinks he can save money on his building and park all his cars on public parking spots then this would push people that actually use parking spots for the intended purpose out. This is not fair but also kind of legal. To avoid this certain rules apply to parking spaces to ensure it's real inteded purpose (providing people with a parking spot) is served instead of the superficial purpose (parking a car). In a city buildings are the cars and the owners the car dealers. The inteded purpose of a city is creating a living and working environment. Things happening in the city should contribute to this, at least to an extend. If someone buys a lot of properties and leaves them unused the inteded purpose of a city is not served so there are rules in place to avoid this from happening. This is done by giving squatters some rights which forces people to take action to avoid there properties from becomming squats, like renting them out. By doing this the inteded purpose of a city is being served again. So optimally there are no squatters because people avoid there properties from becoming squats. Thus giving squatters rights benefit the middle class people way more than the squatters themselves. This is something often not realised by people who are strongly against squatter rights. They themselves gain from these rights by a more liveable city.",
"If we're talking about adverse possession, the thing you have to remember is just how extreme the level of neglect you have to exhibit for this to happen to you. Essentially you have to go between 5 and 10 years without even bothering to show up at your property one single time. If you rock up once and there's no evidence of someone living there the clock on adverse possession reset to zero. Literally show up once in five years and take some photos of your empty house so you can prove it wasn't occupied. Send an agent even."
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6j77po | what's the hazard of drinking aspartame based diet drinks? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You might get annoyed by people stupidly telling you they are unhealthier than the original sugary drink.",
"Nothing. Studies upon studies have been done. It pops up about once every few years. You can thank 90's spam email for originating this beauty.",
"Yeah i read on URL_0 that there is no link between cancer and aspartame. so i was wondering why do so many people believe this, still?"
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6j825e | How do Sin, Cos and Tan work? Where are they derived from? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine the unit circle: [a circle with radius 1]( URL_0 ). If you mark out an angle x at (0,0) and draw a line at that angle the point where it intersects the circle is at (sinx,cosx). Sinx describes the height of the point, cosx describes the length like the image shows. Tanx would then be the length of the line that starts at (1,0) and goes up until it reaches the first line.",
"Alright, since half of these answers are about explaining the theory behind sin, cos, and tan, I'll explain the programming behind it. In mathematics, there exists a representation of a function known as a Taylor series, which is an infinite sums of terms that are calculated from the values of the function's derivatives at a single point. Or to simply put it, it's a method that returns a value of varied accuracy. So how would you put it on paper? > Sin (x) = (x/1!) – (x^3 /3!) + (x^5 /5!) - (x^7 /7!) + … x! denotes factorial (the product of an integer and all the integers below it. For example 5! = 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1) So let's do sin of 30 (degrees) together: First, we convert degrees to radians by dividing degrees by 180 and then multiplying by pi. > radians = 30 / 180 * pi > = 0.523598776 Now we insert the answer above into our equation. > Sin (x) = radians– ( ( radians^3 ) /3!) + ( (radians^5 ) /5!) - ( (radians^7 ) /7!) > = 0.523598776 - 0.02392459626 + 3.279*10^-3 ... approaching zero > = 0.49999999135088125 We did it Reddit!"
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6jaww5 | if all us paper money is legal tender for all debt, how can a store refuse any bills over $10 as payment? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you buy something in a store there is usually no debt involved. You don't owe the store money because you don't own the items you want to buy yet. Since there's no debt, the concept of legal tender doesn't apply and they are free to accept or deny any type of payment they wish.",
"When you purchase an item in a store, there is no \"debt\", because you don't own the item until *after* you pay. But more importantly, the words on paper money is not law. There is no federal law in the US that requires private business to accept US currency as payment, or to accept all forms of US currency.",
"Well what they are really saying is that \"If you choose to pay with a $50, we may require you to wait here for up to 24 hours until we have a chance to go to the bank and get you some change, as we don't keep that much cash on hand (to prevent robberies) so we'll get it to you as quickly or as slowly as we choose to\" So if you want to stand there for 12 hours waiting on your change, they'll take it, but no one ever would want to do that."
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6jbk7w | If U.S. Currency isn't backed by anything, how does it hold any value? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"because we all agree it has value. at this point, no currency is backed by anything. not a single currency still in use that is backed by gold or anything tangible. They exist on the credibility of their govt and society. Its convenient to have an intangible unit of trade, and as long as you have critical mass of people that agree to a common unit, it works."
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6jdmll | How do some fireworks makes shapes and whatnot when they explode? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine you draw a bunch of dots pretty close to each other on the surface of a deflated balloon. Then blow it up. The dots are much bigger and farther apart."
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6jflx3 | Why is the American flag printed backwards on military uniforms? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The stars lead the assault. If you were to grab a flag and run with it on a staff it would look exactly as it does on the uniform.",
"The [Flag code]( URL_0 ) dictates that the blue field should be upper left. > §175. (i) When displayed either horizontally or vertically against a wall, the union should be uppermost and to the flag's own right, that is, to the observer's left. When displayed in a window, the flag should be displayed in the same way, with the union or blue field to the left of the observer in the street. On the other hand, [Army Regulations]( URL_1 ) say it should be reversed, to \"give the effect of the flag flying in the breeze as the wearer moves forward.\" > AR 670–1, 28018 c (2): The full-color U.S. flag cloth replica is worn so that the star field faces forward, or to the flag’s own right. When worn in this manner, the flag is facing to the observer’s right, and gives the effect of the flag flying in the breeze as the wearer moves forward. The appropriate replica for the right shoulder sleeve is identified as the reverse side flag. TL;DR: to look like you're carrying a real flag as you move.",
"It's not. US flags don't have a front and back, rather we are accustomed (by heraldry tradition) to viewing them as though the pole is on the left. The flag is always worn so as to be advancing, or carried forward, on modern uniforms. Hence the blue field is toward the wearer's front. On certain uniforms, like USAF flight suits, the flag is worn on the left sleeve and thus is sewn as you're used to seeing. It was not always this way. On D-Day, the flag on the right shoulder sleeve of US Army uniforms was depicted \"normally.\" This was reprised in the 2016 Army uniform for the Army-Navy game, which featured such a flag (complete with 48 stars as I recall) on the right shoulder.",
"\"The reason has to do with proper display of the flag. The blue field of stars should always be in the highest position of honor. When viewing the flag on a wall, the highest position of honor is the upper left when displayed horizontally, and at the top (upper left) when displayed vertically. When displayed on a \"moving object\" like a person or vehicle, the highest position of honor is the front, and not the rear; so the field of blue should be displayed to the front.\" [Source]( URL_0 )",
"The rule is: If it moves (like a person, vehicle, ship etc.) The blue field should be facing the direction of movement, to simulate what a flag on a pole being carried would look like. If the flag does not move ( a wall, a poster etc.) The field should be on the upper left.",
"Would be nice if visuals were provided for people who don't know what OP is talking about, but still want to learn something new. [\"Backward\" Flag]( URL_0 )",
"Some people complained that this post/topic violates the rules of our sub. I think it just barely gets a pass. Partly because it had already gotten some traction and activity. If i had caught it before people invested their time and interest I might have removed it under rule #7 or rule #2. **Edit:** I moved my original comment [here]( URL_2 ). I want to leave a record of it for accountability or context. The only people that it was useful to or aimed at would have seen it by now, so it isn't useful anymore. A line-by-line breakdown i tried to write for someone is [here]( URL_1 ). And my overall thoughts on the whole thing [here]( URL_0 ). I just can't respond to everyone so i thought i'd try to have a central place to direct a few people to.",
"Always advancing. Never retreating. If you are carrying a flag and move forward the patch is displayed hie the carried flag would look.",
"Moving forward will cause the wind to blow the flag back so that the stars are up front. Look [here] ( URL_0 ) or [also here] ( URL_1 ).",
"The wearer is the flagpole, so whenever it's on the right sleeve it'll fly backwards because the wind would be blowing the far right side to the left E: this is how you should actually explain something to a five-year old, preferably with arm-pumping pretending to charge into battle action",
"It is to signify forward momentum whether that be on the battlefield or elsewhere. Source: I'm an Army combat veteran",
"It's so that it appears that the breeze is blowing the flag back while the wearer is moving forward.",
"When you attach the flag to a flag pole, you put the stars nearest the pole. If you were to then carry this pole forward, you'd observe the stars forward with the stripes trailing behind. When you make the flag into a patch, you need a left-side and a right-side version in order to give the picture of the stars forward with the stripes behind.",
"Actually looked this up about a month ago. A very watered down reasoning is that it's supposed to look like a free flying flag being carried into battle.",
"When the flag moves forward the stars lead. In the face of battle we always advance, because lets face it, these colors never run brother.",
"Why didn't they just put it on the other sleeve where it wouldn't have been backward?",
"I find the interesting OMISSION from all of the responses is the answer to why it needs to be on the RIGHT arm to begin with. It wasn't always, it isn't in other branches (USAF) and there doesn't seem to be a readily available answer as to why the flag was swapped to the right shoulder, requiring it to be reversed, to begin with.",
"The flag on our uniforms it that way to symbolize running towards the battle. I'm a army veteran OEF/OIR.",
"It's so that when I run into the Class Six the flag looks like it's blowing backwards in the wind.",
"I always wondered so I asked this question to a cop in philly. He said imagine the flag was mounted to a pole, and the person at the bottom of the pole is always charging forward. So only when it's on the right side of a uniform is the orientation flipped. I have a team USA baseball jersey and hat and for the longest time I was pissed cause I thought the manufacturers fucked up lol. I was actually wearing the hat when I asked the cop. Source: just trust me",
"Plot twist: The backwards flag represents another country to which the entire military belong.",
"If you had two little American flags poking up from your shoulders and you were running forward, what would those flags look like? There you go.",
"In less than 24 hours I've seen four videos, and this post, all related to the flag being backwards on military uniforms. The fuck is going on?",
"There's a couple reasons really. I imagine you're talking about this: URL_0 First, every flag has two sides, this isn't something that initially occurred to me as a Canadian because my flag is symmetrical, so no matter which direction I view it from, it always looks the same. But for the American flag which isn't, you may see the stars on the left side of the flag, only to see them on the right when win changes direction, like this: URL_1 Furthermore as other people said, the 'backwards' print makes it seem as if the soldier is 'running into battle' with the flag, as opposed to away from it. What you're probably not realizing is that on the other shoulder, the flag is the 'right' way. Like this: URL_2",
"On uniforms it appears backwards because they want to convey the look that they are moving forward and the wind is blowing the flag back. It comes from the \"never retreat\" mentality and that they will also push forward towards the enemy",
"IT's not... It's printed the correct way. It's supposed to look like a flag does when attached to any moving object which is not the same as a stationary flag pole.",
"Like Mel Gibson in the patriot....when you run with the flag...charge the attack...it looks like that. Stars first. Bugged me til i was in the army and someone explained it. Pretty cool when you find out why they have it that way. It's not really common knowledge.",
"The real question is, why is it on the right arm?",
"The reason is because the flag appears to be waving in the wind, as if it were rushing forward through the air. Back during the time of the American Revolution, militaries around the world still had people carrying flags into battle, rushing forward with the front lines, and the flags on our military uniforms are meant to represent that forward progress, literally and figuratively.",
"When I was in military academy I asked my TAC officer, a retired Delta Force sniper, the same question. His response? \"Son because the flag flys in that direction when we charge and move forward. It represents that value and the idea that we don't retreat. It's almost and inspirational reminder that when we want to sometimes go backwards, we must keep marching onwards.\"",
"The American flag has to always be pointing forward, so when you see it on a pole the stars are pointing forward. When you see it on a soldiers arm the stars are pointing forward towards the enemy(backwards in your mind). If it in reverse it would look like the flag is retreating rather than moving forward . Pointless fact I know and don't know how I obtained it"
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6jg2a0 | Why is it so hard for games to be cross-platform? Is it just the fact that companies don't want to work together? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pretty much, yes. Each company has their own online account system which does various things, so a developer who wants to do cross-platform play has some work to do bridging those different services so they work together. But that's not *that* difficult. The main problem is that Sony is holding it back. They see PSN as a \"walled garden\" which protects its user from harassment, inappropriate content, inappropriate behaviour, etc. So if they allow games to also play against Xbox Live users, they're no longer in control and can't guarantee users are \"safe\". That's what they say anyway, they have allowed cross platform play with PC before. So their real reason might be something different."
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6jg3x5 | Why do we see people wrapped in blankets in shows/movies after cops arrive at a crime scene; even when in the warmth of their own home? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One of the first treatments for shock is keeping the patient warm. However, in visual media it is more about telling the story. Being wrapped in a blanket shows the viewer that the character is safe now, because being wrapped in blankets is a cozy good thing. This is also why horror movies like to show people being attacked in bed. It up ends the notion that blankets are a safe place, which adds to the fear."
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6jg7tm | How come we can "feel" other people staring at us? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We can't. However, there's an evolutionary advantage to being vigilant, and being wary of being watched. So many little clues will make you feel like you're being watched: A subtle change in the ambient sound quality implying that someone is behind you, and small moving reflection, etc. If you look around and don't see anybody, you mostly forget that it even happened. But if you look around and see someone looking at you, your brain is all, \"Aha! I knew it! I'm _always_ right when I think someone's watching me!\" This is known as \"confirmation bias\"."
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6jgiuc | How do fighter pilots know that another fighter jet has a missile lock on them? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"An electronically steered radar will generally scan a large area of the sky until it acquires a target. Once that happens, it's likely to start scanning a smaller area around the target, both to pick up any movement sooner and to get better sensitivity. This would be easy to detect by the target since the signal would get much stronger and/or it would repeat faster.. FOR EXAMPLE If you're escaping from prison and the spotlights are scanning around, looking for you, you're safe. Once they stop scanning around and just point right at you, they're \"locked on\"."
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6jinvp | The whole "mining" thing with RX video cards? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Crypto currency \"mining\" is basically solving a bunch of complex math problems, in exchange you get some of that crypto currency. It just so happens that Radeon graphics cards, specify the newer RX ones, are very good at it. GPU's are better in general at this than CPU's and Radeon based graphics cards are better at it than Nvidia based graphics card. This caused a very high demand for these graphics cards, as the price if Bitcoin and a few other crypto currencies have increased very quickly in the last several months. Many people are buying Radon RX series graphics cards to get in on the increase in crypto currency maker value."
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6jjpz4 | How can aircraft detect when their heat signature has been locked onto? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They can't really detect if someone locks on through the heat signature. However, what you've seen in the movies and possibly from pictures of military cockpits seem to contradict me, right? Well, what's used to detect if someone is \"painting\" you, is radar. If someone is directing a radar signal at your plane, that can be detected with a \"simple\" antenna and some basic electronic circuitry. The strength of the signal will indicate how close the other plane is, and the time between each signal will indicate what's going on. A \"slow\" signal indicates that the other plane is seeking, and faster one indicates that it has \"locked on\" and is tracking. A much faster signal indicates that a radar-guided missile has been launched and is tracking you. Some planes have several antennas all around the aircraft, and can tell the pilot or RIO from which direction the threat is coming.",
"They can't detect that directly, because \"locking on\" is an invisible internal decision of a missile or other aircraft. They can infer that something is following them if they see it via radar, cameras, or external warnings (someone else telling them about it)."
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6jn4ip | Why do household fans always have the highest option as the first option when you turn it on instead of the lowest option? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It takes a lot more power to start something moving than it does to keep something moving. The highest option is first because it gives the burst of power to start turning the previously stationary fan motor. Once the fan has started, you need much less power to keep the motor spinning so you can turn it down to a lower setting."
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6jpsme | I've noticed that a lot of antidepressants carry warnings that they may actually cause depression. How do these drugs work? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Antidepressants have two functions: to make you more motivated and to actually make you feel less depressed. Unfortunately, the \"less depressed\" part can sometimes take a week or two longer to kick in than the \"more motivated\" part. So that leaves some people still feeling depressed, but more motivated to do something about it... I'm just going to leave this here: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Call 1-800-273-8255 Available 24 hours everyday",
"The actual answer to \"how these drugs work\" is a bit interesting. An executive summary: 1. Drug blocks the pump that pulls serotonin from gaps between brain cells (synapses.) More serotonin remains there, where it can be active, rather than hanging out in the cell. 2. Patients keep taking drug for several weeks. 3. ??? 4. On average, greater improvement in clinical depression after several weeks, compared to people taking a sugar pill. That third step is the tricky part. We know that the drugs hit their targets quickly but take weeks to work, and that they don't do much of anything to mood in healthy people. This suggests that rather than it being a simple matter of serotonin up=good, there's some secondary or \"downstream\" effect of consistently elevating serotonin in those gaps. They don't work as consistently as we'd like, and at present the only way to find one that works is trial and error. (There are efforts to improve this, but it's hard.) The flip side is that when fiddling with brain systems that affect mood, worsened depression is a risk. In this case, it's not a large one.",
"Not so sure if this would be an answer to your question but an experience with Wellbutrin I had. It is an anti depressant but also used to help stop smoking. I was never depressed but got on the Wellbutrin to help me quit smoking, within one week I was having suicidal thoughts and learned what true depression was like. Maybe if someone is not experiencing true depression and takes an anti- depressant it can cause a rebound effect and make the person feel depressed. Not a pharmacist, so can't say that for sure.",
"Antidepressants of the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) class work by preventing the outflow of a neurotransmitter known as serotonin from the nerve synapses. This eventually leads to increased quantity of serotonin and leads to \"happiness\". However, for people who are already suicidal, antidepressants in the early few weeks give them enough energy to stop sulking and now they might actually try to commit suicide. This is the warning that it may cause suicidal ideation. As far as the depression warning goes, it's not fully understood but it might mean that a different class of antidepressants is required for the patient if they are feeling more depressed [after prolonged therapy] Edit [ ] Edit 2: do not take more than the prescribed dose of an SSRI to speed up to the \"happy\" part. It leads to heart problems (prolonged q-t wave) and can also cause too much serotonin (serotonin storm) which is fatal"
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6jq94i | why do ceiling fans and many larger fans starts off on high setting and adjusting it sets it down? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It takes a fair amount of power to get a fan spinning from a full stop. Motors can be damaged if they're running but unable to get the axle to spin. By starting on the highest power setting, they ensure that the motor has enough power when it's turned on to start the fan spinning, and thus avoid damaging the motor."
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6jqits | What actually happens when you get the feeling of your heart "sinking"? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Scientists aren't really sure WHY it happens but the feeling you get is your muscles contracting/flexing. Almost like a muscle spasm. Edit: word",
"1. It's a mistake to believe that having an emotional response is at all removed from your physical hardware. 2. Emotional responses, besides being integral to your physical functioning, are massively influential on your psychological *perception* of your physical hardware. I mean, you're asking for a wikipedia entry on the phenomenon some humans call \"heart sinking,\" but it's just not available. But that stuff about your emotions absolutely affecting all manner of physical perception of your environment and body? Yeah, that's an important one. That sinking feeling you had was accompanied by an audio/visual filter that's equally hard to describe in scientific terminology. We don't have the tools to observe these events in that way yet. But we sure as hell know that emotions affect us physically.",
"I asked this question recently in my abnormal behavior psych class. My teacher explained that the consensus is that it is a result of your sympathetic nervous system overreacting to present stressor triggering a flight or fight like response. (I'm assuming the rapid vasodilation could result in a short drop in blood pressure giving you that sinking feeling but also just a guess) Unless you're talking about when it happens with no external or internal stimuli (a jump scare in a movie or a stressful thought) often described as \"heart skipping a beat\" could potentially be a heart abnormality causing a murmur and should probably be consulted with a proper physician"
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6jql0v | if our resting internal body temperature is around 98 degrees, why do we prefer temperatures lower than this? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because the human body is always producing heat, like a light bulb. More when a person is active and less when at rest, or sleeping. But the body is always cooling itself. It is much harder to cool yourself when outside temperature is equal to the internal temperature."
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6jrcqo | when in a quiet room why do ears start to ring? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"To the first part - only in a very quiet room can normal people (who do not suffer from tinnitus) can hear this ringing, which is just the flow of your blood through the blood vessels in your ears. To the second part - I'd say that after a period of being in a quiet environment, your eyes adjust and become more sensitive. Just like a light seems a lot brighter after you've been in a dark room. (Anyone correct me if I'm wrong.)"
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6jvl9j | Why is it easier to balance something on your finger when it's rotating (like balancing a spinning basketball on your finger) compared to when it is stationary? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Top comment from march 2015 when this was asked: (answer by u/Toppo) Every object keeps continuing its movement until there is an opposing force preventing that motion. When the basketball is spinning, the spinning is force in motion, which keeps its resisting change to its position. When you put a ball to spin, it attains energy to resist other forces, like gravity pulling it out of balance. If the ball does not spin, it has no force to resist gravity. Also [this video ]( URL_0 ) was posted by u/LinearWave on the same thread"
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6k16sr | What causes "asparagus pee" and how does it happen so fast after eating it? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Short answer is that asparagus contains a natural chemical aptly named asparagusic acid. This acid is broken down by the body into sulfur-containing compounds. Those sulfur compounds smell. This is the same reason rotten eggs smell. And once made, the breakdown products end up in your urine. Because they are highly volatile, they make it into the air as you pee, and float on up your nose! I don't know exactly why it shows up so quickly, but my best guess is just that the smelly compounds are made from asparagusic acid very quickly, as soon as you begin digesting the asparagus. Source: URL_0 Not an asparagus expert, nor a pee expert. Just googled your question and found a good article.",
"When your digestive system breaks down mercaptan (a compound in asparagus), by-products are released that cause the strange smell. The process is so quick that your urine can develop the distinctive smell within 15 to 30 minutes of eating asparagus. Not everyone suffers this effect; your genetic makeup may determine whether your urine has the odor -- or whether you can actually smell it. Some people can't even smell the odor in asparagus urine!",
"**What causes it?** *Enzymes* There's an inheritable gene that some people have that includes a specific enzyme that can break down the acid in asparagus (C4H6O2S2). This acid, when broken down, smells. There is nothing wrong in \"asparagus pee\", as it's not toxic. It simply is unpleasant. When you have the right gene passed on to you, you can either produce or smell this \"Asparagusic acid\". If not: You simply lack a gene modification. Nothing to worry about. **Why does it happen so fast**? Again, Enzymes. They are pretty quick in breaking down the compounds found in asparagus and therefore it smells instantly.",
"There are something like 500 genes that contribute to the ability to smell that \"asparagus pee\" smell. Only roughly 50% of people have the necessary genes for it, meaning only about half of all people can smell it. There is some debate to this; some scientists think certain people don't produce the smell itself, however I can say from personal experience that I always smell it, while my wife never smells it, regardless of who is the pee-er. The cause of the distinct smell is sulfur, as the byproduct of the digestion of asparagus is a bunch of sulfur-based chemicals. The chemicals are volatile, which means they have a low vapor point where they can get into the air and therefore be detected by human noses. While they are locked in the asparagus, they are not volatile and so we don't smell them.",
"Fun Fact: There are two things at play here, the ability of the body to *produce* the pee smell (one gene) and then there is the ability to *smell* the pee smell, which is a different gene. So you could be producing the smell and not know it, you can also be able to smell it in other's pee, yet not produce it yourself.",
"I have the same question about Golden Crisp and/or Honey Smacks cereal. Urine smells like the cereal rather quickly after eating.",
"Do you know if you can smell asparagus pee, you are one of the few that have the ability. Just like some people are born with more cones and rods in there eyes that give them super color vision, you have a much stranger superpower of smelling asparagus pee that affects 1/3 of the population.",
"Along with the other answers in this thread, vitamin B can also cause rank piss. If you were to take a supplement of B 6, B 12, and others, your urine will gain color even if it is diluted through heavy ingestion of water and will also smell like piss. This is why many people use it to prevent a urine sample being denied during a drug screen. If your vegetable contains a high amount of vitamin B (I believe asparagus, broccoli, and other firm, green veggies do) then prepare for your piss to smell worse than R Kelly's sheets and Trump's comb-over combined.",
"More interesting to me, what causes \"Sugar Puffs pee\"?",
"What about Sugar Smacks cereal? Those always make your pee smell funny as well.",
"Depending on who you ask, it's either aspagusic acid, or methenitheol. Most now believe that pretty much everyone is a smelly \"excreter\" but only 25-33% of the population has the gene that allows them to \"detect\" smelly pee. Source: Alton Brown is my hero, also Google :-)"
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6k2r5e | Why are some hazardous items labeled: "Known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects or reprooductive harm?" Why is it worded in such a way? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the 80's warning labels were not that common, but consumer concern was rising. So California took a step to inform their citizens, making a list of chemicals known to do x (one of the things listed in prop 65). This list must be updated once a year and has grown to almost 800 items. The list, which is being kept active by California has to have a warning stating that California recognizes y chemical causes x if it is sold in California so that Californians may make informed decisions. If you are out of the state of California and see the warning, you are benefiting from the fact that it is cheaper to do a single label versus a label for California and a label for other areas.",
"california has some of the most aggressive consumer and environmental protections, and they are also one of the largest markets in the world. california pursues some of these issues much more than the feds or other states, and so companies word their disclaimers to comply with their laws because you're going to tailor your products and packaging to comply with regulations in one of the biggest markets in the world.",
"California has legislation requiring labeling of certain materials on products sold in its state. Because it's cheaper and easier to produce a single package for the entire U.S. market than create something different for every state, they print it so that it will be legal if that particular box ends up in California. It's the same reason you see refund information on glass bottles for a bunch of different states instead of just the state you're in."
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6k46dw | How did the modern version of the globe come to be, with what we call North on the top and Souyh on the bottom? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In actual fact nobody really is sure as to which side is north and which side is south. In Australia for example, globes can be purchased that are flipped with the southern hemisphere appearing above the northern one. I believe the reason most globes are the way they are today is largely down to the British empire and the richness of explorers and adventures from the northern hemisphere earlier in human history.",
"It was an arbitrary convention that was adopted by the ancient Greeks. From there it spread to Europe and then the Europeans conquered everybody else. There is no inherent difference between north and south. The choice of which one to make \"up\" is purely a matter of convention.",
"If you're a primitive civilization you need a way of telling people what directions things are in (what direction is home). Ultimately, you end up using the sun, since it's easy to figure out. Thus you end up with \"the direction the sun rises\", \"the direction the sun sets\", \"left of the direction the sun rises\", and \"right of the direction the sun sets\". The cardinal directions mostly stem from these directions and definitions. As for why North is up, well once you understand the earth, it's clear that North/south are the points that don't move, they are the directions you can look and see a star never moving year round. They are both great candidates for \"up\", but if you live in the northern hemisphere, you can see the north star, if you live in the southern hemisphere you have the southern cross and can easily identify the pole in the sky and you can't see the north star. Thus, for almost everywhere on earth, you can see exactly one pole spot in the night sky. That means that likely if you were to pick, you'd pick the pole you can see that is physically up (North for the northern hemisphere, south for the southern hemisphere). When it came to deciding what one is up, everyone agreed North is up in Europe, and everyone in China said south is up. Europe one that argument."
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6k54qs | Why do retail stores sell things at $.99 $.98 and even $.97 instead of $1.00? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"$1 is a psychological barrier for a tremendous number of people. I worked at Pillsbury a long time ago. Every time they tried to raise the price of Totino's Pizza from $0.99 to $1.09, sales would tank. So they just kept cost-reducing the pizza instead--mostly by making it smaller.",
"It comes down to how we as people digest information. End of the day if you can say that you purchased something for one dollar, compared to I bought that for less than a dollar, it sounds better. It's easier to brag to your friends about it as well, which in turn could make them buy said product. It's merely perception and advertising trying to get you to buy into their deal."
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6k5lna | Why are we so tired throughout the day but when it's time to sleep we're wide awake? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is caused by bad [sleep hygiene]( URL_1 ) which can just generally throw off your sleep cycles. Essentially, you are over-tired. There is a \"sweet spot\" for everyone regarding the time they should go to bed (just the right level of drowsy). Once you get past that, your brain thinks there must be an important reason for you to continue to stay awake, so it sends you a surge of adrenaline. When you lay down, your body just isn't able to relax that quickly. _________________________________________________________________ [Source from previous thread]( URL_0 )",
"Looking at back lit devices at night before bed (I.e. Phone, iPad etc) may cause a 'phase delay' in your sleeping patterns-tricking your brain into thinking it is daytime when it's not. Using artificial light like this can be used by travellers to help get over the effects of jet lag.",
"If you're like me, you have [delayed sleep phase syndrome]( URL_0 ). It's incredible to realise that for most people, they are wide awake during the day and sleepy at night.",
"Perhaps it's boredom. During the day, most do not have the chance to entertain themselves as they do at home, thus tend to procrastinate and entertain themselves with their leisure time which for most is at night.",
"You're probably not doing enough physical exercise every day. I used to have insomnia, but I started swimming every day and now I am able to get to sleep much easier. Also, like others have said, TV and mobile devices, smart phones and tablets are too bright. I turn on the blue light filter and the brightness way down. And generally avoid any bright lights for at least an hour before bed. The best way to fall asleep is to simply read a paper book with a dim reading light with warm light color (more orange than blue). Also, don't consume any caffeine 8 hours before bed time. Personally, I only get caffeine from tea and only during the morning. Coffee has way too much caffeine and so do soda drinks.",
"Someone commented on a similar post a while back that we get tired and fall asleep because we aren't trying to sleep, and when we ARE trying to sleep, our brain is working on falling asleep. As such it takes us a while to fall asleep while actively seeking slumber."
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6k6hbr | When we type up an email and hit "send", how does the Internet know where to correctly deliver our email? What does this process look like between two computers/email accounts? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you hit send, your mail is delivered to the Mailserver of your mail provider. Your computer knows which one that is because it was part of your initial mail setup on your computer. Once the mail reaches 'your' Mailserver it'll look at the domain (the part behind the @ sign in the mail address) and looks up the IP address of that domain using DNS (think of it as the phone book of the internet). Once the server knows the IP of the recipients mailserver it'll send your mail over there. The recipients Mailserver then looks at the account name (the part before the @ sign in the mail address) and puts the mail in the correct mailbox. Edit: the recipients computer is set up to know the recipients Mailserver and thus checks there for new mail. So in the end, the two computers themselves don't communicate directly at all but the servers do.",
"It works kind of like the post office. Think of it like this. The stuff after the @ symbol is the city. The stuff before the @ is the street address. When you hit send the email gets given to the post office of the \"city\" you specified which can be google, yahoo, comcast or hotmail. The city then looks at the \"street address\" and figures out where to put it. You then go and pull it out of your mail box."
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6k81u3 | Why is the sound quality in phone-line hold music so terrible? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is related to the bandwidth of the signal. Think of bandwidth as how much information can be sent at any one time. Plain old telephone service (POTS) has a frequency range of 300–3300 Hz, or 3000 Hz bandwidth. This is really all that is required to hear and understand a voice clearly (this is called voiceband). If you were to listen to FM radio it will transmit a bandwidth of around 15 kHz. This means this signal is able to carry much more information. This means the sound you hear will likely be clearer, can be sent in stereo (more than one channel) and just overall be of higher quality. There is no reason for the DMV to send a high quality music signal if they are limited in bandwidth using the POTS. It would be like mailing a high quality cake through the postal service in an unprotected box. No matter how nice it was when you sent it the cake would just end up smashed and destroyed when it arrived. Also keep in mind that even if your telephone service has better bandwidth this is not really something the DMV would spend money on or be able to adapt to quickly. They are all about what will accommodate the most people. This reasoning is also why we still have paper registrations or stickers we put on when it could fairly easily be electronic.",
"As already explained, a lot of phone lines are working on very old standards and most of them physically cannot support sound efficiently outside of the human speech range. On an electrical level, anything outside of those ranges gets attenuated prematurely. This means that when playing music, all higher and lower-pitched sounds will be 'filtered out'. This also kills harmonics and overall makes the music sound 'flat'. But other factors make it sound terrible and 'irregular'. Most telephone switches use a couple of compression methods to limit packets going through. This is because even though the last stretch of line up to your phone is analog, most 'modern' telephone switches operate digitally, and you only have so much bandwidth in a T1 channel, so not everything goes through. A lot of systems also aren't 'really' two-way and instead alternate very quickly as the conversation goes, even with two people speaking at the same time. You can actually test that for yourself; call some automated reception and start blowing into your handset, most likely the voice on the other side will start cutting out. That compression acts very quickly, and is tailored for human speech, so whenever music stops sounding like someone having a conversation, parts of it starts being filtered out, on top of what doesn't go through the cable in the first place."
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6k87x3 | Why is sexual abuse so rampant in the Catholic Church? Is it as common in other organized religions? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The \"rampant\" thing is a matter of perspective. The catholic church is huge, and centrally organized. Over the years I've heard about lawsuits brought against officiants of other religions as well - along with scout leaders, teachers, boarding schools, etc. What happened with the catholic church was in some cases evil and inexcusable but also, to some extent a product of the time. In the olden days when I was young, people thought that pedophilia was a disorder that you could go for a few weeks of therapy and it would go away. They also thought that letting anyone know their child had been a victim of a sex crime would be permanently damaging to the child whereas the crime itself could be forgotten because children get over these things. So they would send the priest away for therapy (best case, worst case just send him away) and the family wanted it kept quiet so the family didn't call the police either. I mean, if it was me, I wouldn't have called the bishop to report my son was molested, I'd call the police. But back in those days, parents didn't want the world to know their son has anything to do with \"gay\". As far as the rampant thing, I'm on my phone and can't find the statistics among different churches but I heard on the radio a child advocacy group said all religions are about the same on the prevalence of offenses, but the catholic church had a hierarchy that made it possible to move offenders around rather than throwing them out. I grew up in a catholic neighborhood and went to catholic schools, married a catholic, and know of only one person who had an issue but then there are a lot of priests and i think the ones who were bad had lots of victims more than that everyone was bad. The important thing is in being outraged about the Catholics to not let down protection of children just because most abuse isn't by Catholic priests or any other religious group. It comes from everywhere. I've been reading a lot lately about how schools just help to move teachers around who've been accused because with union contracts it's too hard to fire them. Parents seen to be the main abusers, and surprisingly, other children. There are some stats about child sex abuse here: URL_0",
"The Catholic Church has a rate of sexual abuse virtually identical to normal society. So the idea that it is rampant is skewed impressions of events. There are many reasons why we see it skewed: 1) They are a position of social power in our lives and so abuse of said power is more notices. It is the same reason we pay attention to teachers and to politicians. 2) Their specific role is suppose to be above sexual things. So violation of their vows of celibacy is seen as being extremely severe. 3) People remember and gossip about bad things.",
"Predators seek out positions of power over their victims, and a member of the clergy has a lot of power over people. On top of that the Catholic Church had a history of covering up for their priests and sending them to a new area where the community wouldn't know if their crimes.",
"It's not that it's more common in the Catholic Church. That's kind of a misconception based on its prevalence in the media, but I've heard that abuse by priests is no more or less common than abuse by other people in similar positions of authority. The issue and the reason it's so prevalent in the media is that there have been several cases now where bishops and others in higher positions of power in the Catholic Church have taken efforts to cover up the occurrence of abuse, shuffle priests to other dioceses to avoid responsibility, and protect the priests involved in these scandals rather than the families who were victimized.",
"I don't know whether the percentage of priests who abuse is greater than that of any other profession where people have authority over children. The reason that the catholic church is so hated for this is the fact that they know about the abuse *and cover it up and protect the priest*. Furthermore, they endanger a new parish by moving the offender in with no warning to parents. In all the documentaries I have seen, the attitudes that are expressed by bishops and cardinals that they are somehow exempt from reporting these *crimes* to the police is the most despicable aspect of their behavior. My opinion: The catholic church has been exposed as an evil and criminal organization. They should lose their tax exempt status in the US.",
"So a ton of people seem to have this same misconception about sexual abuse rates and what they see in the media confirming such. Essentially you're being taken advantage of by your own confirmation biases because the only time you ever hear of a Catholic Priest in the news is in a sexual abuse case. From this you think, \"wow this must happen all the time if I see it all over websites what seems to me like ALL the time.\" So once you get that initial idea in your head that \"catholic priests are more inclined to be child molesters\" you continuously feed into that notion by affirming it with more and more news stories. In reality, sexual abuse cases within the Church are no more prevalent than they are in the general population. Here is a blog post by an adjunct professor of psychiatry at Stanford who explains the situation in greater depth. URL_0",
"Jehovah's witnesses were recently investigated by the Australian royal commission who [found]( URL_0 ) 1,006 cases of JWs accused of abuse and also that the policies of the JW organization do not adequately protect children. So no, it's not just the Catholics, its any organized religion that lacks transparency and accountability in their leadership. There is a \"handle it ourselves\" mindset in these communities. They have a kind of adversarial relationship with secular authorities. Plus, when you're claiming to be the embodiment of God's will on earth, having sex offenders in your midst doesn't help convincing your followers of that. So basically the needs of the church come before the needs of the children.",
"I'm a cradle Catholic who went to Catholics schools from 3rd grade through high school. I was also an altar server through 8th grade. I guess here I should stipulate I was never abused, nor around any priests who gave me any odd vibes. There was a priest at our church, during the time I was a server, who was eventually accused of engaging with a minor (I think some high school kid---can't recall if it is male or female). As far as I know, there was no coverup or anything. But to your questions: Why is it so rampant? Well, I think there are a couple of reasons I can identify: 1) The church has a worldwide, very detailed hierarchy. Whenever there is a lot of organization and red tape, it makes it easier to hide things. And this becomes especially true when this massive hierarchy is a religious one, so people have that factored in. 2) Catholicism has \"confession\" or \"reconciliation\" where sins are confessed to a priest who, by the power given to priests by Jesus (or so we believe), those sins are forgiven. What is said during this time is absolutely private. So if one priest confesses to another priest through this sacrament, it is much less likely that it will be reported, because it \"shouldn't\" be. So basically secrecy and a large organization that can facilitate keeping those secrets. I am not in anyway justifying that. I think it is awful. And generally the Church has taken huge steps to rectify this problem and ensure that abuse doesn't occur, and that it is reported when and if it does. I coached my little brother's Catholic Youth Organization basketball team a few years back and had to have a background check and attend a three hour training session that allows us to recognize and address abuse. There are tip lines and offices assigned to address any allegations, and they're taken very seriously, as they should be. Is it more prevalent in the Catholic Church? No. It isn't. Catholic priests don't offend at a higher rate than other males, and other religions have similar rates. That doesn't justify or excuse anything, of course. I think that, as I discussed above, the reason it feels like it is more common in the Catholic Church is because there is a worldwide hierarchy that systematically hid abuse. So once it was exposed it was overwhelming. Whereas if there are hundreds of little Baptist Churches who are only loosely connected, and abuse is found to have occurred at each, it would be view as a local problem with each church, not a problem with the Baptist faith in general. I guess I ultimately don't view child sex abuse as a \"Catholic\" problem. Sadly, a child is just as likely to get abused by an adult in any other kind of organization (be it youth sports, boy scouts or another religious organization). It is the scale, depth and consistency of the coverup, probably combined with the sometimes-mysterious nature of the 2000+ year old Catholic Church, that ends up making it more newsworthy and more well known than general abuse. I think the danger, though, is that parents might be less likely to be worried about their children or look for signs of abuse because, \"We don't go to Catholic church with those pervert priests.\" Unfortunately, a pastor or scout leader or youth coach is just as likely to be a pervert. So always be vigilant with your children. Edit: I'll also add that more attention is paid to Catholic sex abuse scandals because priests are unmarried and supposed to be celibate. So people want to argue that potentially many are homosexual and/or that celibacy leads to abuse. That's just a massive and dangerous misunderstanding of what drives an abuser. One doesn't start raping children because they are gay or because they aren't otherwise having sex. It is because of an awful mental defect and/or some kind of innate evil.",
"just because now Cardinal Pell has been *accused* of sexual abuse * firstly it doesn't mean that he *has been condemned* * secondly it doesn't mean that *sexual abuse is rampant* in the catholic Church some time ago an italian journalist (Introvigne) wrote articles and a brief essay about the argument. you can read it [here]( URL_0 ) translated by google I can copy here briefly the conclusions > To know whether the Catholic Church is a particularly favorable environment for pedophilia - and the priesthood is a \"life-threatening\" state of life - it would be necessary to compare statistics on Catholic priests to those on Protestant pastors, rabbis, imams and school masters. Of state facilities. For all these categories, Jenkins does not give data on accusations collected with the same systematicity as the Catholic priests have been studying; But condemnation data shows that the percentage is similar, and in some cases higher, than the priests of the Catholic Church. For Jenkins, this figure removes, among other things, the repeated repeated thesis that priestly celibacy is responsible for pedophilia. Protestant pastors and school and asylum masters are mostly married, yet there is a proportion of pedophiles who are similar or taller than Catholic priests. As Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell (and Jenkins data confirm this), ninety percent of pedophiles are married . Yet - as far as politically correct - the data confirm that the pedophilia risk is greater among homosexuals. While it would be unfair and absurd to argue that all homosexuals are pedophile, it is a fact that many pedophiles are homosexual. According to the John Jay College report, 81% of accused priests with minorities in the 1950-2002 years had a homosexual orientation. However, when Benedict XVI advised American bishops with greater caution before ordering as seminarian priests who show homosexual orientation, the same media - including the BBC - who call for harsh measures against pedophilia risk have accused the Pope of being \"homophobic.\" Where is the mistake? unfortunately, as you can see by other comments, the *general opinion* is that priesthood and celibacy is somewhat *bad*... even if statistically it isn't.",
"There is a royal commission into child abuse in Australia right now. What they have found is that child abuse happened pretty much everywhere. Almost any institution that was responsible for looking after children had child abuse. Church's, state institutions, secular, government. They all did it. The rate of child abuse is not too different between any institution. Its just the Catholic Church looked after more children than most, and is one of the largest institutions of its kind in the world. But the rate seemed to be something like 7% of of priests would abuse children (yes the number was that high) and it didn't matter whether they were catholic or something else. The rate was fairly consistent despite different institutions and histories. It seems to be something inherent about people who become priests and are given that responsibility.",
"\"The answer lies with the victims. Many, like Mr. Rozzi, are resilient and accomplished. (He is a businessman, a husband and a father, as well as a legislator.) Some are utterly destroyed, unable to hold down a job or romantic relationship. But no matter where they are on this spectrum, the abuse they suffered is often so searing that it is the formative experience of their lives. Even if they have supportive family and friends, a financial cushion and plenty of time in therapy — all big “ifs” — they never entirely leave it behind.\" \"Of course, child sexual abuse is an issue everywhere, not just in the Catholic Church. But the scandal in the Catholic Church has proved far more extensive, and experts I have spoken with over the years have had a few theories why. One is sheer numbers — Catholics make up about a quarter of the American population and are the largest single religious denomination. The Catholic Church is also a hierarchical organization that keeps extensive records, so abuse usually leaves a paper trail.\" Another factor, too, is the exalted position of priests, acting “in persona Christi” — in the person of Christ. Many Catholics, survivors included, have told me they had found it unthinkable that a priest could be capable of crimes against children. And then there is the church’s requirement of celibacy for priests. While many live by and value it, for others it has led to covert sexual relationships with adults, double lives and deep secrets. Some also theorize that the all-male priesthood is a factor. While it’s quite possible that having women in the clergy would have instilled more accountability and sensitivity, child sexual abuse also happens in faiths with married clergy. It also happens in families.\" _____________________________________________________________ [Source]( URL_0 )",
"There's a deadly good documentary on Netflix called the keepers. It's quite graphic, but watching it offered some insight on this topic.",
"On a practical level, an abuser needs a few things: * Access to children * Trust (People need to allow them to spend time alone with kids) * Authority (To cover up their actions, the kids need to obey their instructions not to talk about it) * The appearance of innocence (An abuser needs a good cover that projects innocence. For example, a 'strange man in the park' will always raise suspicions.) Clergy naturally have the those attributes just by being clergy. Some abusers go to great lengths to access children. So one question would be which came first, the desire to abuse, or the desire to be a member of the clergy?",
"The Catholic Church is a centrally organized, hierarchical institution that is perceived as being *complicit* in the assaults--that is the major difference. Whereas when a Baptist minister commits a similar offense, the entire Southern Baptist Convention (which doesn't share the same organizational structure as the Catholic Church) doesn't become complicit by moving the minister or paying hush money and generally aiding & abetting the perpetrator. It *may* also be true that abuse rates amongst priests mirror rates in society at large (this can be debated) but the unique thing about priests is that they have *enjoyed the protection of a world-wide organization that can and does quickly remove them from the jurisdiction in which their crimes were committed.* As others have noted, the Catholic Church has positions of power and influence both within their congregations, but also the community and local and national governments. The Church has exercised this political and \"moral\" influence to the advantage of the offender and to the detriment of victims. Finally, few modern religions require their leadership to be unmarried, celibate and male. I think it should be fairly obvious to any *reasonable* person that those requirements will most certainly result in either drawing in people with sexual issues or creating such issues by denying certain biological imperatives. The Church is implicated insofar as they have refused to change these requirements and create a healthier and more diverse core of leadership not subject to daily sexual frustration and denial.",
"*(This answer assumes \"If it isn't any more common in the Catholic Church\" as this part of the question does.)* > If it isn't any more common in the Catholic Church, why is it so much more publicized than other religions? **ELI5: *Everyone knows who a Catholic is, most people have reason to hate Catholics or their bishops, and big scandals about people everyone knows about sell more papers than scandals about someone nobody knows about*.** **Short version:** If Cheney shoots a guy, it's big, national news. If someone identical to him does it who is not a hated national public figure, it's a local story. If it looks like a bunch of people exactly like Cheney do it, with similar political views, similar notoriety, and similar positions in government, it looks like it's endemic, and everyone loves reading about it, even if the ties are more cultural/spiritual than personal. This comparison works because the Pope's role in the active administration of the diocese is actually extremely minimal. To his credit, the Pope who best responded to the sexual abuse crises in recent years is unquestionably Pope Benedict XVI, despite the media narrative that he was enabling the cover-up. See [Marcial Maciel]( URL_1 ) for a specific example, and note that [his involvement in cleaning up the \"filth\" stretched from before he was Pope]( URL_0 ). ------------------------- **Long version:** It should be noted that coverups are also quite common elsewhere. I am not saying that the coverups weren't evil---I am saying that the evil is more common than most people are giving credit. So why the difference in coverage? Yes, other religions don't have a bureaucracy which leaves a paper trail that accounts for up to a million or more people at a time, but mostly it's that readers love consuming news against the Catholic Church, including ex-Catholics and practicing Catholics! There are four big groups involved in consuming media coverage and all of them have something to profit by the news of a scandal. (This will be from the perspective of an American, but the patterns appear to repeat elsewhere.) **Protestants:** The United States is not a Christian nation---it is a Protestant nation, or historically so. Anti-Catholic prejudice runs deep, and the narrative only recently included John Kennedy (reviled by many) and the Bing Crosby-crooner priests. In the first century of the United States, the Papists were seen as the tentacle of Europe, and Catholics were necessarily disloyal to the country because they were subject to a foreign power. Mostly, they were caught up in the \"errors\" of Rome, and Rome herself was pictured in Pilgrim's Progress as an evil giant paired with to paganism. **Irreligious:** From the perspective of the less religious, the Catholic Church is still an international organization toting belief in God. (See Reddit for an example of how gracious many though not all irreligious folks consider anything that has anything to do with religion.) For those less religious who aren't the /r/iamverysmart or /r/Atheism crowd, the talk about the Catholic Church even in this thread is caught up with phrases like \"regressive sexual ethic.\" Anti-abortion, anti-contraception, and in an age when the god of most people is the orgasm? Seeing the Catholics taken down a peg is cathartic. \"I knew something was wrong with them! Obviously it's the celibacy.\" (There's nothing wrong with celibacy; \"If only schoolteachers/scout leaders could get married they wouldn't rape little boys,\" & c.) **ex-Catholics**, especially Protestant converts, resent or even hate the Church more than the irreligious do. Basically, combine the two above for the most potent recipe for resentment and hatred. **Catholics**: Without too much detail, there are significant internal stresses within the Church. From the actually anti-Semitic fringe who are in clear schism, who say that the Second Vatican Council is proof that there have ceased to be valid popes, to those who do believe that there are valid popes but resent the treatment of faithful clergy by wicked bishops, to those who resent the treatment of dissident clergy and \"womenpriests\" by faithful bishops, to those who were curtly talked to in confession once, there are a great number of Catholics who have some personally significant reason to believe that bishops deserve some kind of evil retribution. This is to say nothing of those who hate the Church out of legitimate hatred of the evil done by wicked bishops---but there are many who hated before the news broke and are riding the wave. --------------------- Add up the percentages of the population represented and you get a few percentage points short of everyone. In general, despite internal stresses there is a Catholic presence everywhere in the country and basically everywhere in the world (other than, say, North Korea.) Everyone knows who a Catholic is, and it looks like an international organization rather than a local organization covering a land area rarely larger than a few counties bunched together. It looks like an organisation with deep pockets when it's really hundreds/thousands of local organizations with very little liquidity. Americans hate the rich guy, and Americans love seeing Catholics as evil even when they aren't rich. It should be said that there are many dioceses that never had a child sex abuse cover-up, even in highly Catholic areas. These dioceses were never wealthy enough to have pull or connections."
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6k8bpn | How does SPF actually work to block out sun rays? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A sunscreen product acts like a very thin bulletproof vest, stopping the UV photons before they can reach the skin and inflict damage. It contains organic sunscreen molecules(such as avobenzone or oxybenzone. Instead of physically deflecting UV light, these molecules absorb UV radiation through their chemical bonds. As the bonds absorb UV radiation, the components of the sunscreen slowly break down and release heat.) that absorb UV and inorganic pigments that absorb, scatter and reflect UV. To deliver a high level of protection, a sunscreen product must have sufficient quantities of these protective agents and it must optimally deploy them over the skin's peaks and valleys. Some inorganic chemicals, including minerals such as zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, act as a physical sunblock. They reflect UV rays, similar to how white paint reflects light. The white-colored noses on beach-goers in the 1980s and 1990s were due to these compounds; because manufacturers make the inorganic particles much smaller now, we don't see the visible white. The term SPF that appears on sunscreen labels stands for Sun Protection Factor, but it is really a sunburn protection factor. Products with a higher SPF allow fewer of the photons that produce sunburn to strike the skin. In simple terms, you can view an SPF 10 sunscreen as allowing 10 out of every 100 photons to reach the skin and an SPF 20 product as allowing only 5 out of every 100 photons to reach the skin. Because sunburn is primarily a UVB effect, it is possible for a sunscreen product to deliver high SPF while allowing a significant percentage of the incident UVA photons to reach the skin. To deliver true broad spectrum protection, products must also block a significant fraction of the UVA photons. In the U.S. market, this requires that the products contain significant levels of zinc oxide, avobenzone or titanium dioxide. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ [Source 1]( URL_1 ) [Source 2]( URL_0 )"
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6k8by4 | Why do I have to restart my computer when I update a program/app, but I don't have to restart my phone when I update programs/apps? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"On a computer, programs tend to have \"root access\". This means that a program can edit parts of your computer other than the program installation itself. (eg: the registry) When a program needs to edit other parts of your computer, the computer needs to restart for these changes to take effect. Other programs may be using the same areas that the new program is trying to edit to install itself, or certain logs may need to be refreshed when the computer restarts. When you restart your computer, it refreshes those other areas and the computer knows about the new changes. Unlike a computer, when you install an app on your phone, that app only has access to the part of you phone designated for that app. (Like workers, restricted to their own cubicle.) Because the app doesn't need to edit more critical areas of your phone, it doesn't need to restart the whole system for those changes to take effect."
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6k8gwi | Why do we feel embarrassed ourselves when we watch an embarrassing moment from a tv show? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The thing is we are not sure. But these are the plausible reasons which are widely agreed on : **Empathy** It is a psychological reaction which pretty much relates someone else's body to our own. It exists so that humans could work together better and to have us avoid killing each other in most cases. Well, the face reaction is really just us putting ourselves into that persons shoes, and reacting how they would. But there is this study that claims it has nothing to do with how empathetic the person is. - [Link]( URL_0 ) From an evolutionary view it is beneficial for us to easily remember bad memories. This helps us avoid repeating mistakes we have witnessed and keep us out of dangers way e.g. My friend was eaten by a bear in that cave, I remember this in great detail and avoid that cave in future so I'm less likely to be eaten by a bear. I think it might be similar for things we find embarrassing. It's dangerous to do things that alienate you from a group since we are social creatures that rely on acceptance and group work to survive. If we remember things we've done before that threatened our social standing then we aren't likely to repeat the behaviour in future and avoid exclusion. That's just speculation though. for people asking for more info on this I highly recommend looking up evolutionary psychology 'Evolutionary theories of emotion view emotions a s adaptive traits - they help the organism to adapt to the demand of the environment and thereby survive' (Izard, 1977; Plutchik, 1984). ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ [Source]( URL_1 )",
"The German's actually have a word for this, Fremdschämen. There's varying theories as to why embarrassment is good or bad, but it really boils down to surviving in the social and cultural customs of whatever group (tribe) you're in. If you don't fit in you aren't finding a mate. Feeling the embarrassment of your friend when they're unaware that they're not fitting in allows you to step in and save them, with the understanding that they'll do the same for you...you could think of Fremdschämen as nature's wingman. You have to keep in mind that at our core we're still very much socially dependent pack animals. A key part of being able to survive as long as we have is our ability to empathize with others. We're capable of feeling the pain, embarrassment, and even joy of others, which compels us to help and support one another.",
"People have already mentioned mirror neurons and vicarious embarrassment but I think the key feature that a lot of people are missing is this. When you do something embarrassing, you elicit a negative response from the people around you, which causes tension and discomfort among the group. The most extreme case of this would be being ostracized from a group which would significantly lower an organism's chances for reproductive success. Thus, when our brains view someone else in an embarrassing situation, we recall the feelings (often literal physical feelings) of what it was like to be embarrassed; basically your brain's way of telling you \"remember how bad that feels? Don't do that!\" much the same way we remember and avoid physical pain. Basically, feeling vicarious embarrassment is our brain's way of \"sandboxing\" the emotional experience and subsequent processing of being embarrassed without having to first actually do something embarrassing. It's our brain warning us that whatever that person did that embarrassed them, we shouldn't do because it will feel super bad and risk being cast off from the group.",
"Humans contain mirror neurons, which allows our brain to experience a few of the same feelings associated with an act we are viewing. For instance, sports. People watch football and they enjoy it. These motor neurons might possibly have an evolutionary advantage of allowing us to become more sociable, by understanding peoples emotions through vision alone."
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6k9z80 | Why does far away road look like it's covered in water when it's hot out? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Light passes through different temperatures of air at different angles. So when the sun heats up the road, there's often an area of hotter air above the road surface. As the light from the sky comes towards the road, it encounters that hotter air, and its path becomes bent. Sometimes the change is steep enough that instead of you seeing light coming from a relative straight path (the road) you're seeing light redirected from the sky, so as far as your eyes are concerned, there's [sky where you should see road.]( URL_0 )"
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6katzf | How can birds sit on electricity cables and not be electrocuted? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Electricity will always seek to flow through the path of least resistance. If it can flow at all, it will go through the conductor that is lowest in resistance to the flow. When a bird perches on an electrical wire, there's no change in the bird's electrical status- it offers no easier path for electricity to flow, because it's already flowing through the wire, which is *far* lower in resistance than a bird is. If a large bird or other animal were to touch two wires or one wire and the ground (or a conductor that connects to the ground) at the same time, then it would create a path between two different electrical states (called *potential*), and then electricity would flow between those two wires through the animal. Probably very briefly, as the animal would die or burn up almost immediately. Editing to add: Almost no electrical cables on power poles are insulated because it costs more, the insulation can crack and wear away, and it serves no purpose other than to increase expense and weight. Only in some specific circumstances are overhead power lines insulated, and it's not common."
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6kccc7 | How do 'Glow in the Dark' objects work? | Does it work the same for all glow in the dark stuff? E.g Glowing wall stickers, Glow sticks, Clothing | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm very tired so I'll give a short winded shitty response but you'll probably get the gist of it. Glow in the dark objects contain a compound (phosphors) that can be excited by light. The compound absorbs the light energy by using it to put its electrons in a higher energy shell. If you imagine the Bohr atomic model with the rings around the center, the electron would be moving away from the center therefore occupying a high energy state. The atoms in the compound then release the energy via moving the electron back to its lower energy state (closer to the middle of the atom) and this energy release is given off as light. What color the light is when it's released depends on what compound is used, and what wavelength/energy value is absorbed/emitted by that compound. So to answer your second half of the question- no, not all glow in the dark objects use the same compound. There's more to it and I'm sure someone will take the time to explain it but that's the simple version",
"Glowsticks operate via chemiluminescence, which is a fancy way to refer to a chemical reaction that produces light. You know that a chemical reaction is occurring because you need to mix the two chemicals in the glow stick to activate it. Phosphorescence, on the other hand, is the mechanism for glow-in-the-dark pigments that need to be \"charged\" by exposure to external light. Phosphorescent chemicals absorb light and then re-emit it slowly, at a lower intensity after a relatively long period of time. Radioluminescence involves using a radioactive element to excite a chemical that then emits the energy as visible light. This used to be highly popular, but that was at a time when radioactive water was marketed as a health tonic.",
"Atoms absorb and reflect light. Leaves on a tree absorb light and only reflects green light. Glow in the dark objects are the same. They need to absorb light before they can glow, thats why after a while they become very dim if they haven't been under the light for a few hours. The reason why they glow in the dark unlike other objects is called phosphorescence. The object absorbs light but they don't reflect it instantly. The energy of the light thats absorbed is slowly released over time. What happens inside the atom: In normal objects the electron of the atom absorbs the photon of light. This gives the electron energy, the electron is what we call excited. The electron then releases that energy again in the form of light which we see. Objects that are phosphorescent have electrons that absorb light, but releases it in small steps over a long period of time. Hope this was easy to understand."
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6kdoda | Why do our bodies sweat and try to cool down when the temperature outside is 98°, isn't that the normal temperature for our bodies? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Humans are exothermic. We generate our own heat and are capable of overheating. The higher the ambient temperature the harder it is for our bodies to exhaust excess heat."
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6kgmgm | What is the advantage to society in funding NASA? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Space is a very valuable resource. Communications and scientific experiments conducted there are much, much better and cheaper than land-based counterparts. NASA investments are improving efficiency in the use of this resource, reducing the cost to get mass into space, and understanding how to more effectively support humans in space. It took decades of NASA investment to get launch rockets to the point where rather esoteric private companies could participate, and their participation is still mostly funded by NASA. Companies can't take that sort of ling-view, it takes collective action through a government agency."
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6klax6 | How can 2 (3?) gas atoms (H & O) form a liquid (H2O)? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"3 atoms, It's H2O, two Hydrogen one Oxygen. It forms a larger, heavier molecule. Keep in mind a water molecule can be a gas, liquid, or solid, and it just happens to be liquid at the kinds of temperatures and pressure we're used to on Earth. There is gaseous water vapor in the atmosphere all around you (unless you're in Death Valley or somewhere equally frighteningly devoid of water) and many places have solid H2O (ice & snow) Hydrogen & Oxygen can also be liquids, or even *solids* at the right temperature & pressure.",
"Hydrogen bonding is why water is a liquid at room temperature despite being made of gaseous atoms. CO2 has a heavier atomic mass, but is not a liquid at room temperature. Because of hydrogen bonding, all the water molecules form a lattice structure where all the molecules are, more or less, slightly bonded together due to electronegativity. Oxygen only needs 2 electrons to complete its valence shell and hydrogen is fine sharing its electron to empty its valence shell as well. Because of this, hydrogen has quasi-positive charge and oxygen has a quasi-negative charge which creates attraction between the atoms between molecules. Here's a [picture]( URL_0 ).",
"I'm not sure exactly what you're asking...but I'll give it my best shot. Water molecules are liquid at ambient temperature and pressure because they don't have too much energy to not be in an ordered matrix solid, but not enough to form freeflowing gas. That's thanks to water's molecular structure and its asymmetrical shape making it a polar molecule (has a + and - side, why its so good at dissolving stuff like salt and alcohol too). H2 and O2 on the other and are symmetrical molecules so they stay gasses at ambient temperate and pressure."
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6km8hk | How come photons can travel through a solid substance like glass, but not through another solid substance like rock? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Glass, diamond, and other \"transparent\" substances are transparent because they do not have the ability to absorb the frequencies which make the light we can see. Objects which are \"opaque\" can absorb the frequencies of light we can see. All substances have frequencies which they can't absorb and frequencies which they can absorb. These frequencies depend on the substance. Diamond, for example, is clear in the visible frequencies, but opaque in some of the infrared. Wood is composed of many different substances, and is opaque in the visible and infrared, but fairly transparent in the microwave and radio range.",
"A video from Sixty Symbols which may help you. URL_0"
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6kmhc7 | What determines how much money one currency is worth in another currency? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Market. And the market is all of us. Let's say we're on an actual market. Someone is selling 100 dollarydoos for 200 euros. Someone buys it, so now 1 dollarydoo = 2 euros (and 1 euro is 0.5 dollarydoo). A day later he want's to exchange his remaining euros again for dollarydoos so he's says he is selling 100 euros. Fortunately for him, there are a lot of ppl trying to get euro's, so someone offers him 60 dollarydoos for it. So now 1 dollarydoo is only 1.66 euro's (and 1 euro is 0.6 dollarydoo). So the price is whatever the other guy is willing to pay for it. And as there are a lot of sellers and a lot of buyers the price will eventually settle on some point. That is, until something happens (and something happens all the time) that causes there to be more sellers or more buyers and it causes the price to fluctuate.",
"The short answer is: it's worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. The long answer is: the ratio between a common asset. So if coin 1 has a 0.1btc cost and coin 2 had a 0.4 btc cost, then the cost of coin 2 is 4 coin 1's. If it gets too out of balance, then there is a arbitrage opportunity where you can make nearly risk free money by buying one coin in btc and immediately selling it for the other coin and going back to btc.",
"The same thing as what determines what any commodity is worth, it's worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. Now in terms of what makes a currency more or less desirable and thus changing what people are willing to pay for it there's a lot of factors going into play including things like interest rates, inflation, and the general condition of the economy that the currency belongs to.",
"One of the major factors is something known as Purchasing Power Parity. You may have heard of something called the Big Mac index which is an informal way to test wether commodities in two different countries cost the same relatively. Currency like most other things is largely controlled by the forces of supply and demand although you do get fixed exchange rates. If you take a basic economic assumption that firms are profit maximisers a domestic USA firm that needs steel to produce its goods is looking to purchase that steel at the lowest cost it can. Say domestic steel is $100 a unit and Chinese steel is 540Yuan (80 bucks) a unit the firm will purchase the Chinese steel assuming they're the same quality. You would then have to sell your dollars on the market to purchase yuan in order to buy the steel. This should cause an appreciation in the yuan and a depreciation in the dollar ( your dollar is now worth less yuan). If you look at the wider economy eventually all these transactions should lead to a point where steel is the same price relatively in both countries however in a fixed exchange rate (or pegged) the Chinese would be constantly monitoring the rate and making sure they never lost their pricing advantage. In order to do this in this example they will sell their Yuan to buy dollars (making Yuan worth less dollars) and thus maintaining their advantage. You also have something called hot money. Basically investors around the world looking for the best return on their investment. Take the Bank of England interest rate of 0.25%, very low compared to most other countries and historically. If the UK independent from government, monetary policy committee decided to raise this interest rate, hot money would flow into the country thanks to the higher returns available. This will cause an appreciation of the exchange rate Hope that makes sense, I tried to write an answer at a high school economics level, when you get to undergraduate level things start getting much more complicated and this is a bit of a simplification.",
"Firstly: My source is that I'm an accounting graduate. A few months ago one of my modules involved researching specifically this. Basically, there's a lot of different factors so I'll tackle them one at a time, just bear in mind it isn't an exact science. Some of the more obvious things are more self explanatory so I'll combine those. There's a TL;DR at the end. Firstly, confidence is a big thing in the markets, the same way it is with shares. Things like Brexit, changes in economic policy and swings in government can all make short term spikes/dips. These will typically stay at the altered amount until something comes along to change it, although it can slowly recover from the shock. Also, stuff like wars (both in your own and neighbouring countries) can affect it. Much of these are linked to demand for the currency. Take brexit (as I'm in the UK). The basic fear with brexit was what deal we could negotiate, and how that would affect the finance sector. That sector is a HUGE part of Londons, and therefore the UKs, economy. As a result, the risk averse want to remove their money BEFORE the currency tanks due to financial services leaving the capital. The effect of this is higher supply (for less demand as well) for the currency, as everyone is selling. Whenever supply rises relative to demand, you expect prices to drop. This is partly why the Euro/US dollar is so stable - a huge amount of global trade is done in dollars/Euros so the supply and demand is relatively stable. Interest rates are another factor, as is the amount of money in circulation. These also both tie into PPP (**Purchasing Power Parity**). PPP is a rule which basically states the overall buying power of a currency must stay the same, there is a delay in reaching this equilibrium. The way it works, is if inflation goes up, the currency must become cheaper. Otherwise, the purchasing power will fall. Example below in italics. *EG if the rate of inflation rises in the UK, but the strength of the £ stays the same then other countries will find it more expensive. When you change over $100, you still get £150, but that £150 won't get you as much. Therefore, the $100 has less purchasing power. So the currency needs to become weaker. When this balances out, your $100 gets you £170, which now gets you the same amount of stuff as £150 did before the rise in inflation.* This works both ways. The difficulty in applying this is two fold: You don't know which side of it is causing it, and you don't know exactly how long the previously mentioned delay will be. Now, it's worth noting that there are many ways these things can be affected indirectly. Demand for the currency could be increased by attracting a lot of foreign investment through things like corporation tax cuts. Inflation is affected by interest rate changes. The Bank of England directly meddled post brexit to stabalise the currency, and we still had the most spectacular nosedive in living memory. Furthermore, no one has perfect information. I define perfect as \"knowing everything\". Any given person has a small part of the picture, not the whole thing. Much of what affects it is often outside of any individuals control, or even totally unforeseen. TL;DR Demand and inflation are 2 of the core reasons, but they are linked. Also, many, many things feed into those 2 factors. So really, there isn't a definitive answer short of \"everything\"."
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6koahq | Why do we have to pay for internet? What natural resources are being used to supply internet rather than space? If that's the only thing why is it not payed through taxes like roads and other public services? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djnj0pm"
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"text": [
"Internet providers have to lay down miles and miles and miles of cables, including cables *on the ocean floor between continents* (this is usually done by large companies that your ISP than has to pay to be able to use those cables). They have to install routers and switches. Those routers and switches have to be inside buildings, for which rent has to be paid. All of that equipment has to be maintained and sometimes replaced, which costs money and is done by people who have to be paid money. If something goes wrong with your Internet service, you have to be able to call someone to report the problem and get it fixed. So they need a call center staffed with employees (who have to be paid) to sit at desks (which have to be purchased) and answer the phones (which also have to be purchased), using computers (you get the idea). They also have to pay for rent, water, electricity, and insurance on that building. As well as salaries for managers, human resources, janitors, repair technicians etc. And if your ISP has a website (hint: it does), they have to pay web developers to design and maintain the website. As well as programmers to design and maintain all of the backend systems that handle the website. And then there's he billing department, and public relations department, and marketing department, and legal department, etc. It's a huge business employing a lot of people and requiring a lot of expensive equipment. All of that has to be paid for somehow."
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6koi9x | Dust bunnies | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djnpxbt"
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"text": [
"They are small clumps of dust that form under furniture and in corners that are not cleaned regularly. They are made of hair, lint, dead skin, spider webs, dust, and sometimes light rubbish and debris, and are held together by static electricty. They can house dust mites or other parasites, and can lower the efficiency of dust filters by clogging. The movement of a single large particle can start the formation of a dust bunny. They are especially bad for electronic components because they can clog up the air flow, thus increasing heat and shortening the lifespan of electronic components."
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6kqf5g | How does the body age while in a coma? Would resting for long periods slow down aging? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djo2b1u"
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"text": [
"You would age the same as anyone else except you would have gone through a state of atrophy where your muscles were not being used which causes them to break down. Your body is still working to keep you alive and the components of your body will not age slower just because they are not being used as much. Somewhat off topic but the only way I've personally heard of someone aging slower is through something called \"relative velocity time dilation.\" The basic premise is that you age slower the faster you are moving based on the theory of relativity. There is also something called \"gravitational time dilation\" which states that the aging process decreases when gravitational force increases."
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6kr0y6 | How do they colorize old black and white video. | I have been seeing ads for a show called America colorized, I think, that is colorizing old black and white videos. How do they do this? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djo7a3n"
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"text": [
"Simplest answer, they paint it. Back when they first started colourizing black and white film, someone would sit with a brush and dyes and colour it by hand one frame at a time. When you think that there's 24 frames in a second, you can imagine how painstaking it would be to colourize a feature length film. Plus the results never looked natural. Today, it's still largely done the same way, all be it digitally. With tools like Photoshop, you have a much larger palette than they did back in the old days. You can also make changes to the base image, which couldn't be done prior to digital photography. Which is why skilled artists can make more realistic colourized photos and videos. It's still a painstaking process though, and they'll rarely look as good as a photo or motion picture taken on colour stock. Even colour stock of the era."
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6kr8ta | If vegetables are good for you, why do soda, chips, and other "junk food" taste better? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djo6rfx"
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"text": [
"Sugar, salt, and fat are critical for the human body to work. Our brain users more sugar than any other part, salt is needed to conduct electricity, and fat is of course an excellent store of energy. You and I are unfortunately a very old model, stuck in modern times. Human beings haven't had a major evolution in 35,000 years. We are essentially designed to be the perfect hunter gatherers, but that's not been our role in a very long time. Our tastes turn us on to exactly what our ancestors needed the most, but in the age of the Big Mac that's exactly what we have too much of."
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6ktfok | Why do people tend to cover their mouths in a moment of awe, disbelief, shock, etc.? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djop4if"
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"text": [
"Shouldn't it be why do they drop their jaw, cuz I believe that's why they're covering their mouths"
],
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6kvuib | Why do we get light-headed or faint when standing up? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djp6g99"
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"text": [
"Mostly, it is a sign of low blood pressure or adrenal exhaustion. It takes pressure to raise a column of water a certain height. You are the height in this case and the water column is your blood. As you stand, your body has to increase the blood pressure to keep everything in balance. It is natural for a well person with normal blood pressure to be able to do this fast enough to have no or only a momentary light-headedness. Try this experiment. Get a blood pressure cuff. Lay down for two minutes, take your blood pressure, then stand up and take it immediately afterwards. Your blood pressure should rise about 10 points on the top reading to keep you feeling healthy. If not, look up adrenal exhaustion on the internet. Doctors will tell you that it doesn't exist. It does."
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6kwq8r | Why do ribbons curl when you run a scissor blade against them? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Full disclosure I'm not completely sure what ribbons are made of, but I would venture to say that this is the reason: It's basically that you're bending it. Ribbon is very flexible in a sense, and bends without bending permanently (called elastic deformation). But if you bend it in half and pinch it flat, you'll notice that it stays bent when you let go (plastic deformation). When you run scissors across the ribbon, you're plastically bending it along the whole length of the ribbon, so it curls."
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6kxheu | Why is prostitution illegal in the U.S. But if you pay somebody to have sex with you, film it, and post it online then its fine? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djpk2ze",
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"text": [
"> if you pay somebody to have sex with you, film it, and post it online then its fine? That's actually *not* fine. You have to have all kinds of licenses, you have to hire the \"actress\", which involves getting her social security number to fill out tax documents as her employer, and it's still not legal to film porn in all 50 states. Just filming sex with a prostitute and calling it \"porn\" doesn't make it legitimate porn, and won't stop you from being charged with solicitation.",
"You actually have to get licenses to film porn with paid participants. It is also not legal to make in every state or city, many places do not grant the licenses. So the idea that you can just make it and post it online and it be fine is not accurate. The logic, whether you agree with it or not, is that you are hiring someone to be an actor/actress for a project that happens to involve sex. You are not actually paying for them to have sex, and more importantly you are not paying them to have sex with you but with each other."
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6kz94f | Why are ultra enlarged objects not in color? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djpvtjz",
"djpw4ik"
],
"text": [
"The cameras that see that small are called electron microscopes. They don't see in the visible light spectrum like regular cameras. Google them, they're pretty cool.",
"Colors are not a phenomenon that is intrinsic to objects. Objects simply reflect some wavelengths of light. It is our brain that attributes colors to certain wavelengths. As objects get magnified more and more, the wavelengths of light we can see get too big to resolve those objects. That is, a wave with wavelength 700nm cannot resolve an object that is 0.1nm big. Thus, we have to use objects with smaller wavelengths - like electrons. Electrons, however, are not associated with color in our brains, so we simply have to resort to black and white images."
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6kzaxj | Why do drinks taste better when they're stored in glass containers? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djpw7n7"
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"text": [
"If you store a drink in a metal or plastic container the metal and plastic will slowly dissolve into the liquid. It does not happen in any quantities as to be harmful however it may have a slight effect on the taste. Glass on the other hand is much more stable and does not dissolve into the liquid at any measurable rate. This is also why glass is very commonly used in chemistry as it does not taint the chemicals."
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6kzger | Why, in a 24/7 digital economy, does it still take several days for a check to clear between banks? Where does the money go in the meantime? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djpyjn3"
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"text": [
"Back in the eighties when interest rates were quite high, banks here in New York were notorious for taking a very long time to clear checks (4 or 5 days IIRC). Even a certified or bank check would take days to clear. The banks were basically making money off the interest while it \"floated\" in their system. I think regulators eventually stepped in, limiting the time they were allowed to float the funds. Modern banking is much faster now and although there is obviously a certain amount of time necessary to validate checks and transfer funds I'd venture to say it's a fraction of the time they actually set aside. They're making money off your money (albeit at a pretty small interest rate)."
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6kzhqt | What prevents different platforms like XBOX, PS4 and PC from reading other game discs? If they can all read multimedia discs, how are game discs different? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djpz6hh"
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"text": [
"It's not the physical discs that really matters, it's the format of the data on it. Different games consoles have different operating systems, and sometimes different hardware (although the PS4 and Xbox One are pretty similar in terms of hardware). Games programmed for one OS won't work on a different, incompatible OS. Imagine Xbox One games are written in English and PS4 games are in Japanese. The Xbox One only understands English, the PS4 only understands Japanese. So even though they can both physically see the game's data, they can't make sense of it."
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6l0lzd | let's say all humanity is wiped out apart from 1 breeding pair. Would repopulation be possible if so how many generations would it take before there is no negative effects from inbreeding? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djq6hxm",
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"text": [
"Minimum viable population size is somewhere between 1,000 and 4,000 individuals depending on species. I don't think anyone has calculated it specifically for humans yet, but there would be a lot of factors including how genetically similar the population is (you wouldn't want to pick a single family unit at the smaller population size). Smaller populations are possible, but would require more careful breeding and husbandry to prevent negative effects. 1 breeding pair is definitely too small.",
"Such a scenario would doom the human race. The problem isn't so much the ability of the human pair to produce viable offspring. It would be enormously difficult, but probably possible, to get a stable population going if you had access to some sophisticated technology to help you. The real issue is the genetic bottleneck. By having only two humans, you restrict every single one of their offspring to some combination of their genetic material. Having a \"deep\" Gene pool is tremendously important for organisms, as it allows for resiliency to disease and other threats. All it would take is an opportunistic virus to infect one of the parents or children, and unless they have a robust immune system (which they might not because of the inbreeding) and that virus could very easily exploit any genetic weaknesses that are present in the population and kill everyone. To say nothing of the dangers of inbreeding alone -- humans become very unhealthy with successive generations of incest, which you would have to have in order to make a decent population. And since everyone has very similar genetic material, it would be a constant concern. So no, I don't think two people could repopulate earth unless they have access to some very sophisticated genetic manipulation technology."
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} | [
"url"
] | [
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|
6l26tk | How can my microwave have a metal rack in it if I'm not supposed to put metal in the microwave? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djqiz30",
"djqngqh",
"djqr98a"
],
"text": [
"Metal in microwaves is not an absolute rule. It's just that trying to explain the nuances of what types of metal you can use in a microwave, and when you can use them, to the average microwave user, is more than most microwave manufacturers are prepared to do. So the general rule is don't ever put metal in a microwave. If the metal thing is shaped properly, it won't matter. It's just the average metal thing you'd put in a microwave isn't shaped properly to not end up sparking and arcing when you start it up. As you may have realized by this point, the rack that comes with a microwave is very carefully designed to work properly within one.",
"What you want to avoid is creating electrical arcing. If you put a crinkled sheet of aluminum foil in a microwave you will see electric arcs jumping between the peeks of the folds. Big enough arcs can ignite other materials in the microwave. Sometimes arcs can travel all the way back to the magnetron and burn out the electronics. The metal rack is designed so that arcs won't occur.",
"My microwave manual actually says you're to leave a spoon on the cup if you are heading a liquid. I think that this is to prevent super heating above boiling point (the temperature of, say, water is above 100°C but no bubbles). This could cause spontaneous bubbling when you take it out, splattering you with hot water. The spoon would act as nucleation point where the bubbles could start. No metal in the microwave refers to thin metal which could spark, or metal containers which would block the microwaves from the food your heating. Bonus trivia: the first microwaves didn't have a rotating plate, but had a rotating metal \"stirrer\" that reflected the microwaves around the oven minimising ~~hot~~ cold spots"
],
"score": [
8,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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[]
]
} | [
"url"
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|
6l4712 | When using slow internet how does advertisements quickly load in high quality while the actual content can not? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djr0suw"
],
"text": [
"The two main reasons, although there may be more, are 1. The file size of an ad is likely much smaller than a YouTube video because they're usually only 15-30 seconds. 2. Ads are not actually being shown by the page itself. The ads are ran from dedicated ad ~~several~~ servers. Yes, Google probably cares much more about playing that ad than showing you the video and I definitely wouldn't doubt the ad servers have priority over resources."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
6l64go | Why do thunderstorms have that "Smell" before it starts raining? What is it we are smelling? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djrdvzv",
"djrtlnj"
],
"text": [
"Weather patterns produce distinctive odors that sensitive noses sniff out. **Before the rain begins**, one of the first odors you may notice as winds pick up and clouds roll in is a sweet, pungent zing in your nostrils. That's the sharp, fresh aroma of ozone. (An electrical charge—from lightning or a man-made source such as an electrical generator—splits atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen molecules into separate atoms. Some of these recombine into nitric oxide, and this in turn reacts with other atmospheric chemicals, occasionally producing a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms—ozone, or O3. The scent of ozone heralds stormy weather because a thunderstorm's downdrafts carry O3 from higher altitudes to nose level.)",
"This smell is referred to as petrichor. The main cause for this scent, is, as some suggest, not actually ozone. Rather, it is caused when rain makes contact with ground soil [(MIT)] ( URL_0 ). This aerosolizes certain compounds, as well as bacteria and viruses, that were trapped in the soil. You likely smell this before you actually see any rain because there is still plenty of rainfall, just not right where you are. The same pressure systems that move the storm to you also move the aromatic particles to you, and therefore, you can smell the storm."
],
"score": [
36,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/rainfall-can-release-aerosols-0114"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
6l680e | Why are we able to eat beef not cooked all the way through (e.g. rare) but not other meats like chicken? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djreknv"
],
"text": [
"It depends on the bacteria that can grow on them. Beef meat is not having any bacteria inside, and the outside cooking is enough to remove possible pathogens. In chicken you can have pathogens in between the meat like Salmonella, thus you need to cook it well."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
6la0an | What purpose does the wedding quote "speak now or forever hold your peace" have and what happens if someone does object? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djs810s"
],
"text": [
"It's a hold over from the past when marriages were prearranged with a contract and sometimes previous betrothals could be a legal impediment. That line means if you know of any legal impediment like a previous contract or secret marriage/consummation this is your last chance to bring it to light. This isn't an issue now. If you spoke up now you'd probably just piss everyone off."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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} | [
"url"
] | [
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|
6lda8r | What exactly causes the 'buzz' when you've had a few drinks of alcohol? What gives you that feeling of less sensation/etc? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djsxbt3"
],
"text": [
"Alcohol slows down your central nervous system. The central nervous system accounts for your senses, motor function, etc. When you drink alcohol, everything is shortened and slowed down in your CNS. When the CNS is slowed down from the alcohol, You begin to experience light headedness, hazy thinking, slurred speech, a slower reaction time, and dull hearing"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
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] | [
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|
6ldkyf | Why flying insects can't tell that a window is in front of them and repeatedly fly into it? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djszy9q",
"djt06xu",
"djt0tzz"
],
"text": [
"If you had never seen a window before you would probably hit it a few times too before accepting that a completely transparent object can block your way, or perhaps you'd keep touching it while walking along it, searching for an equally transparent opening. I'm not sure the intelligence of an insect is enough to reach the accepting part though.",
"Compound eyes don't focus. They see shapes and blurs and specialize in detecting movement.",
"Flies are really dumb. Not only that, but their memories are practically nonexistent. Add that to the fact that they can't even see the window in the first place and there you go."
],
"score": [
44,
9,
5
],
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[],
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} | [
"url"
] | [
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|
6litym | Why does the filming of Soap Opera shows always look a certain cheapish way? Can't they afford better cameras? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dju6zxd"
],
"text": [
"It's not so much the cameras as the lighting. Soaps are filmed quickly, using multiple cameras. In a movie, when you switch from one angle to another, the director will generally take the time to change the lighting to accommodate the new point of view. The director of a soap can't afford to slow down a production like that, so the sets tend to be very evenly lit, so the actors and cameras can move around without worrying about being in shadow. This results in a sort of blandness, where the actors do not stand out very well from the background."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
6lktwo | Why is it illegal to collect rainwater in some US states? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djujaeo",
"djus1qr",
"djujul9",
"djuko8f",
"djutmne"
],
"text": [
"This was orginally necessary to prevent owners of large ranches from being able to divert run off into holding ponds reducing or eliminating water which would otherwise be available to those further downstream. Your roof might seem inconsequential but if you imagine the loss of runoff if 1 million roofs were being diverted...it becomes significant. In some states the water is considered a state controlled resource and in essence you are stealing water from the states control when you harvest rainwater.",
"Colorado was like this for years because there was a study saying that collecting rain water prevented it from flowing into rivers and downstream to states like California, or because the water way it drains to belonged to someone else. This law was written into the states Constitution. Recently there was an opposing study released the found 90% of rainwater never makes it to the rivers before being absorbed by the ground. Now you can store 110 gallons. URL_0",
"While I cannot say whether this is the case in U.S. States, many places have outlawed rainwater tanks in the past because they allow mosquitoes to breed through the dry season. This allows dangerous tropical mosquitoes to survive in dry sub-tropical cities. Keeping things like dengue and malaria out of those cities was worth more than the individual benefit of individual rainwater tanks. Many of these laws have since been removed.",
"Some states (mostly western) have very little rain fall and the water is very valuable while the land itself is not. In some of these states one can buy the property rights (build a house/driveway), water rights (rain that falls on or is found under) the land, and mineral rights (oil/gas, gold, etc) all separately from each other.",
"in st petersburg, fl they actually encourage us to collect rain water in big barrels and then use it or dump a day after a storm... helps stop flooding during rain storms."
],
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150,
30,
22,
12,
4
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[],
[
"https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/03/24/it-is-actually-illegal-in-colorado-to-collect-the-rain-that-falls-on-your-home/"
],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
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|
6llckp | Is there a cultural or historical reason why America developed its own measurement system? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djumnf2"
],
"text": [
"Brits arrived, taught imperial system. Brits left, moved on from imperial system. USA didn't."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
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|
6llqg8 | How can there be all type of frequencies and waves in the air (Bluetooth, Wifi, Radio) and we are not physically affected by it? Shouldn't our watery or brainy components be affected to some degree? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djupout"
],
"text": [
"Ultimately it matters how energetic they are. Radio waves in the air can be as benign as a flashlight shining on you, and you don't see complaints about that. So a radio wave in the air isn't really an issue, but if you lived with a 50,000 watt radio transmitter, that sort of energy could be dangerous. Just like getting too much UV from the sun. We can decide what devices are able to put out as far as energy yield. As far as what is in your home, your television would be more of a threat than your wifi router or your mobile phone."
],
"score": [
4
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"text_urls": [
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} | [
"url"
] | [
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|
6lpjcr | How do Radio Shows know how many people are listening to them? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djvltbh"
],
"text": [
"It can be difficult to determine the ratings of over-the-air radio broadcasts, and has always been a thorn in the side of determining adverting rates, which is the most important part of running a radio station. But, in general, there are a couple of ways. One is to simply ask people through a proper scientifically sound survey done through mailers or phone calls. Ask enough people what stations they listen to, and you can extrapolate it with pretty good confidence. Another way is by using those call-in contests that you hear radio stations having all the time. There's a well established percentage of people who are likely to call in to the station for contests, and so by keeping track of how many people participate, you can roughly judge how many people are listening at that particular time. Obviously, for things like radio apps"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
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} | [
"url"
] | [
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|
6lqebd | How do computers REALLY work? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djvug9v"
],
"text": [
"At the lowest level (almost), it runs due to the actions of transistors. Transistors in digital logic circuits are used mostly as switches. You want the transistors to be either all the way OFF (no current flow) or all the way ON (lots of current flow). And you can use the output of one transistor to control the input of other transistors, so you can construct a complicated circuit by wiring them up in certain ways. Using just a few transistors, you can build very simple logic circuits to implement binary digital logic (called \"Boolean\" logic after the guy who invented it). For example, imagine a light bulb hooked up to a battery through a switch. Switch on, light on; switch off, light off. Now imagine that there are two switches in a row, A and B. The light is only on if A and B are both in the on position. This is what a digital logic AND gate does! If you hook the switches up differently, you can just as easily make an OR gate (A OR B turns on the light). Label a switch backwards and you have a NOT gate. It turns out that you can build any digital logic function with a combination of just a few simple circuit types, such as AND/OR/NOT (you can actually do everything with just one, but no one really does that). By combining those simple circuits, more complicated circuits can be made (such as an adder, a multiplexer, etc.). You can use those circuits to make even more complicated ones. Like a CPU. It's like if you had a bunch of little Lego blocks, and you could use those to make larger Lego blocks, and you could then use those to make even larger Lego blocks, and so on. Today's integrated circuits use more than a billion transistors to make something that is very complex, but it is built up out of very simple things. Transistors are great for building these things because they are small, fast, reliable, cheap, and don't use a lot of power. These are all important properties when you are trying to make something that uses a billion or more devices. After you've built a bunch of different chips and put them into \"packages\", you solder those packages onto a Printed Circuit Board (such as a PC motherboard). The PCB has copper traces on it that act like flat wires to connect things together. (It is cheaper, simpler, better performance, and more reliable to use a PCB to do this rather than a bunch of individual wires.) It even has many layers, and connection vias going between layers or clear to the other side of the PCB. So now you can connect up different chips that do different functions, like CPU, memory, graphics, etc. They \"talk\" to each other via the traces on the PCB according to certain pre-determined rules, called \"protocols\". Kind of like the circuits, these protocols are built up in layers, with the lowest level protocol defining what signals mean \"0\" and what signals mean \"1\". These protocols get pretty complicated, and allow the different components to pass very complex information back and forth. The different parts of the PC have different functions, with the CPU acting kind of as the main brain and control center. It gets program instructions and data sent from the hard disc to the memory and then to it, manipulates the data as dictated by the stream of instructions, and sends data out to where it is needed. But the CPU does what it does according to the digital logic that has been built into it."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
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|
6lspo6 | how did scientists figure out how to make computers? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djwbowg"
],
"text": [
"The whole field built on top of other stuff over many years. First, people figured how to control electricity with electro-mechanical relays. Relays are binary - ON or OFF, like bits in a computer. Then they figured things like how to combine them to make a circuit that can make some basic boolean logic *gate* - for example, an OR gate, application may have been \"turn the lights on if any of these 5 light switches is on\", an \"AND\" gate might be \"only start this machine if the power switch is ON AND the operator has both hands pushing the safety buttons ON\". Those are the building blocks of logic, which can then be combined to do things like add up numbers or run a sequence of steps / make a basic decision depending on the state of various things. A lot of the early stuff was built around making mechanical telephone exchanges (Strowger) rather than requiring human operators - no coincidence that Tommy Flowers worked for GPO Telephones and most of the equipment at Bletchley Park will look *very* familiar to telephone engineers. So you have circuits of relays that **count** your sequence of pulses (dialled number) from your telephone, connect through the system **deciding** if a circuit is busy or available, etc. etc. it all starts to look a lot like a sort-of-computer. From there, you build up to making a system where you are able to change the *steps* or *decisions* (the program) without having to re-wire the circuit specially for each task, perhaps by feeding punched cards in or putting pegs in a board. All this can still be done with relays, or any other sort of controllable switch. In parallel to these advances in thinking about how to make \"computing machines\", electronics got smaller, faster, more efficient and reliable as valves replaced relays, then transistors replaced valves, then we put multiple transistors and things on a sliver of silicone to make a chip, then we put a whole load on one chip to make a processor... You could make a modern computer out of relays (or wood & marbles) but it would be huge, expensive, slow, and unreliable. If you search on URL_0 , some guy made an entire computer out of single transistors to demonstrate how it all happens, it plays tetris and takes up a whole room. He's done a really good job, written loads about how it all works & goes together etc. There's also nand2tetris which skips the first couple of steps but does cover most of it quite well."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[
"Hackaday.com"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
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|
6lt4oc | Why are we scared of bugs? They're just small animals. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djweqnm",
"djwdp8g",
"djwdbrg"
],
"text": [
"Insect fear is programmed into us by society. Children are not born with the fear, parents and stuff on TV programs it into them. I played with every type of spider and bug as a kid, then I got scared as a youth, now I am over it again. On that note, bugs are friends, I build edible forest gardens and work with bugs a lot. [Here]( URL_0 ) is a video of one of my spider Bros who asks for a ride, not once, but twice, to get to his Ladies nest on the other side. 1 minute. They do recognise you, and can be money and time saving minions when you train them to do the desired job. I trained yellow jackets to do pest control on my leafy greens in the garden. I left out sugar for the wasps, and they came to feed the pest caterpillars to their growing larva. Adult yellowjackets are vegetarian, only the babies require the protein. Keep in mind that venom from an insect is very energy intensive to produce. Wasting their super juice to bite a human may spell out their own death. Therefore there is little benefit to bite or Sting. I ohm to my minions in the garden, it allows them to associate a sound vibration with the giant who comes through and adds cools stuff to their world. It allows me to get right up to wasp nests with out getting attacked (note, do not do this, I can not promise your wasps will not get violently defensive) . They will even come out to see you. Sing if you prefer over ohming. Maybe stay away from death-metal lyrics. If you are interested, I spent 2016 turning a barren house in the desert into the most self sufficient biodiverse home in the region. On a small 90 square metre property we went from 2 species of bugs to over 50, all contributing to the maintenance and Fertility of the ecosystem. [Here]( URL_1 ) is the project summary, lots of bug pictures. The house generated no waste water, it was all recycled into food and growing the little oasis.",
"Some are poisonous and can kill you, especially pre antivenom days. You would live longer if you were scared of them.",
"I dont know if you need some extensive backround in human psychology to answer this but Id say bugs have quite the different exterior than our lovable fur coated creatures"
],
"score": [
9,
3,
3
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"text_urls": [
[
"https://youtu.be/EbGpOoTU4gw",
"https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5mLitql1p9_bzc2aFdVSXp5cFU/view?usp=drivesdk"
],
[],
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} | [
"url"
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|
6lvmck | If cells in your body do not live forever and tattoo ink is applied to skin cells, how are tattoos permanent? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djwwliw",
"djwwvol"
],
"text": [
"Tattoo ink is embedded in the deeper layers of skin, called the dermis. During this process the dermis is damaged, and as it heals, it forms fibrous tissue - the equivalent of scar tissue. The ink gets locked into it, and stays there. Scars do break down slowly over time, but the rate of cell replacement is hugely reduced. Regardless, tattoos will fade over time as the ink partially disperses, and the tattoo starts to get blurry. Sun damage also plays a part, but that's not related to this discussion.",
"Ink is not applied to skin cells like a piece of paper, instead ink is injected in between the layers of skin. A tattoo is, really, simply shaped unabsorbed pools of ink being suspended in your skin."
],
"score": [
43,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
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"url"
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|
6lwjxi | If a sail boat (say from a few hundred years ago) wanted to go west but the wind was blowing east, how would they go west? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djx4e02"
],
"text": [
"URL_1 > Sails at a 15% angle to your boat will, when blown on from the front, push your boat forward, allowing you to sail perpendicular to the wind. So you tack the boat, switching sides, never sailing directly into the wind, but rather across it. Here's a handy picture. > URL_0"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[
"http://nabataea.net/Photos/tacking.jpg",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zdcxu/eli5_how_does_a_sailboat_sail_into_the_wind/"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
6lx7zi | How do we 'teach' a computer the length of time? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djx9pmv"
],
"text": [
"Computers have quartz crystals that vibrate a known number of times per second when they are wired up. We tell the computer to count the oscillations and make time measurements based on the counting."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
6lxlnz | why do restaurants in America not charge customers more for food and pay staff a higher wage rather than have them relying on tips? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djxd2n3"
],
"text": [
"Let's say a restaurant does what you are suggesting. They raise prices, pay the staff appropriately and tell the customers not to tip. Well, now the food costs more than it used to. Customers will notice. They will be unhappy. They will look at the restaurant next door and see that their food is much less expensive. \"Maybe we should go there next time instead\", say some of the customers. Restaurant is now paying more in payroll PLUS they are losing customers. This is a pretty crappy situation for the business. Now they probably need to lay off employees to make up for the downturn. Very few owners are willing to intentionally drive the company into that sort of situation. You might say \"Well how come the customers don't realize that they aren't really paying more since now they don't need to tip?\" Well, customers aren't well known for noticing things that aren't directly in their line of sight, and will really only notice the higher prices on the menu and probably never even realize that there is a whole wage/tip thing going on in the background. Once a culture gets into this sort of routine, its hard for businesses to try and change it on their own, because their own business will almost certainly take a hit at best, and go under at worst. It's hard to ask people to risk their livelihood between those two options. That's not to say there aren't situations in which this will work. Each business has it's own unique economic situation, and there are places that can absorb the downturn in business, or maybe even get some good publicity if they play their marketing and advertising correctly. But on the whole it's a rough road to hoe for most places."
],
"score": [
3
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"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
6lyy83 | Why is it that 37 degrees (celsius) feels extremely hot to us even though that's our natural internal temperature? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djxo5fh"
],
"text": [
"Because we're warm-blooded (hooray mammals!). That means that our body constantly produces heat. When the temperature outside of our body is the same as the temperature inside our body, then we can't get rid of heat easily. We have to rely on sweating to provide evaporative cooling, or we risk overheating and dying."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
6lzlkh | Why is the alphabet in the order it is in when it could have been in any order when it was first made? Who decided that order? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djxx9xg"
],
"text": [
"It was the ancient [Phoenecians]( URL_0 ) IIRC. * A comes from [\"Aleph\"]( URL_2 ) (meaning ox). * B Comes from [\"Bet\"]( URL_1 ) (meaning house). Probably the most important stuff got letters before other stuff. Oxen and houses were very important back when the alphabet was invented."
],
"score": [
3
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"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bet_(letter\\)",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
6m04bs | If the universe is constantly expanding, what exactly is it expanding into? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djxw9xw"
],
"text": [
"Nothing. Space itself is created faster than light moves, so we will also never know. It's crazy, but it's \"the end of the world\""
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
6m0hli | If water, electricity etc are considered basic human rights, why are people charged for them and companies can shut down your utilities if you can't pay? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"djxyqmh",
"djxz2np",
"djy0bgp"
],
"text": [
"Water is more than a basic human right, it's essential for your survival. However, clean water piped directly in to your home is not a human right, and when you pay for water, that's what you're paying for: the convenience. You can dig a well and get fresh water that way. What if you live somewhere you can't do that? Move, as people did before the modern age. As for electricity, it's not a human right at all. Many survive just fine without it, some by choice.",
"Just so we are all grounded. Where does it say anywhere that these things are basic human rights? I'm not denying that water is a necessity, but where is it written that it's a right?",
"The UN resolution talks about having **access** to water and sanitation as basic human rights. The objective is to foster cooperation between nations so the poorer countries can have access to means and methods to provide for their populace. > Calls upon States and international organizations to provide financial resources, capacity-building and technology transfer, through international assistance and cooperation, in particular to developing countries, in order to scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all It doesn't mean it has to be free or even subsidized. The resolution doesn't say anything about electricity."
],
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7,
5,
3
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"url"
] |
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