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eli5Split_55

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{ "a_id": [ "ceez3ff", "ceez9ax" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "It's a bit tough to wrap your head around, but the universe is more like the *surface* of a balloon. As you inflate it, there's no more actual \"balloon-stuff\" but the existing stuff makes more surface area.", "The space that is our universe is what is expanding." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbb7ocn", "cbbjn3x", "cbbjnsg" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "[one and two recap.](_URL_1_)\n\n[three recap... A bit longer.](_URL_0_)", "Three hundred years ago, House Targaryen conquered the seven kingdoms of Westeros in the war called Aegon's Conquest. Seventeen years ago, House Targaryen was deposed by the eight major houses in the war called Robert's Rebellion. The kingdom's at a fragile peace because people are loyal to their major house and not the king, and the king has no standing army. Every major house lives in a different climate and has its own regional culture. They compete for wealth and authority.\n\nRobert of House Baratheon and Eddard of House Stark both get killed by House Lannister, who had been continuously undermining the kingdom and consolidating their resources. This leads to the War of the Five Kings where five different people are fighting either to be king of the whole continent or to have their own region independent.\n\nThe War of the Five Kings ends when Eddard's son Robb, the King in the North, gets killed by the lord of one of his own minor houses, along with nearly all of his tens of thousands of soldiers and his commanders. Before that, the claimant Renly Baratheon was assassinated by his brother Stannis Baratheon. Stannis then tried to attack the capital city Kings Landing but failed and lost most of his army, and runs to the far north in order to stop an invasion of the continent by a race of mythical ice-men.\n\nIt remains to be seen:\n\n1. What do the ice-men want with the continent?\n2. How will the kingdom redistribute Robb Stark's lands?\n3. A hundred other things I didn't cover.", "Incest can fuck up an entire kingdom" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MViOiVT1Xc4", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzxOv-KF9do" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "csw4lfg" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Especially when it comes to a new, foreign, and time-limited tasks, your brain is trying to \"find the solution\" to the problem given as quickly as possible(whether that problem is making it around a corner, not getting shot, or answering a question). Because of this, you sometimes use the wrong solution for this specific problem (a game) and apply the real life solution (turning/leaning/ducking).\n\nEver see those game show outtakes where people answer a question with something inappropriate and almost instantly? It's a bit like that. You're so busy trying to figure out what to do as fast as possible, you don't take the time to ensure it's the correct solution before acting." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2ym0dx", "c2yo4ph", "c2yplx6", "c2yuu5d", "c2ym0dx", "c2yo4ph", "c2yplx6", "c2yuu5d" ], "score": [ 7, 3, 2, 2, 7, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "DNA is a long string made up of four subunits, A, C, T, G. DNA in cells exists as two long strings twisted around each other running in opposite directions.\n\nA always pairs with T, C always pairs with G. So the two strands run:\n\nstart...ACTG....end\n\nend ...TGAC....start\n\nTo replicate the two strands are opened up by some proteins at specific points in the genome called \"origins of replication.\" Then a protein that makes DNA based off of a DNA template called DNA polymerase copies the DNA strands. Because A always goes with T and C always goes with G the two strands get copied exactly. Mistakes do happen, but there are proofreading proteins that check for mistakes, cut out the bad parts, and then they get redone.\n\nThis is made more complicated by the fact that DNA polymerase only can add DNA to the end of existing DNA strands. This is overcome by priming by an RNA polymerase that builds a short RNA segment complementary to the DNA strand called a \"primer\" (DNA and RNA are chemically similar enough that the DNA polymerase can add to RNA segments). This is then later removed by another enzyme and the DNA is synthesized by another DNA polymerase.\n\nThis is more complicated for one strand since DNA polymerase only works in one direction:\n\nstart...ACTG....end\n\nEnzyme works - > \n\n < -Enzyme works\n\nend ...TGAC....start\n\nbut since the open part of DNA only grows in one direction, one enzyme has to form short segments only based off of RNA primers. These later get joined together by another enzyme.\n\nedit: formatting", "Here's the best analogy I can think of:\n\nDNA is like a zipper, where all the teeth of the zipper are coloured. There are 4 colours: yellow, blue, red and green.\n\nTeeth are always in coloured pairs when the zip is done up, so a yellow tooth on the left will be followed by a blue tooth on the right, a blue on the left will be followed by a yellow on the right, red on the left followed by green on the right, green on the left followed by red on the right.\n\nWhen DNA replicates the zipper is undone, so you end up with 2 separate strips of coloured teeth. Because teeth are always in pairs, you can zip the separated coloured strips to 2 new blank strips and colour the blank strip based on the colours of the original strips. Once you've done that you've now got 2 identically coloured zippers.", "Okay, so you have DNA, which is made up of 4 kinds of nucleotides. Big word, I know. We give them the letters CGAT. They are lined up kind of like teeth on a zipper. There is a specific order they go in that is unique for every living thing. \nThe key part is that the teeth on one side of the zipper have to match up with the teeth on the other side. If you have C on one side, it has to match up with G. A has to match up with T. \nSo, what if you only had one side of the zipper? Could you make the other side from scratch? Of course! You just match up the teeth on the one you are making with the one you already have. \nThe thing that does this is proteins. Proteins do pretty much everything, and for the most part, each protein has one single job to do. First, they unzip the DNA and look at each strand. For each strand, they make a matching tooth for the half of the zipper they are working on. They keep doing this until the whole zipper is complete. Since you started with two sides, and you added a new side to the zipper, you will have two whole copies of the zipper when you are finished. \nThere are a few more details once you have this down: there are proteins that keep the zipper folded up so it will fit in a cell, and a protein that unfolds the zipper. Once unzipped, there are proteins that keep it from zipping back together again. The new side of a zipper can only have teeth added on in one direction, so one side will be fine, but the other side will have to work backwards a section at a time. There are proteins that put a placeholder on the backwards part to give the backwards-working zipper-building protein something to work off of, a protein that removes the placeholder, a protein to put the real teeth where the placeholder was, and a protein that makes sure it is all glued together properly. Also, there is a tag put on the side that was already completed so that if you make a mistake, you can tell which is the side you should have been copying from.", "Creatures, plants and lifeforms are built using lots and lots of invididual cells -- they're like the bricks that make a building. DNA is a special code that cells use to build the building -- they are the blueprint plans.\n\nThe problem is that each builder only works on a small part of the building, so you need lots and lots of builders and -- because builders don't share -- you need lots and lots of copies of the plans. That's okay though, because the plans can be copied really easily.\n\nThink of the full blueprint plans as a big page that is folded in half. The left side is exactly mirrored by the right side. This is really good, because it means that when the plans get copied, you can split the pages in half, and two people can copy them -- saves a lot of time. The person who gets the original left half can make a mirror copy, and that will be the new right half. The person who got the original right half can make a mirror copy to make a new left half. After both people have copied, they now have two complete blueprints.\n\nThis is what happens with DNA. The DNA is split in half, and copied by tiny machinery in the cell resposible for DNA-making.\n\n\n(ELI15)\n\nDNA is an alphabet that only has 4 letters, A,T,C,G. Think of DNA like a sentence that is a few thousand to a few million letters long. Using the left half/right half analogy above, the mirror of \"A\" is \"T\"; the mirror of \"C\" is \"G\" (and vice-versa).\n\nDNA-making proteins inside the cell split DNA in half, and mirror the half they get, creating two pieces of DNA. Mutation occurs when the enzyme is dyslexic, and mirrors an \"A\" with a \"C\", etc. When the wrong copy is copied, the wrong letter stays in the new code. The mutation is like how a photocopy can be perfect, but if someone draws a rude phallus on one of the copies and photocopies that, the phallus is perpetuated.\n\nThat hurt my brain.", "DNA is a long string made up of four subunits, A, C, T, G. DNA in cells exists as two long strings twisted around each other running in opposite directions.\n\nA always pairs with T, C always pairs with G. So the two strands run:\n\nstart...ACTG....end\n\nend ...TGAC....start\n\nTo replicate the two strands are opened up by some proteins at specific points in the genome called \"origins of replication.\" Then a protein that makes DNA based off of a DNA template called DNA polymerase copies the DNA strands. Because A always goes with T and C always goes with G the two strands get copied exactly. Mistakes do happen, but there are proofreading proteins that check for mistakes, cut out the bad parts, and then they get redone.\n\nThis is made more complicated by the fact that DNA polymerase only can add DNA to the end of existing DNA strands. This is overcome by priming by an RNA polymerase that builds a short RNA segment complementary to the DNA strand called a \"primer\" (DNA and RNA are chemically similar enough that the DNA polymerase can add to RNA segments). This is then later removed by another enzyme and the DNA is synthesized by another DNA polymerase.\n\nThis is more complicated for one strand since DNA polymerase only works in one direction:\n\nstart...ACTG....end\n\nEnzyme works - > \n\n < -Enzyme works\n\nend ...TGAC....start\n\nbut since the open part of DNA only grows in one direction, one enzyme has to form short segments only based off of RNA primers. These later get joined together by another enzyme.\n\nedit: formatting", "Here's the best analogy I can think of:\n\nDNA is like a zipper, where all the teeth of the zipper are coloured. There are 4 colours: yellow, blue, red and green.\n\nTeeth are always in coloured pairs when the zip is done up, so a yellow tooth on the left will be followed by a blue tooth on the right, a blue on the left will be followed by a yellow on the right, red on the left followed by green on the right, green on the left followed by red on the right.\n\nWhen DNA replicates the zipper is undone, so you end up with 2 separate strips of coloured teeth. Because teeth are always in pairs, you can zip the separated coloured strips to 2 new blank strips and colour the blank strip based on the colours of the original strips. Once you've done that you've now got 2 identically coloured zippers.", "Okay, so you have DNA, which is made up of 4 kinds of nucleotides. Big word, I know. We give them the letters CGAT. They are lined up kind of like teeth on a zipper. There is a specific order they go in that is unique for every living thing. \nThe key part is that the teeth on one side of the zipper have to match up with the teeth on the other side. If you have C on one side, it has to match up with G. A has to match up with T. \nSo, what if you only had one side of the zipper? Could you make the other side from scratch? Of course! You just match up the teeth on the one you are making with the one you already have. \nThe thing that does this is proteins. Proteins do pretty much everything, and for the most part, each protein has one single job to do. First, they unzip the DNA and look at each strand. For each strand, they make a matching tooth for the half of the zipper they are working on. They keep doing this until the whole zipper is complete. Since you started with two sides, and you added a new side to the zipper, you will have two whole copies of the zipper when you are finished. \nThere are a few more details once you have this down: there are proteins that keep the zipper folded up so it will fit in a cell, and a protein that unfolds the zipper. Once unzipped, there are proteins that keep it from zipping back together again. The new side of a zipper can only have teeth added on in one direction, so one side will be fine, but the other side will have to work backwards a section at a time. There are proteins that put a placeholder on the backwards part to give the backwards-working zipper-building protein something to work off of, a protein that removes the placeholder, a protein to put the real teeth where the placeholder was, and a protein that makes sure it is all glued together properly. Also, there is a tag put on the side that was already completed so that if you make a mistake, you can tell which is the side you should have been copying from.", "Creatures, plants and lifeforms are built using lots and lots of invididual cells -- they're like the bricks that make a building. DNA is a special code that cells use to build the building -- they are the blueprint plans.\n\nThe problem is that each builder only works on a small part of the building, so you need lots and lots of builders and -- because builders don't share -- you need lots and lots of copies of the plans. That's okay though, because the plans can be copied really easily.\n\nThink of the full blueprint plans as a big page that is folded in half. The left side is exactly mirrored by the right side. This is really good, because it means that when the plans get copied, you can split the pages in half, and two people can copy them -- saves a lot of time. The person who gets the original left half can make a mirror copy, and that will be the new right half. The person who got the original right half can make a mirror copy to make a new left half. After both people have copied, they now have two complete blueprints.\n\nThis is what happens with DNA. The DNA is split in half, and copied by tiny machinery in the cell resposible for DNA-making.\n\n\n(ELI15)\n\nDNA is an alphabet that only has 4 letters, A,T,C,G. Think of DNA like a sentence that is a few thousand to a few million letters long. Using the left half/right half analogy above, the mirror of \"A\" is \"T\"; the mirror of \"C\" is \"G\" (and vice-versa).\n\nDNA-making proteins inside the cell split DNA in half, and mirror the half they get, creating two pieces of DNA. Mutation occurs when the enzyme is dyslexic, and mirrors an \"A\" with a \"C\", etc. When the wrong copy is copied, the wrong letter stays in the new code. The mutation is like how a photocopy can be perfect, but if someone draws a rude phallus on one of the copies and photocopies that, the phallus is perpetuated.\n\nThat hurt my brain." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "da900un", "da904rh" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "ELI5: is it only my country that spells it/call it Chalk?", "The researchers speculate that the amplification of frequencies in the 2kHz—4kHz range could have been important for human survival early in our evolutionary history — allowing us to respond to a baby's cry for help, or heed the warning call of another individual. This hypothesis is one that has been explored before in monkeys, and the one species that was examined did not demonstrate the same aversion to these sounds as humans." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ch3jmbo", "ch3kkwl" ], "score": [ 3, 4 ], "text": [ "A credit card score is basically a number telling someone how likely you are to pay back borrowed money.\n\nBad scores mean you miss payments, or only pay the minimum and generally should not be trusted.\n\nA good score means you pay your credit back promptly. ", "Every action you do that involves credit (take out a loan, open a credit card, get a credit card bill, make a payment, miss a payment) is reported to one or more of the three credit ratings companies (yes, they're private companies). They then apply their secret algorithms to all that data and come up with a number between 300 and 850 that approximates how likely you are to pay off your debts. If you've nearly maxed out all your credit cards, are behind on your mortgage payments, and don't have a history of paying off debts on time (not that you've necessarily missed payments before- it's also bad not to have any credit history), you'll have a lower score.\n\nWhen you request more credit, whether it be another credit card or a new mortgage, the creditor looks up your credit score and determines how much money they're willing to loan you and what interest rate they'll charge based on your score. People with higher scores are lower risk of defaulting, so they'll offer a lower rate and larger loans." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cwl6ukp", "cwl6ysi", "cwl895x" ], "score": [ 2, 12, 2 ], "text": [ "Weird Al, specifically, asks permission before he spoofs a song, even though technically he doesn't have to. He's protected because parody is considered fair use. I don't really understand what you mean by the same chords and rhythm, but beyond spoofs and covers, you can't copyright a chord or a rhythm. If you could, making new music would literally be impossible. ", "Parodies are generally considered a fair use exception to copyright law (it's not guaranteed but Weird Al style works would usually be covered). But Weird Al asks permissions for all the songs he parodies, and won't make a version without the original authors approval.", "In the United States and many other countries, parody and satire are considered legitimate exemptions to copyright law, so he isn't breaking the law. Al's songs usually bring [more notice to the original songs](_URL_0_) meaning it's usually a good thing to be singled out by Al. Artists usually sue when people do bad things that reduce the value of their works. Finally, as others have pointed out here, Weird Al is a nice guy who asks permission from the original artists even though he doesn't have to." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fbxh9zr", "fbxiz9c", "fbxj3qe", "fbxjhxm", "fbxkozv", "fbxskcx" ], "score": [ 119, 8, 2, 3, 9, 2 ], "text": [ "TL; DR - commercial/retail banks take deposits. Investment banks create securities. [oversimplified]\n\nFirst off, most banks are commercial banks (aka retail banks). In general they take deposits from individuals and make loans, as well as offering services like credit cards. \n\nInvestment banking works more with the markets directly relating to financial securities (stocks, bonds, derivatives, etc) and financial advisory services. But investment banks do not take deposits. \n\nWant to have your company go public and be listed on a stock exchange? The can determine a listing price and distribution. Need to issue $10B in bonds, they can partner with other firms to create the terms and get them sold. Want to merge with another company? They help with due diligence and the terms and the funding (loans, stock conversions, etc.).\n\nTraditionally (at least since the 1933 Glass–Steagall legislation) these were separate institutions. Many banks collapsed (for instance) when they used deposits to speculate on the markets. These functions are still separate but can be housed in one corporation. And most investment banks chose or were pressured to become commercial banks (at least from a regulatory perspective) after the crisis of 2008.", "The most ELI5 interpretation of them is that investment banking has one job, and that job is to help their clients find money for their business. They find investors. They help companies merge etc.\n\nBy definition, **Investment banking** is a special segment of **banking** operation that helps individuals or organisations raise capital and provide financial consultancy services to them.\n\n [_URL_2_](_URL_2_) \n\n & #x200B;\n\nInvestment banking sells services. They can help you whether you want to buy something, or sell something. They aren't the buyers or sellers themselves, they are advisors. All investment banking activity is classed as either \"sell side\" or \"buy side\". The \"sell side\" involves trading securities for cash or for other securities (e.g. facilitating transactions, market-making), or the promotion of securities (e.g. underwriting, research, etc.). The \"buy side\" involves the provision of advice to institutions that buy investment services. Private equity funds, mutual funds, life insurance companies, unit trusts, and hedge funds are the most common types of buy-side entities. taken from [_URL_0_](_URL_1_) \n\n**DO NOT CONFUSE INVESTMENT BANKING AND INVESTMENT TRADING.** They have touching points but they are not the same. Investment banking will help you get your company on the open market so you can sell your stocks (1st hand). Investment trading will buy your stocks, sell them forward (2nd hand), and also deals with many more financial instruments (option trading, bonds, FOREX etc.)\n\nP.S. if you wish to lose all knowledge of investment trading and descend into madness, go to r/wallstreetbets and leave your sanity at the door.", "Investment banks are companies that work with investments - for example, they help companies to issue stock and bonds, advise on buying other companies or assets, create derivatives based on the value of underlying assets or indices, trade financial instruments, create structured products like securitized mortgages or loans, all that fun stuff. They also don’t traditionally take deposits - you aren’t supposed to be able to open a chequing account with an investment bank. They work purely in the world of capital markets, mergers and acquisitions and sometimes wealth management.\n\nInvestment bankers basically are people who work for investment banks or investment banking arms of full-service banks. The career is typified by very long hours and high pay.", "Let's say you own a bakery. You need money to expand. So you go to a normal bank and get a loan.\n\nNow let's say you own 10,000 bakeries and you need money to expand each one. You could go to a regular bank and get a loan, but you might not like the terms or they might not be able to lend you all that money. So instead, you go to an investment bank. The investment bank finds a bunch of investors who want to lend you money, and helps you issue bonds to those investors (a bond is essentially a promise to pay someone back for a loan they made you). Or, the investment bank helps you raise the money by finding investors who want to buy part of your business, and helps you navigate the various requirements for you to issue stock to them in exchange for the money.\n\nInvestment banks also offer advisory services, like helping you analyze whether to purchase that other chain of bakeries who is your main competition.", "Think real estate agents. Every time you want to buy or sell a house, you get an agent that does the heavy lifting for you and takes a percentage cut. \n\nIB does the same when a firm needs to buy, sell or IPO. The process to do these require a lot of specialized knowledge on the area and market conditions and firms are better off outsourcing these fairly difficult and niche tasks (like buying or selling a house, only really happens a couple times in the life of a firm) to experts who who do this day in and out. Just like making a bad real estate investments, a bad M & A (mergers and acquisition) or a bad IPO could be ruinious to the firm in the short - medium run, so firms are willing to pay the massive fees that these IB firms command. [2-3% of $1B raised is a lot of money]. \n\nI think the real estate agent analogy holds for a lot of these. Some clarifications: \n\n1. Yes, IBD does only mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs. For other related activities like raising debt capital, there are other related teams in the capital markets division of the banks. IB sits under capital markets as well.\n\n2. Why is it so lucrative? Surface reason, money. 2-3% of $1B being earned by a team of ~10 IB is a lot of revenue per employee for the bank. They get bonuses accordingly. Also, the work you do is incredibly impact. You can be working on the biggest deal in the industry that year and advising on where $1B+ of capital is going to be deployed!\n\n3. Is it a lot of work? Yes. These deals are usually massive and have a lot of work that needs to be done before. It is also extremely time sensitive. So during crunch time its not uncommon to put in ~100 office/week at the office. \n\n4. Usually called the sell side of the deal because it is usually the seller who bears the 2-3% fee that bankers charge (just like real estate agents again!)", "There are two things you're asking here OP:\n\n1. What an *Investment Bank* is\n2. What *Investment Banking* is\n\nFor number one, there's basically two sides to an investment bank: the side that deals with doing deals, giving advice and raising capital (the **Investment Banking Division**) and the side that deals with making markets for investors, brokering ideas to large investors, creating new securities and publishing research (the **Sales and Trading** or **Markets** division).\n\nFor the second question, you can liken the investment banking division to a couple of things: 1.**account managers**, 2. **realtors for businesses** and 3. **mortgage and home equity brokers for businesses**.\n\n1. As **account managers**, bankers working in an **industry group** will be the first point of contact for a company within a specific industry. They'll be the ones who own the relationship, provide ongoing strategic advice, oversee/represent the companies during any transactions (i.e. company sale or capital raise) and if there is no dedicated realtor team (M & A team) to execute the sale they will do it themselves.\n\n2. As **realtors for businesses**, bankers represent clients looking to sell their business or looking to buy a business. In the first case, they'll figure out how much that business is worth and try to connect the seller to appropriate buyers. In the second case, they'll help screen for potential businesses to buy and will organise the whole process of buying said business.\n\n3. As **mortgage and home equity brokers for businesses**, bankers help raise money through a mortgage (i.e. debt, most oftentimes a bond) or by forgoing some piece of the \"home\" for money (i.e. equity, selling pieces of the company). The difference is that the banks also initially administer/co-administer the mortgage (purchase the bonds by themselves or as part of a syndicate) or buy the entire piece of the house (purchase all of the new stock being issued) usually all of this at a discount, this is referred to as **underwriting**. They will usually find investors to pre-agree to buy the debt or equity from them before buying it themselves so they don't take on too much risk - because it was at a discount they make a decent profit on selling it on. \n\nNow, the above differs a tonne:\n\n- The \"IBD\" (Investment Banking Division) could just represent the first two types of banker (the \"account manager\" and \"realtor for businesses\") and there could be a separate \"Capital Markets\" division that handles the third type (\"mortgage or home equity broker for businesses\"). \n\n- An investment bank could also be \"independent\" and not have a \"Sales and Trading\"/\"Markets\" side; these firms are usually referred to as \"independent advisors\" because they can't underwrite any debt or equity since they don't have the money (balance sheet) to do it.\n\n- There are also other teams that fall under investment banking that I didn't get into for the sake of the ELI5 including: Public Finance, Leveraged Finance, Corporate Broking, Ratings Advisory, Risk Management Solutions and a bunch of other niche teams.\n\nHope that's helpful." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment\\_banking", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_banking", "https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/investment-banking" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dw8fvum" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Different parts of your vision are good at different things. The part of your vision that is good at seeing detail is a very small part of the very center of your vision. You can see how small it is by keeping your eyes focused on a single word in a text, and trying to read the next few words without looking at them. \n\nOutside of that focused area, the eye is more dedicated to identifying motion rather than detail. The very edges of your vision, your peripherals, are entirely dedicated to motion, which is why you can see movement out of the corner of your eye if you had no idea something was there. \n\nThe area just outside of your detailed center of vision can pick up a good amount of detail, but relies on your brain to fill in the blanks. When you wave the pencil in front of your face, the center of your vision can see that the pencil is rigid, but the area just outside of the center sees motion and less detail. Your brain fills in the blanks, interpreting the image as \"the pencil is loose and wavy\" " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdzdjsu", "cdze4zi" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "There's probably not a big health problem with doing it short term like this, the human body actually tolerates alcohol very well. You're not going to get liver or pancreas problems with a couple of drinks a day for a while.\n\nThe real problem is that for many people who self-medicate through periods of emotional pain using alcohol, short term turns into long term. And then you have an addiction, which is a *huge* problem. It starts slowly, maybe you have a drink at 2pm. Then you start anticipating that, and having that drink at 1pm and then another one later. Then you drink a couple of drinks at 1pm and a couple more throughout the evening. It just gets worse from here. \n\nPlease see a therapist or psychiatrist instead of drinking!", "Psychologically, alcohol can be used in a healthy manner to relieve occasional bouts of stress or anxiety. But, if you're using the alcohol to mask serious underlying issues then there is a problem. Alcohol may be alleviating the symptoms, but's not treating the cause. To some extent it may be preventing you from addressing the cause of the problems. Prolonged use of alcohol in this manner is a slippery slope. If you want to continue drinking, keep track of how much you are drinking each day and make sure you are not escalating. \n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cqtel70", "cqtem32" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Physical features have nothing to do with being a species. Being a part of the same species is defined as being able to breed and produce offspring that can then produce more offspring. ", "The same animal with a different fur color is not a different species. It is just different colored. All cats are from the same species regardless of what color they are. Two animals are considered different species if they are unable to produce offspring that are fertile. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dk2bxk4", "dk2fucb" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ " > How is it assigned a value,\n\nIt's not. It's a fiat currency. It's only worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. **Just like the US dollar**. But people are accepting it at stores and stuff. And other are interested in it, so they.... speculate and invest (and a few lucky bastards made millions) and they make the market price go up. \n\n > how come the computing power need to \"mine\" is > so substantial\n\nIt's a pretty intense mathematical process to go find new coins and help process the ledger for new transactions. It takes a lot of computer crunching power. That crunching power takes actual electrical power, which costs money. \n\nJust like the US penny, if it costs more money to make than you can sell it for, you LOSE money by making it. \n\n\n > etc.. ?\n\nGonna have to give me a little something. ", "In addition to what /u/heckruler said, what gives cryptocurrency value is that it is hard to mine, which makes it rare, like gold, and hence valuable (as a trade commodity, status symbol, or investment into it's future value). \nThe fact that it's hard to mine is intentional. In fact, the mining difficulty is usually increased every so often so that as more/better mining hardware comes online, the world-wide mining rate remains almost constant. This is intended to keep the cryptocurrencies valuable and keep the people incentivised to mine.\nMining in itself performs the important role of processing transactions done with any given cryptocurrency, like a bank with personal checks. So having a constant mining rate is good for stability of the financial system." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "el5t200", "el5ttfy" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "I’m fairly certain it’s the lack of oxygen to the brain caused by the coughing that makes you feel extra high", "The lack of oxygen to the brain that comes from coughing I always thought, but also could just be a placebo." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cxkrdl2", "cxksh3a", "cxkud6c" ], "score": [ 7, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "It's beliefs are based on a bunch of ~~pretty terrible~~ science fiction novels. The US government isn't in the business of deciding what religions can name themselves. Hell, one church a few blocks away from my house is part of \"[Church of Christ, Scientist](_URL_0_).\"", "It's based on the word for knowledge. Religions tend to maintain that they deliver knowledge to adherents. Also it's hard to get membership up in the Church of MumboJumboICameUpWithInTheShitter.", "Well... two answers to that. The cynical side of me would say that it's because Hubbard (The founder) was trying to imply that his religion was based on scientific methodology (something he straight out claims in a lot of his texts on the subject) while maintaining a good cover story that the name is not based on the word science, but rather based on the same root word. This way he could claim it to be as scientific as he wanted, while still allowing himself to present it as mystical when it served his intent.\n\nThe more generous side of me accepts the \"company line\" on the meaning behind the name (after all, what do I care what the name means, it doesnt change whether I do, or do not think it's all true). That company line is that the word is based on the latin scio, meaning \"knowledge\" and the greek logos, which is the root for the suffix \"-ology\", meaning \"the study of\". So the name literally means \"the study of knowledge\". Since the religion makes claims about increasing one's knowledge about self, the universe, and one's relationship with the universe I think its actually a fairly clever name. \n\nWhat they actually DO, and what their name means are entirely different things, and just because their name is clever does not mean their ideas are. Keep in mind that what you name something has everything to do with marketing and PR, and very little to do with reality..." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Christ,_Scientist" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cufwnpu" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Honestly, It's cause cods trash nowadays. They don't put in the time to fix all these isues cause they're too concerned with trying to push the next money grab of a game out. There's that, and the fact that on top of it there's so many noobs from all over the world trying to play at once that the servers just say fuck it just through them all into one. Than you got little camper Juan from mexico fucking with jims connection in California. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dei0dno" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Um, well...you can. You just can't actively participate in competition sports that outlaw steroid use.\n\nSo, go for it. I am sure you can find a doctor to prescribe it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cj9ofmk", "cj9oikg" ], "score": [ 14, 8 ], "text": [ "\"Decibel\" or dB isn't a unit of _URL_0_'s a way of measuring things with large ranges relative to some arbitrary value. dBFS is the measurement for digital signals, and 0dB is the maximum. dB V is the measurement for analog voltages, dB SPL is the measurement for sound pressure level in air. All are different and mean different things.\n\nAnd you have to consider what it's measuring. Is that the amp gain? The signal going through it? It's all relative.\n\n\n0dB *SPL* is the threshold for human hearing. 0dB V is moderately low signal. 0dB FS is the highest possible digital signal without distortion. ", "0 is full signal. So you are -40dB below max. " ] }

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[ [ "measurement.It" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4bnba0", "c4bpit1", "c4bq67s" ], "score": [ 15, 2, 12 ], "text": [ "contrary to popular belief the NSA and CIA don't just listen in on my dirty phone conversations with my girlfriend. ", "Space flight and rocket trajectories are fairly common knowledge actually. Even \"amateurs\" can figure out what the rocket will likely do, and it's capabilities from what is public. NK had released a handful of info about it. And yes, spying as well, but prob less than you think. ", "Actually, they told us. They want their missile launches to appear to be as not-ICBM-y as possible, so they went through all the hoops of reporting a missile launch to the appropriate international bodies. You have to do this so airline flights and ocean shipping can be rerouted, just in case something goes wrong. They also reported the satellite's hopeful orbit to the international body that handles satellites too." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dp412oi", "dp4o2fv", "dp4tlz4", "dp4uclk", "dp50irh", "dp57yug" ], "score": [ 1209, 48, 17, 1012, 80, 3 ], "text": [ "They take a small, exact amount of the dried pepper in question, dissolve it in alcohol, then mix this solution into a cup of sugar water. They have 5 tasters drink that concoction to see if any of them can still detect the heat of the original pepper. If 3/5 tasters can detect the heat, then they'll dilute the solution further until they can't. \n\nThe more dilution needed before the heat can't be detected, the hotter the pepper, and the higher its score on the Scoville scale.", "But why is it not on a log scale?", "And I've always wondered how something can be 100× hotter. What does that even mean ? At what point does your stomach melt", "The dillution technique isn't being used anymore, because it is subjective. Every persons tolerance to capsaicin is different and actually rises, the more of it you intake.\n\nToday a **high-performance liquid chromatography** is used. The heat producing chemicals in a chili are observed, measured and then transfered into the scoville system, because it is the familiar one. Every chili or sauce has different components with different amounts of capsaicin in different parts of the plant, therefore it is often difficult to measure the exact \"spice-level\". It is still more usefully and accurate than the old procedure. \nThere are a lot of crazy methods for classifying hotness, for example the ***Dremann Hotness Scale*** where the chili are measured in their spiciness in relation to the salsa they are in. \n\n\nHope this helps and I apologise for any grammatical or orthographical errors, English isn't my first language.\n\nEdit: Some formatting", "Originally, the Scoville Scale was a human-driven test. The dried peppers were powderized and diluted in sugar water, and a panel of 5 humans tasted the dilutions until a majority of them detected spiciness. If that dilution was, say, 1/1000th of the original solution, then the scoville rating was 1000 * 100 = 100,000 Scoville Units.\n\nBut this scale had flaws: Between labs, you could easily get a 50% difference in ratings. So a new unit was developed: Scientists established a standard curve for spiciness, and then looked at what chemicals were in each level of spiciness using a tool called High Performance Liquid Chromatography. They made a new scale based on **American Spice Trade Association Pungency Units.** But because Scoville was already publicly known, they came up with a conversion between ASTA Pungency Units and Scoville: 1 ASTA Pungency Unit = 16 Scoville Units.\n\n**TL DR** Originally, Scoville ratings were done with an elaborate taste test. Today, Scoville ratings are calculated by a lab test based on chemical composition of the peppers.", "Since people are answering HPLC, and HPLC is absolutely not something a layman encounters often, I'll take a stab at simplifying it. \n\nHigh-performance liquid chromatography is a way to 1) separate all the different chemicals in a mixture and 2) learn how much of each chemical there is in that mixture. Since peppers are spicy because of a specific chemical, capsaicin, they can look for that chemical in an HPLC experiment. The way it works is that as each different chemical goes through the machine, it interacts with the makeup of the machine differently. So, some chemicals will go through faster, and some slower. Since they know how fast capsaicin flows through, they can identify it and measure how much there is. So, they mash up a pepper, run the juice through the machine, look for capsaicin, and there's your Scoville test!\n\nHopefully that helps!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "crsy9ek", "crsy9th", "crsyj67", "crsyv4o", "crsyy1n", "crt1t6k", "crt79pr", "crtowvg" ], "score": [ 25, 2, 6, 140, 3, 3, 11, 2 ], "text": [ "A oligarchy of companies control the direct supply that they make available. They always keep supply available well under the demand, which helps dictate a higher price", "Its is common knowledge on this site were many people post it over and over and over. \nIt is pretty easy to think that something is now know to everybody because you have read it here several times. \nThe truth is: Many people still think they are rare, they are sold for a high price and people still pay them because they think thats how its supposed to be.", "The tradition of buying diamond rings for proposals is some of the best marketing an industry can have. As long as the companies who make diamonds can keep associating their product with love, they'll always be able to sell them at a higher price. Love is something that is universally, uh, loved, and love makes people do stupid things.", "Alright, I'm finally annoyed enough at seeing \"fuck diamonds\" posts to say something about it. So without further ado....\n\nThe early 20th century was a different time with different morals. Premarital sex was far more taboo than it is today, and women did not work as much as men did, the expectation being that they find a husband to support them. Also, it was very important to most potential husbands that the woman be a virgin before their marriage. Keep these things in mind.\n\nNow, even though premarital sex was frowned upon, men still wanted sex without necessarily committing to a lifelong relationship. This lead to some men leading women on with a promise of marriage, using her for sex, and then leaving her when he got bored. This was very bad for the woman because now that she was no longer a virgin, she would have a much harder time finding a husband, and by extension, financial security. This was a serious enough issue that breaching a promise to marry was actually a crime in many jurisdictions and the man could be forced to pay damages for the woman's emotional distress and decreased earning potential. \n\nKnowing all this, De Beers sensed a marketing opportunity. They told women that if a man wanted to propose marriage, he should prove that he wasn't doing so for underhanded reasons, and the best way to do that would be to make a significant financial commitment to the woman he wanted to marry, upfront. And it just so happened that De Beers had the perfect way to make that committment: buying a beautiful, diamond engagement ring! (Because handing someone a stack of cash isn't terribly romantic). Now, men were essentially paying a deposit when proposing marriage, one that the woman had no obligation to refund if he didn't hold up his end of the bargain,~~and that she could convert to money (by selling it) to have some means of supporting herself after a broken engagement and loss of reputation~~. After further review, I don't think resale value factored into this as De Beers worked very hard to make resold diamonds worthless, by cutting off jewelers who accepted second-hand diamonds.\n\nWhy is it still around today? People have largely forgotten the origins of the tradition and just see it as something you're supposed to do. Societal change is slow and this is something that will probably die out or change as time goes on and the wealth/power imbalance between men and women gets smaller and smaller.", "They're actually less controlled than most think, as a bunch of competing producers have popped up and broken the monopoly very recently (the big one is run by this nutty Israeli guy). At the end of the day, though, diamonds still require a lot of resource and labor to obtain and process.", "I don't have an answer to the question but I do have a fun fact about diamond engagement rings.\n\nThere is a common misconception that diamond engagement rings are an ancient tradition. Sure, there is a rich history of rings being exchanged during marriage ceremonies, and there have also been a variety of circumstances where royals and other elite gave diamond jewelry for an engagement. But, it wasn’t until the De Beers diamond cartel decided to funnel millions into marketing and advertising campaigns that the diamond ring became deeply embedded into the culture.\n\n**[Here's a quick video about the scam.](_URL_0_)**\n", "Most people here haven't addressed the question, they've just reiterated the problem--why do people think diamonds are rare and valuable, still? And most people just say that it's because of marketing, basically. But *why* is the marketing still effective? Don't people know better than that now? So my answer is that it's at least partly due to the fact that people don't buy diamonds for themselves. The consumer and the purchaser are different. So while a person might have a certain standard if buying for oneself, they will defer that standard to the person they're buying it for. Women, having it bought for them, have their eyes on tradition, prestige, and bragging rights for diamonds. If they were to not have a diamond engagement ring and say that it was their choice, people might think it's sour grapes, because their man was too cheap to buy a diamond for them and they were just lying when they said they didn't want one. The man might think yeah, I've heard these are worthless, but my woman wants it, and so I'd better get it for her or I won't hear the end of it. So basically, it's this particular dynamic between the person buying the diamond and the person the diamond is being bought for, that leads to the diamond economic bubble--the continuing high valuation of diamonds despite it being built on lies.\n\nThere's also the fact that people have long valued diamonds, so deciding they're not valuable at all would be tantamount to saying that something one has a lot of is worthless. That is, it would be offensive to other people to say that diamonds are worthless, so people don't want to say it or admit to it. People want to continue to believe that what they have is valuable. Kind of like how,have you ever encountered someone who has fallen for that internet scam where someone writes from Nigeria claiming to be the widow of someone important, and they want your help in transferring some money, and if you help you'll receive some huge amount of money in return? People who've fallen for that, and lost huge sums of money paying \"fees\" for the money transfer, become really committed to believing that it's a legitimate request. It's too painful to think they've been scammed and that they've lost all their money.", "Because people are stupid and believe what they want to believe.\n\nthat's really all it is.\n\nDo you know why words with english and german roots are considered obscene?\n\nDo you know why parents STILL hit their kids?\n\nDo you know why school classrooms are set up they way they are?\n\nDo you know why Brits drive on the wrong side of the road?\n\nBecause we've always done it that way. We're way past trying to impress our French overlords with our language, we're way past sending our 9 year olds to backbreaking labor, we're way past groups of clerks working in a room that looks like a classroom with their boss facing them instead of a teacher and we're way past London cab drivers hitting British pedestrians with their whips on when on the right side of the road. But I'll be damned if 100 years from now someone won't be hitting their kid for saying 'shit' about going to school while wondering aloud about the brits driving on the wrong side of the road." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5kWu1ifBGU" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdt5fa5", "cdt5h3x" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "You can't see.", " > why can we still perceive light with our eyes closed?\n\nYour eyelids are not 100% opaque. Some light comes through.\n\n > how are phosphenes produced and why?\n\nMechanically applying pressure to the vision cells in the retina can stimulate them." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cq4vrlx", "cq4vxi8", "cq4wfol", "cq4z28j", "cq4zoeg" ], "score": [ 8, 2, 5, 19, 2 ], "text": [ "^^*...the* ^^*silence* ^^*is* ^^*your* ^^*answer...*", "Maybe because cooking shows are in right now. I watch it because I like to see what is being cooked. I doubt these kids are doing this alone but it is entertaining and it gives me ideas.", "Because we're sadists? ", "Drama, even fake drama, helps to spice things up. Look at the WWE for example. They openly admit the whole thing is fake, but it is still entertaining to thousands of people. The same goes for these \"reality\" competitions.\n\nFor whatever reason it is easier to associate with the drama for most people when it is presented in a realistic fashion. This is the reason behind the \"found footage\" horror movie craze a while back. It helps to immerse yourself, while dedicated dramas, even with their own merits, are less \"realistic\" to some people.\n\nThat is my guess, anyways.", "Most people like to watch others being humiliated, it used to be blood sports but these days were more civilized.\n\nEdit: And its cheap to make" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cwslnzk", "cwsniv5" ], "score": [ 40, 3 ], "text": [ "The ads and games you see are for companies based in China. There is little recourse anyone in the US can do to these companies, as they are based in a country that does not respect US Copyright laws (or turns a blind eye to it). Facebook will put them up until Pokemon/Digimon/Disney/Whoever sends them a cease and desist or copyright infringement letter. You can bet they do not have \"Over one million players\" either. They dont give a shit, they want your information and money.", "Some are too small to attract attention, so they're just going to do this sort of crap until the company it stole from realizes and sends them a copyright infringement letter." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctkl66s", "ctku5tm" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "This one is quite easily explained by typing \"Phases of the moon diagram\" into Google image search.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nBasically the phases of the moon are based on where the moon is relative to the earth and the sun.", "This isn't technically accurate but it helps with illustrating the concepts. Over the course of approximately every month, the sun and the moon have a race around the earth and the sun is always slightly faster than the moon. At the start of the race, both of them are at the same point and the moon is not visible at all because all of the sunlight on the moon is on the side we can't see from earth. Over the next few days of the race, as the sun creates a small lead, some of its light can be seen as a sliver on the moon but only at a point during the day when that sliver of reflected sunlight isn't completely dominated by sunlight in the sky: just after sunset. As the sun increases its lead over the moon over the next several days, the portion of the moon that is visible increases and the \"distance\" between them in the sky increases so it becomes easier to see the moon during daylight hours. The sun's lead continues to increase, until a point at which we see a full moon and the sun and moon appear to be at exact opposite ends of the sky, ie - moonrise occuring just as the sun sets. This is the halfway point of the race. During the next half of the race the reverse starts to happen, where at first we see all of the moon all night and then it sets just before sunrise, then we see slightly less of the moon for most of the night and then for a little bit after sunrise, then we see the moon for the later parts of the night and for longer during the day but with it becoming less and less visible as the sun appears to catch up to it over the course of several days. This pattern continues until the point where only a sliver of the moon is visible only just before sunrise and then eventually the race ends and they are both at the starting line again and the moon is no longer visible." ] }

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[ [ "http://00.edu-cdn.com/files/static/science-fair/determine-positions-sun-moon-earth/phases-of-the-moon-diagram.png" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ctk9x7s", "ctkqfft" ], "score": [ 9, 2 ], "text": [ "Well, you do stir the air quite a bit when you do this. That would throw their little airborne bodies around some.", "When you clap your hands, because of the format of your hands (open it resembles a bowl), the air that is being compressed by your movement is swatted away from your hands. That way, even if the fly didn't move at all, the air pressure your hand creates would push the fly away. Try to drop one single rice in a glass of water and than try to pressure it fast against the wall of the glass. You will see the water movement pushing the rice to the side of your finger. Almost the same principle (air and water are both fluids).\nThat's why those fly-swatting hands you can buy are punctured.\nThat way the air between the fly and the swatter isn't moved horizontally to the swatter, but is moved through the swatter as well, making it easier to hit the target.\ntl;dr: swat it slow to move less air around your hand and kill the sob OR get a swatter." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d2cwt44" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "After a few years with a team certain players are eligible to renegotiate their contracts (not sure exactly the rules for eligibility). If the team and the player can't agree on a new salary, it goes to arbitration.\n\nAt the arbitration panel, the player submits what he thinks should be paid and makes a case based on similar players. The team submits what it thinks the player is worth. Thenthearbitators deliberate and eventually pick one number or the other -- they can't split the baby. And that's the player's new salary.\n\nBy requiring the arbitrators to pick either the player's bid or the team's, it forces both parties to make an effort to be reasonable in their ask. If one side gives a ridiculous high- or lowball offer, it forces the arbitrators to choose the other one." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d2f2d87" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "It isn't the radiation that stays, it is the material that produces the radiation that hangs around\n\nRadiation is a byproduct of the transformation a radioactive material goes through when it decays. It might (for example) start out as plutonium, decay into uranium and spit out a byproduct like an alpha particle, which is the 'radiation'\n\nA material like Plutonium has a half life of about 25,000 years, which means that in 25000 years time, half the plutonium has gone through this transformation. The other half still remains, waiting for its turn to go through the transformation.\n\nFast forward another 25000 years, and half of THAT has gone, leaving you with 1/4 of the original amount, etc\n\nOn a human scale, that is a long time for an area to be contaminated" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d11puwu", "d11px3f", "d11pxvc", "d11qm1e" ], "score": [ 2, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "In computers there is a componenent called a capacitor. A capacitor stores charge. Capacitors are used all over a computer.\n\nOver time, capacitors degrade. This is what causes a computer to fail, because if an important one breaks, the whole thing can break", "over time the boards are exposedto everything from cockroaches to layers of dust can in the right circumstances can cause short a circuit. personalty i have seen lots of dust and humidity can kill a computer. i have seen 2 different grades of equipment (laptos, ibm think pad V panasonic toughbook) in the same environment have life spans that differ in the decades", "If the computer is getting hot enough. The contact silver solder for the heat sink can degrade away over time. This results in less heat transfer which quickly fried the CPU", "The computer code itself should run indefinitely, what does wear out over time are the physical components.\n\nIssues like rust, power issues (a spike in power damaging components for example) problems caused by heat such as solder cracking, or components wearing out (a lot of components use mechanical properties to affect the electrical signals, so the metal film in a capacitor may wear out through repeated charge cycles or a battery chemistry will slowly decay)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6ujw4x" ], "score": [ 14 ], "text": [ "Dante is a pretty cool guy whose beloved Beatrice bites the dust is taken to the afterlife. Hell is Dante's first stop.\n\n* Level 1: Limbo. Unvirtuous Pagans and the unbaptized. Didn't get eternal punishment, but didn't get reward because they never accepted Jesus. Lots of Classical characters are chillin' in Limbo. Dante continues, guided by the Roman poet Virgil.\n\n* Level 2: Lust. Lustful souls are blown about by eternal strong winds representing the power of lust to blow us about in life. He meets Cleopatra and Paris and Helen of Troy and other lustful figures. \n \n* Level 3: Gluttony. Cerberus stands guard over the gluttonous. They lie in slush brought down by relentless icy rains. They are meant to represent the cold, empty, meaningless sensuality of their lives. They are blind and unaware of their surroundings.\n \n* Level 4: Greed. The greedy and miserly are meant to push large weights around (sometimes depicted as large bags of money) and joust using these. The god of wealth Pluto, or Plutus, watches over them. \n\n* Level 5: Anger. The angry/wrathful are punished by being forced to fight one another for space on the surface of the river. The downtrodden lie on the bed of the river surrounded by inky water. \n\n* After this, the punishments of active rather than passive sins are carried out in the city of Dis. The walls are guarded by fallen angels, who refuse to let Dante in. An angel from heaven comes and tells them to let Dante in and they do. \n\n* Level 6: Heresy. The heretics are trapped in flaming tombs. Two of them chat with Dante.\n\n* Level 7: Violence. Divided into three rings. 1). Outer ring: Violent to people and property. Forced to stand in a river of boiling blood and fire. The more violent you are, the deeper you stand. Alexander the Great is dipped up to his eyebrows. 2). Middle ring: Suicides. Transformed into thorny bushes and trees. These trees are the only ones who will not be resurrected for the final judgment. They renounced their bodies by killing themselves. 3). Inner ring: Violent against God, usurpers, and sodomites. The inner ring is a desert of flaming sand with fiery flakes falling from the sky. Blasphemers lie on the sand. Usurpers sit. Sodomites wander in groups. \n\n* Level 8: Fraud. 10 pockets of stone are cut into one large space. Bridges connect them. They are for different types of fraud. 1). \"Panderers and Seducers\" are whipped by demons and forced to march endlessly. 2). Flatterers are forced to sit in human poo, meant to represent the useless words they produced. 3). Those who commit simony have their heads stuffed into the rock and flames burn the soles of their feet. 4). Sorcerers and false prophets have their heads turned around and walk backwards everywhere. 5). Corrupt politicians are immersed in boiling pitch, supposed to represent their sticky nature and dark words. 6). Hypocrites walk around with robes made of lead covered in gold, meant to represent their gilded nature. 7). Thieves are guarded by a dragon-monster and are tormented by snakes and lizards. 8). Fraudulent advisors burn in individual flames. 9). A demon uses a sword to wound and chop up the \"Sowers of Discord\". 10). Various falsifiers are subjected to various diseases.\n\n* Level 9: Treachery. Divided into 4 concentric circles. 1).Treachery against family ties, the punished are covered in ice up to their faces. 2). Traitors to political entities, Dante encounters a man gnawing on the head of a former compatriot. 3). Traitors to the guest-host relationship. Forced to lie flat in the ice with everything but their faces covered. 4). Traitors to their lords and masters. Punished by being covered completely in ice, in various distorted positions. \n\n* At the center of Hell is Satan, and his domain is those who commit a personal treachery against God. A beast with three heads and six wings, he is trapped in ice. He beats his wings to try and free himself, and constantly cries from his six eyes. Brutus and Cassius are in the left and right mouths. In the center mouth is Judas Iscariot, being constantly chewed by Satan and having his back flayed by his claws. It's portrayed as an inverted trinity.\n\nDante descends below Satan through the center of the Earth to Purgatory and the narrative continues. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d1oewb0" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Relative to the ground yes, provided you throw it in the direction you are moving.\n\nRelative to you no, it is traveling at 100mph.\n\nRelative to the sun it's probably closer to 67000mph" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cwk2wl9", "cwk38sh", "cwk4fng", "cwk6lhj", "cwkb3jt", "cwke3us", "cwjkdcl", "cwjke79", "cwjkf8s", "cwjlf65", "cwjlmcw", "cwjqdkd", "cwjr0z9" ], "score": [ 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 58, 3, 16, 4, 3, 3, 16 ], "text": [ "Because up until the subscription model, Adobe CS was one of the most pirated pieces of non-OS software out there. They allowed it because many of the Pirates were learning graphic artists, so it basically built their customer base. \n\nThe change to a subscription model is a pretty brilliant way to enforce purchase, but make the software cheaper, and in turn make more money than they were before. ", "I cant believe that nobody has mentioned piracy yet, many people could pirate a 100+ dollar program, never update it so they dont lose the software and keep it free for life. You cant pirate a subscription, Adobe products are some of the most highly pirated and a subscription keeps them from losing revenue to pirates.", "All the other answers here are right, but I don't see a lot about the ops portion of this. If you've ever worked on the backend of a software, being cloud based makes maintenance significantly easier. You don't have to deal with versioning, maintaining support and bug fixes for old versions, etc. You're also only maintaining one code base and you can easily push out updates to your software and monitor your usage. ", "If the requires continuous updates and upgrades it is more cost effective for them to charge as subscription fee for their work. It is also easier on the customer to buy a piece of software once and pay a low subscription fee than it is to buy a completely new set of software when the next edition comes out. ", "Same reason Streaming is promoted over legal file downloading. They are basically switching from selling a product to rent seeking.", "I work in software development. This strategy is called \"Software as a Service\" and is becoming the new norm. There are rumors Microsoft is moving towards this model with Office too.\n\nThere are two major reasons for this strategy. The first has already been mentioned - piracy. \n\nThe second reason is more complicated: the development lifecycle. \n\nA) It is too lengthy for the current consumer and less profitable (at least in the short-term, arguably in the long-term depending on the success of the product).\n\nA good example of the development lifecycle being too long is to look into Early Access games on steam. On average, even a small quality game takes 3 years, but that length of time receives a lot of negative feedback to the developers. Users don't really *understand* what goes into software development and therefore don't have the patience to wait.\n\nB) But on top of that - the world is a lot more competitive. The earlier you get your product out, the more likely your product is to dominate the market. (Or at least this is the perception of management.)\n\nC) Users are finicky and expect a lot more out of their products now. For better or worse, they expect their feedback incorporated into the software.\n\nD) Probably one of the most major factors - Success of an old-time software development lifecycle is unknown until the product is released. And by then, major changes are too late. You see this a lot in video games for console, and it puts some smaller companies out of business. The service model completely prevents/bypasses this. The developers can respond to feedback to improve user experience and lower the risk.\n\nThere is the negative side too though that isn't really acknowledged because it's bad publicity. This is the 'customer is always right' model, and in software development this is often far from true. It also demands quicker development, which means bigger teams and faster fixes, that are often detrimental to the product.\n\nRegardless, it is becoming the new norm, and will likely remain that way for some time.\n\nThe biggest risk against it though is exactly what you've mentioned: another bill to pay. Long-term are users going to be willing to add so many bills for luxuries? Netflix, spotify, youtube has a subscription model now, office, photoshop, etc? This shit is going to add up.", "Because money. If you buy a package and then don't upgrade for years, they lose out on revenue. Subscription keeps the money coming from as long as you use the program", "A couple of reasons. Firstly, the company can determine how much income they'll have at any given time because it's constant (individual sales are usually inconsistent and mostly random).\n\nSecondly, more money. If they make you rely on something that you have to pay for monthly, they've got you. They'd rather have $10/month off you rather than a single $100, especially for something you're going to keep for a long time.", "Long story short, many things are switching to subscription because it's easy to make the customer think he's getting more out of it, while generating much more profit for the company. Simple psychological behavior, like the sunk cost fallacy, means that many customers keep paying the (otherwise smaller) monthly fees, end up paying many times the cost of the one-time package, but the company does not have to spend more effort or resources on it, just reroute it differently.", "Along with the other reasons listed, a subscription model offers a lower barrier of entry in terms of price. With the Adobe Suite, before now pirating it was the only real option for non-professionals, now its actually feasible for a student to pay for it.", "My theory is this:\n\nSoftware utility hasn't really improved much in the past 10 years. Really, what can the average user do with Office 2016 that they can't do with Office 2007? Or a lot of other programs, IMO.\n\nSo there really is no compelling reason for people to \"upgrade\" any longer. In order for software providers to continue to make money, they have to come up with a different method of charging for their products. If you bought Office 2007 eight years ago for $499 (about $5 per month, if you paid full price), and only use it for simple office tasks, such as letter writing, spreadsheets, etc., it will work for you for another 8 years. Why spend another $500 for features you don't need?\n\nBut the subscription model requires you to pay and pay again, as long as you are using the product. So the software companies have a reliable stream of income forever.", "Lot of reasons and most important ones are\n\n* Software companies want every user to have the up-to-date version of their software, which translates to easier patches, better security etc.\n\n* To enforce up-to-date the software company you can't make them buy their newest version every time. The only viable option is give the updates free or charge them by subscription packages.\n\n* The book keeping for companies that buy packages is easy because they don't have to worry about long term assets ( because when you buy the software and use for 3 years, then you have to handle the books differently ).\n\n\nSimply it is the best way to sell and deliver software.", "A lot of responses say 'money' but if you break it down, companies that upgrade regularly [may actually end up spending less](_URL_2_). Adobe, for example, have priced Creative Cloud in such a way that three years subscription is approximately equivalent to the old CS6 Design Standard (although you actually get a lot more with Creative Cloud so it's arguably a much *better* deal). The operating costs for Creative Cloud are substantially higher as well (as Adobe have to provide an always-on cloud service) which has led to a[ *decline* in profits](_URL_1_) since releasing Creative Cloud.\n\nThe old way of developing was that you worked on a product, adding features and ironing out the bugs until it was 'ready'. At this point you wrote it to a disk, printed the manuals, stuck it in a box marked *Version 2.3* and shipped it to a store to be sold. Then when your customers found some problems you would work on solving them, go through the whole process again and in addition supply your loyal customers with a disk marked *Version 2.31*. This way of developing is, as I'm sure you can imagine, very outdated in a world of downloadable installers, endless software updates, etc. But it's still the primary model for development for a lot of our most used software. \n\nA subscription model allows developers to adopt more of a *[rolling release](_URL_0_)* approach to development, which should allow for more innovation through faster iteration. That's why the big players like Microsoft and Adobe *say* they are moving to subscription models; we will just have to wait and see whether it delivers the goods as promised." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_release", "http://www.alphr.com/news/390835/dark-clouds-for-adobe-as-profits-slide-by-46", "http://www.cnet.com/news/how-greedy-is-adobes-creative-cloud-subscription-not-very/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dsfuw4f" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "The colors you are seeing are the metal tempering at different temperatures.\n\nIf you heat iron (not metal in general, just steel really) to a certain degree, it actually changes color. Then you can \"set\" that color by cooling the metal to room temp. Colors for steel range from straw-purple if I recall correctly. \n\nSo you get the rainbow effect because a weld causes uneven heating. " ] }

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[ "https://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Weld-1.jpg" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "c6dredc", "c6dx0lj" ], "score": [ 19, 2 ], "text": [ "Ad revenue. Firefox gets millions of dollars a year from Google for using their search engine for the Firefox start page and as the default search bar at the top right. Google increases it's own revenue by doing the same on Chrome, and Microsoft is pushing IE more now that they have Bing. ", "Influence. Writing a major web browser gives you some control over the direction web standards evolve. Setting a default search engine gives you shitloads of ad revenue." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chkfiqf", "chkgg48", "chkgwlx", "chkilrd", "chkktkj", "chkky4s", "chklq9i", "chkm8id", "chko4a1", "chko6jy", "chkpd8e", "chkpynn", "chkqfn4", "chkqns9", "chkqpot", "chkriny", "chkrito", "chksc2z", "chkt6cq", "chkt9vi", "chkxd1m", "chkxidv", "chky2j5", "chkyg8l" ], "score": [ 26, 1254, 6, 427, 5, 3, 8, 22, 12, 7, 4, 2, 38, 20, 2, 12, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 24, 2, 5 ], "text": [ "Generally, you have to hire a few rather qualified people. People like money, nay, need money to survive.\n\nIn the case of a full fledged game, they can require a staff of five to fifty people to get a product to market in a reasonable timespan. If you're planning to get it out within the year, you could easily be expecting production budgets in the multiple millions to pay for staff and hardware.\n\nPredominantly, kickstarters are made to birth studios, not just a single game. As a result, the kickstarter is usually funding more than the first game.", "Expensive workers using expensive tools.\n\nSuppose you have five workers earning $20/hour? That's over $5,000 for every week of development! \n\nSuppose you have some really passionate developers willing to work poverty wages? Paying two people $5/hour for two years is still $20,000.\n\nThis is before we even cover other costs. Hardware and tools may cost over $3,000 per employee, and there are taxes and legal fees. Don't forget that Kickstarter takes a cut, and that many projects lose a huge chunk of funding, maybe as high as 30-50%, to backer rewards.\n\nAnd *marketing*. Do you really think it's reasonable to spend forty grand making a game, and market it without spending a dime? Looking at major publishers, marketing is sometimes just as much of a cash drop as the development, itself.\n\nIf anything, the question isn't why their budgets are so high, but why they are so low.", "To add on to what has already been posted, game engines require years to design or they require lots of money to license. While there are engines that have licenses for as low as $99 to $1,500 the big league ones like Unreal can cost well over $1,000,000 to license.", "Indie developers can build games somewhat cheaply by keeping the scope low and doing the work in their spare time. However for games that are intended to compete with big titles the economics change quite a bit.\n\nSay I want to build a game that has a 3D character that can perform certain kinds of attacks and special moves and I need it to look at good as the latest games on the market. *For the purposes of the below you can assume a typical developer at this level costs $2500-$3500 per week.*\n\n1. First the initial concept needs to be created for the character by a professional game designer. This is just the basic *idea* of the character and what he/she will do. This process can easily take several weeks.\n\n2. Next we have a 2D concept artist draw the character. This is a multi-stage process where we start with *thumbnail* sketches to find the basic look we want and then iterate on or more designs, getting more detailed as we go. Feedback from designers and any investors cause more iteration until we get a final full color concept that usually has callouts to show specific things like what materials the clothing is made of. This process will take weeks and possible more than a month of concept artist time. It also required small chunks of designer, animator, and 3D artist feedback time.\n\n3. Now we need to create a 3D model and texture. It can take 2 months to fully model and texture a next-gen character. If we outsource this to China a typical character can cost $5000, if we do it in-house it can cost more than twice that. Additionally we need to setup the character material (what is shiny on the texture and what is dull, how does light affect it?) and this takes about a week of a technical artist's time.\n\n4. Now we have a character but he doesn't move. So the next thing we do is called *rigging*. This is where we create virtual skeleton inside the model, where virtual bones are *skinned* to the polygons of the model so they move when we animate the skeleton. This process is an art in itself and can be take over a week to complete. It takes even longer if the character has cloth or special features like wings or tentacles.\n\n5. Now the animators take over. For a leading character we may need to animate over a hundred different moves. Even a simple walk cycle needs several animations to handle transitions, turning, reactions, etc. We may have 2 or 3 animators on one character for a few weeks so the cost really adds up. Motion capture doesn't save much time either because of the cleanup time and initial cost and setup.\n\n6. Now we have our character and it can move around but it need special effects. Blood, dust, smoke, magic, etc. This can vary depending on the game but can be anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.\n\n7. We can't forget audio either. In AAA games each character may have its own unique footsteps sounds. Every surface the character touches may have a unique sound attached to it for dirt, metal, wood, etc. All the abilities have sound effects and then you have voice. Voice recording at this level requires hiring professional actors, even if all you are doing are grunts and effort sounds. (Trust me, there are people who are professional at grunting and the difference is quite noticeable). Sounds effects for one character can take a couple weeks not including voice. Voice can more than double that and that is assuming we're not recording for a long cut-scene.\n\n8. After all that, none of it is going to work until we have a programmer write the code to determine how it behaves, how it moves, when it attacks, etc. This process happens at the same time as the above steps but often requires *months* of multiple programmers working with one or more designers.\n\nOverall, if you include all the design and production managing this process it can cost $100k-$250k *for a single character*.\n\nThe above is just the directly relevant people and just for making a single character in the game. It doesn't include the enormous task of building next-gen quality levels, designing and coding the game rules, building an AI system, creating all the user interface and HUD art, creating cinematic cut-scenes, composing music, camera design, employing an army of game testers to find every bug, *fixing* every bug, producers managing the process, and bizdev people managing the marketing and investors. We also need to pay overhead which covers employee benefits like medical insurance, free food and drinks, office space, etc. \n\nSo something like FTL can be made at tremendously lower cost because it could be potentially made a by just few people working for themselves and doing all the coding and artwork, but something like Star Citizen will need millions.\n\n**Source: I am the owner of a AAA game development studio**", "Most really successful Kickstarter funding goals are usually not just met, but they're exceeded. [Hover: Revolt of the Gamers](_URL_0_) set a goal of around $38,000 and surpassed $100,000.\n\nGames like this set goals after they're been funded indicating what kind of time of money they'll need to add in most things.\n\nMost independent game developers have the hardware and software they need to make video games. Some have to pay for a license from a game engine, but that's all baked into the Kickstarter price.\n\nFor the most part Kickstarter money goes to the salary and wage of the developer or developers. Developers are expected to make between $50,000-$75,000 a year. That might be peanuts in money, but it's what they need to really survive while making video games. They're going to be putting in 12-14 hours a day into making that game so they're going to need money to order take out a lot of long nights.\n\nThe fact is if the opportunity is not there to make a lot of money off of their baby.... why would they ever want to do it?\n\nFor the record Hover isn't a game where they're making crazy money off of. Split between the three developers they're getting $30k to finish up the game in hopes of getting a lot more when it releases. Considering small indie games don't generally get a lot of sales.... that could really be all they get out of it after Steam/XBLA/PSN takes their ridiculous cuts.", "I may be able to help a little bit on this one.\n\nThere are many costs when making a game and it takes a long time. The high costs of developing a game starts at day 1 with hardware. Lets say you have a team of 10 people to make a small game, that is 10 computers you will need. They will also have to be high end computers for modelling and rendering etc. \n\nNext is the software costs for the team, 3ds max has a licence to use for a small office which would fit in with a small team, you also need a game engine where prices vary but lets say they want to make a unity game, that will cost them 1500 or 75/month. There are cheaper alternatives though which they could use. \n\nYou also have to take into account payment for employees which is VERY expensive for 3d modelers and sound people, you will also need coders, artists, writers and more. Lets say a 50k average payment a year for all of them to save time. If the game takes a year to make which is fairly decent time for a good game it adds up soon. \n\nAdvertising can be done fairly cheaply now with youtube/reddit and other social media websites however it can become expensive if you want to reach a large audience, this I am not so good at as I haven't looked into it as much but large AAA games spend MILLIONS on advertising alone\n\nCost of computers - 1000 each / 10 000 for all \nModelling software - 3675 this is for 3ds max which is arguably the best on the market. \nGame engine - 1500 OR 75/month for unity. \nEmployees - 50k a year for everyone\n\n\nThere are a few things I have left out like renting a office and other stuff like that but you get the general idea.\n\n", "programming, 3d modelling, animating and texturing take a lot of time. You gotta hire people or you wont be done in 5 years.", "I can't explain it myself, but I do remember Skullgirls had an Indiegogo campaign for a single DLC character where they broke down exactly where the $150,000 would be going.\n\n_URL_0_", "Indie game developer here. Most development cost for games is LIVING EXPENSES. While there's always an argument to be made for having a second job to cover living expenses, usually people doing a kickstarter are doing it so they can work FULL TIME on their game.\n\n2 people x 2 years dev time x 30k/yr [pretty low baseline for living expenses] = 120k total.\n\nMost people doing a kickstarter for less than that are covering the rest of the expenses in other ways.", "Ex Industry Professional Here\n\nI am not even going to go into the Lawyers, the Marketing and the rest of the nonsense that could come up (building costs etc).\nWhen I worked in a small studio there were 60 of us Employed from Writers, Artists, Riggers, 3D Modelers, Animators, Programmers, Art Directors. etc etc etc\nIt takes all of these people to make a game (50-100 people on average are employed in a small studio). They will cost you (the owner) between 30 and 70k a year. These people have worked for years to learn their skill. One person can not do multiple jobs (well they can but most will be piss poor at it, or there is just no time to do so anyways)\n\n\nThe Process? Man I don't have all night but.... it starts with a lot of arguing and then writing a proposal and then throwing money at the problem by hiring workers (who are hopefully good at what the do) \n\n\nThe Art Director tells concept artists what to draw and works as the liaison between the technical side and the artistic side.\nThen the 3d modeler models the final design,\nthe Rigger adds \"3d bones\"\nThe texture artists strips the model then paints the model\nthe animator then takes those bones and makes them move.\n\nOn the other side, the writers write (a lot) and make many many iterations. \nThey then write the game, they write what will be said in game as well\n\nThen on the other side the programmers will work in a very costly game engine and in a nut shell take all those assets and make it work together.\n\nThen you hire guys to test it, and test it and test it and test it.\n\nThen pay a lot of $$$ to get it off the ground.\n\n\nHope this helps", "Former MMO developer here.\n\n1) Hardware costs.\n\n2) Software license costs.\n\n3) Employee Salary (most of which demand a hefty price for their very highly skilled labor).\n\n4) Terrible executive oversight: This is perhaps the single largest contributor to video game development costs for multiple reasons.\n\nA) Poor Planning: Most executives I've worked with are neither particularly intelligent, skilled, nor well educated. Most of them have been \"socially promoted\" through the ranks, and their increased power promotes what I call, \"the Executives Disease.\" One of its primary components is impatience. Another is a lack of knowing what you want but only knowing what you don't like. Because of this, most projects have nearly zero direction and just a vague set of, \"Let's make this thing that is awesome.\" This is a terrible way to go about creating anything.\n\nFor instance, I worked on a game that was originally intended for 8 to 16 year-old boys and girls. No one that worked on that project (until I got moved onto it 3 years after development began) had any experience with child development. That demographic does **not** exist. The average 16 year-old girl might as well be an alien compared to the average 8 year-old boy. By the way, in the United States at least, that average 8 year-old boy is who is functionally illiterate.\n\n3 years after development started they completely changed how the combat mechanic of the game worked... for the 4th time! And these aren't minor changes. These are changes that completely monopolize the time of the most skilled coders on the team for months or years at a time.\n\nAnd this often leads to the next issue...\n\nB) Feature Creep: This is a common term in development. Feature creep is when a developer has already been giving a list of objectives to accomplish to create a specific thing, and then hours, days, weeks, or months later, a new, major, feature is added into the demands. Again, this can bloat development time immensely.\n\nC) Dropped Projects: I can't tell you the number of projects or features that get planned, have significant development time invested in them, and then are dropped with little or no warning.\n\nAt one point I was tasked with creating a training program for developers to learn Flash. I spent 3 months making this program. However, about 2 months into it, the executives laid off about 50% of our work force, and reassigned about another 25% to a new project.\n\nWe got a \"new\" producer in who lasted about a month, and then he was reassigned. By the time the next producer came in and finally had time to meet with me, he was like, \"What the fuck have you been doing?\" When I told him that I'd made this training program he was like, \"Yeah, we're not going to do that.\"\n\n3 months of work. Gone.\n\nAnd this wasn't the worst of it. I'd seen YEARS of other peoples' work just completely destroyed because of poor planning and poor oversight.\n\nTL;DR: It's expensive to make games, but the worst part is that the people financing and overseeing the projects have no idea what they're doing and answer to investors that know even less of what they're doing.\n\nThe best games and the best game companies are the ones with the fewest executives and/or management and with the largest number of \"skilled contributors.\"", "Kickstarter-er here who ran a campaign that raised 18k but then went on to raise another 600k from investors...\n\nIt was myself + 2 full time developers working 24/7 for two straight years and we burned through the $600k. This is considered an ultra slow burn rate as we really stretched our budgets out and cut corners wherever we could. \n\nImagine that a really great iOS developer costs 120k on the cheap. Now imagine that x2.\n\nYou have a lot of overhead costs that people don't think about. \n\nOffice space? 2k a month\n\nOh ya you're a corporation now, means that you have to supply medical coverage for your employees. Oh your one developer has a wife and kid? That's another 23 grand a year in medical care. \n\nLegal fees, just to incorporate and deal out your shares internally is 5 grand. That was considered cheap.\n\nThere's a lot of realities to building a game. \n\np.s. heres our old game: _URL_0_", "I am professional game developer and I also own a few websites on the topic; Let me see if I can explain as my skills are more back end server development for large scale MMO's, but I am lucky enough to have a wife who does things on the art/client side so I know that as well.\n\nIts an expensive and skill intensive process, skills that most people do not WANT to learn. Its also math intense at times, meaning that its hard and most people would rather not try.\n\nThink about all the things you have in a video game. Lets just focus on this aspect alone, just building the game.\n\nYou have sound:\n\n* Environmental Ambient Sound Effects\n* Environmental Music\n* Game Credits Music\n* Game Intro Music\n* NPC Voice Dialog\n* PC Voice Dialog\n* Non-Player-Character Specific Ambient Sound Effects for every NPC and creature/thing.\n* Player Character Specific Ambient Sound Effects\n* Player Character Specific Voice Dialog for every voice type a player could select.\n* NPC Sound Effects (Interacting with them, bumping them, etc)\n\n.. and that not the full list of sound work you need in most games.\n\nYou have the Graphics used by the Graphics Engine:\n\n* Models - A dragon is an entire model (or possibly a mesh) with multiple textures possible. Somebody has to sit down and mold it using tools like ZBRUSH. And if it is set to allow jointed moment - like your skeleton - it will take a lot more work to build. That can be very expensive.\n* Meshes - Multiple Models working together.\n* Textures - You see that tree log block in minecraft? It uses multiple textures, one for each side that looks different.\n* Banners - Images placed facing the user at all times. Sometimes generated automatically by the graphics engine, or \"hung\" in the air at fixed points either manually - takes a lot of work -or using tools to make trees and plants look realistic. The tools that do this are EXPENSIVE because they have a corner on the market and they do not need to compete with many other tools due to how specialized they can be.\n\n.. and thats all work that needs to be done separate from your graphics engine (the motor of your game that shows you things), but your graphics engine must support it first!\n\nSo somebody - usually multiple people - have to sit down and either make a new graphics engine, or learn and use another one that was built already. These are available, but they are also expensive and also come with legal restrictions. For example it snot uncommon for the prebuilt ones to have rules that say if you the gamer wants to hand the game developer $10 for making a game you enjoy, that they the game developer has to give the people who built the game engine a part of that. I have seen it be as high as 50% - so if you give them a$1 they have to hand over $0.50 - years ago, but the numbers are dropping more and more now as the technology becomes available to more developers. Still, most indy developers build their own rather than use a pre-built engine for exactly this reason.\n\nSo what about input and controls? Adding joystick/controller support is better these days but its still a pain if you are doing it all yourself. As a result that is extra development time and money that needs to be spent.\n\nWhat about multiplier? Well in this case the game just got BIG because now you have to re-engineer the entire system to support thousands of people at once. Any MMO that has at least 200k-300k subscribers is considered a success these days, but the top ones have millions of people at once. This brings a lot of technical issues and that means more work, more people, and more cost. Not to mention, the server infrastructure, the sheer number of computers they need to host these systems, costs a lot of money.\n\nAnd if you want a game that updates? The Content Delivery networks cost a lot of money to host your files, but first you ahve to pay a developer to give you a loader/updater that will use them. So you need them active even before you have a game.\n\nSo we have covered sound, graphics, input, and multiplier and update. What about local save games? Well that's work on its own because if you want to be cross platform and allow yourself to be able to debug issues, you need to have a way to make things secure for players but open to the developers. This usually means creation of internal tools to unpack and tweak save files to do things, and that is more work.\n\nSo now you have graphics, sound, save game, multiplier, and input taken care of. Did we miss anything? Well yes we did.\n\nIn addition to paying for our developers, sound engineers, artists, we also need to do QA (testing) and Planning (Program Managers) as well as the normal people who do accounting and HR or the janitors that keep the place clean. Oh and if you want office space, that going to cost you as well. What you want internet and power in the office building?Taht costs you as well. Oh you want source control so people can work and save their work without worrying about the other guy deleting their file by mistake? That is going to cost you.\n\nAnd these people are all expensive. They have skills companies NEED, and these same companies are willing to spend a lot of money to get them. This means that when a kickstarter is happening, the Indy dev company is competing head to head with the gaming giants of the world for the same people. Often, its in the best interest of the gaming giants to pay their people VERY WELL simple yo keep them out of the free market so they don't go create a game or game franchise that would compete with their own business. So kickstarters are in a very real sense a danger to companies like EA because if they can get funded well then the best people are taken from the armies of the big old game developers and given to the armies of the new, young developers with ideas. And if they do not get funded, well no lose for the game developer as they always have work and companies willing to pay them.\n\nThat is what makes funding indy developers worth it, in my humble opinion.\n\nOh and now that you have your team of 30 or so people for a bare bones minimal MMO project, you have to fund marketing as well. Then hosting, the cost of that will spike after release and then smooth out, but you need to make sure you get new people playing and paying to do so in some way, so it goes up (and so does your costs!). You need a buffer for that or that sudden spike in users can KILL a game as costs increase and the money they pay is up to a month away.\n\nSo you have paid for the development, the marketing, the infrastructure, that is it right? Nope.\n\nYou now have players and that means you are in the \"Gamma Testing\" Phase of Software development; the users will find bugs your QA team never dreamed of, and abuse them ruthlessly to have an advantage over everybody else.. or even just so they can sell the stuff to people for real world money. Yes, RMT (real Money Trading) in games is ilegal and its banned every game due to that, but ti still happens because the bad guys like the money more than they like playing by the rules. So now you have to pay Customer Service Reps to deal with the accounts that are abusive, and Game Moderators (GM's) to protect the game by acting as roving cops looking for bots to kill. Oh wait, not all the accounts running bots are the spammers, they may be accounts broken into that are owned by your good players.. so the tools you need to handle this are intense and expensive.\n\nOh and lets not forget that devs now have to spend time and money fixing these bugs.\n\nOk so we have covered development, keeping the lights on, server farms, marketing, support, abuse, defects. Anything else? Yup. Legal.\n\nLegal is a huge thing because now you have to defend yourself form other big bad companies that simply do not want you to exist. The sheer fact you exist at all makes them angry because that means a customer you have could be playing their game, giving them the money, instead. So you need to hire expensive lawyers to not only cover your ass from the start, but stay around to cover your butt from things as they happen. That spammer that is spamming the local area chat? Yea he is run by a rival game company and just wants to fingerprint your user demographics for competatie analysys to figure out if you are big enough to defend yourself rom a lawsuit he files for no reason at all other than to drain your resources. Or mayb its the irate cusotmer that was stupid and used \"password123!\" as their password, so now the entire republic of korean gold spammers is ruthlessly abusing the account and has already cleared it of anything valuable before changing the password and sending it off to market their spam before it gets killed. Now the customer is pissed thier now empty account is banned and has sued YOU when its not you fault they shared their account in clear violation of your terms of use... but its still going to cost you money to defend yourself.\n\n\nOk so we have covered development, keeping the lights on, server farms, marketing, support, abuse, defects, and legal. Anything else? Yup. There is always something else.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "Oooh lots of stuff! I'm a small \"indie\" dev. Here's what I use. \n\nUnity - there's a free version and then there's the highly recommended \"Pro\" version. That'll set you back for around $1500 for a permanent license. \n\n3DS Max - For modelling. Pretty essential. This shit will cost you around $4000+. Oft.\n\nPhotoshop - Absolutely essential. Another $500.\n\nPremiere - For those promos you know? Another $500-ish. \n\nFL Studio - To make sexy ass music. That's around $100. It's the plugins that will fuck your wallet though.\n\nPlatform licenses - Oh dear. Around $100 for an Apple publishing license per year. $25 for a Google Play license. Around $75 for a Steam Greenlight license I think? Console publishing costs considerably more... I won't be touching that for a while. \n\nThen there's the other stuff.\n\nMarketing - For AAA publishers? They have millions to splash out on TV spots, billboards, online banners. For Indie devs? Ehh... word of mouth, obnoxious video postings on forums, conventions etc. It's hard to get off the ground. I made the mistake of not advertising my Kickstarter and it failed miserably. Even with the small goal. Don't make that mistake!\n\nLabour - That's right. You have to pay the lovely people who are working on your game. The rates vary depending on position/company etc. And it's common for developers to pay for outsourcing. No point in hiring an animator/actor/whatever for the whole development process when they might not be utilised the entire time right? \n\nUpkeep - Doesn't matter if you're working in a small or large office space. You've got to pay them bills.\n\nIt's fucking insane. ", "The game business model is one of a long period of high fixed costs, preceded by a huge spurt of revenue and minimal costs thereafter. \n\nThe fixed cost period can last 1-3 years and typical costs include employees (in-house and outsourced), software kits and subscriptions, hardware, supplies, rent on office space, license/registration fees, legal fees, and the list goes on. And then there are advertising/marketing costs, which are usually substantial relative to the rest of the budget. The biggest cost is probably labor. \n\nA lot of indie developers have cleverly offer \"alpha\" and \"beta\" stage pre-releases as a way to generate cash flow to fund the fixed cost stage of development. \n\nWhen the game finally is released, most revenues will occur within the first few months, so there is this huge spurt, and then there will be a geometrically declining sales curve from there. There is a huge amount of \"execution risk\" around the time of release. Any bad bit of press can fuck things up. Someone releasing a similar game at the same time can fuck things up. Poor execution on the marketing/advertising can fuck things up. Or if your game just isn't well received by gamers, it can fall through as well. \n\nGames are a volatile business. Nintendo is notable for carrying a HUGE amount of cash on their balance sheet. They could totally screw up a whole console cycle, make no money, and still have enough in the bank to survive until the next console cycle. That is a sign of just how tough the business can be in terms of that execution risk. ", "This sums it up quite well: \"Eidos president Ian Livingstone said one developer spent two years programming Batman's cape, using over 700 animations and sound effects to make it move realistically\"", "I'm a software developer. I make around $60/hr, and I'm around the middle of the pay bracket for what I do. If you want _real_ talent, you tend to pay more. If you don't care if you've got empowered script kiddies, you tend to pay less.\n\nGame development often takes a small team of developers - people specialized in physics software, interaction design and implementation, gameplay, logical design patterns, and an architect. Call it five skilled people at a minimum for an A class game.\n\nIt also takes designers - most at least as well-paid as I am. Sounds, graphics, characters, etc. Call it another five humans.\n\nIf the game is capped at 1000 hours of work (about 6 months), that's at least $600,000 to develop a game - not counting what you pay for bean counters and marketing.\n\nNow, you _can_ make a game with one person and a few weeks - it might actually be fun, too - but if you want end-to-end quality, top-notch graphics, deep storyline, etc - you're getting into the area of $1e5-7, depending on who's willing to work for what, how long it takes, and how ambitious the game is.", "Because everyone that works on the project is going to be paid full-time money. Money that is used to live one's life for up to, or at least 1 full year. Tis a lot of money for even just one person.", "It's expensive to keep a person alive who has a very high skill set. If you're an indie game developer such as myself you have to make sure you can eat and live. Since you can either spend a small amount of time making a simple game that could go unnoticed or you could make a bigger one and run the risk of running out of money. \n\nKickstarters ask for a lot of money since it will go toward living expense for the developers to work on a game full time and for the tools needed. If you're on a Wii U (I have a dev license for this but not the other consoles) you need to pay for the dev hardware which costs a few thousand dollars. \n\nSo it either costs money or time which both are a premium.", "As a dev who is about to post up a kickstarter, here's how we determined the amount we're going to ask for:\n\n1) living expenses for the team for long enough to start selling the game\n\n2) External contractor bills\n\n2a) sound studio\n\n2b) voice acting\n\n2c) character modeler\n\n(there would be a 2d for the writer, but we've already paid him in full out of pocket)\n\n3) software! It's really easy to get up over $5,000 per person for basic programs and tools. \n\n4) Advertising. We try to get the most out of small amounts of money by going to conventions, but it's still several thousand dollars per con to get a table and present for a couple days.\n\n5) hardware. We're mostly using our personal computers for development, but we're having to buy Oculus dev kits, a mac (so we can release on macs & iphones), laptops to present on, a mic for recording quick stuff we don't want to send to the contractors, etc. We also have to rent dev kits for consoles and handhelds.", "Devpacks are expensive and stupid project managers are even more expensive.", "Here's an great example I read a while back giving an idea of how complicated rather simple things in game design can become.\nSource: [Liz England](_URL_0_)\n\nThe Door Problem\n\nI like to describe my job in terms of “The Door Problem”.\n\nPremise: You are making a game.\n\nAre there doors in your game?\nCan the player open them?\nCan the player open every door in the game?\nOr are some doors for decoration?\nHow does the player know the difference?\nAre doors you can open green and ones you can’t red? Is there trash piled up in front of doors you can’t use? Did you just remove the doorknobs and call it a day?\nCan doors be locked and unlocked?\nWhat tells a player a door is locked and will open, as opposed to a door that they will never open?\nDoes a player know how to unlock a door? Do they need a key? To hack a console? To solve a puzzle? To wait until a story moment passes?\nAre there doors that can open but the player can never enter them?\nWhere do enemies come from? Do they run in from doors? Do those doors lock afterwards?\nHow does the player open a door? Do they just walk up to it and it slides open? Does it swing open? Does the player have to press a button to open it?\nDo doors lock behind the player?\nWhat happens if there are two players? Does it only lock after both players pass through the door?\nWhat if the level is REALLY BIG and can’t all exist at the same time? If one player stays behind, the floor might disappear from under them. What do you do?\nDo you stop one player from progressing any further until both are together in the same room?\nDo you teleport the player that stayed behind?\nWhat size is a door?\nDoes it have to be big enough for a player to get through?\nWhat about co-op players? What if player 1 is standing in the doorway – does that block player 2?\nWhat about allies following you? How many of them need to get through the door without getting stuck?\nWhat about enemies? Do mini-bosses that are larger than a person also need to fit through the door?\nIt’s a pretty classic design problem. SOMEONE has to solve The Door Problem, and that someone is a designer.\n\nThe Other Door Problems\n\nTo help people understand the role breakdowns at a big company, I sometimes go into how other people deal with doors.\n\n* Creative Director: “Yes, we definitely need doors in this game.”\n* Project Manager: “I’ll put time on the schedule for people to make doors.”\n* Designer: “I wrote a doc explaining what we need doors to do.”\n* Concept Artist: “I made some gorgeous paintings of doors.”\n* Art Director: “This third painting is exactly the style of doors we need.”\n* Environment Artist: “I took this painting of a door and made it into an object in the game.”\n* Animator: “I made the door open and close.”\n* Sound Designer: “I made the sounds the door creates when it opens and closes.”\n* Audio Engineer: “The sound of the door opening and closing will change based on where the player is and what d irection they are facing.”\n* Composer: “I created a theme song for the door.”\n* FX Artist: “I added some cool sparks to the door when it opens.”\n* Writer: “When the door opens, the player will say, ‘Hey look! The door opened!’ “\n* Lighter: “There is a bright red light over the door when it’s locked, and a green one when it’s opened.”\n* Legal: “The environment artist put a Starbucks logo on the door. You need to remove that if you don’t want to be sued.”\n* Character Artist: “I don’t really care about this door until it can start wearing hats.”\n* Gameplay Programmer: “This door asset now opens and closes based on proximity to the player. It can also be locked and unlocked through script.”\n* AI Programmer: “Enemies and allies now know if a door is there and whether they can go through it.”\n* Network Programmer: “Do all the players need to see the door open at the same time?”\n* Release Engineer: “You need to get your doors in by 3pm if you want them on the disk.”\n* Core Engine Programmer: “I have optimized the code to allow up to 1024 doors in the game.”\n* Tools Programmer: “I made it even easier for you to place doors.”\n* Level Designer: “I put the door in my level and locked it. After an event, I unlocked it.”\n* UI Designer: “There’s now an objective marker on the door, and it has its own icon on the map.”\n* Combat Designer: “Enemies will spawn behind doors, and lay cover fire as their allies enter the room. Unless the player is looking inside the door in which case they will spawn behind a different door.”\n* Systems Designer: “A level 4 player earns 148xp for opening this door at the cost of 3 gold.”\n* Monetization Designer: “We could charge the player $.99 to open the door now, or wait 24 hours for it to open automatically.”\n* QA Tester: “I walked to the door. I ran to the door. I jumped at the door. I stood in the doorway until it closed. I saved and reloaded and walked to the door. I died and reloaded then walked to the door. I threw grenades at the door.”\n* UX / Usability Researcher: “I found some people on Craigslist to go through the door so we could see what problems crop up.”\n* Localization: “Door. Puerta. Porta. Porte. Tür. Dør. Deur. Drzwi. Drws. 문”\n* Producer: “Do we need to give everyone those doors or can we save them for a pre-order bonus?”\n* Publisher: “Those doors are really going to help this game stand out during the fall line-up.”\n* CEO: “I want you all to know how much I appreciate the time and effort put into making those doors.”\n* PR: “To all our fans, you’re going to go crazy over our next reveal #gamedev #doors #nextgen #retweet”\n* Community Manager: “I let the fans know that their concerns about doors will be addressed in the upcoming patch.”\n* Customer Support: “A player contacted us, confused about doors. I gave them detailed instructions on how to use them.”\n* Player: “I totally didn’t even notice a door there.”\n\nOne of the reasons I like this example is because it’s so mundane. There’s an impression that game design is flashy and cool and about crazy ideas and fun all the time. But when I start off with, “Let me tell you about doors…” it cuts straight to the everyday practical considerations.\n", "Manpower is expensive, video games take manpower.\n\nLet's say one of your people $50,000 a year on average. Just five of them cost you $250,000 for the year. That's without any overhead for rent, software licenses (which certainly aren't cheap), their computers, dev kits, ect. 5 people is a super small indie team.", "I'm currently in the process of starting up a small indie games company in Australia, there are a lot of costs and skills that go into making a game, from the people who write the software we use, to contractors that we have to hire to fill the gaps. \n\nTo give some idea of what we are spending on our first game below is a list that is by no means comprehensive.\n\nWe need 3 copies of unity for our programmers, which is about $1,500 each.\n \nThe art program we we're taught in costs around $6,000 for one year per artist so we have had to go with less desirable options. \n\nWe don't have anyone who knows sound in the team so we are hiring a musician and will probably have to hire a sound engineer as well. \n\nPaying a marketing firm will cost us about $3,000 per month.\n\nLuckily we are all studying in a specialized business course that helps companies like ours get off the ground and included in the fees are things like internet and office space, as well as the chance to go to some conventions and get our game out there, but that course costs about $20,000 each. \n\nIn Australia we all get some money while we study which is what we are living off for now but next year we will be on our own and to make ends meet we will need a minimum of $12,000 per person, plus the costs of office space if we don't want to be working out of a garage (which may well happen).\n\nThe dynamic of video game development has changed drastically in the past few decades, where before a team could get a publisher to cover the cost of development once they had a cool demo to show, nowadays publishers wont touch a game until it is almost finished and put some of their marketing power behind it for a large percentage of the money that the games make.\n\nBut with all that in mind we are all together taking a shot at the career that we want, making games that express what we want. So even if I end up dirt poor in a gutter somewhere at least I'll have tried." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [ "https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/midgarstudio/hover-revolt-of-gamers?ref=discovery" ], [], [], [ "https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keep-skullgirls-growing" ], [], [], [], [ "https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/turf/turf-geography-club-an-iphone-game" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "czerxru" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "It doesn't matter. Your GI tract doesn't know which food you ate first. Whether it's before or after salad, eating an entire pie is going to make you gain the same amount of weight. \n\nThere's no real causal link between weight gain and the time, or order, of consumption. All the cultural wisdom about the best times of day to eat, or what order to eat food in, is really about affecting behaviors that will result in you consuming more or less food." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckwr2g7" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "~~Visible light is able to travel easily through glass, which means energy goes into the car. When it hits the seats or other surfaces, some of that energy causes the object to heat up, essentially turning into infra-red light. That light is not able to as easily travel through the glass. So for each chunk of energy that pours in, some of it isn't able to come back out, and so it builds and builds.~~\n\nEdit - It appears my explanation was mostly wrong, please read FoolishChemist's correction below." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cilsy7o" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Each team has 11 players. Every player bats and fields. Like baseball they take it in turns to bat and field, however there are only 2 innings for each team. This is because unlike baseball the innings isn't over until all but one of the batsmen are out.\n\nWhen a team is in bat they have 2 batsmen in at any one time. One of these will be batting and the other waiting to run. When the ball is bowled the batter will try to hit the ball. If they miss it and it hits the wooden stumps behind them they're out. If the ball hits their body when it was about to hit the stumps they're out. If they hit it and are caught without it bouncing they're out. If they hit the ball and exchange places with the other batsmen then that's a run. If they hit it to the white boundary across the floor that's 4 runs. If they hit the ball over the boundary without it bouncing that's 6 runs.\n\nFor the fielders, you have a wicket keeper (like a backstop) and a bowler (like a pitcher). The rest of the team field to limit the number of runs scored.\n\nDepending on the type of match there are a different number of balls bowled. There are 6 bowls in an over. For a T20 match each team gets 20 overs to score as much as possible. For an ODI each team gets 60 overs. For a test match there isn't a limit on the number of overs, just that the match lasts 5 days. For a team to win a test match they must get more runs than the opposition and have gotten the opposition completely out in both of their innings." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dziuqlm" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "It has to do with the fight or flight reflex. Your body doesn't know the difference between a difficult phone call and being chased by a tiger, so in both stressful situations the body gets ready to run for its life, releasing hormones, tightening the blood vessels, protecting vital organs, possibly releasing the bladder or bowels." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2ivq2d", "c2ivq2d" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Even though 70-90% of workers would prefer to work under a collective bargained contract. It is the goal of the wealthy and powerful to chisel away at worker democracy. \n\nThough it seems unbelievable. Bringing down wages has been the goal of the wealthy elite for some. The US has/had some of the highest middle class wages in the world. Bringing down wages opens up competition in world markets. \n\nThe left (actually most people) believe that the growth of collective bargaining in the 1930-60's built the middle class, leading to greater wealth, State funding for technology. Leading in technology led the world towards a tech. economy. \n\nRepublicans think that the economic growth of the 1940 forward was because of free markets. They feel Unions hinder progress and every would be better off if the wealthy were free to get richer. \"Trickle down economics\"\n\nThe average worker has not seen their pay increase in 10 years in the US and Canada.", "Even though 70-90% of workers would prefer to work under a collective bargained contract. It is the goal of the wealthy and powerful to chisel away at worker democracy. \n\nThough it seems unbelievable. Bringing down wages has been the goal of the wealthy elite for some. The US has/had some of the highest middle class wages in the world. Bringing down wages opens up competition in world markets. \n\nThe left (actually most people) believe that the growth of collective bargaining in the 1930-60's built the middle class, leading to greater wealth, State funding for technology. Leading in technology led the world towards a tech. economy. \n\nRepublicans think that the economic growth of the 1940 forward was because of free markets. They feel Unions hinder progress and every would be better off if the wealthy were free to get richer. \"Trickle down economics\"\n\nThe average worker has not seen their pay increase in 10 years in the US and Canada." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e4xd6j9", "e4xd9pv", "e4xd9yr", "e4xdafg", "e4xdebu" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "This is why it's so classic that homeless people go to the emergency room for \"small\" issues that don't require immediate Care, and the rest of the people get mad that they're taking up a spot on the waitlist.", "They will report your failure to pay to a debt collection company. This will hurt your credit. Bad credit means you might not be able to buy things you want/need later in life.", "If you don't pay your bill, it will go to collections and potentially tank your credit score. Your wages can be garnished by court order if you refuse to pay your debts.", "It's fine, if you're homeless. If you own stuff, the hospital's debt collectors will find out and then they will take your stuff to pay your bill.", "The hospital can still try to collect on the debt, and having hundreds of thousands of dollars in delinquent medical debt can have a huge impact on one's credit history (speaking from personal experience). \n\nPlus if you have insurance, even if they don't pay for the hospital visit, providers will be far less willing to negotiate/forgive debt." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cd3mrlj" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Firstly some parts on that longitude could be near the equator, so a lot of rainfall happens there. Just above and below this area around the equator one would find tropical areas with your typical palm trees and sandy beaches. \n\nFrom there going even further North or South you'll find inland dry places such as hot deserts. But since this is mainly inland away from the coast there is little rain or any precipitation. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e8ncepv", "e8nj3eh" ], "score": [ 16, 7 ], "text": [ "Its more stable at speed to have front wheel. Im not sure if youve ever gone fast in reverse and turned, but it is very easy to go too far. The forklift requires a very small turn radius that is more easily accomplished with rear steer.", "Forklifts have rear steering wheels for a few reasons but the most important is the working load at the front. If the front wheels steered then it would be very hard to position the pallets precisely and almost impossible to position them close to walls. Just like you can't parallel park a car in a tight space other than by reversing into it.\n\nCars have their steering in the front because it's easier to stabilize the vehicle in a lane. The driver sees the effects of his wheel turning immediately because the front turns first. They just keep the visible front in the lane, the rest of the vehicle follows. They also don't run the risk of hitting something with the back of the vehicle on a tight turn (which can happen easily in a forklift). Sure, they could scratch the side instead, but that is easier to see.\n\n & #x200B;" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ddhqms5" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "All antibodies last the same amount of time. The difference in resistance is in the diseases themselves. Some diseases mutate faster than others, allowing them to take on new forms we don't have an immunity to in a shorter time.\n\nIn your particular examples, Chickenpox is caused by a single virus, but there are 4 species of brucellosis that can infect humans.\n\nThis is why you need a new flu shot every year. It's not that you lose your immunity to the flu, but that there are many kinds of flu and you can continue to encounter new ones after gaining immunity to the old. It's also why they say we can't cure the common cold. The \"common cold\" is actually many different things, so no matter how many you get, there will always be more you aren't resistant to. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dnrwgcz" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The sodium in salt binds with other elements in ither ingredients and creates new properties, including different flavors." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cu6vu4k" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "In the most ELI5 way (from my understanding):\nPeople with small mosquito bites have an immune system that says ok, there is a wound here and chemicals that I don't like, lets inflame (swell )it and heal it up.\n\nThen there are the people who are crazy allergic. Their immune system says \"Holy Crap WTF IS THIS.. ITS KILLING YOU\" and makes you swell up to fight the infection. But it goes overboard and well bad things happen.\n\nTo my understanding: Histamines are chemicals that trigger inflammation." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckd7ck2", "ckd7v1o" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Hmm. I get the opposite feeling. If I don't have it on I feel like I'm missing something or a little but naked. Unless I have deliberately taken it off. ", "Ghost watch syndrome." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dxg7o6a" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Changes to the air pressure. Storms are lower pressure causing your sinuses to expand slightly, the opposite happens on a high air pressure day." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cud50xr", "cud52kk", "cud54cp" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 5 ], "text": [ "I think you mean the gas tank?\nor did you mean the fuel pump, which in older cars is typically located right next to the engine but located by the gas tank in newer cars?\n\nplease clarify.", "Because that's where there is room for a large fuel tank. Also, the weight of a full fuel tank placed away from the engine helps keep the car's overall weight more evenly distributed. ", "Because the gas tank is usually in the back. The placement is to distribute weight and space inside the car. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dk4e4g9", "dk4f722", "dk4fb4h", "dk4feth", "dk4mebo", "dk4q374", "dk4q3ge", "dk4r7f0", "dk4rakq", "dk52xzo", "dk5hboa" ], "score": [ 156, 8, 31, 4, 11, 6, 8, 5, 49, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Basically, the important thing in space communications is not the size or power of the transmitter, but the sensitivity of the receiver. Once you have compensated for local issues like atmosphere, other radio sources, the rotation and revolution of the Earth, etc, then the only thing that affects the transmission is distance, and we have lots of distributed, really sensitive receivers to pick up weak signals. ", "_URL_0_ wasn't really a clear broadcast.\n\nNASA including an erectable antenna on the Lunar Module, but that wasn't the only interesting part of the mission in regards to its live broadcast. \n\nYou should realize here that a lot of the technology was already in place aboard the LM in order to broadcast information back home. The mission crew at NASA needed to be able to communicate with the crew aboard the LM, they also needed telemetry, voice, and various computer diagnostics to be streamed back to Earth in order to monitor the mission. They used both UHF and VHF streams while they tracked over a C-band beacon on the LM.\n\nNASA also developed something called USB (Unified S-band) streaming which combined tracking, telemetry, ranging, command, voice, and television data into a single antenna. \n\nYou can read all about it on Pop Sci at _URL_1_, for all the specs and extra info. \n", "* there is very little interference in space...if light reflected from the sun can get to the earth, so can radio signals\n* being the government, they weren't restricted by licensing or the FCC, they could use the best frequency for the job\n* the orbiter boosted, focused, and directed the signal\n* giant radio antennas, not rabbit ears, were used to receive the signal", "Televised broadcast has been commercial since 1930. So by 1960s it's pretty well matured... So why would people think it's not possible?", "The same tech that's behind the radio or local TV, or even WiFi today. Radio communication. \n\nYes, it is really far away. Radio waves are actually really good at going far! Radio waves can't go as far on Earth because in order for the waves to get to you, they are going through buildings and even the Earth (due to curvature). That's why you can't connect to a radio station many miles away. \n\nBut in space, you've got a straight shot all the way to home base with absolutely nothing but air in between. It makes radio communication quite easy, actually. \n", "Yeah but how bad was the stream delay???", "Every time this question comes up, it brings back a favorite memory...I was stationed in Dayton OH, and the local paper ran a letter asserting that space flight was a hoax. \"How can we be getting TV from the Moon,\" he said, \"when I can't even get Toledo on my TV?\"", "Here's a good video discussing how the filmmaking technology of the late 60's wouldn't have been up to the task of making a fake video - it had to be live TV.\n\n_URL_0_", "It's actually higher quality then what you're used to seeing. The Neil Armstrong first walk is actually a TV recording, pointed at a monitor, because they didn't have a slow scan TV adapter. The camera feed from that was recorded, but the tape of the video coming from the lander has been lost. Only the people in Australia saw it at full-quality, ever thing else is a copy. Australia boosted the signal and sent it to the US. People at NASA saw the boosted signal, and that was also recorded to make the public TV feed. See _URL_0_ for details. You can see a good photo of what the screen looked like showing the live image, and how high quality the images were.\n\nIf you're intrested in how they got the radio signal, it was picked up at the _URL_1_. That little brick building that the dish is resting on... is a 3 story building. That telescope is huge. Watch _URL_2_ If you're interested in a dramatized version of it.", "There are many good technical answers here. I just wanted to point out one more. \n\nThe images you see on a website like NASA's are not the same [quality as what was broadcast](_URL_0_) What you see today is after the fact and NASA probably choose the best tapes from the downlink and cleaned up the image and fixed the contrast. As well the Lunar mission carried film cameras that were of much better quality and some of the images you see now might be from film rather than TV broadcast. ", "The pictures became much better starting with Apollo 14 or 15 because of processing done in real time by a company in Hollywood that had a method for removing the static from the pictures. Apparently one of the methods was similar to that used in VCRs, where adjacent horizontal scan lines are stored in a buffer and compared and any noise (white spots or streaks) gets replaced with darker areas in the nearby lines. " ] }

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[ [], [ "goo.gl/LgRY65", "http://www.popsci.com/how-nasa-broadcast-neil-armstrong-live-from-moon#page-3" ], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU&amp;feature=youtu.be" ], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish" ], [ "https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-cbb74d4f599e11817a62868390c5ec30-c" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cf37pn4", "cf38lc6", "cf38u7a" ], "score": [ 4, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Every adaptation has to be slightly better than the base case or the mutation won't likely be transmitted to future generations. But \"slightly better\" is a term that contains a universe of possibilities.\n\nFor example, feathers evolved (probably) as a way for an animal to radiate heat. They became better and better heat radiators and coincidentally also became something that could help an animal glide through the air (or fall more slowly). At some point the \"wing\" qualities of feathers became more important than the \"radiate heat\" qualities, but without that first rationale feathers wouldn't have evolved.\n\nAlmost every biological system follows this pattern. The changing system produces a variety of subtlety and incrementally better changes to the base system, and at some point a new potential capability becomes possible and then evolution can act on that potential too. Evolution doesn't work by targeting an end state, it just works by selecting a slightly better version of whatever systems are currently available and sometimes those changes produce surprising new capabilities.", "The likely intermediate step was useful either for gliding (such as a flying squirrel), or as an extended jump (like a domestic chicken). Both of those are useful for quick bursts when fleeing from a predator. From there longer, more controlled, and powered flight are all beneficial improvements, but as pointed out there are examples of living creatures today that survive with pseudo-flight.", "The trait continued to develop because it was still advantageous, even though it was not as good as the current wing. It was advantageous all the way, that's why the trait survived.\n\nHaving wings that can help you fly 10 kilometers is worse than having winds that can help you fly 100 kilometers, but it is still an advantage. And if you go back in time even more, you might be able to fly only 1 kilometer, which is worse, but still better than not being able to fly.\n\nAnd if we go back even more, that animal might only have had some skin between its legs [like this](_URL_0_). It wouldn't be able to exactly *fly*, but it could still glide for quite a distance if it jumps from a tall tree.\n\nGoing back even more, those flaps would have been smaller. Couldn't glide as far, but still better than just walking. And before that it had just regular legs. They couldn't help you fly or glide, but were still useful.\n\nIn each step of the way that trait helped the animal." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Draco_sumatranus_with_wings_extended.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "em834ay", "em83i00" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Interestingly enough your example shows that Asian companies are far LESS agile/versatile than American ones. What you are describing is the old style of large conglomerates. US companies figured out that massive scale doesn't mean huge profits in the 21st century and moved away from them. GE is the single greatest example of this and the show 30 Rock spends a lot of time making fun of GE.\n\nBecause Asian companies tend to be much more resistant to change than US firms, they are stuck with an old structure that much of the world has moved on from.", "Because American companies don't draw attention to the fact that they are parts of larger conglomerates, and present themselves are smaller than they really are." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cl53zfp", "cl54r8n" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "The black bars encode the numbers below the barcode. The most common format is the 13-digit EAN number, so there are ten thousand billion combinations to use.\n\nEdit: 1 digit is a checksum, so one thousand billion.", "Its fine, i was just wondering how many different barcodes there could be. Haven't we run out of keys though, like if I used my key on a million different houses, could i get into one?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d9mjd7v", "d9mjdwc" ], "score": [ 15, 2 ], "text": [ "\"Rendering\" essential just means \"creating the image you see on the screen\". Internally, the computer just represents the scene as a bunch of polygons and textures. Rendering is the step where the computer decides exactly what those polygons should look like when viewed from *this* precise location, with *that* exact lighting, and with *those* textures mapped onto the polygon meshes.", "It's the procedure of taking instructions from the computer and turning them into mathematical models with shapes and textures and lights, and then turning those into pixels on a computer display.\n\nIt's very heavily math based, and requires doing a lot of the same calculation at the same time, so we use special components we call GPUs to do that." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dudscc5", "dudujs1" ], "score": [ 5, 5 ], "text": [ "Mountain Dew, a light coloured drink, has more caffeine than either Coke or standard Pepsi. There is almost as much caffeine in a 12oz Mountain Dew as a 20oz Coke. (55mg vs 56-57mg).\n\nThe only soft drink with more caffeine is Pepsi Zero Sugar.\n\n[Source](_URL_1_)\n\nThere goes that theory...\n\nHere is the real question... what colour would Coke or Pepsi be if they didn't [add the caramel colour?](_URL_0_)", "The Kola Nut, major flavoring agent in the original formulas of virtually all sodas with \"cola\" in the name naturally has caffeine. The extracts from the Kola nut also happen to be dark in coloring. In fact the word cola comes from kola and was an alternative English spelling for kola at one time. \n\nBut what you are noticing is not really a hard rule. Mountain Dew which is yellowish and lemon-lime flavored has caffeine, and most root beers which are dark do not have caffeine. It is makers choice as there are people that want caffeine in their drinks and those that do not. \n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/07/03/198040172/coke-changed-caramel-color-to-avoid-cancer-warning-pepsi-in-transition", "https://cspinet.org/eating-healthy/ingredients-of-concern/caffeine-chart" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e7kct0x", "e7kfb4s", "e7kl5km", "e7klsx7" ], "score": [ 4240, 56, 5, 16 ], "text": [ "Heart ‘drop’ typically happens when you experience a stressful event, like forgetting something important or receiving bad news. This activates a part of the nervous system responsible for the fight or flight response. This causes the blood vessels to become wider, leading to a drop in blood pressure. The heart needs to compensate and pump harder in order to bring the blood pressure back up which gives the feeling of the ‘drop’. \n\nOne will tend to notice a chill that comes along with it, as a consequence of this widening of blood vessels (vasodilation) is a short increase in the rate of heat loss. \n\nEdit: source, med student\n\nEdit2: med student who needs to review some stuff. It doesn't cause a drop in blood pressure, but there is still a stronger heart beat in response to the fight or flight response. Sorry for misleading anyone or causing any confusion.", "The 'heart drop' feeling you experience is the sensation your body experiences when it begins to pump adrenaline into your system. \n\nA stressful or surprising event will trigger your body to respond by pumping adrenaline into your system, and that 'heart drop' you feel is the adrenaline system being kicked in, it's almost instant like a light switch.\n\nAdrenaline is the bodies way of increasing your response and reaction time to whatever situation has triggered your body to produce it. Adrenaline will literally feel like it's slowing down time because it increases your reaction time so much. (The more actions you can take while on adrenaline feels like time has multiplied.) When people are in accidents or fights and they talk about how time came to a stand still? Yeah, that's adrenaline. Great stuff!", "Additionally, what happens to the heart during heartbreak?", "When something startles you, your body gets itself ready for a physically demanding task. To do that, in addition to a bunch of other stuff, it makes your blood vessels bigger. The increased space means that the pressure drops. That \"drop\" feeling is your heart getting startled by the sudden drop in pressure and making one big squeeze to compensate for it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "czjnmgj", "czjoj27" ], "score": [ 44, 2 ], "text": [ "A good poll accounts for this--there is data available on the kinds of people that are likely to respond to polls, and the pollster should weight the results to be more representative of the population polled. For example, many polls undersample young people, so giving more weight to the young people who did respond (considering their proportion of the population) corrects this bias.\n\nThis is one reason that it is very important to check a poll's methodology before considering the results. A poll that is poorly conducted is worthless. Since it is political polling season, it is worth noting that even the best of polls are bad indicators of how people will vote--people say one thing, but when they are in the voting booth it is often quite something else. Hence why so many in the Republican field are hoping for a primary win despite polling low.", "A scientific poll will get a lot of demographic information to ensure that the poll is accurate. Yes, you may hang up, but that just means that they'll keep calling more people with the same demographic to get the sample that they need." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cn2r1se", "cn2rvcp" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "It's confirmation. Until now it was just a joke that may or may not be true. People could get away with not feeling guilty about doing nothing about it. \n\nAlso, has it really been so huge a thing? It's already pretty much vanished from the news and nothings changed. Miley Cyrus has been in the news for wearing an unflattering pair of shorts for longer than this...", "Plausible deniability. We don't like to accept information that makes us look or feel bad and will take any possible opportunity to deny or ignore it. Once we can't pretend anymore, we have to maintain the illusion that we didn't know before so we can at least pretend that we would have been perfect if we had only known." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "czq37o7" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Long story short, Counterweights.\n\n[Take a look at this](_URL_1_), notice how the backside of the crane arm extends a little further than the \"root\".\n\nThe backside is equipped with heavy counterweights that equalize the gravitational pull on both sides.\n\nHowever, there is of course more to it, as a mechanism like this only holds the crane arm in balance at a constant mass, not when the crane is trying to lift things up.\n\nFor a more sophisticated mechanism that also balances your crane while it's operating you need a couple more counterweights at its' base.\n\n[Like you can see here](_URL_0_)\n\nNow, there are a ton of things that can happen, falsely calibrated software that doesn't balance the arm correctly, a ripping cable or the counterweights changing their masses due to environmental circumstances, this all results in the weight of the crane arm being unevenly distributed, causing it to tip over.\n\nHowever, modern cranes are quite robust and errors like these rarely happen." ] }

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[ [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Crane.jpg", "http://www.craneblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/sanmarco.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dygoefl" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Can confirm from personal experience I struggle to breathe when sleeping on my back, you probably don't feel better because you struggle with sleep apnea" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fa1834f", "fa18n68", "fa1wd2z" ], "score": [ 9, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Sparks from welding are very small very hot bits of metal, so it's no surprise they hurt. Electric arc welding give out high levels of UV light and this can hurt your eyes from ten metres away. The effects of UV exposure are not immediate, but show up several hours later. This condition is known as \"arc eye\"", "The sparks from welding are tiny pieces of metal that are heated well above 1000 C. I don’t see how it’s even a question that getting a piece of white hot metal in the eye would cause eye damage? \n\nPerhaps you’re equating the sparks with why you’re not supposed to look at a welding arc without eye protection? The reason that you’re not supposed to look at it because welding requires heating the metals to very high temperatures. When substances are heated to these temperatures they emit UV light. UV light is very bad for your eyes because it damages both the proteins and small molecules in your eye that are responsible for your vision. The reason you’re not supposed to look at the welding arc is the same reason you’re not supposed to look directly at the sun.", "When metal is heated until it's red hot and gives off light we call that \"black body radiation\". Black body radiation gives off a lot of Ultra Violet light, which you can't see, like the sun. When this intense source of UV is so close to us, we can literally sun burn our eyes by looking at it too long. The real trouble comes because we don't feel the affect of the UV right away and we keep exposing ourselves. \n\nIn the same way, one should never weld without a face mask, long sleeves, and something that shades the neck, sub burn from welding is very real and painful." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cr6sv4x", "cr6sy76", "cr6szfo", "cr6uwax", "cr6v8mo", "cr6xs7a", "cr71cm7", "cr784ia", "cr7a1oj", "cr7b7ht", "cr7cial", "cr7cpg6", "cr7dky5", "cr7fuz2", "cr7hris", "cr7o2p5", "cr8l7fd" ], "score": [ 96, 32, 42, 2, 15, 12, 7, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "It means entry level for that company. What most companies have realized is that they can ask for higher requirements for the same pay, and they'll get qualified people they can spend less time and money training.", "Basically since the recession there is a lot of very skilled unemployed people in a lot of fields. On top of that most companies don't have the staff or resources to train *entry level* people.\n\nThe definition of *entry level* has changed significantly to be a college degree + work experience. Because currently people with that skill set will work at that level.", "They'll take someone with less if they have to usually; they're just fishing and hoping they can get somone that needs less training. In some fields the number of unemployed folks is such that they can get someone who's desperate to work.\n\nIf nobody suitable to them was biting for these postings they'd stop putting them. ", "Those are guidelines and if you have internships in the same field, you're well qualified. Also, randomly, anonymously applying for a job is not the best idea. Use your career services, network, LinkedIn etc and try to have some sort of referral. ", "It will scare off potential applicants who really have no clue what they're doing, but if you have 0 experience and a degree in that field, you should apply anyways, you still have a decent shot.", "A lot of people think that there is an endless supply of work - that if you're qualified to be a doctor, you get to be a doctor, or if you're qualified to be a software engineer, you get to be a software engineer.\n\nThe truth is that jobs are entirely a product of consumer demand. There is an absolute and set number of each job, and more people training for that job does not increase the supply.\n\nAn entry-level position is one that can be done by someone with no training or experience. However, if there are 10,000 experienced people and 10,000 jobs, then there won't be any left for inexperienced people.\n\nAs an inexperienced person, you have two and only two choices. You either find a job that no one else is willing to do, or you work for free until you're competitive enough to force someone else to take your place at the bottom.", "Too many workers, not enough jobs. They can get away with it, so they do. \n\nPlus, classifying something 'entry level' means you get away with paying 'starting salaries'. ", "Job titles tend to indicate responsibility and compensation rather than experience.\n\nMy first job was a web developer, meanwhile there were junior web developers.", "Companies do this mostly because they can, economy being down means there is a greater pool of candidates and they can afford to be selective.\n\nTraining of staff is another big reason, companies want people who can step in to do the job right away at all levels, they will fund training if it is necessary but most prefers not to since it is expensive, takes away from productivity and there is no way to guarantee that the employee wont resign after being trained at the companies expense.", "You can get those two years of experience by having internships while you are still in college. Besides, it is never 100% strict, it is also your job to convince the interviewer why even though you don't have those 2 years of experience you are perfectly capable of handling the responsibility. ", "All experience doesn't exactly have to be dictated by time worked on a professional level. Even if it were, you could say that the 2 years you spent working as a Cashier at K-Mart would be 2 years Experience as a Customer Service and Sales Representative. Three Years working in a Call Center = Three years experience with Customer Service, IT Support, Time Management, Data Entry, maybe even Quality Assurance.", "Because they can. I accidentally played a part in that trying to get through a list of hundreds of applicants for an internship. I found I could narrow it down to a dozen or so by looking at Masters Degree candidates with a couple years experience. ", "The number of unemployed is now multiple times the number of jobs available in all Western economies. Everything else falls out of that; employers now have far, far too many applicants for any position even the most basic, so are adding on fairly-random and irrelevant requirements like degrees and experience for no reason other than to winnow the herd.", "Not an answer to your question, but if you read a job listing and you feel qualified for it then apply. Even if they want someone with X amount of years. Entry level is really 0-3 years so if you're in that range apply for jobs that ask for experience between those years. Highlight where you might be able to make up for not meeting that exact requirement (i.e. specific courses you took that could directly apply to the job, a training you attended, experience from a job in a different industry that has transferable skills etc.). Any decent company isn't going to look at 2 resumes and be blown away by a 2 year applicant versus a 0 year. At least in my field it would make little difference if we were hiring an entry level employee.", "On top of what others have said, in a great number of those cases, the ad is really kinda fake. they have a policy to put out the ads and do interviews, but really they have somebody making a lateral or upper move within the company they actually want to put there.\n\nand when you see the vague ad in the newspaper, it's really often just an excuse to find an undocumented person to abuse with threats of deportation and whatnot, and have them work severely underpaid, under the company's thumb.", "I've always been able to find examples that add up to a few years of previous experience in an industry in just the jobs I had during college. Like working in retail helps with some sales, organization, maybe people skills. You can talk about lean production and supply chain if you were in the backroom, or making food, and assisting in the training of new employees, or training others in safety measures if you ever told the new guy what to do. That does count as a little of managerial experience, and a hiring manager would love that you went beyond the minimum in an entry level job you took in school.", " > Why do \"entry level positions\" require 2 years of experience? ^[Citation ^Needed]\n\nMost employers hiring at the entry level PREFER people who are experienced over complete novices. The list of items on a job listing tend to be what the ideal person would have, not the absolute minimum they need, with a few exceptions. They may require specific licencing or specific tools and technologies, but that usually is not at the entry level.\n\nSaid differently: The company WANTS someone who is experienced doing the job and needs no training. They will ACCEPT someone who is completely unskilled if they cannot find what they prefer.\n\n > The wages being offered dont even seem livable.\n\nThe wages for what job? Doing what tasks? At what level of quality?\n\nJust outside my neighborhood there is a row of restaurants. I learned a few years back that they offer very different wages. One of them, the low-end chain, offers minimum wage for most workers. One offers about $1.50 over minimum wage. Another -- more of a premium sit-down restaurant than fast food -- offers about $4 over minimum wage for cooks but requires a few years of work experience.\n\nWages and jobs are not all the same. \n\nUsually it works with supply and demand, and with turnover. If you are looking at jobs that are filled in bulk requiring zero skill, anything from a call center front lines to the person stocking shelves at a big box store, anybody can do those jobs, and there is an enormous list of people *with no skills* or people *wanting a menial but easy job* willing to accept those jobs for low wage.\n\nWhen a company requires a little more experience the market is different. Re-heating meat patties in a line is unskilled labor and is increasingly being replaced by machines, the wage is as low as the market or law allows. The moment it becomes cheaper to bring in a robot rather than pay an unskilled worker, [robot burger cooks like these will be installed.](_URL_0_) This is already happening in cities where labor is more expensive. A short-order cook who can turn out everything, grilled top sirloin to salads and soups to pizzas and sandwiches, requires more skill and experience, and thus can generally negotiate a higher wage. But even those will be replaced with robots [when they can do the job more reliably and cheaply.](_URL_1_)\n\n" ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-12/meet-smart-restaurant-minimum-wage-crushing-burger-flipping-robot", "http://singularityhub.com/2009/08/03/the-robots-are-the-chefs-in-this-japanese-restaurant/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1n2uke", "d1n5vlp" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Basically high taxes, unemployment, income stagnation, bad schools and rising rent make it both better to leave the state and difficult to justify moving to the state. For businesses, taxes are so high that it makes almost no sense to open up shop in the area. On top of that the best candidates for employment are the ones leaving the state. The state legislature is fucking over the state even more because they can't agree on a budget. The public universities in neighboring states offer the same or better education for less. There aren't many jobs for young people. \n\nBasically there's no reason besides family to stay, and no reason to move there if you don't have family. ", "The article sites lots of reasons. But it is also a cherry picked year. The article itself says that it was the first time the population had declined in 25 years. That was on the heals of two brutal winters in a row and a state budget crisis that has killed a lot of jobs. \n\nAlso compared to Detroit, the exodus has already happened there. Lastly, it looks like they are comparing decline in raw numbers not percentage, which makes it tough to compare across cities of different size.\n\nSo, there are a lot of good reasons someone might move out of chicago (politics, budget, weather and crime mostly).\n\nBut to say \"look at the first decline in a quarter century after two historically brutal weather years and declare the sky is falling\" is a bit disengenuous." ] }

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[ "http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago-population-record-loss-met-20160324-story.html" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "c7bckdb" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "A police scanner is just a one-way radio, tuned to the same frequency that the police use." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ee3bksj" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "No, it can however damage your gums and over time it can only be repaired by a gum graft or a gum and bone graft since receding gums will cause the underlying bone to recede as well." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cf0cau6", "cf0m97o" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Say you start up a company and decide that you want to go public to raise money. You issue 1,000,000 shares at $10 apiece and let the public buy them. Initially, that means you have a \"Market Capitalization\" of $10 Million - the number of \"Outstanding\" shares multiplied by the stock price.\n\nAs time goes on, your company does well, with the stock price rising to $100 per share. But sales are slowing, and it's becoming harder to grow - kinda like what's happening in Intel and Microsoft these days. They are still making tons of money, but a home OS or CPU market isn't growing much anymore. What do you do?\n\nYou take the money that the company is sitting on and re-buy the shares that you issued earlier from the public. Let's use an extreme example - you want to buy back 500,000 shares. You pay 500K * $100 = $50 million. Now there are only 500,000 outstanding shares available to the public.\n\nBefore you rebought those shares, your company's market capitalization was $100 million (remember, shares * price). Now there are only half as many outstanding shares. Since the value of your company hasn't changed, the stock price will jump up to around $200 to keep the market cap the same. The people that sold their shares to the company had money returned to them - and even the ones that DIDN'T sell had money returned to them (as their shares are now worth twice as much!)\n\nAgain, this is extreme. Normally buybacks are for under 1% of the outstanding shares. The concept is the same - by reducing the number of shares available and keeping the company value constant, the stock price rises.", "It's probably not the best means of returning money to shareholders though. If you believe companies do stock repurchases when times are good, then it stands to reason the stock price is high as well. It would be a better use of cash to buy when times are bad and the stock price is depressed. You would get more hang for your buck that way." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbd7ii0", "cbd7kcp", "cbday2s", "cbdbo6a" ], "score": [ 2, 10, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Imagine it's November. Your parents tell you that the more chores you do before Christmas, the more presents Santa will bring you.\n\nTo start with, you do a few chores, thinking you'll get loads of presents. But you soon get bored, and go back to cleaning your room once a week (and only because you can't find your favourite comic book, so you clean your room hoping to find it).\n\nBut then, a week before Christmas, you realise that you haven't done many chores, and Santa won't bring you many presents. You decide to spend the last week doing as many chores as you can, so you can get as many presents as possible.\n\nIt's a bit like that with businesses. With the Santa scenario, you have a deadline of Christmas, and as the deadline approaches you go all-out to meet get your chores done. Well, businesses analyse their spending and income on a monthly basis, so as the end of the month draws near, everyone goes all-out to sell as much as they can and spend as little as they can, so the monthly figures look as good as possible.", "Let's say that you are 5 years old and you want to open up a lemonade stand. Mommy and Daddy give you $10 for supplies, but you end up spending only $9. If you go back to Mommy and Daddy with $1 left after you bought the supplies then they will only give you $9 next summer. This means that will want to spend that dollar so Mommy and Daddy think you spent all $10 so they will give you another $10 next summer. The leftover money is called a surplus.", "Okay so while some of these answers are correct depending on the situation the business is in (government entity) For medium size business this is why they spend in the last quarter. With all the forecasts done they are now able to accurately determine realized profits. However most companies will either give out bonus or put money back into the company to lower their profits. Why would somebody want to lower their profits you ask? With a lower amount of profit comes a lower amount of taxes. Alot of the spending has to do with tax planning for the next fiscal year. ", "Don't know how it works in other countries, However in Australia, most business's run a budget over a twelve month cycle. Also, they tend to set certain criteria for payment of creditors (i.e: 30 days, 60 days, etc). Together with marketing and production, they also work on a certain dollar amount of income (cash flow).\n\nSo when expenses exceed cash flow, this means that they may have to use line of credit or overdraft and will actually cost the business money.\n\nSo lets pick two months, March and April, OP has ordered all sorts of supplies in the first two weeks of March, (and say payment terms of thirty days), payment to the suppliers will be due mid April.\n\nHowever, income from sales has only been averaged out across the four weeks of March, and may not be enough to meet the creditors invoices, so, ta da, use of overdraft, thereby costing money.\n\nAnother probably more simpler analogy, is consider you get paid your wage monthly, say on the 1st of the month. It goes in the bank and looks like a lot, so you pay the rent, utilities, put food and alcohol in the fridge, maybe go out a bit. By the end of the 3rd week, there is not much left in the bank. \n\nThat's ok, payday is in a week, all things are cool, just tighten the belt a little. THEN, your car breaks down, and you need it to get to work. So what do you do, max the credit card out (remember the interest/overdraft) , hit the oldies for a loan? Which they give you provided it is paid back as soon as you get paid. \n\nAnyway, the 1st comes around again, you pay the money back, but, now are a little short for this month, because you don't have the same amount of income to meet expenses that you had last month. \n\nEdit1: And so the cycle continues, until either your income improves or you go broke.\n\nHope this was reasonably understandable.\n\nEdit2: Also end of financial year can provide a totally different scenario.\n\n\n\n\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4q07vi" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Most stuff in our system is in roughly one plane. Pluto is a bit skewed, but not dramatically (by 17^o ). \n\nAt the beginning of the solar system, our Sun started forming in a cloud of gas and dust. Some object (distant star, asteroid, spaceship, giant marshmallow) passed by our cloud and nudged it a bit with gravity. The cloud started spinning around its centre. As it was collapsing, stuff was gaining speed and eventually started orbiting. \n\nThink of it as a blob of pizza dough that started spinning. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d1gqmb5", "d1gqsmh" ], "score": [ 10, 57 ], "text": [ "The first two parties are the two original people involved in a transaction. A third party is anyone who isn't part of that original transaction. In your example, you and Sony are the first and second parties. ", "**You** are the second party.\n\n\"First party\" and \"third party\" are analogous to the first person and third person in grammar. The first person is \"me\", the second person is \"you\", and the third person is \"he/she/it\".\n\nWhen someone refers to \"a third party\" in a conversation, sale, or negotiation, they are referring to any random person not involved in that conversation. So from Sony's point of view, there is a transaction (you buying the PS4) between the first party (Sony) and the second party (you). Anyone not involved in that sale is a \"third party\"." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dsd0ueq" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "There needs to be air in the bag to prevent the chips/candy/etc from getting crushed into pieces.\n\nThings like pringles don't do this because they have sturdier packaging." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f3zechb" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "They are not stored securely. But, they are stored conveniently. If your security risk is from someone with physical access to your computer, **you are screwed**. \n\nIf your security problem is some script kiddie in Belarus, then the key is to have long, random, unique passwords. This is the problem for 99.4% of the people on the Internet, so that's the problem the browser folks set out to solve." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "do3ib3c", "do3ibao" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "\"Volume\" has referred to the amount or loudness of sound since a published review of a music performance in 1784.\n\n[source](_URL_0_)\n\nThe idea is that a certain \"quantity\" of sound is coming out, and since sound feels like it fills a concert hall, the metaphor felt apt.", "It means the amount or quantity of something, which applies both to area and the strength of a sound. It originated from referring to the rolled content of a scroll and more generally to a mass of quantity of something." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-term-volume-used-in-sound" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cuyxp97", "cuyy2no", "cuz50bg", "cuz77pt" ], "score": [ 3, 19, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "I see two potential outcomes over the next five years. The first is that because he polarises opinion, the Labour vote will become fractured. Of course you can't be certain but I can't see how the Labour party would move into power barring a far left wing renaissance in the UK. The other outcome is that a re-election is called, it would be incredibly difficult for the party to remove him as leader but as politics goes, there's usually a way which lies between the lines of good and evil.", "It's good for British politics and bad for Labour, at least in my opinion. \nCorbyn is more left wing than than Labour have been in decades, so it signifies a great change for them, and their supporters, who seem to be sick of sharing the middle, with Tories and Lib Dems. This is good for British politics as a whole as it will result in more left-right debate, as opposed to fighting over the same ground and every party being much the same, as has been the standard in modern times. Having parties that oppose each other ideologically can only be good for politics as it offers the voters a clear and distinctive choice, other than policies only differing slightly. I feel that it will make politics more engaging and will interest would be voters, so good for British politics.\n\nHowever on the flip-side of that I don't think it necessarily a good thing for Labour. As mentioned previously Corbyn is very left wing, think Sanders and just keep going left, and while being exciting he doesn't offer Labour the stability they need after such a heavy loss. He is strong in his conviction and has been saying the same things for many years, but he is very easy to attack, from a Tory point of view. For perspective his predecessor was nicknamed Red Ed, for his supposedly left wing views. Now Milliband was far from being left wing, but he was still perceived that way, and was attacked for. So just imagine what opposition could to do someone with actually left wing credentials. I think when it comes down to it he is just to left and too divisive a figure to win an election. In fact the last time Labour went this left was 1983, and their manifesto that years was nicknamed 'The longest suicide note in history', by a Labour MP, and I feel that unless he tones down his ideology this is the way, Labour are heading.\n\nTL:DR: Good for politics, more right-left debate, bad for Labour, too left and to polarising to win election ", "Its compleatly unpredictable, most press sources seem to believe that he is unelectable but they don't really know that. Its just a scaremongering slur right now. ", "It means we Will have a conservative 3rd term because honestly he just won't give the middle classes a reason to vote for him.\n\n\nLiz was the best possible candidate because she would have given the middle classes an incentive to vote Labour.\n\n\nHe needs either to follow a Blairite playbook ( he could do this by making Liz director of policy ) or convince Murdoch to back him somehow perhaps by offering to Privatize the BBC or allow all T.V. to have a slice of the license fee.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eq8rx4r", "eq8rypz", "eq8ud07", "eq8xen1" ], "score": [ 12, 40, 5, 5 ], "text": [ "Engineering is a very broad term, essentially it means applied science. \n\nSo engineers take very specific scientific principles and apply them to life. Ie designing bridges by using physics and materials science. Or like oil production by using geology, chemistry, and physics.", "An engineer designs and plans things, not builds them. Theye will do all the math and science to design a bridge that can handle super intense traffic in the worst conditions, but they aren't the one laying the concrete. \n\nAn engineer is a problem solver. Electrical, structural, or mechanical it's all about the same. The engineer is going to try and design something that fixes the problem.", "I am a mechanical engineer. Retired. I designed assembly line jigs and fixtures(explosive items). I designed and built computer networks. Developed computer models to calculate reliability of missiles and bombs. I designed tests for reliability testing of hardware and electronics. \nMy whole career was based on my Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering. (ODU)\nI was hired because of my success in college. I progressed because of the other engineers I worked with on the variety of projects assigned. Sharing and Learning was a career long process.", "Engineers apply science to do useful things. When you start nit picking the line between science and engineering can become blurry, but generally scientists seek to increase knowledge for the sake of knowledge whereas engineers take knowledge and use it to do things. For most branches of the hard sciences, there is a corresponding branch of engineering. Electrical engineers understand electromagnetics to design power systems, motors, computers, etc. mechanical engineers understand materials science, classical physics, fluids, etc to design pretty much everything. A very clean example of the line is a chemist versus a chemical engineer. (Very generally) A chemist works in a small lab trying to figure out how to synthesize some new molecule or how to do it better; a chemical engineer designs a system to take that process and scale it up to industrial production quantities.\n\nThe jobs of engineers vary greatly too. Engineers oversee the entire process of a product’s lifecycle from conceptual design to disposal. Some engineers design the thing, some oversee manufacturing, some oversee operation of complex machinery/systems, some do research and development. Pretty much everything man made thing you have ever seen or touched was designed by an engineer and manufactured under the supervision of an engineer." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cljt0yw" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "TMJ issues, most likely. The cartilage disk is probably ruptured or slipped out.\n\nTalk to a dentist." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c64kf5x" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Political ads are enormously expensive. In 2008, the political campaigns combined to spend over 800 million dollars. Just on ads." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2a11e5", "c2a11e5" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "It's not expanding out from one point, it's expanding everywhere. The probable reason you think of it as as sphere is because when people want a simple example to talk about expansion they use a sphere. In fact, the best data we have suggests that the universe is infinite and not curved at all one way or the other. It just goes on forever.", "It's not expanding out from one point, it's expanding everywhere. The probable reason you think of it as as sphere is because when people want a simple example to talk about expansion they use a sphere. In fact, the best data we have suggests that the universe is infinite and not curved at all one way or the other. It just goes on forever." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f6o6cj5", "f6on4re" ], "score": [ 4, 6 ], "text": [ "Basically, it's because of the speed that each of them can absorb energy and how much energy it takes to change the temperature of each.\n\nWater is harder to warm up than air, and it can absorb energy much faster than air. This meant that at the same temperature, water will feel further from comfortable than air will.", "It's because your body doesn't measure absolute temperature, in other words your body doesn't say \"It's 68F\" it says \"I'm gaining heat\" or \"I'm losing heat\". How fast that happens is how hot or cold you feel. \n\nWater, as /u/RogerGodzilla99 says is far faster at absorbing heat than air is. So as long as the water is cooler than your body is, which at 68F (20C) it absolutely will be, it'll feel colder than air at the same temperature will because your warmer body will be transferring heat into it faster. Your body feels that faster loss of heat as being colder. \n\nSame reason a wooden spoon will feel warmer than a metal spoon when they've come out the same drawer in the same kitchen, so obviously must be the same temperature." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dsf21av" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "While I'm certain that some are arrived at spontaneously, a vast majority are simply proofs of a concept. For example, all of the ones you linked appear to move but don't actually, and are intended to take advantage of the way colors (and their wavelengths) and lines/shapes (and their relative shapes and sizes) can be combined to to create the illusion of movement. One would really have to understand colors and shapes to design a decent optical illusion, furthermore understand the science of why and how our brains perceive these images in relationship to eachother. So yes, there is an underlying method and definitely a science." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "drnn6mg", "drnupfv" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "What’s the basis of this question? Any background or stats?", "Cleveland is part of the Rust Belt, a part of the USA whose old prosperity was based on steel production and other very heavy industries, peaking just after World War II. These industries became old and inefficient and many companies went out of business. This led to loss of jobs, so people left." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c2hw3a9", "c2hwhg0", "c2hw3a9", "c2hwhg0" ], "score": [ 13, 5, 13, 5 ], "text": [ "They weren't exactly close allies in WWII either, just reluctant bedfellows, due to a common enemy.\n\nIn fact, the beginnings of cold war scheming, on both sides, had already started before WWII ended.", "Communism and Capitalism are completely opposite ideologies. \n\nCapitalism means private ownership of property, so like you and me can have our house, car, cell phone, etc. Also, it means that big companies are owned by people, and are not subject to government whim. There's a lot more that goes into it.\n\nCommunism is what's called a command economy. The government says,\"Hey make this\" and people have to do it. There is no private ownership, the government owns everything within the country.\n\nWhen these two conflicting methods came together, its just a NOPE scenario. \n\nAnd on top of that, they both wanted to be the most powerful nation on Earth, and that led to theCold war and etc etc. ", "They weren't exactly close allies in WWII either, just reluctant bedfellows, due to a common enemy.\n\nIn fact, the beginnings of cold war scheming, on both sides, had already started before WWII ended.", "Communism and Capitalism are completely opposite ideologies. \n\nCapitalism means private ownership of property, so like you and me can have our house, car, cell phone, etc. Also, it means that big companies are owned by people, and are not subject to government whim. There's a lot more that goes into it.\n\nCommunism is what's called a command economy. The government says,\"Hey make this\" and people have to do it. There is no private ownership, the government owns everything within the country.\n\nWhen these two conflicting methods came together, its just a NOPE scenario. \n\nAnd on top of that, they both wanted to be the most powerful nation on Earth, and that led to theCold war and etc etc. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dui54jv" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "I could be wrong on this, but my intuition says that you are splitting the load between two major muscle groups with chinups (bicep and back) vs one muscle group with pullups(back)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccoag6i", "ccoeleh", "ccof55o", "ccog3t5" ], "score": [ 15, 3, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "The shell (aka \"Cartridge\") sits in the chamber (aka [\"Breech\"](_URL_0_), the open area in this picture), that is a larger diameter than the barrel. Once the firing pin strikes the primer and ignites the powder, the bullet leaves the brass casing and enters the [\"lands and grooves\"](_URL_2_) which are the start of the actual barrel.\n\nOnce the bullet is in the lands and grooves, it starts twisting thanks to [\"rifling\"](_URL_3_) in the barrel that causes the bullet to twist. This keeps the bullet stable in the air.\n\nBut back to the brass casing. Once the bullet leaves the brass and is in the barrel, a couple of different things can happen. The main idea is that the [\"extractor\"](_URL_1_) is grabbing on to the rim of the casing (see [this picture](_URL_5_)). Once the bolt carrier/bolt is charged back, it pulls the casing with it thanks to the rim of the casing. Once the bolt is all the way back, the brass casing will now fly out of the breech, because the extractor is only gripping on to one side of the casing. Imagine pulling a book off the edge of the table by grabbing it on the edge that is hanging off the table. The book is going to fly out towards the edge that you pulled. Same concept for a casing leaving the breech.\n\nBut what causes the bolt to fly back once the gun is fired? Either 1) inertia or 2) gas blow-back. Some guns simply use the force of the casing/round flying back (think of Newton's laws of motion) to bring back the bolt, and some guns (such as the AK-47 and AR-15 platforms use the gas that is leaving the barrel to push back in a tube and move the bolt. See [this animation](_URL_4_).\n\nHope that helps!\n\nEdit: some words", "I'd like to add that brass is a popular material for cartridge casings in part because of its lubricity; that is, it has a slight inherent slipperiness, particularly relative to the steel of the chamber.", "This question has been answered already but there is a third mode of ejection I'll mention.\n\nIt isn't common for obvious reasons, but some small pistols use *the jetfire principle* which is akin to a blowback system. But there *is no extractor.* Nothing hooks the cartridge out of the chamber. But brass expands when it is fired, this is called *fire-forming* and the change in dimension is enough to loosen it. The backward pressure of the detonating cartridge is enough to eject the brass when the slide travels to the rear.\n\nBut this is relying on the bullets to do it, and sometimes it can fail. I have a Beretta 21A, similar to the [Beretta Jetfire](_URL_0_) which uses this sytem. I actually really like it, and it does work, but it can fail.", "When you're shooting a revolver the casing never enters the barrel, it stays within the cylinder. To extract the cartridge you have to push the extractor rod into the cylinder which forces the shell out. The shells are kinda stuck, you have to apply some force to get them out. They won't all just fall out if you invert the cylinder the way they do in videogames. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.ammoland.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Kimber-Team-Match-II-.45-ACP-1911-Pistol-Breech-Face.jpg", "http://www.m1carbinesinc.com/256boltb.jpg", "http://www.firearmsid.com/Galleries/illustrations/rifling/rifling_6R.gif", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/105mm_tank_gun_Rifling.jpg", "http://gunfreezone.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/akcutout.gif", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/5.56_x_45mm_NATO_bullet_casing_end_-_rim-fs_PNr%C2%B00274.jpg" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beretta_950_Jetfire" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ce0ehrn" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "There's three reasons:\n\n* Black holes don't \"consume\" any more than any other object of the same mass does. If the Earth were to collapse into a black hole, it would only be about to size of a peanut, and the Moon would stay right where it is in its orbit.\n* The universe isn't infinitely old, space is very big, and black holes are fairly rare. Even if they were actively consuming at very high rates, they wouldn't have had the time to finish off all or even most of the matter in the universe yet. Note that the supermassive black holes at their centers will, in fact, consume most galaxies eventually, but not until a *very* long way in the future.\n* Black holes don't *only* consume. For quantum mechanical reasons, they're believed to 'leak' mass very very slowly; since this process is so slow for medium or large black holes, the first two reasons are most of the explanation." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cnbhmbd" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "Because it's an instinctive reaction that was beneficial to our ancestors. By grabbing on to the hurt part, you;\n\n* protect the injured area, you keep other thing from poking or pressing against it, which could cause further injury and would most certainly hurt even more;\n\n* slow down the bleeding, if it's a cut or a tear; in this case you also protected the wound from dirt and such coming into contact with it;\n\n* stabilize the appendage, if it's a break or a twist.\n\n* Also the touch lessens the pain (it's why we rub the area, if we bump into something) by exiting the tactile receptors. The excitation of sensory neurons of that area inhibits the transmission of pain signals in the spinal cord. Think of it as white noise drowning an annoying tune." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cnlrftq" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The objective of ISIS and Al Qaeda in attacking defenseless people is to foster prejudices against Muslims.\n\nThe biggest problem for ISIS and Al Qaeda is that, by and large, Muslims don't agree with them and think that they are dangerous lunatics. France has millions of Muslims, and very few are particularly religious -- they're mostly an ethnic group of immigrants, sometimes second or third generation, and pretty much like anyone else in France. What ISIS and Al Qaeda really need is for Muslims to be reviled - they need the sort of prejudice and hate that will lead to them being marginalized and feel victimized by western society. They need Muslims to feel persecuted. So, what do you do? You get unstable people to commit heinous crime yelling \"Allahu Akbar\" so everyone knows to blame Muslims, who are clearly murderous lunatics.\n\nSo, what do people get by protesting, gathering together after such an attack? Well, it's essentially calling their bluff. It's intended to send the message that, \"we're not stupid, we know the difference between a Muslim and whatever you are\" sort of thing. Further, it calls out to others not to fall for the tactic. Prejudices are fairly easy to get people to adopt, particularly against a minority or group of which one is not a part, but if people start falling for it - well, than the tactic works." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dbway14" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Your phone is in constant communication with the closest cell site. If there is no cell site with an active connection to your phone then the network knows its out of range or turned off. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ehykt0l", "ehyovgx" ], "score": [ 3, 5 ], "text": [ "The Sun is very bright. Much brighter than the display technology available for signs. To over power the Sun would take a powerful laser on a sign in the middle of nowhere. What could go wrong? Everything!", "Bright sunshine can exceed 50 & #8239;000 lux whereas bright lighting inside is typically more like 500 lux. Our eyes are amazing enough to deal with this factor-of-a-hundred difference but consumer display technology is not." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dn1hlgx", "dn1hlgx" ], "score": [ 4, 4 ], "text": [ "They have more fur all over, so they need the patterning to blend into their surroundings or provide other benefits (such as siamese cats and other color-pointed animals - the theory is that the darkly colored extremities trap more heat and prevent frostbite in those areas, all of which are particularly susceptible to it). We have mostly skin and very little visible hair, so we don't really need the patterns. However, if you pay close attention, you'll notice that we do have some patterning to our body hair. The hair on your arms and legs is thicker and darker, while the hair on your stomach, inside and underside of thighs and forearms, neck, and face tends to be lighter in color and also thinner. So I have black arm and leg hair, but the rest of it is light brown or blonde. It's just that our hair is very very thin and hard to see compared to other animals.", "They have more fur all over, so they need the patterning to blend into their surroundings or provide other benefits (such as siamese cats and other color-pointed animals - the theory is that the darkly colored extremities trap more heat and prevent frostbite in those areas, all of which are particularly susceptible to it). We have mostly skin and very little visible hair, so we don't really need the patterns. However, if you pay close attention, you'll notice that we do have some patterning to our body hair. The hair on your arms and legs is thicker and darker, while the hair on your stomach, inside and underside of thighs and forearms, neck, and face tends to be lighter in color and also thinner. So I have black arm and leg hair, but the rest of it is light brown or blonde. It's just that our hair is very very thin and hard to see compared to other animals." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dhuq9k0", "dhuqdmo" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "The surfaces of most breads are glazed with something like egg wash (egg and water), butter/oil, or some other means to enhance the browning of the crust. Even without that however, the dough-ball is not a homogeneous (uniform throughout) and the inside is much wetter than the skin, which is quite dry. The hot dry air in the oven dries it out even more, but you can actually see in a crust that what you're describing kind of happens. You'll see a darker layer fading to whatever the color of the main body of the bread (the crumb) is, but it's that outer cm or so which gets *very* dry, and undergoes a series of complex chemical processes. \n\nThe results of those processes (collectively known as caramelization) are oxidized sugars, cooked proteins, acrylamide, and MANY more compounds. ", "Think about it this way--the very outside of a loaf is the only part that's directly exposed to the heat, and everything past that outer layer is insulated to some extent. The heat that the very center of the loaf is being exposed to is less than the heat that the part of the loaf closer to the edge is being exposed to, yes, but WAY less than the heat that the very outside of the loaf is being exposed to." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ci5yq5m", "ci6blmp" ], "score": [ 8, 2 ], "text": [ "So you can use it as a cane when it's not raining, or hold it on your wrist and use your hands.\n\nEDIT: [BONUS illustrated like I'm five!](_URL_0_)", "They don't. Golf umbrellas typically have straight handles.\n\n_URL_0_\n" ] }

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If they bailed out the people instead, chances are the people would have the tendency to just see it as free money and not do anything useful with it. \n\nNow, if they gave money to stop their foreclosure instead, it would have probably cost a lot of money. The bail out most likely just covered the banks' losses. But to keep the houses, it would have cost a lot more.", "The realistic answer to this is that the sum of money used in bank bail outs was less than all the money needed to deal with the foreclosures.\n\nNow obviously you would argue \"well why didn't they just save as many foreclosures as they could with that money, the banks get it in the end\". \n\nTo which the answer is simply its overt complexity and the fact it would cost more money to give out that much money, track that money, make sure people actually spent it on foreclosures, etc. Not only this by the time the banks got it there would be fees and such of there own further reducing this sum of money. \n\nThen there is the more direct concern that keeping major lending/financial institutions up and going helped keep other businesses not directly related up and going. If lenders are functional a business temporarily in the red can get a loan and recover, as can others. The direct \"bail out\" also allowed the banks to have more capital to directly lend in these situations aswell. \n\nHypothetically in a perfect world what you said could be done, but we arn't in a perfect world the very fact the foreclosures and recession happened more than proves this. Instead of a very complex and much more expensive route that saved some homeowners, they opted for the direct approach that best kept society going which was also much cheaper. ", "The government can regulate how the banks use the bailout money; they cannot regulate how individuals would use the funds. A lot of Americans would not use the money for its intended purpose which would essentially compound the problem.", "Serious answer: Because the banker bailout mastermind Henry Paulson was CEO of international bank Goldman Sachs, immediately before being appointed Treasury Secretary. Goldman Sachs received $10B in the bailout. Paulson was worth $700M at the time. Homeowners not being able to pay a mortgage were not and are not in his sphere of influence.", "The government did \"bail out\" homeowners, but not by handing them money (which would be impossible to account for). \n\nUnder a government program, I was able to refinance my mortgage despite being moderately underwater. My monthly payments went down 25%. My interest rate is among the lowest in US history, which was also due to government action. Around the same time, there were huge government incentives for first time home buyers. ", "Imagine your allowance was a million dollars. That's pretty nice, right? Eventually you hire other people to do your chores and you just keep the rest.\n\nAfter some time passes you find that you have more money than you can spend for the rest of your life. In fact, you have more money than all your friends can spend in their lives too. \n\nThis would be great for a few decades but eventually you may wonder \"What's next?\" Well, some other folks thought that too. They came up with a way to turn their money in to power and influence. \n\nThey accomplished this by becoming a bank. They convinced politicians to make their bank the official unofficial bank of the United States. They're allowed to create and destroy US currency any time they would like to give loans to people.\n\nOf course, some people were wise to their ways. They did what they could to avoid borrowing money and going in to debt. The bank didn't like that very much at all. \n\nOver time, the rottenness of this bank creeped in to other banks. This central bank gobbled them up, replacing those banks with copies of itself that looked like the old bank. This led to an entire country of people - who were one time the wealthiest, most prosperous nation in the entire world, becoming slaves to the central bank. If you needed to borrow money, it came from one bank. If you needed a savings account, the rates come from one bank. \n\nThese people weren't slaves like you are taught about in school. This form of slavery is much sneakier. You see, the banks don't care about your religion or skin color. They don't care what you do for a living, they don't care who you marry or where you make your home. So long as you forfeit to them a portion of your wages.\n\nThey accomplished their evil goal through their government partnership. Through government, the bank is able to move from one part of the market to the next. It pumps up the market with huge lines of credit, people borrow money they cannot afford to repay, soon that entire section of the economy is relying on the flow of money to continue operating their businesses.\n\nAnd then the bank stops the money flow. The bubble pops. Businesses stop working. People lose their jobs. No one repay the bank.\n\nThe federal government derives most of its power from the military and from the banking system. Without the ability to print money on a whim the US government would have to raise taxes (Printing money is effectively taxation but it is sneakier). \n\nWhen the government paid the banks it was securing it's ability to do whatever it wants with the money. \n\nTax payers - > Pay taxes to government\n\nTax payers - > Owe money to banks\n\nTax Payers cannot pay.\n\nGovernment gives tax payer money to the banks.\n\nBanks say \"Hah, even though this is the tax payers money we aren't forgiving tax payer debts\"\n\nGovernment says \"As long as we can keep printing!\"\n\n**TLDR: Federal Reserve**", "This is a two parter: \n1. A big part of the reason for the bailout was to unfreeze credit markets. Banks weren't lending because they needed the cash to replace losses from nearly worthless assets backed by junk mortgages. Businesses need access to credit to function so the banks got money with the idea that they'd actually lend it out. That was an immediate problem which needed to be addressed somehow or we would have had a cascade of failing businesses. \n2. You might be asking, \"Then why didn't the government offer to make mortgage payments which would go to the banks eventually anyway and kill two birds with one stone?\" Most of the mortgages weren't held by the banks. They serviced the loans which means they handled the administrative activities but most of those mortgage backed securities were actually owned by institutional investors (pension funds, some exchange traded funds, etc.). \n\nNow for commentary: \nAnother plan was for tax payers to buy out failing banks so we'd get some equity out of the deal and get our money back when we sold it back off at something like an IPO but somebody yelled \"SOCALISM!\" so we couldn't do that. Iceland did and they didn't burst into flames or anything. \n\nPart of the reason this all got so out of hand was that banks gave mortgages to people they knew couldn't afford them because they were taking fees origination fees and selling the actual notes off to someone else. They didn't have that much skin in the game until it became obvious that these were increasingly worthless and they couldn't sell them anymore. When the scam was running well they convinced crooked ratings agencies to give inflated grades to their junk securities made of bad mortgage bundles and used those grades to buy insurance backed by pretty much nothing (AIG).", "Because banks own both political parties, and it's always easier for politicians to protect the status-quo than to come up with an innovative, just, solution that might rock the boat.", "It was a loan. And its all paid back with interest, for the record.\n\n", "Like they did in Iceland and they did very well. Also arrested the bankers. So in my opinion the bankers had many good friends in politics!\nAnd isn't it funny that the money transferred offshore is pretty much the same amount the taxpayer paid to save the banks? And why did the managers, who allowed this shit got boni, but the homeowners the boot? \nAnd after being bailed out the banks start crying \"get out of my business government\" what's wrong with this picture?\nHonestly America was founded as protest against the (British) government, but now? No sound against government control and suppression (patriot act) not a peep against the banks robbing everybody and getting tax funding to do so. The forefathers would turn in their graves, if they know!", "The crash wasn't directly caused by people foreclosing, it was caused by the banks crashing AFTER so many mortgages were foreclosed leaving them with a bunch of properties which became toxic when the real estate bubble burst.", "The government did help out homeowners as well. When the government took control for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac they introduced the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). This allowed home owners that had a mortgage that was backed by Fannie and Freddie to refinance their mortgage to a significantly lower interest rate no matter their equity position in their home. Most of these refinances were done without even having an appraisal done. I will also point out that this program allowed people that had damaged or not perfect credit to get a lower rate that they would not normally qualify for. \n\nThe government also helped VA and FHA home owners, since those are government backed loans as well, with what is called a VA or FHA streamline refinance. These programs allowed people to refinance as well without have to do an appraisal as well as not having to credit qualify. That means that the banks didn't even pull their credit and offered them a lower interest rate. \n\nAside from these programs the government has been buying bonds and mortgage backed securities to keep the interest rate down for the public to be able to refinance of purchase affordable housing during the recession. \n\nTl;dr: HARP program and VA & FHA government refinance program helped the general public refinance to lower rates. ", "Homeowners don't make campaign contributions like bankers do....", "Comments here are terrible, filled with ignorant comments from people with no financial background and a few crackpot theories ", "Wow, the loons are really coming out in force for this thread. The biggest reason: We were in a liquidity crisis, where banks need cash to meet obligations, or they are at risk of failing. Giving that money to homeowners to pay the banks through their mortgage would get the money into the system very, very slowly; mortgages are small slices of payments over 30 years. \n\nThe banks were ready to fail in weeks, not years, and a failing bank would have a cascading effect on the financial system. The results of more bank failures would have been catastrophic. \n\nThe bailouts were intended only to restore liquidity, therefore preventing a complete economic collapse, and then get that money paid back. ", "Get ready for a lot of angry people who know very little about economics", "UGH, all these answers aren't really correct. The reason is because we made the banks take it as a loan, to be paid back. Homeowners who already weren't paying their loans would have not paid another loan back. The truth is that the banks are already paid up, with interest, so the government made money on the deal.\n\n[Source.](_URL_0_)\n\nEDIT: /u/Helmet-GLA was right, but I didn't see his [comment](_URL_1_) before mine.", "The banks have better lobbyists", "There are a lot of incredibly wrong answers in here and I think you're slightly misinformed based on the question. \n\n**Let's start at the beginning:**\n\nThe recent recession was at the fault of both banks and people. People were starting to purchase homes they couldn't realistically afford. In return, the mortgage payments people owed on their homes were over half their salary. The recommendation is 1/3 of their salary. \n\n**What went wrong?**\n\nMortgage companies were stupid enough to allow people to purchase these homes. For example, at the time the recession happened I was approved to buy a home for $300,000 when my salary was only $30,000/yr. Really bad idea. Eventually, it caught up to the mortgage companies and they had more debt than income. \n\n**Then what?**\n\nAIG amongst many other large companies started declaring bankruptcy. Some took government loans and went through a restructure, taking advantage of bankruptcy protection laws.\n\nLaws were placed to have more strict regulations, accounting practices, and loaning practices. \n\n**The bailout - the answer to your question**\n\nThe idea behind giving people money, not just home owners, was to jumpstart the economy. People would spend this money on electronics, food, or anything to help prevent businesses shutting down.\n\nGiving money to people who were already foreclosing on a home would've only helped them for that one payment. Then what? They're in the same situation. \n\nThe plan, however, somewhat backfired, but not entirely. Some people put money towards their foreclosing home and others just invested the money (like myself). ", "i hate to be that guy.... but you guys should really do some more research on exactly what is going on between the government and the banks right now before forming such an icorrect oppinion of the current state of mortgage lending banks....... a FEW of the titanic sized banks recieved a bail out, and that was to preserve the economy. \n\nResearch the consent order, and the settlement agreements that several banks have taken with the government. youll see that the banks arent recieveing any bailouts as a whole, and the majority of them are getting massive fines (cumulative totals in the billions). ", "I am no expert, but in my mind point being missed when supporting the bailouts is the individual who should be accountable and suffer loss.\n\nWe always say we bailed out \"the banks\". We bailed out very wealthy people who did the wrong thing. Sure \"the bank\" paid back the loan. That was easy enough apparently and the wealthy who made the bad decisions got nice salaries being saved by all of us making a fraction.\n\n", "Because the bankers hold much more power then broke home-owners. It is pretty simple. ", "The short answer is the bailout money was much much more likely to be repaid when given to banks. The bailout was an emergency loan to replenish short term cash supply and was to be paid back in full. Banks could repay because they were, on the whole, not in debt. However, home owners who would default were, and the extra cash will only increase their debt burden.\n\nWhat people don't realise is that the bailout money is already [a profitable investment for the government](_URL_0_). The current net profit stands at $12 billion, and the money hasn't been paid back in full yet. This directly benefits the tax payers.", "A guy I know who has spent a career in finance, including working as a VP for several large banks, stated that your suggestion is exactly what the gov't should have done.\n\nRather than giving money to the banks, who seemed to more or less sit on it, he suggested that the gov't should have setup a program to help those who were short on their house payments.\n\nFor example: Homeowner complains \"I cant make my house payment because my wife's job went away.\" Gov't says \"How much is your payment? How much can you pay?\" Homeowner replies \"Its $2200. I can pay $1100.\" Gov't replies \"Ok, we'll spot you the other $1100 each month, BUT when you sell the house you owe us that money back, plus maybe a little interest.\" Homeowner replied \"Awesome! Thanks Uncle Sam!\" Gov't smiles and says \"Hey, I got your back. Remember, we are all in this together!\"\n\nHe also suggested a plan where the gov't plunk down a lump sum of $200k to readjust the payments on a mortgage of $400k.\n\nAaannnnddd... None of this happened. Instead I know good people who were screwed because of things beyond their control, slightly bad decisions they made, etc.", "Because homeowners don't have lobbyists\n", "Because the home owners didn't bank roll the congressmens/women's campaign funds. < --- period. ", "Giving out money isn't the problem, problem is how do you do it accurately, with accountability, track the money and ensure it can be traced and returned back if required. \n\nIf money is given to home owners following happen:\n\n * A lot of people will fake the need for bailout; there isn't enough resources to go around tracking who's right and who's not. You can see this from amount of verification that is required now for purchase/refinance a mortgage.\n\n * There is no way to accurately measure how much money is needed NOW, over next few years and over all as home owners will overtime come out and make requests for bailout.\n\n * There is no way to qualify a borrower; can you bailout a guy who's 50 LTV on a $100k mortgage, or 110 LTV on a 110k mortgage, or 95 LTV on a $1,000,000 mortgage? What about credit scores, other assets, etc. etc. \n\n * There is no current system in place to qualify a borrower for bailout; a system needs to be developed, tested, implemented, etc. This makes it possible for lots of risk.\n\nThere are other points to consider but you get the point. It takes a lot of housekeeping to qualify borrowers.\n\nOn the other hand, if you bailout banks following happen:\n\n * Banks already have a system in place to qualify/screen borrowers income, assets, mortgage, that can be re-deployed to qualify if a borrower requires bailout.\n\n * Banks report net income on expenses (loss) and profit. If everyones paying bills on time, expenses are lower, profits are higher. If more and more borrowers need bailout, banks will report higher losses and lesser profit. Thereby you can easily calculate how much money is required for bailout. I say easily because the bailout is in hundreds of billions of dollars over millions of borrowers. \n\n * Ultimately banks are setup for peoples benefits. Why throw out people from their homes leaving lower house values when you can keep people in their homes, let them have a roof and also maintain the asset owned by banks. Banks will overtime get through the number of bailouts in a semi-manageable manner.\n", "look at all these people taking loans that they cannot afford, setting themselves up for financial ruin if the slightest thing goes wrong. let's give them money, they sure seem to know how to handle it. ", "Looks like a lot of people don't know jack about the financial system in this thread. \n\nGiving bailout money was not free money- it came with the stipulation of either part government ownership of the organization I do believe or it was essentially a loan that had to be paid back. Over half of the loans paid out have been paid back( 384B dollars out of 609B). Thanks to gaining equity in some companies the government made over 200 billion dollars in dividends in those companies. All in all the government has actually profited 12 billion dollars from the bailout. \n\nThat is something they could have never done giving money to homeowners. Additionally the money to banks was necessary because our entire capitalistic economy thrives at the present time through a delicate, intricate, and powerful shadow banking system in which assets and security are traded in enormous amounts not only to create profit but to create liquidity and leverage in the system such that everyone these days can get a loan.\n\n If they didn't bailout a lot of these mortgage-backed security holding banks, the markets would have essentially froze as credit lines were stopped due to risk factors being too high. This would cause a domino effect through the markets that would essentially create a new great depression. Paying mortgage holders instead sounds good but the system would still have collapsed as 1) The size of the mortgage market would have made the bailout of 600 billion dollars a drop in the bucket. Outstanding mortgages in America in 2008 were over 10 trillion dollars in value and in the same year over 9% of mortgages in the U.S. were delinquent and failing. So right there over 900 billion dollars needed to fill that gap. At the banking level, money gets multiplied thanks to things like fractional reserve banking and the fact money can be moved rapidly and easily through different assets where it is needed using the shadow-banking intermediaries so the 600b the government dolled out had a stronger net effect than paying out the 600b of the 900b+ mortgages that were default. 2) paying out the mortgages was a much more complex issue with a lot more record keeping and needed the government to directly pay the mortgage holders because people have a habit of spending money poorly when it arrives in a lump sum(see: tax returns). \n\nWe are not Iceland or a smaller country, and pinning which executives in an organization knowingly took advantages in the credit loopholes we have in the U.S. is nigh impossible. We don't convict men who we can't find guilty in this country so charging the bankers with this probably would not have stuck. I wouldn't have minded seeing the VPs and CEOs of some of the most guilty banks put on trial and possibly convicted for their organizations doings though. But that would have only increased the instability of the country and we have a system literally thousands of times more complex and bigger than Icelands, meaning it's not so simple as throwing a few bankers in jail. I do think they should have been restricted in gifting themselves bonuses and whatnot but obviously the gov't wasn't interested in pissing off too many folks on Wall St. and the relative money involved was nothing compared to the size of the whole ordeal. \n\nThere's a lot more to it and this isn't exactly right but it should be in the ballpark. Bottom line is people criticizing this event who haven't bothered to study its details aren't much different than creationists who criticize evolution. You never have put the time in to understand and you see it in a way most folks in finance do not yet they are the ones who understand it, at least better than the layman. \n\nTLDR: the Bailout has actually been paid back with profit, something paying out the the populace could never achieve. On top of that there was more mortgage debt by over 33% than was paid out to the banks so you can't go and just randomly pay off 66% of mortgage defaults and leave the others to deal with their misfortune. ", "Home owners would have spent it on cars, drugs & women. ", "OP, there are going to be a lot of explanations informed by what the masters of spin in DC and in Wall Street put out for the rest of us to squabble over.\n\nIf you want an actual explanation, read Neil Barofsky's \"Bailout.\" He was the Special Inspector General for TARP (one of the bailout programs), and actually a reasonably unbiased outsider. The book is actually a great read: Barofsky develops it like a narrative, with a storyline, character development, etc.\n\nI hope you get to this comment!", "I don't know. \n\nBut to give an example of another nation bailing out its citizens: Back in 99', Japan gave its qualifying citizens an equivalent to $200 (20x$10 notes) in what was the equivalent to gift cards to spend in stimulating the local economy. \nThe gift cards were regional, so you couldn't use it outside your local area, and no change was given so it couldn't be converted to cash, and it encouraged spending more than the $200 amount. \n\nMy mom bought it off me (she didn't qualify) $ for $ so she could use it for groceries, and I put it away in my savings account. I was 15 at the time. ", "Because the people that make those decisions have a much closer and more intimate connection with people on the banking end than people on the middle-class-homeowner end.", "Some have had a go at answering this question but I don't think anyone has hit the nail on the head. I shall give it a shot\n\nIn actual fact the government did think about doing this, bailing out the home-owners instead of the banks. However, there are number of problems that they ran into that made it impractical at best.\n\n1. **Complexity.** Who gets the bailout, do people who took NINJA (No Income No Job or Asssets) get help? Do people who took out a mortgage for a second home get a mortgage? People who lost their job indirectly because of the crisis and fell behind on their mortgage do they get hope? Was there fraud sure, but a lot of people from bank CEO's, to loan originators, to the people who got mortgages and then foreclosed on made a lot of stupid decisions. The government would have to decide who deserved to be bailed out and who didn't (a decision that is potentially politically explosive) and how much help they would get.\n\n1. **Time.** This was a fast moving crisis, there was no time to put together the type of legislation and then agency action that a mortgage bailout program would have necessitated. Remember how long it took to get the stimulus money out the door, and that was fast by government standards.\n\n1. **The crisis was way bigger than mortgages**. It may have started there but by the peak of the crisis the global economy was at risk. Credit is the oil that lubricates the modern global economy, almost every corporation or company has debt. From a small business with a credit card or small credit line, to the biggest companies like Apple or Microsoft who have tonnes of cash. Most companies do not hold that much cash on hand, it doesn't make sense, why hold cash when you can put it in short term treasuries where it will earn more than the rate of inflation. Consequently most companies take out a short term loan to meet payroll, buy new stock etc they pay it back within days or weeks but it is very handy. At the height of the crisis these credit lines froze, CEO's of blue chip companies like GE were calling the treasury secretary saying they wouldn't be able to meet payroll. Companies big and small around the world were facing the same problem, solvent good companies would have to lay off people or close because of credit freeze brought on by a Mortgage crisis. Something had to be done.\n\nTL:DR - Bailing out homeowners is too complex, would have taken too much time and **The crisis wasn't just a mortgage crisis, its most dangerous aspect was the credit crunch, which put the global economy at risk, would not have been solved by bailing out home-owners**. ", "There are several reasons why they did this.\n\nFirst of all, it's important to understand *why* the government bailed out the banks, and how they did it as well. The TARP program guaranteed large loans to several investment banks (like Goldman or Merril Lynch) and savings & loan banks (like Bank of America). They didnt' do this out of the goodness of their heart, and they didn't do it because they thought those companies were run by \"good guys\". No, they did it because the US and World economy depends on banks. They provide liquidity, and they are an essential part of the engine that drives economic growth: CREDIT. If they hadn't bailed those guys out, then the 5 largest investment banks in the country would have gone to zero. The stock market could've ceased to exist. All that money you've got in your 401-K? Bye bye. And if they hadn't bailed out the savings & loan banks? Well, let me just quote Michael Lewis on that. He put it best in **The Big Short**:\n\n > *When banking stops, credit stops, and when credit stops, trade stops, and when trade stops - well, the city of Chicago only had eight days of chlorine on hand for its water supply. Hospitals ran out of medicine. The entire modern world was premised on the ability to buy now and pay later.*\n\nSo we didn't bail these companies out because we liked them. In fact we didn't like them one bit. They'd stupidly taken **massive, terrifying risks** and abrogated their responsibilities as market makers. Their recklessness gave birth to the phrase *Too Big to Fail*. But at a certain point, that's bygones. Damage done. If they go under, we all go under with them.\n\n_____________________\n\nNow, why didn't we just pay off all the homes? Well keep in mind that when a bank (or the holder of a mortgage-backed bond) forecloses on a house, they don't lose 100% of their investment. They lose about half. After all, the house **is still there**, doing what it's supposed to do, which is to serve as collateral for the loan. They still lose 50 cents on the dollar, due to a variety of reasons (the time the homeowner is making no payments, the cost of the damages as they trash the place on the way out, the cost of selling the house, the loss taken by a motivated seller.) So if you want to bail out the homeowner instead you're immediately talking about **double** the cost.\n\nAlso, the government didn't just **hand** the banks money. I mean, they *kinda* did, but not, strictly speaking. They extended a loan, interest free. Now, when you're talking about *that much money*, an interest free loan is pretty goddamn valuable. You take a loan of, say, 10 billion dollars over one year, interest free, and you put it into US T-Bills, getting, say 1%, and you're still talking about $100 million in risk-free profit. And that's what those investment banks did, really. They just took their interest-free money, put it into safe bonds, and pocketed the interest to pay off their bad investments.\n\nIt's also important to realize that while the these investment banks did take a huge bath on these bad loans, they were only exposed to a tiny fraction of the **total** bad mortgage bonds out there. These guys knew they were trading in crap. That's why they moved it to other investors almost immediately. But that's the problem - the \"almost\". They couldn't foist it all off on suckers, and they got stuck with a tiny fraction of it. And they tiny fraction was nearly enough to destroy the world economy.\n\n*They were cynical enough to know they were trading in crap, but not cynical enough to know how crappy it really was.*\n\nIn a very real sense the Goldmans and Merrils and Bear-Sterns of the world were playing hot potato with every mortgage bond. The only problem is they never imagined that the whole thing could come apart so rapidly that they'd be stuck holding some of those hot potatoes.\n\nFinally, it's almost impossible to take a mortgage bond and trace your way **back** to the homeowner behind it. Not only are there thousands of them bundled up behind it, but privacy laws make it difficult to get those names. And then there are CDO's, - GOOD GOD, the CDO's! They're just sliced up tranches from *other* mortgage bonds. How do you track those?\n\nAll this adds up to mean that paying off the homeowners would be:\n\n* a) Much more expensive. Like, 20-100 times more expensive, I would imagine. Possibly more.\n* b) Impossible to do anyway, at least in any meaningful fashion that would save the banks behind them.", "The government acted as investor for 9 Trillion of the 12.1 Trillion involved in the bailout. Many of these investments have turned out to be money-makers for the government, lowering the overall amount of spending with the bailout. With households, there was no clear opportunity for the government to get their investment back. We would have each* gotten an unsecured, $40K loan. \n\nI agree that the bailout was the wrong move, not because of the way the bailout has performed (better than expected), but because of the precedence this set. Right now, our savvy business folks are knuckle-deep in shadow banking in China and another housing bubble in the US, predicated on private equity purchasing rental properties. How do I know that? Because these are both high-risk, high-return activities. Seeking the highest returns is a requirement of any public company (thanks for all the fees and dangerous incentives 401(k)!), so they *have* to get involved with stupid shit like this. Plus, we not only *told* them that we'd bail them out, we *proved it*. Bonuses for good performance, bailouts for bad performance. Oh, what the hell; keep that bonus. Uncle Sugar ain't mad.\n\n*assuming every one of US's 300 million citizens were eligible and received an equal portion of the 12.1 trillion.", "There have been enough posts answering this question. Nevertheless the movie \"Too Big to Fail\" (2011) is a great one that explains and shows insight to the economic collapse. ", "ELI5:\n\nYou've asked your parents to give you money to open a lemonade stand, and you spend the money with the expectation you'll earn it back.\n\nYour parents have lost their job and now want you to give them back their money :(. But you've already spent it!\n\nWell, you have grandparents who are willing to give you money! Let's ask them. But instead, they give it to the parents since the real problem isn't your lemonade stand (which maybe you shouldn't have bought so much ice for that melted away that now you can't recover the costs for...), but the parents not being able to pay their bills so that you can now keep your stand AND your parents are not in deep water anymore.\n\nFurthermore, you being able to keep your lemonade stand instead of selling it off at desperate prices to pay back your parents will generally be good for your parents too since you're still earning income.\n\nGrandparents are awesome.", "The housing crisis was caused when WASHINGTON told Freddy and Fanny to change the mortgage lending standards. EDS reprogrammed the computers that did the calculations at Washington's direction. Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton were involved in the decision. Everything that happened after that was just downwind of their decisions. If not bank X, Bank Y was definitely going to underwrite mortgages backed by Fannie and Freddy. The same banks were going to realize they were crap and sell them off. None of this was good, but Washington was the root of the housing crisis evil. Newt and Bill and Washington saw the .Com cash cow as eternal \"good times\" ... They wondered how they could milk even MORE money out of the economy. They came up with the awesome 'Give everyone and their dog\" a mortgage plan. And we have what we have here now. 15 years later, so many houses were built that even those who could afford their mortgages saw their home values depressed by ~50%. In the typical 30 year mortgage, to pay of 50% of the principal balance takes about 20 years. . .so therefore, we won't fully be out of the housing crisis for about 5 more years. Forget the left or the right. Washington can't get out of it's own way. ", "Because even one failing bank causes everyone to freak out (e.g. great depression), while one or even many homes being foreclosed doesn't. ", "They did. \n\nAnd also the \"bail out\" of banks was loan, that was paid back with interest. ", "Because the government convinced banks to give sub-prime loans (loans that people probably can't pay) in order to boost the economy in the 90's (several banks didn't want to, but were pressured to do so) and when people stopped paying their mortgages the banking system was in big trouble, so the government (which created the problem) fixed it by giving them bailout funds.", "because bank(s) would have collapsed and would have caused a panic with systemic failure. Mohammad El-Erian told his wife to get as much cash out of the ATM as possible", "This question is a lot easier to answer if we clear up what a bailout is. The media loves using the word 'bailout' because it confuses people. 'Bailout' means loan. However, people interpret the word to mean 'handout'. Loans need to be repaid, handouts do not. The media uses this word because they know it can infuriate readers when they see the headline, making them more likely to read the article.\n\nSo now that this has been cleared up, your question really becomes \"Why didn't the federal government lend money to home owners instead of banks?\"\n\nThis becomes an easy question to answer. There are many ways to answer this question but fundamentally, loans needs to be repaid. If the government lends out money and it's not paid, the bill gets picked up by the taxpayers. The government only lent money to companies who they felt can pay it back. The ones that they felt could not pay it back did not receive any loans. (Lehman, Bear Sterns, are among the biggest)\n\nEdit - Lots of comments are insisting that the loans were done at 0 interest rates or 'handed out'. The government lent money to banks in the form of purchasing preferred shares. Here is an article describing the 8% preferred share deal with Citi.\n_URL_0_\nPreferred shares pay dividends, meaning the payments are post tax. An 8% post tax dividend payment is equivalent to maybe ~11% pretax interest payment, so these are very expensive loans. Banks \"pay back\" the loan by purchasing the preferred shares back from the government.", "So we wouldn't reward people for taking on a mortgage they couldn't afford.", "A bailout to homeowners would be a check to all the people with bad mortgages. What happens when you give the average American (especially one who decided they could afford a half million dollar home on 80 grand a year) some money? Do they pay their bills, or do they go out and buy a new tv?", "When the crash happened, the immediate threat to the entire economy was the disappearance of inter bank lending. At the end of each day, all the banks settle up, and borrow/repay each other for the days activity. Even well run solvent banks are dependent on this system functioning smoothly to exist.\n\nWhen the crisis started, banks stopped lending/settling, threatening a chain reaction of events that could have destroyed the entire banking system, including the good ones.\n\nThe bailout had to inject money immediately and directly into that cycle in order to prevent total collapse. Bailing out homeowners directly would not have gotten that done, as it would have taken months/years to take effect.\n\nThe bailout is often characterized as a gift to the banks, the reality is that it was addressing a problem that threatened every single one of us. Bad banks were eventually closed/dissolved (several hundred in fact) and the bailout loans have been repaid with interest.", "Duh! AYFKM! If you gave the quantitative easing money to the people it would be welfare and socialism by giving it to banks it is free enterprise and capitalism. I believe that the money for (QE) would equate to about $45,000 for every breathing U.S. American citizen, now how could have that helped the economy? C'mon, giving it to banks was the obvious choice. ", "Why should someone who is renting pay taxes to keep a homeowner in their home? Why should someone who saved up enough equity that their home wasn't underwater pay taxes to keep a homeowner who bought a home with zero down? That was the significant obstacle that couldn't be surpassed even if this was a good idea.", "The \"home owners\" were a large part of the problem.", "Here's why:\nThe TOTAL allotment for TARP, as of June 30 2012, was $467 billion. In 2008, there were about 240 million adults in the US.\n\nIf TARP had been directed towards individuals instead of corporations, that would have been about 1950 bucks per person.\n\nNow, people would undoubtedly have spent this money, which would have helped the economy, but there would have been no way to collect it BACK, which was part of the idea of TARP - it would be a temporary loan to banks and other companies, at little to no interest, and it would eventually be asked to be repaid (current TARP losses are about 60 billion dollars; not really a huge amount of money).\n\nPlus, companies could theoretically leverage their continued existence into hiring and benefiting the economy. The fact that this hasn't happened is an issue worth raising, but the *theory* is at least nice, if not sound.\n\ntl;dr: TARP was directed towards corporations and banks because the government hoped it would be repaid, and because the outlay being focused on corporations would, theoretically, result in job growth.", "The people deciding where the money goes are friends with bankers not homeowners. They're also willing to bet there's nothing we can do about it.", "I don't want a hand-out. I bought a house in 2006 that lost 60% of it's value in 2009. Half the homes on my street became vacant. Squatters, vermin, the yards filled with glimmering roaches at night. I want my mortgage adjusted to reflect this shitty reality. I want these god damn people to give back the VALUE they stole, the INVESTMENT that's coming out of my fucking ass. I'll be stuck in this upside house for A DECADE! Fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me hooray!", "I just got a couple hundred back from that settlement for wrongful eviction and foreclosure from a couple years back. Didn't do anything, they just sent the check. A couple hundred doesn't really get me my house back but it's more than I expected.", "The poster is not asking about new home sales. They are asking why the government bailed out banks INSTEAD of giving the money to home buyers that were underwater to help offset the cost of their mortgage. ", "I wrote the White House and I suggested giving money directly to home owners with the stipulation that it first gets applied to mortgage then charge cards, student loans, etc. In that manner the money would be distributed throughout the banking system instead of cronyism which is what happened. More money was wasted on GM and Solindra when it could have help many people in need. The White House response was a form letter inviting me to join the Democrat Party. I tore it up and have been hating this administration ever since. What a bunch of clowns. By the way... The govt refinance program was a slap in the face to those people not under water as unless you had a need, meaning your house was worth less than you paid for it, you were denied. Many people that have been able to pay but have high mortgage rates were unable to refinance unless they took on substantial debt. If you're middle class and pay your bills, keep down your debt, don't expect a favor from this group in DC.", "The government bailed out homeowners by lending the banks money, who then let homeowners refinance their mortgages (lower rates at new lower market prices) instead of default/foreclose so the banks still make money (not as much as before) and are able to pay back the government for the loans.", "All of the top answers here are shit\n\n\nOK\n\nHERE WE GO!\n\nWhen mommy and daddy pay the electric bill, they take their paychecks and put them in the bank, then write a check against the money in the bank.\n\nThe men and women at the bank make loans on the money and pay interest to the people who put their money in there. See, not everyone needs their money at the same time, so it's sort of like juggling.\n\nWhen banks juggle money it's called fractional reserve banking. See the bank doesn't loan YOUR money to people to pay you interest, you always have your money, because some people won't be using all of their money.\n\nIt's like when a clown juggles pineapples, on average he always weighs as much as a clown plus 3 pineapples even though 2 are always in the air.\n\nNow the problem is not everyone puts money in the bank and then writes checks to pay their bills like mommy and daddy. Some people like McDonald's don't put in any money at all. What a McDonald's has is like the credit card, but much bigger. They buy things on the credit card and pay it off. That's where some of the interest money comes from.\n\nWhat happened with the banking thing is the congress where they make the laws said that a lot of people had to get loans to buy houses. \n\nSo many people bought so many houses so fast there weren't a lot of houses to go around. This made houses more expensive.\n\nThis created artificial wealth and that's what we call a bubble.\n\nWhen the houses decreased in value because people who shouldn't be given loans were given loans, all of that artificial wealth went away at once. \n\nSo banks didn't have enough money, because a lot of money suddenly disappeared. \n\nThe federal government had to loan money to the banks so when mommy and daddy wrote the check to the electric company it would be worth money, so the electric company could buy more coal to make more electricity. Also the McDonald's was able to buy more coffee from south america so mommy wouldn't be cranky.\n\nWhen the banks recovered they paid the government back, and if Obama wasn't such a sucker he would have made a net profit on the deal, but he also bailed out GM and they paid him back in stock, which means the government owns part of a failing business. Also they gave the government non preferred stock which is like owning the litterbox, but not the kitty. ", "I had a thought about this back in 2008 when the TARP was originally announced and I haven’t been able to think of a reason why it wouldn’t have worked.\n\n\nPoint 1: Banking liquidity was a paramount short-term consideration for maintaining the day-to-day functioning of the economy.\n\n\nPoint 2: The longer term consideration was to preserve consumer demand in the economy to prevent a spiraling contraction in the job market and the entire economy as a result.\n\n\nSuggested solution: Give the TARP money to the banks under the condition that they immediately apply the money directly to the outstanding mortgages (say by reducing them all by some fixed percentage) and refinance all of them at 4% fixed rate. \n(i.e. instead of corporate socialism, we spread the socialism around)\n\n\n1st Order Results\n\nThe banks would have had the money they needed.\n\nThe distressed CDOs on their books could have been revalued so their liabilities would have decreased and they would have been in less danger of failing.\n\nTaxpayers would have had more money in their pockets due to lower mortgage payments and been less likely to default on their mortgages.\n\nThe government would not have had to take the risk of not having the loans paid back.\n\n\n2nd or higher order results\n\nPeople would have been less fearful of the future of the economy and less likely to reduce their spending, thereby maintaining the demand for production.\n\nFewer layoffs\n\nFewer people homeless and/or on government assistance.\n\nTax revenues would have been higher with more people working.\n\nThe uncertainty that resulted in the stock market dropping would have been reduced If not mitigated.\n\nGDP would not have taken as big a hit since people would have had more confidence in the economy and maintained a higher level of demand and companies would not have subsequently needed to lay off as many people.\n\nThere may have been less of a need for banks to be given no interest loans from the Fed (effectively giving them riskless profits) and possibly mitigated the need for Quantitative Easing. The effects of which lined the pockets of the wealthy.\n\n\nPotential Issues\n\nThe only issue I could see would be the oversight of the actual distribution of funds. After seeing how the banks effectively scuttled most of President Obama’s attempts to help out homeowners, it seem s like they would have had to settle on a set percentage decrease of the mortgages in advance so the banks could not mess around with the process after the fact.\n\n\n\nEven people who were not homeowners would have been better off by not having the economy contract as much as it did.\n\n\n\n(edit: spacing)", "When the federal reserve was created, one of its purposes was to stop bank runs, which are known to cause economic collapses. The fed was only designated to help out commercial banks in these situations. This happened after the depression of 1902. \nIn 2008, AIG insured not only the majority of the houses in America but they also insured pensions, life insurance policies, and basically anything they could \"securitize\" or \"back with insurance\". \nWhen the collapse happened a domino effect occurred on investment banks that held these different securities. Lehman Brothers was the first to fail and Hank Paulson allowed that to happen. Lehman had what was called toxic assets on their balance sheet. The toxic assets were a bunch of abandoned houses that no one wanted, due to bad debt not being paid by homeowners. The entire housing market started to slide and that's where most Americans invest their money. \nOnce Ole Hank and the Fed continued to watch the markets crash they realized AIG and GM was headed for collapse. \nI can't really help you fathom the true impact of what would've happened, had those two companies sank. I understand a fraction of it, and it's all ready become quite clear that the proverbial shit would've hit the fan. \nSo the government bought the toxic assets from the remaining surviving banks. Hence TARP. Toxic Asset Relief Program. \n\nSerendipitously enough, the only reason there was a dispute over the bailout was because the banks bailed out, were investment banks and not commercial. Nowadays the fed does not discriminate between commercial or investment when deciding on a bailout. \nON THE PLUS SIDE we made money on the deal and no one starved to death. The money given to the banks, was not a free loan, and has been paid back with interest. I think GM and a few other companies have yet to pay there portions back, though we've still made money off the entire bailout. \nConsidering the implications, Hank Paulson saved our asses, and yet he's hated all over America. \n\nReference: I'm a graduating finance major with a minor in economics. ", "Don't make the mistake of thinking that the federal government just gave money to banks. Banks were obligated in a number of ways to pay that money back, and so far the government has received [more money](_URL_0_) back from TARP bailouts than it ever loaned out. In fact, the bank/finance portion of TARP has turned about a $28.5 billion profit for the U.S. Treasury. ", "A major role of banks is lending money to businesses so they can expand and create more jobs. If the the major banks collapsed, they would stop lending, meaning business would stop functioning. This would only exacerbate the problems with the economy, so the banks had to take priority to stop a major collapse. Also, banks have more capacity to pay back the loans, as banks generally make a lot of money when they do well, allowing the government to be paid back sooner.", "Everyone has pointed out that there were indeed a lot of programs that helped out home owners with their mortgages. One important fact is that banks essentially *make* money without any being physically there. Here's what I mean:\n\nSay, for example, that there's you, your friend bob, and Mr.Bank. You, being content with what you have, put your money into Mr.Bank for it to gather interest rather than just sit under your mattress doing nothing. Mr.Bank then takes the money you have deposited and loans it to people like Bob, who want to buy houses, pay for school, or a shiny new car. Now, technically, there is essentially twice the amount of money in the system than before, where it would have just sat under your mattress. The \"money\" you have with Mr.Bank, and the money used in investing in the previous things I mentioned.\n\nInvestment, in Macroeconomic models, is an incredibly important factor in determining the amount of production we get in our economy. Without banks, there *is* no investment, because there is no credit availability and nobody giving out loans to smaller businesses, people who want to go to school, etc.", "Because if the banks stop lending a lot more people than just homeowners are going to be under the water. When business is done on an industrial scale there is usually a gap in between when goods are delivered and when they are paid for by a company. If you sell 8000 wigets to staples it is possible that Staples Will not be paying you for one month ( the period if often longer but let's just say a month for an example) during that month you still have to pay all of your overhead costs such as rent, water bill, heating, or electricity. Not to mention all of the employees who have to paid monthly. How do businesses get around this problem? Banks. Banks loan money to businesses and then make a profit doing so. If major banks had gone down it would have affected much more of the economy. The reason that the government bailed out the banks is because of lessons that we learned from previous financial downturns.", "You're right that that would've been a better, less morally corrupt way of doing things, and would've been easier to live with knowing that the banks, who created the mess and fucked everyone (especially the homeowners) over, didn't just get off scott-free, but that's exactly what ended up happening. And it really is because the US system is stacked in their favour, money rules all and that's the truth. The truth also is it was a panic situation when it went down, and bailing out the banks was pretty much the only quick and dirty solution. The banks held all the power there, all of it, even if they were the ones who were hat-in-hand looking for bailouts. Failing to give the bailouts would've resulted in collapse, which would've led to the post-08 recession being much worse than it was. ", "The short of it is that some banks were already going under by the time they got bailed out. These banks were heavily invested into housing, housing had already crashed, and their portfolios had dumped. Investor confidence was at a low not seen since the great depression and there were multiple bank runs (Bears Stearns, Lehman Bros.). Giving money to home owners would have prevented additional forclosures, but would have been more of a mid-term solution. We were literally a day or two away from a total meltdown when we bailed out the banks. The bailout was an emergency measure that had to go straight to the source to prevent additional bank runs. Credit default liability also played a role here, since nobody really knew just how far in the red the banks were or even what banks were at risk.", "Because home owners didn't make significant campaign contributions to politicians.\n", "Why didn't the government give bailouts to renters?", "THEY DID.\n\nThe Government forgave income tax on forgiven mortgage debt. This amounted to a $1 Trillion handout, considering that there was about $4 Trillion in mortgages held by deadbeats.\n", "Nobody seems to be touching on this: fractional reserve banking. Our modern day banks are essentially money printers. By giving money to the banks they can then create 10x that amount in new loans for the economy.", "Between one and five of these gentlemen could have fixed the problem single-handedly without experiencing any significant loss:\n\n_URL_0_", "If homeowners fail, the economy is hurt\n\nIf the banks fail, the economy is GONE.", "As explained elsewhere, they did.\n\nThat said, I think you need an ELI5 for the reason for the bailout - it WAS NOT a result of people not paying their mortgages.\n\nHere goes: The total value of all US sub-prime mortgages peaked at around $1.5T, the bailout was around $9T, all told. Why? Because banks not only bundled and traded bad mortgages and claimed (with the help of ratings agencies) that they were good (AAA), they also bought insurance (called OTC derivatives) on those bad mortgages and then traded those insurance policies on a separate, unregulated market. That market became so big it was estimated to be 6-11 times the size of the stock market.\n\nSo, when the bubble burst, not only did banks have a bunch of overvalued mortgages on their books, they also held derivatives that were only as valuable as the stability of their backer, which in the event of a crash like 2008 meant their value could've been zero (hence an insurance company, AIG, getting a massive bailout package). In addition, since banks felt they'd protected themselves from risk by purchasing these derivatives (insurance), the ratio of what they were lending to what cash they had on hand was much, much higher than it should have been, causing them to be illiquid in the event of a crash.\n\nI'm not sure any 5 year old could ever conceptualize this, but it was worth a try. Further reading below.\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_ ", "What really grinds my gears are the 3 homes on my very small street that sold for $60k below their original price. That absolutely killed my home value and it will take an EXTREMELY long time to not be upside down on my mortgage even after it's paid off. The bail out may have been great for people in trouble but outside of lower interest rates it did nothing for the people who were able to pay their bills and in the end actually hurt them.", "because the banks owned the homes that were being foreclosed on.", "Maybe because the homeowners that defaulted on payments are already proven to no pay back what is owed and bank owners are the ones who are owed the money anyways. And even though they're just as likely (in my opinion) to not pay it back, and can just make money via a central bank. They can actually use the money more 'responsibly'.\n\n_URL_0_", "Because if the problem had just been the underwater homes, it would have been fine.\n\nThe problem, to make a very long story short, is that banks all pacakaged the homes into investment securities called Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). In order to make those securities \"safe\", they were backed up by a form of insurance on those investment securities called Credit Default Swaps (CDS).\n\nBasically, all the banks figured that with enough mortgages bundled together in CDOs, with enough CDS insurance being sold on them, nothing could go wrong and they could make insane amounts of money. Which they did. They assumed that basically the entire housing market wouldn't collapse all at once.\n\nBut when the housing market did go belly up, that meant it wasn't just the value of the houses that was underwater. It meant that all those investment securities were sour, but more importantly that the CDS insurance contracts had to be paid off.\n\nOnly problem is, there was more money owed on the CDS insurance contracts than there is actual money in the world. There was $70 trillion in CDS obligations. Basically, all of Wall Street was screwed infinite times over. And if Wall Street went bankrupt, no more loans of any kind to anyone. And then poof--goodbye economy.\n\nSo the banks had to be bailed out. The problem is that we gave them a blank check, essentially, when we should have done what was necessary then taken them over and/or broke them up into little pieces.", "How much money do homeowners have to pay lobbyists/bribe politicians?", "I got the less popular $7500 first time homebuyers credit of 2008. I have to pay it all back. $500 every tax year for 15 years or pay the remainder of what's due if I make a profit on my house. (Basically an interest free loan). It was a real kick in the dick when they decided to just give away $8000 a year later. Every year I file my taxes I hope the government absolves the debt of those who bought a year early. Spoiler Alert... Not this year.", "Like it or not, the economy would have flat-out failed if the banks died.", "Because of everyone stopped paying interest on their loans, the majority wouldn't take out a second loan and banks would lose money and collapse. It makes more sense to give the banks more money to loan out and drive Americans further into debt according to big business. I don't agree with it because essentially, the pan is to screw me, but I don't have funds to pay a lobbyist boat loads of cash to argue my point like banks do. Probably not the only reason, but it's my opinion and it sounds good in my head. Smdg...", "Because you (homeowners in general) aren't paying your congressman/representative fat stacks of cash to do whatever you want them to do.\n\nAmazing how simple it is when you just cut out all the bullshit rhetoric.", "Because that would not have stabilized anything. ", "Easy. Because if they gave the money to the home-owners, the home-owners would get to keep their homes.\n\nThis way, the banks gets bailed out for the bad loan (ie, no losses).. AND.. they also get your home, which they can sell... and then someday give you another loan, so you can have a place to live.\n\nUnder your scenario, everyone wins. Under the real scenario that happened, the bank wins twice.. and you lose..so, obviously, they're going to go with the latter\n", "Giving bailout directly to the home owners, would be directly rewarding those who made the bad choice of borrowing more than they could afford to pay back. (It's not entirely their fault for making that choice, our culture encourages everyone to borrow as much money as possible, basically so they can sell you more stuff. And the banks allowed them to do it because they're greedy and want the interest.)\n\nIf a bank goes under, on the other hand, anyone who had money in that bank suffers, including people who were smart, and didn't borrow stupidly large amounts of money.\n\nWhile giving money to the bank, doesn't teach the bank any lessons... it at least protect those homeowners who made better choices from becoming collateral damage.", "Because individual homeowners don't lobby.", "The problem with the financial crisis is that banks bundled and sold mortgages, in the hundreds or thousands. They were rated, via moody's or standard and poore's rating agencies. \n\nWhen other financial agencies or banks buy these products they don't go through each loan and scrutenize it. They rely on the ratings, that work should have already been done and the ratings should be a decent indication of the quality of the bundles, and something that should be reasonably reliable. After all, that is the point of the ratings. \n\nWith a slowing economy, that followed a housing boom and low lending rates and shoddy lending practices (lending to people who had no business buying a house, or lending more than they could afford, sometimes > 100% of the homes value!) banks were suddenly left holding mortgages that were underwater and falling even more underwater as housing values declined. \n\nThey were toxic, they were illiquid, they were left with no other choice but to just write the investments down, or essentially completely off, crippling the financial industry and would have caused massive failures throughout the country and world.\n\nWith respect to individual homeowners, they took out the loans, and with instances where the full value or close to it was borrowed they can and often did end up underwater. However, this is not toxic, it essentially locks the homeowner to the home long term. They would and have often reversed that over time with continued payments. \n\nThe government picked the worse of two birds to bail out. I didn't support TARP, but neither would I support bailing out people who borrowed more than they could afford with ARM's and Balloon payment mortgages. They had every opportunity to understand what they are doing. Plus, how do you go about deciding who gets money and how much?\n\nIf I bought a 200k house with 100k down and 2 years later I now owe 95k and my house is worth 150k. I am not underwater, but my house is worth far less and I am going to take a large hit if I chose to sell the house.\n\nMy neighber though, they bought that same house at the same time for 200k. They borrowed the full 200k plus the 10k in closing costs. Now their home is worth 150k, and the owe 205k. They;re underwater. If they sell they're still going to be in the hole and would likely have to work out a short sale with the bank if they wanted out ASAP.\n\nWhy does situation B deserve any money versus person A? We pay for irresponsibility now? Insane.\n\n*Before you jump down my throat about how I am pro-corporate blah blah and I hate people blah, please remember this line: ***I didn't support TARP**", "I don't really agree with the reasoning. I bought in 2005, when the market was peaking here. I made every mortgage payment, but was house poor. Thanks for that buying advice, internet/real estate agent/finance gurus. Due to some homeowner issues (maintenance I couldn't afford), my housing value fell to where I couldn't get it refinanced. I'm still in the house. The value is still in the toilet. But thank GOD the banks were saved. They should have been allowed to fail and the mortgages they had no business giving out should have been absolved. Or better yet, take all that wonderful stimulus money and apply it to my mortgage to help bring me back out from underwater so I can refinance. Get me back to discretionary income levels and I'll spend it on the economy. (IMO) No, instead we just propped back up a bad business model: a housing correction is bound to happen again.", "This thread is just hundreds of people give hundreds of alternative, conflicting answers to OP's question.\n\nCant we just admit that most of us, if not **all of us**, do not know what the hell we are talking about beyond what we're repeating from media and people claiming to be experts? \n\nEconomics may as well be magic. ", "I was not underwater. I worked hard, saved and paid 50% down on my mortgage. ($100,000). Then I was badly injured and couldn't work for 4 years. I have been unable to get hired at a full time job ever since (I am currently 18 months behind on Payments). A judge ordered the insurance settlement from the accident be split between three victims instead of each victim getting a separate settlement. The settlement share wasn't enough to stop foreclosure on my home. I applied for mortgage help through two different government plans. I didn't qualify for either one. The mortgage bailouts were only for the so called \"sub prime\" victims and victims of what was termed mortgage fraud where payments were allegedly mismanaged or misdirected by certain banks. There was no help for those of us who did everything right and got behind through no fault of our own. I sued to gain time but it is only a delaying tactic. I will be homeless in 3 months. I will lose everything I worked so hard for and still no job. ", "The bailout was done to stop a bank run on the major banks. \n\nThe story is, the banks were deregulated in the 90s from having to keep provisions for the loans being made, this allowed for cheaper loans without increasing the inflation rate. This built up into an asset bubble which fed back into the valuation of the banks, this caused exuberant optimism in house prices, leading to lowering of lending standards.\n\nWhen the bubble burst, the balance sheets readjusted, we realised the banks no longer held enough money to stop a bank run. Failstop solution was to bail the banks to stop creditors calling on the bank and collapsing the system.\n\nEven if the mortgages were purchased by the government, the bank run would have still collapsed the system." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/21/news/economy/fannie-profit-bailout/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20pti6/eli5why_didnt_the_federal_government_give_bailout/cg5n0r8" ], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/11/24/us-citigroup-idUSTRE4AJ45G20081124" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Blogs/TFTalk/2014/01/02/TARP-Profitable-Bank-Bailout-Keeps-Giving" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://imgur.com/Ys7lVf9" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivatives_market" ], [], [], [ "http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/26/citi-jet-purchase-50-mill_n_160807.html" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "crvprm3" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Grass is very high in chlorophyll, the green ***pigment*** that captures light from the sun and turns it into energy. Wood contains very little chlorophyll." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgvhxp2" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Evolution- all the babies that reached out for the breast and obtained nutrients grew quickly and strong. The ones that didn't grew more slowly, weak, and died before the ones that got more milk. The ones that naturally were better at sucking for milk had children, and the same cycle happened. It is essential for survival. After thousands of generations, the human brain developed an involuntary skill to do this. It is simply programmed subconsciously into all human brains.\n\nEDIT: the same thing goes for any animal, with any essential instinct." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cij9xkv" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I'm going to remove this, as it's not really an ELI5 question. \n\n > ELI5 is for requests for easy-to-follow explanations of complex concepts and subjects. That means no questions that are just looking for straightforward answers, *that are subjective*, a request for a guide/walkthrough, or that are objective but not asking for an explanation of an answer. ELI5 is absolutely not a repository for any question you have." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dc6m61u" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Steam power is grossly inefficient compared to a combustion engine. And internal engines are much safer than external engines." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cshxz16", "cshz5bv", "csi0my2", "csi2cyb", "csidkxj" ], "score": [ 12, 33, 5, 10, 4 ], "text": [ "Facebook has the profile number saved in the photo name. If you renamed the photo they would be unable to tell. There's also the exif data which is what your device adds to photos such as when and sometimes where it was taken, whether it was modified, etc. It's not terribly difficult", "There are multiple tools. Reverse searching allows you to find where the photo has been. EXIF data in images allows you to see photo metadata (information about the photo like what camera took the photo). There can also be some social engineering like gathering information you find. It's kind of like putting a puzzle together. \n\nIf I were to find a picture of anon's Facebook profile, I could put it in Google's reverse image search engine and it could link me to anon's Steam account (for example, if he used the same photo) and he could have info of where he lived or other things like that.\n\nDoxing isn't *too* hard.", "Doxing isn't too hard.\n\nIt requires you to have just a general clue or vague information about that person, and then just to know how to search and filter out the noise. \n\nUsually it happens that someone recognises a familiar reference point, around which you are able to work. While it is possible for one person to dox, it is really much easier to let a group of people / hivemind work it out. \n\nThe other thing is that people leave a large unique footprint on the Internet, even if they try to avoid it. By unknowingly releasing such info (even by others, not just that person) it is possible to work it out like a jigsaw puzzle and find out things about them. \n\nPractice makes perfect, and friends make it easier. ", "Because people are completely clueless about:\n\n1) how much data they are willingly giving to web services that they can make public\n\n2) how much those companies track them\n\nAll they need to do is get that data from those companies. Many people say \"I don't have anything to hide\" - until something like that actually happens to them, and *then* they realize just *how much* they care about privacy.", "I've seen a couple of varieties, but the basic skill is the same. Find something connecting the photo to another account. \n\nFirst, you look for \"Metadata\". Metadata is extra stuff other than the primary information in a file. For instance, if a file's primary info is a photo, metadata will be \"EXIF\" data, which typically has things like make/model of camera, date and time photo was taken, etc. \n\nMost cell phones, when you take a picture, will add the GPS coordinates to the photo as well. You take a photo with your phone from home with that enabled? Boom, I can now figure out where you live in minutes. \n\nFortunately, due to a lot of publicity about this, many phones have this option disabled by default now. Still, doesn't hurt to check. \n\nStill, other data buried there might be useful. My camera, for instance, adds a bunch of photo related stuff - make, model, date, time, lens used, shutter speed, ISO, flash settings... but it also adds some copyright stuff. When I first set the camera up, it asked me for a name. That name is tagged onto every image shot under a \"Copyright\" field. In theory that's supposed to make it easier for me to track if people are stealing my images. But since I used my username - sgtkashim - pulling that out of one of my photos and googling it would lead you back to my profile. I usually strip all metadata before I publish a photo. \n\nAlong with metadata, the filename is sometimes useful. If you save a photo *from* facebook, the filename is based on your profile number. A file that hasn't been renamed makes it a cinch to get back to the original profile. \n\nSecond, reverse image search. You can use a service like tineye or similar to see if an image is posted *anywhere else on the internet*. Let's imagine you post an image on your OKCupid profile. You like the picture, so you put it on Facebook too. Reverse image search will find those links. Your facebook profile is usually a gold-mine for find out more about you. \n\nThird, you can look at the photo itself. One of the best I've seen, someone posted a photo of themselves. Behind them, on the table, was an envelope. The photo had enough resolution to zoom in and pull a name address off the envelope. Tada. \n\nFourth, username re-use. Many people use the same username on many many websites. I made the mistake of giving mine to Facebook, for instance. This created a link between the user on the internet, and my real identity. In many cases, simply googling someone's username is enough to find all kinds of things about them. From there you can follow a trail of email addresses and usernames back. \n\n\nActual PERSEC on the net is a hugely difficult thing to do right. \n\n\nThen the question becomes - what do they do with it?\n\nOnce someone has a real-world name, they can make your life very difficult. Studying your facebook profile and available public records stuff, they can often find enough detail to guess your security questions. That gives them access to your email accounts, maybe amazon and netflix. Amazon and Netflix give them enough detail to get some credit card info - even if it's just the last 4 digits - which is enough to call Apple and get your iCloud password reset. Once they iCloud password is reset, they can remote wipe your i-devices. That's not a hyperbole, either - that one actually happened. Their real goal was to steal his twitter feed - he was a journalist for Wired with a pretty good twitter following - and put up some very racist posts in a very public place. They wiped his computer and phone to make sure he wouldn't catch on until it was too late to do anything about it. [Details here](_URL_0_). \n\nMaybe they dig up news articles about you, or find past criminal records, or... who knows. Anyway, point is - we give out *WAAAAAAYYYYY* more data than we realize, and it absolutely can be used to hurt us. " ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7xnjfd", "c7xnl4x", "c7xociy", "c7xs7ew" ], "score": [ 4, 21, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Cats can be overstimulated by petting. Some cats are more sensitive to this than others. \n\n_URL_0_", "The truth is that no one *really* understands *why* cats purr. Cats mostly purr when they're happy, but sometimes when they're sad or angry or in a lot of pain, they purr then too, and we don't really understand why. Mommy cats who are having kittens sometimes purr when they are having the kittens, which presumably hurts a reasonable amount. So just because your cat is purring, it doesn't always mean it's because its happy and then suddenly angry at you.\n\nWe also have to remember that cats act differently with each other than they do with people, but sometimes cat behavior comes into their interactions with people too. When cats get together in \"feral\" (that means they have no owners) groups, sometimes they communicate with each other by licking each other. When they're licking, sometimes they bite each other to get knots in each other's hair out, and it's considered kind of a \"love nip\" - they do it because they're being friendly, not because they're mad at you, although biting you to tell you he loves you does seem kind of silly. We also have to realize that kitties play with each other by play fighting, and that often includes scratches and bites - your kitty may simply be trying to play with you! Also, as Mrs_Cake says, sometimes you can pet your kitty too much and they get tired of it. Sometimes they just want to sit quietly in your lap without being patted or rubbed.\n\nUltimately, cats are small versions of vicious hunters we keep as pets in our homes, and sometimes we can't fully explain animal behavior. If your cat is purring in your lap when you're petting it and suddenly scratches you, he could have a lot of different reasons for doing so. Play biting is normal and can be a sign of affection. Serious scratches might mean that kitty didn't like the way you were petting him and has no other way to tell you so other than scratching you and running away. Light scratches might mean that kitty thinks you're trying to play with him.\n\nBut if kitty always comes back at the end of the day, you can rest assured he still loves you. ", "You could also potentially be hitting a sensitive or sore area of the cat while petting them. \n\nFor example, my two cats are both fixed, and if you rub their stomach area (even 6 years later) the wrong way, they will nip in warning. If you keep pushing, they'll scratch and run away. But they love having their stomach rubbed, just in the right way.\n\nPay close attention to a cat while touching them. If their tail starts flickering over the place or they're squirming, those are warning signs. It's very easy to pick up on them once you know what you're looking for, but a lot of the time these signs are misinterpreted. \n\nThis could also happen as the cat ages and gets arthritis or if the cat has ever had an injury. Watch for the triggers and if you see it's a consistent area, have that area checked by a vet.\n\nTypically sensitive areas in my experience are the stomach and tail, and sometimes the top of their head.", "What are you doing when the cat turns vicious? Where is the cat?" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.littlebigcat.com/behavior/overstimulation-petting-related-aggression/" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d84a076", "d84a451" ], "score": [ 7, 14 ], "text": [ "Same way they make socks. The stitching machine is tubular. Either you can say: There isn't one seam or the entire shirt is seam", "Cloth can be woven or knitted as a tube instead of a sheet. [Here](_URL_0_) is an example for a circular knitting machine." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cch5MuIQKHk" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dhjt6ir" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "There are several fundamental development stages, from in utero (while still in the womb!) to late infancy and early childhood that are critical for attachment style development. If any one of those stages is interrupted, or the mother or primary caregiver is inadequate in their response to the infant, this will lead to dependency issues (commitment or over commitment, we would call it \"being clingy\") later on in life, compounded by any failure of later development stages. For example, an under-responsive mother or primary caregiver at birth, during the mirroring stage, will lead the child to have abandonment issues. Put more in 5 year old terms: If mom doesn't come when you cry, doesn't give you loving attention, ignores you, that can \"mess a kid up\". Overbearing or overly responsive primary caregivers can cause retreat as well, but the behavior of the child can be intercepted or interrupted at many stages. For example, if during the separation stage of development, the primary caregiver doesn't let the child individuate, or push themselves to be independent (\"No! I do it!\"), they can develop commitment issues, feel suffocated.\n\nAlthough commitment issues can, of course, develop from adult faulty relationships, or appear to, it can theoretically be traced back to that.\n\nThe attachment style we generally attribute to someone having \"commitment issues\" is called \"Avoidant\" in attachment theory. Relationships will feel suffocating to them if, for instance, the primary caregiver was more interested in getting attention FROM the child than giving it TO the child. There's a lot of variables, OP, but basically commitment issues come from 1) poor infancy and childhood development stages involving connection and independence and/or 2) adult traumatic relationship experience.\n\nNot a professional just know a lot about this." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dqq8l4f", "dqqsgnv" ], "score": [ 7, 6 ], "text": [ "Removing the regulatory body allows illegal activites to operate in the open. The slavery industry always existed but without a practical government they can operate in the open now.", "It wasn't so much the death of Gaddafi as it was the failure to form a stable government to replace his rule. This idea that you can remove a dictator and \"the people\" will replace him with a democracy seems to have been one of the USA's ideological blind spots in recent decades. You got better results when doing the opposite: replacing democratic governments with dictators, as in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile." ] }

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