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5ql0rb | Could an identical twin get off on a technicality if we can't know that it wasn't their twin that committed a crime? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes. In the U.S. and many other places juries are instructed to only vote guilty if the prosecution has shown \"beyond a reasonable doubt\" that the accused is guilty. If all of the evidence applies equally well to one twin as it does to another then there is a reasonable doubt and the accused would walk free. This isn't a perfect way to get away with a crime—one twin could have a rock solid alibi or, by colluding with the other twin they could *both* be guilty of conspiracy to commit ____. However, there are cases where it has happened. [This]( URL_0 ) article gives some examples."
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5ql0z0 | why water completely damages a cell phone when submerged. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Electronic circuits are designed to only allow electricity to pass through certain parts at certain times. That's how your phone works. It's a set of boolean functions (1 or 0/true or false). Electricity passes through chip, and it makes a decision such as \"and/or\". If it's 'and', it sends the signal one way, and if it's 'or', it sends it another way. After it does that, this step is repeated through other logic gates that have other functions that aren't and/or (not/or or any of the many other variants). Once you submerge it into water, it doesn't follow this designed 'trail', and the phone short-circuits. Because water is conductive, the electrical signals go wherever they can, and electronics can't handle that. To make something of a comparison; It's the same reason you get in a line when you're shopping. Imagine if all the customers just threw all their items onto the counter at the same time and talked over each other. The cashier wouldn't know what to do. That's what the submersion is."
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5ql46v | How exactly do the different settings on dryers (i.e. "Permanent Press") affect clothes? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"According to [Sears]( URL_0 ): > A washer on permanent press will wash clothes in warm water and rinse them in cool water, maintaining a mild agitation and spin. The warm water helps relax creases while the slow spin prevents new wrinkles from forming. A permanent press cycle is gentler than a regular cycle, making it good for synthetic fibers like polyester, rayon and knits. Because it does not use hot water, a permanent press cycle will also reduce shrinking and color fading. > A dryer on permanent press uses medium heat to smooth out wrinkles as it dries, while avoiding the high heat that can shrink clothes and fade colors.",
"The heat output is anything from very hot air (whites) to completely unheated air (air dry). Certain fabrics will shrink with too much heat, and colors will fade.",
"Lower heat and slower tumble. At least on my dryer. I use it on most clothes with exception to whites, sheets, blankets,and towels."
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5ql6fs | Sometimes when I'm driving and I squint, the traffic and car lights turn into rays, why? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"My best guess would be that its due to your eyelids causing the liquid on the surface of your eye to form a kind of [meniscus shape] ( URL_0 ) over where light is entering your pupil. This would kind of be like a concave lens, leading to the bending of light in a vertical direction around where your eyelids touch your eye. edit: I'd like to point out that if you move your eyelashes out of the way using your fingers, you still get rays appearing when you squint.",
"Obviously you don't need glasses to drive. Squinting helps the rays I see turn into car lights.",
"take a rubber band, put it in front of a camera, and the lens flair will become stretched: URL_0 . (he does it with a naylon string, results at 2:30) my guess is that your eyelashes do the same",
"The lights are always rays. The shape of the aperture of your eye (eyelashes lids and obstruction included) control how the light hits your retina and how the refraction is shaped. If you look at bokeh from say mesh fabric and squint your eyes each bokeh dot will look like its \"squinting\" too. Tldr: When your squinting your eyelashes change the way light enters your eyes and make focused light seem like a starburst.",
"It is probably diffraction on your eyelashes. When light passes through a narrow opening, it spreads out in a direction perpendicular to the direction of the opening. (So for a vertical slit, it spreads out horizontally) When you squint, your eye lids and lashes make a bunch of little slits for the light to diffract from."
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5qlm5h | How are NCAA players not being paid? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"NCAA players are college students, not professionals. They are not supposed to be paid because it is not a job for them, it is a college activity. It would be no different than a high school paying their players with the excess the football booster club makes. Ideally, the excess goes to support the less lucrative sports."
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5qlpcj | Who would build roads under a Communist ir Anarchist regime? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You might want to check out /r/anarchism101. I'm pretty sure there's an equivalent sub for communists. They probably have plenty of basic things covered in the sidebar, so you might want to start there.",
"Communists: The government would dictate how and where roads are built. Anarchists: Companies or groups of individuals would likely band together for certain sections/areas of road to be built based on necessity and individual benefits (if Walmart can't get their trucks to/from their stores safely, they would pay to have a road built where they need one).",
"I can't speak for sure in the case of Communism, but I imagine the government would handle that. In the case of Anarchists, it would depend on the core philosophy of the community. \"Anarchy\" is actually just a larger umbrella for many different ideas about how to run a community without (necessarily) the oversight of a government. So the answer to your question is \"some people\" :-/ I'd suggest [this video]( URL_0 ) if you're really interested in Anarchy -- it's not just people running around shooting guns and being crazy for no reason. It's actually kinda boring"
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5qlrpy | Why do some wounds get just stitches or staples to heal while others get packed with sterile gauze? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You want the wound to heal from the bottom up; if the skin heals itself closed before the sides of the wound have joined back up, the bubble that's trapped under the skin can turn into an abscess, which is bad news. So you pack the wound with gauze so that only the deepest part can knit itself back together; then when you replace the gauze, you can't push it in as deep, and the the wound gets a little shallower, bit by bit, until, finally, it closes at the top."
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5qly78 | If monitors only have 3 colored pixels: red, green, and blue, how do we see colors like yellow on our computers/phones? | So, as I understand it, the basic monitor has pixels and those pixels can be colored in as red, green or blue. If those are the only colors on the monitor, how can we see colors like yellow, or even different shades of yellow? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your eyes can only *detect* red, green, and blue. Yellow light has a wavelength between that of red and green, so when yellow light hits our eyes, it stimulates the red and the green receptors just a little bit (rather than stimulating the red receptor a lot and the green receptor not at all, the way red light would, or stimulating the green receptor a lot and the red receptor not at all, the way a green light would). So we actually have absolutely no way of telling the difference between light that itself is yellow, and a combination of smaller amounts of red and green light that together stimulate the red and green receptors that same amount. (Yes, this means that some objects that appear yellow to us might not actually reflect yellow light - they might reflect both red and green light, instead! This means they're indistinguishable to us, but *some* creatures have more color-sensing types of cells, and might be able to distinguish them!)"
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5qm9nf | Why is this pigeon the most common bird of cities? What allows the pigeon to thrive in cities? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pigeons are birds that naturally nest on rock faces in hills and cliffs. Tall buildings in cities make a nearly perfect artificial cliff face so they have a lot of places to nest. Pigeons are also foragers that eat a wide range of foods from nuts to worms in nature, which makes them well adapted to scavenging human food waste. But the commonality of pigeons varies by region. In Texas for example it is more common to have grackles than pigeons."
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5qmgbd | Why does your flesh appear to glow red when you hold a bright light against it? | First of all why does it do this at all, and secondly, why red? Thank you | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> First of all why does it do this at all Because our flesh is not completely opaque but is translucent. It allows some light to penetrate and then come back out. > and secondly, why red? Because we are full of blood and blood is red."
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5qmi8c | If sitting is so bad for us, how bad is the third of our lives we spend lying down (sleeping)? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First of all, that third of your life is spent sleeping, which you would very quickly die without. I'd say that means lying down is *definitely* healthier than *not* doing it. As for sitting down, it's unhealthy because it's not a natural position to be in for extended periods. We're supposed to be moving around a lot. You know how blood circulates around your body? Well, your heart is great at pushing it *down*, but not pulling it back *up*. Walking helps your blood circulate - we've evolved so that the muscles we use for walking help push the blood back up our bodies. When you're lying down, gravity isn't that big of a problem. That's just *one* reason. We're also not supposed to have a sedentary lifestyle. We're supposed to get a decent amount of sleep (as discussed earlier, lack of it *will* be detrimental to the point of lethality) but other than that we're built to be active and we've not evolved out of that. So sitting around all day means we're conserving way too much energy that our body doesn't have anything to do with, so it stores it was fat, which makes our body *less* efficient and means we need even *more* exercise. Again - we've evolved to sleep for ~8 hours, and then be active most of the rest. Not doing either of those is not healthy.",
"When you are sitting there is unnatural pressure on certain parts of your spine. When you sleep the pressure is spread about your whole body. Certain sleeping positions can be painful though.",
"In addition to what was added by others sitting is bad for the muscles in your hips. Your hip flexors get shortened and tigtened because your body now thinks that sitting is your natural position and will actuslly begin to remove sarcomeres from the muscle fibers. Your hip extenders (ie. Glutes) become stretched out and lengthened as well causing them to become weaker. Now you have created a muscle imbalance in some of the primary muscles involved in your gait cycle. The forces on the vertrbral discs in your spine also change as you lay stand and sit. Laying down puts no pressure on your spine, standing puts 100% more pressure on the spine , sitting increases this force to 150%. Sitting down and bending over is even worse clocking in at 200% of the normal force on your spine. There are also some numbers dealing with calories burnt while sleeping standing and sitting , i couldnt tell you the exact numbers off the top of my head but sitting burns the least per hour. Edit: big fingers small phone.",
"sitting your compunding your spine and discs and putting preasue on it. My dad basically had a job that required him to sit in a chair all day 5 days a week and at age 60 he had to have back surgery just from sitting all day( he played no sports or had no accidents that would have contributed) Laying down your body is in a more natural position and your not putting such a strain on the spine or discs.",
"It isn't the actual sitting, it is the inactivity that comes with it, sleeping is a necessity."
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5qmjlk | How does Gintama get away with having parts of so many other anime series in it? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A majority of it is parody. Also the fact that it's well-known and a long running series puts it up there with shows like \"the Simpsons\" and Such. We all know about the \"Simpsons did it\" justification. Also their writing staff is pretty huge and have a lot of background so you never really know who's borrowing what ideas from where. They could just be ripping their own ideas off their old works aswell. Long story short, they have \"tenure\"."
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5qmk2u | Why do the Flamingo exhibits at zoo's look very easy to escape from? | from a flamingos perspective, the bars are never too high and it seems very easy for them to escape. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So, they might have their wings clipped. Or they might be like the flamingos at the zoo I worked at and be the unclipped offspring of clipped birds. Because their parents never taught them, they don't know how to fly and don't. Also they tend to stick with what they're familiar with. 8 did hear of a flock that was moved across the country to a different zoo, and they all flew back to the original one.",
"The birds will have their primary flight feathers clipped making flight extremely difficult. In addition, Flamingoes need a long runway to take off from."
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5qmlnw | How do institutions like the ACT and the SAT come up with their standards? | As in, how do they decide what students should know, and to what depth they should know them? Is there some kind of consortium of people involved in education policy and/or theory? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The College Board is not a government program. It's a private program that employs hundreds or thousands of well respected people who create the standards for others to follow. People like it because it works."
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5qmwfq | Why is it blurry when we look straight into water but clear when you wear goggles? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because your eyes need air directly in front of them to be able to focus properly (its to do with the way that your cornea bends the light as it enters your eye; when touching water, nowhere near as much of this bending is possible).",
"Some children actually possess the ability to see underwater relatively clearly, as their lenses are more flexible and can adjust to the difference between seeing in air and water. Scientists studied this in [Thailand's Moken tribe's children]( URL_0 ) and also found it was still somewhat possible in European children, just with more eye irritation and less clarity.",
"I believe it's due to the refractive index between the air and your eye vs between water and your eye. When light goes from one medium to another its path gets bent. You can see this when looking into a glass of water with a spoon in it, the spoon doesn't line up. So when you open your eyes in the water, the light gets bent in a way your eyes haven't adapted to deal with and still focus. I think I read that pearl divers have adapted to be able to focus under water.",
"TIL That other people can see clearly underwater with goggles on. As someone who has needed glasses most of my life, and sees equally blurry with or without goggles on, I just thought goggles were to keep irritants in the water out of your eyes. And water always got inside my goggles anyway. In short, for me, the goggles do nothing.",
"If you recall some of your teenage year science lessons on optics you may remember something called 'refraction'. This is to do with how light changes direction slightly when it switches from one medium to another I.e glass to air. We evolved to use our eyes in the air, so our vision is reliant on light bending in a specific angle as it transitions from the air to our eye. When you are underwater, there is no air in front of your eye, so the light transitions directly from the water to your eye, which causes it to shift by a slightly different angle, messing up the focusing inside the eye resulting in slightly blurry vision. When you put goggles on, this restores the air to eye transition for the light so your vision returns to normal.",
"I don't know if these explanations are complete. I am near-sighted; I practically put books into my eye sockets to read with my contacts out. When I wear goggles, I have what feels like equal vision with or without contacts underwater. It is a strange feeling to see as a late-stage Van Gogh saw above water, dive in, then crystal clear vision arrives. Thoughts? edit - Thanks everyone for the input! I also used to just stare underwater (with goggles) -thankfully we had a pool, so no getting in trouble in swim class!",
"No one in here has the correct answer. Goggles have a flat front surface so the index of refraction between water and goggle does not lens because the interface is a flat plane. Get a square clear container; fill it with water; you'll be able to see what's inside clearly. Get a rounded container such as a glass of water, and the inside will appear \"warped\". It's the same effect that wearing goggles has. Your eyeball is a curved surface evolved to work in air. Meaning it bends the light just right in that medium. If you change the medium to water it gets fucked up.",
"If we pulled a fish out of the water, would our world be blurry to them?",
"As someone who has always worn glasses and never wore them underwater, I never knew this...",
"Normally, the difference in the index of refraction between your cornea and the air is such that light focuses perfectly on your retina. Water, on the other hand, has almost the same index of refraction as your cornea so the light entering your eye is not focused properly. When wearing goggles, the goggles create a pocket of air in front of your eye which allows the cornea to do its job and focus the light.",
"Your cornea is shaped specifically to make sense of light. Light travelling through water bends differently by refracting through molecules that are much different, thus, the light makes no sense. The water touching your eye acts as an extention of your eye's natural lens. However, when you wear swim goggles, your eyes are interpretting light as normal through the goggles, and since your head is under water already, there is no perception of refacting light. Edits: sp, clarity",
"So are there special contacts that can be worn underwater to see?"
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5qnqt6 | sometimes when I'm listening to music through headphones and I yawn, the pitch of the music shifts down a semitone or so for the duration of the yawn. Why does this happen? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The sinuses are connected to the inner ear via Eustachian tubes. In a yawn, the musculature around the jaw can squeeze on these tubes, affecting the pressure in the inner ear. This pressure change also effects the resonance of the ear drum and the anatomy in the inner ear."
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5qnv12 | if cocaine and meth release dopamine, why do they feel good? | I'll start of with saying that I've never done drugs, but I know that using coke or meth can produce really good feelings. But what these two drugs do is releasing dopamine in your brain, and I read today that dopamine doesn't create pleasure but instead [is responsible for desire]( URL_1 ). [Another article]( URL_0 ) about the same subject says: > However, the idea that dopamine is the 'reward chemical' of the brain now seems too simple as more evidence has been gathered. Dopamine is known to be released when unpleasant or aversive stimuli are encountered, suggesting that it is not only associated with 'rewards' or pleasure. Also, the firing of dopamine neurons occur when a pleasurable activity is expected, regardless of whether it actually happens or not. This suggests that dopamine may be involved in desire rather than pleasure. Drugs that are known to reduce dopamine activity (e.g. antipsychotics) have been shown to reduce people's desire for pleasurable stimuli, despite the fact that they will rate them as just as pleasurable when they actually encounter or consume them. It seems that these drugs reduce the 'wanting' but not the 'liking', providing more evidence for the desire theory. If dopamine generates desire instead of pleasure, why do people who do coke and meth experience pleasure? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Dopamine has varying effects in different parts of the brian. It may well induce both pleasure and desire depending on what the rest of the brain is doing at that moment, as well as the place in the brain it gets released. Another factor is the type of dopamine receptors. Receptors can be compared to keyholes which unlock when they meet with the right key, and trigger a signal if unlocked. In this case dopamine is the key which fits into several locks; the dopamine receptors. For instance, there are at least 5 major classes of dopamine receptors which have different responses to dopamine. The response also depends on other factors in the synaptic cleft. A synaptic cleft is the place where the end of one neuron (the axon) releases neurotransmitters (signal molecules/keys), to excite/trigger the neuron it is connected to. More than one substance may be released into the cleft (for instance ATP), and varying relative amounts of substances can have different effects. One of the leading hypotheses for the causative mechanism of symptoms of schizophrenia is an increase of a particular type of dopamine receptors in one part of the brain and a decrease in another part, for example. Don't pin me on this though as I know next to nothing about how the brain works; just a little bit about the physiology at the micro level. Edit: important notion from u/EverDownward that no single drug is a perfect 'key' and different drugs thus activate multiple receptors to varying degrees. His comment that pleasure can be experienced in multiple ways/dimensions is also a meaningful addition."
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5qnvp9 | Why does time asleep feel the exact same whether it's four or eight or ten hours? | If this is just me, let me know. Otherwise, I'm curious as to why this is. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I believe it has something to do with the fact that you are not conciscious when asleep, and thus any kind of recollection of elapsed time is beyond what you're brain had been doing while asleep."
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5qnxq9 | Why are things wrapped in aluminium foil to keep them warm but never cool? | From my understanding, aluminium foil reflects both light and heat. I've seen things wrapped in foil in order to lock heat in (e.g. jacket potatoes) but I never see things wrapped in foil to keep them cool. Is it possible? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"i've been in the saharan desert a few times near luxor we definitely wrapped water bottles in aluminium foil for the top layer of insulation",
"People actually do that all the time. It might not be common where you live, but it's very common in many places.",
"In high school I used to wrap my soda cans in foil for my lunch. Pretty sure that did nothing.",
"Wrapping things in aluminum foil in the hot sun will definitely keep them form heating from the sun. Potatoes can be wrapped in Aluminum foil to bake, them piled in a bowel to keep them warm. But except for that I do not know of anyone using foil to keep things warm."
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5qo6y1 | Why does density decide what sinks and what floats? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Gasses and liquids (fluids) exert pressure on everything inside of them. But the pressure in a fluid increases the deeper the fluid is. So if you put an object in a fluid there is a different pressure at the top than at the bottom. So there is a greater force pushing up than what is pushing down (the force at the bottom is higher). So gravity pulls the object down, but the fluid is pushing the object up. & nbsp; If you do some math you will find that the force pushing up is equal to the weight of the water that would be in place of the object if the object wasn't there. This is called the weight of the water that is displaced by the object. The force of gravity is just the weight of the object itself. So if the weight of the object is greater than then weight of the water it displaces, then it will sink. & nbsp; Since the volume of the object is equal to the volume of the water it displaces then what easily determines if the object will sink or float is the mass per volume of the object vs the mass per volume of the water that is displaced. Because for any given volume, the one with the higher mass per volume will have more mass. The one with the greater mass will provide a greater force. If the object has more mass it sinks because its weight will be greater than the upward force provided by the fluid. Mass per volume is density."
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5qo8iq | What is the difference between an expat and an immigrant? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You're an expat if you're temporarily living in a foreign country on a temporary visa. You're an immigrant if you have acquired a lifetime visa or citizenship from a foreign country, and have moved there permanently."
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5qo91x | How can the president issue an executive order like the Muslim Ban without it the other 2 branches approval? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It falls under the purview of the President, as it is considered a case of immediate national security. The precedent was set by John Adams in 1798 as a result of our relations with France. The Alien & Sedition act gave the president the right to imprison, deport, or refuse immigrants from a nation considered hostile to the US. First, it is not a \"Muslim ban.\" No one is barred entry due to their religious beliefs. It is a temporary suspension of immigration from countries with a high rate of radicalization into ISIS, which has used the immigration process in the past to get onto US soil. Immigration from these countries is only expected to last as long as it takes to come up with a thorough and effective vetting process, to determine no ill intent or ISIS affiliation of the person entering the US. As I mentioned above, this is not the first time the President has suspended immigration from certain countries due to high risk of people immigrating from those countries. In 1882, President Chester Arthur suspended immigration from China, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1889 as constitutional. Justice Stephen Johnson Field wrote, \"The power of the government to exclude foreigners from the country whenever, in its judgment, the public interests require such exclusion, has been asserted in repeated instances, and never denied by the executive or legislative departments.\" The immigration act of 1917 was passed by congress which barred immigration from Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East. And in response to Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt suspended immigration from Japan, Germany, and Italy with Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526, and 2527. This current temporary suspension is due to the same sort of risks FDR was responding to.",
"The President is the head of the Executive branch of the US government and is in charge of executing the laws through enforcement (the police are an example of the executive branch acting to enforce laws on the state level, the national guard being sent into an area to enforce laws such as the desegregation in Little Rock at the national level). One way the President can enforce/execute the laws is through an executive order. However, because the President is only in charge of executing the laws and not making the the laws (which is left up to Congress), the President needs an actual law (let's call it a \"base law\") to attach an executive order to. The President cannot (or should not) just make things up and sign executive orders that mandate things Congress has not contemplated. In the scenario of the Muslim Ban, President Trump's executive order probably falls under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which is the immigration policy of the US. Section 212 of the INA deals with \"Inadmissible Aliens.\" That chapter basically lists the situations in which an immigrant will be considered \"inadmissible,\"- not allowed entrance into the country. So, it is not completely true that the other two branches of government do not approve of the President's executive orders. The base law must still be passed by Congress, following all of the bicameral steps to become an actual law. The Judicial branch sort of stays out of everything until it is called upon through a lawsuit. In fact, it is a practice of the Supreme Court not to even entertain questions of Constitutionality before a law is passed or has been challenged in a lower court. Neither Congress nor the President can ask the Supreme Court whether a law (and probably an executive order by extension) is constitutional before it has been challenged. In other words, the Supreme Court does not approve or disapprove of laws until it is asked to do so. In addition, as other posters have pointed out, Trump's order was done under the color of national security. In general, when a law or order has been passed through the proper steps, the Supreme Court will usually defer to the other two branches. For example, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order mandating the detainment of Japanese citizens on the west coast during WWII. When this order was challenged in Court (See \"Korematsu\"), the Court held that the interment was not a violation of the Constitution because national security is regarded as a higher priority.",
"Can an executive order be challenged by the either of the other two branches?",
"The executive branch is usually given a lot of leeway by congress on how to actually enforce the law. A law about banking may just say \"the treasury will make rules to regulate this activity.\" So an executive order can say how a particular administration will handle that. Of course the other two branches can step in. A judge may say that the EO doesn't follow the law like it should and the legislature could pass a law against what the EO does.",
"Th president is allowed to *interpret* the laws as he or she sees fit, and executive orders are how they do so. Note that an executive order is *not* a Royal Decree. Quite often, to get it implemented, the legislative branch *does* have to act. For example, a president can issue an executive order saying a certain prison should be closed, but congress has to approve the method of prisoner dispersal. And sometimes they don't do that. Or a president can issue an executive order saying a giant, useless, environmentally disastrous wall should be built, but it won't happen without congress allocating funds for it.",
"The President as head of the executive branch has always had the task of implementing laws passed by Congress. There is never enough detail in a law to put it into practice. The President issues and executive order with sufficient detail that a government department can implement the law. Exactly how much detail is done at what level is negotiable and variable. President Bush began issuing broader executive orders. The practice continued under more Presidents. conservatives grumbled that Obama was issuing executive orders violating the Constitution. But these orders were carefully researched. None were successfully challenged in a court of law. As President Trump has shown, executive orders can be issued immediately. The other two branches of government operate much more slowly. Congress can pass more specific laws. Lawsuits can be filed challenging the executive orders. This seems much more likely because Trump's executive orders do not seem to be well researched or even well thought out. Bur lawsuits take time to file and appeals take a long time to move through the system."
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5qo92z | Why are some animals noses wet? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"With dogs, they lick their noses. They do this to help gain more information regarding a scent. It can also help them keep cool. Some dogs dont lick their noses as often so it's not true that a wet nose is a sign of good health. It could be a sign if your particular dog's nose is usually wet but now it's dry."
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5qob2m | Why is it that with old Christmas tree lights if one bulb went out the entire strand stopped working but with new lights if one goes out the others stay on? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The lights can be wired in series (a loop) or parallel (a ladder). Series lights will go out if a bulb is removed. Some incandescent bulbs which are designed for series use have a loop of wire in them which short circuits the bulb if the filament burns out. That means a little more voltage will be dropped across each of the remaining bulbs, and they will burn a little brighter and last a shorter time. If several bulbs are burned out, the remaining ones burn out quickly or a fuse will blow. LED bulbs do not have a similar bypass mechanism for series bulbs, so if one goes out, they all go out."
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5qoba0 | Is the sound we hear when we speak how we actually sound? | Some people really think they sound good singing that actually sound horrible, right? And most people when hearing their own voice recorded hate it, talking and/or singing, so why? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you hear your own voice you're hearing it as it vibrates through the rest of your skull. When you hear your recorded voice you're hearing it as everyone else does.",
"Regarding the other half of your question—terrible singers singing—it's a fine example of the [Dunning-Kruger effect]( URL_0 ) at work. Basically, the skills required to recognise whether you're good at something are the same skills required to actually be good at it. So somebody who is completely tone deaf not only can't carry a tune, *they can't tell that they can't carry a tune*. Their singing might sound like a cat being drawn and quartered to someone with a more musical ear, but to their own cloth ears, it sounds spot-on.",
"Your voice as you hear it when you speak is heavily affected by internal sound waves traveling through your flesh and bones directly to your ears, mixed together with the sound of your voice that travels from your mouth to your ears through the air around you. Because of this, it sounds like your voice is deeper than it actually sounds to those around you, who can only hear your voice as it travels through air. People usually find their voice weird when recorded because it's not what they're used to hearing. I think people who sing horribly without noticing might have a certain degree of tone-deafness."
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5qoepv | DRM and how it actually stops pirates instead of just making it more difficult for me to play my movies on my many devices, etc... | DRM has been around the block, and eventually removed from music in pretty much every market place, but only increased in invasiveness with movies. Despite this, pirates can circumvent enough DRM schemes that pirated movies are common. Are there quantifiable ways in which it's deceased movie piracy, or is the inconvenience just on me as a purchaser? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"DRM on movies *is* dumb. Worst case, people can just record their screen while watching a movie legally. Best case, people just remove it. It's only an inconvenience for the legal buyer. Same goes for games (aside from Denuvo, which hasn't been cracked yet and actually has stopped piracy, but it'll be cracked at some point, which even the Denuvo devs admit). EDIT: I'd like to add there was no big increase in legal sales for Denuvo games.",
"Usually, DRM is not added with the expectation that it will never be broken. It is more commonly used as deterrent to make people less likely to bother getting around it. It increases the level of effort required to get it illegally, and the idea is that it'll increase the effort enough for a significant percentage of potential customers to just buy it instead. It is also intended to increase the time between the release of a work, and when it's available illegally. This is often the case for games. The developers know the protection will eventually be broken, but games are the most valuable when they're new, so the longer it takes until the DRM is broken, the more people will just give up waiting for a \"crack\" and buy it instead. Eventually, the price of the game decreases by a lot, and a significant portion of those who are willing to pay for games have already bought the game. At this point, it doesn't matter too much for the developer that the DRM has been broken, as the people pirating it at this point are often people who would never have bought the game anyway. Some developers have said that having a game that's not possible to pirate for just the first two weeks after release makes a very big difference. The DRM doesn't have to be very long lived for it to be worth the cost of licensing it. Game developers have a business to run, after all. If the cost of DRM leads to a net loss of money compared to not using it, I don't think they would bother."
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5qohy8 | Why do every (most) games start with one having to "press a button" to get to the game menu? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"most games have to load the main menu into memory, so it is waiting for you to press a button to command it to load it. otherwise most games go into a demo mode while its waiting"
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5qomk3 | The autism spectrum | We hear about the autism spectrum, but what differentiates high/low functioning autism, Asperger's, and other(?) types? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's an enormous series of tests to determine level of function based on age. The participants results are compared to datasets collected on average functioning children in the same cohort. These tests range from identifying colors to recognizing and mimicking facial expressions to teeth brushing to mathematics. They're divided up based upon target behaviors like social interaction, self care, etc... High functioning people's simply do better on these tasks than their lower functioning counterparts. The highest functioning autistic individuals may only have impairment in one or two areas (social engagement is the most common)."
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5qoopw | How does call audio to the other side of the world take 0-5 seconds, when it would take sound about 18 hours to get their? | How can call sound travel way faster than normal sound? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because you're not sending audio. You're converting audio to electricity which travels at the speed of light. It gets converted back to audio at the other end."
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5qoq9x | Why does a temperature like 18 degrees Celsius feel so cold inside a house that I would start to shiver and need a blanket or sweater, but when it's 18 degrees Celsius outside, it's easily T-shirt and shorts weather and considered nice outside? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"if your sitting around outside, at night or in the shade, you'll be quite chilly at that temperature.",
"Air temperature is only one of the factors in how warm or cold you feel, though usually it's the most important. Radiant heat is another factor: inside surrounded by cold walls can be very different from being outside on a sunny day. Humidity is important too, since humans cool themselves by evaporative cooling (sweating) a high humidity will feel warmer. Wind chill is important enough to be acknowledged by the weather forecasters who often give adjusted temperatures taking the wind speed into account. Then you get into personal factors such as how much clothing you're wearing and how hard you're working which will interact with the environment in different ways. Don't forget that what makes a temperature feel comfortable is how easily our body can maintain our body temperature at around 38C. Since we're always producing 100 Watts at rest, and well over ten times that when working hard, we like an environment cooler than 38C to dissipate our body heat. Once the environment's temperature exceeds our body temperature we really rely on sweating to keep cool so high humidity (where sweat won't evaporate) and 40+ temperatures makes for a very dangerous environment."
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5qosap | Why are my taxes so high, even with a high withholding amount? | My income taxes are about 35-40% and I am at a fed & state withholding of 10. When my withholding was a 1, I was being taxed about 45%. My coworker made more money than me last month, and was only taxed about 20% with a withholding of 1. Is this an accounting error or is it something more? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Commissons are withheld at a much higher rate than wages, asthe IRS considers them \"supplemental\" income. This should even out when you actually file though."
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5qovvo | What would happen if I followed one of those "Shoot the target to win a new iPhone" pop-ups on a webpage to the very end? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Either never get to the end or end up on a site where you have to complete 2 offers from each of 3 tiers and the last tier is usually signing up for pricey services. But it's set up so that they get all kinds of personal info from you and have you signed up for spammy crap before you realize you'll have to sign up for a timeshare and an expensive wannabe AAA to get a free iPad. If you do buy the time share and fake AAA you'll have to jump through hoops and probably still won't get the prize. Then, when you try calling MCA (shitty AAA), you won't be able to get it cancelled within an hour. Then the next month when you get charged again, you'll try to cancel again. The month after that you'll spend your time finding out where their headquarters are at. When you go fire bomb the place you'll have probably crosses state lines. So now you'll go to jail on federal terrorism charges. Tldr: If you complete it, you'll probably go to jail for terrorism."
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5qoyes | Why is it easier to dwell on upsetting moments rather than happy moments? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Memories get bound more strongly the stronger the emotion that accompanies that memory. Oftentimes, happiness is simply the absence of negative emotions. Yes, sometimes you feel ecstatically, exuberantly joyous. But most happy memories are the moments where nothing in particular is stressing you out, and you are calm and peaceful. Compare that to when you feel very angry or scared. Memories are not only stored cognitively with its sensory perceptions (sight, sound, taste, touch, etc...) but are also stored in your midbrain in emotions. The emotions get stored in one place, the sensory/visual memories in another (like in the hippocampus but not only there). When you have a negative memory of strong emotion, your emotional brain (midbrain) remembers the emotion. It makes it easier to conjure up that sensory memory, especially whenever that particular emotion surfaces for any reason again. Happy moments are usually the absence of negative feelings, and very very happy memories do get remembered vividly, but then again, often produce nostalgia or even sadness or grief, as the memory ended."
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5qp32o | In a democracy, what is supposed to stop hypothetical 90% majority from literally killing off minority 10%? | My first thought was the Constitution. But leaders elected by the majority can amend constitution and make new laws. So, ultimately, what stops majority rule from killing off (or persecuting) the minority if it was so inclined to? In other words, is there any *moral obligation* ANYWHERE in the tenets of le democracy? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is a known problem with democracies, and is called *the tyranny of the majority.* URL_0 Other than human decency, the main things stopping this are (1) rules explicitly protecting minority rights and (2) the fear that \"maybe I'd be next\". These protections famously broke down in Nazi Germany, an advanced and wealthy and educated modern European society that suddenly decided to murder quite a few of its citizens just for being members of a minority ethnic group.",
"There are several examples of this happening in democracies. The problem is that if you establish that killing off the minority is acceptable there is nothing stopping you from killing off the next minority, and the next, etc. In a working democracy a lot of people will fight for rights that does not apply to them because it may be their rights that is challenged next.",
"> In other words, is there any moral obligation ANYWHERE in the tenets of le democracy? Knowing a system is democratic doesn't tell you much about its morals. That comes from the voters in the democracy. And if you think it's horrible that a majority in a democracy can do immoral things, consider that other systems don't even need to get the majority on board for that.",
"The idea is that democracy is supposed to be a reflection of the people. If the people don't want to round up and kill that 10%, it won't be done. Morals, in that sense, are not necessarily right versus wrong, but instead determined by what the majority decides. The reality is that nothing can stop them. It's happened before and it will happen again.",
"One of the reasons the United States has the electoral college, to prevent mob rule. There are many safeguards in place to make sure the majority does not always win.",
"> My first thought was the Constitution. Your first thought is correct, a constitution will typically establish basic rights that a mere majority can overrule. > But leaders elected by the majority can amend the constitution and make new laws. It typically takes a lot more than a majority to amend a constitution. In the US, the primary amendment process requires a 2/3rd majority in both houses, and then 3/4 of the state legislatures. If the 13 smallest states (less than 10% of the population) opposed an amendment, it wouldn't pass. But yes, at the end of the day, a democracy would allow a very large majority to murder off a small minority. This is known as the *tyranny of the majority*. This is a key concern in political science, finding a government that minimizes both the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of the minority.",
"Ultimately, nothing. Democracy is a terrible system of government, but it also seems to be better than any other we have tried. In a dictatorship, one person can decide to wipe out a race - easier than getting 40+% to vote for it. This is also why democracy in a place like Iraq is not necessarily a great idea.",
"You have to understand that in modern language, when we speak of \"democracy,\" we are actually talking about a specific subset of democracies known as \"liberal democracies.\" Liberal democracy has nothing to do with being a democracy that promotes left-leaning policies: rather, it means that the powers of the government are constrained by a constitution. For example, in the United States, even if a majority of the population voted to make, say, Protestantism the official religion of the country, it would never make its way into law due to the 1st Amendment expressly prohibiting such an endorsement of religion. In other kinds of democracies, so called illiberal democracies, the tyranny of the majority is a serious problem. That's why you see suppression of ethnic minorities in countries like Turkey, where institutions aren't strong enough to protect people from the will of the majority.",
"Democracy is a little more nuanced than simple majority rule. Etymologically, democracy means \"rule by the people/public\" so while modern democracies use majority rule/voting to make certain decisions, a functional democracy has to respect and make provisions for the 'minority' as well.",
"I do not post often but I found my self asking the same question. The U.S.A is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. I found an informative article explaining the difference which goes into the details of your question. URL_0",
"Hated as it is, this is actually why we have the electoral college in the United States. It limits the ability of a small group of densely populated cities from controlling a large amount of rural areas. Look up the 2016 election sorted by counties",
"Here's the thing about that... if you're one of the 90%... you've got to be afraid that you'll be in the NEXT 10%! I mean... we are the remaining 90%, if you figure the other 10% was Native Americans (in the US) or going further back, \"the tribe/town/country next door who we killed off and don't remember.\"",
"This is exactly the question that Muhammad Ali Jinnah asked the world at the time of Indian independence. He asked, should Indian Muslims trade domination from colonial Britain for domination from Hindu \"caste Indians\" (Brahmins) in the new nation of India? Jinnah, the secular political leader of millions of Indian Muslims, answered the question with the creation of modern Pakistan.",
"in germany the constitution says that articles 1 and 20: > **Article 1** > (1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority. > (2) The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world. > (3) The following basic rights *[articles 2-19]* shall bind the legislature, the executive and the judiciary as directly applicable law. > **Article 20** > (1) The Federal Republic of Germany is a democratic and so- cial federal state. > (2) All state authority is derived from the people. It shall be ex- ercised by the people through elections and other votes and through specific legislative, executive and judicial bodies. > (3) The legislature shall be bound by the constitutional order, the executive and the judiciary by law and justice. > (4) All Germans shall have the right to resist any person seek- ing to abolish this constitutional order, if no other remedy is available. are irremovable from the constitution which i mean isn't a 100% failsafe solution for various reasons, but it's better than nothing"
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5qp5ln | How do auroras in the night sky work? How do they form? Why do they occur? Why do they only show up near the poles? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[Here is an informative video explanation]( URL_0 ) actually aimed at children, so I think it's appropriate for this sub. :) Basically, energy from the sun (solar wind) hits the earth's atmosphere and excites the gasses in the atmosphere until they light up. (This is the same way that neon signs work, and is the reason that neon signs and auroras are the same colors - blue, red, and green.) As for why they only show up at the poles, it has to do with the *shape* of the earth's magnetosphere. If you've [seen a drawing of a magnetic field]( URL_1 ) you may notice that the lines \"connect\" to the magnet only at the poles. Because the earth's magnetic field works the same way, when charged solar particles hit the atmosphere they are directed to the poles of the earth instead of the rest of it."
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5qp761 | When a pot of water boils, where does the air in the bubbles come from? | Here's what I'm talking about: [Boiling water]( URL_0 ) | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The bubbles you see are not air, actually. What happens when water boils is that a part of it becomes so hot it stops being liquid (this is called vaporization). Vapor (gaseous water) is lighter than the water around it, so it rises as bubbles. If you were to see thousands of those bubbles together, you'd see a cloud! *[Edit: as /u/AmonDhan said, this last thing is not quite true. Clouds are made of liquid droplets which are held in the sky by wind.]*",
"Boiling water is just water turning from a liquid into a gas. So the gas inside the bubbles is just water vapor. The reason why you see a lot of bubbles coming from the bottom of the pot is that in order for a water molecule to go from a liquid to a gas, it needs to find some place it can move relatively freely without bumping into all the other water molecules around it. They can do so at all the slight bumps on the bottom of the pan and then other water molecules trying to become a gas join it, making the bubble bigger until it rises to the top.",
"Those bubbles aren't air. They're water bubbles. *Steam* water bubbles. That's what boiling water *is*: turning water to steam by heating it.",
"That \"air\" is water, in a gas phase. Because of the heating element is at the bottom of the pot, and the heat conductivity of water isn't perfect, water evaporates at the bottom of the pot, and flows upwards as bubbles."
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5qpbf2 | Why is chickenpox worse as an adult? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's mostly due to the difference in immune system between a child and an adult. A primary varicella zoster infection (chickenpox) in adulthood is indeed associated with increased risk of complications. Most of these complications are due to the intense response by the adult immune system that comes into contact with the virus for the first time. Children have less active immune systems, but usually active enough to clear the virus - making them immune to it thereafter, and are therefore less likely to develop complications with this particular infection. The same goes to hepatitis A: adults develop jaundice, while children are asymptomatic. Note: a secondary varicella zoster infection during adulthood is called \"shingles\" and is generally less dangerous than a primary varicella during adulthood, due to the immunity that is already present at the time of the second infection."
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5qpcgc | How do mobile companies like Verizon and Sprint decide on data charges? Does using more data really cost them more money? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dd11a2z",
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"text": [
"Yes, carrying more traffic costs them more money. Much of that is in upgrades - e.g. adding more antennas on towers and adding more backhaul capacity from those to the core of their network, upgrading circuits in the core of their network and adding transit and peering capacity. But they'll charge you whatever they can get you to pay, which is lots higher than what it costs them to carrying that traffic.",
"There is a limited amount of data that can be transmitted per tower. If too many people are using their maximum bandwidth, it will be capped out and it would effect everyone's throughout. Think of everyone having a straw. That represents how much data they can receive over the air. Now think of a larger pipe. This represents how much data the tower's data connection can receive. Everyone crams their straw in the pipe, but it can only hold so many straws before they start to squish, limiting the amount each straw can hold. The above doesn't answer the question at all, but it's important to understand that. Now, a company can either be known for having crappy data, or they can add more pipes, or increase the size of their pipes. This costs money. They could pay out of their normal budget, or they could charge everyone extra. A third option is to charge people who use more data more for their usage. This way, people who don't use data as much pay for less, and people who use data more pay for more. An individual person using more data on a network that is not being fully flooded doesn't cost a company more for that data (or if they do, it would be negligible power and wholesale data costs). It does cost the company to upgrade their networks. To answer the first question second: if I were a company of any sort, I would charge as much as I could without the cost reducing the subscriber base beyond what the increased profits are from increased prices. In essence, I think that's how all prices are determined for anything."
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5qpi90 | Why do the hand rails on escalators not go at the same speed of the escalator itself? | When I have used any escalator and I put my hand on the rail as I go up or down, it always seems to be a bit slower. Like, I am going up slightly faster than the rail is moving and my hand is slowly moving behind me. Why aren't they the same speed? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Wait really? I've never been on an escalator that does this, it always goes at the same speed. Some field service installers are messing up the escalators you are on.",
"They're most likely attached to separate mechanisms which are (unintentionally) just a bit out of sync.",
"So that tired people would not fall asleep riding the escalator. A long time ago, they had studies that showed tired riders have a tendency to fall asleep because of the motion of the escalator, but if their hand moved faster than their body, it would keep them awake enough for the duration of the ride."
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5qpmen | Why do we vocalize our thought process by saying, "um"? | Is there an actual reason behind this, or is it simply considered some form of a crutch for the way we communicate? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's a mechanism for holding on to the conversation ball. By using discourse markers and vocalised pauses ('like' and 'y'know' vs 'er' etc) we indicate that we're still speaking and please would the other person wait until we're done. Essentially it's a way to indicate whose turn it is to talk, without losing our place. It's noticeable that if we intentionally don't use them, unless our conversation partners are good at reading nonverbal cues we'll probably be interrupted more often in pauses. One of the reasons people who don't use discourse markers sound 'smart' is because the only way to achieve that without constantly being interrupted is to think fast and keep talking. Refer to the BBC programme 'Just A Minute' for examples of that skill being demonstrated with punishment for failure.",
"I'm no psychologist, but part of the reason I say \"um\" is to give an indication that I am thinking, and not just ignoring the question they asked.",
"We use filler words such as \"um\" to indicate to others that we are still speaking. It discourages people from interrupting us."
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5qpo45 | Why do internet browsers fail to prevent "add extension" advert pages from locking up the browser? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dd191k3"
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"text": [
"There's lots of Javascript and HTML(5) APIs around that allow websites to provide cool content such as web apps and games. Sadly, since the authors of these APIs forget that there are evil developers around, they end up giving the APIs a lot of control over the browser that loads the page. This is also how some shady ads are capable of vibrating your phone, taking you to the app store, etc. Improper sandboxing and APIs with too much power. You can reduce this by installing an Adblocker and NoScript, which makes pages incapable of doing much without your consent."
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5qpomg | Why do birth certificates have the adoptive parents instead of the birth parents? | It's a certificate of live birth, shouldn't it have who actually gave birth to the child instead of who adopted the child? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dd12wc8",
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"text": [
"It's more important for legal purposes for the government to know who is responsible for raising the child than for who is biologically responsible for them, and that's really what a birth certificate is meant for. The government doesn't care whose genes are in the kid, they just want to know who is legally responsible for them.",
"In addition to what was said, many states allow for biological parents to remain anonymous."
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5qpq34 | Why do different parts of the world have different emergency numbers? | Eg. Currently living in Switzerland where the emergency number is 117, whereas in most European countries it's 112, etc. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dd13nty"
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"text": [
"Interesting question! In the USA, AT & T recommended 911 back in 1967 as the nationwide emergency number. AT & T chose 911 as it fit into the North American Dialing Plan N11 code system (dial 411 for directory assistance, 611 for repair telephone repair, etc.) and 9 hadn't been allocated at that time. Canada also adopted the 911 emergency number. 111 is the emergency number (adopted in 1958) in New Zealand whilst in the UK the emergency number is 999. This is because with the old rotary dial systems the number of \"pulses\" sent were reversed in NZ vis-a-vis the UK. In NZ dialing\"1\" on a rotary phone sent 9 pulses whilst in the UK dialing \"9\" on a rotary phone sent 9 pulses. So the equipment used in NZ and the UK for the phone exchanges worked for both 111 in NZ and 999 in the UK. Across the ditch in Australia the emergency number is 000. This is due to the historic need to dial two zeroes in remote Australian areas to reach an operator; adding one more zero for the national emergency number seemed like the smart thing to do. Australia briefly considered using 911 but those numbers were already in use for regular phone numbers."
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5qq0jf | why can you eat a pound easier than you can drink a pound? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dd1649k",
"dd17vlv"
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"text": [
"Assuming your talking about the weight, not currency, I'd disagree and say chugging a large glass of liquid is easier than chewing on a plate of food",
"It depends on how dense the matter we are drinking or eating is. I can drink a pound of water much easier than eating a pound of kale or marshmallows."
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5qq510 | Time Crystals (Scientists have confirmed a brand new form of matter: time crystals) | URL_0 * Plz ELI5 in detail they are 2 PDF inside of the website plz see those and tell us normal people everything * How will this discovery benefits the normal people what can a normal people do with it ones it becomes viable? Thanx for telling us. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dd16p15",
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"text": [
"/u/ramblingnonsense has a good ELI5 explinaton [HERE]( URL_0 ): > This is about what happens to things when you take all their energy away. Think of it like dropping something on floor. > Many things fall down on one side or the other when you drop them. The way that the thing falls is called its resting or ground state. Figuring out what makes these things fall on one side or the other can help you learn about the object as well as the floor. Sometimes things don't literally fall, but still have ground states. Magnets sort of pick one side to be north and the other side to be south. That's their ground state. Learning why they do this is hard and has taken a long time. Because magnets always have a north and a south pole, they are called asymmetrical, which just means they don't look the same on both sides. > Crystals also have asymmetrical ground states. As a crystal reaches its ground state it always has some bits that are pointy and some bits that are smooth. It's not the same on all sides, so it's asymmetrical, just like the magnets. > Lots of things in nature have asymmetrical ground states, but they all have one thing in common: they don't move. You have to give them some energy to make them move or to change their ground state. > Now some people think that there might be some weird objects that have asymmetrical ground states across time rather than space. That's what they mean by time crystals. An object like that would be interesting because, to us, they would look like they are moving in their ground state without any extra energy! Imagine if you dropped a die on the ground but instead of landing on a side, it landed on one corner and just spun forever. That's how weird these things are! > Because this is so hard to explain, these scientists spent most of their time just trying to define what such a weird object would look like and how you would know it when you found one. Once they did that, they used supercomputers to predict where you might find them, if they exist. > So far, no one has actually seen one and a lot of people think they can't exist. But now we might know where to look to see who is right! > **Edit:** Had I realized how fast this was going to blow up I'd chosen my words a bit more carefully! The bit about the die landing on its corner and spinning isn't meant to be a literal representation of what a time \"crystal\" would do. The article states that the ground state of such an object might be something that moves in a circle rather than sitting still. The other example they give is of a particle that oscillates despite not receiving any additional energy. I suspect (although I don't know) that classical physics probably prevents \"broken time-translation symmetry\" from working at scales big enough to see and interact with; we're talking about quantum properties here. The example with the die was merely to demonstrate the counter-intuitive nature of the phenomenon. > **Edit 2:** I see a lot of people are confused about the ramifications of this concept. **This is not a perpetual motion machine.** This is a ground state; by definition, **there is no energy in the system to extract.** You couldn't get energy out of it any more than you could get energy out of a rock sitting on the floor.",
"So, a \"time crystal\" moves without energy, as in, it's ground state is in motion? Theoretically, what would happen to such an object during the heat death of the universe?",
"i think i am oversimplyfing to the point is wrong, but i will give it a shot. Normal matter in his ''ground state'' (AKA doesn't release any kind of energy) don't really move at all. however, time crystals can move without releasing energy in unique ways on his ground state. and no, it doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics, because that's how is supposed to behave a time crystal on that state. basically a weird rule of nature that may look illogical if we don't go deeper into the subject",
"Why has no one explained why it's called the \"time\" crystal? I'm dying trying to find the answer here! So far, from people's explanation, doesn't look like it has anything to do with time..."
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5qq6f0 | Who decides on the currency exchange rate? | Why is the U.S dollar more than the Canadian ? What makes it more valuable ? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dd16wpm"
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"text": [
"The market decides exchange rates. Lets say you're a Canadian, and you really like some American product. Now the American producer doesn't really have any need for Canadian dollars since they live in the US (not really but this is just a really simplified version of it), but there is someone in the US who wants to buy some Canadian good, which they're going to need Canadian dollars for. Now the Canadian needs American dollars, and the American needs Canadian dollars, so they can trade, so that they can both buy the other countries goods. So that should explain why people want to exchange currencies. Once you understand that, it becomes a fairly simple example of supply and demand. There are people who are willing to supply the currency, and people who want to buy the currency (or they demand it). At the intersection of these two points, a price is set. Now when either the supply or demand change for any reason (changing interest rate in a country is one that can effect exchange rates, as can differing levels of demand for foreign products), the rate between the currencies changes."
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5qq6la | How the ban of americans on Iran will affect american fight attendants and pilots that fly there? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dd16tfz",
"dd17lm4",
"dd1ew7r"
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"text": [
"That will be a problem. It is possible to visit a country without a visa as long as you keep to the international zones and not go though immigration. It is not so uncommon for ship crew to do this but flight crew may have problems finding a place to sleep on the wrong side of the airport.",
"No American airlines actually fly to Iran. Foreign airlines that do would just have to make sure they don't have any American crew members on Iran flights.",
"There are no direct flights from the US to Iran. So for all practical considerations there are no American Pilots or flight attendants involved. For them to be flying there it either has to be a strange emergency, or they have to be working for a foreign air company."
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5qqata | What is the biological process of building muscle, and why is protein so important? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dd182ap",
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"text": [
"When a muscle is trained, minuscule cracks occur inside the muscle ('micro-damage'). These microcracks trigger recovery. The cells inside the muscle responsible for the recovery process are called 'satellite cells'. They will start to migrate towards the damaged regions and proliferate there. These cells multiply and grow and finally fuse with the muscle fibers, recovering the damaged site and making it stronger than before. Since muscle consists primarily of proteins, most notably actin and myosin, proteins are required for the repair of muscle.",
"ELI5 - when you work out you cause little rips and tears in your muscle fibre. the body then works to repair these rips and also 'overcompensates' slightly in order to make the damage less likely to occur the next time the muscle is exposed to a similar workout (akin to when you develop callouses on your skin). protein is the building block for muscle, the ingestion of which helps facilitate this recovery stage of muscle building."
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5qqh1j | How do video game servers differ from web servers? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Oh boy, something I can explain! Generally, the two are very similar. (The software is the only difference) A server's job is to serve (hence the name *server*) content to a user that is asking for it, and receive and process input from the user. With a game server, depending on the game, the server will often act as a middle hub that all the players connect to, and the server handles the game. There are many types of game servers, such as matchmaker servers, multiplayer or world hosting servers, etc. For a matchmaker server, the server receives a request from a user logging into the game to be placed into the queue, which it will process. Then, based on the method coded into the server, it will dispatch the player to a game server, one that actually hosts the game world. Again, this may differ between games, with some games having the server do very little, and some making the server the focus of everything. The method that these servers usually use to communicate with the game client is usually UDP. A web server serves the purpose of serving web services to users, such as web apps or websites. Web servers host the content, and give it to users that request it by visiting the web site. For example, when you go to Google, Google's servers will send you the Google search page. If you then search something, it will send that search back to Google's servers to be logged and processed, and then the server will return the results to you. Web servers often use HTTP(S) or in some rare cases FTP to communicate with users. Attempting to connect to a game server with a browser will likely result in you being unable to connect. In some cases, it will launch the game and connect to the server for you. (Some valve games can launch from the browser via a steam: link.) Let me know if you have any more questions.",
"They both have the same general kind of interface: people send data to the servers, the servers do some stuff, and then send some data back in response. The actual specifics of what data is being transferred is different though. Web servers get requests like \"show me the page URL_0 \", then do work to put together the resulting webpage (e.g., getting a list of the top N posts on reddit), and returning the result. Video game servers get requests like \"I am moving forward\" or \"I am firing my weapon\" from different players, use this information to figure out what's happening in the game overall, and then respond with the actions of other players and how those actions affected the game."
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5qqkmj | Why is NYC so much cleaner and safer than it was in the 80s and 90s? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dd1bm03"
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"text": [
"Many of the seedier business districts were either closed or gentrified. The rental market prices are high enough to push out many of the poor and unemployed to surrounding areas. Finally crack/come are no longer the drug of choice."
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5qqlgv | Why do italians 'salt' their boiling water before putting the pasta into it | My moms method: 1. Put cold water into pot 2. Heat water on stove 3. Once water is boiled, she puts a pinch of salt into it 4. Adds Pasta My method: 1. Turn sink on until it produces hot water 2. Fill pot with hot water from sink 3. Turn stove on high, put pot of hot water on it and add pasta immediately (no salt) I find there to be virtually no difference between the pasta's we each make, yet she insists that I am making it wrong. Can someone tell me the significance of her method and why it is "correct", as opposed to my way which is "faster". My pasta literally takes 10 min less to make since I do not need to wait for the water to boil and I feel the end result is the exact same. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dd1brg0"
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"text": [
"According to tradition, the water you boil pasta in should be 'as salty as the Mediterranean'. You can salt the water to season the pasta even if you *are* using a sauce; just don't over-season the sauce. The 'always boil the water first' rule is true of *fresh* pasta because the protein in the eggs has to set quickly to prevent it becoming mushy. Long pasta such as spaghetti and fettucini will also stick together more easily if heated slowly in cold water. It is possible to cook pasta without boiing water at all; just pre-soak it for an hour or so, cook the sauce in the meantime, then drain it and add it to your hot sauce and heat it through. Buon appetito!"
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5qqsf7 | How does salt used for melting ice/snow work? Also, is there a temperature at which it is no longer effective? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dd1c609"
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"text": [
"Salt raises the boiling point of water and lowers the freezing point. The normal freezing point of water is 0C/32F, and adding salt lowers the freezing point by a few degrees, which usually is enough to melt ice and snow back into water."
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5qqucz | When a new POTUS and his family move into the White House, how much can they change? How are the personal tastes of each president balanced with historic preservation? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"URL_0 says that \"Since the early 60s, each presidential administration has seen the White House as a kind of living museum, making changes to the decor and maintaining the building's structure and exterior, but making very limited alterations to the architecture and layout.\" Every president redecorates the Oval Office, although the general layout of the furniture has been pretty consistent since at least the early 60s. The president often borrows many of their decorations from museums. The museums would presumably complain if the president ruined their paintings and statues. For other historical artifacts, each recent ex-president has a presidential library that collects items related to that president. The most historically significant piece of traditional furniture in the White House is the \"Resolute Desk,\" which Presidents have used since 1880. If a president wanted to steal or set fire to the Resolute Desk, I can't figure out who would have the authority to stop him. There must be a bureaucrat somewhere in Washington D.C. who is responsible for taking care of things that \"belong\" to the White House instead of the president or the Smithsonian.",
"In addition to Todd math. There is a residential portion of the white house, which is not ceremonial, and I'd like a real home, and there is a lot of leeway in redecorating, and is generally updated about as often as your parents home or so, just updating the appliances and backsplash and paint, etc. And the recreation rooms, such as theater and bowling alley are changed by preference. Then the oval office is specifically redecorated and finished by each president to their own taste, including the rug. Some elements remain consistent, like the desk, but they're not required to. Art and the like, as Todd said, is borrowed from museums and such. Also, a large portion of the white house, like the wings, are simply offices for staff. They're updated and redecorated as personally needs change, and are not historic, etc. The parts that generally remain the same and are not changed aer the exteriors and the ceremonial rooms, like the blue room, and some historic rooms like the Lincoln bedroom. Same with outdoor spaces, ceremonial spaces, like the Rose garden remain mostly unchanged, but the rest is up for grabs. Obama added a swing set, a vegetable garden and a basketball court. Otherwise, things change as needed.",
"There is really very little history in the interior of the White House other than furnishings and other portable objects. The building was completely gutted leaving only the exterior walls during the Truman administration.",
"NPR just did a [relevant story]( URL_0 ) on this last week. \"...When it comes to the public spaces in the White House, the rules are different. In the early 1960s, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy helped bring some order to the process of how art should enter the White House and be paid for...\""
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5qqvql | What process(es) is/are my body going through once an antibiotic is introduced to my system? | I started taking an antibiotic today (doxy-cycline) for a bacterial sinus infection. Once that first dose hit my system, how is my body reacting to it? I'm guessing all of my natural antibodies were ramped up already so how does the antibiotic join up and slaughter the germs?! | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dd1etb1",
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"text": [
"Different antibiotics work in different ways, but all of them work by killing bacteria themselves, not by helping your immune system do it. Doxycycline works by stopping the bacteria from making proteins. Humans and bacteria both have little machines inside our cells that read DNA and then make proteins that are necessary to survive. However the bacteria machine is slightly different to the human machine. Doxycycline stops the bacteria machine from working but not the human one, so the bacteria can't make proteins that they need to survive anymore, but it doesn't kill human cells in the process.",
"Every drug works slightly different, but in general, the antibiotics will target the bacteria directly. They'll either kill as much of them as they can or stop them from reproducing so that your immune system can finish the job either way. Doxycycline, for example, can directly enter any bacteria, and bind an important molecule that the bacteria needs (that we don't have). This will prevent the bacteria from making any more protein or replicating. Note that the doxycyclin didn't directly kill the bacteria. However, if you take it through its entire course, then your immune system will catch up and kill it off. Make sure you take the entire course even if you feel better before it's done!"
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5qr6y9 | When a person does 'cos(theta)' or 'sin(theta)', how exactly does he/she figure it out from just a number? | I.e cos(45) = 0.707 sin(45) = 0.707 How the hell does one find the number?! (assuming we're using a unit circle) | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"sin(x) = x - x^3 /3! + x^5 /5! - x^7 /7! + x^9 /9! - .... with an infinite number of terms following that pattern. The more terms you sum, the closer you get to the true value. Once you sum enough terms, it gets to the point where the value you get is basically the true value with negligible error. Cosine has a similar series.",
"URL_0 sin(theta) is the length of the line opposite the angle theta in a right triangle with a hypotenuse of length 1."
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5qroml | Why is coffee/pepper that you grind at home better than coffee/pepper ground at the factory? | Would people be able to tell the difference in a blind taste test? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Coffee, pepper, and many other spices have very volatile oils that evaporate fairly quickly after their outer shells/skins are broken. So the closer to end use you put off the grinding of the spice the better it will taste and the more of those oils you consume. Grinding them in a factory means you lose a lot of those oils, and therefore lose flavor.",
"First, yes, anyone who's palate hasn't been numbed by something like years of smoking would definitely be able to tell the difference in a blind taste test. Coffee, peppercorns, and many other foods contain volatile oils that hold the essence of their flavor. Once cut, crushed, or ground, there's a limited time to capture those aromatic oils. Let's use coffee for an example. Inside every coffee beans there are 1,000 volatile aromas. 15 minutes after grinding, 60% of them are already lost to the ether, never to be seen again. This is because they interact with oxygen (which is why coffee is often sold vacuum packed). Additionally, coffee's oils are water soluble; interacting with moisture in the air further dilutes the remaining volatile aromatics, leaving less for your cup. Lastly, the carbon dioxide formed during roasting is an important part of releasing the coffee oils into the water during brewing, and when the coffee is ground, it's depleting by the minute. The sooner you brew after grinding, the better, and more flavorful, your cup of coffee.",
"if you can smell something- its losing its strength. there for fresh ground/crushed is better. the way things are packaged can help prevent this lose- but can not completely stop it.",
"When natural products are ground, they release certain chemicals that taste nice. If exposed to air, moisture, or other elements, those chemicals degrade or disappear. Even if you ground and packed it under vacuum, you wouldn't have the same result, because the more volatile chemicals would evaporate away."
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5qrpvo | The first basic fusion that will happen in a star is two hydrogen atoms fusing and becoming helium. We know that other elements will be produced by fusion, like Neon, Iron, etc. What is the sequence after the atom is helium for subsequent fusion... H > He ...? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Carbon comes next, fused from three helium nuclei. Once carbon shows up a few things can happen. The [alpha process]( URL_0 ) reactions start to occur slowly and build up small amounts of heavier elements while the helium burning phase is occuring. What happens next depends on the mass of the star. Stars around the sun's size can't go any further once the helium supply starts dropping and they fizzle out. Much larger stars can compress their cores enough to start pulling off: 1) Carbon to neon-oxygen-magnesium 2) Neon to oxygen-magnesium 3) Oxygen to silicon-sulfur 4) [Silicon-burning process]( URL_1 ) that produces iron and nickel and kills the star. Tl;dr: H > He > C > Ne > O > Si > Ni/Fe > Boom"
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5qrsil | What happens to the people that were on their way (in the air) to the US from one of the now banned countries? Do we get a situation like Tom Hanks in "The Terminal"? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That is exactly what's happening right now. There's a protest a JFK to release the people who are being detained for coming over.",
"I saw something come across tonight about a federal judge intervening and voiding the executive order, so there's that."
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5qrxdx | Can someone please explain how Jurassic Park (1993) was visually so ahead of its time, it seems almost comparable todays visual effects? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They spared no expense. But seriously, there's a lot less CG in Jurassic Park than most people think. Today, it's quite common for the only live action element in many shots to be the actors. If JJ Abrams (hardly the most CG reliant director currently working) were to remake Jurassic Park today, he'd probably feel forced to engage in a full-on CG fuckathon for sequences where Spielberg simply did not have that option. Spielberg was, instead, forced to use every cinematic trick in the book to hide the short-comings of the comparatively awful CG elements he had available to him. Dark lighting, practical effects (models and animatronics), clever cutting... Jurassic Park is a tour de force in all of these things because the CG was still quite primitive. There are only a couple of full-CG shots that take place in brightly-lit daylight (e.g. the Brontosauraus reveal) and these are probably the weakest shots in the film. People today watch Jurassic Park and think they're seeing flawless, state-of-the-art CG, but what they're really seeing is mostly models and animatronics with only flashes of CG to tie the shots together. The CG was weak, but Spielberg hid it's weaknesses like the master he is. Bonus example: Consider the cup of water in the Jeep when the T-Rex is first approaching. > > One other issue that was initially seen as very small turned into a big puzzling problem. As the T-Rex approaches our main characters, we hear it before we see it. In particular, we see a cup of water start to form “rings” from the T-Rex’s approaching footsteps. Spielberg got the idea after listening to loud music in his car and seeing his rear-view mirror vibrate from the heavy bass. He quotes, “I was on my way to do storyboards for Jurassic Park and I never forgot what it looked like when the bass rhythm went off. I thought in the middle of storyboarding ‘hey wouldn’t it be cool if, when the T-Rex began to approach, the low-end vibration of all that tonnage hitting the ground was causing these little concentric circles.’” The crew thought the gag would be really simple to pull off. As it turned out, however, forming these “concentric circles” proved to be much more arduous than anticipated. Everyone on the production team was puzzled. Sound engineers, physics specialists, and wave tank generators were called in and used to try to achieve the circles, but to no avail. Finally, a solution was found. Michael Lantieri, who was part of the special effects team, quotes, “The night before the shot, I’m at home and I’m still playing around and I took a guitar that I had at home and set a glass of water on the guitar and plucked the string, and it vibrated and did it.” So in the end, the gag was achieved by feeding a guitar string from the cup through the tour car down to the ground, where a guy laying under the vehicle plucked the guitar string (Jurassic Park DVD). [Source]( URL_0 ) Directors often have a vision and go to great lengths to see it realized. However, I guarantee you that Michael Bay isn't going to call in physicists to help him make concentric rings in a cup of water (or to make realistic action scenes, apparently). He's just going to CG that shit and, most of the time, people won't even notice. CG has gotten really good at fixing seemingly small things that cause great pain for the production crew. I don't point this out to denigrate CG or directors today (except maybe Michael Bay), but rather, to illustrate how impressive it was for a director like Spielberg to pull off a film like Jurassic Park that still holds up so well, in spite of the technical limitations of his day.",
"One of the big primary factors that makes a CGI effect look real to the human eye is the way that light reflects off the generated object. The human eye is really good at noticing when an object is CGI when there is a lot of light illuminating it. The visual effects team working on Jurassic Park understood this, so to compensate for the issue they tried to put their CGI characters in the dark. Additionally, many of the scenes switch between puppet and CGI. For example, the T Rex scene switches between a giant T Rex puppet and a CGI object. The Raptors in the Kitchen scene is the best example. It's harder to notice the raptors are CGI because the room is dimly lit. And the character switches between CGI and puppet at different camera angles. The fast switching between the puppet raptors and the CGI raptors in the kitchen is very deliberate. Because it tricks your brain into not noticing the CGI character as much. The visual effects team was so cautious with CGI at the time that they avoided using it only in cases where a puppet character would be impossible. The hydraulic T Rex they built was supposed to be impossible to make, as no one had made hydraulics that could respond as quickly as they needed the character to move. But they were able to overcome some engineering hurdles by using a special fluid in the hydraulics. So that should be some indication of just how much effort went into producing puppet characters, before resorting to CGI. **Edit** Woke up this morning and found my top comment of all time is about Jurassic Park. I'm really super ok with this. Apparently some people think I sounded smart. I've never worked in the film or visual effects industry. I'm just a nerd with a huge love for Jurassic Park. And I've watched a LOT of behind the scenes for the movie. Many people have pointed out that there are obviously scenes where dinosaurs are in the broad day light. I didn't mention these because I don't feel like they hold up nearly as well. And I hadn't given those scenes as much thought. But as [Kaptain Kristian]( URL_0 ) points out in his nice little video, Spielberg had a lot of other ways to hide the weaknesses in Jurassic Park. He used cinematography to give the dinosaurs perspective and dimension so that they would seem believable. Not to mention that seeing the actors on screen react to seeing the dinosaurs makes us see them as more believable creatures.",
"For the computer graphics, Spielberg originally wanted to avoid them and use stop motion and puppetry instead. It took a lot to convince him. Even so, most of the dinos you see are puppetry, models, and robotics. Most of the CG dinos were intentionally kept in conditions that were difficult to see. Dinos in the rain, dinos in the distance, dinos running quickly or jumping out. There were very few scenes where the CG dinos were up close and personal. Thanks to that, those few scenes had the dedication of the entire crew. Modern movies have an enormous budget for computer graphics, but the cost per second is rather low because they are everywhere in the movie. Jurassic Park spent a fortune on computer graphics, but because they had so few scenes of them the investment per second is quite high. Each brief scene was meticulously reviewed and brought to exacting standards.",
"There were only a small handful of actual CG shots and there's only about 18 minutes of dinosaurs in the film total, and most of those were puppets. These days 9/10 of a movie is CG and on bonus material you see people say stuff like, \"well, we had 1,897 effects shots to do and render in the space of two months.\" Jurassic Park had maybe 20: - A couple of the brachiosaurus and then the watering hole. - The most during the T-Rex attacks (after breaking out of the fence and then the Jeep attack). - The gallimimus scene. - A couple wide shots with the raptors in the kitchen. - Another couple of the raptors near the end with the skeletons. - The big T-Rex finale. But I agree, it holds up so incredibly well. Edit: changed the spelling of \"gallimimus\" because I was on mobile and made a typo that people FREAKED THE FUCK OUT over. Good God, you people.",
"It's a combination of a number of factors. For starters, there was a great lack of faith in CGI's ability to produce realistic creature effects. CGI had been used in movies since at least the 70s but never to create convincing lifelike creatures. As a result an extraordinary amount of care was taken to hide the imperfections in the CGI. Secondly, Jurassic Park had a big name director and a big budget. It could afford to take the best from both worlds. It used physical effects for the shots where those would work best. In a lot of the close ups where you can't see the entire animal but just snapping jaws, lunging claws and stomping legs, animatronics were used. They have a real world presence which means they reflect real light, have real texture, real fluids and give the actors and environment something real to interact with. Vice versa, animatronics tend to be bad at convincing and lifelike motion. So for the full body shots where dinosaurs are walking, jumping and running in full view, CGI animation is used where the animator has much more control than someone using a mechanical puppet. And because the effects team was very concerned about making sure neither type of effect didn't stuck out like a sore thumb, a lot of care was taken to try and mask the way the effects blended with the environment. That's why the T-rex escapes it's paddock at night in the pouring rain for instance. Rain, fog, refracted light, shadows, lots of stuff to help hide any imperfection in the effects. But more than anything, what helps sell the effects is 'movie magic', nothing more than basic psychology. Jurassic Park went to incredible lengths to convince you that the dinosaurs are real animals both before the fx works starts and during. Let's look at the T-rex for instance: * Your first introduction to the T-rex is... nothing. The characters sitting bored in the car while the rex hides in the jungle. A very recognisable feeling for anyone who has visited the zoo. * There's a lot of minor interaction between the dinosaurs and their environment that isn't relevant to the story but extremely relevant in convincing the viewer that they're real. For example... * The T-rex eats, like any other animal. It eats a goat and just for good measure it drops a goat leg on the car. Physical interaction between the rex and it's environment. * You see the rex's little forearms testing the fence, pulling on the wires before you see the wires snap one by one as he pushes his body against it out of view. Again physical interaction with it's environment. * And they do this over and over. The vibration of it's step makes the glass of water ripple. It's feet sink into the soaked mud when it walks, leaving footprints that fill with water. It's pupils dilate when Timmy shines the flashlight into it's eyes. It's breath blows off Grant's hat. * The rex acts like an animal too. It get's distracted by the tire on the wrecked car. It follows the dominant motion of Ian's flare. It's not a monster, it's an animal. Over and over Jurassic Park reinforces the appearance that these animals are having a real physical impact on the world around them. It makes the viewer want to believe. Looking at monster movies in the decades after, most movies simply don't take this much work to establish their creatures are real. Occasionally monsters fight the protagonists and that's it, none of the build up. And part of movie magic is also that if you convince the viewer once, he'll want to believe later. Stan Winston once pointed out that in the gallimimus scene in broad daylight, the rex looks like a rubber toy. But after the amount of work put into the rain storm escape scene of the rex, the viewers already believed it was real and they didn't notice it looks a lot worse in the daylight scenes later in the movie.",
"You only notice CGI when it's bad. Or when it's the focus. Take a look here: URL_0 The Boardwalk Empire one with the boats, looks really well done. But it still seems a bit off. Because it's a major focal point. Take a look at the Life of Pi set. The one where he's standing on the boat seems a bit off, but that's from the tiger. The sky and sea look well done. That's because they're not the focus of the shot. Now, for Jurassic Park. There's some scenes where the cgi does fall flat. And falls just to the bad side of the uncanny valley. The brontosaurus in particular. But, the night scene with the trex looks great. But, if you look close there's not too much separating the quality of the cgi. What separates the two scenes is the intent behind the use of the cg. With the bronto meaning to wow the audience and the TRex showing us the fear of the characters. Also, the dim lighting helps. Another things Jurassic Park has going for it is the uncanny valley point is so shallow. We've never seen (at least most of us, looking at you roswell) a dinosaur in real life. So we can accept it more readily. However, faces, tigers, boats, water, etc. we've all seen at least video of. So the valley is set much deeper.",
"They used state-of-the-art practical effects for as much of the movie as possible. Things like the raptors coming out of the eggs, the sick triceratops, the brachiosaur that sneezed on Lex, were all lifesized robots made for the film. And that tends to be leaps and bounds above CGI animation.",
"A lot of people talking out of their butt on this one. OP, here's the actual answer you're looking for, posted a couple of years ago by u/teaguechrystie in a thread about the Jurassic World trailer. \"VFX artist here. [...] Aside from utilizing a whole slew of fairly basic (albeit smart) tricks that make it easier to look photoreal, Jurassic Park also had a few things going for it, historically speaking. As a thing to attempt doing, it was more or less unprecedented. Just a ton of work, a ton of question marks, unforeseen innovations were certain to be required, and custom scripts and software would have to be written. They knew what it had to look like, but they didn't know exactly how to get there. Their target was a look. They'd know it when they saw it. So, they started hammering away at it. There wasn't even a solid optimism that it was possible to pull off so much CG, at that level of quality, at that point in time — much less an absolute goddamned foregone conclusion that obviously it's possible to do twenty times as much CG at that level of quality — and so they benefited, a bit, from the exploratory nature of it. As far as executives and producers and studios and expectations go, the attempt to make that first CG dinosaur movie was akin to Apollo 11. \"Oh god, I hope this is fucking possible.\" When it actually worked, it was an accomplishment. That was the context for that CG work. These days, the context for the CG in, like, The Avengers, is akin to Southwest Flight 782, service from Oakland to Burbank. \"Oh god, I hope I'll be able to rent a red car when I obviously make it to Burbank.\" It became \"obvious\" (to the higher-ups) that we could do CG VFX. The process got figured out, the pipelines established, the groundwork laid, the procedures sorted... and now, the process of arriving at the end of the VFX process is seen as the goal. First you do your story art, then you do your modeling, then you do your layout, then you do your animation and sims, then you do your comp, then you render out the result. \"That's how ya do it.\" Once the process is complete, your VFX are complete. Congratulations, let's move on to the next movie. The problem — and distinction — is that, remember, Jurassic Park's goal was a look. They didn't know what the process would be, but they'd know it when they saw it. Now the goal is, largely, a process. Finish the process. Are we capable of delivering CG at the level of quality you see in Jurassic Park? Fucking absolutely. (And, \"duh,\" quite frankly. Most movies with big CG setpieces are actually at that level of quality.) When that doesn't happen, these days, it's because we're working under a very different set of limitations. For instance, way, way, way more shots, way more complex shots, way harder shots, an atmosphere of assumed possibility, a wee bit of studio apathy, less-and-less money, higher-and-higher rez, stereoscopic delivery... and, uh, not to put too fine a point on it... not much of a premium being placed on quality of life for the artists. (That's a whole separate thing.) In addition to that, like I said a few paragraphs ago, Jurassic Park also (smartly) utilized a handful of tricks to make life easier. In CG, realistic shiny things are easier than realistic matte things, so they made the T-Rex wet. They did the T-Rex scene at night. They did a tremendous number of hand-offs between the CG Tippet critters and the practical Winston critters. Not to mention, there's way fewer CG shots in that movie than you're probably remembering, and on and on. So. Yeah, it was twenty years ago, but they were also climbin' a different mountain. Now, it's important to note that Jurassic Park deserves every bit of the VFX credit it gets. (That Gallimimus sequence blows my mind.) It's outstanding work, it stands the test of time, it's great — I know I'm basically saying, \"yeah, good job with the fucking Coliseum, you guys, you scrappy group of rag-tag weirdos,\" but. I want to make sure it's clear that I'm not throwing shade at Jurassic Park. I love Jurassic Park. But, for being a trip to the moon with nothing but a tin can and a calculator — sorry, I'm very analogy-heavy this morning — for being just this impossible thing, it also managed to avoid some of the pitfalls of the modern CG experience. Expectations, mostly. Different flavors of expectations, at different points along the line. Being the first to do a very hard thing well isn't easy. For that matter, neither is being the 6000th to do a very hard thing well, when people are totally unimpressed with the assumption that you can do a very hard thing well. Like \"come on, knock it out. We're on a schedule here.\" Not that they weren't on a schedule, but. You know what I mean. I've rambled on long enough.\"",
"It's because they went to extreme lengths to get everything looking great on screen. They built massive robots and rigs to get movement and creatures looking even better then what cgi, especially for the time, could keep up with. They also made their own camera rigs and sets to make scenes look far better then just green screening everything in. It wasn't cheap, but it got the job done like nothing else could.",
"There's about 5 minutes of CG, done with a big budget, and the shots were all very carefully planned. Basically, no smoke or atmospherics that would make compositing terrible difficult. No shakey cam that would make tracking harder. No half-assed \"this would be neat, let's not plan it and hope it can be fixed in post\" documentary style shots. Plenty of time for the VFX crew to get lighting references and the like. A very forgiving schedule. And some very talented maniacs who knew their tools and their art as well as anybody on the planet.",
"Finally a topic I feel qualified to contribute to... and everyone else has already done it! One really key point - visual effects are what the filmmakers want them to be. If you want the photorealism of the Revenant, you can get it. It costs a certain amount requires extensive research and talented artists and technicians, but you can get it. However, many directors, producers, studios simply don't want that. They want to be bigger and more impressive than *insert rival studios summer tentpole* or *insert last summer's box office success*. So many times I've seen incredibly realistic vfx shots ruined because somebody who's been looking at it too long decides it needs to 'look prettier' and starts breaking physically correct and wonderfully invisible vfx. You can also get amazing vfx on a budget. But that requires very careful planning, sticking to the original vision, and careful use of practical effects to complement the digital work (ala Jurassic Park) That's why movies like Ex Machina, Kon Tiki or The Impossible can seem to come out of nowhere and really impress with their visuals. It's like wine. If you study regions carefully, make a sound selection, and enjoy it in moderation, you can have something great. Or you can grab the first bottle from the liquor store shelf, overindulge once you realise you quite like it, and end up shitfaced, with your head in the toilet bowl and waiting for the inevitable hangover to set in.",
"They had some of the most talented people ever to work on effects, in their primes with a good budget, a good director. And most importantly they chose the most effective places to deploy the dinosaurs. There are almost no gratuitous shots. Tou can do a lot with newer technology but you can't replace talent and good decisions.",
"Because it was one of the first. Arguably the very first to do what we now just casually call \"CG.\" Meaning CG that an audience can watch and not really pick out as CG; that they can see as just part of the film as it was shot. *Terminator 2*, and two years later *Jurassic Park*, proved that **photo-realistic** CG was a thing. Prior efforts to use CG had largely been either extremely obvious as CG, or had been very, very, very minor pieces of the film that audiences saw. *T2* built on what Cameron had been trying to do with the water aliens in *The Abyss*. The T-1000 was a transformative character made out of CG (when it's doing the liquid metal thing). It was something new, something that had never been seen before. And even as good as it was, most of the shots were still obviously limited. Better than anything prior, but still not quite all the way to believably artificial-without-being-identified as such. Then *Jurassic Park* arrived in '93 and it looked even better than the liquid metal T-1000. It took the next step. Sure a lot of the movie was animatronic, but the CG was used to blend between what Spielberg wanted to show and what the puppets couldn't do well enough. The result was ... I mean, you really need to look at the history of movies in the late 80s/early 90s. Reference (look at the wikipedia article) the comments Spielberg and others had when they decided to try the CG. And when they got the tests they ran back and realized how well it was working. *Jurassic Park* was just something that really had not been done on that scale, that well, ever before. It was golden age Spielberg, but even with that everyone was still talking about the \"digital dinosaurs.\" It was something spectacular because it was something film hadn't been able to do before. From the wiki article: > But despite go motion's attempts at motion blurs, Spielberg still found the end results unsatisfactory in terms of working in a live-action feature film. Muren declared to Spielberg that he thought the dinosaurs could be built through computer-generated imagery, and the director asked him to prove it. ILM animators Mark Dippé and Steve Williams developed a computer-generated walk cycle for the T. rex skeleton, and were approved to do more. When Spielberg and Tippett saw an animatic of the T. rex chasing a herd of Gallimimus, Spielberg said, \"You're out of a job,\" to which Tippett replied, \"Don't you mean extinct?\" It's not that *Jurassic Park* looks like today's films. It's that they largely look like it, because it was the first to do it. The tech has evolved a lot since, but there haven't been any seriously huge leaps ahead from what *Jurassic Park* offered, compared to what was available prior to *Jurassic Park*.",
"The puppetry has been repeated ad nauseam so I'll add something I don't see here yet. Computer graphics have a really hard time with light when it's diffused through skin, because it is slightly transparent. We're just now reaching the point where computer rendered skin looks realistic at all. In Jurassic Park they were very clever with their scene composition. Remember the famous up close scene with the T. Rex? It was raining, which makes its skin shiny. This allows for a much more simple reflection that still looks good up close. They used a lot of techniques like that. Limited light sources, low lighting in general, water to simplify the reflections, and when all else fails (like the sick stegosaurus) animatronics alone. Source: Some dude who answered a similar question in another thread long ago. I'd link him if I could.",
"> \"It seems almost comparable today's visual effects.\" No it doesn't. Effects today are so far beyond Jurrasic Park it's not even close. I wish there were more videos like this one explaining that people these days often haven't a clue what is / isn't CGI / effects - and how far composite, practical effects / CGI / hybrids have come: URL_3 You can spot every instance of CGI / visual effects work in Jurassic Park. Nobody can spot every instance of CGI / visual effects in Life of Pi - you can spot a few of the very obvious ones, but you'll miss tons 'cause they are so well done. Same goes for Mad Max, Gravity, most Marvel films, etc. Most people couldn't even tell Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One was entirely CGI. VFX / CGI reel for Mad Max Fury Road: URL_1 Hell - here's an effects reel from Boardwalk Empire...a TV show... from like 5+ years ago: URL_2 Game of Thrones Season 6 CGI reel: URL_0 Even for live people / animals, the Planet of Apes two reboot films complete blow Jurassic Park out of the water in every single way: textures, expressions (probably the biggest leap forward thanks to motion capture), movement, hair, skin, eyes, etc. and also practical / CG hybrid effects. This doesn't mean modern effects are perfect. Also doesn't mean the work in Jurassic Park wasn't spectacular (same could be said for T2 and The Matrix), but honestly, these are really dated examples by today's standards. If Jurassic Park came out today it would look SUPER dated compared to other heavy effects films.",
"Despite all the \"this is the answer\" posts, nobody's given the actual answer yet. The big difference between Jurassic Park's CGI and the CGI of modern movies is Jurassic Park's lack of an established workflow. They were inventing the methods and the tools to create exactly the visuals they needed, step by step, because it had never been done before. So it wasn't just a CGI studio adding a bunch of dinosaurs in post, but the entire crew working to pull it off together. Now that workflow already exists, the tools to create CGI imagery already exist, and it isn't designed for specific images but for everything. But now there's an expectation that it costs a certain amount of time and money to produce a certain amount of shots, and the workflow has to be bent to that task. Think of it like a master carpenter inventing an intricate piece of furniture, and then a factory mass producing it. Edit: I knew I'd read a great comment about this very subject once and I've tracked it down. This redditor describes the reason a lot better than I did and is well worth reading if you want the actual answer to this question: URL_0",
"They understood what the available technology could do, and they made the movie work within the limits of that technology. They didn't ask the visual effects people to promise more than they could deliver. At that level, you're dealing with the best people in the world. When they tell you \"No\", you need to listen. Clever beats high tech. You can go all the way back to silent films, and see crazy special effects that still look totally real. You can also go back and see a stop motion King Kong that looks like shit. And that was a blockbuster at the time. Try watching 2001. It was made in 1969, but it still looks so fucking real.",
"Stan Winston studios was at the forefront of animatronics and special effects and basically made them so if you were standing looking at them in the face, they were still incredibly life like (although, as another user pointed out, they used other camera effects such as lighting and rain to make it easier to hide the flaws). CGI is just catching up to that point where it can mimic the real world, and you can generally still pick it out with things that are complex and move (such as a dinosaur), whereas it's much easier to make something look real, that well is real.",
"A lot of other people have answered, but I think that it's important to note how incredible the puppetry was. There is a great YouTube series on making the TRex puppet. The companies supplying the parts didn't think it would be possible to even do. Edit: typo",
"Off topic, but what really blows my mind is Kubrick's tour de force in 2001: A Space Odyssey. From 1968, if you want to talk about being ahead of one's time.",
"Because it was done well & properly. I think a big part of this illusion is just the comparison to bad CG. In terms of CG effects, Jurassic Park was groundbreaking. But after its success, a lot of other movies wanted to use similar effects, but weren't willing to pay top dollar for it. Because of this, a ton of bad/cheap CG was used in movies in the 90's and early 2000's. That's why Jurassic Park aged so well - because a lot of films from the same era really didn't age well.",
"A lot of effects that people think are CGI in Jurassic Park are animatronics, puppets or man in suits. Among other things they build a [life sized hydraulic T-Rex]( URL_0 ) for the movie and used [man in suits for raptors]( URL_3 ). Generally speaking, CGI is only used for dinosauriers far away from the camera, seen in total and moving. Jurassic Park also mixes those different effects together constantly, so you get close up of a puppet, followed by a shot further out that is CGI. Thus giving you photo-realistic texture via the puppet and realistic movement via CGI, those two blend together in your mind to a realistic looking dinosaur and they compensate the shortcomings of each other. The CGI is also always used for only a small part of the scene, you always have a real background into which the CGI dino gets inserted, in modern movies it's often the other way around, the background is 100% CGI and you only have a few actors in front of a green screen. All the physical dino props they build for the movie also had another effect: It provided reference for the CGI people. So they could tweak their CGI graphics until they matched the physical prop. Without the reference it is much harder to create realistic results, since you don't know how it should look. That said, Jurassic Park CGI doesn't look perfect, you can for example see the [pixels in the textures of the Brachiosaurus]( URL_1 ), but that is one of the few obvious faults one can find and would be invisible on a lower resolution version of the movie. Effects aside, Jurassic Park dinosaurs also look realistic because that was their goal from the start . They made those dinos to behave like real animals and had experts around to give advice. A lot of other movies don't aim for realism to begin with, they want scary monsters, relatable cute animals or cool action set pieces. Thus even so the graphics themselves might look better than JP, the behaviour and action happening on screen makes it obviously it is fake. Most [outrageous example is the King Kong dino stampede]( URL_2 ), the compositing in that scene is horrible, but no amount of good CGI could fix that and make that scene believable, as the action itself is already completely removed from reality.",
"They made heavy use of rain and darkness to hide the limitations of cgi However take a fresh viewing and many of the effects look terrible, especially the brontasaurus scene",
"Because, just like with the original Star Wars, 99% of it wasn't visual effects. URL_0 Pretty much the only times they were actually using CGI was when you could barely see the dinos and it was night/raining. And Steven Spielberg knew what CGI could and couldn't do going into the project so he wasn't like \"we need 15 T-rex's with laser cannons on their head fighting magic fireball casting Raptors but it's all gotta look 100% real\". And what they did use is not even remotely close to today's CGI. The majority of big budget movies are mostly CGI and you can't even tell. Unless the actors are directly interacting with an object or walking on something it's a good chance it's not actually there. Especially things like what's going on in the background. Most movies don't even go shoot on location anymore it's all in a studio with greenscreen walls and a handful of actual objects in the room. For instance this is \"New York City\" in The Avengers URL_1",
"Rather than feed you a repeat of countless Cracked articles, I'll do the thing people hate. Everything that was amazing about Jurassic World's effects: -The detail level was insane. Every bit of flesh that could be accounted for on modern CGI tech was there, at a resolution scale that almost-certainly constitutes all of Jurassic Park's work in a few frames. -The way the flesh and teeth interacted with light, revealing their perceptible texture and substructures was amazing. Until independent human craftsmen are 3D printing real bone and tissue, this is the most amazing and least disconcerting art our species could hope for. -The detail of the I-Rex's mouth as it sniffs out Pratt is another great example of a disconcertingly....\"meaty\" sort of dino. I think there might have even been some flies buzzing around that steamy mess of a mouth it had. Again, silicon with paint and KY jelly on top looks like silicon with paint and KY jelly on top. -Animation. Good lord the animation. Where the intersection of human fact and myth starts to pay off visually. Most specifically, the way the I-Rex attacks the sphere-o with the exact timing and approach that an oviraptor (or any egg-eating bird/reptile) would. Heck, the scene that got people so riled up, where the lady gets snatched up by the pterodactyls, who attempt to drown her, and then both get chomped by the big beastie? Straight outta National Geographic through and through. That scene was so well done, people weren't talking about FX, they were imagining that the nature on display owed them some karmic balance sheet to explain what they just saw and reacted to with their own deep human fears. If FX came up? \"CGI.\" As if those words are a curse in and of themselves without any functional understanding of how to do this stuff. -If that one-shot in the finale doesn't justify CGI to you, you should read or watch more things about how this stuff is accomplished, and how films work, and why humans bother to make films in the first place. The flawless shifts in scale from dino to human and back. The modern choreography of massively detailed simulations being wrangled by factories of electron clouds buzzing.... Bonus: Blue: They turned a raptor from a clunky hand-off between \"real\" puppets with puppet-level emotions and a CGI super-animal....into a proper character. That hero shot was *flawless* in excess of anything Jurassic Park managed, including with the Amusement Park T-Rex. Not only visually convincing, but a well-earned bit of character work from a fully-digital character. That is what defined the CG in Jurassic World to me.. Its utter commitment and execution of genuine character work through this digital realm, with animal characters given modern respect as to their evolutionary cultural capabilities. They needed one old-school Speilberg monster, and they had to genetically engineer it in their narrative of animals being animals. The thing Spielberg always talked about without ever managing to portray with his clunky giant robots...he settled on horror-movie tropes about not seeing anything. Great for \"holding up\" visually, but not so much scientifically/intellectually/philosophically. In Jurassic World, we got a nature documentary so convincing, we hated the humans for being flawed humans and the dinosaurs for acting like dinosaurs at those humans we hated. Also, our brains are still clinging to the Uncanny Valley for dear life, and \"Pffft CGI\" is a spell to strengthen our hold. (Totally fair exaggeration of the Reddit Response :-P ) Bonus Bonus: You guys realize that Reddit comments are CGI right? And that when you all cluster around the one that gets the most positive attention, that's when its influence gets questionable? Groupthink is great for facts, but considering this thread asks for an explanation of an incorrect perception of art, the top comment seems like a fireside retelling of like .075% of all internet content. (Edit: I called Reddit itself CGI, and it got revenge with auto-formatting. I will not go back to change my numbers back to the numbers that I typed before a machine tried to correct me. Particularly on one of these Jurassic Park CGI threads. Food for thought/vomit.)",
"URL_0 A great video by the legendary u/kaptainkristian about the visual effects in Jurassic Park",
"Huh? A lot of the special effects in Jurassic Park look very dated. Source: I just watched it again two weeks ago.",
"Also note that you see a lot of VFX today that you have no idea was VFX. You only notice the bad stuff.",
"They used real dinosaurs. Sure, it takes a lot of takes to get the trained dinos to act perfectly, but it doesn't get more life like than the real deal.",
"2 reasons. 1. Mixed with 'real' practical effects. 3. You've never seen real dinosaurs so you have nothing to go on. Also, 63 million dollar budget in 1993. That's about 110 million today and movies today can be 100% CGI so you can imagine more time invested in less frames.",
"Most of the big trex scenes with cars at the paddock fence was a giant model. Same with the scene where the raptors are in the power room are all models* and you have to remember when Jurassic park was made the animatronic and props and sets were all real and kinda at there peak in film industry. The CGI used was expensive and leading technology at the time. Also the raptors in the kitchen, its just them rendered on a real background and no filters or effects like lense flare, shudder etc so in being minimal it gives a really good and believable effect. Today's CGI where everything's CGI and going for ultra realism can have the opposite effect where your brain just knows its bs, whilst Jurassic park CGI your brain is just questioning it as 90% of the scene is real with the CGI over the top. My 2 cents anyways :)"
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5qs2c6 | Why do your eyes feel "heavy" when you're tired | Whenever I am tired my eyes get "heavy" and it gets harder and harder to keep them open | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally speaking, heaviness of the muscles around the eyes, including the levator muscles that open the upper eyelids, is similar to fatigue of any muscle of the body. Ocular and brow muscles are especially prone to fatigue because they are active for most of our waking hours. Over the course of the day, they gradually grow leaden with extended use, as our arms and legs do. Such a feeling may be compounded by general fatigue, including a lack of sleep, or by specific muscle overuse related to long hours of focusing on, say, a computer monitor. Excess skin of the eyelid, or prolapsed fat pads underneath the eyes, makes an individual more prone to this sensation. Chronic allergies and sinus infections may also exacerbate the heaviness, and sun exposure may cause eyelid swelling and thereby increase the probability that the drooping will interfere with vision. Although heavy eyelids do not typically indicate underlying medical issues, some conditions do cause drooping eyelids, or ptosis. A stroke or a muscular disorder such as myasthenia gravis or myotonic dystrophy can damage facial muscles or their nerves and cause ptosis, as can elective facial surgery or interventions such as Botox injections to the brow."
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5qs2m5 | In regards to post-secondary tuition inflation, why can't new or even perhaps existing Universities/Colleges just lower their tuition costs to compete and set a trend in motion? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There aren't that many new private institutions that have a reputation that could draw elite, or even highly above average students. Most newer schools that aren't public institutions are online schools that get laughed at on a resume, and are usually for profit institutions trying to squeeze maximum profit for the shareholders anyway. The price of tuition is not trending upwards for a few reasons. We've created an economy/culture where you need/are expected to go to college. This creates a really high demand. We've given all of these students access to a nearly unlimited loan market, that allows them to go into 6 figure debt. Now not only do you have high demand, but they can all \"afford\" to pay the tuition, and are showing no signs of changing their behavior due to the high prices. Finally, at public institutions, taxpayer contributions for in state students are shrinking, leading to the slow disappearance of a cheaper public option.",
"To talk about it from a completely different angle, the wage premium from having a college degree is greater than it ever has been. Therefore, it makes sense that there would be higher tuition costs, as there would be far more demand for a college degree since the payoff is so much greater."
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5qs31k | What is chaos theory? | I tried to read a website about chaos theory but it left me more confused. Can anyone break it down into simpler terms? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Chaos theory basically talks about finding order in what seems like absolute disorder, in other words, non-linear systems. Traditional science deals with more predictable systems like gravity, electricity etc while chaos theory deals with the supposedly unpredictable systems like weather, stock markets etc. It is a theory which talks about or teaches us to expect the unexpected. To this effect, chaos theory makes use of the following : - The Butterfly Effect : The butterfly Effect says that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly can cause a hurricane a 1000 miles away. What this means is that even the most minute of changes can have a major effect somewhere else. - Unpredictibility : The initial conditions of a complex systems can never be perfectly known, and hence we cannot predict with absolute certainty the ultimate fate of a complex system. Even slight errors in measuring the initial state of a system will be amplified dramatically, rendering any prediction useless (i.e. The Butterfly Effect). - Order/Disorder is not simply disorder. In other words, exploring the transition between order/disorder of a system, which can happen in the most surprising of ways sometimes. - Mixing : This talks about turbulence and it's effect on a complex system. This states that any two adjacent points in a complex system will end up in very different positions after some time has elapsed. For example, if you release a bunch of balloons in the air, despite them being filled with the same gas and released from the same place, they will end up in different parts and areas completely due to the effect of turbulence. - Feedback : Often times, systems tend to go nuts when feedback is present. For example, the stock market. When the value of a particular stock rises, people sell it, which causes further increase in prices which lead to more selling. On the other hand, if the value is low, people but it, which further lowers the prices, which causes more buying. This feedback here is people's interest in buying or selling the stock, which causes the system (the stock market in this case) to vary the prices of the stock chaotically. - Fractals : This is one of the more fun parts of the theory. A fractal is basically a never ending pattern. Imagine looking down on a beach from space. You see some borders with the sea which is a non straight line. Lets zoom a bit closer. Again, you'll see that the pattern you saw earlier repeats, though on a slightly smaller part of the whole image. Zoom in a bit more. Result will be the same. As you zoom in closer and closer, you'll see the same pattern over and over on smaller and smaller part of the same overall image. Fractals is the study of this phenomenon. I hope i have been able to give an idea about chaos theory to you.",
"the branch of mathematics that deals with complex systems whose behaviour is highly sensitive to slight changes in conditions, so that small alterations can give rise to strikingly great consequences."
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5qs5e2 | How does wet canned food (like soup) not spoil when bacteria thrives in moisture? | I know packaged food, like beef jerky, is vacuumed sealed then loaded with salt, making it a harsh environment to thrive in. How can a company pack food with water in it and know it won't spoil until after its open. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Canned and jarred foods are heated after being sealed to kill off any bacteria inside and make it sterile inside -- this process is called canning. With no living bacteria inside and no way for any to enter, these such foods can have a very long shelf life without any refrigeration, freezing, etc."
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5qs5kx | If I always feel mentally and physically better after exercising, why do I still avoid it like a whiny toddler? | Motivation not correlating to effect is absolutely befuddling. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because exercising for the sake of exercising is completely unnatural, and our brains resist it. We evolved to have a more active lifestyle than we do now in modern times; for 99.9% of human history nobody was running on treadmills. But they were plowing fields and picking turnips and milking cows all day, and that was more than enough physical activity to keep their bodies in shape (not to mention simply not having access to the ultra-calorie dense foods that we have now). When you think about running on a treadmill (or around the block), your brain and body both know damn well on a primal level that that's a completely fucking pointless activity, from the point of view of your immediate survival. Of course, we know it's not pointless in a more intellectual and long-term sense, but that's irrelevant to our impulses and emotions in the here and now. It's not a natural or organic activity that we have an immediate need to do, so we understandably resist doing it. It's only relatively very recently that we have adopted this lifestyle where we sit at a computer 8-16 hours a day and don't need to do a whole lot of physical work to meet our basic survival needs. Making exercise for the sake of exercise a thing that makes sense. But again, it's not how we evolved so it only makes sense on an intellectual level. It's always going to go against your biological impulses.",
"I think it is a matter of motivating yourself further. [At this url,]( URL_0 ) URL_1 lists motivational factors which are not situation specific. > achievement, advancement, autonomy, personal growth, recognition, responsibility, and the work itself. Maybe you've hit some points but not enough, so it's like a chore that you will do but dislike. Are you: * Considering each individual workout a success? * Working your way through a plan of action? * Doing this yourself, as opposed to having another person drive you to it? * Incorporating exercise as a part of your identity, dreams, and/or aspirations? * Getting the chance to share your accomplishments with a support system? * Feeling a duty to yourself to work out, and feel accountable if you miss it? * Enjoying your work outs? My own answers aren't 'yes' to all of these now and I've gotten fatter and lazy. However, a year ago when I was running regularly and enjoying it, each answer was 'yes' and I saw great results. Maybe this helps you OP! :)",
"Because you feel miserable while exercising and instinctively avoid that discomfort maybe?",
"I always need a spotter/rival. I really enjoy it when it's social, but excercising alone is boring (I sound like a girl -_-)"
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5qsb69 | Why do clouds get extremely dark before a tornado? | So I've seen a good share of storm chasing videos and always have wondered why the clouds always get [very dark and grey before a tornado touches down.]( URL_0 ) Can anyone compare this to your average thunderstorm and why they don't become as dark? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because they are incredibly dense in contrast to the rest of the sky. Cumulonimbus clouds spawn tornadoes because they are extremely tall and interact with jet stream, and contain millions of tons of water vapor, hailstones and ice. All of this is dense enough to absorb the day light thus making the sky dark."
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5qsh5y | Why is the YouTube video player so much better than other sites (For instance ESPN, Netlfix, SlingTV, etc)? | I have found myself getting more and more frustrated with video players and streaming, especially on sites that I use frequently; ESPN being the most common. On seemingly every other video site with regards to jumping forward or back, or even just starting a video, there is a major issue with speed, buffering, and skipping, while YouTube is almost always instantaneous for me. Why is that? What is YouTube doing that is so much better than everyone else? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Youtube has a lot of servers, where they store the videos they send to you, in lots of places. This means that odds are better they'll have a server ready to respond to your request for a video, they'll have more bandwidth and/or a better connection to serve it to you, and that they'll be physically closer to you so the data doesn't have to travel between as many internet nodes and get slowed down. Another factor could be that the Youtube player code is just better written than whatever other websites use. I'm not sure how it works exactly, but consider how big Youtube is and how many engineers they can afford to have working on optimizing it for every conceivable circumstance. This could be things like taking advantage of data they've already buffered to your computer instead of discarding it and redownloading every time you skip around the video.",
"If it's issues with the speed your video loads at, it's probably just that youtube has better servers or servers that are closer to you. The quality of the player shouldn't impact the speed your video loads at, bar really badly designed players.",
"Part of the reason like /u/ataiwaochinchin said is that YouTube has the support of Google's massive server farms for sending videos to you super quickly. Another reason is that Google works hard to make the player as \"bare-metal\" as possible, meaning there's usually very little extra getting in the way of you and your video, besides the ads. It uses the technology already built into your browser (and if you're using Chrome, technology which they specifically design and maintain) to keep things as minimal as possible. Also thanks to Google's server farms it has the ability to \"transcode\" the videos into other formats (this is what the \"processing video\" part of the upload process usually is). Some video formats run better on certain browsers and devices, and since they can store all the different formats they can detect what you're running on and send you the most appropriate format. It's also in Google's best interest to make that player run as fast as possible, since the service absolutely requires that users watch the ads, and users are less likely to watch/endure the ads if the player is loading slowly.",
"Video streaming sites use something called bandwidth. This is (basically) analogous to water flowing through a pipe to a tap. Youtube has the equivalent of a standard faucet with bigger than average pipes and a giant super powerful water pump at the water station. Other sites might not have such a big pump such but a really shiny tap that has diamonds and is made is of solid gold. It looks pretty, but it's just a tap and there's hardly any water pressure. This can be fixed by reducing the pipe size (HD - > SD) or by getting a bigger pump. But because it's not their primary purpose they don't really need a bigger pump running all the time and it's cheaper for a smaller one even if it doesn't work quite as well. I know it's a bit rambly but I just finished a 7 hour shift 😴 if you need me to clarify just ask :)"
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5qsma1 | Despite feeling better at before completing the therapy, we are told to fully finish our 10 day antibiotic treatment to prevent risks of developing resistant bacteria. Why can't we instead let our immune system finish the job? | I know that the extra antibiotic is so that 99.999% of bacteria are killed rather than 99.9%, but why can't our immune system handle the last few? Also wouldn't the additional use of antibiotics select for even more resistant strains? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If *all* the bacteria die, then none of the ones that mildly resist it can survive to reproduce. You can't just \"leave it for the immune system\" because you don't know for sure that your immune system will actually kill them all. There's no downside to finishing your antibiotic treatment and lots of potential problems if you don't.",
"When you have a bacterial infection, not all individual bacteria are identical to one another; some may be more resistant to different antibiotics than others. Antibiotics will obviously kill off non-resistant strains quite efficiently, but with resistant strains things are a bit more complicated. Because of the energy and resources needed to build and operate the machinery used to circumvent the effects of certain antibiotics, in many cases the resistant bacteria won't produce that machinery until the antibiotic is detected (tetracycline resistance is a good example of this). It may seem counter-intuitive, but in the wild, bacteria are relatively unlikely to encounter antibiotics (especially man-made ones), so constantly spending all that energy and resources would make them uncompetitive to non-resistant bacteria strains that can spend all that energy on growth and division. But in any case, this delayed response opens up a window where even resistant strains may be sensitive to the antibiotic. Now, even after this window of sensitivity has closed, the antibiotic still presents an obstacle that even resistant bacteria need to deal with. To do that, it continues to divert energy and resources that would otherwise go to growth and multiplication. So staying on the meds even when the vast majority of the bacteria are dead helps keep the infection under control while you're immune system takes out the stragglers. If you stop taking antibiotics, pretty much only resistant bacteria would be left, and they'd quickly stop diverting so much energy/resources on survival and be able to multiply much more rapidly. That gives them a much better shot at overwhelming your immune system, and restarting the same antibiotic will be far less effective at that point. Plus, if you manage to infect someone at this point, the antibiotic will also be far less effective for them as well. Another thing to consider is that bacteria can pass genes between one another (called \"horizontal gene transfer\") as opposed to just passing along its genes to its offspring when it divides (\"vertical gene transfer\" as is almost always the only option for humans to pass their genes on). So if there are lots of resistant bacteria, it's possible for any non-resistant bacteria that didn't die off initially to become resistant. I hope this helps and makes sense!",
"> but why can't our immune system handle the last few? Maybe it could, but why risk that it can't? > Also wouldn't the additional use of antibiotics select for even more resistant strains? Yes, but the idea is it would kill everything off. You want to use the antibiotics until there are no strains left but you are right that if you leave stuff alive the longer antibiotic use is worse."
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5qt1wv | How do we know the half life of Uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years if we haven't been around long enough to test it? | I googled and found [this]( URL_0 ) which I did not understand at all. Bonus points for explaining like I'm 25 and simply not a scientist. Thank! | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically the same way a paramedic/nurse can work out your pulse in beats per minute without counting your heartbeat for a whole minute. Half life is an example of exponential decay, and so it follows a very regular, predictable mathematical pattern. If we have data about how it has decayed over time now, then we can extrapolate mathematically from that to determine the whole decay profile."
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5qt36u | What are tennis players looking for when they are choosing a ball for their serve? | They have 3, discard one and save one for the next serve in their pocket. But the next serve they pick from 3 again | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Fuzz. They are looking for the fuzzyest and the least fuzzy. The least fuzzy is for the first serve where you're going for speed and the less fuzz there is the faster it will go through the air. For the second serve they're not going hell for leather (too much risk of a double fault) and so you serve slower and try and get as much topspin on it as possible. More fuzz=more topspin",
"They are looking to make sure there are no knots, holes, or missing felt and making sure they still have good bounce"
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5qt38a | Why has USA not included Saudi Arabia in their banned countries list? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Saudi Arabia is in fact worse than ISIS - you cannot survive in it if you are not Sunni Muslim, they probably killed more people for having \"wrong\" faith than ISIS. US are strong allies of SA because of money. Both work together to stabilize oil prices, both worked together to fight communism, both have investments in each other. Also there are indications that Saudi government was connected to 9/11, and not including SA in this ban just shows how stupid trump is and how stupid are those americans who elected him.",
"No one can really know besides trump himself, but here are the facts. Of the countries that major Muslim countries not affected by the immigration freeze Trump's family has significant business dealings in most of them. Of the countries that are directly targeted by the ban he has no ties to what so ever.",
"Oil. It is a huge supplier and we have a ton of business dealings with them. This is a complex question with complex answers so it obviously goes way deeper than that."
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5qt4r7 | Since cancer stems from irregular cell multiplication, would damage from exercise increase your chances of getting it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I doubt it, because the damage from exercise is normally to muscle fibres. Muscle cells do not divide, which means that mutations in them are less likely. It was recently posted on Reddit that you have the same number of muscle cells as you did when you were a baby, but they are simply larger now. Muscle cancers do exist but they are exceptionally rare in comparison to cancers of rapidly dividing tissues aka. Lungs and skin. If you are wondering how muscles seemingly get larger without dividing, I believe it is due to the fusion of muscle fibres together and the increase in production of actin and myosin filaments."
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5qt6eh | Historically, what happens to people of country X who live in country Y, when X and Y go to war? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Usually most civilians try to vacate. War is not always an overnight start, and people with a strong survival instinct try to book it. Otherwise they could have thier lives leveraged as a negotiation tactic, put in internment camps, or just plain be casualties of hate crimes. Thats just scratching the surface of what can go bad, without even looking into the regulr atrocities of war. The safest place to be of countries X and Y are at war is to find country Z to hang out in until its resolved. Going home to country X you could be treated as a spy, and you could get the same suspicion by staying in country Y. Being in an area about to erupt in a war when you are from the country about to attack is just dangerous.",
"Things get pretty rough when these scenarios happen. There is no cut and dry way to do things when this happens so its pretty much up to whoever is in charge. things range from Simply being forced to flee the country to civilians acting against the immigrants while cops look the other way to concentration camps. The best example of this would be the U.S during WWII. If you where German then you where hated by most Americans but you would likely go on with your life. If you where Japanese then you would likely end up in an interment camp for a while."
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5qt78m | why do we sometimes hear someone call our name, but no one is there? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, there isn't specifically ONE cause for it. Schizophrenia could cause someone to have auditory hallucinations. Tinnitus - the ringing you hear after listening to something loud - is also known to cause phantom sounds. Sometimes, sleep deprivation will cause it as well, especially after an extended period of being awake. The brain has a knack for filling in information that it doesn't actually have. For example, the blind spot in your eye; or one of those GIFs that start out with color and then turn to black and white, yet your brain still perceives colors for a few seconds afterwards. Hearing loss can also cause your brain to interpret static as phantom noises, similar to how it does with your eyes."
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5qt81r | If i have a completely different set of atoms making up my body from 7 years ago, how can i have a 20yo scar? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"imagine you have a bunch of cheerios on a table arranged into the shape of a face, across the face place some cheerios into a line like a scar, continue replacing the cheerios with new cheerios til they have all been replaced...did the scar go away? of course not, because when you replaced the cheerios in the section making up the scar you put them in the same spot as the old ones. same thing is happening to your scars, every time your skin makes new skin in that area is puts the atoms in the same spot as the last atoms were, different atoms, same pattern. (well mostly the same, over time the pattern will change and the scar will get lighter, the body isn't a stickler for EXACTLY where the atoms go, or even that they are the right atoms, so long as they get to roughly the same area and they can fit in the right spots the body is happy...this is also why carbon monoxide is deadly and you shouldn't eat human brains...well one reason)"
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5qt88d | How can malware get installed on your computer just by openning up a website and without the user getting notified about a download? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Malware is mostly spread through security vulnerabilities on your computer, for example in your browser or some plugins your browser uses. The most common ways for an infection are through JavaScript or the Flash plugin. Someone might find a bug in Adobe Flash to manipulate it into running arbitrary code. Using this bug, he downloads the real malware to your computer and executes it. Since this still requires you to visit a website that serves the exploit and quite sure you won't visit some site like URL_0 too often, there is often another step in the whole attack campaign like hacking a advertisement network and serving the exploit code via advertisements. This way every website that includes ads from the hacked network, will serve the malware (that's why we love ad blockers ;)). Another way to spread the exploit are so called Cross-Site-Scripting vulnerabilities in websites where a attacker can inject JavaScript code in a website that will get executed when a user visits the website. But using vulnerabilities in your browser or the plugins aren't the only ways to infect your computer. Another way that was described not to long ago but only in theory (never seen in the wild) was to infect Fedora Linux using the fact that Google Chrome will download files without prompting the user and Fedora will automatically index the downloaded files and create for example preview images for pictures or video files to show in your file manager. A attacker could cause Chrome to download a manipulated media file, that would be stored on the disk and processed by the multimedia engine used by Fedora (called gstreamer). Due to a bug in gstreamer, when processing the manipulated media file, the attacker could execute code on the computer. All in all, to infect a computer without user interaction the attacker needs a vulnerability in any program you use or multiple minor bugs combined in a clever way.",
"in general it just shouldn't be possible, everybody knows that this is a big security risk. Usually JavaScript and everything that allows your browser to run code on a homepage is the source of all evil. You just don't know exactly what this code will do on your computer. People try hard to make it save but programs have bugs and programmers don't always think about all possibles uses of the tools they develop. A basic approach of hacking is sending a string to your browser that gets executed and in some way nobody considered yet this code gets more rights to execute and write stuff on your computer than it should have. And i have to give credit to the hackers who develop those things. It is really hard and requires a lot of knowledge about a browser to do things like that. And as soon as other people notice how the code works they usually improve the browser to prevent something like it from happening again. But nowadays most malware works by abusing the human mind \"click here for free iphones!\" or an email that says \"man, look at this picture i send you!\" or \"check out this cool game!\" are a lot easier to create and use.",
"When you load a webpage there are things going on in the background to make that possible. For example images are downloaded and displayed, scripts are executed, plugins loaded etc. Every time a program gets an input and does something with it there is a chance that such input is malicious (not the kind of data that the program normally deals with) and this fact should be accounted for by the programmer and dealt with in a graceful manner. However programmers do make mistakes and sometimes such malicious inputs aren't dealt with correctly and and the program can be derailed in its execution by such malicious code. For example, the browser takes some picture in a website and decodes it so it can display it to you and the programmer didn't make sure to check that only precisely the size of the image can be loaded into memory, not a byte less not a byte more. An attacker can use that fact to create a particular image file that tricks the software into loading in memory more than it should which in turn causes it to write in an area of memory that enable the attacker to execute code. Now in a scenario like this it means that just by loading an image some code, aka a program, would be executed without any further action by you. Fortunately most of these issues come from plugins like java or flash, which means that disabling them greatly reduces the risk of being victims of such attacks.",
"I answered this [yesterday]( URL_4 ). Here's a copy of my answer. > A modern web browser is a complicated beast, with lots of different capabilities. It can do pretty much everything, from displaying complex graphics with custom fonts and playing audio and video in a variety of formats, to showing PDFs and doing all sorts of computationally intensive tasks. Browsers can also have addons and plugins, such as Flash, Java and Acrobat Reader. Websites can use your webcam and microphone, and access your local files, although only if you give it permission. > > Having the aforementioned capabilities means that browsers have a lot of complicated components, each with a lot of code. More code means more bugs, and some bugs can be abused by an attacker to take over your computer or steal your data. > > Getting infected by just visiting a website isn't that common these days, but it's still entirely possible, especially on shadier sites. Browser developers are pretty fast at fixing known exploits, but sometimes hackers use [zero-day vulnerabilities]( URL_5 ). Keep your browser up to date and pay close attention to which websites you visit, and you should be safe. > [part 2] > > Yes, normally web pages can only save certain kinds of data, but certain bugs can lead into [arbitrary code execution]( URL_0 ), meaning a carefully crafted web page can execute any code the attacker wants on your computer. > > Image, video, document and font formats can be quite complicated. For instance, two years ago [Google engineers discovered]( URL_3 ) that a bug in Windows's font handling enabled carefully crafted font files to run arbitrary code on your machine. Since web sites can embed custom fonts, any website could've abused this. > > Plugins are also a common source of exploits. [Here's an example from this week.]( URL_1 ) Cisco has a popular browser plugin called WebEx which is used for video calls. The plugin has to communicate with programs installed to your PC. Due to the incompetency of Cisco's programmers it's not limited to just communicating with their program, or only being usable from their website - any website can do anything to your computer. This applies to any browser the plugin is available for. > > Websites use Javascript as the programming language. Once again, things are complicated, so a serious bug in the language implementation can be exploited for who knows what. Almost every page already executes some code on your machine, and while it's limited to only certain things, breaking out of that [sandbox]( URL_2 ) is not impossible."
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5qth1h | Why do some animals have no whites in their eyes, and other have slits instead of pupils? Is what they see much different to humans? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Having completely dark eyes is the norm. Humans are actually the odd ones out in that the whites of our eyes are visible as a form of nonverbal communication. See URL_0",
"Most vertebrates have a much larger iris that covers most/all visible parts of the eyeball. They do often have white eyeballs though."
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5qtlav | Why do you sometimes pass a lot of urine when you need to pee, and other times a little bit while having the same sense of urgency | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You have special hormons in your body controlling your needs for peeing, drinking, etc. It's the RAAS - Renin Angiotensin Aldosteron System. URL_0 Like every hormon steered circuit the signal can be surpressed or amplified - nearly unbiased by the amount of urine you have into your body.."
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5qtp75 | Right leaning buddy claims Obama instituted a similar ban on immigrants when he was in office. What are the major differences here? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He is most likely talking about the pause of Iraqi refugees in 2011. Trumps ban is basically Obama's but on steroids. In 2011 if you where a refugee or requesting asylum in the U.S while in Iraq you could apply but none of the info would be process for during a six month time period. This was brought on by 2 terrorist found in the united states that most likely came in as refugees. Trumps ban pretty much restricts all non-u.s citizens coming from several middle eastern countries. The original order actually calls for the deportation of people coming from the specified countries that are in transit or already hold visas, however this was denied by several judges. Basically the key difference here is that during Obama's you couldn't get a visa to get into the states. during trumps it doesn't matter you just cant get in.",
"I remember that happening because there was a connected story about an an interpreter who had helped the US in Iraq being killed because his visa application was delayed by the action. Carter apparently did a similar thing during the Iran crisis. There are, apparently, similar precedences in history. The obvious objectionable (it seems) difference is that these were enacted in response to specific incidences and somewhat limited in scope. Trump's targets several countries and city states but excludes certain religious minorities . This gives it the definite quality of his fulfillment of tge \"Muslim ban\" promised in his campaign. If it were backed up with a credible intelligence report on a specific threat it might go down easier. But as it is it's a pretty blatantly discriminatory fulfillment of divisive and fear mongering rhetoric and only part of a larger agenda. So people who oppose that are reacting powerfully to try and nip it all in the bud... So to speak.",
"It's extremely different. The claim your buddy is making is one that is a Republican talking point voiced by Spicer this morning and also echoed by various republican operatives on the news today, which is why it seemed to erupt all at once from every Republican talking head and any supporter who watched the news at all on TV in the past day. There's really no truth to it, it was just designed as a response to basically blame Obama for the things that Trump has done, or else to make it seem like democrats are hypocrites for not protesting it then, but protesting it now. Here's why it's not a valid criticism but really more resembles propaganda and is a gross misrepresentation of what has happened: Trump's executive order: * **Bans entry to the US for people born in seven majority Muslim countries - Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen - including holders of legal green cards and visas - for 90 days.** It's almost unprecedented to ban people with green cards and other legal visas on a blanket basis with no cause against them, and against people who had *already* gone through the \"extreme vetting\" that Trump claims he wants to institute (but that is already being done). Obama did nothing remotely like this. No other president in living memory has done anything remotely like this. * **Suspending the Syrian refugee plan indefinitely** -- this is a humanitarian disaster * **Suspending entire refugee plan for 120 days** -- this is a humanitarian disaster * **Bans entry to the US for dual-nationality passport holders - meaning citizens of the above countries who also hold, for example, a British passport, are also banned for 90 days.** Obama did nothing like this. What he did do was require people who meet these criteria to have to apply for a visa (rather than be automatically allowed into the US), but only if they had been to any of the listed countries in the last few years. * **Prioritize Christian refugees over Muslims** -- this is very likely unconstitutional, as there's not supposed to be a religious test of this kind. And incidentally, Trump lied when he said that it was \"impossible\" to get a visa if you were a Christian refugee from these countries, but if you were a Muslim, you could get a visa. In fact, overall for these countries, a larger percentage of Christians got visas than Muslims. That is, Christians make up a tiny percentage of the population, but a larger percentage than that got visas. * **He capped the refugee total to 50,000.** This wasn't done by Obama * **He did it out of the blue.** Not done by Obama, as explained below. * **Did it via executive order**, with no consultation/input with other departments or experts, and without any (or almost no) warning to any agencies who handle these things, like Homeland Security. Bannon and Trump overruled things like having this not apply to people with green cards. * There's a smoking gun, in that **Giuliani says that Trump asked him how to ban Muslims, but legally**, so any denial that this is a Muslim ban, is clearly false. And a commission was assembled to figure out how to do that. This is distinct from a commission of experts figuring out how best to detect terrorists and keep them out as described below as having been done by Obama. The commission Giuliani described as having assembled for Trump was of lawyers to figure out how to ban Muslims in general, but legally. In contrast, Obama: Paused approvals of refugee applications from Iraq for a period of six months after two Iraqi al-Qaeda terrorists were discovered living as refugees in Kentucky. So it was a very particular and narrow ban based on a hard evidence example, not a blanket ban and not targeted at Muslims in general with a specified preference for people of a certain religion. Also, it was done after careful consultation with the security experts in these matters to see how best to screen people to find potential terrorists. Trump banned all refugees for a certain period of time and severely limited the number we'd take in. This is quite cruel as a huge number of refugees have been created recently. Another thing Obama did was put several countries on the list of countries that wouldn't get automatic visa waivers. That is, suppose you're from Japan and you want to go to the USA for a visit. You can just come--get on the plane with your passport, land in the US, get the passport stamped, done. It's easy, as a courtesy for two countries that trust each other and have friendly relations. You don't need to go to the US embassy in Tokyo and fill out an application and send in your passport and money and then get a stamp that allows you one entry and one exit to the US during a particular time period and for a certain number of days. But with some other countries, you do need to go to the embassy and fill out a form, etc., for a tourist visa (you have to fill out forms and apply for almost all countries if you want a non-tourist visa to work or something). And Americans need to do that when in turn going to those other countries. So Obama put a few countries, responding to events occurring at that time, on a list of the many countries where they don't get the easy way to get a visa--they have to apply at the embassy, etc. Not *everybody* from those countries (Somalia, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen, but just people who have passports from those countries and have visited those countries *recently*. The concern is that terrorists living in, say, Britain, might get radicalized on-line and then visit those countries or a few other countries we are watching, and take terrorist training camps and make plans with enemy groups for terrorist activities. So people with those specific characteristics need extra vetting by our security forces to make sure they're not going to be a problem. But newborn babies and 5 year old kids and disabled 85 year old women in wheelchairs who have lived in the US for decades and doctors who have lived in the US for decades didn't end up, with Obama's action, getting trapped at the airport without food or water for many hours, not allowed to see a lawyer or, in the case of the 5 year old, alone and not allowed to see a parent or guardian. Nor did anyone have green cards confiscated. That's what happened with Trump's plan. And Obama's thing wasn't an executive order--it was in a much larger bill proposed by congress and signed by Obama. So there are numerous very specific and very nasty reasons why Trump's Executive Order is a nightmarish abuse of power, unconstitutional, as well as cruel, and none of those reasons apply to Obama's actions.",
"The executive order issued by Trump places a ban on entry and applies to ALL foreign nationals [edit: of the named countries]. That includes Green card holders, people with valid travel and student visas, people who have already been confirmed to qualify for asylum working through qualified refugee resettlement programs, minor children and orphans, doctors working in US hospitals, spouses and parents of US citizens. Not only does this violate US immigration law in and of itself, it effectively imprisons noncitizens [edit: from those nations] currently in the country on valid visas. If they leave, they do not know if they can return."
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5qtqt2 | How can hypochondriacs make themselves feel ill and exhibit symptoms if there's nothing actually wrong with them physically? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The brain is a remarkably powerful thing; but on a fundamental level can be pretty stupid. It's in complete control of pretty much everything your body does, so if it becomes \"convinced\" that something is wrong, it can cause many of the same reactions as if that thing were actually wrong.",
"Hypochondria is a form of mental illness and usually goes along with general anxiety, depression, OCD, bipolar or other mental disorders. These other mental disorders very often cause unpleasant physical as well as psychological symptoms, but a hypochondriac patient does not attribute these other symptoms to their actual condition, they attribute it to some other condition. The physical symptoms from anxiety disorders come about from chronic stress, which means a constant firing of the fight or flight system and excess levels of cortisol in the body. These factors produce physical symptoms and weaken our immune system. This is why it is important for primary healthcare providers to not just dismiss hypochondriacs as annoying and wasting their time - there is actually something wrong with them and their physical symptoms are real.",
"When we were cavemen, we needed a lot of tools for survival. If a bear walked in the way we needed adrenaline for the fight or flight response which would give us that little burst of energy to move. When we walked beside a cliff edge we needed something to make us feel a bit safer further away from the edge or else we could accidentally fall off. When we ate a berry, we needed a response that would make us cautious to eat anything we hadn't eaten before and potentially regurgitate anything we weren't sure of. Nowadays we don't have these risks, but we still have the biological build up for nausea, dizziness and high blood pressure/heart rate to become a very real thing just from stimulus in the brain."
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5qttc4 | When an entrepreneur says he didn't pay himself for x years when he started his business, how did he actually manage to live ? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They may have lived off savings, borrowed money, or even have a dual income household with their spouse paying the bills. There are plenty of ways not to be living paycheck to paycheck.",
"It usually means that they formed an LLC and didn't formally cut any checks in their own name. They still 'made money'. Just indirectly.",
"I did this. 2 years with no check. Business paid for gas, car repairs, and food while I was working but I didn't take anything home. Home expenses came out of savings or wife's meager income. It wasn't terrible but there were some tough times."
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5qtv53 | "Alternative Facts" | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Kellyanne Conway, advisor to and spokesperson for Donald Trump, came up the with the term \"alternative facts\" as a way of brushing off press accusations that Trump's press secretary was caught in a lie over the size of the inauguration crowd. Specifically, the administration claimed (through the Press Secretary) that inauguration crowds were bigger than those from the Obama inauguration, despite there being a live feed from the top of the Washington Monument focused on the Mall at both events and the crowd at the Trump inauguration being quite visibly much smaller. Critics leapt on \"alternative facts\" as a phrase representative of Orwellian \"new speak\" - making up euphemisms to change the perception of what people hear, for example, using \"alternative facts\" in place of \"bold-faced lies\" to downplay that they are attempting to change everyone's understanding of the \"truth\" by presenting and \"alternate truth\" which is preferable. It's propaganda. Ever since, the press and critics of Trump have used \"alternative facts\" mockingly to emphasize his history of inaccuracy and verifiable lies which characterize his political career.",
"They are falsehoods. Kelly Ann Conway used the term to describe press secretary Spicer's remarks about the amount of people at the inauguration which contradicted essentially all the news agencies. Alternative facts are nothing more than lies sold as truth to serve a particular agenda. Propaganda is a close cousin.",
"It means \"this is not a fact\". The term is being used by people in order to justify things which have no basis in fact and are simply opinions or beliefs.",
"Prior to about a week ago, it meant something like 'things which are true and which should be considered instead of the things we already are considering which are also true'. As in, one is making a decision based on one set of facts; the same decision might be better made by taking into account an alternative set of facts. Everything involved is true, the alternative is in the choice. It was then used once and very publicly to mean something like 'things which we are claiming to be true, which should be taken as an exclusive alternative to the things other people are claiming to be true'. This attitude is classically recorded as 'I reject your reality and substitute my own.' Basically lying crossed with either delusion or wishful thinking. One of the sets is true, the alternative is in the truthfulness. Now, it means \"officially 'true', actually complete bullshit\"; it will probably pass out of use in a non-combative and non-political form altogether."
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5qty14 | What are the implications of Steve Bannon having a seat in the National Security Council | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The National Security Council is basically an advisory board that meet to inform the President about key foreign policy and national security interests and topics. The Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff is the most senior general officer of the United States military. His role is to keep the President up to date on vital national defense topics on the Council. Also replaced on the National Security Council with this latest order was the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The DNI is the head of the United States Intelligence Community. All IC Agencies (CIA, NSA, DIA, NGA, etc.) report to him. The implication that Trump replaced to head of the military and Intelligence Community with the guy that used to run Breitbart (along with the \"alternative facts\", the \"I know better than the generals\" rant from the election, and how he's been at odds with intelligence agencies since the Russian hack) implies that he's doubling down on drawing support from the alt-right than existing institutions that play vital roles in our national security.",
"This move coupled with his refusal to read the daily intelligence reports says to me the US will drop the ball in the next 4 years and there will be a major, possibly nuclear terrorist attack on US soil."
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5qtymc | Quintuplets, how does a woman hold that many babies all the way to term? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They don't. Twins are usually born prematurely - the more twins, the earlier. The average pregnancy length for quintuplets is around 29 weeks, as opposed to the normal 40 weeks. Additionally, the last few weeks are when the fetus gains the most weight, so a fetus at week 29 only weighs about a third of what it will weigh in week 40, and twins generally weigh less than a normal fetus.",
"They don't carry to term. One of the major risks of carrying multiple children is premature labour and birth. The mean gestation for triplets, for example, is just 31 weeks. (40 would be full-term). For quintuplets, it's 26 weeks. I believe the longest recorded quintuplets pregnancy was up to 35 weeks. The babies are also generally born with very low birthweight, sometimes with disabilities, and it is not uncommon for them to die in childhood.",
"The higher the number of babies, the earlier they are born. The average is 4 fewer weeks of gestation for each additional baby, (i.e. twins are usually born around 36 weeks, triplets around 32, and so on). It's usually a pretty rough situation."
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5qu3b5 | what is it about apples that makes us have so much variety compared to other fruits? | For example, at any supermarket I go to, there's at least 6-8 kinds of apples. This is not the case with other fruits. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In many cases there are in fact many different kinds of a fruits or vegetable. We just either dont sell them or they got breeded out for what was considered better looking or tasting. For example there are multiple types of bananas, oranges, ( berries in general actually), etc. Theres also variety in vegetables with various kinds of greens, peas, corn, carrots, etc. Carrots are a prime example of breeding out different types. The orange one you see today was created mostly by cross breeding, not naturally As for fruits that only have one type thats mostly because they only grow in a very select few places under fairly strict weather requirements leaving little room for mutations."
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5qu84q | Why is Justin Trudeaus approval rating so low? | From an American perspective, it seems like he's a really great leader and doing a great job. Someone used this as a counter argument and I was completely unaware and can't find much to explain why | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He's made some blunders with the Native communities with breaking a few promises. Major promises, even. Adopting the UN policy nited Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, going back on giving them the ability to beta development that affects natural resources, lifting a cap on funding for First Nations. He's kept a lot more campaign promises than he's broken, that's for sure, and it's looking like with those currently in progress his achieved promises will only be rising with the coming years. There was a point in November where he made a few blunders on some stances, including his response to Fidel Castro's death, and the approval of 2 out of 3 proposed pipelines. Come December: a lavish meeting he had for the Trudeau Foundation and rich, Chinese lobbyists were about. Same issue Clinton had running through her campaign. This January: Alberta residents are unhappy about his phasing out oil sands as our economical driver (a necessary move, but a huge job market for people in that province). All of these saw him finally drop below 50% approval, but he's still higher than the last few PMs at this point. [If you're curious about how he's holding up with his promises, there's record of that]( URL_0 )"
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5qud5n | Why does 'cornstarch mud' become solid when impacted and remain liquid at all other times? | Cornstarch mud - Two parts cornstarch, one-part water | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Cornstarch Mud\" as you call it, sometimes also called \"Oobleck,\" is a non-newtonian fluid. Specifically it's a called a *shear thickening* non-newtonian fluid. There are two types of non-newtonian fluid: Shear Thickening fluids increase their viscosity when they are acted upon; Shear Thinning fluids decrease their viscosity when acted upon. Most shear thickening fluids are shear thickening because they're complicated molecules. Looking at this [cornstarch molecule]( URL_0 ) you can see this one is too. If you let it sit by itself the individual molecules will be able to slide over one another like a fluid; but if you try to pull on the mixture the individual molecules will get \"tangled\" in each other and seize up and appear to be solid."
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5quecw | How does bill Gates keep getting richer if he's not with Microsoft and keeps giving his money away? | If he's no longer with Microsoft (his source of income) and he keeps giving billions away to charity, how is he actually getting RICHER as the years pass by? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Invested money yields returns. Bill Gates keeps the vast majority of his wealth in ownership of other companies, and those companies grow in value creating more wealth for Gates. He is wealthy enough to support his philanthropy and still grow in wealth overall.",
"A lot of his wealth is in stocks in Microsoft that he was paid with. That can go up in value over time. In addition to the other comments about his investments, he's still getting speaking fees and royalties."
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5qufpa | Why US Telecos still use CDMA technology, when majority of the world uses GSM for the communication? | What's benefit of using CDMA in the US ? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The main reasons are a matter of timing, corporate greed and legacy. Back when the US networks where starting to form, the switch from analogue to digital cellular technology was also happening and CDMA had some interesting advantages over GSM. One of the most appealing features at the time (And still continues to be) was that it is easier to lock a CDMA user into the network that provides the phone than it is with GSM technology whose spec demands that they be interoperable between networks. CDMA makes it harder for a user to leave a network for another one and take the phone with them (In some cases it's impossible). There where other benefits to CDMA as well such as greater capacity on the network, a questionable theory that call quality was better and so forth but GSM caught up very quickly and eventually leapfrogged CDMA in the quality and feature departments. Now of course, some of those network operators have folded into the big players you see today and frankly switching from CDMA to GSM is a BIG commitment those network operators don't really wish to undertake. CDMA as a technology outside of the USA and small parts of Russia is dead with the advent of 4G. GSM has been taken up by most of the world, mostly driven by Europe's mass uptake of it. Though 3G briefly was based on a variance of CDMA, 4G uses a technology called LTE which is a further refinement of GSM technology.",
"The selection of CDMA over GSM was mostly based on the distances and number of users supported by an antenna. CDMA was initially superior to GSM on both, therefore cellular networks could have better coverage with fewer macro cells (towers). However with the adoption of LTE, as well as refinements to 4G over GSM (contrary to popular belief, modifications to both CDMA and GSM were allowed to call themselves 4G without supporting LTE), and subsequent future migration to 5G, the differences have become moot. But as the US was an early adopter of cellular technology, and Qualcomm was the leading provider of CDMA technology to both Verizon's predecessors and cell phone manufacturers."
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5quj61 | What is the difference between Chrome & Chromium, and who owns Chromium? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Chrome is a browser created by Google. Chromium is an open source browser based on Chrome. Chrome OS is an operating system made by Google, where the Chrome browser is the primary user interface. It is designed for lightweight devices that are primarily used to access the internet. Chromium OS is an open source version of Chrome. Chromebook as a laptop sold by Google with the Chrome OS preinstalled."
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5qukkw | How do our ears "focus" on one sound over another when there are multiple things happening at once? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sorry, but you probably aren't going to get a real ELI5 answer. It's still being studied. So I guess the real ELI5 answer is; * The human brain can do a lot of interesting stuff. * We don't know exactly how the brain can do everything it does. * This is one of the things we haven't figured out yet. More Info: [Cocktail Party Effect]( URL_0 ). [Selective auditory attention]( URL_2 ). [Sound localization]( URL_1 )."
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5quma0 | Why do we have to cook food in the oven for 20 minutes, but we can cook it in the microwave for 3 minutes? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Different types of energy. Convection is limited by diffusion. Microwaves have far greater depth of penetration and spin all of the water molecules in food. The resulting kinetic energy of the spinning molecules gives off heat.",
"Ovens heat the food by primarily two means: Convection (of hot air, from the heating elements to the food) and thermal radiation (infrared light, from the heating elements and hot walls of the oven to the food). Both of those can only directly transfer heat to the surface of the food, and the heat takes time to diffuse through the food. In a microwave, on the other hand, it is microwaves which transfer energy to the food. These microwaves can penetrate a few centimeters deep into the food, and thus heat not just the surface, but also the inside."
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5qupij | How is being dyslexic in symbol languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) different from being dyslexic in English? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I am dyslexic and it is actually quite commonly said that dyslexia doesn't exist in China, it's a bit more complex than that, but basically, the characters do not affect dyslexics in the same way as letters do. These are a few interesting links that should tell you more, firstly an article about someone who is severely dyslexic in English but not at all in Japanese - URL_0 The second is an article on the discovery that chinese 'dyslexics' actually suffer from a deficiency in a totally different part of the brain to english ones - URL_1",
"My understanding is that dyslexia is primarily (in about 80% of cases) a disorder of phonemic processing; i.e. the capacity of the brain to order sounds into meaningful chunks. I assume that languages which represent *meaning* with characters such as Chinese and Japanese take some of this work out the equation: for example the Japanese character for fire (火) can be pronounced a few different ways, but it always has the meaning \"fire.\" This versus English and other languages whose writing only carries meaning *after* you've done the phonemic assembly required, meaning that \"f.i.r.e.\" means nothing until you've put the letters together and translated them mentally into a sound. I would assume that what you would see in languages like Chinese and Japanese is people with dyslexia having an easier time unless something was written in the phonetic Pinyin or Kana (for Chinese and Japanese, respectively) at which point presumably some of the phonemic processing issues would emerge. There is also a small subset of dyslexics (20% or so) where the issue lies in visual/spatial processing, and has to do with the brain not being able to correctly mentally orient letters. I imagine for these folks Chinese might be a little easier because the complexity of the characters would help you to find the meaning regardless of its perceived orientation, but you would probably still have a hard time. Source: I'm a pediatric occupational therapist who has read some books and articles in addition to working with lots of kiddos with language-based learning disabilities. The piece about dyslexia being based in phonemic and sometimes spatial processing is well-established neuroscience. The piece about why it might be different in pictographic languages is my educated speculation, so let the reader beware.",
"Hey Redditor! My degree background is in Psycholinguistics, which is basically put: understanding how language functions in the brain. I actually did a research project on dyslexia and hope I can be a help explaining it. So, symbol languages, in linguistic terms, is called a logographic system. This basically means that the language is communicate (in writing systems) through logos, or symbols, representing - usually - a \"chunk\" or what is called a morpheme. A combination of these morphemes in a particular pattern and combination represent a word or phrase. Languages like English are considered alphabetic (cause - you know - the alphabet). There's a lot of different things to consider you'd need more information from studying to field, but basically our ability to read has mapped on to previously developed parts of the brain, utilizing their functions to process language. For alphabetic system, they are usually called \"t-junctions\" meaning before modern times, letter like the \"o\" weren't actually round, but were a series of lines making almost a diamond shape that has altered over the years to the circular \"o\" we all know and love. Alphabetic languages actually access a part of the brain (which I can't currently recall) that has to do with your lexical phonetic storage system - meaning you link the letter to a specific sound (with has its variations between words in English... but that's a different topic all together). That is how it is simply organized. Logographic systems actually activate parts of the visual cortex not activated in alphabetic systems (or only activated minimally). There are actually MRI testing that has been done on this demonstrating the results. What's really cool is the fact that because these two systems of writing/reading don't full connect, a person who is dyslexic in one system, such as English, could be fully able to read and write with easy in another system, like Japanese, because of this lack of overlap between logographic and alphabet systems (you can find case studies on this which are actually pretty rad!) There is much debate as to why dyslexia happens in the first place, but some of the best journal articles dispute that it has to do with the fact that writing and reading is a relatively new systems to our brains, and might have to do with the fact we are utilizing previous skills for other task that have evolved in our brain, to map the ability to read and write and make it accessible. If you have any questions about it, or want me to send some academic literature your way, PLEASE reach out! I nerd out over stuff like this < 3",
"On a side note: Korean, or Hangul, is read kinda like English. Korean \"symbols\" are actually just a few letters crammed into a little block. It's like taking the word \"talk\" and rearranging the letters in a 2x2 grid: t a l k Edit: words",
"Just a side point... Korean is actually a phonetic language with an alphabet -- much more phonetic than English. You could learn to read it in about 20 minutes if you have the time. So dyslexia in Korea is pretty much the same as in English (Source, I've been living and studying in Korea now for several years)",
"I have dyslexia and have studied about dyslexia previously. Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty similar to dyspraxia, dyscalculia and ADHD. All of the overlap and it is extremely common to have more than one (I have dyslexia and dyspraxia). Dyslexia has a lot more to it than just have difficulty reading and writing, it come with difficulties in memory, attention, word finding, organisation, time management and so many other areas. Other language difficulties can include difficulties knowing which sentence particles to use, confusing similar or opposite words (e.g. Left and right), difficulty structuring sentences so that they make sense, and knowing which tense to use and the different conjugation of words (e.g. What is the past tense of 'write'). These are all things that would be experienced regardless of the language you speak/read. As an adult my main difficulties are not to do with reading and writing, they are to do with memory and organising my though processes. I make a lot of speech errors, I find it very hard to explain things in a logical way even though they make perfect sense in my head. In terms of writing my difficulties are in structuring my ideas. I do still have difficulty with reading and writing but I've learned to manage this over the years. TL;DR there is a lot more to dyslexia that spelling and reading, most of which would happen regardless of the language used.",
"Just want to clarify that while Chinese is a symbol language, Korean (hangul) and Japanese (hiragana/katakana) are alphabetical, though they often refer back to the Chinese symbols (especially in Japanese).",
"Dyslexia is a problem with the brain's interpretation of relating written language to the sounds they make. In a nutshell, there is no difference in how dyslexia affects english-speakers vs East Asian languages. The scrambling of letters explanation people give for dyslexia is an analogy for how the brain mixes up sounds/words. It isn't exactly what dyslexia does.",
"Korean is NOT a \"symbol language\", btw. It has an alphabet like English. In fact, considering how shit our spelling system is, we're practically a symbol language compared to it.",
"Dyslexia is a condition where the brain struggles to translate a written language to a non written one, ie the voice in your head when you read or write. Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognise faces. So you could look at a person and have no idea who they are until they speak or you recognise their perfume or some other non face que. It is not an inability to see, just to process faces. Dyslexia is similar - you can see the symbols, you know they come together and create meaning, but your brain struggles incredibly hard to figure out what that is.",
"Good question, but an FYI. Korean is actually a phonetic language, and is in some ways, easier to use than english.",
"Korean is not a \"symbol language\" if by that you mean logographical. If Korean is a \"symbol language\" then so is every language in Europe. Japanese is hardly one, too. They use occasional logographs but also have an alphabetic system. Edit: OP you might enjoy this: URL_0",
"Just saying, the Korean language are not symbols, they don't have a meaning in each character. While Japanese (kanji) , Chinese do",
"I'm not an expert in dyslexia but am a Chinese speaker. Written Chinese is not an alphabetic or syllabic language so dyslexia in Chinese is not really related with how sounds are represented but how the symbols are written. You know, Chinese characters are actually made up of components put in specific positions and written using a specific stroke order. If any of those components/strokes are **1)** missing or superfluous (e.g. 天 \"sky\" vs 大 \"big\", 日 \"sun\" vs 目 \"eye\"), **2)** put in the wrong place (e.g. 太 \"very\" vs 犬 \"dog\", 本 \"book/root\" vs 未 \"not yet\" vs 末 \"end\"), or **3)** wrongly written (e.g. 田 vs 由 vs 甲), it could cause problems for the readers. **Examples:** URL_4 In the the circled character above, some strokes are missing. (The correct form would be 麗 ) URL_3 Here the upper part of the character is horizontally mirrored. URL_2 In image 1.9, the second character (夫) has an extra horizontal stroke. In image 1.11, the characters are supposed to be 唱歌 , which means in this case the left and right of the first character got reversed, and the wrong component is used in the right hand side of the second word. Apart from the mistakes in how a character is written, there are also problems with the mixing up of characters similar in form or related in meaning. **Examples:** URL_1 In image 1.1, 橾 (ancient wheel hub) is used instead of 澡 (bath). In image 1.2, 炮 (a cannon) is used instead of 跑 (to run). In image 1.3, 回學 should be 回校 . This happens because 學 and 校 are often used together. (學校 means school) Of course there are a host of other symptoms but I guess the above are several of the more obvious. **More examples:** URL_0 URL_5 **Reference** (in Chinese): URL_6 Edit: formatting",
"I am dyslexic and its not that you see stuff backwards its that the siginaling from your brain to you hands gets messed up amd I end up writing the wrong letter or 8 just skip words all together when I write. I really hate grammar Nazi btw",
"There is a profound difference in the number of dyslexics between English and Japanese speakers. This article places it at 5-6% dyslexics among English speakers compared to 1.5% in speakers of Japanese. URL_0",
"Korean is not symbolic, it's alphabetic. Japanese is a mixture of both symbolic and alphabetic. Anecdotally, it's very easy to be dyslexic in Chinese script and to even \"lose\" the written language. With an alphabet, like Hangul or Latin, it's hard to forget because you use letters to construct words and sounds - words are always being built when written or said without much memorization. Chinese characters don't carry sound and so must be memorized. If you didn't do well in school, you're kind of screwed.",
"My dyslexia doesn't allow me to write down the correct number on a piece of paper or say it correctly. I always manage to be a full power off. IE 1,234.56 - > 12,345.6 or 1,234.56 - > 123.45 If I see the number physically or hear it I have no issue. I do know if I formulate the number in my head I have a 50% of output it wrong.",
"Purely anecdotal, and without any formal training in learning disabilities, but from my experience teaching English in Japan I think it can exist for Japanese people l. How would i know if I'm teaching them English? Well i have a few kid students who have severe trouble memorizing the alphabet as well as reading and writing basic words. All children struggle at first but these are long term students who still can't even spell their names after studing for years. I speak japanese and ive started testing their japanese ability and even asked their parents about their regular school work and it seems they have a lot of trouble in school with Japanese. One kid couldnt even write his own name in Japanese as a 3rd grader in elementary. These kids are otherwise normal.",
"Obviously our P's, b's, and d's are very similar. Same with lots of other of our letters. It isn't as bad in certain languages because of subtle differences in the characters in general and written stroke patterns. Source: am person with dysgraphia dyslexia who can read Japanese katakana with little trouble.",
"i think to get the conversation started on the right foot, we should all be aware that Korean is not a symbol language.",
"My understanding is that there are many, many types of dyslexias, too numerous and can exhibit themselves in various intensity. While phonemic processing may be one type that some dyslexics suffer less with iconographic scripts, there are others (ex. difficulty navigating through tables) that they would do rather badly in, regardless of what language type is used.",
"Dyslexia is mainly a problem between the spoken and the written language. It can happen when you read or write. In general when you have it with writing the fingers type faster than you actually think the word, so in many cases certain letters are mixed up. And even when you read that word, with dyslexia your brain doesn't recognize that you mixed these two letters up. I would imagine that this goes for all languages as people that have dyslexia in one language in general also have it in a 2nd or 3rd one they might learn. Now there are ways how to help kids with that and today with computers and word you barely see this happen in the everyday world as we all sometimes type faster than we think. And word knows how to correct these little problems quite well."
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5quvly | Why do hangovers get markedly worse as we get older? | Currently feel like a jackhammer is going thru my skull. Curious about the science behind it. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"More acetaldehyde (extremely toxic and makes you feel horrible) is released into the blood because the liver can't process alcohol as efficiently with age. Drink lots of water (with electrolytes added) and try something like Drinkwel. Works wonders for me.",
"They are worse for me because I cant sleep it off anymore. When I was young, up drinking till 2am, I could sleep in till noon.. 10 hrs of sleep. Now, up at 6am with the kids. 4 hours of sleep. The lack of sleep magnifies the hang over because theres less time to sleep it off, plus lack of sleep in general makes you feel shitty. I drink a lot less than i used to because of this.",
"In my experience, they don't get worse. I got less tolerant of waking up and thinking, \"If I didn't *know* why I felt this bad, I'd check myself into a hospital.\" Hangovers have never been fun, but I was stupider thirty years ago.",
"I drink everyday and get hammered all the time. Take a Vitamin B100 pill before you go to bed, cuts hangover 75-100% Edit adding this: Alcohol burns up B-vitamins, especially vitamin B-1 (thiamin). If you drink, take a B-complex vitamin supplement plus extra thiamin (100 mg) on days you use alcohol. This will help protect your nervous system and potentially avoid the nerve damage seen in alcoholics as the result of thiamin deficiency.",
"Am I alone in thinking age is a good thing here? With age, I've learned what I can amd cannot drink, what causes hangovers and how to prevent them?",
"I'm under 25 but still feel like hangovers are getting worse and worse. Like this shouldn't be happening right now.",
"As I get older I find the hangovers went away when I stopped drinking so effin' much. Its the social interaction that's fun, not the booze that makes you stoopid.",
"I chase shots with water. Big ass glass of cold water. Keeps me hydrated and minimal hangovers. They are 10 times worse when i chase with beer.",
"Hangovers are due to a byproduct the liver puts out processing alcohol. Its thought that as you age you have less of the enzyme the body needs to process alcohol plus dehydration, low blood sugar and the immune system play their own part. Fun fact; some people are impervious to hangovers but it's not because of some magical superpower but rather that they've never drunk enough for their liver to not be able to process the alcohol due to livers of steel."
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5qv491 | If there are fewer leaves in the winter, does it mean we have less oxygen then? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No. The global oxygen level do not fluctuate that much if at all from things like loosing leaves because half the world is always going to be in summer. Also equatorial rainforests are always in summer, and contribute the most of anything to filtering air.",
"Yeah. But not by a large margin. Carbon dioxide, which takes up a smaller part of our atmosphere, has a very clear yearly cycle as seen in the following graph URL_0 However, that shouldn't be confused with the alarming trend of massive increase over several years we are seeing recently, contributing to global warming.",
"When it's winter where you live it's summer where I live. But it doesn't matter because most of the oxygen is produced in the sea by phytoplankton."
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5qv5pp | How is a bank "too big to fail"? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Too Big to Fail\" was term used in the 2008 financial crisis to describe banks that were so large, that their failure would have a devastating effect on the entire US economy. That is why the government bailed them out. You have to remember that the failure of one of these massive banks would affect more than just that company. These banks were the major supply of capital to major corporations across the country. Had one of these banks been allowed to fail, they would be forced to call in loans, which could thrust hundreds or thousands of businesses into bankruptcy. It would be a total disaster. The real lesson that I think has been missed is that these banks effectively had monopolies over the US economy. No entity should be allowed to get so big that they can crash the US economy, that's the whole point of the Sherman Anti-Trust law. These banks should be broken up into multiple, smaller banks to avoid this issue in the future.",
"\"Too big to fail\" doesn't literally mean that the bank won't fail because it's big. It means that the bank is so big that its failure would cripple financial markets, which leads to the bank getting preferential legal and regulatory treatment compared to smaller banks. In the event of a bank run, it's likely that the government will step in and prevent its failure, but smaller banks would probably be allowed to fail in the same situation. What it means is that the rich get privileges that your smaller credit unions and local banks don't."
],
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5qvmjv | How is Reddit not incredibly profitable? | The reason Google offers its search engine, YouTube, Gmail, etc. for free is so that it can learn what its users like and can therefore tailor ads. Advertisers know this and buy ads through Google, making Google a lot of money. If the key to selling ads is for the target audience to see ads that suit them, isn't Reddit the best possible model for this? If a car company wants to show ads to people who like cars, then Reddit has an entire community dedicated to it. The same with movies, games, phones and so on. Why isn't Reddit full of ads? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Reddit DOES have ads. You, like most people on Reddit, probably are using an ad-blocker. That's the problem with running a website for tech-savvy people.",
"Reddit is in the process of trying to make the site more friendly for advertisers. [Fortune actually did an article on this subject back in April]( URL_0 ). Here's an excerpt from it: > Ellen Pao, an existing Reddit executive who also was waging a high-profile gender discrimination case against her former employer (venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) was installed as interim CEO. Her tenure wouldn’t last too long, but she did make a major hire: Zubair Jandali, a former Google advertising executive, as vice president of sales. > Jandali was given a fairly simple mandate: Figure out how to translate Reddit’s massive user base into dollars. > Jandali immediately recognized that Reddit had made very little effort to help advertisers understand the site, resulting in poor experiences and high client churn rates. > Jandali’s plan was to maintain traditional display advertising, but focus most of his efforts on creating what amounts to an in-house creative consultancy for native content. Reddit not only would provide space for brands, but would help develop their message for the right audience within (after first mining Reddit for information on how and where the brand is being discussed). So that's what Reddit has been working towards. I'd imagine that since that article came out, they've moved closer to the level of profitability that you'd expect from a site this big, but it's a process as they presumably want to do it in such a way that doesn't alienate their users.",
"Would you visit Reddit as often as you do if you had to watch a 15s ad before reading a post? Slapping ads all over the site seems like an obvious moneymaker, but it would risk alienating the core base that drives the traffic."
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5qvwfu | Why are airplanes able to get struck by lightning yet keep flying? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The whole aeroplane acts like a big Faraday cage. The metal body of the aircraft conducts the electricity around the outside, leaving the important components inside intact.",
"According to the laws of electromagnetism, if a volume is entirely enclosed by a perfect electrical conductor, it is impossible for an external electric field to penetrate it. Airplane skins are not perfect electrical conductors, but they are pretty good."
],
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5qvzf5 | Do American citizens have a right to freedom of information? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There's the Freedom of Information Act which allows citizens to request public documents from the government. There are some exceptions to it, as classified material, and anything that would violate the Privacy Act can not be handed over, but otherwise yes.",
"There is an overriding concept in the American view of government: All government information is public unless there is a really good reason for it not to be. The law in most jurisdictions reflects this: citizens have a right to government information unless that information has been, by law, specifically excluded from disclosure."
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5qw0i9 | why does the body physically hurt when emotions are strong? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cortisol is a hormone released when you are stressed. It’s produced in the adrenal cortex in response to stress (physical or emotional) and to natural cycles that tend to correlate to circadian rhythms. Cortisol makes the body respond more to normal levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine, and can therefore cause vasoconstriction which in turn can cause chest pains (which can mimic angina). Edit for sources: URL_0 URL_1",
"A map of where emotions are physically felt: URL_0",
"Does this really happen to people? I have never experienced this. I have always assumed sentiment like this was purely figurative.",
"Psychosomatic pain. Your brain interprets pain signals from your body (as with all your senses), which results in the sensation of pain. If something goes wrong with that process you can feel pain where there is none. That being said, see a doctor. Edit: see top comment, as this doesn't necessarily apply here. That being said, see a doctor if you are experiencing this. [Depression might be linked to heart disease.]( URL_0 )",
"When I get really upset I experience this intense concentrated aching in my throat. It makes it extremely difficult to talk. It feels like my body is trying to stop me from speaking. I have no idea what's really going on there.",
"Psychologist and PhD candidate in Psychosomatic Medicine here: Strong emotions can be a sign of psychological distress and for individuals with a history of emotional deprivation and traumatic experiences, pain sensitivity can be hightened in the process (see stress-induced hyperalgesia URL_0 ). In other words, if you were emotionally deprived in your upbringing, dealing with strong emotions might be difficult and one reacts the only/best way one has learned, through hightened sensations of physical pain. Invididuals who had others help them deal with strong emotions and therefore buffer stress might be able to react more adaptively. This is one explaination of this phenomenon and doesn't necessarily apply to all people feeling physical pain due to strong emotions.",
"This is a great question, and one I'd been wondering just recently! I had surgery done back in November, and it had been healing without a peep the whole time, until someone I used to know suddenly popped back into my life in early January. It had been years since we last spoke, so I welcomed him back, hoping we might be able to get along. Unfortunately, it soon became evident that nothing had changed, and we started arguing over the same stupid crap we always used to. Sometimes the arguments would become so escalated, I could feel the area where my surgery had been done starting to feel sore. That freaked me out to the point where I knew this person and I needed to stop communicating again. Things have been fine ever since, but I'd never experienced anything like it before.",
"Whenever I'm nervous or stressed out, my right index finger starts aching intensely. Things like going on a date, speaking in front of people, my finger hurts like crazy. I can only guess that years of mousing with that finger have stored a solid mass of pent up frustrated emotions waiting for stuff to compute. After a bad relationship breakup I realised (again) that a broken heart actually really hurts physically, as well as chills and body aching. Worse than flu or dengue fever. Foetal position, ocasional soup, basically. You can even die from a broken heart URL_0",
"Wow, it seems hard to believe some people have never felt physical pain from emotions. See a very rational, science-oriented person that stays cool experience obvious body stress from emotion. This is from mission control room during the Challenger explosion. Look starting at 1:38: URL_0 Lots of people talk about pain from guilt, anxiety, stress, depression and other negative emotions and I have felt that as well at various times. I have at certain moments felt literally like walking with a knife in my chest for days on end after a heartbreak. It is literally what it feels like. Not many talk about the physical feeling from positive emotions, the bubbly, light feeling at the throat. Music is an absolute life-saver.",
"MD with significant clinical experience with pain and close relations with world renowned pain researchers here. The simplest answer I can gave that it's very complex and any answer on Reddit will be at best incomplete if not totally wrong. The simplest \"wrong\" answer is that there is a process that can be simply termed hyperalgesia, which means noxious stimuli that causes pain in a \"normal\" person causes more pain in a person that has undergone a hyperalgesic process. So my pain score is 2 and yours is 8. The process can be so significant that non-noxious stimuli can be interpreted as pain (allodynia). This process is complex and has a lot to do with central (nervous system) and peripheral sensitization of the nervous system. Another element of hyperalgesia can come from mood disorders (such as depression). The biological framework of this is extremely complex and cannot be simply explained by any single process. To be even more simplistic and incorrect, but kinda true, is that when you feel emotionally down you are more aware of noxious stimuli that was always there but now your threshold for experiencing this as pain decreases. On top of all this is pain is subjective and placebo effects in treatments are far higher than that of other medications, again tying emotional cognitive aspects to the experience of pain. Hope that helps."
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"https://images.sciencedaily.com/2013/12/131231094353_1_900x600.jpg"
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5qw1o3 | Smartphone CPUs, compared to PC ones | What are the best, the worst, and the in-between? I've heard good smarphones use Snapdragon, does that mean they are the i7 of smartphones? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are many different brands and models of mobile processors. It's not like Intel vs AMD. The most common ones are from Qualcomm, who are responsible for the Snapdragon. Their flagship processors can be identified by the 8 as the first number. They are currently on the 835. Their mid ranges begin with a 6, and the low end at 4. Other notable brands are Samsung, Mediatek, Huawei, Intel, etc.",
"Just think about cars, we have two main types used today: cars with diesel engines and cars with gasoline engines. They both do the same thing (power a car) but the engines are different and each have their strengths and weaknesses. CPUs are the same way. Currently there are two major types: ARM CPUs and x64 CPUs. ARM is a lot newer and more power efficient while x64 is older, more power-hungry but generally considered to be more powerful. 99% of mobile phones use ARM CPUs while basically all PCs use x64 CPUs for obvious reasons. Now going back to the car analogy, there are a bunch of companies that make engines. Companies like Honda, Ford, VW, etc... make either diesel or gas engines for their cars or sometimes for other car companies! In the CPU world there really aren't so many companies actually designing and building chips. x64 CPUs are only made by Intel or AMD. ARM CPUs are a bit more complicated. Companies can buy \"premade schematics\" from ARM and then hire a manufacturer to actually make the CPUs off the schematic. Qualcomm and Apple are special, they hire their own engineers to take pre-existing schematics and heavily modify because they wanted an edge on the competition (there are actually a lot more reasons). Since neither Qualcomm or Apple actually own any chip factories they also need to find companies to actually build the things from their custom schematics. Samsung, Taiwan Semiconductor (TWSC) are examples of some companies that manufactor ARM chips"
],
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