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5qbog1 | What is the difference between doublethink and cognitive dissonance? | **Doublethink**: the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time **Cognitive Dissonance**: is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time They seem so similar that I'm having trouble working out how they are actually different or if they are at all. Edit: I googled the question and am still left questioning it but have a better idea. I'm hoping this question generates good discussion. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're similar, but they're different. In fact, they both describe the same phenomenon, but with a different reaction. With Doublethink, you perfectly accept the 2 contrary positions, as if there's no problem whatsoever. Cognitive dissonance meanwhile, is the mental stress/discomfort you suffer from when having 2 or more contradictory beliefs. As such, doublethink occurs when no cognitive dissonance is present.",
"As you note, cognitive dissonance indicates that the person experiences \"mental stress or discomfort\" by believing two contradictory ideas. Doublethink is the ability to believe two contradictory ideas *without experiencing stress or discomfort.* From Wikipedia: > [Doublethink is notable due to a lack of cognitive dissonance — thus the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction.]( URL_0 )"
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5qbso0 | Is saturated fat bad or not? (Bacon for example). All the studies I find seem to contradict each other. | Is saturated fat in larger quantities unhealthy? Will it lead to circulation/heart issues? Has this been proven or is it still debated? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Recent meta-analyses have shown that saturated fat is really no worse than monounsaturated fat. The real thing to avoid is trans-fat, and the real thing to eat more of is omega 3 fatty acids."
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5qc45v | What is the point of the anaphylaxis reaction. Why would the body try to protect itself by essentially committing suicide? | Here's a miniscule particle of something my body's not sure about. Quick let's swell our airway shut until we die! | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The reaction is caused by types of cells called granulocytes releasing histamine and other chemicals typically used to fight parasites. These cells are part of the innate immune system which means they are less well regulated than your T cells and B cells which handle most illnesses. The lack of regulation of those cells gives rise to an increased chance for things to go haywire. If a food, chemical, or insect venom triggers an allergic response, the granulocytes will quickly go to the places where the problem is (inflammation), and release their toxic components. The cells mounting this defense believe they are fighting a parasitic infection and don't realize they need to calm the hell down. Anti histamines combat this by neutralizing some of the toxic chemicals they are dumping. I'm not sure how well established this is, but I believe the granulocytes family of immune cells are sort of the 'old guard' evolution wise. We have better tools now for fighting infection, but the carpet bombing granulocytes haven't been retired from service.",
"The issue here is that we tend to think of the immune system as the body's army, a group of soldiers that are charged with defending their home (you) from attack. But that's wrong. The immune system is more like it's own civilization, doing the best it can to keep the local environment to its liking. It's just that the environment happens to be you. Anaphylaxis (the allergy kind, not the non-immune kind that I think is more like being poisoned) is the equivalent of that civilization burning all the farmland in a war and then starving that winter or burning all the fossil fuels without realizing it will cause warming.",
"This is your body's \"burn it with fire\" response to parasites. Some parasites release chemicals to reduce your bodies response, so some people have highly-overactive responses which would still function correctly in the presence of these chemicals from the parasites. If you haven't got any parasites, however, then your highly-sensitive immune system will sometimes create a bit of an overreaction. In the past, it was more helpful, since it would still function even when your immune system was being suppressed by parasites."
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5qc74o | Why do people feel the urge to roam the house while on the phone? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Personally I would call it anxiety as I do not enjoy talking on the phone no matter who the person is, and if I am stagnant I feel like I will contribute less and seem off putting. Roaming kind of makes your brain stay alert."
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5qc78x | What does E = MC[squared] mean? | I have always heard this but have absolutely no idea what it means. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically, it's a simplified form of a slightly more complicated equation that shows that mass is actually a highly concentrated form of energy. If you have a certain amount of mass, it's theoretically possible to convert it into a certain amount of energy. How much energy that would be is represented by the equation E=mc² -- the energy (E) is calculated by taking the mass (m), multiplying it by the speed of light (c), and then multiplying it by the speed of light *again*. From even a tiny amount of mass you can get a huge amount of energy: if you had 1 kg (a little over 2 pounds) of mass, and managed to convert all of it into energy, it would be like exploding 40 *million* tons of TNT. We can't actually convert all of the mass into energy. In a nuclear bomb, only a tiny fraction of the mass is actually converted into energy, but even so a single missile can release enough energy to destroy an entire city.",
"Okay, all these comments about mass being \"condensed energy\" or \"concentrated form of energy\" are completely wrong. Comments saying that you get a huge amount of energy from converting mass to energy are also completely wrong. In physics, energy is something that stays constant at all times. You can't create or destroy energy, and you can't convert mass to energy, or anything of the sort. This has to do with something going through a transition where mass is converted to *momentum.* Here's another explanation of it that I posted in another comment once: The actual equation is: E^2 = m^2 c^4 + |p|^2 c^2 E is energy, m is mass, p is momentum, and c is the universal speed limit, which we refer to as the \"speed of light\" when talking to people who haven't studied general relativity. You start with a radioisotope atom that hasn't yet decayed. When it does decay, it emits a photon (light, but with such high frequency it's an invisible deadly gamma ray). When it decays, it becomes lighter. Therefore, some part of that atom disappears. We are only concerned about the part that vanishes, because the rest of the atom is the same both before and after the decay happens. So we're going to look at what we can infer about the part of the atom that vanishes when it emits the photon. It is at rest relative to your measuring gear, so its momentum is zero. Therefore: if p=0 then E^2 = m^2 c^4 + 0^2 c^2 Simplify. Since 0^2 is zero, and 0 times c^2 is zero, you get: E^2 = m^2 c^4 Take the square root of both sides: E = mc^2 So that's the energy of the part of the atom that vanishes. Now we look at the energy of the photon that is emitted. It does have momentum, but the mass of a photon is zero. Therefore: if m=0 then E^2 = 0^2 c^4 + |p|^2 c^2 As before, 0^2 c^4 is zero, so you get: E^2 = |p|^2 c^2 Again, take the square root of both sides. E = |p|c Now, we have a principle called the conservation of energy. Energy can not be created or destroyed. Nothing can turn into energy, and energy can't turn into something else. It is constant. So if the energy of the disappearing mass is the same as the energy of the photon that is created, then: mc^2 = |p| c Divide both sides by c: mc = |p| This is very significant, because Einstein's formula shows that an object with a mass of zero can still have momentum. But momentum is a function of mass. You can not calculate the momentum of an object without entering in some mass greater than zero. So how do you get a number for mass, if mass is nothing? Well, this equation showed that the momentum of the photon is proportionate to the mass that disappeared when it was created. This is because momentum is always mass times velocity. One you simplify the above equation, you get one that equates momentum to a mass times a velocity. It's really weird. The more you know about it the weirder it gets. So, in reality, the meaning of the mass equivalence equation is not that the energy you get is mass times the speed of light squared. It's that when you trade mass for momentum, the resulting momentum is that mass times the speed of light. No squared. Only c. Here are a couple of neat lecture notes that you can check out of you want to blow your freakin mind: URL_0 URL_1",
"It basically says energy and mass are the same thing, and you can convert from one to the other and back again. The product of your conversion will conform to this equation. BTW, the *full* formula is E^2 = (pc)^2 + (mc^2 )^2 which accounts for the momentum of massless particles, like photons."
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5qcaxv | What is the U.S. State Department? what does it do? Why is it such a big deal that it's senior members just resigned? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The state department is one of the oldest parts of the federal government. It is responsible for conducting the foreign affairs work of the United states, which covers everything from big time negotiations over war and peace to small scale stuff like making sure people can get visas. A big part of this is keeping embassies and consulates open overseas. The resignations are a \"big deal,\" which I will take to mean newsworthy, because it's unusual. Although new administration's often replace these offices, since these are (mostly) the people who do non-\"policy\" work, the mundane stuff that keeps the place running, they usually stay on to continue working and are replaced piecemeal---and sometimes stay on for a while if the new people end up liking them. Whether this particular event is good or bad, or indicates some larger failing or issue is up in the air still, and may be a matter if opinion.",
"The United States has two main diplomatic components, the State Department and the Department of Defense. The State Department's job is to ensure that the Department of Defense doesn't have to be used."
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5qcbmk | Why does the Chinese Super League suddenly have so much money to buy foreign players? (football) | Especially considering that I would presume their fan base and revenue is lower. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you have access to Capital, and are willing to take losses, you can spend more than you bring in. China now has the second largest GDP in the world. It would not be hard for them to put together a league with a bunch of billionaire owners, who want to blow their wad on expensive player contracts."
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5qcbqy | If every action has an equal and opposite reaction, why can a bullet do tremendous damage to someone, while the recoil from the gun cannot? | Think about this, a large bullet that hits someone in the upper arm can dislocate the person's shoulder, but the recoil cannot. Sure, the bullet focuses the energy onto a smaller area, but is that alone the reason? That doesn't make sense to me, because incredibly large guns (for instance, a anti-material rifle firing a .50 BMG round) can take an arm or off even when they hit a good distance away from the point where the limb is torn off, but the rifle's recoil is enough to be managed without injury. Similarly, some bullets can knock a soldier unconscious if they hit them in the helmet (dispersing the energy over a large area), but the rifle doesn't damage the shoulder, despite the fact that A) the but of the rifle has less surface area than the inside of a helmet and B) the shoulder doesn't take that much to be dislocated. Does it have something to do with the difference between force, energy, and momentum? Or the difference in velocities? Really confused here. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A bullet exerts a ton of pressure, much more than the gun does when it recoils. Pressure = momentum / surface area / impact time. Momentum is the same for the bullet and the gun, but the surface area and impact time vary drastically. The surface area of a gun is the area of the grip, while in the bullet's case it is less than a square centimeter. But much more importantly, is the impact time. As the bullet accelerates along the length of the barrel, a continuous force is applied to the gun. Additionally, because the gun is much more massive, this force goes into accelerating the gun, which acts as a buffer when translating momentum from the gun to the hand. When a bullet hits someone, travelling at hundreds of meters per second, the time of impact is tiny, resulting in a huge pressure. Even if the bullet was the size of your head, the time of impact is still so small that the pressure felt would be massive. This is why getting shot in a helmet can cause concussion or death.",
"> Sure, the bullet focuses the energy onto a smaller area, but is that alone the reason? Basically. The gun outweighs the bullet by a huge margin. Equal and opposite reaction- the bullet and the gun fly apart with the same momentum, but since the gun is much more massive, its velocity is slower and its inertia keeps it in check.",
"Because the weapon itself as well as he way the weapon is held, absorb and spread out the force so that it doesn't do nearly as much damage. It's like a knife. Why can I stab a hole clean through my steak, but my hand doesn't get punctured? Because the blade is sharp and puts all the pressure on a single point, while the handle is blunt and the grip (both the handle and how i hold it) means that the pressure is spread through my whole hand.",
"In addition to these physics-based answers, it's also important to point out that modern guns - rifles especially - are engineered specifically with mitigating recoil in mind. There are several ways to accomplish this. Take your example of a Barrett .50-cal. The round is massive, and as such, expends a **tremendous** amount of energy when fired. Modern rifles are made to be as light as possible while still being tough enough not to explode into pieces when they fire a round like the .50, but that means that while they won't explode in your hands, they're still going to transfer all that opposing energy back toward you. So how do we lessen that energy to something manageable by a person's shoulder? One way is a muzzle brake. If you look at the end of the barrel of a Barrett rifle, you'll see that big crazy finned piece of steel that makes it look cool. This actually serves a purpose, though. Part of what creates that recoil is all the gas that is built up behind the bullet being fired. The gas expands, and exits the rifle the same way the round does. When all that gas pushes itself out of the front of the barrel, it pushes the rifle backward - recoil. The muzzle brake provides an area where, as the bullet leaves the barrel, the gases can be expelled sideways. Since the gas is expelled to both the left *and* the right, the opposing forces cancel each-other out, and the rifle isn't pushed one way or the other. But gas is only part of the problem. The force of the bullet being propelled forward in and of itself creates a substantial amount of opposing recoil. So rifles use a couple different means to correct that recoil, such as large springs seated inside the butt stock (this is not present in the Barrett .50, but is integral to the design of the M16) or simply constructing the bolt assembly and the receiver assemblies out of materials that are sufficiently heavy enough to absorb a great deal of that energy and recycle it for functions like ejecting the empty casing and cycling a new round into the chamber from the magazine. The other thing that helps manage the recoil in a weapon firing a round like the .50 BMG is size and weight. The sheer weight of a Barrett .50 does a great deal to absorb and spread the force of the recoil out. The M82A1 weighs in the neighborhood of **30 pounds**. Simple physics tells us that something as large and heavy as a Barrett rifle will easily absorb the energy created by something as comparatively small as a bullet exiting the barrel."
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5qccsa | How can I find real, unbiased news? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is no such thing as unbiased news. Any news source will, at minimum, introduce [selection bias]( URL_4 ), consciously or unconsciously, when they decide what to report on. It's also important to get biased, opinionated content too, because it's impossible for a layperson to do all of their own analysis - the insights of smart people like Paul Krugmen and Charles Krauthammer can go along way. So best to get your news from a variety of different sources, and to avoid extremely biased sources like Salon and Brietbart. The best news sources have a full editorial staff and separate their news and opinion sections. I recommend: **Soft Paywall:** [The New York Times]( URL_5 ) - hard news, centre-left editorial content [The Washington Post]( URL_1 ) - hard, mostly political news, various (mostly leftist) editorial content [The Wall Street Journal]( URL_7 ) - economic news, various (mostly right-wing/libertarian) editorial content **Free** [BBC News]( URL_0 ) - hard news [CBC News]( URL_6 ) - hard news, mostly liberal editorial content [NPR News]( URL_3 ) - hard news [Vox]( URL_2 ) - leftist editorial content.",
"It doesn't exist, as all news is written by someone (or written according to rules created by a developer) and all of those authors have their own biases. The best way to get as close as possible to truth is to pull in biased views from multiple opposing sources (several different political views and at least one foreign view) and practice judgement when reading them."
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5qcevk | Assuming weight loss is purely about "calories in vs. calories out," how is it possible for the body to go into "starvation mode" and temporarily prevent weight loss from occurring | Hi all. I'm currently on my own weight loss journey, and I've noticed that even though I've been strictly counting calories, I will go through periods where my weight refuses to budge. The calories I'm consuming vs. calories burned should be low enough to cause weight loss but my body is somehow able to stave it off for days (or longer) at a time. If weight loss is really just about "calories in vs. calories out" (as I've seen even Neil DeGrasse Tyson argue), how is the body able to keep itself from shedding the weight? And, for the sake of argument, assume that I'm not making a mistake in my accounting. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Short answer... It doesn't. Long answer, it stores a bunch of water. So, your body has fat cells. Those cells store fat. When they're full of fat, that's it. They're 100% full fat cells. However, as you start losing weight and using those fat stores, those cells start getting smaller. So at say 50% full of fat, it's like a half deflated balloon. So as you lose weight you get hundreds of millions of half deflated fat cells. Because our body is super efficient, it doesn't want to get rid of the cells yet because \"we might need them again\". But also half full cells are a waste as well. So the body starts replacing the Fat with water. Once the fat cells are completely full of water for a while, the body, being as efficient as it is, decides that maintaining these cells isn't worth the effort, we were holding on just in case, but it seems we're just wasting energy to do that. That's when your body starts getting rid of the water and the cells themselves. Edit: TL:DR - Body replaces the fat in fat cells with water for a while before getting rid of the fat cells. (This is part of the reason it's important to drink a lot of water when attempting to lose weight)",
"What people think is starvation mode is a myth. Starvation mode exists ONLY when you are so malnourished and underweight that your organs are going to start shutting down and you will die. So as a last clutch attempt your body tries to prevent any more weight loss to prevent death. Starvation mode is not something that happens to obese, overweight, or normal weighted people.",
"Weight loss != fat loss. Water retention is a large confounding factor, especially when your diet is protein deficient."
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5qcgsn | What is that super weird dizzy feeling we get sometimes while stretching? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"All that flexing and stretching is causing a brief, temporary change in blood pressure to your brain, causing that lightheadedness, dizzy feeling.",
"It's medical term is Orthostatic hypertension, or more commonly known as Postural hypertension. I know because this happens to me, I always become dizzy, lose focus and even lose vision frequently. [It's basically a change in your blood pressure when you stand/stretch. Click here for more detail.]( URL_0 )"
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5qckv9 | what shorting the market is. | My understanding is that it is betting against the market... | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Normally you buy a stock because you expect its price to go up. If you think a stock's price is going to go down, you can \"short\" the stock. What this means is you borrow shares from someone, sell those shares, and then plan to buy them back once the price has fallen, in order to hand them back to the person who lent them to you. So, yes, shorting is betting against that particular stock.",
"Let's say there is a baseball card you have, and I think the value is going to go down. I borrow the card from you, and sell it for $100. When it goes down to $50 a week later, I buy another one in the same condition, and ~~sell~~ give it back to you. I made $50, and you lost nothing. But if I was wrong and the value went up to $150, I would have had to spent that to replace your card, and I would have lost money. That's how shorting a stock works. You borrow a stock, and sell, and hope the price goes down, so you can buy it for less and give it back. It is equivalent to buying a negative share of stock.",
"So Beanie Babies are super hot right now, but you're positive it's just a fad. Your friend has a rare royal blue Peanut the Elephant Beanie Baby, and you convince him to let you borrow it. You sell it online for $1000. Later the price plummets because people wake up and realize Beanie Babies are stupid. You buy an identical beanie baby online for $10, give it back to your friend, and keep the $990 profit. You just shorted Beanie Babies.",
"that is a correct statement. Shorting a stock is literally selling a stock you do not own. So I think Google is higher today than it will be tomorrow, so I would like to sell google today, and buy it back tomorrow. So that is exactly what I do. I sell 100 shares, creating a portfolio holding of -100 in google. My account is credited thousands of dollars for the sale (but the funds are on hold as collateral for the negative stock position). At some point later, I must repurchase the stock to satisfy my obligation. Where do the negative shares come from? Other investors at my brokerage who have long positions. packaged with a margin account agreement is a clause that says the brokerage may lend your shares to other clients. This is transparent to the loaner, and they are typically not compensated in any way (large instittutional investors will negotiate interest on their loans, small brokerages just take the interest as profit for themselves) In truth, the brokerage will not specifically identify *whose* shares were loaned, its not relevant. They will make sure they have sufficient shares in hand at any given time so that the long owners are never at risk of lacking shares to sell if they so choose. Typically a brokerage will only loan up to 30% of total shares, and only on a minimum total quantity. But this can fluctuate depending on the stock. If there is a run on things and sell orders spike, the shorts can get squeezed where the brokerage will execute market order buys to close out their positions to recover the loaned shares (so their owners can in turn, sell them). This is a rare (but very real) risk of shorting a stock."
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5qcozd | How do companies like Valve which have a "flat" organizational structure work, seemingly without bosses or direction? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"These kinds of flat structures don't mean that there aren't leaders. Theoretically everyone is there to do something impactful to the industry, and the more senior folks have good business sense and can figure out what's most important to work on. Then, since you want to have a big impact, you join on with a cool, impactful project.",
"I'm a big fan of Valve's structure and there's a few reasons why (I think) they can do what they do. Here's a bunch of factors to think about, in no order in particular: 1. If they make a bad move the company has a lot of treasure to sustain itself. The huge profit margin coming from Steam that would keep the company afloat for years even if they released nothing at all or a string of failures. That allows them to think (very) long term. In the beggining Gabe Newel's personal fortune filled that role. 2. Newell's goal was to build a company that constantly delivered innovation. For reasons I have yet to hear explained he ended up figuring out that that a completely flat, bossless structure was the way to do it. Considering they have built a series of acclaimed games, one of the first online marketplaces, and that they are, by most reports, behind most of the tech in the current VR renaissance, I would say he has suceeded. 3. Valve is also very, very careful about who they hire, and they are very swift in dealing with people who do not deliver value within their corporate structure. You can learn more about this from their corporate handbook. 4. From the corporate handbook: You are supposed to listen carefully to your colleagues and Gabe Newell in particular. So it's boss-less until it's not, really. 5. From what I've heard (personal reports and Glassdoor) there's some question about how good of a corporate culture having no bosses actually creates. Some people describe the culture at Valve as close to a high school. Also the Oculus move - there's a comment at hacker news recently (would have to find it) about how the VR team basically moved itself into Oculus with all the tech and they were quickly acquihired by Facebook, turning themselves into millionaires. In a bossless structure, the decision was made, I suppose, by the team itself. A very curious turn of events that many people at Valve are bitter about (again, according to the commenter). Definitly read the handbook and Abrash's blog about Valve if you're interested, The history of how Gabe Newell arrived at that structure is interesting and while I respect his decision I'm not sure if any other company could work the way Valve works.",
"The reality is that their structure is only flat on an org chart. There are 8-10 leaders who basically drive the company in the direction they believe is best, and those people are the leadership (for better and for worse, because it's a *very* cliquish company). There is a lot of lip service to the idea that 'anyone can get their idea built' but the reality is that you have to build consensus first and then get resources to get your project done, and that means you're taking resources away from one of the culture captains to do it. This is a big no-no and is why some employees feel marginalized and leave. Last but not least, I would argue that valve isn't a game company anymore, and hasn't been since ~HL2. They are a platform company, and despite their success (or because of it, when you're swimming in money there isn't a lot of impetus to change) their platform does a TERRIBLE job at developer experience. It's literally 5+ years behind the mobile platforms for usability. As of today: you can't use digital marketing techniques to grow your game because they provide you no analytics so you don't know what is working, you can't use modern payment flows because steam wallet (which is a fucking shit-show... how many clicks to get to the center of the checkout experience??!?) you can't do paid user acquisition on steam because they want to control who grows and who doesn't. They don't detect fraud well, so when it happens you end up eating the cost because valve processes the transactions, you give the digital goodies away, and then a week later they say 'whoops! we're taking that money back because it was fraud' only you've already given away the stuff. But you still *have* to be on steam, because it's where all the eyeballs are. Source: Done a lot of business with them, have friends who work there, have others who used to work there.",
"And when was the last time valve released a damn thing? They buy companies with near finished products, and maintain what they have (sort of)... My point is that it sounds great on paper but does not seem to be very productive.",
"There was actually some hubbub about this a few years back that calls into question whether or not this sort of organizational structure really works all that well. [A couple former employees came out and talked about some of the problems they encountered]( URL_0 ). No doubt they're biased being former employees, but I think some of the problems seem like they would be realistic. Basically an unspoken leadership structure forms naturally, but because it's unspoken it's very clique-ish",
"Flat organizations mean that management needs to have actual leadership skills. The kind of leadership skills that inspires people to WANT to come in to work every day and genuinely do their best. Managers like those found in Office Space that are blindly enforcing corporate policy will not do well in a flat structure.",
"They don't. They said we were flat when I worked at Imgur, but we clearly weren't, and roles had to be defined soon after to end confusion and tension."
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5qcr3p | If sound travels better through water, why is it always quiet under water ? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sound travels 5x faster in water. Above-ground noises are significantly attenuated when they cross the air-water barrier. So every sound originating above water is muted. Underwater sources aren't affected by this. However, making noise underwater requires more energy per dB, because water is 1000x as dense. You need to vibrate 1000x the mass, which is ~~30dB~~ *60dB* (darn convention changes) of attenuation. Our ears also judge sound logarithmically, where each 10dB sounds about 2x as loud. So equal sound sources at equal distances underwater sound about ~~32x~~ *64x* as quiet. Additionally, you'll kind of feel muffled, not just from the drop in volume, but because the sound doesn't seem to come from any direction. Our brains are very well trained to find the direction of a sound source by the difference in time of arrival between our ears. That tells us left, right, or center, and the shape of our ears and face blocking sound from certain directions helps us judge forward/backward and up/down by subtle differences in volume. Sound traveling 5x as fast makes the time delay only 1/5 as long. And since the volume is already significantly attenuated, we have trouble judging forward/backward from the small difference in volume caused by the shape of our ears. So everything sounds like it's coming from right in front of us, or on top of us. **TL;DR** Sound under water is ~60x quieter, and it's really hard to tell where it's coming from. Hence the claustrophobic, near-deaf feeling you get like you're walking past one of those anti-echo fabric boards in an auditorium.",
"While sound travels well underwater, sound does not change mediums well. Sounds made above water will sound muffled at best underwater. But sounds generated underwater such as tapping metal objects together or the sounds of aquatic mammals will travel very well.",
"Got a little background in underwater noise as I was a submarine Sonar Technician for 9 years. First off my opinion is that it is a lot louder underwater than it is above, at least in oceans. Ships, Shrimp( they sound like popcorn popping, or mouse clicking), and dolphins are extremely noisy. I am assuming your question is more to the point of why does it seem quieter when my head is below water that above. Like when you are at a lake, pool,or even in the ocean. Well first off your ears are designed to work out of the water. They may work okay'ish underwater, but not to the same degree. When your head is underwater, your inner ear typically maintain the little amount of air within them, as getting water to your middle ear can cause issues. Anyone who had tubes in their ears already know this. So in order for you to hear anything underwater, sound has to transfer to air first. When sound goes from one medium to another(water to air in this example) it loses energy depending on what the difference in density one is from the other(and it doesn't get much more different from air to water). A good example of how sound loses energy when going through mediums would be ear buds. A physical object that is much higher density prevents the vibrations from reaching the air drum because sound doesn't transition well from Air to solid objects. When your head is underwater its the same thing, but the densities are reversed, the sound never reaches your eardrum as most of it bounces off the air bubble retained in your ear. Now if you got yourself an underwater microphone, you will notice a completely different amount of noise underwater.",
"I'm assuming you're saying it's quiet in a pool, or possibly a lake. If you ever go swimming/diving/etc in the ocean, you'll find it's quite loud, especially in areas with coral. There, you can hear fish crunching away at it constantly, like pop rocks always by your ears. That sound travels very well, so it's all-encompassing. If you hear a whale or dolphin, even if it's fairly far away, you can usually hear the sound. However, directionality of the source of the sound is nearly impossible to tell when underwater.",
"It's easier to imagine by putting your ear against, say, a table. If you then lightly (very lightly, as it gets quite loud) tap on the table, you will hear it incredibly clearly. Now, if you then block your other ear, so your only hearing is from the table, and then somebody speaks, you won't hear it very well, because even though the table is conducting the sound much, much better than the air, the air doesn't transfer the sound to the table. When underwater, it's like a really, really big table. You can hear any sound that originates from inside the water or from a collision with the water, but, like with the table, sound from the air won't transfer. So while water does conduct sound incredibly well, you still need something to introduce the sound into the water. Edit: changed 'day' to 'say' and 'eat' to 'ear', thanks to u/ponyphonic1",
"Acoustics researcher here! Sound propagates quite well underwater, what doesn't work well are human ears. Sound waves struggle to propagate between differing mediums, in this case from the water to the air in our ears. In fact, very little of what you hear underwater is from sound waves entering your ear canal. The human body is mostly water, and as such an underwater sound wave passes quite nicely into our flesh. This results in the sound wave resonating through our bones themselves. Much of the sound you hear is bone conduction!",
"From my experience, working as a commercial diver for many years, sound travels very well under water. A ship can be heard pretty far away, and metal clunking sounds very clear. However, what is difficult to determine underwater is the direction of where the sound is coming from. Example; I was trying to locate a particular seal in a ships hull. The crew decided to bang metal against the hull around the seal for me to find it. I would hear every bang very clearly, but they might as well have come from behind me, nevermind pinpointing a small hole.",
"It isn't quiet, but our ears aren't built to hear under water. The acoustic impedance of water is very different from what our ears can process. Water is heavy, so even loud sounds don't move it very much, that is, the amplitude of sound in water is small, but it moves with a lot of force. Our ears expect the opposite - they expect air that moves with a large amplitude, but with very little force, as the air density is rather low. The middle ear is largerly responsible for \"compressing\" the movement from high amplitude/low force to low amplitude/high force needed by the cochlea. Sound with 0.001mm amplitude still moves the eardrum just by 0.001mm, even though it corresponds to much louder sound in water. The rest of the energy is reflected/wasted and doesn't pass to the inner ear.",
"I'm guessing that you have never been scuba diving before. It can be quite loud down there. I can hear whales that are miles away. Sounds produced underwater travel quite far. Sounds that are created above the water line and cross underwater get muffled. If a cruise ship is nearby it is downright deafening, talk about noise pollution...the fish hate it and take off",
"I went to a spa and they had underwater music everywhere. It worked really well, however it got weird when there were birds singing and waterfalls splashing.",
"The simple answer is because there are very few sources of sound underwater. Most sounds on land are either animals or man made. Very few fish/mammals are close to beaches - the most likely place you'd stick your head under water - and there are few man made devices producing sounds anywhere in the ocean.",
"It's nowhere NEAR quiet under water. Here's one of my dive videos where you can hear the pebbles being pushed by current against each other as well as hear my bubbles ascending. at the 3min mark you can even hear a small dubber dingy's engine as it passes overhead 30m above us. URL_1 Bonus video of an eel swimming around with a bunch of ambient noise. The constant crackling is the noise of small rocks and pebbles and fish eating off parts of the coral. URL_0",
"Sound doesn't travel better under water. That's a widespread myth. Instead, sound travels *faster* underwater. It's like a light beam traveling through oil versus water versus glass versus air. All four materials are 100% transparent, ideally. We don't say that light travels \"better\" through a glass prism. Instead we say that the glass surface reflects light, and also it refracts (bends) the light which passes into the glass. The same is true of water surfaces: * Sound in the air will reflect off the water surface. * Sound in the water will reflect off the air surface. In other words, the underwater world is quiet because all the sources of sound in air are being bounced off the water surface. And, usually there are no large crowds of noisy fish. \"Underwater wind,\" when the water flows past objects, doesn't produce audible sound. Water \"blowing\" through kelp forests isn't like wind in the trees. Stick your head under water, and mostly you'll hear noise from waves on shore, plus human traffic sound (the boat motors.) Why would people think that sound travels \"better\" under water? Here's one reason. If you knock two stones together in air, most of the vibration stays within the stones. It bounces around inside. The \"crack\" of colliding stones in air is very, very feeble. Now knock the stones together underwater, and most of the sound comes right out of the solid surfaces. The wave-reflection between rock and water is very low. The wave-reflection between rock and air is very high. Whacking rocks together underwater is *intensely loud.* But it's caused by the rock-liquid coupling effect. Heh, if you repeatedly collide two rocks together under water using your hands, soon your hands will ache. Your tissues received a bit of ultrasonic damage. Possibly you could even bruise yourself, just from the acoustic pulse radiated by the colliding pebbles. PS To make things a bit less quiet under water, try the following trick. Get two stones, make a big cloud of underwater bubbles, then whack the stones together near the bubble-cloud, or inside it. BONG BONG BANG BING BEENG! You'll hear intensely loud underwater musical notes. And the pitch increases as the bubble-cloud shrinks in size against the water surface. This is bubble oscillation, where the group of air-pockets has a collective resonance, like a bell. (The closest \"dry version\" to this is to tap on a thick, closed book, and hear the \"boomp\" tone. Paper sheets with a bit of air between them will collectively form a sort of \"resonant cavity.\" Hmmm, play books with drumsticks? Thinner books are higher pitch.",
"The ocean will actually drown out higher pitch noises like a screeching voice. But low pitch sounds like a deep voice can be heard very far away. In electronics we call this action a low pass filter. Edit: backwards logic",
"All these scientific answers, but I think you may need one comprehensible to a layman. Next time you go swimming, take a friend with you. Have him go underwater and shriek obnoxiously loudly like a little girl. Above the water, you won't hear it. Tell him to do it again, but this time go underwater with him. This time you will hear it, and it'll be rather loud. Hope this helps",
"Not very many Best Buys under the sea?",
"If light travels faster than sound, why can I always hear the horn before the light turns green.",
"Crack your knuckles under water sometime. I swear everybody with his head under water will be able to hear it.",
"Because there is an air pocket in your ear canal, and your hearing is mechanical based on the percussion of small bones designed to work in an atmosphere of Air. Both the change in density of sound transmission from water to air, and also the density of water itself changes the parameters of your hearing. The mechanics of your hearing is designed for air, along with your brains training through your lifetime. Analogous to your eyes becoming occluded and opaque through life whilst your brain adjusts making whites white and colors the same.",
"Above water there are a lot more sources of sound. Birds chirping, leaves rustling in the wind, cars driving on roads, etc. But if you dive into your backyard swimming pool, there is almost nothing under the water making any noise. That's why it's quiet - because the noises from above have a hard time transferring from air to water. Most of the sound will bounce off the water and remain in the air. But if the sound is generated underwater in the first place, it will be plenty loud. Just go under water with 2 rocks and tap them together.",
"Energy, as sound is, has a hard time crossing between materials (different density, rigidity, resonance, etc). This is called an \"impedance mismatch\" and it results in some energy making the crossing and the rest either being absorbed (converted to, say, heat) or reflected. Water and air are quite dissimilar so there is a large impedance mismatch, which prevents a lot of sound energy from moving from one to the other. That's why it's hard to hear the noise of a busy swimming pool when you're diving under the surface, and why you can't hear fish talking when you're on a boat.",
"Studying Diagnostic Medical Sonography, I'll give a go. When sound waves hit the boundary between two mediums, such as air and water, much of that sound is reflected. The more different the mediums, the bigger the reflection created at that boundary. This is why bones show up as crazy bright on Ultrasound -- speed of sound is massively different in bone than in muscle or fat. Now when noise from the open air hits the water, it loses a lot of intensity. Not only that, but there's always a little air inside your ear when you're underwater -- and that constitutes yet ANOTHER change in medium that causes reflection. Compare that to when you're in open air, and there's no change in medium at all because it's all air. 0 < 2. Even if the sound originates in water, it still crosses into the air in your ear. The speed of sound might be much faster in water than air, but it's the change in medium that attenuates the sound."
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5qcrux | What does sunlight consist of, and why do some parts pass through windows while other parts don't? | Sunlight and its heat penetrates windows, but you can't get a sunburn from sun through a window. What causes this? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sunlight and heat are (in simple terms, heat is complex) both electromagnetic radiation. They just have different frequencies (the rate at which the wave repeats itself, think of it like the number of waves in a given stretch of ocean). UV light (higher frequency) causes sun burn. It’s blocked by special glazing on the glass. Visible light, and IR radiation (lower frequency) which feels like heat, are transmitted through the glass to your body.",
"Sunlight is borne out of nuclear fusion reactions. Atoms like Helium are smashed together by the sheer force of gravity. This causes release of a lot of energy. This energy is in the form of vibrating photons. Different photons vibrate at different wavelengths or in other words, different photos are excited to a different degree. Some photons we can see, some we cant. What we can see, we call visible light (think of a rainbow), what we cannot see is called either ultra-violet or infra-red, outside the rainbow spectrum. Out of this range of excited photons, some can cause you sunburn, some are fun to look at and some others just provide heat. Windows are made of glass. Sometimes the glass has special layers that block certain wavelengths. They are gatekeepers that keep some photons out. \"You're too excited, Mr. Photon, you can get through\". The gatekeepers work by either absorbing the light energy or by reflecting it or a combination of both. These layers or films are usually designed to keep out the photons that give you sunburn. So you can sit behind a glass sheet in the sun and not start looking like toast."
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5qcs7l | What does the state department's senior management section do? How will them leaving affect the US government? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They run the State Department. The Secretary of State flies around the globe talking to other government's officials. While they do this the Senior Management runs the day to day operations of the State Department. Kennedy ran the management bureau which was kind of the HR and domestic functions of the department along with the administration bureau. The Consular Affairs bureau does passports and visas. The Office of Foreign Missions handles overseas embassies."
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5qcsi6 | Why is it so difficult to achieve and maintain an erection while standing? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ummmm are you sure that is a thing? Never been an issue for me but IDK.",
"I have never experienced this before. But I can only imagine that it's because when standing, you're pooling blood in you're legs. This would be stealing blood from the corpus cavernosum in the penis.",
"Never been an issue for me. Never even heard of it. Maybe see your Dr?"
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5qcssr | Why is it so difficult to desalinate water? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's hard to do because the molecules that make up salt are extremely tiny and can slip through all but the most extreme filters. That leaves you with two options: 1) boil the water into vapor to leave the salt behind. 2) force the water through an extremely fine membrane to filter the salt out. Option #1 requires a massive heat input, option #2 requires a massive pressure input. Both are very energy intensive and therefore expensive. Both also have issues with the salt residue fouling equipment. As technology improves and freshwater sources dry up it will become more economically feasible to desalinate on a large scale. Some nations have already built plants.",
"It's not difficult. It's just difficult to do it for a large amount of water over a long time. Desalinating water leaves behind the salts that were dissolved in the water, and salts are really notorious for eroding away mechanics, so it is difficult to automate what to do with these salts after it's done being removed from the water in the first place. It also uses a considerable amount of power, since the usual way of desalinating involves boiling the water away."
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5qcwwl | What is the Libertarian plan for roads, police/fire departments, and schools? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Libertarians aren't anarchists. Most believe the government is *only* useful to facilitate things too impractical to be privatized. Infrastructure, primary education, defense, courts. Some believe these tasks should be performed via the government as a collective buyer with various private contractors. For example: instead of the Government building roads with their own Department of Highway - they contract it to Randy's Roadways. Instead of Boston having their own police department, they pay Eddie McDoyle's Security Firm to do it for them. The idea behind contracts is that they're not renewed if quality of service is crap. It incentives Eddie McDoyle's Security to do a good job - whereas Boston Police Department will continue to exist whether or not they do a good job. Depending on your level of Libertarianism, you may believe it's each citizens personal duty to pay for fire or police insurance. For each citizen to support their own education. Or you may believe a tax is better.",
"If you and your neighbors want a road, or a school, or police, or a fire department, or ... then youall will get together and sign a contract to acquire one. You will have to pay, either for use or per year, and you will negotiate the payment with a company that either provides the service or is established to provide the service. Perhaps in a certain county they will agree to fund toll-free roads, and everyone who moves to that prestigious county will agree to an annual fee, like a property tax, to pay for the roads."
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5qcygn | How does taxing Mexican imports 20% to build a border wall not just pass the costs on to American consumers? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It will pass on the cost to consumers. The idea being that now what used to be cheap Mexican goods are now more comparatively priced to more expensive American made goods so now, why wouldn't I just make my goods in America where I can have a higher quality of living thus bringing jobs back. We all know that there's been a problem with outsourcing jobs to developing nations where you can pay slave wages. Applying tariffs to goods coming in from nations with slave wages and no labor protections is a way to even that playing field. I don't know if it is good policy or not. Unfortunately Trump's isolationist and protectionist policies haven't been debated much for being isolationist or protectionist. Instead they've been criticized for being \"racist\" or \"insensitive\", so IMO it's not like any debate has been settled about whether isolationist policies are decent. We just don't know. It's also important to remember that this is only one aspect of his economic plan which will include regulatory reductions and is aimed at improving the business limits in America. Like it or not, Trump policy isn't like anything we've seen in my lifetime and quite frankly no one knows what to expect. I'm not a fan of the man. I think he's a bad fit for the job and I'm already alarmed. This was my attempt at being reasonable and impartial.",
"This is exactly what will happen, unless US consumers boycotted the now-inflated Mexican goods to the point where the wall cost is not reimbursed. If that were to happen it means US taxpayers still paid for a wall that was never reimbursed. Trump's end goal here is to get US companies to move their manufacturing operations back to the US. For that to be accomplished, those companies would have to undergo major layoffs to pay for the cost of moving back. That doesn't help the lower or middle class of America. That helps Trump fulfill a campaign promise. Import tariffs don't work. 1920's Protectionism & Smoot-Hawley taught us that much.",
"I think Krugman does a good job of explaining how similar tactics backfired in the 80s. He has a pretty good track record of predicting economic outcomes over the last 20 years. He believes that if implemented, the policies will harm more than help US manufacturing, and hurt most consumers. > So Trumpism will probably follow a similar course; it will actually shrink manufacturing despite the big noise made about saving a few hundred jobs here and there. On the other hand, by then the BLS may be thoroughly politicized, commanded to report good news whatever happens. Full article: URL_0",
"You need to consider what the imports are and whether there is an alternate source. From the US govt trade site we get the top export categories from Mexico. The top export categories (2-digit HS) in 2015 were: machinery ($42 billion), electrical machinery ($41 billion), vehicles ($22 billion), mineral fuels ($19 billion), and plastics ($17 billion). Now interestingly, Mexico doesn't make a lot of this stuff internally. What happens is foreign manufacturers use Mexico as a cheap landing ground for NAFTA. So what would happen if we taxed mexican imports 20% ? Without a full analysis of the total cost models it's tough to say. We can make a reasonable guess that the total value of exports would begin to drop off a cliff as customers looked to alternate sources, or suppliers re-routed their operations probably through Canada or possibly direct to the US. This would have a small impact on us but a devastating one on Mexico, meaning it's a very effective threat.",
"The Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 wiki page without comment. URL_0",
"Another good question, does this violate NAFTA? And what do we lose if it does?",
"It doesn't. Companies would have pay the tariff or build a factory inside the US, either way, it's the consumer who pays in the end."
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5qczh4 | Why does grilled cheese taste so much better than a plain cheese sandwich? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The sandwich undergoes a chemical process called the [Maillard Reaction]( URL_0 ), where it produces new flavors and aromas.",
"Because it was made with love. That and the butter on the toasty bread goes perfect with melted cheese.",
"1. Cold mutes flavor; warm melted cheese tastes better 2. The Maillard reaction creates new aromas and flavors that aren't present in a plain cheese sandwich, so again...more flavor. 3. Grilled cheese is usually griddled in/with butter. More flavor.",
"When the bread becomes toasted, the sugars in it are caramelized. Caramelization on many foods makes them tastier. It even works on meats and veggies. That's why grilled meats and veggies are tastier. Also, warming up cheese brings out its flavor. Cheese connoisseurs always allow their cheese to warm up to room temperature before serving."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction"
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|
5qczjh | I'm a better person when I'm drunk. Why is this? | Hey all, I've noticed that when I'm intoxicated I tend to be a much kinder, understanding, sympathetic, determined, bolder, and all around better person than I am when I'm sober. Granted, I miss out on motor skills and short-term memory, but I overall feel like I contribute more to the world when I'm under the influence. Why is this? Is there any way I can obtain these qualities without becoming dependent on alcohol? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcybk98"
],
"text": [
"Alcohol plays with your hypothalamus. Some people (like my friend) get very anxious when drinking. And i don't mean wasted, but mildly drunk. Some people get angry and physical, and some (like me) veel so much better, active and social. Like on some drug. I also have more motivation to finish some after work tasks home when i'm a bit drunk. I finish them correctly, and fast. Being sober i have no appetite to do anything like this."
],
"score": [
6
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"text_urls": [
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5qd0dl | Why is it entirely possible to fall asleep while listening to music, but very difficult to fall asleep while listening to someone snore? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcybgxs",
"dcyc0pm"
],
"text": [
"I think it's subjective; if a sound can lull you into a sense of security and distract you from thoughts that would otherwise keep you awake then it'll be easier to fall asleep. Anything that helps you disconnect from the day without stimulating you would likely help you sleep. I personally can't sleep with music playing, but I can with my wife snoring. Other favorites include rain, a ticking clock, night traffic, and the sound of someone mowing their lawn a few gardens away.",
"Other than subjectivity, I would say it's the sporadic nature of snoring. It's not consistent, there are varying sound levels, intervals and \"pitches\". Whereas music and other sounds are typically level (depending on the type of music of course) I can't fall asleep without a documentary playing in the background, but if there are random sounds popping up as I try to sleep, my ADD brain wants to wake up and pay attention."
],
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4,
3
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|
5qd1zn | At what point would it be too far along to worry about climate change? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcya4m4"
],
"text": [
"I think the best answer to this question is that the point of no return would be a point at which the changes in climate caused by human action can no longer be reversed simply by reducing human greenhouse gas output. So, for example, if it gets hot enough that methane in the oceans and permafrost is being released fast enough to be self sustaining, that's a point of \"no return,\" because it would no longer be enough to stop being bad, we'd have to invent something that would fix things. But I don't think there's agreement on when or if this point would be reached."
],
"score": [
3
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"text_urls": [
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|
5qd8lk | Why do gyms put cardio equipment in front of windows? | I'm not a shy person, but I hate exercising right in front of the huge windows in my gym. Does anyone know why nearly all gyms I have seen have this setup? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyafg0"
],
"text": [
"Probably so that one can look outside. I can also understand cardio in front of televisions. But actually, I'd prefer the windows. The outdoor view lends to the perception of being outside while on treadmill or elliptical. The weights are best in front of mirrors so the user can verify their form."
],
"score": [
7
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"text_urls": [
[]
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5qd90p | Why is America pro spending billions on a wall but against spending billions on universal health care? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyayse"
],
"text": [
"According to Pew, 61% of Americans do not support the border wall. Not to mention that Trump build his platform on somehow being able to force Mexico to pay for the wall. People didn't support Trump because they thought his policies were any good. They supported him because they wanted to give Washington a black eye."
],
"score": [
4
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"text_urls": [
[]
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} | [
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|
5qddg1 | Why do lakes freeze but rivers don't, in the same temperature? | I understand that since the river is moving, some sort of heat energy is being created, but how and from where? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcybstl"
],
"text": [
"Water in lakes is still, so it has time to freeze. Rivers are flowing, so water is constantly moving, making freezing much more difficult."
],
"score": [
4
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5qdeup | How does a tax on imports work? How does this tax shake down to consumers? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcygc8i",
"dcychbz",
"dcygdnw"
],
"text": [
"I will give two very simplified examples of a Mexican company selling goods to a Walmart in the USA, which in turn sells to a customer. **Example 1 (No import tax):** * **Mexican Company** - I want to sell a shirt to Walmart in the USA. Mexican company manufactures shirt, imports it to USA and delivers to Walmart for $10. Mexican Company pockets $10 dollars. * **Walmart** - I will now sell this shirt to a customer for $20. I pocket $10 (after paying $10 to the Mexican company). * **Customer** - I paid $20 for this shirt. $10 of my money went to the Mexican company. $10 went to Walmart. **Example 2 (20% tax on imports from Mexico):** * **Mexican Company** - I want to sell a shirt to Walmart in the USA. Mexican company manufactures shirt, imports it to USA. During import they declare the value fo the shirts to be $10. Customs imposes a 20% tariff. Mexican company pays $2 to customs. Mexican company then delivers the shirts to Walmart, but charges them $12 instead of $10, because they want to recuperate the $2 they paid in tarrif. Mexican company still pockets $10, but also paid $2 to customs. * **Walmart** - I will now sell this shirt to a customer. I still want to make a $10 profit, so I will sell the shirt for $22. I still pocket $10 (after paying $12 to the Mexican company). * **Customer** - I paid $22 for this shirt. $10 went to the Mexican company. $10 went to Walmart. $2 went to customs via tarrif to pay for a wall. * **BONUS:** Also, because the price of goods went up, customers in general will buy fewer shirts, meaning that BOTH the Mexican Company and Walmart make less money. Walmart may decide that, because of slumping shirt sales, they need to cut back on hiring sales associates, reducing jobs. Mexican company may decide that it's better to sell shirts to China instead of Walmart in the USA, meaning that the customer gets lets options to buy. In the long term, Mexico recognizes that China is a more important trading partner for its economy than the USA, which means it may start siding with China over USA in international politics and decisions (which is particularly bad for the USA, because Mexico is a geographical neighbor with the USA and you generally want to have strong relations with your neighbors for defense purposes).",
"When you go to the store, the sales tax is *technically* charged against \"the sale,\" not specifically to \"the buyer\". However, the retailer completely and transparently passes this cost onto you. An import tax would function very similarly. Companies that import products are charged a tax, say 20% of its retail value. They will recuperate this by increasing the final price of the object by 20%. This makes imports more expensive to the end purchaser, and therefore makes them less desirable.",
"An import tax is normally paid on the price paid by the person importing it into the country. The importer will then distribute this to stores. The importer may absorb this additional cost or pass this cost onto the stores. If they pass it on (or some of it) then it's up to the store. The store may absorb it or pass it on to the consumer. A 20% import tax will mean that many or most goods from Mexico will raise in price for the end consumer since often these distributors are working on low margins anyway and so can't absorb the cost, but it's complex. Not everything will go up and not everything from Mexico will go up by 20% since there are more factors to the price than just the cost of the product. But the cost of the product is of course a very major factor in determining the final price. Also you might think \"why don't we buy widgets from someone else\" but the product from Mexico might still be the cheapest even with a 20% tax because Mexico is closer, and the transport costs of bringing it from, say, china will outweigh the tariff. This is a tax grab. Mexico isn't going to pay for this wall, American consumers are going to pay for this wall."
],
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5,
4,
3
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|
5qdf2j | Where does the mustard from "mustard gas" come from? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyc5yn"
],
"text": [
"Sulfur mustard (mustard gas) agents are generally yellow-brown in color and have a smell similar to mustard, garlic, or horseradish. Although if you can smell it you're in real trouble."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
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} | [
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|
5qdfqr | Cross-pollination by hand. To be more blunt, how can you make sure two plants have "sex"? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyclmu"
],
"text": [
"Plants have structures which release pollen (stamen) which is the sperm. They are designed to float on over to the pistil which contains the eggs. You can ensure this happens by physically taking the pollen and rubbing it in the pistil."
],
"score": [
3
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"text_urls": [
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|
5qdgez | How are all-you-can-eat buffets profitable? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcycfnt",
"dcydxnr"
],
"text": [
"They calculate with what a average person would eat (because jot everyone eats tons just because it's all you can eat) and choose a price after that calculation. There are also person who don't eat much (old people e.g.).",
"Different buffets use different techniques. 1. Cheap types of food. Souplantation specializes in soups and salads, which are relatively cheap to produce, and relatively filling. Cici's specializes in pizza - also cheap. 2. Portion control. Meat is expensive, so carving stations aren't going to give you control over how much you cut off that huge roast. Expensive items will literally have smaller spoons, or smaller dishes. See also the layout of the buffet - more expensive stuff is further away, or less visible, so fewer people take it. 3. Availability. Expensive foods are replaced less often, to help control costs. At any given time, there are 4 cheap choices and 1-2 expensive choices. Businesses know people will have some pizza while waiting for the crab legs to come out. This means fewer crab legs are consumed. 4. Sometimes, buffets are just amazingly expensive. One buffet I went to at a conference was $85 for brunch, about three years ago. But it was beyond excellent. I had salmon at least five different ways: lox, poached, sushi, ravioli, and caviar. 5. Sometimes, they get their money from other sources. When in Vegas, the buffets are much cheaper, to draw in players, who will also spend money at the gambling tables. So they use the food as a 'loss leader'. If you've just lost $2,500 rolling dice at a top Vegas hotel, like the Wynn or Bellagio, they are happy to give you two passes to their buffet, even if that's a couple of hundred bucks retain price."
],
"score": [
3,
3
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|
5qdgpz | How can humans die of electrocution from wires yet survive lightning bolts? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyft6u",
"dcycokv"
],
"text": [
"the reason you die from electrocution is it is an ongoing, continuous, current. The current will immobilize an muscle tissue it passes through, keeping it contracted for as long as the current is present. This includes your heart and lungs, to name a few. So basically you die because it stopped your heart / breathing / etc. A lightning strike, is pretty fast, lasting only a split second. Can still kill you but the chances are lower.",
"The exposure to the pure lightning bolt is for a very, very small amount of time compared to a wire electrocution"
],
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5,
3
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|
5qdiu2 | How does an import tariff on items from Mexico make Mexico pay for the wall? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcydw3m"
],
"text": [
"Mexico receives some of its main profit from US sales. Increasing a tax on foreign goods will drive more people to pay for domestic goods; thus, resulting in less money going into Mexico."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
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|
5qdjk3 | Why do people from the US say that they are the most free in the world, even compared to first world European countries? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcye5ts",
"dcydqiu",
"dcydren",
"dcydggv"
],
"text": [
"To be blunt about it, Americans seem to be ill informed about the rest of the world. They claim freedoms (like privacy) they don't have and claim other countries have a population that is oppressed. If that was true wouldn't America be way more overrun with foreigners (not just the downtrodden) that it is? You don't see a ton of wealthy people waiting in the immigration line to come here for all those \"Freedoms\".",
"People who say that, and \"America is the greatest country in the world\" are usually people who've never left the states.",
"Because they are told so, and like the good broken records they are, they repeat it as if we are the only example of freedom there has ever been. I mean we were the first ones ever right!?",
"It depends on who is saying that. Europe does have some very society-friendly health and wellness policies, but many countries place more limits on free speech than the US. There are also a lot more regulations on guns in Europe than in the US. If people value free speech laws and guns, they *may* feel that the US is more free."
],
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8,
5,
5,
3
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|
5qe0zg | why is it that people use underscore "_" instead of "-" when programming | On the internet (URL's) you rarely see the "-" while in programming languages i've never seen them, why is that? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyh0zm",
"dcyiqnv",
"dcyhrgk",
"dcyijzr"
],
"text": [
"In many languages \"-\" means \"minus\" which means it breaks things when you just use it as a separator.",
"\"my-variable\" is \"subtract 'variable' from 'my' \" (in many programming languages) \"my variable\" is often a syntax error, because \"my\" and \"variable\" are both seen as variable (or words with special meaning) and the computer has no idea what to do with the two variables (add them? multiply?) \"MyVariable\" and \"my_variable\" are both treated as one variable.",
"When using an \"_\" it's used for a space. While in programming \"-\" can be misinterpreted as subtraction.",
"A \"-\" can mean a minus sign, or a hyphen or dash. A \"_\" is kind of a leftover character from typewriters, where to underline you would type a bunch of underscores, then backspace over and type letters on top of them. Obviously computers work differently than that, so it kind of lost its meaning. It took up a new one as \"a space somewhere I'm not allow to put an actual space\"."
],
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11,
5,
3,
3
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5qe2gm | What Caused the Great Depression? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyinft"
],
"text": [
"Many factors, but in a nutshell: The stock market crash of 1929 decimated some banks that were offering margin (money loaned to buy stocks) to traders who lost everything and could not pay back their margin loans. Because some of these banks had over leveraged their depositor's money, the bank went out of business and the depositors lost all or most of their money. This triggered a nation wide run on the banks, including banks that were not affected by the crash. People were worried that their money was not safe at any bank, so in a small time frame, most depositors closed their accounts and took all their cash out. The problem is that banks loan out the money that is deposited in their bank, so they generally only have about 20% of the actual cash that is in people's accounts. In order to keep their liquidity, banks started calling in loans (meaning they had to be paid in full). Most people could not pay off their loans all at once, so they were foreclosed on (their collateral was seized). So people started losing their homes, businesses, and farms. This led to a lack of jobs and an economic depression."
],
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5
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|
5qe2pz | What does stretching do? | And why are you supposed to stretch before/after exercising? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyjr61"
],
"text": [
"Stretching helps prepare your muscles for exercise. It allows it to be nice and loose so that you don't rip something. If you immediately go into some hardcore exercise like golf then you might pull something because your muscles were still tense and not properly ready for that hardcore golf. Think of it like a rubber band. If you slowly ease into the exercise or slowly pull on the band, it's less likely to break. But if you just yank it real hard (that's what she said) then the chance that it'll break is much higher."
],
"score": [
5
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"text_urls": [
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} | [
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5qe3xy | How does chat applications knows when the other person is typing before sending the message? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyiyuo",
"dcyp7oe"
],
"text": [
"Easy, once you type at least 1 character, the program detects that and sends that info to whomever the conversation is with, it's super simple.",
"There is a tiny bird inside your phone. When you start typing, it flies over to the other phone real fast and tells the other bird (the one in that phone)."
],
"score": [
7,
7
],
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|
5qe4uf | Why were the Repubs allowed to block Obama from appointing a new Justice-- for over a year? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyickp",
"dcyibsq"
],
"text": [
"The nominees have to be confirmed to take their appointment. Put simply there was nothing to force the GOP to accept obamas nominee. They arguably had a strong moral duty to do so (or at least reject the nominee for good faith reasons). Perhaps even a theoretical legal obligation under the constitution to approach the matter in good faith, but only they have the authority to police themselves. The system in place is the system that was followed. The system assumes everyone involved operates in good faith. There is no enforcement mechanism.",
"The appointments clause of the constitution requires supremes to be appointed by the advice and consent of congress. That means a majority teapublican congress is able to hold up the appointment. They did this for two reasons. The first is Scalia died during an election year so their case to wait was plausible. The secondary reason was that Scalia was the most reactionary judge on the court and they didn't want him replaced by a moderate, even a republican one. From the democrats side, there was the colossal arrogance that made them think up until the last minute, that Clinton would be President, so they didn't really mind waiting. Doom on them."
],
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7,
3
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|
5qe5pd | Why do kernels of microwave popcorn pop individually rather than in groups? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyi9kk"
],
"text": [
"Popcorn kernels contain small amounts of water, and that water evaporates when heated, expands, and pops the popcorn. Due to variation in the water content of the kernels along with size, and even strength, it takes different times for different kernels. Imagine that we have two kernels, one strong, one weak. The weak kernel will take less time to pop, due to requiring less force, which can be generated in a shorter amount of time."
],
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4
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|
5qet5b | Why is it common practice to bury our dead in the ground? | I am not educated on all nationality's versions of burial. I know many have different ceremonies, it seems like most almost try to preserve the person in some sort of way. I.E. in a casket under the ground. Why is that? I am from the south and I know that I live under the water table, so instead of putting bodies underground, some are preserved in "tombs" basically, above ground. I've seen caskets float away during floods. It seems like there is a strong belief as to why our human burials should be as they are and I've never thought to ask why? Why isn't cremation or some other type of burial more popular in modern time? Preserving a body rendering unusable land is counter productive IMO. Edit: South as in Southern U.S. Thought I changed that. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyrtdc"
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"text": [
"We bury bodies because dead bodies are horrible disease spreaders. The idea is to get a rid of the body where it won't infect the rest of us."
],
"score": [
3
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5qeypt | - What is actually happening when you get water stuck in your ear? | So you know how when you go to the pool, occasionally you see kids either jumping up and down with their heads tilted or just shaking their heads to one side? Yeah, that was probably me as a kid. What exactly happens when you get water "stuck" in your ear? Why is it that sometimes it comes out after a shake or two, but then other times you have to just suffer through having slightly muted hearing in one ear until the water evaporates? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyq055"
],
"text": [
"Water is pretty \"sticky\" on our skin. Have you been to a restroom only to find one of those air hand driers? Even if it tries to blow away the water, you end up wiping your hands on your pants anyways because the water is still stuck to your hands. The same thing happens in your ears. The water is stuck in your ear canal. Depending on where it's stuck it can get out easier or harder. If it's just in your canal, it's like a drop of water on the inside of a large straw. It can slide out with enough effort. If it's stuck directly on your eardrum, it'll muffle your hearing and it's harder to get out because the drop is attached to the sides and end of your ear canal."
],
"score": [
3
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5qf0y2 | Why is the Midwest called the Midwest? | What are we west of? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyqjnh"
],
"text": [
"It's west of the original States of the US which were mostly located on the East Coast. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 signed by the US and Britain after the Revolutionary war granted the US that region for settlement. It's considered \"Mid\" because the south was mostly owned by Spain and the north and far west by the French. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 from the French further expanded the Midwest region."
],
"score": [
7
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5qffwc | How does imposing a 20% tax on Mexican imports, WHICH will be paid BY American Citizens, make Mexico pay for the wall? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcytt10",
"dcyuclh",
"dcyvszl"
],
"text": [
"It's not a direct form of taking payment from Mexico. However a steep tarrif like that will strongly urge buisness to move out of Mexico (preferably to the US), and cause Mexico to lose a lot of revenue from exports to the US. Either way, the end goal of financially punishing Mexico is achieved.",
"Put a fee (tax) on those remittances that Mexicans send back home to Mexico. That's how Carlos Slim became a multi-billionaire.",
"Europe put huge tariffs on farm produce from Africa that ruined some African countries economies but saved European farms. So I guess it had kind of worked in the past."
],
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4,
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3
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|
5qfg93 | why is cancer so fucking prevalent? | has this always been the case? are people more likely to get cancer now than they were, say, fifty years ago? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyuezm",
"dcyu2m1"
],
"text": [
"The short version is that now we have more labels, and we killed off most of the easy ways to die. Go back 100 years, and there was a good chance that you'd die of injury or \"consumption.\" Injury is pretty self explanatory. Consumption was a very inclusive term that covered pretty much every kind of wasting disease. If your lungs started to fail due to tuberculosis, causing you to slowly suffocate over a year or three, you'd shrink and die. So people would refer to it as a consumptive disease. If you had an internal cancer that slowly sapped your strength, ditto. Same if you had congestive heart failure. These days, we'd break those all out into more specific diseases. And for two of them, we have specific therapies that are, to some degree, effective. The other one is \"cancer\" which, in itself, is a shitload of different diseases. We just (currently) have them all lumped together because they have enough things in common. And, realistically, everyone gets cancer if they live long enough. And long enough isn't really even that long. About 30 years. The odds of getting a metastasizing cancer (the kind that spreads inside your body and is more likely to kill you) in that time frame is low. But you're pretty much guaranteed to already have at least one by the time you realize that you're really gonna die some day. It just comes down to the incredibly high number of cells in your body, and the fact that your cells aren't quite perfect at making copies of themselves. Sometimes they mess up. And eventually the mistakes will be the kind of mistakes that create cancer. And eventually they will be the kind of mistakes that make a cancer that kills you.",
"Simple answer is because medical science has eliminated many of the previous causes of death leading to a major boost of life expectancy. Now the thing about cancer is that it's not a matter of if but of when. Anyone lives long enough will eventually get it so now you're seeing people surviving long enough to be afflicted."
],
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4
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5qfgbc | Boomerangs | How do they actually work ? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcyuekv"
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"text": [
"Oddly enough, they were never originally meant to \"come back\". They were hunting tools, and the returning effect is just a product of improved aerodynamics. There are two things happening. The boomerangs shape is similar to that of a planes wing, creating high pressure on one side, and low pressure on the other, generating lift. Secondly, when the blades are spinning, they \"want\" to spin about their central axis. The end effect meaning it acts in a similar way to a gyroscope. As gravity pulls on one side, the boomerang will either arc to the left or right, depending which way its thrown, and the lift generated will \"usually\" be enough to carry it in a circular motion till it returns to its point of origin (Hopefully you're not still standing there when it does though)"
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5qfn6w | The origin of "your mom" jokes. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"according to recent archaeological finds, it seems to be from ancient Babylonian philosophy or writing students, about 3500 years ago. a tablet had a list of riddles, most condescending or conceptually funny at the time, such as: The deflowered girl did not become pregnant. The undeflowered girl became pregnant. What is it? Auxiliary forces. translating to: the non-virgin did not become pregnant, but the virgin did. what is it? special forces. (most likely referencing the virgin's lack of honesty and possibly applauding the suitor's bravery and tact in keeping it so secret) {lost piece of tablet}...of your mother is by the one who has intercourse with her. What/who is it? [No answer] \"{something something} is from someone willing to bed your mother. what is it?\" \"...\" this is perhaps the strongest wit among them, because it's a meta-joke. every one has an answer, except the last. The lack of an answer, after reading the rest, is striking. this could also mean it's the longest running memetic, or \"meme\", ever."
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5qfsts | What makes plastic surgery look so obviously overdone? | It seems you can always tell when someone has had work done on their face, but what is it exactly that gives it away? Shouldn't the goal be to not tell you had work done in the first place? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's like CGI in films. You don't notice a lot of it. You only notice what stands out. Tens of thousands of people undergo cosmetic surgeries every day, and you'd have no idea. It can be simple things like having protruding ears pinned back, eyelids changed, lip lifts, nose jobs etc etc.. if surgery is done well, you'd never know. It's when people go crazy with lip filler and augmented cheeks that things start to get noticeable.",
"I think the Uncanny Valley hypothesis could help you understand this. Its básically the idea that human replicas that look almost like humans but not quite can make us feel un confortable. This also explains fear of clowns or costumes. I am guessing people that has had surgery stops looking completely human and our minds detect it.",
"So how do you know all the people that have had work that you don't notice? URL_0",
"You think you can always tell, because you only notice the botched jobs/ over done stuff. You're only noticing a tiny fraction of procedures, usually attempts by older people to reclaim their youth and it looks freaky, old people can't just botox themselves young again.",
"You notice 100% of the (visible) flaws, and 0% of the (invisible) successes. Obviously you'll think that most surgeries look bad.",
"There was a cool video about why we hate CGI in movies and the conclusion was that we hate bad CGI because we don't notice when it is done well. I think this applies to plastic surgery as well.",
"I think of it like using the Liquify tool in Photoshop. Really skilled digital artists can alter a person's appearance while keeping in mind proportions, continuity, patterns, and the background (e.g., edges which, when distorted, give away that Liquify was used). Likewise, a skilled surgeon knows not only the appropriate changes to make, but also keeps in mind proportionality and continuity. Their technique also minimizes scarring or hides them completely in the folds of the skin. Poor surgeons will agree to changes that they *know* will not look normal (excessively large cheekbones and lips). Their poor technique also stretches the skin to an abnormal degree making it very painful for the patient post-op and looking completely abnormal."
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5qftj1 | Is it possible to be depressed without knowing it yourself? Without even suspecting it? If yes, how does that work exactly? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Depression is one of those things that creeps up on ya and kills your ability to realise that you are depressed. A few ways to tell if you may be clinically depressed: You are bored all of the time, nothing is interesting or exciting. Things that you typically enjoy are no longer fun and you can't tell why. You are lethargic. It can even be a struggle to get out of bed. There are many more symptoms than that, those are the symptoms I get when i'm getting depressed.",
"You can be so used to being in that state you can't/won't see a difference because whatever is normal will be far behind you.",
"Yes absolutely. In fact thats probably the *normal* state of affairs. Most people who are clinically depressed dont know it."
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5qfya9 | Why does the speed of sound increase again after a certain altitude? | I've been looking at some tables online of the speed of sound at different altitudes. A lot of the tables I'm seeing show that the speed of sound increases again after about 25,000 m or so. I thought air got less dense and the temperature got colder the higher in the atmosphere you are? What am I missing? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"At ~18km up you leave the Troposphere, and enter the Stratosphere. Up there instead of it getting colder with increasing height, it gets warmer again. This is due to heating from the sun due to Ozone absorbing UV light. This means the top layer heats up more than the bottom layer, as less UV light gets down to the bottom layer. The speed of sound depends on the temperature (which is a measure of how fast the air molecules are moving.) So higher temperature = faster speed. [Pressure has no direct effect on the speed of sound]( URL_0 ) as the speed depends on the pressure / density, and as you increase the pressure, you also increase the density, cancelling out the effect. If you chance the humidity, you change the density without changing the pressure, which will affect the speed."
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5qg1r8 | Why does school food tend to be awful? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not only does the school want to make a profit off the food, but parents don't really want to pay $8/lunch or so like you would for an adult. Low quality food is inexpensive but tastes bad.",
"Because there is very little incentive to make it good. If a restaurant has poor quality food, people will stop eating there. However it's pretty unlikely that a company would lose a school contract just because some students complain about the food."
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5qg4ol | If web browsers treat Javascript consistently, why can't they do the same with CSS? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Browsers **don't** treat Javascript consistently. They're better than they used to be but they all have little quirks. Why? Because JS & CSS are complex specifications and nobody does it perfectly & nobody implements 100% of it.",
"Browsers don't treat javascript consistently. That's why libraries like jQuery are so popular. They essentially standardise tasks by executing them in browser specific ways behind the scenes. HTLM and CSS isn't standardised because different vendors have different priorities. Think of it like this: * Apple is big on selling media and as a result they're big on standards that support licensing and other anti piracy measures as demanded by their business partners. * Mozilla and Opera wave the open source / open standards flag. They want the opposite of what Apple wants. They're not in favour of media related HTML tags that are based on proprietary or licence based technology for instance. * Microsoft traditionally wanted their browser to integrate strongly with their own technology and software. They prioritised their own solutions over those of others. Which gives them a different approach than either Apple or the open source browsers. A standardised approach to how browsers interpret the web is next to impossible because each browser vendor has goals that conflict with those of other browser vendors. [XKCD sums up the problem quite nicely.]( URL_0 )"
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5qg97v | How is that my cable box can record up to 4 HD TV shows at once whilst playing 5th one directly but my internet, provided with a package cannot cope to smoothly stream HD anything | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because you get way more bandwidth on a TV cable. The reason for this is because they only have to send out each channel once. So if there are 400 channels, the cable TV provider just sends out 400 channels of content which people who are subscribed can request. This means even if there are 2000 people connected to that provider, it still only sends out 400 channels. On the other hand, the internet is designed to be *dynamic*. Each person who wants a file - such as a bit of a video stream - requests it specifically and gets a specific response back. So if there are 2000 people asking for various parts of various videos, it uses bandwidth for all of them. This is why you are getting much higher bandwidth via your cable tv line than your internet line. Coax cable I think with all channels combined can transfer about 4200 mbps? Though I might be misremembering. Still, the limit on your internet speed isn't in the cabling, usually, but instead on the fact that *somewhere* down the line there's just too many different things going on to get it all through at once.",
"First, the streams that you record are streamed out to everyone as part of the cable package you get. It has dedicated bandwidth. The cable box has 5 tuners in it. Second, when you stream an on-demand program it has to go to you and only you. If too many people want to stream on-demand at once you could get a slowdown, because you share a \"last mile\" segment with neighbors. You may have another problem though. What is your advertised internet speed and are you getting it? Try using wired internet if possible. Many times people's slow speeds are due to wi-fi problems.",
"I worked tech support for a big IPTV company. The pipe going into your house is big enough to support 5 HD channels and whatever tier of internet you have but always has the bandwidth required for the TV reserved for TV. So if you are watching one TV show and not recording anything the bandwidth that can carry 4 HD streams just sits idle it doesn't get allocated to the internet. This is done for two reasons. People complain way more about bad TV service then they do about slower internet. And this big IPTV company wants you watching their TV content which is way more profitable for them then Netflix which they don't make money from."
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5qgiux | What happens to our bodies to cause sleep walking? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Over the course of the night you go through several sleep cycles between lighter REM sleep when you're dreaming and deep sleep. When you sleep walk, it's generally due to your brain not properly shifting from deep sleep to light sleep or waking, therefore you remain asleep but still can walk around or do things (like my brother who once sleptwalk to the radiator and peed on it, causing a house fire haha)"
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5qgl0b | Negative Gearing | All I know that it is about houses and how people buy it out and then like keep it for a while so they can profit. But then again I could be wrong. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Gearing in real estate is taking out a loan to buy property. Negative gearing is when you expect the payments on this loan to be higher than the income you get from your property. This loss can then be taken out of your income tax, meaning you don't have to pay as much tax. This can also serve to make an investor more money if the value of their property rises faster than the losses they make on the property (if capital gains are higher than their losses). [ URL_1 has a great article on negative gearing if you want to know more about this.]( URL_0 )",
"Can someone do an example, even with really nice numbers?... wouldn't you still be losing money seeing as you still have to pay the difference in the loss you're taking by having the property in the first place?"
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5qglai | The hydrogen metal that was just made | Sorry if there's already a thread, if there is, link me to it. What were the main obstacles in making hydrogen metal? How long did this take? Why is it such a big deal (or not)? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a very big deal. Right now the only sample of this in the world where it was made not long ago. They used two diamond (a material with one of the highest hardness) to crush hydrogen with super high pressure to form metallic hydrogen. Now they are testing it as much as they can, but they plan to release the pressure sometime in the next couples of days or weeks. On theory is that like Diamond, metallic hydrogen is metasable. Meaning that just like diamond is created from high pressure and temperature, it will still stay stable at room temperature and pressure. That's incredibly important because other wise we can't use it in our technology. The main propriety that is interesting is that it's a supraconductor. Normal wire depending on the material, size of the wire and voltage lose more or less electricity when it travel through it. This wasted electricity is transformed into heat. That cause two problem. Thing can heat up more, you need bigger wire to stay safe, you need to produce more power than you actually need, etc. All of that make bigger, more costly and possible less safe equipment. But a supraconductor will be near 100% efficiency when it come to electricity travel. That mean faster and smaller electronics, huge reduction in weight for wires (think of the weight reduction if we could replace all the copper wires), huge increase in efficiency in electric production and distribution. It would basically make everything with electricity better. I also heard that we could use it as a rocket fuel. Basically, you put a lot of energy to create metallic hydrogen and if you can release that energy in a rocket energy that would be a lot more powerful than our current rocket. But the first step is to know if it's stable at room temperature and pressure. Then you need to develop a cheaper way to produce, so even if everything go perfectly we are still decades away to see commercial application.",
"Making hydrogen into a metal requires huge amounts of pressure. Pressure that's greater than what's at the center of the earth. After that it's uncertain whether it stays metallic if you take the pressure off at normal atmospheric conditions. It's a big deal because this could be a huge leap forward in superconductor technology increasing electronic devices efficiency."
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5qgpb0 | Why do most Ameican homes in TV shows have fly screens, but they're uncommon elsewhwre? | So I'm currently deep in binge watching MTV's Catfish. Anyway, almost every door Nev knocks on has a fly screen. They seem so handy. I've never seen one in my country (South Africa. And we definitely have flies enough to warrant fly screens) or other countries I've visited (in Europe). What gives? I think they look super neat. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I've never really thought about it. Amusingly, up here in the frozen wastes of Canada, where the only benefit of the soul-crushing winters is a half helping of bugs, screens are everywhere."
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5qgq1c | What does "/16 or /24" after an IP Address mean? | Hello all - I have seen the /16, /24, etc multiple times after an IP Address and I just don't understand it! How do I know which number after the slash belongs to my home network? Any help/guidance an explaining this would be very much appreciate! Thanks in advance! EDIT 1: Thank you everyone who replied and for not making me feel so dumb! haha I now have a much better understanding of what this means! :) | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is a decimal representation of your subnet mask. Your computer has an IP address. Something like: 10.1.1.2 But this address represents two things: a) your computer; and b) the local network your computer is on. And it needs a way of knowing which part is which.^* To do this it uses what is known as a subnet mask which can be represented in a number of ways. The \"slash\" notation, followed by a number, is how many 1 bits are in the subnet mask, in the case of /24, that would be 24 1 bits. Remember that computers deal in binary, so... 10.1.1.2 Is actually: 00001010.00000001.00000001.00000010 A subnet mask of 24 would be: 11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000 Each bit of the IP address that lines up with a 1 bit in the mask is part of the network (in this case 10.1.1.x). Each bit of the IP address that lines up with a 0 bit in the mask is a host address (in this case x.x.x.2). Your computer uses this information to determine if communication is destined for the local network (and doesn't need to go through a gateway) or is destined for a remote network (and does). In this case, everything from 10.1.1.1 to 10.1.1.254 would be considered local. All other IP addresses would be remote. \\* - Originally, they designed a scheme where IP addresses would fall into certain classes that defined which part was the network part and which part was the host part. For example, if it began with a 10, then the first octet was automatically the network part and the last three would be the host part. This turned out to be insufficient for modern networking needs, so they developed the concept of subnetworking of which the subnet(work) mask allows us to chop up the address any way we want."
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5qgun7 | Why are humans the only creature that needs help in giving birth? | Aren't we supposed to be superior? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is only partially true - many animals die in the process of childbirth, and could use a lot of help during it. But the reason it is harder for humans is because we evolved to have bigger brains and larger heads.",
"We dont NEED help.....we just feel safer and better with professionals taking care. Still in rural parts women give birth without any medical help",
"Humans have unusually big heads compared to the rest of our bodies. However, we don't always *need* help, but getting assistance helps avoid complications. Don't forget that it's not unusual for other animals to have stillbirths, and some die after giving birth as well. We humans get kind of strongly emotionally attached to other people so I guess we kind of want to avoid taking unnecessary risks. Grew up on a farm, and I have been in a situation where it was just me as a young teenager along with my mother trying to help a cow giving birth, and the calf died before we got it all the way out. We weren't strong enough to pull it out and it eventually got squeezed to death.",
"Humans actually come out way too early and underdeveloped compared to other mammals. We come in to the world so fragile and helpless and in need of so much care and attention, unlike other mammals who can stand within hours of birth, etc. Something to do with our large heads/ brains and female hips being big enough to only carry said head for so long. It's a trade off between how long you can carry the underdeveloped human foetus and being able to still walk upright.",
"1) Humans are not superior. 2) Many animals die during childbirth, and many of them can be saved by providing them with help during the delivery.",
"A combination of two factors: * Walking upright required changes to our pelvis which makes birth harder. * Our \"superiority\" comes all from our intelligence, and that requires a large brain and a larger head, which again makes birth harder, especially in combination with the narrower pelvis. And as others have pointed out, we don't strictly *need* help, it only, well, *helps* (to reduce suffering and mortality). And our intelligence and social behaviour ensures that help is usually given when needed.",
"Most women don't need help. They just prefer to do it with some guidance from a midwife, usually in a hospital. Also, pain relief is a 'nice to have' but again they would survive without it. Something like 20% of births in the city I live in require surgical intervention - and that's considered high, but due to the average age of first time mothers being higher in capital cities. In evolutionary terms, you might say that those 20% of births would've ended with either mother or baby (or both) dying. And in the wild for other species I wouldn't be surprised to find that birth mortality rates are broadly similar, especially among other primates? I don't know though. One thing I do believe - we are now conditioned to fear giving birth, to expect pain and to adopt positions and techniques that contrast with a more primal approach. 1) the idea that a woman should lie on her back to give birth. In this position the birth canal is angle upwards, meaning the baby must go against gravity to be born! This position also causes more discomfort and is more likely to result in the baby turning so he or she is 'back to back' with the mother. Ouch. 2) the concept of 'pushing' when someone else decides you are ready. Most women - even first time mums - know instinctively when to push, if you can even call it pushing. The body expels the baby all by itself and the more relaxed a mother is, the easier this process. 3) the tradition of hospitalisation - many natural births could easily take place in a birth centre or in a woman's home, with minimal intervention. There's a fairly big resurgence in a practice called hypnobirthing. This is basically re-teaching women the instincts and techniques that used to be very common but that were lost when birth became almost completely medicalised.",
"Women do not need help giving birth at all. They are perfectly capable of giving birth without any help and deal with all after effects. The reason we give them help is it enhances the survival rate of the mother and offspring.",
"Why are we supposed to be superior? 'Survival of the fittest' is misleading if you understand evolution. It's truly only, Survival of a species whose ability to reproduce exceeds its rate of death. We do have larger brains, generally, as another post mentioned, and that makes crowning more difficult. We have also been a social species for a very very long time. Since before many of our current 'adaptations' (another misnomer really). Being social means that we can have relied on help giving birth, and having had help means that traits that would otherwise make birth more difficult have not affected birth rate. Because of this, the traits that make birth more difficult have not been self limiting -- rather, those traits may get successfully passed on, and have a chance of spreading through the population. In other animals a difficult birth would result in failure, and if it was due in any part to genetics, by small random mutation or by a new combination due to parentage, that set of genes will be much less likely to propagate. And all of this is not to say people can't give unsupported birth. But it looks a lot different."
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5qgwag | How does a war neutrality work? For example, why didn't Germany just invade Switzerland and ignore its neutrality? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It had little to do with Swiss neutrality. Switzerland is a castle of a country. It's set in very mountainous area with only a few strategic roads and railways that offer quick movement across it. These all have bridges and other expanses that can easily be blown to slow down an invading force and cause a high number of casualties. It's strategically not very important if you already control most of the surrounding countries like Germany did. This wasn't set in stone there were a number of border skirmishes and fights that spilled into Swiss territory and Nazi Germany had plans to invade (Operation Green)",
"I'm not sure if this is correct, but in the 1880s, Belgium had a neutrally agreement stating that, while it couldn't attack, no one could attack it",
"Basically, because Switzerland posed no threat due to its neutrality, it would be incredibly difficult to invade (due to the geography and well trained military), and there was no real benefit to invading it.",
"Taking a neutral stance is really just about convincing a potential aggressor that you won't eventually side with their enemy. Norway claimed neutrality in WW2, but was still invaded because of, i assume, strategic reasons. Long coastline, proximity to the UK. Sweden was also neutral, but did not get invaded. Any country can *technically* do whatever they want in a war, but as they have limited resources, they have to spend them where they think they'll get the most back. Invading a country that has promised to stay neutral might not be a wise move, if the same troops could instead have been used to invade another country next to it that is very likely to join the other side.",
"War neutrality only works if that neutrality is beneficial to whomever might invade you. Yes, Switzerland was neutral. But the benefit that Germany got from having access to those banks was far greater than the expense of invading and occupying the country. Belgium was neutral in the First World War, but that neutrality wasn't useful to Germany who invaded them anyway.",
"There was an episode near the end of The Battle For France in 1940 where German Bombers would “cut the corner” and fly over Switzerland. on their return leg. Switzerland started sending up fighters to intercept them and escort (force) them out if Swiss airspace. This didn’t sit well with an egotist like Göring who immediately sent German fighters into Switzerland. Shooting ensued and the Germans came in second place. Fun fact: The Swiss fighters were Bf-109s recently purchased from Germany."
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5qgww8 | What limits our speed in space? | What would be the speed limit, if we build a huge nuclear reactor on a spaceship and kept accelerating? There's no friction, there's no gravity. Is it possible that if we kept accelerating then we would attain speed comparable to speed of light? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Scott Manley on YouTube explains it really well. The main limit is mass. A small mass is easier to accelerate than a bigger one, as it takes less energy to accelerate. The closer you get to the speed of light the lower your mass has to be to maintain that speed, otherwise the energy required would grow too great too quickly.",
"The other people have answered why we can't reach the speed of light. I can explain what limits our current rockets from going faster. To accelerate in a direction in space you need to throw stuff (also called reaction mass) in the opposite direction. Newton tells us that this will result in an opposite reaction accelerating us forward. Now the problem is that space craft only have a very limited amount of stuff to throw out, and once they are out they can't accelerate anymore. You can be more efficient (i.e. more accelaration per kg of reaction mass) by throwing it out faster, but you will still run out.",
"The speed of light is the limit but you would never reach that. Outside of external influences ie hitting a planet and friction from space etc you would start to see time slow down for all objects outside of you and they will appear to contract in length but the important part is you would never actually reach the speed of light. It's impossible for anything with mass to achieve this as it would require infinite energy.",
"In theory we could reach near the speed of light. The problem is that we have no idea how to engineer such a spaceship. The problem is mass. So far we need to launch mass behind our spaceship to get acceleration and you gonna need a incredible amount of mass to launch behind you if you want to reach such a speed. But ya in theory we could maybe or not engineer such an engine. Just to give you an idea. The fastest man made spaceprobe right now is going at 0.00013C."
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5qgy3c | why do a lot of businesses push me towards downloading their app? | Most of the time it's completely unnecessary for them to have an app when they can just have a nice mobile friendly site. It's strange to me, why waste time and money developing an unnecessary app when a website would do the same thing and serve me up with ads? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Having an app installed (which requires more effort from the user, and therefore often a more dedicated user) encourages use of the app. Seeing the app on your phone (even while not actively using it) makes your unconscious mind think of it, strengthening brand awareness and usage. Google is currently working on [progressive web apps]( URL_0 ) which very simplified allows a website to be installed as an app.",
"To lock you into their business. If you want a pizza, you might do an internet search, see what is close, who has a special, etc. Sometimes you might order Domino's, sometimes Pizza Hut, some time some little family place you have never heard of before. But if you have the Domino's app on your phone, maybe you don't go through that hassle, and just click on gimme a damn pizza. You save a little time, maybe spend a little more, but Domino's gets more of your business. On top of that, they can use their app to push notifications, and maybe get you to buy a pizza when you otherwise wouldn't have.",
"A lot of good answers here, but one that isn't mentioned is data collection. Assuming you grant the app access, it can collect information about you (location, contacts, microphone data, scrub through your photos, etc), compile this information into a profile and sell that profile to advertising companies (or use it internally). You can collect more information from an app than you can from a website (most of the time)."
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5qgy3z | How big are human intestines and why? | I've often heard something about football fields but am not sure. I'm an adult, but small, and that seems like a lot. More importantly, why is this size the case, whatever it is? (Also yes I am talking about the large and small intestines) (I tried to post this on mobile last night but couldn't get flair up so I deleted it, in case anyone saw it for the short time it was up.) | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The small intestines is about 20 feet long while the large intestines is generally about 5 feet long. The main purpose of the intestines is absorption of nutrients and water from your diet. To do this, you must expose whatever food or drink you have ingested to the enzymes (which facilitate absorption) lining the walls of your gut. For this reason, it's really important to have an extremely large surface area to your intestines so that everything you take in as an opportunity to be absorbed.",
"It's nowhere that big. The 2 intestines together are a bit less than 30 feet, which is still huge. The reason is that it gives your body more time and area to fully absorb all the food. In addition, you can break down your intestines into different sections, which are specialized in absorbing different types of food. For example, Vitamin B12 is only absorbed in one particular part of your small intesntines",
"The fun part is when you compare it with other species. Herbivores have longer intestines to absorb as much nutrients as possible. Carnivores have shorter intestines so they are sooner ready to hunt and that food goes in and out faster and bacteria doesn't have time to develop in larger numbers. Humans are somewhere in between because we are omnivores but raw meat can be dangerous and we can't process \"simple\" vegetables like grass."
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5qgzfq | How porn can "hurt everyone"? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It can't. It can be very destructive for some. It can be made by people who abuse the actors. It can be made by actors who do it for the wrong reasons. It can be watched by people who then abuse themselves psychologically or even physically for watching it. It can violate trust in a relationship. Etc. But none of those things are inherently a part of porn. Most people are fully capable of watching porn and it not harming them or their relationships. Most porn made in the Western world is made in a way that respects all involved in production, and most workers do it because that is what they enjoy. So over all it is perfectly fine.",
"We could do with some context or a more detailed question really but I'll take a stab. It can be bad for young people because they can be heavily influenced by what they watch, and if their first experience of sex is what they've seen online in some hardcore video then their perception of how sex should be can be warped and can cause them problems in relationships when they eventually end up having sex. It can be bad for women because a lot of porn portrays women as objects to be degraded and used for the satisfaction of men. This isn't good for the perception of women and doesn't teach people to respect them. It can be bad for men because it can make them feel inferior or inadequate to the actors on screen, or it can make them resentful to women because in porn they appear so attainable when in real life they often struggle with women. It can be bad for the actors and actresses if they are coerced into doing things they are uncomfortable with or aren't properly protected by their employers with STD checks and fair working conditions. It can be bad for anybody because it can become an addiction, if somebody overuses porn it can lead to them seeking out weirder and weirder porn because the regular stuff doesn't cut it anymore which could in turn affect their sex life with their partner. Or they simple jerk it to porn so often that they aren't horny enough to have sex any more. Or they are so addicted that they start looking at it at work and get fired. Porn has the potential to hurt everybody/anybody but on the flip side it can be completely harmless if used in moderation by someone mature enough and of sound mind.",
"One way would be to get a lot of porn DVD's all together in a giant bucket, then dump it on top of someone when they weren't looking.",
"By using very broad definitions of the word hurt. The idea is it hurts the performers by exploiting them and making them do weird sex acts for money. It emotionally harms the viewers, by giving them an unhealthy view of sex. And it harms the people whom the viewers have relationships with, which in turn become unhealthy. Note this sort of argument can be used with just about anything, alcohol, gambling, video games, social media, etc., which makes it less than compelling."
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5qh3xx | Why are the Terms used in Anatomy and other Sciences usually derived from Latin or Greek? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think it was Carl Linnaeus who started the practice after publishing Systema Naturae. The idea behind this is that both these languages are dead languages so the words used for naming won't change over time like languages naturally do."
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5qh6z9 | The Fibonacci Sequence and its Importance | I would love a simplified explanation of what the fibonacci sequence is mathematically, as well as why it is seen as universal and mysterious in some way | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In school we were taught that the Fibonacci numbers were related to the golden ratio, which is the limiting ratio of a number in the series to the previous number. The golden ratio often occurs in nature in leaf formations, shells, etc. It is also somewhat an aesthetic ratio for humans, as surveys have been conducted where people were asked to pick between rectangles with different side ratios to see which appealed to them most, and 76% chose rectangles with ratio very close to the golden ratio. Fibonacci numbers also appear in nature similarly to the golden ratio: number of flower petals and their golden arrangement, branching plants have Fibonacci number of branches to maximise sun exposure etcetc. I'm not a biologist or an expert on plants, so I don't know exactly how this works, but I just know that this happens from what I've learnt at school & extra research I've done out of interest. The golden ratio was also involved in aesthetics in architecture from the ancient Parthenon to the less ancient Eiffel Tower. I'm just writing as I go so I'm not as eloquent as I'd like to be but I hope this gives you some new insight to the significance of the Fibonacci numbers. [Here's]( URL_0 ) a website that has more information regarding the mathematical background of the numbers and ratio, and they explain it much better than me.",
"The Fibonacci sequence starts with 1, 1 then after that every term is the sum of the previous two: 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, etc. This sequence is related to the golden ratio, which is most easily described in geometric terms: draw a square then add a rectangle onto the side of it such that the added rectangle has the same proportions as the large rectangle you've made. The proportions of those rectangles is the golden ratio. The ratio of consecutive terms in the Fibonacci sequence is a progressively better approximation of the golden ratio. There is a bit of a cult surrounding the golden ratio, mostly based on crap pseudoscience. It's claimed to be a ratio that appears often in human biology, but that's just because there are so many different ratios you can find in a human body and enough variation from person to person that you could do the same for tons of ratios. It's claimed to be aesthetically pleasing but people are really bad at actually identifying the golden ratio and confirmation bias leads to people accepting \"close enough\" as being proof. Similarly, the Fibonacci sequence is claimed to be abnormally common in nature but most of that claim can be debunked by simply noting that half of the numbers under 10 are in the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8. Somehow the prevalence of 4- and 6-way symmetry can be ignored but if anything has 3 or 5 of something it's proof that Fibonacci is magic. Where the golden ratio does pop up is when the mathematics that lead to the golden ratio are also present somewhere else. Same with the Fibonacci Sequence. Both deal with self-similarity and can be found when dealing with efficient packing. This is why you can find actual statistical trends towards Fibonacci numbers in something like sunflower heads. These few actual occurrences of the Fibonacci sequence serve as proof to Fibonacci cultists that the sequence is of great importance in lots of aspects of life. Ultimately what a lot of this comes down to is that the Fibonacci sequence and golden ratio are complex enough to not be immediately completely understood, while being simple enough that most people can follow along. That positions it excellently for math fans (not mathematicians) to latch on to.",
"The fibonacci sequence is starting from 1, the next number is the sum of the previous two. The sequence goes: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 etc etc. As for its importance, I'm not entirely sure. I think it's normally overstated how important it is but I'll leave that for someone else with a bit more knowledge to explain."
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5qh9y4 | How do transportation apps like Moovit or Navigation in Google Maps know exactly when buses are arriving late, where exactly are they, at what time will they serve, etc? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Through public or private APIs. The transport company almost always has a way of knowing where their transports are. This data can then be shared with other organisations. Some of the APIs are available for free and sometimes they will pay for access."
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5qhbrw | How come Digg died but Reddit thrived? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I came here from Digg when the collapse came. Before that day, Digg had a far superior look to it.. it was “Web 2.0” CSS – rounded buttons, soft edges. Reddit was a “Wall of text” and muddled with data. On my normal day, I would open URL_0 and scroll through the first few pages of stories to see what I had missed over the night. Then I would head to the submitted articles section and see what was worth ‘suggesting’ to other people. Bury the story if it was stupid, or just spam or trying to sell stuff we didn’t want. But Digg needed money. They couldn’t figure out how to turn the website into a cash cow, so they decided to have advertising websites (like Tech crunch or cnet) just automatically feed their articles into Digg like an RSS feed. You didn’t get any imaginary points for submitting it yourself! You couldn’t bury sponsored articles! Control and curation of content were no longer something users felt we controlled. (Perhaps you’d say we never had the control, but we had the PERCEPTION of it at the LEAST) We were being shown/told what to like by marketers. The exact opposite of the core system behind why people enjoyed Digg. Reddit, the ugly step brother, still offered us control over content. So we submitted our content to Reddit, got all the content we wanted to see, then posted Reddit to Digg. One day the entire front page of links on Digg directed to Stories ON Reddit. ( < 3 ). Soon after, everyone just stayed on Reddit, and the crappy design of Reddit started to grow on you like Moss.. or shingles..",
"Change of layout. Digg changed layout that people loved, into something that looked like news websites. People hated it, and somebody posted about reddit there. Thus, the exodus. I was there when it happened. And yes, I hated the new layout too"
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5qhebi | How do most companies monitor their employee's internet activity? | I recently left the start-up business world and started working for a large corporation. At my old jobs, I used to use social media, do my banking, and handle personal things online at work in my downtime. This is pretty much frowned upon and not allowed at my new job so most "non-work" sites are blocked. I understand all companies are unique, but I'm curious, how do some companies monitor what their employees are doing? Is someone getting notified if I try to access a blocked website? Is somebody monitoring my emails and getting notified if there are certain words being used? Can my manager just choose to watch my screen all day, or would most companies require some kind of "just cause?" | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It can vary widely, depending on the company. Most corporations do have a \"you're supposed to only use work equipment for work\" policy, but smaller organizations may not have much to monitor their employees besides some simple blocks and antivirus/security software. I work for a large company and we do have some pretty significant barriers in place. If you access something that's immediately dangerous or absolutely forbidden, someone will get an alert in IT. But managers can monitor absolutely everything, see your screen and hear your calls and be alerted to keywords if they choose to; this is the norm for a lot of companies where the ability is there, but only used if an employee gives cause. A caveat is that some business areas, like call centers, will pretty much have every single thing monitored at all times. And, of course, the more sensitive the information, the heavier the scrutiny, typically."
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5qhf3k | People when they get old seem to be shorter than when they were young with at least a few inches. Why?? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Besides older people who 'stoop' or are unable to stand up completely straight due to arthritis and the such, the cervical discs in between each vertebrae get compressed as people get older. Each disc gets a little smaller, but with like 16 discs, even 1/16th of an inch per disc will shrink you by an inch.."
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5qhg5n | What is the white foam that forms on top of the water when you cook pasta ? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's starch. By the way, when cooking pasta, or any starchy items, add some oil to water. Note that this is NOT for the folk tale of making the pasta \"not stick\", it doesn't do jack for that. But it will prevent the pot from boiling over.",
"It's the starch! > It has everything to do with the composition of pasta. Pasta is made from flour, water, and sometimes egg—that means it’s basically just starch and protein rolled out into different shapes and dried. It’s the starch molecules that are important. Once they’re heated in a moist environment—like your pot of water—the starch will absorb more and more water until it finally bursts. That sends little starch molecules into your water, resulting in white foam. [Source]( URL_0 )."
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5qhpq7 | What atomic properties determine the transparency of a material? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It has to do with the way that the electrons are arranged. Electrons can also absorb photons to jump up energy levels - but only if there's the right amount of energy in the photon to do a complete jump. Electrons won't jump up anything but whole energy levels. This means that there has to be the right amount of energy in the light in order for it to be absorbed. With light, energy is proportional to the frequency, which is inversely proportional to the wavelength. This means there's a direct relationship between wavelength and energy. This is why glass, for example, is transparent. The amount of energy necessary to excite electrons in glass doesn't match the amount of energy that photons have when they're in the visible part of the spectrum, so the photons go whizzing on through without being absorbed.",
"A material shows transparency if there are no processes that compete with transmission, either by absorbing the light or by scattering it in other directions. In pure silicon, there is a very strong absorptive process at work: the incident visible light is absorbed by electrons that then move from one electron energy state to another (an occurrence technically known as a band-to-band transition). Glass, being silicon dioxide--not pure silicon--does not have this band structure, so it cannot absorb light as pure silicon does. Sand, on the other hand, is also silicon dioxide, but it is so filled with impurities that light simply scatters outward incoherently and does not pass through to a noticeable extent",
"Photons carry the electromagnetic force. Electrons interact with the electromagnetic force, however, electrons can only interact with photons of certain energies, depending on a few factors that are too complex for an ELI5. Basically, electrons can only absorb or emit photons of discrete energies (think whole numbers, 1,2,3, etc. You can't have a .5, for example) This means that any photons that aren't at those specific energies don't interact with electrons, so they fly right through the material. Pure metals, for example, are opaque because their electrons can occupy a huge number of possible states, and visible light happens to have the right energy to interact with the electrons in the metal (electrons moving freely through a metal aren't under the same restrictions and can interact with any photons IIRC). Glass, however, has electrons in a tightly bound state that can only interact with photons in certain bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, few of which fall within visible light. Most materials have specific energies at which photons can pass through them, and other energies at which photons can't pass through. Glass is right in the visible spectrum, as is water (which is probably why our visual range is what it is, all the frequencies of light we can detect travel through water easily, I cannot explain the mantis shrimp, sorry). Clear as mud?"
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5qhqs4 | What will happen to someone if they die in space? Will they keep orbiting? Will they decay? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They would not decay much as they would freeze solid pretty quickly. Once frozen, the gut bacteria would no longer be able to grow.",
"[XKCD's What If had an article on this,]( URL_0 ) but the summery is this * You would quickly dry out in Space, losing about 80% of your body weight * If you were low enough, your orbit will decay and you'll burn up on re-entry * Higher up, you'll be pelted with space debris and be destroyed, either by many small collisions or one big one * The higher you go, the more longer you'll survive (as much as a dead person can survive), until eventually the Sun becomes a red giant, we get sucked into a black hole, or you experience the Heat Death of the Universe",
"Depending exactly where it happened, they could orbit indefinitely, or their orbit could decay (different kind of decay) and they would reenter. They would decompose for a very breeze period of time, but would eventually become freeze dried."
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5qhr27 | Why is Social Media so addictive? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Good ol' dopamine. Social media is a constant stream of potentially new and interesting information, or funny memes and such. This triggers your dopamine response and like many things that trigger dopamine it can become addictive, especially since it takes little effort. It's actually very similar to smoking. Have you ever noticed yourself checking social media without thinking? Maybe exiting out of Facebook or Reddit only to go back to it a few seconds later? It gets to a point where you're not even doing it because you want to but rather because you're bored, thinking vainly that something new might have showed up (trying to get your dopamine fix). It's a habit that's hard to break similar to smoking."
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5qhya9 | Twitter vs Facebook | Why is it more socially acceptable to tweet often but people are upset if you over post on Facebook? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The whole idea behind Facebook is to reconnect with old friends that you don't have their email/phone. So, posting stuff about what they would want to know to be kept up in your life is what it's for. For Twitter, the main idea isn't to post to friends, it's to post to the world, or to people who follow you (but this is more for celebrities), so it's really anything you would post to like Instagram, like \"Kendrick is killin' the rap game.\" or \"OMG, I can't live without Starbucks, RIP me!\". You shouldn't be posting that to Facebook, because why would your old high school friends care about that?"
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5qhz1i | why must I first dial 1 before calling this number? | Computers can land a satellite on a meteor, but can't add the 1 themselves? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The 1 is part of the number. It's the country code, and indicates that the number is based in the US or Canada. The system can't add the 1 itself, because it has no way of knowing what country you want to call unless you tell it.",
"They do. See why you can dial local numbers without the area code. Source: 8 years running softpbx's"
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5qi51u | Teeth grinding at night and how it can be so loud. Also how can our jaws clench that hard unconsciously but not awake? | One night in college I heard my buddy grinding his teeth after he passed out. It was one of the strangest noises I have ever heard! Made me think of two massive blocks of concrete sliding together. How can our jaws make this much pressure when we are asleep. I can't clench anywhere near that hard when I try. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your teeth are also capable of biting your finger off entirely, but when you're awake and aware, your brain does not authorize such a dumb idea as mutilating yourself. It's the same with teeth grinding. You are absolutely capable of grinding your teeth hard when you're awake, you're using the same muscles. You're just not aware that you're not actually trying as hard as you physically can.",
"Masseter(the jaw muscle responsible for clenching) is the strongest muscle in the body. The enamel on the teeth is the hardest substance in body. Now during deep sleep, there are phases when the tone of muscles below the neck is reduced, but of muscles on face is intact. Hence there may be movements of eyes and clenching of teeth at night. More pronounced in some, less in others.",
"I have this condition, it's called Bruxism. I have to wear a night guard or my wife will not be able to sleep well. I really wish I knew how I can stop doing it. Sometimes it's so loud I wake myself up and I'm going full strength on the jaw clenching. Send help",
"I have to wear this two piece night guard that has a titanium spacer to keep my top and bottom teeth from touching. I had a sleep study and they found I was clenching down so hard while sleeping that I would actually stop breathing. Fortunately my appliance was covered under my medical insurance since the diagnosis was sleep apnea ($3500.00!!). I've had it for 4 years and it has saved my teeth. Though it took forever to get used to wearing."
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5qi74x | Why does local anaesthetic have adrenaline in it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Adrenaline (aka epinephrine) has the effect of constricting blood vessels in the skin and superficial tissues. Notably it has the opposite effect in other tissues like heart tissue or muscles. Epinephrine causes the \"fight or flight\" response - get the body ready to run or fight. To do this, your body needs to direct blood away from tissues that don't need it, like the GI tract and skin, and give the oxygen and nutrients to tissues involved with fight/flight - eyes, ears, brain, muscles. Blood flow to the skin is reduce to get more blood to the muscles, etc. So... the answer is: Docs can take advantage of this effect for local anesthetics. They inject the anesthetic locally, and at the same time shut down blood flow to the immediate area. This is done so that the anesthetic is absorbed into the blood stream more slowly, and stays at the injection site longer. This helps insure that it will act locally at that site, instead of entering the bloodstream and acting throughout the whole body."
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5qicsg | What is the difference between serotonin and dopamine? | What are their roles too. What does dopamine do as well as serotonin. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Quick Answer. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with the pleasure centers of the brain. It is responsible for feelings related to love, joy, pleasure, reward and motivation. Serotonin is also a neurotransmitter and helps to regulate mood, irritability, impulse, obsession and memory. - Copied from Google.",
"Most neurotransmitters are used in many different ways. Saying dopamine is responsible for pleasure and serotonin is responsible for mood is an oversimplification. Some functions of serotonin: * Memory and learning * Cardiovascular functioning * Vasoconstriction * Digestive system movement Some functions of dopamine: * Pleasure and reward system * Pain processing * Movement and motor function",
"/u/eliminate1337 has the most complete answer. It is difficult, if not impossible, to summarize or group together the effects of any single neurotransmitter. Think of neurotransmitters like the individual letters in a document. Two documents which mean very different things can have similar numbers of As, for example. Ultimately counting the different letters doesn't tell you what's going on - you need far more complex systems, like vocabulary and syntax, to actually parse the meaning. So it is with neurotransmitters. There is a huge amount of feedback and location-dependent function, and many neurotransmitters serve to mediate *other* neurological systems or are mediated themselves by them, or the endocrine system. This is why you you can't, say, measure someone's stress level by the presence of cortisol (which does seem to mediate emotional stress, among other things) in their body. Depending on where it interacts with your neurons, dopamine may be used to reinforce behavior, or initiate motor activity. Humans have a preference for simple, discrete explanations of their emotions - the idea of four or five different \"humours\" as controlling one's mood and temperament (as well as causing illness) was very popular for most of human history. Neurotransmitters just don't work that way. tl;dr- neurotransmitters are a very low-level unit in a very large, complex system, and most phenomena meaningful to us occur at higher levels that we don't yet fully understand.",
"Dopamine gives a 'high' and responsible for addiction to certain drugs. Also regulates body movement and posture. Deficiency leads to disease like Parkinson's. Serotonin is responsible for mood mainly and appetite/vomiting etc too. Deficiency of serotonin or imbalance leads to dysregulation of mood like depression or bipolar."
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5qihc2 | What is the benefit to a company to enact a policy that prohibits promotion of employees from within? | I've seen complaints from mostly younger job seekers about companies that hire but do not promote employees from within. Obviously, this has negative effects for employees, but what is the benefit that the company sees from this prohibition? It seems that such companies are limiting their staffing options, alienating their best employees, and potentially losing investments and experience of valuable workers when they choose to leave the company for better jobs elsewhere. What is the benefit for the company that comes in exchange for these issues? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I've never heard of a company that flat-out didn't promote from within. That would be a fantastically terrible policy. However, it would be a great excuse for middle managers to give an internal candidate for said promotion when an external candidate was chosen by upper managers. That said, there have been good case studies that can show why promoting internal candidates becomes a rarity. For example, Wal-Mart famously always promoted from within. Almost all of their store managers came from floor managers who all started as stockers/checkers. This is a fantastic marketing story, and gives the rank & file workers something to aspire to if this is the best job they can get. But there's the problem. The vast majority of Wal-Mart floor workers don't aspire to make a career of it. Anyone worth keeping is usually picked up within months by any other employer with double the wage, steady hours, and benefits. So the only people that stick around the two to three years it takes to land that first promotion are the ones milking an easy job with flexible hours, or simply couldn't find anything that paid more a little over minimum wage. So now your floor managers are the best of the bottom of society's barrel. Your true best left $8/hr for $16/hr 3 months after they were hired. A couple of years later you need a new store manager, who is selected from the best of that bunch. Now your local-level store leadership is largely comprised of uneducated people who (when they started) couldn't land a job literally anywhere else. Even though most of their corporate staff are college educated, experienced negotiators helping feed a god-tier supply chain and can calculate the exact right amount of workers and product to put where, the uneducated store-level management doesn't understand enough of these concepts to properly execute within a 1% margin. This creates inefficiencies, and when Wal-Mart is already only expecting a 1% gross margin on their stores, these little things add up. That's why they've started relaxing their \"promote from within\" philosophies and started seeking out and favoring college kids to start at a floor manager level. It's still a tough sell because you're ultimately a glorified stock-boy with an economics degree, but you are being actively groomed to be proper management. Walmart *could* solve their problem by being not a shit employer and paying their rank & file what it takes to stick around. However, their own studies say that's not as econoimically efficient. Fun fact: A seven year veteran cashier/stocker costs Wal-Mart 55% more than a 6-week newbie due to benefits and tenure raises, but is just as productive as the new kid. They actually have a financial incentive to push their employees to quit so long as they can always find more newbies to take their place.",
"It would be a good way to prevent the [Peter principle]( URL_0 ) from coming in to effect, I think. I expect it could also prevent a cascade of promotions to hire a new employee to fill a position rather then have to promote a guy to replace the guy that was promoted. And I suppose that getting someone new from outside the company could help avoid drama over a promotion as well as potentially find someone who would be willing to start at a lower pay than the promoted person might have been willing to accept for the promotion. That said, It's been my experience that new hires to a position tend to be paid more than those promoted internally because they are subject to company policy limiting raises, so most of those benefits are questionable.",
"I don't know about companies that prohibit promoting from within. It may be rare, or they may seek external, but that's not to say they don't promote from within. It's also possible that a company may purposely underpay/undersource certain positions in their company that they find less valuable, but for more senior positions they find the position valuable and do not trust their current staff to move into such a role based on their lack of experience/trust. So for example. Let's say you make widgets. You need menial labor, so you underpay, undersource your labor market for this task... you pay under market and take in low quality builders. However, for a management role you need someone strong and with experience to help keep the company afloat with subpar workers. You wouldn't promote one of your subpar workers to a role that you value. You'd seek elsewhere for a quality candidate instead. There's nothing wrong with this per se. This provides entry-level work for employees that may struggle to find/maintain work at a higher quality shop. It also allows them to move to another company and work their way up. It may take them longer, but they also started lower on the employment food chain so to speak. This is why getting a good degree and going to a good school is helpful. It can help you land a better first job on the employment food chain. I made the mistake of going to an average state school for price and getting a useless degree. Took me longer to move up the employment ladder than some of the new kids coming in right out of school.",
"It isn't, which is why I serious doubt such policies exist. Some companies have due diligence and anti-nepotism policies that require them to also consider outside candidates, and to go through a process where job openings are publicly posted. But in general, it is much better for a company to promote from within, and they only go outside when qualified candidates are not available. A lot of people who don't understand how businesses work might think they are automatically qualified to be promoted after a year or two, and express frustration when a company doesn't share this view. But a promotion is not an entitlement, and putting in time is not the only qualification for a position with greater responsibilities.",
"A lot of it depends on the position that is open for those internal candidates to apply for. In some cases, institutional or company knowledge will have just as much impact on potential success as education or prior experience in the higher level position. In other cases, that institutional knowledge may not make up for a lack of experience. So let's say I have 2 candidates for a senior job, Person A - has worked for the company for a few years and knows the ins and outs of internal politics, but has never senior level or in charge before Person B - external candidate who has prior senior level experience If it would take more time to train A to do the job than it would take B to learn the lay of the land, than from a business perspective, you'd want to hire externally. If however, person A could do a serviceable job while learning the exact job skills for the job, and you estimate that they would be able to fully handle the responsibilities more quickly than B, then you can promote from within. The issue is that in a lot of places, it's easier to hire someone with experience and let them learn the lay of the land than to train someone from within. So it's usually not a hard rule to hire externally. Another issue that crops up is that because you already work for a company, they already know all of your flaws. An external candidate can often mask their flaws with good interview preparation, making them appear to be a better fit for the position, even when they are not."
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5qij5w | What would happen if we detonated an atomic bomb in the eye of a hurricane? | I was wondering what would happen if an atomic bomb was detonated either directly above or right in the center of the eye or a really powerful hurricane. Could it possibly destroy the storm? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You'd likely just end up with a radioactive hurricane. Hurricanes are huge. The area of effect of nuclear weapons, even the largest, are tiny in comparison. You might disrupt the very center of it, but the center isn't what creates the hurricane. That's done by large scale and long-lived pressure differences, which the nuke really won't disrupt. The hurricane would possibly take a hit, but it would almost certainly reform in some manner, but with all kinds of nasty radioactive bits mixed in. It's like trying to stop the wind by blowing a fan into it. Sure, you might be able to make some changes right in front of the fan, but when you turn that fan off, the wind's still gonna be blowing.",
"It wouldn't make things better; you would just end up with a hurricane full of radioactive dust and debris. There are two things to understand here. First, hurricanes are friggin' huge. Way bigger than nukes. The biggest nuclear bomb ever actually exploded was about 50 megatons, or 2 x 10^16 joules. The energy a hurricane uses, per day, is a thousand times larger. Second, and more importantly, a hurricane isn't an object- it just doesn't compute, to try to destroy it. To explain what I mean, let's look at a similar question: could you destroy an earthquake by bombing its epicenter? It's easier to see why you can't destroy an earthquake: what physical object would you try to blow up, and how would that stop the earthquake? It just doesn't work that way; an earthquake- and a hurricane- is an event, or a process. You might be able to destroy the things affected by that event, or in some cases (not earthquakes or hurricanes, though) the things that are causing it, but the process itself isn't a thing you can destroy.",
"A hurricane gets its energy from warm ocean water, and in the process of water vapor condensing into rain droplets. The heat released during condensation serves to continue to warm the surrounding air, which causes more seawater to evaporate, condense, and continue the cycle. A fully developed hurricane releases 50 or more terawatts of heat energy at any given moment, only about 1 percent of which is converted into wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. The entire human race in 2011 used about a third of the energy present in an average hurricane. So bombing a hurricane might be about as effective as trying to stop a speeding Buick with a feather. It will make the hurricane worse because: 1. There's the possibility that bombing the hurricane, if it had any effect at all, would just add to the storm's heat supply, making it even stronger. 2. You're creating a radioactive hurricane.",
"A hurricane gets its energy from warm ocean water, and in the process of water vapor condensing into rain droplets. The heat released during condensation serves to continue to warm the surrounding air, which causes more seawater to evaporate, condense, and continue the cycle. A fully developed hurricane releases 50 or more terawatts of heat energy at any given moment, only about 1 percent of which is converted into wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. The entire human race in 2011 used about a third of the energy present in an average hurricane. So bombing a hurricane might be about as effective as trying to stop a speeding Buick with a feather. It will make the hurricane worse because: 1. There's the possibility that bombing the hurricane, if it had any effect at all, would just add to the storm's heat supply, making it even stronger. 2. You're creating a radioactive hurricane."
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5qik2p | If radiation exposure can cause cancer how does it cure it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A little bit of radiation damages DNA/parts of the cell, which in turn can lead to cancer if it messes with the parts of the DNA/parts of the cell which prevent uncontrolled replication (which is what cancer is). A lot of radiation tears cells to shreds, killing them. Even cancer cells, that normally reproduce robustly and are hard to target with chemicals, don't have an especially good defense to being bombarded with radiation. As an analogy, think of a sci-fi type robot with a part that keeps it from harming humans. One well placed bullet that disables the \"don't harm humans\" part turns the robot into a killing machine. But 100,000 bullets all aimed at the robot just kills it outright.",
"If stabbing someone can kills someone, how can it also save their life? Because a surgeon isn't just stabbing someone, they are doing it in a very specific place in a very controlled manner.",
"Chemotherapy is a game of chicken with poison. Who dies first, the person or the tumor? Radiation kills most things, and doesn't descriminate much."
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5qirsa | What is so special about the M1911 pistol that it is still in use today but not other semi-auto pistols of the WWI and WWII era? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The 1911 was the first high volume production of a short recoil design whereby the barrel and slide would unlock independently. This design became the basis for almost all popular centerfire semi autos in the 20th century. The .45 ACP cartridge also had excellent stopping power as opposed to other offerings in use at the time. Due to the popularity of the design in the first half of the 20th century, millions of pieces produced and widespread use by the US military and their allies, the 1911 or modern variants have remained the most popular version of semi auto pistols in the world.",
"First reason: The stopping power of .45 acp. Not even hard drugs like pcp can keep you going when you get an ashtray shot through your gut. Second and critical reason: It's a damn good design, way ahead of its time. The barrel and palm safeties combined with the active thumb safety make it a weapon that can be carried cocked and loaded without fear of accidental discharge. On top of that, they feel damn good in your hand and they look good to boot. Not too many reasons to quit using one.",
"John Browning was a genius. Can't improve on perfection. Seriously, though, like others have said, reliable under the worst conditions, acceptably accurate, and just a great design.",
"It's relatively simple and cheap to manufacture, reliable, and easy to maintain. The vast majority of firearms innovation occurred aljust prior to or durring WW1, and almost everything after is derivative of designs tested in the 1880-1920 time frame. The 1911 happened to get a damn good combination of innovations for a handgun, and incorperated what proved to be the superior fundamental concept for autoloading handguns: short-recoil tilting-barrel delayed blowback with a slide. Other designs, like the Luger P-08's toggle lock system, were clever, but more complex and therefore more expensive.",
"Others have pointed out the design characteristics (namely the browning short recoil design which is still used in a modified way by almost all modern handguns because it is both robust and compact). But I would also point out the unique qualities of the U.S. surplus and gun market. It was popular with American gun owners for the same reasons the Ar-15 is today. Veterans would have been familiar with it, the surplus market would have been filled with them (or at least their ammo and accessories), they have design qualities which are useful outside of war, and their patent expiration allowed private domestic production to cater to the platform. Few other countries had domestically produced arms that could be owned by it's citizens. Some of these qualities can be said about other arms (such as the use of the Mauser action in the majority of hunting rifles or the cheap market for foreign surplus guns) but the 1911 has a combination of all of these features."
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5qisd5 | Scientists figured a way to transform hydrogen into metal. Why is this important? | What I mean is why is this considered a breakthrough in science. Here is a link to the news.: URL_0 | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not. Not yet. They reduced the temperature of Hydrogen down close to absolute zero and claimed it looked reflective. This is amazing as theories existed that this could be done, but nobody has done it before. Critics claim that what they're seeing reflecting might not have been the hydrogen itself, but the equipment they used to apply pressure to it with. The reason they claim that is because that was what happened last time someone claimed to have done this (in 2012). So, let the tabloids have a field day and give the science community a chance to actually verify it. And since this is happening at near absolute zero, don't expect it's going to make much difference to your life any time soon."
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5qitw3 | Why do we need discipline? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First, you (and I'd say a lot of other people too) need to look up the definition. Second, self-discipline allows you to make the right decisions in your life using critical thinking and to make yourself better (in every aspect) even though you may not necessarily want to. Literally means: \"the ability to control one's feelings and overcome one's weaknesses; the ability to pursue what one thinks is right despite temptations to abandon it\". So instead of like..... pounding down that half tub of ice cream every night, put it away and grab some carrots and hummus instead.",
"Discipline is what keeps you going when you run out of motivation for a task. Imagine you're climbing a mountain. You have more motivation than people just sitting in front of the TV because you want to drive out and climb that mountain! You get to the base of the trail, get all your gear, and pump yourself up for the climb! But as you start climbing, your motivation starts to waver. You don't think you're in shape enough for the climb. Maybe it was more difficult than you expected. The sunny day seems to be getting more cloudy and it might rain. When you run out of motivation, you probably just want to go back home. This is when discipline kicks in. Even though you're suffering now and your motivation is gone, you still want to power through it because the climb may be worth it in the end. Self-discipline (also sometimes called \"grit\") is one of the best traits in a person because it is necessary for people to complete tasks. It's very easy to start something but it's difficult to see it through. There's a rule called the 80/20 rule where completing the first 80% of a task takes 20% of the time while the last 20% takes 80% of the time. It's very motivating in the beginning to see something progress quickly but it takes discipline to spend a great deal of time finishing the job."
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5qizlb | Why does a 16oz bottle soda cost $1.79 while a 32oz fountain soda costs $.99? | Also, the same 32oz fountain soda is $3+ at fast food restaurants. What gives? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The cost of soda vs the price charged are separate things entirely. The reason a 16 bottle is more expensive than a fountain soda has to do the materials and the way it is sold. They bottle of soda has to be shipped in a plastic bottle (more expensive than a cup) and then refrigerated and take up shelf/floor space where more profitable items could be sold. So the 16 bottle would be more expensive. Why you are talking about fountain sodas you are looking at a 10-15 cent cup and syrup that is mixed with filtered tap water. The restaurant purchases a \"bag in a box\" for a low price that can be mixed with water to create a large amount of soda for pennies per serving. So the fountain soda costs a lot less for the restaurant to sell. The reason some restaurants charge a lot more for fountain soda is simply because they can. By charging more for soda they can charge less for food. Soda is a high margin product for them so it helps their bottom line. A higher price on soda may also help the restaurant upsell you to a specialty drink that may be more profitable, etc.",
"Because that's what people will pay. The price of everything depends partially on cost but that's not the whole story. Shipping and packaging is a cost for bottled products. When you buy bottled water you are paying for bottling, shipping, and store profits. The water itself is < $0.01 ."
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5qizue | Why does time go so slowly when we're little, yet as we age, time seems to get shorter? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are two possible explanations I know of. The first has to do with how your brain treats new experiences and information. When you experience or learn something new, your brain pays extra attention to it and you tend to consciously remember it more. Your probably remember your first kiss, first drink, first job interview, etc., but forget about a lot of the ones in between. When you're little, almost everything is new. Even if you're sitting in the same classroom most days, you're learning a lot of new stuff everyday. Since so much is new, your brain is actively paying attention and forming memories. When you're an adult, you tend encounter less novelty and do a lot of things on autopilot. When you're on autopilot, your brain doesn't really form memories so the time kind of seems lost. For example, people often don't remember driving to or from work. It's not because they didn't pay attention while driving, but rather their brains went on autopilot because they know the route well. That time they don't remember driving just seems to disappear as though it never happened. When you do enough repeat tasks like that, it can feel as though you have very short days, weeks, months, etc. because you don't have any memories to mark the passage of time. The second reason is that as you get older, periods of time seem relatively shorter compared to the amount of time you've been alive. For example, when you're 9 years old, a month is almost 1/100 of your life. If you have to wait a month to get a Nintendo, that's like waiting 1% of your lifetime. When you're 50 years old, a month is only 1/600 of your life. As a result, it seems like a smaller chunk of time.",
"Relativity. The year between the age of 1 and 2 is literally doubling the time you've been alive. The year between 99 and 100 years old is 1/99th of your life. It's overly simplified, but essentially to get the same feeling at 50 that you got at 2 years old, you'd turn from 50 to 100. Also, when you're an adult, your life is much more routine. You aren't learning things, you do the same stuff every day, there aren't many adventures, and therefore you aren't really forming any new memories, so your internal \"time passing\" clock sort of edits things down a lot, and it feels shorter."
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5qj3ms | Why is it that Autism affects males more than females? | I could be very wrong here but I rarely see or meet females who have autism, however I often come across males who are on the spectrum. Is there any reasoning behind that? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You're not wrong. Men are statistically more likely to be autistic than females. Nobody really knows why, because nobody knows what causes autism. Some researchers have suggested that autism tends to express itself differently in females, so males are diagnosed more often even though the rate of incidence is the same. But this is a hard case to make because it relies on many assumptions. We won't know for sure until we figure out what causes autism in the first place.",
"It's most likely caused by a mutation of genes(and scientists suggest that a lot of the autism-causing genes are located on the Y chromosome; which females don't have). It is still not completely understood, though, so take what I've said with a grain of salt.",
"> Is there any reasoning behind that? What we would really be looking for is evidence of the cause of autism and unfortunately we don't really know what that is. But because you asked for *reasoning* it does seem that we can make some reasoned speculation about the evident trend. Autism appears to be strongly heritable and men differ from women by having only one X chromosome while women have two; this means men are more vulnerable to some genetic diseases as there is no \"backup\" of some important genes. *If* autism is causes by a malfunctioning gene sequence it seems likely that women might possess a copy on another chromosome that reduces or negates the effects, while men don't."
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5qj3zt | How could NAFTA be terminated by a single country? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Either the US, Canada or Mexico could pull out of NAFTA by giving 6 months notice. By nature of scale of economies, if the US pulls out, NAFTA is basically dead. What happens after that would be anyones guess as prior to NAFTA, there were tariffs in place between the three countries. In all likelihood, NAFTA would be renegotiated vs. scrapped."
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5qj7i2 | What do Negative Ion bracelets actually do? | I was at a mall and was basically assaulted by one of the guys at a kiosk selling a negative ion bracelet. I know it is a scam but he had me stand feet together and arms raised, and pushed on one of my arms ( rather lightly I might add) and made me lose my balance. He put the bracelet on my wrist and then with 2 hands was pushing down on my arm without making me lose balance at all. I made him do it more than once to make sure he was pushing on the same exact spot with and without the bracelet on( as I suspect it has to do with your center of mass and the leverage created by pushing on a point closer or further away). I did not buy it because as previously stated I know its a scam I just couldn't figure out how it was a scam. That doesn't explain the fact that I did not fall or stumble with it on. So does it actually do anything or is it just a placebo effect? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not just about where he's pushing but how he's pushing. Pushing outward pulls you off balance. The outward pull is hidden in that he's also pushing down, but he is really pulling on you and causing you to lose balance. When he puts the bracelet on, he pushes straight down as to not alter your center of balance and allowing you to remain steady. So yes, it is about leverage being used to alter your center of balance and is nothing more than a swindler's trick.",
"It is a very old kinesthesiology trick. They are pushing on the same stop, but in a slightly different direction, or some variation of that. Another common trick is to have you rotate at the waist. The second time you can go further because you have stretched out a bit. Total scam.",
"> So does it actually do anything or is it just a placebo effect? What they do is separate gullible people from their money. The scam artist was likely exploiting a clever little piece of work called \"not pushing as hard\" in order to make it seem like the bracelet did something. But of course it didn't, as you seem to already know."
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5qjgrm | How is the US not facing human rights violations for closing the Flint, Michigan case? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> How is this just happening with no repercussions or penalties? \"Human rights violations\" aren't really a thing. There is no \"World Police\" unless you count the United States itself. Nobody is able to go around telling countries what to do because those countries can just say \"Nice story bro, keep it to yourself.\" In order for there to be \"repercussions\" then there would need to be some organization which could enforce penalties upon the United States. Right now I'm not sure what that could possibly be.",
"It's not really \"leaving the town without water\" The problem is being reversed, they got the funding, but a revamp of waterworks and making water clean again can not happen overnight, it takes a long time. I believe they said by the end of the year the worst of it will be behind us(infrastructure wise), but in total it wont be finished for some years. Closing the investigation isn't going to stop that, it's politics 'as usual' and Flint is not alone.",
"1) There is no real global authority. We are not under a global government and there are no police to enforce international law. International law is only as strong as the military of the country complaining about a violation. The US is the bulk of the UN military forces and it would take the entire UN uniting to force us to do something. 2) Closing the investigation does not mean they have stopped any of the projects to provide them with shipped in water, or to replace and repair their water system. It means they have gotten all the information about what happened that they think they can get. The next step is to now study this information collected and then press charges on people responsible if there are charges that can be placed. Sometimes seriously bad things happen by pure accident and there is no one that is personally responsible for a crime or misdeed. It is not very likely in this case, but our law is based on innocence until guilt can be proven and that requires evidence and a trial. The city got their funding to repair things, it simply is going to take time.",
"> leaving the town still without clean water. They're not quite without clean water. The lead levels are back under federal standards(it's at 12ppb, the regulation is for 15), so technically it's \"safe\" to drink. URL_0 They still need to replace pipes, which could cause spikes in the future again. (Although with filters, in theory it should be safe).And it's not like they're in Africa-the city is still delivering bottled water. So while it's awful, it's not bad enough to warrant a huge outcry, and people aren't dying. Even if it was, as people have mentioned, the organization that does those sorts of things are typically the U.N.- which is largely the US. There are other countries, but they have very little incentive to get involved, and probably can't do much even if they did. We have near veto power on a lot of the U.N. process. > How is this just happening with no repercussions or penalties? By and large, the state and federal governments are the ones who are supposed to be prosecuting this. They don't seem to have much desire, and voters don't seem to care enough to punish them. Since the actual crisis is more or less over, politicians are more interested in pushing past it. There isn't a lot of motivation to make a stink now that process are underway to fix the problem, and no one is actually suffering anymore. The only thing closing the investigation means is that no one is going to be held responsible (which, to be fair, would likely largely be scapegoating. These sorts of things require a system of people to be negligent, it would be hard to point to certain people as being guilty of anything."
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"https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/us/flint-michigan-water.html"
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5qjj57 | Why do you stop being hungry after many hours of not eating? | Kind of self-explanatory, you gradually start getting hungry after eating, but after many hours, the hunger suddenly goes away without having eaten anything, why does that happen? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If your blood glucose drops after not eating for a while, the concentration of hormones like ghrelin and neuropeptide Y in the blood rise, resulting in increased appetite. After a while, the body starts breaking down the glycogen storage in the liver into glucose molecules to maintain blood glucose levels. When these stores deplete, your fat and later muscles start to catabolize to increase gluconeogenesis to increase blood sugar. You might feel less hunger when the glycogen stores are used, but eventually the hunger will return. This is a bit simplistic though and probably not completely correct as there are a lot of other factors at play.",
"/u/Abiogenejesus is correct. A slightly more ELI5 version: Your body is designed to cope with periods of hunger, because humans evolved as hunter-gatherers, who might not find anything to eat for several days. The main mechanism for this is that excess nutrients you eat, instead of being completely excreted, are stored, mostly as fat. Blood sugar - glucose, specifically - is the main thing the body \"checks\" to see if you need to eat (although, in reality, your digestive/endocrine systems don't consciously do anything; they're just a set of very precisely tuned chemical reactions that occur when certain situations arise). * If your blood sugar falls slightly, you experience typical hunger symptoms: appetite and mild irritability; these feelings are designed to tell you that you need to eat and should fight something for food if possible. * If it continues to fall further, your appetite diminishes and you may begin to feel fatigued rather than irritable; mild, temporary nausea is also possible if your body over-corrects your appetite. Your body is \"assuming\" that there is no food to be found, so it is encouraging you to rest and conserve resources until food is available again (and calming you down so you don't attack the other hungry people in your tribe). Glycogen - stored fat - is broken down into glucose - blood sugar - to keep you alive until that happens. This is the sensation you're asking about. * If you run out of glycogen, your body begins to break down your muscle tissue, both as a last-ditch attempt to keep your blood sugar at survivable levels, and to reduce the volume of living tissue that requires maintenance. If this occurs, you are most likely suffering from starvation and need medical attention."
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5qjjvr | Is there anything that tastes salty but isn't salt? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Potassium cloride. It's a salt, in the chemical sense, but it isn't salt, in the cooking sense. It tastes saltier than salt, so some folks with heart conditions cook with it because you can use less and still get the taste impact.",
"Do you mean anything that isn't literally tablesalt (NaCl), or anythig that isn't a chemical salt? If you mean not NaCl, there is KCl (potassium chloride) used in low-sodium salt seasonigs and monosodium glutamate which is used in things like Soy Sause."
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5qjm5m | How do teachers quickly tell which students are intelligent over ones who are not? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They get to see a pretty large sample of test results, which might include how someone reasons out an answer they don't necessarily know by rote, they also get to see behavior during tests. If a class clown never does home work, but aces tests, finishes them early, and follows logical steps on problems they've never encountered it's not hard to conclude they're relatively smart, but don't apply their intelligence. In mixed learning it's a pretty important skill to identify at least a few of the brighter and dimmer students so you can tell from behavior when the content of the class is moving too quickly for the some or others need some additional challenges (to stave off boredom).",
"Hi, I'm a teacher. I've been working in elementary education for almost 15 years, specifically special education. All of my students have been smart. > At age 12, I knew a student who was a class clown, liked pranks and he always handed in homework late so his grades were low. So I was surprised when I overheard my teacher say to another staff that this boy is very smart. I'm not surprised at all. The child was probably brilliant. The class clowns usually are. > There were other students who always do their homework,good at math, and have As but I never heard this teacher comment on these students. Eh. Probably because kids who \"achieve\" according to the rules we're given to judge them by are considered to be doing fine, and aren't subject to additional commentary. > do teachers mentally categorize students in groups from intelligent, average, to...difficult case? Not really. Look, I don't know how long ago you were 12 years old, but nowadays, we're under tremendous pressure to not only make children achieve, but to make them all achieve IDENTICALLY. Everyone has to eventually pass that stupid fucking test. In my experience, kids get mentally categorized by their teachers not by their intelligence, but by how worried we need to be about whether or not they're going to pass that stupid fucking test. So: Kids who are gonna pass no problem; Kids who are gonna pass if we give them a little extra tutoring; Kids we need to worry about, but they may pass with accommodations and extra tutoring; Kids we need to worry about who are probably not going to pass; Kids who flat out are not gonna pass, no matter what we do. Extremely intelligent children might be in any one of those categories. I should know. Like I said, I teach special ed... the vast majority of my kids are in the last two categories, and NONE of them are stupid. But if you ask a fish to climb a tree... At any rate: No teacher I know goes around categorizing or talking about their students by degrees of intelligence. Instead, we talk about the by degrees of the amount of help they're going to need to succeed at the level a bunch of nonteachers have decided every child should succeed. Some kids need more help than others, and some need a LOT of help... but that doesn't make them stupider than the majority. It makes them different than the majority. God forbid. Edit: Fixed a misspelling. Seemed wrong to leave it. ;)",
"Some children are extremely smart but are not challenged with the course or even just lack motivation. Teachers (who see kids on a daily basis) are able to pick up small cues over the years that allow them to know which ones have an inherit \"smartness\" and those that are book smart. Much by the same token coaches are able to tell which kids have a raw talent for a certain sport. (It's not all about physical appearance either)."
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5qjn9g | Why is Apple suing Qualcomm? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Qualcomm developed a lot of the technologies behind LTE, and have patents on them. When a company's technology gets incorporated into a standard like LTE, they have to promise to let other people use those patents under \"fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory\" terms (which makes sense, but isn't exactly well defined). Apple is claiming that the terms Qualcomm wants aren't fair- they're charging too much and making them pay extra for patents they don't want in order to get the ones that they need in order to make phones with LTE. They're also claiming this as an anti-trust issue: Qualcomm makes their own processors (if you're in the US, pretty much any flagship phone other than the iPhone uses Qualcomm chipsets), so Apple is claiming that they're doing this in order to make it more expensive to use their competitors."
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5qjrjw | How does plastic thrown in the garbage, which is destined for a landfill, make its way to the ocean? | Or is this not the case? I always hear that all the plastic we throw in the garbage ends up in the ocean. This is why we should cut those plastic soda can rings, for instance, so a poor sea animal doesn't get caught in it. But like, what then is directing landfill waste to the ocean??? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The reality is a bit more complicated than a straight forward once sentence sentiment. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area in the northern region of the North Pacific Gyre, a circular current that rings the Pacific ocean down the North American west coast, across the equatorial line, up the East coast of Japan, and back. The area spans from the West coast, past the north end of Hawaii, and all the way to Japan, and constitutes somewhere between 0.4% to 8% of the Pacific ocean. Trash naturally collects in the middle of gyres, and there are several around the world, the other big one is in the Atlantic. These areas collect debris and plastics ground into near microscopic, principally from marine activity - illegal dumping or inappropriate waste management, buoys, fishing gear, lines, and nets. Trash generated on land takes about 6 years to make it's way into the Pacific garbage patch and consists mostly of microbeads, which is why they were outlawed a couple years ago. In 2011, the EPA is responsible for the claim that 80% of the trash originates from land waste, but the claim is entirely unsubstantiated. Research suggests 60% is marine in origin. The plastics are sparse through the ocean, beneath the surface, and is continually degrading in sunlight. Doesn't sound like much of a problem, except that as it degrades into microscopic levels, it enters the food chain at microscopic levels and begins to concentrate as you go up the food chain, leading to toxic levels in larger animals that eat the smaller creatures. Some places like the Midway Atoll act as a screen for passing plastics, leading to extremely high concentrations of even visible and sizable particles. These pieces are mistaken for food by marine life like sea birds and turtles. They choke or starve to death, or suffer from a blockage, die, and the plastic is released in their habitats to kill again. Of the 1.5 M albatross that call this island a seasonal home, all are likely to have some amount of plastic in their gut at any time. 1/3 of all chicks die from plastic ingestion each year. Overall, plastics in the ocean have a direct impact on some 270 species in the Pacific. And in humans, as the toxic chemicals concentrate in fish food, fish which we wild catch and then eat. So back to your direct question, trash you generate likely won't make its way to the ocean unless you live near the ocean, still, plastic bottles in particular have an annoying persistence both on land and a propensity to end up in water, both because they're exceedingly buoyant and because they're so common (and buying bottled water is retarded for its own set of reasons). You clip can and bottle rings because rodents and birds frequent trash centers and landfills for an easy meal, since Americans throw away almost half the food they produce, and the rings get stuck around their necks, legs, and wings. If the animal can't get free, it's likely to maim or kill the animals. The pictures are gruesome, don't google it before steeling yourself. In particular are the terrible images of turtles that got a ring stuck around their midsections, and their shells grew around it. Ever see pictures of what corsets did to women in the 1850s?"
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5qjwop | What specifically allows some people to hold their breath longer than others? | Is it simply a question of lung capacity (perhaps in relation to body size) or is there more to it? Does the air held in their lungs oxygenate their blood differently/more efficiently? Or do their bodies just require less oxygen per minute than the rest of us? Please ELI5 as the answer will be relayed to a 6 year old. Thanks! | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The thing that makes you breathe again (after holding your breath) is CO2 buildup rather than lack of oxygen. Respiration, in addition to supplying your cells with oxygen, also removes CO2. There's plenty of oxygen in your blood, the problem is when CO2 starts to build up in your cells your body starts sending out panic signals forcing you to continue breathing. So it actually has less to do with lung capacity or body size and more to do with CO2 elimination. People that hold their breath for minutes on end don't just take a huge breath and hold it, they try to eliminate CO2 beforehand. Try doing a series of short, sharp breaths (inhale & exhale) for about 30 seconds (almost like you're hyperventilating). This will expel more CO2 from your body than normal respiration. Then take a huge breath and see how long you can hold it. I just did it myself and held my breath for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Normally I can only hold it for about a minute.",
"Part of it is of course physical, but I would think that at least some part of it is mental. No doubt for those people who can hold their breath for long periods of time find it uncomfortable after five minutes or so, but the difference is that 1.) they worked up to it, and so they have the advantage that they KNOW they can do it that long, and 2.) they simply have built up the ability in their minds to know that they aren't gonna die if they keep holding their breath and that they can wait just a bit longer (as holding your breath is not only physical but mental in that it's almost a reflex to gasp after holding your breath for so long). If you are interested in more about the physical techniques, I'd suggest searching \"free diving\". There's a few resources online for he techniques used to hold your breath for long periods of time (but I would also caution if you are interested in trying it, make sure you have a buddy just to be safe so that they can make sure you are okay if you pass out, for example) Edit: I just reread your question and I think a more useful answer for your six year old (specifically answering the question) is that the people have trained, so they know how to use the space in their lungs as best as possible to hold as much air. There are special breathing techniques that allow people to hold their breath for longer by stretching the lungs. Over time, their body will build stronger lung muscles and other related muscles so that they can do it for a longer period of time. In addition, their body would learn to cope with less constant oxygen."
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5qk4uj | How is it safe/ sanitary not to wash black cast iron cookwear between uses? | I know you arent susposed to wash cast iron skillets or use soap in cast iron teapots. What prevents a build up of bacterial growth on the left over far or bad tastes from former issues like in a tea pot. Right now i just make sure there isnt any standing oil in the skillet and nothing sticking to it. The tea pot i just rinse in hot water and rub the insides with a soft cloth until the stains come out in between uses. Is this enough? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Omg the misinformation.... URL_3 URL_0 URL_2 URL_1 ....stop the madness",
"For starters you don't leave a cast iron pan filthy simply because you don't want to use soap on one. You scrub it out quite thoroughly to get rid of any food remains. It should still be a smooth, clean pan when you put it away. Since the surface of the pan is minimal, there isn't much of a feeding medium for bacteria to grow on. Especially since you quite frequently use the pan and heat it to the point where any bacteria present die. If there's any particularly persistent food remains in your pan, get some coarse salt. Pour a little salt in and use the salt as an abrasive as you scrub out the pan with some kitchen paper."
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"http://www.thekitchn.com/can-you-really-not-wash-your-cast-iron-with-soap-235237",
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"http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/02/16/heavy-metal-the-science-of-cast-iron-cooking/",
"http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/the-truth-about-cast-iron.html"
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5qk85r | Why do small injuries (like paper cuts) seem to hurt so much more than more serious injuries? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"From the \"paper cuts\" Wikipedia page: \"Paper cuts can be surprisingly painful as they can stimulate a large number of skin surface nociceptors (pain receptors) in a very small area of the skin. Because the shallow cut does not bleed very much, the pain receptors are left open to the air, ensuring continued pain. However, the cut can also be very deep, in which case a puddle of blood pools around a longer gash. This is exacerbated by irritation caused by the fibers in the paper itself, which may be coated in chemicals such as bleach. Additionally, most paper cuts occur in the fingers, which have a greater concentration of sensory receptors than the rest of the body.\" In talking about more serious injuries like a broke arm. Your body releases lots of endorphins due to the stress of whatever situation causes the injury. This allows you to focus on the situation rather than being incapacitated due to blinding pain. This would have been very advantageous evolutionarily, although nowadays it is probably safe for me to writhe around in pain until help arrives.",
"It's not the size of the wound that hurts, but how disturbing it is to the pain receptors in and around the wound. If you were to cut yourself with a very sharp blade like a razor or scalpel it would feel cold rather than hurt. The reason is that the blade is so sharp and smooth that it cleanly divides your skin without disturbing it very much. Contrast that with a jagged splinter, or the rough misshapen saw-tooth edge of a piece of paper which tears and gouges at your skin as it cuts, and you can begin to see how they are different. Where you get the small injury also matters a lot. The fingertips and tongue have a lot of nerve endings and pain receptors and any damage to them is intensified. It's even worse with our toes which have a similar level of sensitivity, but are protected by shoes which keeps them from building up a tolerance to pain that our fingers do. Stubbing your toe hurts so bad, but you can tap your finger on a desk all day and not be bothered. And yet you could probably stab yourself with a pencil in the buttocks or your hip and not feel it at first. The other thing is that as you grow older, your tolerance for pain increases. When you are a child you have all the same nerve endings, but in a much smaller body, so they are more concentrated, and everything hurts. As an adult though they are more spread out, and you've had a lifetime of accidents, cuts, and scrapes, to de-sensitize you to pain and little things like papercuts don't bother you as much."
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5qkjw7 | Why can't huge companies like Google and YouTube beat ad blockers? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Google doesn't go to great lengths to prevent ad blockers for the same reason that Walmart and Target don't use draconian measures to stop petty theft. Sure, a big store could eliminate *all* petty theft if they wanted to - but not without inconveniencing and annoying legitimate honest customers. Same with ad blockers. It's not worth going to great lengths to fight ad blockers when it will just piss off the average user.",
"Ad blockers work in one of two ways. * The \"Take it and dump it\" method. * The \"Refuse to ask for it\" method. The majority of ad blockers work on the \"Refuse to ask for it\" method. Basically when a page is loaded, your ad blocker consults a list of known ad serving addresses to check if the content loading on a page is part of an advert (Most adverts are loaded from third party domains). It also consults an algorithm to check if something on a page could be an advert (For example most adverts come in industry standardized width and heights in pixels) and for locations on the page it suspects might be an advert. It will also examine the cookies being placed on your PC by the site. Once the ad blocker has examined the page and determined what is and is not an advert, it will continue to request the bits of the page that is not advertising (Such as photos and images that belong to the sites design), and not request any of the advert components of the page (Like advert graphics/audio, cookies), which it then hides from the sites design so it doesn't look funny. This saves you loading times and bandwidth. Unfortunately, the developers of the site can write detection routines using Javascript to detect that your adblocker has not requested say for example, the graphic of an advert on the page or other advertising components. This is how they detect you are blocking ads and how those annoying \"We know you are blocking our adverts, will you please reconsider?\" messages appear. To prevent this, the other method of blocking ads can be used. The \"Take it and dump it\" method downloads everything, adverts, advertising cookies, the whole lot. However once they have downloaded to your computer, the ad blocker then deletes them almost immediately and carries on hiding them from the page. Though you still do not see the adverts, this is much slower as it still has to download all the advertising components of the page. It is however, nearly undetectable by the site operator. The reason it is not used more frequently at the moment is because it's often more liable to break the working of the site, can sometimes be functionally messy and at the moment, it hasn't yet hit the point where they have to resort to this method so the bandwidth savings are worth it. Detecting ad blockers requires some considerable input and at this point the arms race hasn't yet got to that stage. There is actually something of a cold war armaments race going on between the developers of ad driven sites and ad blocking software developers. As ways are found to beat the ad blocker, the ad blocker is updated, repeat, repeat, repeat. In the end though, it's always going to be a lose for the ad companies because an ad blocker when given total control of a browsers output, it's always going to win. The ad companies just don't have that much control over your browser. To that end, it's likely online advertising is going to change or the paywall is going to become more common in the future.",
"I'd argue that at least a portion of the reason Alphabet (nee Google) doesn't do so is because of market forces. They really want to maintain their browser market share. Firefox was big and it offered extensions (and specifically adblockers), and so Chrome also ended up supporting them. They have all the necessary power to prevent ad blockers from being effective - they could remove the functionality from Chrome, remove those extensions from the Chrome Store, or even bake-in a workaround specifically for their own ads. But I think the fear of losing market share at least partially hinders that move. I'd also speculate that there would be significant legal repercussions, as well as a revolt in at least part of the developer community."
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