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[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How is child pornography taken down so efficiently from all over the web while it's so easy to find for instance pirate movies & TV series?"
] | Police actively enforce the Child Pornography issues so its forced to go much much more underground and its generally illegal everywhere. Piracy is a copyright issue. A police officer cant arrest you for just being in possession of a digital copy of a movie. The owner of the copyright has to put a claim against you etc. Its more complicated and then they can charge you etc. It just being online isn't in and of itself illegal right off the bat. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"what do the different temperatures on a washing machine do to my clothes?"
] | Hot water generally cleans better but ages the clothes faster. Unless it's stained, I wash cold/cold and hang all my good shirts, shorts, and pants to dry. Warm *should* wash fastest, since it should fill the washer faster. YMMV. If you follow the care labels on your clothing they will last a lot longer than if you warm wash everything and machine dry everything on normal or heavy settings. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What kinds of things do high-priced lawyers do that get better results for their clients than what public defenders are able to do?"
] | When you pay for a high price lawyer, you're paying for skill and time. An expensive lawyer has several paralegals working under him that can spend a lot of time digging through old court cases looking for cases like yours. Once the lawyer has these cases, he can craft an argument based on them stating why you are innocent or deserve a lighter sentence. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is the margin of error?"
] | in statistics, its very hard to get an exact number. Most of the calculations for certain statistics come with that factor, a margin of error. Its basically the amount of possible variance in the answer. so 20% with a margin of error of 5% means the actual answer could be from 15%-25% but its definitely somewhere in there. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"how do silencers on guns work?"
] | The bullet is launched out of the gun by an explosion that superheats the air and produces a loud BAM sound. The gas/air that carries that sound wave doesn't have anywhere to go except out with the bullet. A silencer basically extends the barrel and helps that "explosion air" diffuse in other directions so that the resulting explosion from the gunshot is much quieter. Movies and games that have a "pew pew pew" sound with the silencer attached are doing it wrong - it really is still an explosive sound, just heavily subdued, like a brick hitting a sandbag or something. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"why aren't all toilets tankless (like the ones in commercial buildings)?"
] | Homes generally do not have access to the high flow water sources required to make one of those toilets work. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do Republicans want to repeal The Affordable Health Care Act so badly?"
] | It's not really a giant health insurance plan, it's a bunch of reforms to the health care system, one of which being an online marketplace where you can buy private health insurance. The main issue that Republicans have is that one of the reforms is that having health insurance is now mandatory, and there will be a tax penalty for anyone who chooses not to buy it. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why are we grossed out by the thought of our family members having sex or masturbating?"
] | For sexually reproducing species, incest is often problematic because closely related family members are likely to share genetic problems with you that are then exacerbated in the children of incestuous couples. For this reason, many species have some sort of control against incest, typically behavioral. In humans, that control is revulsion at the idea of having sex or even thinking about sex with people who we had close contact with growing up. If we were not disgusted by envisioning family members engaged in sexual acts we might instead be aroused. This would create an evolutionary pressure against the aroused group because their children and their children's children wouldn't be able to breed as well and the family arousal trait would be out-competed by the the family disgust trait. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do sour foods make faces move involuntarily?"
] | Many sour foods are poisonous, we are programmed to reject sour foods with "disgust", same as when you see other unhealthy things like feces and Kanye West. There was a good BBC Horizon show on Disgust years back. I found this article. _URL_0_ |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why are dreams so much more vivid if you wake up during them?"
] | Your brain actually tries to forget dreams. Most people have more than three per night, and forget most of them. If you wake up during a dream, your brain hasn't had time to try to forget it. Partially forgotten dreams, either by waking up before the memory has faded or by the mind failing to completely forget it, will seem much duller than a fresh dream. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why don't people get drunk on rubbing alcohol?"
] | Ethyl alcohol sold as rubbing alcohol is denatured. Meaning it's mixed with poisonous and disgusting tasting substances to make it undrinkable. The additives are also selected to ensure that it's difficult to purify the alcohol with distillation. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What motivates people to write thousands/millions of lines of code for open source software for free?"
] | I like to think of OSS developers as in two categories 1 - People actually EMPLOYED to do work, and are legally obligated to submit their work back into the OSS source tree for whatever reason 2 - Weekend Warriors, College Kids or Bored Teenagers with nothing to do and kind of "get off" on seeing people use their creation and commit something to the greater good. They like solving complex problems, and doing something cool that others can use is a great feeling |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why Bing is so poor compared to Google search engine and showing no sign of catching up or improving"
] | Bing is actually excellent at certain things. But my interest in it is usually short-lived. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Can I build the internet from scratch?"
] | Connect two computers with a network cable. Bam! Your very own personal Internet! |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does only your own saliva take out your own blood in fabric (like a tshirt)?"
] | Not true at all. Even if saliva can remove blood (it can, but so can water), whether or not it comes from the same source as the blood makes absolutely no difference. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Exactly how is smoking weed different from eating edibles. Not in your mind but chemically."
] | When you eat it it gets processed by your liver into 11-hydroxy-THC. Which is said to be 5 times more psychoactive than when you smoke or vaporize cannabis. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is Bill Cosby not in prison yet?"
] | Because 1. The statute of limitations for the crimes Cosby is accused of has passed. 2. Because given the length of time between the acts and now, there is little chance of there being enough evidence to prove his guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Is Irish a race or a nationality?"
] | That's ridiculous. Irish is a nationality. They might say those kids aren't Irish because they don't have the right accent it don't follow the traditions, it happens in all closed communities, but they are as Irish as the taoiseach (current or past). It has nothing to do with race. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why aren't Chinese people typically fat? We eat so much rice on a near daily basis."
] | The answer is extremely simple: a modest number of total calories per day. (Often combined with a decent amount of exercise through work, walking, and/or cycling.) No matter what *kind* of food you eat, if the *total calories consumed* don't exceed the number you burn, you cannot get fat. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Where do the newborn babies in television come from?"
] | Most babies you see on TV are actually a lot older than you think. Most are at least a few months old. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"if cameras take square photos, why are the apertures round?"
] | You've sort of got it the wrong way round. The camera LENSES are round, because round lenses bend light much better. But the film the image is captured on is rectangular, for the same reason that all pictures are usually rectangles, easier to frame and they are easier to put onto walls. Modern camera sensors have just continued this. Also when light is bent by a round lens, the images around the edges are often distorted, by using rectangle sensors you are just cropping these out and getting a better image. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What has caused Brazil to become as major of a country as it is?"
] | They have a large area, large exploitable population, lots of natural resources, and are politically stable. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do they say to \"breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth\" when exercising?"
] | When you breathe in through your nose you're filtering the air before it goes into your lungs, and pulling it through a smaller opening, forcing you to inhale slower taking deeper breaths. You exhale through your mouth because it's a bigger opening and you want to get the 'bad air' out as fast as you can. Your nose also helps regulate the temperature of the air you're breathing. When it goes in your mouth it goes very quickly into your lungs, and if it's too cold it can be jarring to your lungs. I'd guess, when it's way too hot out, like today, it also serves to cool it down a bit. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"The naming conventions of sea vessels, HMS, SS, RMS etc."
] | HMS - His/Her majesty's ship - British Royal Navy USS - United states Ship - US Navy SS - Steam Ship - not necessarily powered by steam, designation for Us merchant ships Each country has their own traditional ship designations. NATO also has designations for Navy ships from all nations |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"If Republicans are such terrible leaders (responsible for govt shutdown, etc) why are they still elected?"
] | In the US, people tend to think everyone in congress is a bunch of idiots...except their guy. The guy they voted for is the one voice of reason trying to find common sense solutions and everyone else is out for themselves. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why hasn't there been a viable 3rd Party in American politics to date?"
] | It's because of the "first past the post" method of determining the winner. Whoever gets the most votes wins, rather than the candidate having to secure a simple majority of 50% plus one. Third parties end up skewing the results and acting as "spoilers". There have been successful third parties — the Republican Party, for one. There's also the matter of the two main parties doing everything they can to keep viable third party candidates off the ballot or handicapped in one way or another. Ranked choice voting is one solution to this rather undemocratic feature of our system. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is blood type? Why is our blood different?"
] | Not quite 5, but I'll give it a shot. Blood type refers to the type of cell marker that exists on the outside of your red blood cells. There are 3 types- A, B, and O. If you have A, B is considered foreign so you will have anti-B antibodies. The same can be said for A if you have B type blood. If you have O, it is neither A nor B so you make antibodies for both A and B. AB blood types have no antibodies since both types are present on their cells. Type ABs are referred to as "universal recipients" because they have no antibodies in their blood and can therefore receive any type of blood without fear of the body rejecting it. Type Os are the universal donors under most condition but this can vary depending on other more complicated factors since as I mentioned before they have anti-A and anti-B antibodies. These types are genetic. A and B are dominant to O, and if you get an A from one parent and a B from another, you will be AB (co-dominant). |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is my graphics card so big compared to my CPU?"
] | Your graphics card has it's own RAM. Your CPU's RAM is on the motherboard. Technically you're counting the GPU, it's board, and RAM, and cooling stuff as one thing. So if you do that with the CPU too, the CPU is much bigger since its board is the motherboard. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why are terraced houses in New York and possibly other places elevated?"
] | They have lower levels (originally servants quarters) besides the main entrance, they usually go below street level. Every place is different, but I would assume that the underground pipping as well as water level do not allow for basements of considerable depth, which is why he main level is above street level. These lower levels have their own exterior door and are rented out. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does daycare cost so much when the teachers are paid so poorly?"
] | It's for much the same reason that private schools are very expensive: teachers' salaries are only a small portion of the costs of operating the business. Add to this these costs: * Supplies * Rent for the facilities * Administrative costs (licensed daycares have to cope with mountains of paperwork to comply with state and local laws) * Taxes * FICA/Medicare for employees * Training for the teachers * Liability insurance * Legal counsel * Employee benefits (if provided) * etc. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is the controversy of CrossFit exercise programs?"
] | It's olympic lifts (good) but focused on speed and reps at the expense of form and safety (bad). |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is the weight of gravity in pounds and how to find it?"
] | Gravity is a force, while weight is the effect of gravity on a given mass. You cannot convert gravity in to weight. It's like asking me to tell you the speed of your car using only the measurement of how much gas you have in the tank. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why can't \"We the People\" petition to have the NSA shut down (and it actually work..)?"
] | That would be a [direct democracy](_URL_0_). The United States of America is a representative democracy, the people's voice is heard by proxy of their representative. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why don't we sue politicians for broken election promises as breach of verbal contract?"
] | There is a saying that a verbal contract isn't worth the paper its printed on. But beyond that humorous quote, there is a better reason. An elected official can simply say that the situation or information changed in the time between the campaign and the vote, which is a great defense, because that's how we want our representatives to act. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"EL 5, How is it that \"polar bear\" clubs can go swimming in January and not die of hypothermia?"
] | They basically just go in and out of the water, and they're prepared with towels and warm clothes as soon as they're done. Even in near-freezing water, it takes at least 10-15 minutes for hypothermia to happen. Also, at least in the bigger polar bear clubs, there's medical staff around in case of emergencies. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Til Death do us Part. Do religious people believe they are all single in Heaven?"
] | This is coming from a Christian perspective, but marriage is seen as an earthly example of our relationship with Christ, we find fulfillment in caring and loving on our spouse and we get the benefit of them doing the same for us. Now once we get to heaven we are completely and entirely fulfilled by God for He is our ultimate desire of the relationship we were seeking on earth. Now we still get to chill with our loved ones but it marriage is no longer needed like it was, sorry if that was too preachy, hope that makes sense |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Vulgar Latin and it's difference between Classical Latin"
] | Vulgar Latin uses more vocabulary that made it into modern Romance languages, and the sentence structure is often more like the modern Romance languages too. So stuff like: occasionally, you'll see the relative pronoun (qui quae quod) used to mark indirect discourse instead of accusative + infinitive constructions. The pronunciation is also different, but that probably won't matter in your class. Most people I've spoken to have said they found Mediaeval Latin 'easier' than Classical Latin. And the subject matter is often more church-focused, so you'll run into lots of new ecclesiastical vocabulary often borrowed from Greek (eg episcopus for bishop, angelus for angel/messenger (of God)), or new meanings for old words (eg Dominus for the Lord, God, rather than the head of a household) |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"I've never seen a fat bird. Is that because flying is vital for them to survive so natural selection kills them or because birds simply don't get fat?"
] | People commenting here don't know what they're talking about. Birds do get fat the closer you get to the cold extremes (arctic, mountain peaks). You've never seen one because, I assume, you haven't been to these types of places. Furthermore, you wouldn't know how fat the bird is until you kill and butcher it, but I promise, there are fat birds. Yes, flight is a big part of their survival, but so is fat in the cold weather. As with most things, there's a balance. When colder season come, birds store fat. Not enough that they cannot fly anymore, but they do store fat. When it's time to migrate, a lot of that fat gets burned off. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How does paracetomol work?"
] | The mechanism of action for Paracetamol/acetomenophen is not entirely understood. It *probably* inhibits COX, which is an enzyme that is part of the chemical pathway for chemical pain signals in the body. Inhibit the enzyme, the body makes less pain-signalling chemicals. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is \"I don't like sand\" line from Attack of the Clones considered so bad?"
] | It's supposed to be Anakin's smooth line to use on Padme and it's just so derpy and cringeworthy. Lucas has such a tin ear for dialogue that Harrison Ford said to him, "You can type this shit, George, but you can't say it." |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Do you need a computer to create a computer?"
] | Assuming that all humans alive today survived, there's a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience that could be used to quickly bypass lots of steps along the way. As an example of this, check out [the best Commodore 64 games](_URL_0_) from the mid 1980's, and compare that to the winners of the [2010's Commodore 64 Demoscene](_URL_1_) where people take all of the advances in programming from the last 30 years and apply them to old hardware. It's true that modern computers are designed and built in part by computers, so it'd probably take several years to rebuild simple computers by hand, then use those to build more and more complex computers from there. But it'd take far less than 70 years to "catch up" because we have the advantage of knowing the full history. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is more environmentally friendly forced air hand dryers or paper towel?"
] | New air dryers (like the dyson air blade) are more environmentally friendly than paper towels. Older dryers might not be, because they use more power. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do some downloads not show file size and / or ETAs?"
] | When you make an HTTP connection, there are a bunch of pieces of metadata that are sent before the data. One of those is Content-Length, which tells your client how long the data portion is going to be. If you don't see a file size in a download, it means the server didn't send a Content-Length header, so your client has no idea how much data is going to come, and it just needs to continue receiving data until the server stops sending it. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How do coffee machines (like a Keurig) super heat water in 10 seconds?"
] | a thin layer of water heats up very quickly. Take a wet sponge, put it in the microwave for 10 seconds, it will be extremely hot. A cup of water wouldn't be warm in 10 seconds. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"When you boil water, where does the air that fills the bubbles come from?"
] | "Boiling" is the process of water becoming steam. The "air" in those bubbles is water turning into its gaseous form from its liquid form. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"... If yogurt is made with a starter of a small bit of yogurt, how was the first yogurt ever created?"
] | They were not created, they were captured and bred from wild strains of bacteria. You could start the same sort of thing today, but your quality would be hit or miss (and the misses would be nasty). |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What causes something to have a smell?"
] | Molecules from it break off and float around in the air. Your nose picks them up, and your olfactory center "reads" them. Yes this means exactly what you think it means, when you smell poo. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"I'm British. How could Greece defaulting on its loan repayment and leaving the eurozone affect me, the rest of the EU and the global economy?"
] | For one thing, some of that debt is owed to UK banks and institutions. They will have to take a loss, which could mean everything to high interest rates to outright bank failures. It will heard the economies of the EU in general, and those are some of the UK biggest trading partners. One the other hand, the weakened euro might make the pound more attractive, which could boost the UK economy. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder)"
] | Basically, not getting enough sun makes you depressed. That's why one of the ways to alleviate it is to use a light box. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"The difference between deductive and inductive reasoning."
] | > all cars are red. "Hey I bought a car, Jack!" "Oh, then it must be red!" ***Jack did a deduction.*** > "This is swan number 1000, and **again** it is a white one." "Therefore it must be that all swans are white." ***Jack did an induction.*** You might have noticed that though the deduction is always sound, and that its truth depends only on the truth of the premise, ***inductions are always faulty***: no matter how many swans you investigate, you'll never be certain there is not a black one waiting on you around the corner. Source: studied philosophy for years at uni in The Netherlands. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is it so difficult to fall asleep without a blanket even when you aren't cold?"
] | People develop patterns for going to sleep. When you lie down, put your head on a pillow and cover yourself with a blanket your body thinks "ok, it's time to go to sleep" because you've trained it to react that way. You could just as easily train your body with a different set of criteria for sleep. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why are some major media outlets speculating a Ted Cruz presidential run, ignoring that he was born in Canada?"
] | His father was a Cuban who moved to the US in the 1950s (and was probably a US citizen by the time Cruz was born in 1970), his mother was born in US. You don't have to be born in the US to be eligible. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"The way cops sometimes talk"
] | That is the sort of language they might use in a formal report or when testifying in court. It's filtered through to every day use with the public in part, I think, because the words are carefully selected not to have improper connotations, though it does sound rather awkward. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"A few questions on house-buying stuff"
] | Equity in something means how much of a stake you have in its ownership. If you pay for the house in cash, then you own it, and you can borrow against it. If you take out a loan to buy it, then you only own it conditionally (so long as you keep making your payments to the bank). If you already have a mortgage on the house, then it will be harder to use it as collateral for a loan because you're already in debt on it. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"At what point do under the table bank deposits become suspicious?"
] | The reporting limit is $10,000 but if you arrange multiple transactions that look like you should have done a single over $10,000 transaction you'll trip anti-money laundering law wires. For taxes, you should report *all* income earned in a period, regardless of source. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why in ancient times anything but a pure wife was rejected, but some men married widows?"
] | Men didn't prefer virgins because they got to be the first. It was about legacy. Everything they had and were would be passed on to a son, and they wanted to make sure that boy really was his son. Marrying a virgin helped ensure this. Not only could the husband be sure she was not pregnant with another man's child, but she had followed the norm of society, and could be expected to continue to do so when married. Conversely, a woman known to have had sex out of marriage defied society, was considered a harlot who could not be trusted to remain faithful. In this scheme, a widow is almost as good as a virgin. She followed the rules and just had an unlucky break, so there was no reason to believe she would be any less faithful. Also, widows often inherited their husband's property and were more wealthy than a young woman still living with her family. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do people say county jail is worse than prison?"
] | County is nothing but laying and sitting, in a lot of places. Small town? You're just in a cell in a courthouse with a few other guys, beds, and a tv. Prison has other shit to do. Library, classes, exercise and what have you. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"why do large amounts of prize money, (e.g. $100,000 from a game show or a lottery prize) get taxed so much?"
] | Lottery winnings are taxed as ordinary income at the Federal level, and by most states. The highest U.S. tax rate is 39.6%, and it's applied to any income over $418,401 for an individual. So on a big jackpot, that's almost 40% right off the top. Then of course your state gets to tax the income as well. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"That baby smell. Like on baby items in Toys R Us, what is it and why does it all smell the same?"
] | It's made to smell like baby powder, which (fun fact) is rarely actually used on babies these days. But lots of diapers have that as their default scent, so babies still smell like it. The day my daughter was born, it blew my mind that she smelled just like the Cabbage Patch Kid I had when I was little. Then I realized it wasn't her, it was the hospital-issued Pampers she was wearing. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How do owners of non-profit organizations or people who are \"experts\" in really odd things make money? Are most of them just retired or do they get paid by someone to do these things?"
] | Non-profits are still business that have expenses. Sometimes it is an organization that pays salaries and overhead expenses. What is leftover from however they produce income is what is provided to their charity or organization. As far as getting paid for odd jobs, that usually falls under the consultant category. Basically a company or individual seeks the advice of someone who specializes in a certain field or area. The most popular example would be something like website design where big companies can have an inhouse team, but small companies or non-profits, will contract someone to create their site... in which case the one time cost is significantly cheaper than a full time employee. But there are people who specialize in some weird stuff and their specialty is sometimes needed. For example, while in college I met an archaeologist student who specialized in analyzing dung (basically human waste), well that speciality landed him a consulting role for a book that won a Pultizer. Hope that helps |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is on the papers that news anchors are continuously shuffling?"
] | Newsreaders usually have a small screen under the camera. On that screen, the text they read out is shown. This screen is called a "teleprompter". But in case the prompter breaks, they have the same text with them on paper, so they can continue reading the news. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How is headbutting someone effective? How do you hurt your opponent without hurting yourself?"
] | You take the harder part of your head and aim for a softer part of theirs. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Most fracking happens at over 1 to 2 miles under ground. What is the theory that explains how that water gets through 2 miles of bedrock to pollute my 150 foot well?"
] | There is definitely the potential for fracking to pollute groundwater. The truth is, we don't really know for sure exactly how much the underground geology is altered when they use fracking. They inject an extraordinary amount of fluid into the ground under an extraordinary amount of pressure, fracturing the rock formations around the drilling site, which allows for easier extraction of natural gas and/or oil.. It's possible that these rock formations may have been separating oil or gas deposits from groundwater, and after the shale is fractured, these two may begin to mix, where they couldn't before. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How do planes \"break\" the sound barrier?"
] | The speed of sound is only about 780 miles per hour, and all you need to do to break the sound barrier is go faster than that. Most normal planes already go about 500~ mph, so boosting that up to 800~ isnt too hard |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How can \"The Interview\" have an all persons fictitious disclaimer at the end, when it is clearly based on a real living person?"
] | So the TL:NR is going to be "That line doesn't really do jack" here's why: Like someone using music or audio without consent saying "Blahbity blah belongs to such and such, no claim to copyright is made" or some such gives you no legal protection in court should that person decide to sue you the same is going to be true in satire. Being a public figure, Kim Jung Un, in the U.S., has little to no protection against satire, and even if he wanted to, he'd have to sue Sony, et al in U.S. courts for damages, and that's not going to happen. The litmus test, afaik, is simply "Would a reasonable person believe this to be actual events?" |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why did Longswords give way to rapiers and sabres during the Renaissance?"
] | I like most of the answers below, especially m4nu, but there's one big thing no one's mentioning: Armor. As technology progressed, muskets made armor utterly useless. Then, when hand to hand combat did occur, there was no need for a sword so heavy it would break a man's ribs through iron, just something to stab him with would do just fine. I always thought it was interesting that through Korea people quit using personal body armor and now it's coming back. Modern soldiers look about as covered up as a knight these days. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Is a human virgin birth scientifically possible?"
] | If a woman is a virgin until a penis enters her vagina, then yes, virgin births are possible. If a man were to ejaculate on her, it's possible that sperm cells could swim up the vaginal canal and make her pregnant. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How does Piratebay still manage to be a live website?"
] | This bully, Pirate von Bayinstein, goes to a school connected to yours. Every day at the joint lunchtime your two schools have together he steals the cookies your mom packed for you. This pisses you off, so you go to your teacher and tell on him. Unfortunately, while he may be breaking your school's rules, he is not breaking his own school's rules, and your teacher does not have the authority to punish him. Your teacher is the US government, pirate von bayinstein is the pirate bay, and you are the MPAA/RIAA ect. TPB's servers are not in the US and are therefore not subject to our laws. The country where they are does not have any laws prohibiting what they do. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does Anime have a bad stigma?"
] | Hardcore fans argue otherwise, but the majority of anime *is* poorly-animated entertainment fodder marketed towards teenage boys. This is coming from someone who enjoys some anime series, but it's a medium that most Japanese natives look down on for this reason, too. Because anime is deemed a niche genre unto itself, even in its country of origin, *everything* (including shows that feature paedophilia, rape and so on) is tarred with the same brush. There's also the weeaboo phenomenon: Westerners who get into anime are mind-blown at this myopic exposure to one of the world's most unique cultures, and rather than research the parts they would inevitably find disagreeable, they latch onto fictionalised Japan as some kind of utopia willing to let pudgy white kids commandeer their culture. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Theoretically, shouldn't a pyramid scheme work?"
] | Pyramid schemes are 100% effective so long as the number of people joining exceeds the number of people who are already involved. This works because you can use the joiners money to pay off the oldest members. The problem is that the number of fools (while massive) is a finite number. Eventually the scheme cannot maintain cash flow. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How does radiation make you sick/kill you?"
] | Think of the radiation like tiny, tiny bullets. When you get radiation poisoning your bodies cells are getting hit by Billion of tiny bullets that go through your body. These bullets can damage things at the cellular level like DNA, causing it to break apart in the cell and killing the cell. These bullets can also break up alot of the molecules like hemoglobin, or hormones that your body needs. Not only does your body take damage but your body has to clean up the corpses of dead cells and the crazy new molecules that radiation has made. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is a baby not nine months old when its born?"
] | Because it's called a "birth"day - we define your age as being measured by your date of birth. We do that because it's easier to know for sure the day that the baby came out of the mom than the day that the sperm hit the egg. Even with all our technology, there's no real 100% way to know "Oh yeah, this was fertilized on May 8th." So we base our date on what we know, and everything works out about the same. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"what in our brain makes the auto alarm clock go off?"
] | I don't have this :( If it weren't for my phone alarm, I'd probably be nowhere in life. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is actually going on with the oil companies, and why do the prices keep dropping?"
] | all of these answers contain somewhat true points, but something to point out -- no one 'sets' oil prices, not the oil exploration and production companies, not OPEC, not anyone except the market. The two types of oil quoted when people talk about 'oil prices' are WTI (U.S. benchmark) and Brent Crude (North Sea, worldwide benchmark)...and these prices are set by futures contracts that are traded instruments. In other words, the price of oil is determined in much the same way the price of a stock is determined, not like the price of a good/service is determined. OPEC decided not to cut production (Saudi Arabia especially), which had the effect of driving prices down (supply/demand imbalance), but they do not actually decide what price they will be able to sell a barrel of oil. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do most promotions say \"Purchase Not Necessary\"?"
] | If a purchase is necessary to enter the game of chance the promotion is classified as a lottery. Some governments, such as the US and the UK, deem as illegal. You should be able to get a piece for free by going to your local McDonalds and stating you'd like to enroll without a purchase. Your request must then legally be obliged, possibly with a postage paid form that you fill out and mail in and they will, in turn, will mail you a piece. I am not certain how frequently you can do this, but I believe it's once per day per household. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do people call Fifty Shades of Gray porn?"
] | It's an erotic novel, which is about as close to porn as you can get while still being a novel. From what I understand, it goes into great detail about the intimacy involved. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is it that Reddit only displays some of my subreddits in the drop down at one time?"
] | The maximum number of subreddits for the drop down list is 50. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How and why did cannabis come to be illegal?"
] | because of systemic political racism. back in the 1930's, mexicans and blacks smoke weed. white people didn't. so weed was make illegal to have a reason to put mexicans and blacks in jail. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why is female handwriting generally distinguishable from male handwriting?"
] | Young girls fine motor skills tend to develop a few years earlier than young boys. This also coincides with schools teaching handwriting, ages 5-8. As a result girls can get a bit of a jumpstart on developing and perfecting their handwriting. If you want to throw socializations in also, it is usually stressed that girls should be neat and precise, while boys tend to be given a bit more leeway in messiness...."boys will be boys" excuse. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does sperm and bleach smell basically the same?"
] | If I remember my awkward Catholic school sex ed, the female reproductive canal is (very slightly) acidic. Therefore, the male ejaculate has to be slightly basic (alkaline) to counteract it. Bleach is a strong alkaline, hence a somewhat similar smell. Also, I think semen may contain an element of chlorine, we didn't get that far in class ;) |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How does the 'Stingray' work? Wouldn't you be able to hear interference on calls etc?"
] | Your phone treats the Stingray as a local cell tower. And the Stingray passes through all cell phone traffic. It happens quick enough that any delay is not noticed. No interference is generated. If you are concerned about Stingrays in your neighborhood see: _URL_0_ |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What stops a journalist from printing anything 'off the record'?"
] | If you print something that was said to you in the course of performing your journalistic duties, you are basically betraying the trust of your source and burning that source. You do it once, you'd need some luck to be able to talk to anyone on the inside ever again. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"what is the point of making medical students study all the subjects/all residential rotations?"
] | Humans are one giant interconnected network of neural, chemical, and structural oddities. To understand the brain, you have to understand the body, and vice versa. It isn't a waste of time *at all*, and is quite necessary to have a holistic understanding of any one branch of medicine or psychology. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why were ancient cities buried or abandoned if they continued to grow into modern cities?"
] | Some cities have been around for thousands of years, and still are inhabited today. Rome or example or Istanbul. Many cities were abandoned because of things like: 1. Natural Disasters 2. Lack of/exhaustion of local resources 3. Economic/Trade shifts |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do we perceive our vision as a single frame when we have two eyes?"
] | We have binocular vision, by using two eyes our brain receives to separate images with everything shifted slightly left or right. Your brain then takes the images and process them together into a single image, using the differences to give you depth perception and three dimensional vision. For example I am sitting at my computer screen. If I close one eye, then quickly open and close the other my computer screen seems to shift, this is because it's close to me. If I look out the window at a tree down the street and do the same that jump is minimal or imperceptible. This tells me the tree is far away. Your brain is doing this in real time with the two images to constantly keep up our sense of depth. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does semen turn hard when exposed to hot water?"
] | The same reason eggs get more solid when they cook, I believe. The heat causes some of the proteins to denature. Proteins are kind of like balled-up organic strings. Since they are round, they easily bump past each other in a liquid. When they denature, they partially or completely unravel, and the loose ends get all tangled up with each other, creating a more solid structure. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"LI5: Why wont the US government legalize marijuana?"
] | Legalizing marijuana is not a politically wise proposal to make. There are lots of reasons why this is so, but the core thing is that a politician would lose more votes from the minority that opposes marijuana than from the majority that supports it. As long as that is true, marijuana will not be legalized, no matter how strong the reasons are. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why did Tipper Gore get so much hate from the music industry and fans during 1985 for wanting parental guidelines on music?"
] | People thought they wanted to ban/censor music because that's exactly what they wanted to do. And they did it successfully at the time with Body Count's song Cop Killer. They put so much pressure on the label that the album was pulled from the shelf and the song was eventually replaced with a song called Freedom of Speach. It wasn't just an emotional response to a perceived threat. It was a very literal threat against the freedom of expression. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How is math like a language?"
] | In one sense math can be construed as the language of nature because it can explain natural phenomena as well as other things such as human behavior and the probability of future events. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How do trees survive winter?"
] | They can store nutrients below ground mostly. Think of syrup, which all decidious trees in northern climates produce. The flow of syrup is the tree moving sugars from its lower storage organs to its leaf buds yo support the new growth. Also woody tissue with secondary cell walls are dead so they aren't really supporting as much living tissue as it seems. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why in construction, when they lay rebar, is it in a grid pattern?"
] | Because grids are easy and the structural integrity gained from triangles would not outway the massive extra time investment. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do Wind turbines have three blades?"
] | As a wind farm developer, let me direct you to the proper resource: _URL_3_ Essentially: > "Wind turbines extract energy by slowing down the wind. For a wind turbine to be 100% efficient it would need to stop 100% of the wind - but then the rotor would have to be a solid disk and it would not turn and no kinetic energy would be converted. On the other extreme, if you had a wind turbine with just one rotor blade, most of the wind passing through the area swept by the turbine blade would miss the blade completely and so the kinetic energy would be kept by the wind. > Betz Limit Albert Betz was a German physicist who calculated that no wind turbine could convert more than 59.3% of the kinetic energy of the wind into mechanical energy turning a rotor. This is known as the Betz Limit, and is the theoretical maximum coefficient of power for any wind turbine. > the fact is that small scale (1-100 kW) always have lower efficiencies than large scale wind turbines. " |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why does diarrhea make your anus burn."
] | Not to do with stomach acid, that should be neutralised before it gets anywhere near leaving your body (or it'd wreak havoc on your intestines on its way through). Probably because diarrhoea is wet and this, in addition to wiping more often than usual, irritates the skin around your butthole. Also, think about how babies get nappy rash from having wet nappies against their butts for extended periods, if you have wet soppy faeces (like swamp ass) because you couldn't clean it all properly it's going to start itching and irritating you. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"What is the purpose of hanging highly irradiated patient's limbs up in the air?"
] | Not a scientifically backed explanation as such but it might be to do with minimizing contact with surfaces to reduce the pain the subject is in. Any sort of second degree burn or worse hurts when it has pressure applied. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How is the melody encoded on a vinyl and how is it reproduced by a record player ?"
] | Such is the genius of Thomas Edison. It turns out sound waves are really pressure waves that exert force on your eardrums 'creating' sound. Vinyl is a soft material which is sensitive to subtle changes in force. Therefore to make a recording, an etching needle is placed on the vinyl and when sounds are made it moves the needle up and down according to the pressure exerted by the sound wave. As a result it literally converts a pressure wave into a physical shape. To play back, the opposite occurs. You run a needle over the record and the needle moves a diaphragm back and forth converting the 'shape' of the sound wave back into an actual sound. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why can we multiply by 0 but not divide by 0."
] | Let's put it this way - you can't divide something into zero parts. You can divide it into one part, but not zero parts. That's an illogical question (what happens if you divide $10 in zero parts?) There's no answer. Here: $0 x 12 months = I'll give you $0 every month for 12 months. How much money will you have after a year? $0. $12 x 0 months = I'll give you $12 every month, but no months have occurred yet. How much money do you have? $0. $0/12 months = You've made $0 in a year - how much did you make monthly? $0 $12/0 months = You've made $12 in the span of no time at all. How much money did you make monthly? Um...well...I didn't make money monthly. There's no way to calculate this, because there's no time on the scale. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"How did child rearing work before diapers?"
] | As far as infants, cloth and linen were often used as diapers, this is shown in native tribes. Disposable diapers are relatively new. Many people still use cloth diapers as they tend to be better for an infants skin. Thorough cleaning was just very important. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"When naming a new royal, are there only certain names they are allowed to use or is it just assumed they'll use a previous royal name?"
] | It comes down to custom and tradition. For instance, with British royalty, they need to pick a British name. Custom dictates they can't go with something like Barbara or Fleur. Custom shows that typically they choose names to honor other family members or royalty. That's how they chose Charlotte, Elizabeth, and Diana as the three names for the Princess. You want something with historical significance and personal significance. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"According to the BBC: pilots used the aircrafts' sensors to confirm \"no civilians were in the proximity of the targets\" In the Syrian Bombings. How?"
] | It basically means "We hit the designated target. The target was defined as hostile, therefore everybody there were enemies. If there were any civilians, we define them as enemies as well.". In other words, they only know that the bombs hit as intended, they don't know who was there or if the intelligence that selected the target was correct. |
[
"Provided a user question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit ELI5 forum",
"Why do dogs throw up when they're hungry?"
] | I guess you have never been really hungry. Not an insult I just mean humans do the same thing its just we can just feed our selves or drink water or something to stop the hunger before it gets to that point. As a former homeless dude I have been that hungry you start to drool and it burns in your belly till you just got to let it out. hurts. it sucks. |
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