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[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does the U.S. support a dictatorial government in Yemen (a country under sharia law), denouncing the rebels, but has the exact opposite stance in Syria?"
] | Because every geopolitical move America makes is based on either money, or power. Ideals dont even factor. If your totalitarian dictator supports American hegemony, he will get weapons and support, if your democratically elected secular government challenges us or sides with a rival, all of a sudden rebel separatist forces will get mysterious influx of money and guns and will destabilize your region/overthrow your leaders, and everything in between. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Moore's Law - Does computing power really double every 18 months? Will this ever plateau out?"
] | I think it has already plateaued out - and it not likely to continue to increase at a ridiculous pace like it did in the 90/2000's a couple of reasons for this: 1. Size/Heat - In order to continue to make their products faster and more powerful, they had to make the products either smaller and/or figure out a better way to distribute/reduce heat. 2. Cost/benefit analysis - at some point - the cost associated with designing/manufacturing products that will show a smaller speed increase does not outweigh the additional cost associated with said product. 3. Feasibility vs need - Even though the industry would be able to continue to make products faster/more powerful, at this time what we have is working pretty well and there really aren't that many products that need that increased speed/computing power enough to justify the associated costs. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"If a person was shrunk down to fit in the palm of one's hand, would their voice become high-pitched like in it does in movies?"
] | I would imagine so. Itty bitty vocal folds and all that. To quote from [Wikipedia](_URL_0_): The perceived pitch of a person's voice is determined by a number of different factors, most importantly the fundamental frequency of the sound generated by the larynx. The fundamental frequency is influenced by the ***length, size, and tension of the vocal folds.*** This frequency averages about 125 Hz in an adult male, 210 Hz in adult females, and over 300 Hz in children. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What's the difference between a battery pack in series and a battery pack in parallel?( Please forgive my stupidity)"
] | A cell has 2 properties, voltage and current. Having multiple cells in series increases the voltage provided by the battery but doesn't effect the current. Having multiple cells in parallel increases the current provided by the battery but doesn't change the voltage. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why are personal aircraft so expensive? Is it parts/construction or is it because it's a luxury item?"
] | A few reasons, the main one being FAA certification and relatively low volume. Similar to like how all cars must be crash tested on the road and how safety items on your car must have NHTSA certification all the expensive parts of an airplane who's failure could lead to a crash require FAA certification. This is one of the aviation industry's biggest complaints; FAA certification holds back technological advances. Most general aviation aircraft (what most people think of when you say Cessna) are flying with 50 year old engine designs and manual control. We can't get modern fuel injection or ignition systems because no one wants to spend time to develop a new system and pay hundreds of thousands for FAA certification. The other part is maintenance, it's like owning a Ferrari. There's lots of scheduled maintenance that needs to be done |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How is PewDiePie so widely popular, despite many people claiming to hate him?"
] | He appeals mostly to a younger demographic than you probably associate with. There are a fuckton of 13 year olds on Earth so Pewdiepie can have huge viewership while still being hated by everyone over 21 (which isn't even the case). |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do a lot of the elderly wear pastel/beige colours ?"
] | The elderly generally aren't clothes-horses like us when we are younger because they don't have to go to work or social events every day. So they generally have less selection in their clothes. Pastels and beiges are a somewhat bright and cheery and clean-looking but not over-the-top way of comfortably dressing day after day for just about every informal occasion. When you don't have, need or want a thousand outfits, those colours are good choices for most occasions, particularly in places that they like to retire to where there's warmer and sunnier weather and where dark colours would be a lot hotter. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do we grab our heads when something goes wrong?"
] | It's body language. It's the same reason you may cross your arms when angry or scratch your chin when in deep thought. Humans move their bodies when communicating because it helps "ease the mental effort when communication is difficult", but I don't have a source for that. In fact, there are even some that say a majority of our communication is non-verbal. That is we put more weight on subtle facial expressions or hand gestures than we do language. Note: Sorry I'm on my phone and can't really find you a good source, but just Google body language, non-verbal communication or Kinesics. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How can Disney celebrate 100 years of magic if the company started in 1923?"
] | Fun answer: Because magic. Real answer: [Because they started celebrating in 2001.](_URL_0_) Ain't no party like a Disney party, because a Disney party is contractually obligated to never end. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why are humans completely dependent on their guardians for so long?"
] | There are two primary reasons: 1 At Birth) If we waited until our brains were developed enough to walk and do a bunch of other stuff, our heads wouldn't be able to pass through the birth canal. Our heads are really big relative to our bodies. 2 During childhood)We also just have a lot more to learn because we are capable of so much more. Why hasn't this been handled in other ways? Because evolution doesn't make any animal perfect; it makes an animal good enough to survive. Clearly we are good enough to survive. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do dogs use their back foot to scratch their ear instead of their front foot?"
] | Several reasons: Torque. Back legs on quadrupedal animals like dogs are very strong, as they're used to push off during a sprint. The back leg can scratch harder than front legs. Angle. Most dogs can barely get their front paws over their snout, making putting them places like behind their head out of the question. The back legs, on the other hand, can scratch far more areas, at least on the front half of the body. For the bottom half, dogs bite. Quadrapeds! Unlike humans, dogs aren't particularly dexterous with their front paws. They don't have fingers or thumbs like we do, so there tends to be less of a preference for using their front paws unless they really need them. You're thinking of this from the perspective of a 5 year old human who uses his or her hands for everything and generally only uses feet for walking. Dogs walk and are mostly equally dexterous with all four paws. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"what's the deal with the Holy trinity? Why is it still monotheistic?"
] | The Trinity distinguishes between persons and beings, or in layman terms one what and three who's. God is one what (being) with three who's (persons). Each person is 100% God, co-equal (of equal power) and co-eternal (having existed forever). One person is not 1/3 of God because God is infinite and it is impossible to divide infinity into 3. The three persons are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is unseen in heaven, the Son is the image of the Father, and the Holy Spirit works among believers. There is no appropriate analogy because God is unique and thus there is nothing in creation which can accurately describe him. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is it that in the 1900s and up into the early 2000s there were a lot of bands that were \"number one\" for years at a time but now there are seemingly more one hit wonders."
] | It's the way people buy music now. In the 90's, etc people bought albums. Now people buy single songs. It's a much shallower experience and the interest doesn't last as long. People are much more likely to gravitate to the next one hit wonder. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is black and white considered as \"no color\"?"
] | Cameras were not filming in the black and white colors, they where basically filming the absence or presence of light. No color could be said as no definable color, as in it shows all or none of the colors, but not a distinctive color from the light spectrum. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does Universal Studios theme parks have \"The Wizarding World of Harry Potter\" when Harry Potter is produced by Warner Brothers? What kind of deals had to happen here to deal with trademarks etc?"
] | WB owns the film rights. The IP belongs to JK Rowling. Rowling originally went to Disney to add the Harry Potter park to Disney's parks. But Disney didn't want to give Rowling as much say in the park creation as she wanted. Universal did, so they got the park. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is it so easy to fall asleep in upright position in a brightly lit lecture hall?"
] | Going because you have to as opposed to wanting to / Hungover / Sleep deprived / Droning voice going on and on and on / Uninteresting subject pick and choose out of any of those. It's possible to sleep in an upright position in almost any circumstance. Just don't fall asleep resting on your raised arm/hand. Bad stuff can happen if you do that. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What does it really mean when a famous person/public figure gets an \"honorary doctorate?\" Is it actually worth anything, or just a kind gesture?"
] | It's only meant to be a gesture. Universities generally note that the recipient can add the letters after their name, but should not use the title Dr. except in interactions with the school that granted the degree. Most honorary degrees are specially titled along the lines of LL.D (Doctor of Laws) or Sc.D. (Doctor of Science) so as to avoid confusion with an earned degree (Ph.D, J.D., M.D., and so on.) So: * John Smith, who studied music composition at a university and got a high-level degree, becomes Dr. Smith or John Smith, D.M.A (Doctor of Musical Arts.) * Jane Doe, who studied music theory at the same university, becomes Dr. Doe or Jane Doe, Ph.D * Edward Kennedy Ellington, who did not study music formally but made enormous contributions to the field, was awarded several honorary doctorates, and became Edward Kennedy Ellington, D. Mus, but not Dr. Ellington. His title of "Duke" is arguably honorary, but I would consider it more meaningful than any title of nobility. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Hypothetically speaking, what would happen if nobody voted this election?"
] | Then democracy would lose. If the public was able to send a message that strong to the government then I think they'd focus on reforming our political system. Or Donald Trump would just buy his way into office. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why don't downloaded games, burnt to DVDs work on the Xbox 360 etc?"
] | Xbox games have a special key and protection mechanism burnt onto the discs that only the xbox disc drive can unlock. A random burnt dvd will not pass this test. **ELI5**: Xbox does a handshake with the disc before it will load a game. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How do you Depressurize a compartment, say you're in space and you want to go outside without losing all your precious air."
] | You suit up enter the air lock seal it, then you pump the air that's in the airlock into a tank so you're in vacuum, then you open the outer doors. Once you are back from spacewalk, seal outer door. Slowly empty holding tank to repressurize the air lock, the open inner door. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why people are so upset that Ford is switching the body material of the F-150 to aluminum from steel"
] | Aluminum doesn't play well into the machismo aspect of truck ownership. Its the stuff your wife uses to cover her egg salad. In contrast steel or iron conjure images of sweaty hammer swinging riveters. Also change is really hard for some people. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How can YouTube channels that post music, make money by posting someone else's song on their channel?"
] | Maybe : - they asked for permission. - they take down the video if the author ask. - they are sharing the money with the author. - the author doesn't care. Free advertisement. Could be any of those. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is Random Number Generation so important for IT security?"
] | I'm thinking of an ATM PIN. What number am I thinking of? If you can guess it, you can access my checking account. It's like guessing a password. If I use a system to generate my ATM PIN that seems random, but can actually be reproduced (like taking my birthday and scrambling the order of the digits), someone could figure out the system I use to generate PINs and guess only a few times before discovering it. Randomly generated passwords are related to randomly generated numbers. Computers generate pseudorandom numbers with a lazy function called Rand() or something like it that use the time that the function is called to generate a number. This is like creating an ATM PIN with your birthday. It can be guessed if you know enough of the other pseudorandom numbers the system generated. Even perfect security - like one time pads - rely on truly randomly generated passcodes. If the code isn't randomly generated, nothing is secure. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Leverage (in regards to finance)"
] | Leverage is borrowing money. Borrowed money in finance is normally used to put it to more productive uses (profit, in part, comes from the difference in returns between what you used the borrowed money to produce and the cost of borrowing it). More leverage means more profits (but also more risk that a change in the value of your assets will make your firm worth less than it owes). A simple example is perhaps there exists a city with no hot dog stands. Each hot dog stand license costs $500,000 and earns $1,000 per week. If an investor has $500,000 he could of course get one license and make $1,000 or he could borrow $2 million (at 6%) and get 5 licenses (his earnings would be $2700 per week after paying the interest). If the city later reduces the license fee to $400,000 in the first case, he's lost $100,000, but in the second case, he's lost all of his investment (his five licenses are worth exactly what he's borrowed). |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does listening to your favorite song over and over eventually make you hate it?"
] | Music is art. And one of the things that make art so relevant and great is the element of surprise. Everyone likes a little surprise in their music. So the more predictable (or memorized), the less you can experience the joy of this element of surprise. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why are humans attracted to the foreign?"
] | Biologically, animals are attracted to members outside their clan to increase their gene diversity. It decreases the odds that your children would be born with 2 recessive genes for any trait. If humans didn't keep records or strong family ties, and you just met the cute girl down the street that looks similar to you, how would you be sure she wasn't your second cousin? |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Pressurized staircase in hotel?"
] | It means that fan pumps air into the stairwell. This is a fire evacuation safety measure, so that if you open the door from your burning corridor into the stairwell, the positive air pressure will push the smoke back allowing you to escape and close the door. It means that holding the door open will cause people's lives to be lost, and the sign is supposed to be telling you not to do that. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"So how do you actually \"live off the interest\" if you come across a large sum of money or win the lottery?"
] | > Do you just hire a financial advisor or go to an investment bank and assume your tons of money will grow steadily over time? Most people would do this, yes. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How coding differs in asia (using characters and reading top-down"
] | Programming languages are usually not localized. That is, someone writing code in Java will write the same words in the same direction no matter what human language they may speak. Even computing languages developed in Asia (like Ruby) typically follow Western conventions of characters and word orientation. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why are a lot of people scared of dolls/mannequins, or other humanoid-shaped things?"
] | For dolls/mannequins, it is called the uncanny valley. Basically, everything that tries to emulate a human being will have its flaws look monstrous to some people. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does a headache disappear after like 3 hours of sleep but it doesn't when you are 3 hours awake?"
] | Headaches have a myriad of different causes. Some are related to the food you've eaten, or something you have had to drink. Some headaches are caused due to constriction of blood vessels which can cause a headache to get more acute when walking around due to an elevated blood pressure. When you sleep, your body relaxes and your blood pressure is lessened which will cause some headaches to lessen. If a headache is caused by dehydration, the body will attempt to alleviate the defecit by drawing water from tissues that store it which can occur at a faster rate when the body is at rest. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do engineers use I-beams when the triangle is the strongest shape."
] | I-beams are intended to span between columns, so they specifically need to be optimised to handle *bending*. When a beam (any beam) is loaded, it bends in the middle, and its internal stress varies between max tension at the bottom and max compression at the top. It turns out that the most efficient way of handling that is to have essentially all the steel at the top and bottom, and reduce the webbing (the bit in between) to the minimum necessary to hold it together. If the webbing is overstressed, it gives a little and transfers the stress to the top or bottom anyway. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How can an odor be contained?"
] | An odor is a series of particles dispersed in the air that land in your nose and dissolve on your epithelium in your nose, which then signals the brain about what just dissolved on it, which is what we perceive as smells. So, anything that can contain particles dispersed in air can contain an odor. It would have to be an airtight, imoermwable container. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do many pictures from the black and white era look high definition?"
] | Because they're analog, and not taken by a crappy cell phone camera. Actual, real, photographic film is as high a definition as it gets. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How does laser eye surgery work?"
] | Laser eye surgery cuts a small flap of your cornea to start. Then, ultraviolet light is used to reshape the inner surface of the cornea, correcting the curvature. The result allows the image to be correctly focused on the retina. [Souce](_URL_0_) |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How do homeless people survive snowy winters?"
] | In many areas, homeless shelters and other charitable organizations open more beds in the winter time. Some may "fly south." Any form of shelter, even unheated, can provide relief from winter weather; many will squat in abandoned buildings. Also, just because a person is homeless doesn't mean they are without heavy clothing or well-made sleeping bags, many of which are designed for use in sub-zero conditions. Truthfully, snowy winters are easier to survive than low-precipitation winters, because snow itself can serve as insulation from winter weather. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"why do you get nightmares when you're feet are uncovered?"
] | This sounds very much like confirmation bias. Unless you can provide some evidence that this phenomena exists, it would be hard to explain it. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"how long would it take to breed a almost truly intelligent animal?"
] | Actually a lot of dogs are smarter than wolves. But when we breed animals we're usually not aiming for intelligence. Smarter things are cool and all but they're smart - they need intellectual stimulation, they break shit and mess around and don't listen to you and manipulate you because they're smart and it's beneficial. We have dumb lazy couch potato dogs and smart dogs who need extensive training not to screw around. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why did the ruins of Rome and Greece become \"ruins\"?"
] | Long term exposure to the elements with no one repairing the structure and in some cases people actually breaking up and taking stone away for building materials. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is Fantasy Football and how does it work?"
] | It's a (seconardy) game that piggybacks off of the actual NFL games. A bunch of people get together, and "draft" their prefered players, from anywhere in the league. When the real teams play, the 'drafted' players points are tallied, like how many yards did they run, how many touchdowns did that player make or throw. Those tallies are weighted, so that touchdown catches are worth more than running yards, then the weighted points of various football actions are added together and a score results. Compare scores to the other fantasy participants, and wallah you have a fantasy football game. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is that strange feeling of numbness we get when we wake up in the middle of the night?"
] | Yer probably describin' the physical consequences of *sleep paralysis.* Yarr! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Sleep Paralysis ](_URL_6_) 1. [ELI5: Sleep paralysis and why it happens. ](_URL_5_) 1. [ELI5: Sleep Paralysis ](_URL_7_) 1. [ELI5: Sleep paralysis? ](_URL_2_) 1. [ELI5: How does sleep paralysis work and why does it happen? ](_URL_4_) 1. [ELI5: Sleep paralysis ](_URL_0_) 1. [ELI5: What happens during sleep paralysis? ](_URL_1_) 1. [ELI5: What does Sleep paralysis feel like? What happens during it? ](_URL_3_) |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"why all the big leaks, even from 2016, look like they have been typed on a typewriter? Surely in this day and age, there must be more modern font than a typewriter."
] | It's because they use a monospace font. That means every letter takes up the same amount of space (instead of "l" taking up less room than "W"). The emails were not sent in that font. The text was extracted and styled with that font. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How do blind people dream?"
] | In the case of people who are born blind, they just dream as they see the world normally. So they just dream in terms of sounds, touch, and smells. How people dream is based on the maximum sight they had, for example if someone has bad eyesight or goes blind later in life, but they did have normal eyesight at some point, their dreams will be in normal eyesight. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"why do we usually say \"ow\" when we hurt ourselves?"
] | Short answer is both social conditioning (we grew up hearing other people saying it, so we mimic it) as well as vocalizations actually helping to reduce pain. Studies have shown that verbal expressions, especially swearing, actually reduce pain. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is a Sociopath?"
] | If you hurt somebody else, then you will feel bad because you feel their pain. If your bunny gets its leg hurt, you feel bad because you feel its pain. Somebody who is a sociopath doesn't feel others pain and so can sometimes do things that are very, very horrible with feeling bad about it. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Would a cell phone work in space?"
] | The main problem would be heat. Cell phones passively cool themselves via the air, but there's a distinct lack of air in space, so despite the near 0C temperatures in space, without a way to get rid of heat (apart from blackbody radiation), the phone would overheat. If you could cool it, then it should function. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"The current stock market situation and crash."
] | [This is a long overdue correction, IMO. If you look at a chart over decades rather than the last week or month or year, you will see nothing out of the ordinary. Click "max" and look at that chart. You will see that the stock market is doing quite well, thank you.](_URL_0_{"range":"max","allowChartStacking":true}) |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Is light produced from a light bulb the same as the light produced by the sun?"
] | Yes. Actually its extremely similar in that both emit a continuous spectrum that is called [black body radiation](_URL_0_) as contrasted to eg. LED lights that only produce spikes at certain wavelengths. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is cardio? What is actually happening as I get better at running?"
] | Increased blood volume, stronger muscles (that are also more efficient and durable), and slightly reshaped bones are three of the things that you get from training that make you better at cardio. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How did climate change, a natural, scientific issue, become a political issue? Furthermore, how does acceptance of it support the liberal agenda and go against the conservative agenda?"
] | If "climate change was real" it would force companies to spend money to stop them from accelerating climate change. So, this is a matter of cherry picking data in order to make money. In the US, the left is typically pro-environment and pro-regulation (to that end), and the right is pro-business, anti-regulation, and anti-science (that doesn't conform with what they want). This makes it political. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does my stomach growl more in class than when Im home all day if im starving at both places?"
] | Your stomach can sense the stomachs of other people and has to show its dominance. So it makes loud growling noises to show that you are the alpha stomach and you are not to be messed with. Also, your stomach will growl more when you are out on a date in a quite movie theater as a sort of mating call. Its a primal instinct. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do adults and teens have differently shaped knee caps?"
] | Hi, there. I thought maybe I could chime in here, as I know a thing or two about the subject. Knee caps do not change shape with age. Source: I am an adult and I know how bones work. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do drums hold 55 gallons?"
] | A standard drum is actually designed to hold 200 litres (a nice round number) with a little air space on top. That works out to about 55 gallons. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is a smart and dumb friendship duo of two people always portrayed on TV?"
] | At least in TV land, usually the "dumb" person is the audience stand in. They ask questions the audience night want to know the answers to which gives the smart person a reason to explain what they're talking about in a way that TV viewing audiences can understand (see Bones, Big Bang Theory, Fringe, Eureka as just a few examples off the top of my head). It's useful, but can be a particularly annoying trope when the subject is not really that hard to understand for anybody with a tenth grade education. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is flexibility attractive in women?"
] | nope its all about the sex, for me its just the idea of what it means is on the table for us to be able to do. I may be able to try new positions with a more flexible partner. Is it a huge deal? no, but its enough to get a few thoughts rushing through my head. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is the US tax code so exploitable?"
] | It's set up so that the government isn't taxing you for things that they shouldn't. It's up to you to declare the things that are "immune" to being taxed. Some people are more savvy when it comes to discovering these things, and it can appear as an exploit to those who don't understand. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does medicine taken under the tongue enter the blood stream faster?"
] | Under the tongue, there are a large number of blood vessels/capillaries. There, the drugs can enter your bloodstream without going through your digestive system. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"The important differences between republican and democrat?"
] | Republicans want government involvement in social issues, democrats want it in economic issues. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"why is 42°C concidered a fatal temperature for humans, are components overheating like in a computer?"
] | Components heating like in a computer is a good analogy... there are many things going wrong in your body at this temperature but one of the key things is your body is full of complicated biological molecules called _enzymes_ which control all the chemical reactions that keep us alive. Enzymes are made out of protein and above a certain temperature they start to change so that they no longer work. We can see proteins changing with temperature when we're heating meat in a pan and it changes smell and colour. We're literally starting to cook inside at these temperatures. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is a homeowners association and why can't they give you orders on what your house/garden should look like?"
] | HOAs are typically started by a developer who owns a big group of properties they're selling off. Essentially, when anyone buys a house in their development, they agree to join and abide by the HOA as a part of their purchase contract. Once a certain number of homes are sold, the developer typically turns the HOA over to the directors, who are generally home owners in the area. The purpose from the developer's viewpoint is to prevent people who have recently bought into a community from doing anything annoying or stupid that will make the remainder of the homes more difficult to sell. Home owners tend to like them because it prevents their neighbors from doing anything annoying or stupid that will bring down their property value. They are controversial because they are not a government body, can be undemocratic, occasionally enable abuse by the directors, and basically levy a second property tax. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How do snipers work in pairs?"
] | sniper scout teams work in pairs. a spotter and a shooter. the shooter's role is to focus on the target and making the shot. the spotter's role is to provide a broader field of view, determine windage, elevation, calculate distance to field markers, provide wide view intel, as well as covering the shooter. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What happens when you're knocked out/become unconscious?"
] | What you experience, or physiologically? In terms of experience, I've passed out twice from an injection-induced vasovagal syncope. I'm not afraid of needles, they just make me pass out for some damn-fool reason. Anyhow, both times it was like a jump-cut in a movie. I'm really, REALLY light-headed, and then all of a sudden I'm lying on the ground with a nurse asking if I'm okay and saying I've been out for 30 seconds or so. It's actually kind of a cool experience, but I don't recommend seeking it out because of the possibility of head injuries due to falls. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do we get addicted to things?"
] | mainly due to positive association and receptors. When you enjoy something your brain produces dopamine, seratonin, oxytocin, and endorphines which is basically the chemicals responsible for happiness. So when you enjoy something your brain remembers it and decides that this is a good thing, obviously it would want to do that good thing again and so you do. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do we hate \"bandwagoners\"?"
] | People don't like to feel like they've lost a claim to something they once felt defined them. They feel like people who didn't get into their thing at an earlier point do not understand it in the way that they do, and that they only joined because it was popular. In short, they feel threatened about losing a part of themselves to the mainstream. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Can we put something completely static in space?"
] | It turns out that there is no such thing as being *absolutely* still; you can only be still relative to some other object. So you can be perfectly still relative to whatever object you please, but it's impossible to be "objectively" still. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Whats going on when my URL bar sais about:blank?"
] | When a browser sees "about:blank" that tells it to display a blank page. Sometimes when bad coding or weird hiccups happen, your browser will open a new window, but fail to understand what's supposed to go in it, so it defaults to about:blank. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why Cassini needs to crash into Saturn to avoid contaminating a moon?"
] | Huygens probe is clean, Cassini is not. It's pretty much as simple as that, but there's also that Titan is significantly less inhabitable than Enceladus so if something was hitchhiking it would most likely die. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"how do police enforce speed limits with aircraft?"
] | There are lines painted on the highway at known intervals i.e. 1 mile apart. Use a stopwatch and bingo, you're busted. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"If I chill a (crappy) glass on the freezer then take it out and immediately pour boiling water in it, it will crack and possibly shatter. What exactly is going on?"
] | Part of the glass gets hot, and before it can conduct that heat to the rest of the material, the rest of the material is cold. When things heat up, they expand, so one part of the glass is expanding while the cold part remains contracted. This results in thermal stresses causing the glass to break. If you let it heat up gradually over time, the glass would heat at a much more uniform temperature and thus there would be lower thermal stresses. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Canada has a number of military procurement issues with arms manufacturers in the western world, largely having to do with cost. Why won't we consider buying arms from the eastern world?"
] | Western (especially US) military stuff is the best, and it's not even close, like an iPhone compared to Zack Morris giant cellphone. Military hardware made in the east is crap, really crap, it's geared more towards low cost 3rd world nations that don't care if stuff breaks or backfires or even hits it's target or can be fixed etc. Crap, awful. Want replacement parts? Lol And if you get into a conflict with one if those nations, well you're fucked right? Good luck getting any more. Buy from your friends. Also Canada has to get items that will work with NATO, it's militarily alliance, eastern stuff isn't compatible (and NATO nations would have a shit fit for a lot of reasons). It's simply not practically possible |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What essentially is the difference between public schools and charter schools, and what is the broad argument against charter schools in many communities?"
] | A public school is a school that is funded with taxpayer (public) dollars and must follow all of the rules and regulations in place by the government. A charter school is run privately but is also funded with taxpayer dollars. They don't need to follow all of the same rules. Essentially a private company is deciding what to teach your kids, and not the public who funds the school. A public school generally will provide a more secular and standardized education, while a charter school can (but not necessarily will) push some biased agenda. It's a major issue because young minds are impressionable, and the ability to promote an agenda to children in school has a huge potential to cause problems. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How do insect and bug sprays kill insects but don't harm us"
] | > How do insect and bug sprays kill insects but don't harm us Most insecticides target specific aspects of the insect nervous system which are different from those of humans and mammals in general. These neurotoxins have various different types so getting into the details can be quite complex, but the general idea is that insects are sufficiently different for specialized substances to be toxic to them and not really for humans. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why are all of my dishes dry after running the dishwasher, except my Tupperware?"
] | Heat. Ceramic and metal items get and stay hot enough in the dry cycle for the water to evaporate. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is the last game of a baseball series called the \"rubber match\"?"
] | For starters, it's only a rubber match if each team has won a game in the 3-game series-- meaning, the winner of the rubber match wins the series (by taking 2 of 3). |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does throwing up hurt?"
] | Between your esophagus and your stomach is a sphincter that, usually, keeps things in your stomach (acid, food, mucus) from coming up into your esophagus. However, in infants, this sphincter is not totally developed, and thus doesn't always keep things down. During the normal movements that an infant's stomach makes, it might push some food up, through the weak sphincter, into the esophagus and out. However, in older children and adults, throwing up is usually the result of some specific stimulus (responding to vertigo, disease, bacterial toxins in food, etc). In this case, your stomach is actually working to push its contents back through the esophagus and out your mouth. As such, the muscles in your stomach clench very hard and at the same time, which can be painful. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How does a tax haven country benefit from the rich storing their money there?"
] | You put the money into a bank in that tax haven. Banks, when they look after your money, don't just leave it sitting in the safe doing nothing. They invest it! They might do this by lending it to other customers (for a fee), or by investing in the stock market or the currency exchange market. But that money is busy earring the bank money. (I don't know the rules in Singapore, but in some tax havens - the Cayman Islands, for example, tax is very low for money earned offshore. But money earned in the tax haven *is* taxed, albeit not at a massive rate - but the money the bank makes probably *will* be taxed.) |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does driving at 50km/h feel like standing still after you've been driving at high speeds?"
] | You don't perceive linear velocity, you perceive angular velocity. Think about it like the Trench Run in Star Wars. If you're flying at 1000 km/h on the surface, a wide open space, things don't look like they are moving very fast. You get inside the trench doing 1000 km/h and it looks like you're going very fast. Things travelling across large angles of your field of vision is how you perceive speed. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"why can we hear our own voice in our head when we \"think\".7"
] | Imagine our brain takes all human vocal samples we hear and puts them in sound "Jars", and attaches a sticker with a picture of the human that is speaking on that jar. Whenever you imagine what a person's voice would sound like, your brain opens that jar and you hear his vocal samples. Imagine Morgan Freeman's face, now, his voice saying: *" I just don't think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was virtue."*. Suddenly by the end of that sentence you'll hear his voice in your head, even if you said "**I** just don't think" - it wasn't you speaking to yourself, it was Morgan Freeman speaking to you about himself. When you speak to yourself, you imagine you speaking to yourself, literally. That is why your brain opens the jar with your face on it and you hear your own voice. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why isnit that it's difficult to retain your balance if you close your eyes?"
] | Balance is accomplished by a few things working together. You have your ears, your eye fluid, and your brain (mainly the way it interprets what you see). It’s the same way you can tell if you’re standing up, staring at a wall or the ceiling. Basically seeing helps you orient yourself. Cut that off and then the line between looking forward and looking 20 degrees to the left starts to blur and it’s harder for your brain to triangulate how you head is oriented and which way is straight and level. You can prove this pretty easily by sitting in a chair, closing your eyes, standing up, and trying to move around. Your head will lock up in where it thinks “straight” is. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How do states have time to pass silly bills when there are far more pressing issues at hand?"
] | Writing a bill can be done by anyone with the interest in doing it. Many bills are written by companies or organizations, they just find one state senator to sponsor it. Voting on a bill hardly takes any time at all. What takes a long time is finding compromise. With the really difficult and important issues, nobody can agree on the solution, so state legislatures spend most of their time arguing about how to compromise. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How come people die of Cholera and Dysentery from drinking dirty water but people with scat fetishes seem alright?"
] | So, let's take as a situation a small village where there are 1000 people. All of 1000 of them poop in and all 1000 of them drink from the same water source. In that situation if even one 1 of them gets sick, then all 1000 of them could drink the infected water and get sick all at once. Whereas if they are doing scat things individually with one another, then if 1 gets sick, then only 1 other person will get sick. So the chances are getting sick in a sewage situation is very high, whereas in a one-on-one situation you're fine unless you have the bad luck literally to be doing it with the one sick person. That said, it's probably still pretty risky. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What happens when corporations buy back their own stocks? Why is this done?"
] | The primary purpose of a stock buyback is to boost the earning per share and thus boost stock price for those who still hold shares. If a company had $100 profit and 100 shares, then EPS is $1. If company buys back 20 shares, then EPS increases to $1.25. Presuming a constant multiple of 20x, the stock should increase from $20/sh. to $25/sh. Also, with fewer shares outstanding, the company can raise the dividend by splitting the pool of money among fewer shares. In some cases, share buybacks might also be done to counteract share dilution from stock grants and options being exercised by employees — one of the reasons for Apple’s buyback in recent years, along with it being a way to return shareholder equity via use of their cash reserves. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do women adopt their husband's last name upon marriage?"
] | Because, traditionally, marriage was a transfer of property. The bride's father transferred ownership of the bride to her new husband. Hence the giving away of the bride by the father that still occurs in many modern ceremonies. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is phantom limb pain, and how do people feel it?"
] | There are two strips of brain cells that run from ear to ear across the top of your head (The sensory-motor cortex). One strip is used to control all your movement in your body the other registers sensation all over your body. We can actually map out a person's body on these strips. When a person loses a limb, the parts of these strips (the neurons/brain cells) that used to control and feel the sensation for that limb eventually get re-purposed by nearby areas. So if you lose your left hand, the neurons that used to feel the sensations on the hand start feeling sensations of the forearm, bicep, and even face. However, sometimes the brain forgets the limb is missing and mistakes the firing of the neurons in what used to be the hand area for a tickle or itch on the hand when in fact the sensation was actually on the bicep or face. The sensation of gripping with a phantom hand works much the same way in the motor strip. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why Is it possible to watch sick stuff on porn but when you get to try it IRL its suddently not so appealing?"
] | Why is it possible to enjoy a movie like John Wick, were he relentlessly kills dozens of people, but when you see it in real life it's sickening and traumatizing? |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do I have to worry about an SSD in a personal computer losing space over time, but I don't have to worry about that problem on my cell phone or ipod?"
] | You don't have to worry about any of that. The SSD will be replaced by the time it dies. It takes 10 years of copying 30GB of data, daily, to a SSD to kill it. Cellphones and iPods do use flash memory as well, so it's likely, they would also have the same effect, but again, they'll be in a trash heap far before the drive is useless. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How come buses do not have seatbelts?"
] | The bus driver, as the operator of a motor vehicle, is required by most states' automotive laws to wear a seatbelt. The reason for it is physics. Have you ever seen a bus and sedan collision? The result is a pancaked sedan and barely scratched bus. An occupied bus has *far* more mass than a four-door car, meaning much of the impact can be mitigated. When a collision happens, the force exerted by the car onto a bus is not great enough to be a life-threatening issue. Think if a bowling ball collided with a baseball. The baseball would shoot forward while the bowling ball would barely budge. It's the same thing happening here. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"If DNA is the blueprint for creating enzymes that synthesize DNA, how did DNA first come about?"
] | Miller and urey did an experiment some 50 years ago. They took basic chemicals and put it in a special flask that simulated prehistoric conditions such as lightning and volcanic acitivty. Macromolecules like DNA, RNA, and fats formed. Probably one of the coolest experiments ever in my opinio |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do we need to go to Mars?"
] | Because having every human being in existence living on one easily destroyed rock is incredibly short sighted. We need to start moving off of earth if we want to survive and evolve as a species. Plus it would be indescribably awesome to know that a member of my species is standing on another planet more than 33 million miles away. It just boggles my mind that a little more than a century ago humans were mostly stuck in the ground, and now we're capable of colonizing a completely new world. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"The symbolism behind Bioshocks Andrew Ryan"
] | As a place to start - You should familiarize yourself with Andrew Ryan's namesake... Ayn Rand. Andrew Ryan is pretty much Ayn Rand's philosophy's given flesh... and then everything goes horribly wrong. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How can people be sure of a message sent in morse code? What if you missed a blink to write it down or only noticed after a while?"
] | Believe it or not (according to what I've read), it's not that hard to pick up once you're trained to do it. In WW2, morse operators were often able to recognize and distinguish between the morse code signals of different senders. It becomes no different than any language. Occasionally, when we speak or write, we misspell a word or drop a word or mix something up, but we are still able to completely understand what is being said and written. Morse (once you have learned that "language") is no different. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How are the people investigating Hillary right now not part of the \"establishment\" that would want Hillary to win?"
] | The only people who want Hillary Clinton to win are Democrats. Republicans have every interest in spoiling her candidacy as it would be a shocking scandal that would hurt the democrats at large in the presidential race. [CNN is reporting that the Republicans are claiming credit for the Benghazi hearings as a political move against the Democrats](_URL_0_). The Republican establishment wants her gone, and they represent about half of the Washington establishment. The Washington establishment is not one group, but two groups who keep each others' influence in check through their endless political wars. The Republicans would love to see Sanders win because the blow to the Democratic establishment would make Trump less of an embarrassment to them, and because they could play it against the whole party. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do babies cry? Wouldn't this be an adaptive nightmare for early humans who had to deal with predators?"
] | Babies are cared for in the group. A group of humans is going to be loud anyway, so having a baby cry doesn't particularly add to that loudness. And very few predators would attack a group of armed humans. The crying is a good signal however that this baby needs to be attended to (and is in fact ridiculously annoying to people so we can't ignore it) and it is also a good way to help find a child should they ever get lost. Might it draw predators near in that situation? Yes, definitely. But a child without a group is pretty much dead for anyway. Better to run the small risk of being caught be a predator with the chance that someone might find you VS staying quiet, lowering the risk of predators catching you, and then starving to death. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"If forensics try to match a bullet to a barrell based on markings. Why not record the barrell before sale and index the markings?"
] | Matching a bullet to a gun by barrel marks borders on impossible. Constant changes to cleanliness, heat stress, wear and tear..... even variables in ammunition quality.... in a court of law, the best a forensics person could say is the bullet is consistent with the gun type, but could never with 100 percent certainty say that x bullet came out of y gun. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What does Bill Clinton balancing the budget mean?"
] | Balancing the budget means the government spent less than they took in. Clinton raised taxes, cut spending, and had huge revenue from the dot com boom. The US still had a deficit, which is why foreign debt could increase. If you make $50K a year and spend $60K, then you have $10K debt. That $10K is the deficit. The next year, you make $50K and spend $48K. Your budget for that year is balanced since you took in more than you spent, but you still have the $10K deficit from the previous year. Foreign debt is just 'how much of the deficit do I owe to foreigners", so that portion can increase or decrease while keeping the total deficit the same. Year 1 you borrowed $10K from your neighbor. No foreign debt. You then borrow $5K from a foreigner and pay your neighbor. Now you owe $5K to your neighbor and $5K to the foreigner. Foreign debt increased but you still owe a total of $10K the same as when you started. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"people with crosses on their heads today?"
] | Today is Ash Wednesday. It marks the beginning of Lent in Christian religions (in particular, Catholicism). It symbolizes the start of the trials of Christ in the desert prior to his crucifixion; where he was being tempted by Satan. Traditionally, the ashes are made from burning the previous year's palm leaves from Palm Sunday. Source: Was raised Catholic. Edit: Fixed a comma splice XP |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why can I keep butter at room temperature for days at a time, but not cream, when butter is made from cream?"
] | The butter you're leaving on the counter is salted butter, which is therefore preserved. If you did that with unsalted butter, it'll spoil. You can prevent that if you store your butter in a [french butter dish](_URL_0_). It's an extremely simple device, The lid holds the butter in the cup. It's butter, it'll stick in there. The basin has just a little bit of water in it. When you place the lid on the basin, the water creates an air tight seal around the cup. It'll keep your butter fresh for a month. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"When reading comments, why is it that sometimes you can see the amount of points a comment has and other times it looks like this [~]?"
] | Subreddits can set where you can't see the number of upvotes or downvotes so you won't upvote because everyone else does. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"what does #mbps up #mbps down exactly mean?"
] | It measures how quickly you're able to transfer data. "Down" speed is incoming data (ie: watching a YouTube video), "up" speed is outgoing data (ie: uploading a video to your own channel). For example, downloading a 5-gigabyte file at 25 megabits per second will take 1637 seconds, which is about 28 minutes. Unfortunately, "mbps" is kind of ambiguous: it could refer to mega*bits* or mega*bytes* per second (since a byte is 8 bits, a megabyte is 8 megabits). If someone is being technical "Mb" is a megabit and "MB" is a megabyte... but you should be cautious, since a lot of people are sloppy about that. When in doubt, it's usually megabits. edit: fix units |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What are the mechanics of throwing? Why do we point our non-throwing arm at the target then drop it as we move our other arm forward?"
] | This boils down to generating as much force as possible. Think about how something like a trebuchet works -- there's a heavy counterweight that swings down, and this creates a ton of rotational force. Your non-throwing arm is doing the same thing. You point it out, then swing it back through your shoulders, generating extra force in your throw. The weight and momentum of that arm helps to propel the throwing arm forwards. |
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