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5m4w2u | We have vast fields dedicated to satellite dishes listening for signals in outer space. Why can't they install dishes on the moon for both listening to space and for bouncing signals back? | My theory is that it's less domestic interference. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"How would you get it there? Pound for pound, going to the moon is expensive. Really expensive. How would you service them? Getting a technician up there is really really expensive. How would you protect them? Earth has mild temperatures and magnetic protection from solar flares. The Moon doesn't.",
"We could but it would be prohibitively expensive to both ship up the materials as well as construct the dishes. Not to mention the cost of maintenance. All that cost and we would not get an appreciable improvement in quality - at least not one worth that effort."
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5m4wlm | If your brain uses 20% of your calorie intake, and your brain uses more energy when used intensely, does this mean you can lose weight from using your brain more intensely on a regular basis? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most of what your brain does has nothing to do with \"thinking hard\". Rather, the energy is primarily going towards just keeping all the systems operational. While it would no doubt be possible to measure some small difference in energy consumption based on use, this difference probably wouldn't favor the sort of thinking you're considering. It's a much more difficult computational chore for your brain to play a game of racquetball than it is for your to lie dead still and philosophize about how much energy you can burn with pure thought.",
"In theory yes, in practice no. Focusing on certain tasks, even concentrating hard is not significant. Your brain is constantly doing all sorts of things. Someone brought up chess. I dont think that that 7000 figure could possibly be right. Maybe 70 at best but i dont feel like even 700 would be possible. Think about this. We have an incredibly easy time making a computer that can beat even a grandmaster in chess but we have a very difficult time making a computer that can control an mechanical arm to have any where near as fine as motor control as we could control our hands. Every single action we do from a heartbeat to running a course for Ninja Warrior is extremely complicated. That doesnt even factor how much brain power is needed just to process our senses. Focusing hard a single set of thoughts isnt as complicated or hard as one might think. Edit: I read up on the Grandmaster thing. Its not the brain usage that contributes to such an incredible high calorie consumption but the incredible levels of stress that they can go through. It put a lot of strain on the body being in that hieghtened level. It has far less to do with with use of mind. To top that the amount of energy being consumed for 8 hours of play in a row at that level if only brain power would equate to the brain using somewhere in the neighborhood of 300+ watts. Its highly unlikely that can be the case because the brain normally sits at around 20 watts."
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5m52yt | How does a OLED TV work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"An OLED tv is a tv made up OLEDs - Organic LEDs. It works basically like a regular LED tv. To explain the significance of LEDs, I'll have to explain LCD displays first. Liquid Crystal Displays work by having a screen-wide backlight, and crystals in front of that backlight to manipulate the light it gives off into a viewable image. They're usually limited in brightness, as compared to an LED display. A Light Emitting Diode display has millions of tiny diodes, which as the name suggests, emit light individually, and control the color of light emitted through voltage. Since there isn't a crystal in front of the diode, it can emit a brighter light for you to see. Now, OLEDs are basically the same principle, but because of their structure, they have some properties, like being flexible, that make them much better than traditional LEDs for curved displays, either on a curved monitor, TV, or even the inside of a car windshield, where they're being prototyped by several manufacturers."
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5m553m | Why in winter, on sunny days its really cold, and cloudy days its warm? | Why? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pilot here. The weather has a serious effect on aviation so it's extremely important to understand how it works. Many of the answers in here are either saying \"It's because clouds only form in warmer air\" and \"The clouds insulate the ground preventing the heat escaping. Believe it or not, they are both as accurate as much as they are inaccurate and neither explanation is technically incorrect. Here's the straight dope though: Clouds have no bearing on whether or not it will be hot or cold, regardless of the time of year or where you live. So what dictates whether it will be hot or cold? That would be the sun and it's position. In short, clouds are a symptom of a warm day, the clouds themselves do not cause it to be warm. Equally, a lack of cloud does not cause it to be cold. A lack of clouds is ***because*** it's a cold day. So to your question then. Why does it always seem colder when the sky is clear during winter? And why are people insisting that the clouds insulate the earth and make it warmer? It's actually all to do with air pressure. Air like all forms of gas has mass and weight. You can't see it but its a physical thing you can touch and move. And like most gassy things on earth, if you heat it up it expands. And by expanding it becomes thinner. This means hot air is thinner and less dense than cold air. So cold air is thicker and heavy, thus the \"pressure\" of its weight is high, therefore we have \"High\" air pressure. Warm air is lighter and less dense and rises more easily, therefore it weighs less and thus its pressure is low, so we have \"Low\" air pressure. Us pilots love cold days because the air pressure is high and the air is nice and thick. It makes for some good flyin'. Especially if your in a smaller aircraft, you get to save some fuel too as you can lean your fuel mixture back a bit more! Your also at reduced risking of icing up to a certain point on a cold day (Which surprises most people) which is important because icing is very, very bad on a plane. The other reason that we like cold days is because clouds cannot form generally below a certain height. This is a massive simplification but clouds form when moisture in the air rises with warm air higher and higher until the air begins to cool down and cools to a point where it can no longer carry the moisture. This is referred to as the \"Dew point\". It then forms a cloud. If this process continues long enough to a critical mass within a certain amount of time it becomes rain at some point. Warm air carries more moisture than cold air because its thinner (Thus lower air pressure). Beyond a certain temperature cold air carries very little moisture indeed. If the air is too cold to carry this moisture (Water vapour) up in the first place, clouds simply cannot form and thus this is the reason you never see clouds on a really cold day. So why are people banging on about clouds insulating the ground and why are they both right and wrong?? Firstly, as the sun shines on earth, it heats the earth up and some of this heat is radiated back out to space, this much is accurate. However whether clouds have any bearing on this process depends on the time of day. During the day, if cloud forms it actually prevents the majority of the sunlight from reaching earth and thus absorbs or radiates the heat back into space at the cloud level. The heat never makes it to earth and the effect of this is the day feels cooler. However during the day, cloud itself does very little to insulate the earth's heat because that's basically where clouds are coming from as a I described above. At night though it's a different story. As the part of earth you're on moves out of the sun's rays and starts to cool, the heat that was absorbed by the planet radiates back out to space. With no cloud coverage, this process happens very quickly and the night becomes quite cold. However if there are clouds, they absorb some of this radiation and slow the process down and the night feels warmer because it's taking longer for the absorbed heat to be released back to space. However the rules of cloud creation still very much apply, so if it was cold to begin with during the day, there is likely to be very little cloud in the night. It all depends on how much moisture is in the air. In order to simplify this I have left quite a bit out of this including how wind is formed from differences in low and high air pressure and hot and cold fronts which complicate things tremendously but you now have a base knowledge of cloud formation in a static atmosphere. I hope that gives you a greater understanding of it but if you need a TL;DR then that would be this: Clouds form because its warm and do not form when it's cold. If it's a cold day, that is the reason your not seeing any clouds, it's not cold BECAUSE there are no clouds. --- EDIT: Thank you for the gold kind stranger. Also thank you to /u/devilscolonic who pointed out a paragraph I've messed up somehow by deleting part of it when I added a comma which totally changed its meaning, it was supposed to read: > Especially if your in a smaller aircraft as the plane just wants to climb and its performance is enhanced versus a hot day, though riding thermals on a warm day is fun and you get to save some fuel too as you can lean your fuel mixture back a bit more! To those who asked (Many!) I mostly fly a Piper PA28 Warrior II and a Cessna 182 these days. THE EDIT'S EDIT: Many asking various questions so I will respond here. I can't recommend any particular school to learn to become a pilot because I am in the UK and most of you asking are in the US or elsewhere. Also I am biased. However what I do recommend is if you are able to do so, learn on a \"Intense\" course where you have your lessons as close as possible. There's nothing worse than having a lesson once a month or something like that and your flying instructor has to go back and cover old ground with you because it's been so long since your last lesson. Sporadic lessons probably ends up being more expensive because you need more lessons to cover old ground, even if intense tuition costs more initially. The best source of information to learn aviation meteorology is the documents your flight school give you or official aviation publications. We tend to use [this one from AFE]( URL_0 ) (It changes its appearance a lot so this is what it looks like currently) but bear in mind it's got a European slant (Pressures in millibars, UK/European air laws) but the met in it is valid everywhere. How much to learn to fly? Varies massively depending on skill level. There's a minimum flight time requirement too. I can only quote for the UK but it's gonna be around £6'000 to £8'000.",
"nice you noticed. I'm simplifying because we are talking about radiation, wavelengths and it may be complicated but long story short it's a matter of radiation balance: the air temperature is the result of the radiation received from the environment. All the radiation comes from the sun BUT part of that is reflected by (basically) the soil, back towards space and part \"stay\" on earth (again we're simplifying) . * on a cloudy day the reflected part begin a table tennis game between earth and the clouds, effectively being \"trapped\" and heating the environment * on a clear day the reflected part isn't blocked by anything and , bye bye, begins its journey in space to infinity and beyond hope it is clear (the explanation, not the weather).",
"There are two parts to this. First, clouds act as a heat blanket keeping in all the heat that would otherwise escape. Generally, a clear day is preceded by a clear night, and without a protective cloud blanket, heat escapes into space. Snow would add to this, as on a sunny day the heat from the sun is reflected and not trapped. Second, colder air can hold less moisture, discouraging cloud formation, meaning fronts of colder air are less likely to form clouds.",
"The clouds act like insulation and keep heat trapped in our atmosphere. When there are no clouds the heat escapes into space.",
"Depending on where you live, cloudy/overcast days may correlate with wind direction coming from a large body of water. Large bodies of water are usually warmer in the winter than land, so the air coming from that direction will be warmer. Sunny weather correlates with dry continental air, which will be cold. Another reason is that clouds trap warmth. On clear days, all the warmth gets radiated out into space quickly.",
"What? That's not a thing. There are plenty of overcast, freezing cold days & sunny, warmer days in the winter. Are you five?",
"I don't think it's black and white that it IS cold when it is sunny, and it IS warm when it is cloudy in winter. I've experienced countless cloudy days where it's not warm at all maybe even cooler.",
"Not a meteorologist. Warmer air can contain more water vapor than cold air can before condensing it into dew or fog or clouds. The air on a cold day came from an even colder place (like Canada). The air on a cold day is now warmer than it used to be, letting it absorb more water, evaporating any clouds. The air on a hot day came from an even hotter place (like the Gulf of Mexico). The air on a hot day is cooler than it used to be, potentially causing water vapor to condense into clouds.",
"Explain like I'm 5. I'm seeing things on here that 5 year olds wouldn't understand. I'll take a crack at this. Clouds act like a blanket. So the days are warmer when there are clouds. Without clouds the warm air escapes and it gets really cold. That's an ELI5!",
"Latent heat in water vapor plus the pressure systems: URL_0 High pressure - > less likely to have water vapor in air - > much easier to get extremely hot or extremely cold since you don't have to heat up or cool down much water vapor low pressure - > more likely to have water vapor in air - > much harder to get extremely hot or extremely cold since now you have to heat up or cool down shit tons of water vapor This is also why deserts get extremely hot during the day but drop below freezing at night. There's not much water vapor in the air to stabilize the temperature",
"The \"blanket explanations are WRONG! Yes, clouds reflect infrared back to the Earth, but they also BLOCK OUT THE SUN. So the net effect during the day is actually cooling. At night, the lack of cloud does lead to more cooling compare to overcast, but there are other much larger factors at play. What's a large patch of cloud seemingly covering the entire sky from our PoV is actually not that much cloud when looking at from space. Imagine holding a small towel close to your eyes. It looks like it covers the entire sky but it's not large enough to keep you warm. The fronts have much more to do with local temperature than the presence or lack of clouds. Colder air is dry and absorbs the moisture when it reaches your warmer air so clouds cannot form. Warmer air has to release moisture when it reaches your less warm air and thus forming clouds. So it's not: No cloud > cold Cloud > not cold but: Cold > no cloud Warm > have cloud",
"Heat is always in motion in our atmosphere. Most heat arrives from the sun, and leaves from the surface of the Earth. The ground and water act like big rechargeable heat batteries, soaking up heat from the sun during the day but is ALWAYS releasing it back into space (both day and night). The amount of heat that the Sun emits is fairly constant (ELI5), and the amount of heat that escapes the surface is fairly constant to a particular location (leaving wind out of the equation and sea level). Temperature varies with how much heat is arriving minus the amount that is leaving. Practically speaking, assuming you are at a constant location the rate at which heat leaves is constant. So how much heat is arriving is more important. The closer to the Sun more heat arrives (closer to equator/summer). If you are further from the Sun less heat arrives (poles/winter). Clouds change both the amount of heat arriving at the surface of the Earth and the amount of heat that can leave. They reflect some heat from the Sun back to space and trap some heat close to the surface. How much heat they reflect versus trap depends on how thick they are and how close to the surface they are. High, thin clouds don't trap much heat. Low, thick clouds trap a lot of heat. When you have a day that is cold and clear it is not because there are no clouds. More heat is getting to the surface than would be trapped (by about 20%). It's because (again assuming no wind and at sea level) you are experiencing the unadulterated balance of heat for your location/time of year/time of day. Clouds are a symptom of how much water there is in the air and what the temperature is at that point in the atmosphere. Since heat moves through the air both vertically and horizontally it is difficult for someone on the ground to correlate the presence or absence of clouds with the temperature they experience at ground level. It could be warmer or cooler above you and there could be more water or less water in the air in layers above you as well. You will experience cloudy days that are colder than clear days and vice versa. It's because people think of heat rising straight up (boiling water on the stove) and that you can't see how the air above you is moving without clouds revealing wind speed and direction that it gets confusing to try to correlate the two. If you live somewhere like Seattle it's even trickier because there is a lot of water and mountains nearby that can cause the air to compress (and warm up) or expand (and cool down)."
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5m58wm | popular apps terms and conditions | I'd like to explain to mis kids what they are agreeing to for apps such as snapchat, Facebook, instagram, etc... so I'm wondering if there is a website that explains these in a way a teenager can understand | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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5m5nsa | Why it is more pleasant to watch big screen from big distance than small screen from small distance even though they are covering same amount of my field of view? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your eye muscles (muscles in the eye that control the lens ), when relaxed, are naturally focused on what is far away. The eyes also have to turn slightly towards each other to be able to see things that right close to the face. This takes energy and eventually the eyes get tired.",
"Generally speaking, your eyes focus to infinity when they are relaxed and it takes a small amount of effort to focus in on something closer. For this reason it's more pleasant to watch a screen that is far enough from your eyes to be at infinity focus."
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5m5xh8 | How and why do almonds have a split directly down the middle? | I was eating some today and I didn't know why this was... | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Almonds are seeds, almond seeds are dicots, meaning they have 2 cotyledons. When you split the seed in half you are exposing each cotyledon Therefore both sides of the almond are not completely joined",
"Botanist here: They're cotyledons, aka \"seed leaves\". As the seed germinates the developing plant uses them for energy and nutrients until they can produce photosynthetic leaves. [Relevant picture]( URL_0 )",
"If you split open the almond you see a tiny little nubbin at the bottom of the split. This embryo is the part that is going to grow into the plant. The main almond part is a food store for the plant. The split is there to allow the plant to grow and break out of the nut."
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5m61b0 | Why September, October, November, December are 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th months of the year when in Greek (on which I guess it's based) it is more like Septa = 7, Octo = 8, Nona = 9, Deca = 10? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Roman Calendar had the New Year starting in March and went like this: * Martius (March) * Aprilus (April) * Maius (May) * Iunius (June) * Quintilis * Sextilis * September * October * November * December At some point January (Ianuarius) and February (Februarius) were added, but different versions have them placed in different places. Finally we have the Julian Calendar, set by Julius Caeser, which set the beginning of the year as Ianuarius (January) and renamed Quintilis to Iulius (July) and Sextilis as (eventually) Augustus (August).",
"There used to be 10 months until Julius caesar introduced the Julian calendar, which added the months January and february URL_0 This link explains it a bit, although if you're a non native speaker I hope it's not too hard to read",
"It is Latin actually and the names date back to a time before we had January and February as months (winter was a month-less time). When the two months were added the names were kept."
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5m6kba | Why isn't American cheese called cheese, and instead called cheese product? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because it's not (authentic) Cheese. It's made out of at least two different kinds of cheese and processed, therefor making it a cheese product."
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5m6m9q | Why are knives and swords curved? | What about curvature makes it improve these tools' ability to cut? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It gives the blade a point to drive forward, if that makes sense. Imagine you have a big juicy steak in front of you. You grab your fork and knife and get ready to cut a bite. Your knife is perfectly straight from the handle to the tip. As you try to cut your steak, the tip of the knife keeps stabbing at the meat and it's taking quite a lot of energy to get through the meat. So you set down that knife and pick up a slightly curved one. Instead of the straight downward pressure you used before, you can now start with a higher angle and drive the curved edge through the steak with ease. The same goes for swords. You're in a war and you're running at your enemy with a sword. It's got a straight sharp blade. You swing it at him and you land a nice deep cut, but your blade got stuck. You struggle to get it out while your enemy swings at you. Now imagine the same scenario with a curved blade like a scimitar. You swing and hit your enemy; although you may not have landed quite as deep of a blow, the curved blade had less of a chance to get stuck.",
"When a blade is curved, any cut you make is going to be a slicing cut as well as a chop. With a straight blade, you'd have to actually move the blade along its length to slice something, which is not ideal.",
"There are a number of reasons. Take the Berber Arabs, they used curved swords because they often rode into battle on horseback and the curvature helped to stabilize attacks and balance weight so that they can be more easily used. In a more generic sense, curvature also assists in damage since it forces more of a point and the business end of the weapon, making attacks easier and more effective. Rather than having to run a straight knife along an object, swinging a curved sword will kill two birds with one stone, it will chop _and_ slice."
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5m6q6k | Adderall and Xanax are both addictive substances. Why is it that Adderall causes mild withdraw symptoms, if any, while Xanax induces a potentially lethal withdraw? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They have different mechanisms of action, the common denominator of being addictive doesn't really say a whole lot. Xanax is GABAergic, which is something most depressants share: they act on a specific type of receptor causing disinhibition and sedation because there's more GABA (a chemical that stops and slows down processes so to speak) floating around. Adderal/amphetamine is a stimulant which causes more adrenaline, and dopamine most notably to be produced, responsible for increased energy and in many cases anxiety and agitation opposite to that of a GABAergic drug. Withdrawing from adderal normally just means you feel shitty and crave more from the dopamine crash; not immediately life threatening. GABA on the other hand is essential for tonnes of important functions in your body, and if your body's used to having more of it, then it doesn't work as effectively at baseline.",
"Adderal is a stimulant. Xanax is a depressant. They are very different drugs, used for different purposes. Some drugs have the potential to create significant physical dependency. Some drugs do not. Xanax is from a class of drugs called the benzodiazepines. That class includes Valium and Ativan. Benzos are known for creating physical dependency. Typically doctors will wean patients off of them slowly in order to prevent serious possible complications such as sleeplessness, extreme anxiety, and seizures."
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5m6r77 | Are all planets revolutions made in the same direction? | All solar system simulators have all the planets doing the sun revolution on the same direction. Is this true? And if it is, why is that? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So actually Venus spins the opposite direction, probably cuz some big thing hit it early on in it's development. The rest spin the same way because our solar system started basically as a spinning disk of dust. The whole disc rotates the same way, meaning the small individual parts also rotate the same way. Those tiny parts clump together and still spin the same way, eventually you get enough to be called a planet that still spins the same way.",
"The planets all orbit the sun in the same direction, due to the fact that they all formed out of the same disc of material (which also rotated about its center, which is now the sun, in the same direction). So they are simply maintaining the direction they have always had, the absence of some force to alter them. On the other hand, not all of the planets rotate about their axes in the same direction, with speculation that extremely large impacts early on in their lives may have altered these, essentially 'tilting' the planets.",
"This is largely the case. To see how this is the case imagine the solar system in its early days when it was just one huge asteroid belt. Any asteroid that went the opposite way then all the other asteroids would quickly crash into another asteroid. Similarly asteroids that did not go in a circular orbit or that went in a more polar orbit would have to cross the asteroid belt two times each orbit and potentially crash into other asteroids. So even though the solar system started as a more spherical cloud of rocks and dust it soon settled as a disk before forming planets. However the further out you get the less dense the solar system gets and the longer it takes for the collisions to happen so you get objects with more inclined and eccentric orbits."
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5m6rd6 | The difference between things like Inc, Co, Ltd, etc... | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"These names represent different business entities. A business entity is an organization founded for doing business that can enter into contracts and sue or be sued. Let’s say, for example, you start plowing driveways for work. If you don't create a business entity, then you're just considered to be working as yourself. If you hit someone’s car with your plow, you will be responsible. That person can sue you and you’ll have to pay out of your own pocket. Now let’s say that you instead decided to create a limited liability company (a type of business entity) called Plowguy LLC. You would file forms with your state, pay a small fee, and now a thing called Plowguy LLC exists. People now hire Plowguy LLC to plow their driveways and you work for Plowguy LLC. If you hit someone’s car, they sue Plowguy LLC instead of you. And since you’re the owner of Plowguy LLC, you can take money out of the company when there’s a profit. Business entities are helpful because they create continuity with businesses and limit your liability. By continuity, I mean that you can have a single organization that persists through different employees, owners, and management. For example, Ford Motor Company has been around for 113 years and gone through several different CEOs. Business entities also limit your personal liability. Remember the suing example above? If you don’t have a business entity and you get sued personally, you’re entirely responsible for any debt. If you cause $100,000 worth of damage in your car wreck, you will have to pay all of that even if it comes from your personal funds. If you have a business entity, only the business entity is responsible for the debt. If you cause $100,000 worth of damage and your business is only worth $30,000, you can declare bankruptcy, sell the business to pay off what you can, and then forget about the rest. You don’t have to pay the remaining $70,000 from your personal assets. Having gone through all of that, here are the different types of entities in the US: Inc./Corp. – This means a corporation. Corporations are a type of business entity ownership is determined by stock certificates and owners vote on a board of directors, who then hire managers. Most corporations are *not* publicly traded and it’s possible that just one or two people could be the stockholders, board members, and executive officers for a small corporation. The owners have no liability for the debts of the corporation. Ltd./LP – Limited partnership. This is a business entity where multiple partners invest, but only some of them run the business. The investors who don’t run the business are called limited partners. They do not have any liability for the debts of the business. The investors who run the business are called general partners. They do have liability for debts of the business. For this reason, many people make a corporation to act as the general partner. LLC – Limited Liability Company. This is sort of like a mix between a corporation and LP. The owners don’t have liability for the debts of the business and they can choose to involve themselves in running the business if they want. Those are the main types of business organizations. You’ll sometimes hear about partnerships too, but that’s just two people working together. It doesn’t limit their liability and usually doesn’t require any formal paperwork. There are also things like professional limited liability companies (PLLCs) which are special forms of LLCs for doctors, lawyers, etc. but those are just special cases. There are also tax considerations when choosing a business entity. Corporations, LPs, and LLCs all may get taxed slightly differently, but that's a very detailed, dry topic (even more so than the above). Edit: I should mention assumed names. If you want to do business under a name, but don't want to create a business entity, you can get an \"assumed name.\" This is just a record that's easy to file with your county that says \"John Doe is now doing business under the name Plowguy.\" They are also called DBAs for \"doing business as\" as in \"John Doe d/b/a Plowguy.\" These don't limit your liability or change your taxes in any way at all - they just allow you to call yourself Plowguy for business instead of John Doe.",
"It really depends on what jurisdiction the organization falls under, but basically the business structure you choose will have different legal and tax implications. You can visit the [US Small Business Association]( URL_0 ) page for a very brief overview if you live in the US."
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5m6x9z | Why can't single cell organisms be huge? Why can't a single cell be the size of a person? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"surface area vs internal guts. You have an exponential growth problem. Cells need to take food in and get waste out through their cell wall. When a cell is really small, that works out fine. But if you make a cell larger, the amount of potential mass you can have *inside* the wall grows faster than the amount of wall you have. So it's harder for this enormous mass to move resources in and waste out fast enough to stay healthy. And the bigger it gets, the bigger the problem. edit: for a visual representation, [look at these legos]( URL_0 ). Let's pretend that red legos represent the cell wall structure (which plays a vital role in controlling and limiting what goes in/out of a cell), and the yellow ones are the cells other vital internal organs, which is where the magic happens but they need resources coming in to keep it up. When the cell's tiny, your ratio of wall to guts is pretty good. But as it starts to get bigger, your ratios get out of whack. A 12 by 12 cell would have 144 legos worth of internal organs to feed, and it just gets worse from there.",
"They can. The genus \"Caulerpa\" are single celled algae, some of which can grow to be the size of a person."
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5m76k4 | why does shaking (like in a train or bus) and rocking a baby's crib help us sleep? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1cygs"
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"text": [
"I am going to take a dig at this. I think the exact word you are looking for is \"Rocking to sleep\". As to why Rocking helps us sleep, it is a matter of brain waves. Firstly, we have been put to sleep a hundred times since our birth by gentle swinging motions of our parents. Hence our **brain associates these gentle movements to a relaxing environment**. As a result, we feel a little less stressed and calm, the perfect conditions for inducing sleep. Now comes the question: Why do babies rock to sleep in the first place? I read about it a while back, so I might not be accurate here. It is still poorly understood, but the bottom line is, **any sort of slow rhythmic movement is sleep inducing**. The reason is that our brain is made to respond to any stimuli. This is an evolutionary trait, and is one of the most important traits in our survival as a species. While observing a slow rhythmic movement, our brain functions at a much slower rate than if it was observing a random fast paced movement. Since there is nothing much new to intake, that means nothing much new to process. *Same input, same output, less processing*. This applies to all the senses: sight, hearing and so on. Hence our brain functions at a slower rate, which is the ideal condition for sleeping. Another reason is that, rhythmic movement **calms down our Amygdala - the part of the brain which responds to fear**. Since Amygdala is a key element in the sleep-wake cycle, calming it down is one of the foremost tasks before sleep. So there it is. Hope I have remembered it well. Note: Rocking does not only put us to sleep, it also helps us to sleep deeply. P.S. This is my first comment on Reddit, please be gentle. Edit: The article I read was probably about this study: URL_0 . You can check this out. It more or less states the above."
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|
5m770s | Why do kids need more sleep than adults? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1a51x"
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"text": [
"Because they are still in the process of growing and that takes a lot of effort and energy, which leads to more recovery time, thus more sleeping."
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5m7751 | How and why does belly button lint accumulate overnight (or in general)? | ELI5: How and why does belly button lint accumulate overnight (or in general) and why is mine almost always some shade of blue? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1al8y"
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"text": [
"There has been a weird and surprising amount of research done on belly button lint! Lint collects mechanically by body hairs, as you move. Most lint comes from your underpants! There's a lot of blue dye in clothing."
],
"score": [
3
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5m78de | What prevents me from making a consumable product that is harmful to one's health and addictive, even though alcohol and tobacco have no medical benefits? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1am7d",
"dc1pjos"
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"text": [
"alcohol and tobacco were legal before we knew of their risks, and now its the status quo, which is hard to change. Im sure the FDA would love to ban tobacco for sure. but thats not how the govt works, there are other forces at work, namely the smokers who are already addicted, and the industry/jobs that it represents.",
"Also consider alcohol's benefit did outweigh the risk at one point. Water could be deadly to drink so even a mild alcoholic drink was the way to go to prevent getting sick. This made alcohol a necessity at one point in civilization which rooted it deep in our lives which what makes it so hard to kick to the curb. To top that off the process to make alcohol is relatively simple which means that people can easily do it in their own homes. For alcohol at least it simply better to regulate it. I think people really got it backwards. Pot is the perfect reason why alcohol should be illegal. Please note I fully believe that there are medicinal uses for marijuana but i do believe it should be regulated. I know that research has shown that there are components to it that have actual benefits but that's the canniboids (iirc) and not really the part that most people use it for (thc). From what i have read THC doesn't really do anything but help mask symptoms. Its like taking Vicodin for pain. It doesnt solve what is causing the pain but it does make you not feel it as much or at all. It doesn't treat the root causes."
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5m7bj0 | How does match fixing work? | Who are the people behind it? What does each party get out of it and why do professional athletes agree to such a risky act? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"first off, you have to understand there are several types of match fixing. Most types revolve around a binary result (win/loss, yes/no) because that means fewer variables. Most of the time, the people getting something out of it are gamblers (who bet on the pre-destined result) and participants (who are paid to help create that result). The huge majority of match fixing occurs in events that are fairly low profile; the reasons for this are fairly obvious. Fewer people paying attention, and a lower 'cost of entry' (it doesn't cost as much to convicne people to collude). I'll try to give a few examples. The easiest: win/lose results involving only two competitors. This is thought to have happened fairly recently in Tennis, and Snooker. In the early rounds of a tournement - especially 'tour' events - the money for winning an early round is really not much. So a betting syndicate might decide to offer one of the players some money to essentially \"take a dive\". To lose the game. If enough people bet on the other guy to win, the bettors can turn a profit even once the payment to the loser is taken into account. Related to that - score betting. This is something that is alleged to have happened in sports like tennis; you'll get better odds for a player losing 6-2, 6-2 than just losing in straight sets. This is a bit riskier for both the player and the gamblers, because it assumes that one player has that type of control over the match. It occurs to me that for this to really work, you'd have to have both players in your pocket. Prop bets: a few years ago, bookmakers (especially in England) started taking bets on some 'fun' in game events, like which team would get the first throw-in in a football/soccer game (things that don't affect the final score, but are easily verifiable). It wouldn't take much to convinced a player (probably the guy involved in kick-off) to 'attempt' a long pass to the wing only to 'overhit' it and see it sail out for a free kick Match fixing the result of individual soccer games is not easy. It's a team sport, so either you have to have everybody on one team involved, or the referees, or both. The **Calciopoli** scandal in Italy in 2006 revolved around certain teams making arrangements to have 'friendly' referees officiate their games. In the 60s in England there was a scandal that involved several players getting involved to rig specific matches. Cricket has also had its share as well (Hanse Cronje) and so does baseball (with the Black Sox of 1919 world series). In pretty much every case, the reason is for financial gain and that is usually from gambling. It's actually become a lot easier to notice fixing with the advent of betfair and other betting exchanges. Experience will tell you the weight of money likely to be placed on a given match, so if more than is expected is wagered, that counts as the \"unusual betting pattern\" that you see mentioned in the news. Bookmakers are obviously very keen not to get caught in things like this as well, which is why there are such strict rules for staff to follow. Source: used to be betting office manager in the UK.",
"Keep in mind the athlete doesn't actually have to lose to fix the match. If the underdog has a certain point spread, a gambler can pay a player on the favorite to keep the game within the point spread (\"Point shaving\") so that bets on the underdog win even if the favorite actually wins the game outright."
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5m7by8 | How were mathematicians able to calculate pi without accurate measurements? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Before calculus, you computed the perimeter of a polygon inside a circle, then the perimeter of one outside a circle, [like this]( URL_0 ), and took their average. The more sides the polygon has, the better the approximation. After calculus, they discovered infinite series that added up to pi, like: 4 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 + 4/9... Computing more accurate versions of pi was just a matter of how many terms you wanted to use.",
"There are a couple of different ways. Think about a circle with a radius 1. You know mathematically that Circumference= 2Pi*r. What if you had a square that touched the circle on each side? We can easily calculate the perimeter of this square, because we know the length of each side (it's twice the radius of the circle). So we can make a very rough aproximation for Pi. What if we do the same thing with a hexagon? We can find the perimeter of the hexagon that touches the circle on each side by drawing a triangle from the center of each side to the corner to the center of the circle, and then multiplying that by twice the number of triangles. That hexagon is a closer approximation to a circle, so we can get a better value of Pi. You can keep doing this same thing by envisioning a figure with more and more sides, and that gets closer and closer to a circle. So if you start with a polygon that has a huge number of sides, eventually you get to something that is very close to what we know Pi must be. This isn't the only way to get an approximation for Pi, but it's probably the easiest to think about without getting into complicated math."
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5m7eiv | Why are large mergers like T-mobile/ATT blocked on anti-trust concerns where smaller monopolies like Stanley/Craftsman go unchallenged? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The reason for anti trust laws is to make sure companies will compete against each other to make the best products at the lowest cost. If T-mobile and AT & T would merge they would become so big that nobody could be able to compete against them. In a lot of markets these two companies are the only available option but if they were to merge they could increase the price and reduce the quality of the service without fear that people would switch. And if they were to be challenged on some areas they would have the resources to start a price war and drop the prices bellow the competitors prices. The competitor can then lower his prices and lose money on every sale until he goes bankrupt or he can keep his prices and lose his customers and then go bankrupt.",
"That's not the case at all... there are many other brands of tools. First off, Craftsman is actually a Sears store brand only sold at Sears. And Home Depot sells 17 brands of claw hammers, 30+ brands of tape measures from brands like Milwaukee, Husky, HDX (store brand), Ryobi, Stanley, DeWalt, etc. Secondly, the barrier of entry to make a hammer, wrench set, tape measure, etc. is minimal. All you need to do is design a product and manufacture it and you're ready to enter the market. Cell providers rely on heavy regulated access to wireless spectrum, heavily regulated cell tower placement ,and expensive cell tower build-out to have a usable network. It's MUCH harder to enter such a market, so the existing companies consolidating mean there will not be new entries and competition will fall. If tool prices rise because there are fewer manufacturers, it'd be easy enough for some lower cost tool maker to break into the market."
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5m7fh5 | Why can the human eye not see infrared light? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dc1ceht",
"dc1d0wn"
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"text": [
"Your eye has photoreceptive cells that respond to certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation striking them. This occurs because those photons are absorbed by proteins in the cell, which trigger a change, that generates a signal sent to the brain. Those cells do not absorb other wavelengths, including those of infrared light. Because that light does not get absorbed, it does not trigger the change which generates the signal. No signal is sent to the brain, and so the brain does not know to generate any image. Additionally, the eye is not equally transparent to all wavelengths of light. For instance, near UV light might be visible, but your eye is opaque to it, so those photons would not reach your cells regardless.",
"/u/stuthulhu mentions good points about our light sensitive cells not responding to infrared light. One of the main reasons they never evolved to respond is that not much infrared light manages go through our eyes. The vitreous humor, the clear liquid that makes up the inside of our eye is mostly made of water. Water highly absorbs infrared light. Most of the infrared light is absorbed by the ~1 inch of vitreous humor so not much remains to be detected when it hits the light sensitive cells lined on the back of our eye."
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5m7fji | Why do these pictures make people's brain hurt? | Link to pictures: 1. URL_0 2. URL_1 3. URL_2 People say pictures like this make their brains hurt, gives them headaches, etc. People also say they make them feel nauseous, drunk, dizzy, etc. Why does this happen? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1d564"
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"text": [
"The eyes are trying to focus on an image that is not actually out of focus, it is just that the brain cant make sense of the image. The brain recognizes several familiar patterns, but cant quite focus on one at the time."
],
"score": [
5
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5m7it9 | What causes body aches when fighting a fever? | Currently ill with the flu and my whole body hurts. What causes this? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1ddaz"
],
"text": [
"When you have the flu, your immune system diverts the white blood cells to fight off the flu virus, thus leaving your muscles and joints feeling sore and achy. ... This causes inflammation in muscles and joints, resulting in pain in a similar way to mild arthritis or rheumatism. Copied from Google. Either way I hope you get feeling better soon and this gives you a little insight into what is happening inside your body."
],
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5m7kfr | If autonomous vehicles are to be the future of transportation, what steps are being taken to ensure they function in extreme weather conditions such as blizzards or black ice? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1dfrx",
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"text": [
"Extensive testing of these systems on all terrain has been conducted and will continue to be conducted. There are standard responses to certain situations that we should all do. For example if you're skidding, you turn into it to regain control. The car can do this, but faster than you can even think it. Modern cars even without all of the fancy cameras of self driving models are able to determine the ground conditions; for example modern Land Rovers can auto detect sand/gravel/loose dirt etc and adjust traction and gear differential accordingly. If you throw in visual and radar sensors as well, then the car will very very quickly know what condition the road is in. So what we have, is a car that can determine the road condition better and faster than a human, that can also respond to out of control situations faster than a human. It will also be able to respond to individual wheel traction etc automatically, which a human currently can't do anyway. Blizzards are fine as radar can see through it.",
"at the moment, this kind of obstacle is on the fringe of consideration. Simply put, its hard enough to drive on a sunny day. The rollout of automation will included stages of geofencing and weather restriction. Over time, they will tackle these hurdles. At the end, simple fact is that humans have a tendency to drive in unsafe conditions, and we have accidents as a result. These are limits of physics, not the driver, sensors, or automobile. So will autonomous cars balk at 3\" of snow as humans should (but dont)? That will certainly become a huge discussion if/when lvl 5 automation becomes imminent and we talk about removing driver controls from vehicles."
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5m7uap | Why do clouds turn dark when they are about to start raining? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1gr1d"
],
"text": [
"When sunlight hits water or ice in a cloud, it refracts, bending in direction. With small clouds, some sunlight bounces around inside and eventually makes it out towards the ground. Rain clouds are larger, so less sunlight makes it through the cloud without being redirected away. Less sunlight passing through makes for darker clouds."
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5m8187 | How come there are so many companies offering free web hosting? What's the catch? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Like /u/donsterkay said, such companies usually make their money through advertising. It's worth noting, though, that not all of them do shady stuff like cramming ads on all your pages. As is usually the rule on the internet, for every 100 online services there are 99 scumbags and 1 honest fellow. Those two you listed as examples look legit, and although I haven't used them, I didn't find any scam accusations on Google. The most likely answer to your question is that these companies have different tiers of service; i.e. the free tier offers basic levels of bandwidth and tools that would be enough for most people (think portfolio website or shopify online store), and the paid tier has extra stuff targeted at larger clients (like an online business). As long as there are enough paid clients to keep the ship afloat, the company can easily offer legit free hosting. Edit: A user below mentioned that 000webhost have had big security issues in the past, Google seems to confirm that. I asked a colleague of mine about OneSite and he said they're solid.",
"A lot of the free hosting sites do indeed let you have a \"free\" wesite. They make their money by cramming your pages full of ad's. Some limit your size or throughput some charge after as certain throughput is reached (hey you get that many hits you might be willing to pay or there might be a ad that will support you).",
"It is worth noting that most free host's IP addresses get blacklisted because scammers use them so someone behind a corporate firewall may not be able to access your site.",
"You've gotten some good answers already, so I just wanted to add hard drives [are getting ridiculously cheap]( URL_0 ). So, you know, if you run a server farm or whatever, you have some initial cost, sure, but getting your storage online isn't going to be very capital-intensive. Therefore, webspace providers and companies like dropbox can easily afford to hand out a couple gigabyte of storage - it doesn't cost them anything and might even turn you into a paying customer. That's a win.",
"Not all company's but some will make you have a weird domain name. For example URL_0 will give you a free site but your domain will be whateveryounameit. URL_0 if you want to change you'll have to outright buy the domain you want on top of what ever tier of service you want.",
"Usually the free option is very limited. It will likely have low bandwidth, low storage space and some back end features like PHP or SQL will not be available. Paying will get you more power and a wider variety of available features. I used one company for a lot of free hosting for various projects in my college days, but when I had a website that had a login and needed to be able to email users I had to upgrade to a paid service, for example.",
"All of them have paid services too. They give you the free service but a lot of stuff is limited on free plans. Number of databases, ftp accounts, traffic, CPU and RAM, SSH, backups, etc. When your site grows and you need more of those stuff you will have to pay them. Also some of them put ads in your website. Also because of the limited nature of free hosts I don't suppose they cost them much. And they aren't dedicated servers, they are virtual servers which means lots of free websites can reside in one physical server."
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5m83w6 | Why are some things 'oddly satisfying'? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc20brk"
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"text": [
"Burgot gave you 3000+ karma on /r/leagueoflegends, so you are satisfied. Why? Burgot is very odd, yet satisfying. Therefore, he is odd and satisfying."
],
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5m85fe | Why is it that if you look at a word for long enough, your brain will question its spelling, despite it being a simple and familiar word that's normally spelt with ease? | These are usually simple words, like 'able' for example. My brain will tell me 'that doesn't look right' and I know I've been spelling it correctly for years, but suddenly my brain decides it's wrong. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1jxuk"
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"text": [
"This is known as 'semantic satiation' and there isn't much academic literature on this specific effect from my brief research that I did just now. However, from what I can tell it's related to other effects so I'll base my explanation around an understanding of those as well as a bit of research. As a disclaimer, I'm a medical student with an interest in neuroscience, but I am not a neuroscientist and my interpretation of the literature is limited by this. It occurs through a similar process to not noticing background noises after a while or not noticing the frames of your glasses even though they're in your vision. When a nerve fires over and over again, eventually it begins to be habituated and doesn't release as much neurotransmitter to the next neuron. In *very* oversimplified, ELI5 terms, the nerve becomes \"tired\" and stops firing as much. So a nerve's ability to communicate with the next nerve along a sequence of nerves is reduced. When you stare at a word for ages or hear it repeated over and over, a complicated pattern of neurons in your brain fires constantly that leads to recognition of the word. This involves going from the visual information, processing it, to the language centres, etc. Eventually, every time you look at the word the neurons in this complicated pathway fire less and less until the pathway that leads to the recognition of that word is not being stimulated enough to allow normal recognition. It then begins to look or sound \"strange\". I hope I explained that well enough - if you have any questions I'll do my best to answer!"
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5m89k6 | Why do we wake up in the middle of the night even when not triggered by dreams or external stimuli? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"You cycle through different stages of sleep, ranging from lightly asleep to hardcore asleep to dreaming: N1, N2, N3, REM. N1 is light sleep, the transition between awake and asleep. During the night, you move up and down these stages. Sleep isn't an on/off switch--it's a super complicated system. A lot of different things can run this system off the rails, so to speak, and leave you more likely to wake up during the night: alcohol, some medications, stress, sleep apnea, poor sleep habits, shift work, and a lot of other stuff. You can also be woken up during the night and simply not remember what it was that woke you up. For example, people with sleep apnea tend to believe that they woke up for no reason, but in reality they woke up because they stopped breathing, which you might recognize as a bit of a problem."
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5m8gg3 | Why do public toilet seats have a gap in the middle and ones at home don't? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I know this! When a man sits on a toilet, the head of his penis often comes in contact with the inside of the toilet seat. By having a gap, this prevents germs from being transferred from dick to dick. (Ladies never blow your man if hes just taken a crap in a public restroom without the seat notch) Men also for some reason refuse to lift public toilet seats, so when a man urinates any dribble will hit the bowl, not the seat... in theory.",
"Firstly, because it is required due to the American Standard National Plumbing code. It is more hygienic (less chance of private part contact with seat and less urine splash on seat), it is cheaper (less material) and also benefits the ladies (easier wiping).",
"The real answer is that it's for disabled people who need help going to the toilet. It's a lot easier to wipe somebody's butt if you don't need to wedge your hand between the seat and their crotch. It's got nothing to do with dick germs.",
"By any of these explanations, though, why would the same not apply to home toilet seats?",
"Open-front toilet seats are largely designed to make it easier for women to wipe, according to Lynne Simnick, the senior vice president of code development at the IAPMO. The opening is designed to “allow women to wipe the perineal area after using the toilet without contacting the seat,” she says. So basically, open toilet seats are designed for front-wipers. From: URL_0"
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5m8rt9 | Why does a company want to sell my personal info? To whom? For how much? What's the data even look like? | I keep reading that companies like Facebook, Google, and so many others like to collect our personal information to sell it. But to whom? What's that information even look like? Is it an Excel document that has my name and some columns with checkmarks confirming I watch porn and love video games? Who would buy that data and how much do they spend on it? How would they then use that data once they have it? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So the big common misunderstanding is that Facebook, Google, and most large companies **don't** actually sell your personal information. Yes they collect it, but they don't sell it. Smaller and more unscrupulous companies will sell your data though, usually to email spammers. The big guys instead collect it, research it, and both share the results of that research and use that research to build more targeted ads. If some random company is like \"I have a product for cat lovers, I'd love to buy some ads on facebook in front of people who like cats\" Facebook can not only make *exactly that* happen for that company, they can also tell things like \"people over 40 are more likely to click on these links\" \"surfers are more likely to click on these links\" and stuff like that. So now you can put your ads for cat products in front of surfers too, since you know they're more likely to buy it than other demographics. Knowing *what kind of person* wnats to buy your stuff is extremely important, because it lets you put the ads or the product right in front of the kind of people who are most likely to be your customers.",
"Generally it's not an excel document since it's generally massive and more efficient to do so in another manner, however it looks just like an excel document with checkmarks of certain behaviors. With that very rarely do they say \"John Smith went to this website at this time to buy this product\". Generally they make your data anonymous and include general information about your actions. I recently finished a project that dealt with buying prospective customers in the insurance industry so I'll give you a story. If you type search for an insurance policy online and give your email to a website, that website can turn around to a 3rd party company that cleans up your data, adds to it using cookies on your browser and estimates some stuff about you (age, sex, income, location etc.) based on your other habits. From there an insurance agent buys your information from that 3rd party company. The price is based on how valuable you are, income, assets, chance you'll sign up for a policy all, come into play. I've seen $20 for a single persons info down to $1 per person in a bulk buy.",
"I worked with these kind of people for a while. At least sort of. So I worked in the It department of a major Car Dealership chain. We had 10 different buildings with 18 different manufacturers. Part of my job was to export data to several different companies for various reasons. So when you buy a car, or get service done, you get a customer profile built in the system. This typically includes a bunch of general info about you and your car. Sometimes this means your SSN. Well, Dealerships love sending out letters to their customers, or anyone really, about how they really need some new stock, so they'll give you a great deal on a new car, or a trade in, or something else. These are called mailers. We pay a third party company to make mailers for us. Part of the deal, is we export a bunch of client info for them, and they send out the mailers. Now, naturally, this sounds like a super exploitable system, and it is/was depending on who you ask. There are several companies that create these dealership software systems, but there are really 2 or 3 big ones across the USA. The big ones have standards, and typically require the small 3rd party companies to apply for a license to export data. So the Big company would charge the littler company somewhere around $80,000 to grant them permission to a data feed. Now, as much as we'd like to believe that being certified means that these 3rd party companies were clean and ethical, we know they weren't. We know this because of cross dealership bleeding. So, lets say I buy my car at the Toyota dealership. Then a couple months later I'm going to start getting mailers from the Toyota dealership \"General Manager\" about service specials or trade in opportunities. This is normal, and should technically happen. Except maybe a year or two later, I get a mailer from the Hyundai dealership about *their* service specials and their trade in offers. See, someone at Hyundai was \"clever\" and bought a chunk of customers from the mailer company in a hope to reach new clients. Now apply this to almost every other piece of junk mail you probably get, and you get an idea of why people want your information. Edit: The data looks messy in a standard .CSV file. CSV stands for comma seperated values. And in notepad it would look like this John Does, 1952, 123 Street Ln, Town, Zip, Toyota, 801237, Sport, White, White, Jane Doesnt, 1983,,,,Toyota 423414,, Gold, Tan Jose Can, 1990, 456 Curbside St, Town, Zip, Scion, 210543, D, Blue, Black"
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5m8ssq | when looking at the moon during the day, why is the dark side camouflaged by the blue sky? | Just took [this photo]( URL_0 ) as an example | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the dark side doesn't send out (reflect, really) enough light to be able to shine through the blue light that is \"created\" in our atmosphere, while the bright side of the moon does. It's the same reason the rest of the dark sky isn't showing. It's not bright enough to be visible through the general brightness of the sky. Think of it like if you have a sheet of white paper with a black object drawn on. If you then put a layer of blue transparent plastic over that, the white paper will look blue, but the black object will still be as black as before. It's sort of like that, but with inverse colors.",
"Because the blue of the sky is caused by the Earth's atmosphere, not the backdrop of space. And the Earth's atmosphere is between the moon and your eye."
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5m8tbi | Can someone explain how high profile people can not pay taxes? How would they not be audited or investigated if they're suspicious? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The big thing is if you are rich, you (usually) don't have to worry about a regular paycheck to get by. That gives you a lot of options to avoid (legal) or evade (illegal) taxes. For example, instead of a salary, you might choose to get paid in stock options, that don't get taxed until they are exercised. If you own a profitable business, you might forgo a salary altogether, knowing you can sell shares in the business anytime you want. Note these are both a perfectly legal and ethical way to *defer* taxes...you will pay them eventually, but it might leave you with years you don't pay any personal income tax. Also, your businesses are still paying taxes. Another reason the wealthy don't need steady income is they can shift expenses to their businesses. You don't worry about the payment on your Beemer, the company owns it. Same with your Manhattan loft and the beach house in the Caribbean. Getting into some of the more shady techniques... You can set up a non-profit you control, and \"donate\" money to it, and get a tax deduction. Then you can hire family members to \"work\" for the non-profit, so they spend its money instead of yours. They still pay taxes, but since your are spreading that money out rather than taking it as income, they are in a lower tax bracket. You can also move money offshore. Want to sell your old yatch? Sell in in the Cayman Islands, put the money in their bank, and the US gov't never knows about the income. Finally, the wealth hire really good tax lawyers. If you are an middle class working professional, you might earn a nice 100K a year, and pay about $35K in income tax. A clever tax pro might be about to knock $5K off of that, but if it costs you $10K to do it, that's not a win. But if you made $10M last year, and looking at a $3.5M tax bill, what you can save will hire a whole lot of lawyers. Even if you get caught doing something dodgy, those same smart lawyers, many of whom used to work for the IRS, will be going up against career bureaucrats in court, and might just prevail anyway.",
"High profile people who don't pay taxes generally aren't breaking the law, they're using the law as written to let them minimize their tax burden (unless they're actively hiding income). The criticisms aren't that these people are breaking the law, the criticism is that the system lets them do that and it's unfair to everyone else."
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5m8vxj | Fluoride is added to water, but iodine is added to salt. What was the reasoning behind choosing these specific elements and where they should be added? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Iodine is added to salt because there used to be a real problem with iodine deficiency in the US, leading to all sorts of thyroid issues. Goiters everywhere, man. Salt was the most obvious candidate for mass-supplementing, as almost everyone used it, it is nearly impervious to spoilage (although an opened package of iodine salt will lose its iodine content rather quickly), and it was chemically feasible: iodine is added AS a salt, sometimes as sodium iodate or sodium iodide. As for fluoride, same motivation. Mass health srvices. People's teeth were fucked. I mean just awful. As bad as the British. They put it in the water because, again, everybody drinks water. And it's pretty easy, sodium flouride readily dissolves in water. There is a lot of debate (some of it from anti-vaxxer type sources, some legitimate) about the safety of fluoridated water for children especially. It is also being argued that improved acces to oral care - especially toothpastes with flouride - may have made the addition of flouride to water unnecessary.",
"They are both added for the sake of public health. Fluoride is added to prevent tooth decay and other oral diseases and iodine is added to prevent mental disabilities. The CDC views adding fluoride to the water supply as one of the key factors to the growth of a healthy first world."
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5m8wc0 | Why are people swayed more by negative reviews than positive ones? | When searching for things on Amazon, there can be 100 5-star reviews and and one 2-star review, and for some reason I give the 2-star review more weight in my mind even though the overwhelming consensus is that the product is great. It's the same with film reviews. I'll find myself hesitating to watch a movie because of a single bad review despite there being universal acclaim from every other reviewer. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You're more worried about what could go wrong than what can go right. Same reason you fail to notice something in the background of no importance but your brain instantly alerts you of a perceived threat in your periphery (like noticing a giant spider in the corner of a room). Your brain alerts you more of the things that can affect you negatively and focuses on them more than positive things to keep you safe.",
"Well, unfortunately there are a lot of false positive reviews. And sometimes lots of reviews that have 'this product was received free or at a discount for my review.' They can really flood Amazon and make crap seem great. Nobody fakes negative reviews of their own product. I did just come across a web page that does a quick analysis of the reviews to look for 'suspicious reviews.' Neat!",
"Personally, I read negative reviews to get a sense of what people are complaining about. Someone will always find something to complain about for any given thing, but what I want to know is how reasonable those complaints are. My wife and I use Yelp to look up restaurants, but what we're mostly looking for are the bad reviews and what the nature of those reviews are. When we see a that a lot of the bad reviews are petty, or have unreasonable complaints (\"We came in looking for a table for ten at 8:00 on a Saturday and they made us wait 30 minutes!!!\") or are ridiculously over-the-top (\"We sat down and waited for 45 minutes until a waiter came, then waited for 45 more minutes to get our drinks, then it took an hour and a half to get our appetizers...\"), then we give them less weight and generally feel better about our decision to go to the restaurant.",
"Because if you are spending your hard earned money on something you want it to be consistently good and not take a risk.",
"The reason you take more notice of bad reviews is because you are conditioned by thousands of years of evolution to look for them. Yes, ancient cave-men passed along the skills you need to spot a bad Amazon review. They drew warnings on cave walls of bad products with one star and passed those skills down from generation to generation. Ok I totally made that up, but what they did pass along to you was the instinctive nature to spot danger, and a bad review is exactly that, it's a big DANGER sign that you immediately take notice of. It doesn't matter than ten other people said nice things about it, you want to know what the danger flag (Or bad review) is all about because if there's even the tiniest hint of a threat to you (In this case wasting your money on a bad product), well you want in on that!! It's the same reason we don't generally have warning signs that indicate an absence or lack of danger. The sudden prompting that things have gone to shit spikes that same instinctive watch for danger in you. Because of this effect, people who sell stuff hate one star reviews for the simple fact they have a massive weight of influence to them. No matter how retarded a bad review might be, it always has more effect than a well written one that reflects positively on the product which is why most shopping and review sites let the manufacturer have the last word on a bad review as a means of restoring the balance. It's not always possible, but the best way to measure a review is to play other reviews off against it. If a good review says something nice about the product, go and find a bad review that refutes that specific point and vice versa. For example if a bad review says \"The battery life is crap\" and there's three other reviews saying its not bad or its good, the balance of probability says that one reviewer had unrealistic expectations of battery life or some other problem."
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5m8wei | . How do dowsers work? (E.g in the location of groundwater supplies) | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They don't work. They are a form of fortune telling, and are easily manipulated by the dowser (scam artist) by tiny pressure and tilting of the hands."
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5m942b | Why is the top bun of a burger normally thicker than the bottom, when the bottom holds all the weight? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bread rises when baked. The flat bottom portion was on the bottom of the pan, and the \"fluffy\" top was allowed to rise up in the over. The same thing happens with muffins, and loaf bread, and lots of baked goods. You could flip it upside down, but it generally makes sense for the flat portion to be the bottom.",
"someone posted an LPT a couple weeks back about just eating the thing upside down to solve your problem."
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5m96lw | If addiction is a medical condition, then why do many addiction programs require that their adherents take responsibility for their actions? | Wouldn't that be like taking responsibility for diabetes? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is exactly like taking responsibility for diabetes, and then changing your lifestyle to account for it. It is a medical condition, but one that has both physical and psychological elements to it. If you don't fix the mental stuff, fixing the physical stuff does nothing.",
"You're not taking responsibility for the addition, you're taking responsibility for turning to the abuse in the first place that lead to your addiction, and the things you did to fuel it. For example, you didn't have to turn to heroin in the first place, you were first to stick yourself with a needle, instead of finding an alternative method of dealing with your problems. Also, being addicted to heroin doesn't pardon you from robbing that liquor store, putting 17 bullets in that man's chest... Trying to say no to the heroin after you're hooked, and failing, and taking another injection, you're forgiven for that. After all, addiction is a disease.",
"Just because something is a medical condition doesn't mean taking responsibility is not also part of the healing / maintenance process. Diabetes is a medical condition, but that doesn't mean the people with it don't need to take responsibility re: having a good diet, making sure they take their insulin on time. Phobias are also a medical condition, but that doesn't mean the person with the phobia shouldn't be taking responsibility and desensitising themselves under the guidance of a professional. If you were in a severe accident and you need physical therapy, that is 100% a medical condition, but following the instructions of the therapist even if they are not necessarily pleasant is still part of taking responsibility."
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5m96vr | Why do we have different sizes for audio jacks (like 2.5mm and 3.5mm)? Does it make any difference other then the size of the plug? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The larger size audio jacks are preferred in pro-level gear because it can be built much sturdier, and with high end beefy metal parts withstand thousands and thousands of plug/unplug cycles. Functionally, there isn't a big difference. But since for musicians this stuff can spend a ton of time getting thrown around on stages and run over with carts and stomped on and rattling in cases, they'd like it tough."
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5m9asi | How come when you're sick you can blow your nose and they'll be completely empty and 5 minutes later they're full and dripping. How does mucus generate so quickly and where is it even made. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The mucus comes directly from the surface of your nose, called a mucous membrane because it produces mucus to protect itself and as lubrication. This mucus is a combination of long, stringy proteins and water, which allows it to stick to most surfaces. We produce a ton of it while we have upper respiratory tract infections like the common cold because our immune systems are trying to isolate the virus causing the infection and prevent more from getting in. This measure isn't actually that effective, as it only slows down viruses and bacteria can swim right through it, but we do it anyway. Allergies do the same thing because they are an attempt by the immune system to attack something that isn't actually a disease, like pollen. We are less clear on why allergies happen, but some hypothesize that they occur due to infants and children living in environments that are far too clean. Their immune systems don't have anything to fight, so they start fighting random things instead.",
"Some of the immediate fullness you feel is not mucus instantly generating, but your sinuses swelling back up and blocking the nasal passages. See, your sinuses are inflamed when you're sick. When you blow your nose, you kind of flex them as well so they get a bit narrower to let stuff out. Then when you're done blowing/flexing those muscles, they swell back up. That's why you can repeatedly blow your nose, have just a little bit come out, but still feel like you need to blow again.",
"^(i think part of your confusion is that you may not fully know the anatomy of the nasal cavity. the nasal cavity has a large surface area which aids in its function of moistening and warming air you inhale. mucus is also produced here by goblet cells which are interspersed amongst the nasal epithelium.) [^(here's a picture of the nasal cavity which might give you perspective on how large of a surface it is in there.)]( URL_0 )",
"Not sure if posting this too late but I had some follow up questions. I never really seem to breathe out of both of my nostrils. One seems to always have a swollen nodule and it is usually my left notril. Sometimes throughout the day they will switch sides. I am wondering if it is a common occurrence. Second to that is I always have what I am guessing is post nasal drip. Throughout the day I have to cough to clear my throat of mucus and to me it seems totally gross. People think I am sneezing. When I first wake up in the morning I have to cough quite violently because I will have a small dried gobbet stuck to the back of my throat and it will take quite a while to get cleared up. Sometimes I give myself a sore throat because of it. It is always dark brown or green in color and maybe about 2 cm in length. Doctor put me on some anti-histamines last month but they didn't do a thing. I figured it had something to do with being a smoker but I quit smoking cigarettes in 2013 and still have the issue. Then again I do vape. Been having this problem now for maybe 13 years now. Edit: Thank you so much for the feedback guys. Suppose I will be asking to be referred to an ENT soon about the drip.",
"Your body is responding to a stimulus - \"I am sick/foreign bodies detected\". It then goes into security mode. SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING. While your skin does a great job at keeping most everything out, you obviously have openings all over. Your nose is one such place, but unlike your ears or mouth, it cannot be closed off/is closed off already (you have to breath). So our mucus membrane produces mucus. It does this already, and just like your ear wax its job is to keep foreign stuff out of your body (for the most part). When you get sick, your body doesn't want any more bad things getting in because it's already fighting one thing. This is when you are arguably at your weakest. So it produces extra mucus to keep the entrance stopped up. Unfortunately your body has no way of knowing just how far to take its defense. It is an all or nothing response. So even if it is a virus you will be over in a day, or simple pollen in the air, it turns things up to 11 and SHUTS. DOWN. EVERYTHING. But to be honest, I'd rather go hard on something than take that chance. Then again, that's how things like auto-immune diseases pop up.",
"Follow up question: if this is a result of narrowing and expanding nasal passages, and certain people have more narrow sinuses so they need surgery, what is the evolutionary advantage of this? How did so many people (like myself) end up with chronic stuffiness and swollen sinuses? How would that be evolutionary advantageous?",
"Mucus is water plus a protein called mucosin. You only need to add a small amount of mucosin to a lot of water to make a lot mucus. It's like gelatin you only need to add a teaspoon to a lot of water and it turns into jelly.",
"To answer the where it is produced part, the lining of the respiratory tract is made mostly of a type of epithelia (classification of cells) called pseudostratified ciliated columnar epithelium. The mucous is produced by goblet cells which are part of the epithelium. The cilia are tiny hair like projections that face the cavity or whatever they are lining and sweep the mucous around, usually toward an exit such as the nose or throat. The mucous serves to trap dust, debris and germs which would otherwise enter our respiratory system and cause infection.",
"There is a lot of misinformation and poor terminology going around. The sinuses are really just voids in your bones, and typically do not change significantly in size. They don't produce most of the mucus that comes out when you blow your nose. The sinus *tissues* (their lining) can become inflamed and sensitive, perhaps due to infection, not suprising since they are dark, moist, and flesh-lined structures deep in your body, perfect so microorganisms can thrive. Making things worse, most of the sinuses have only small 'openings' to the rest of the nasal cavity. It is actually the turbinate structures and their tissues which people are describing as 'expanding' (swelling) and 'blocking the nose'. These structures and other surfaces in the nasal cavity produce most of the mucus that comes out. URL_0",
"One more thing that I haven't seen in the comments... excess tears drain into the nasal cavity... so if you're having trouble putting your contact lenses in and your eyes water a lot, you'll want to blow your nose. So I guess if you're sick and you're eyes are watering, that contributes a lot to your runny nose.",
"In addition to what u/frommerman said, there are also these kind of balloon things in the back of your nostrils called turbinates, which normally warm and moisturize the air you suck in through your nose. That feeling that your nose is stuffed and you can only breath out of one nostril? That's not so much mucus as it is these turbinates swelling up, blocking the passage of your nostrils.",
"Hey maybe someone can help me here. It has now been 8 years straight of steady mucus drip down the back of my throat. It is very literally never not there. At all times. I'm now 33, started at 25. What could be causing this? Can I do anything to stop it? I've kind of taken it as 'this is my life now' but it'd be nice to get rid of.",
"A lot of people are answering how, but here's why. Your mucus acts for two reasons. It acts as a protective barrier against some germs and helps to expel things already trapped. So while your mucus can generate very quickly, it adjusts the pace to keep the nose at an uncomfortable level without overfilling it. The same property as ferrets; their sent is intentionally maintained, so when bathed too frequently, their glands overporduce and lead to more intense sent than would be typically present.",
"Can I add a follow up question? (Or perhaps 2 if you wanna be picky) Why, sometimes, does only one nostril feel stuffy or drippy and the other one is totally clear?",
"Related question: When I have a stuffy nose I end up usually taking over the counter nasal spray like Afrin, which works, but doesn't last very long. Is there anything I can use that is just as (or more) effective?",
"I was going to ask this myself recently! Another question: Why is it that congestion can switch sides so quickly? One minute my left nostril is completely stopped up with no air passing through. Then it'll switch and my right will be closed. How's that happen?"
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5m9bcw | Why do sites like Youtube and Facebook (but especially Youtube) continuously modify their interface with new skin, color, and features, despite the negative reception of their userbase? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because everybody hates change. Week 1-4 of a UI overhaul, everyone hates it. It's all different and you have to find the stuff you want again. Once you figure it out you stop caring and usually whatever new/optimized feature gets a jump in usage, which is why they made a new UI in the first place."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
5m9jxh | Why does meth make users skin so ugly and old-looking? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc21fo6",
"dc1uh9w"
],
"text": [
"For 7 years i shot up meth and heroin pretty much every day. Between not eating and scarcely drinking enough fluids to stay hydrated, your body begins to basically go into starvation mode. Scabs come from picking because while on meth if you cant stay busy you'll pick at anything you can on your skin thinking something is in there that isnt. Not to mention the sores from injection sites from consistently poking a needle in your arm. Meth is very addicting and its easier said than done to eat and brush your teeth and sleep. Meth doesnt allow you to sleep its a long lasting stimulant that keeps you awake and to avoid the comedown people generally redose and stay awake for longer. The longest i stayed up was 13 days. And 13 days with little food and little water, and like mentioned by others sleep depravation will make you look like a twisted version of yourself. I can go into more depth if you would like, but i am on mobile right now. Also just hit 8 months clean and sober 2 days ago. (I drink but its only occasionally and am nowhere abusing that)",
"It doesn't directly. Dehydration, sleep deprivation and general drug-addict lifestyle does. Same with the teeth falling out, scabs, most other things you've heard about meth"
],
"score": [
23,
13
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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} | [
"url"
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|
5m9mtr | How does one die of depression? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1v77f",
"dc1wt3r"
],
"text": [
"Suicide. Chronic depression, especially when combined with other mental illness, drastically increases a person's chances of attempting suicide.",
"You don't die from depression. It is a stepping stone to diabetes, suicide, and heart attacks. Depression makes it really easy to sit around eating fast food all day and never get anything done. Then you look back at what a waste your life is, get depressed, have a snack, then repeat. This is an unhealthy lifestyle. If you're trying to fight it, you can \"force\" yourself to do what \"normal people\" should be doing. Go for a run, eat healthy, simply refuse to sit in any one spot for 20 minutes or more. Eventually, you will break the cycle."
],
"score": [
15,
3
],
"text_urls": [
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} | [
"url"
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"url"
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|
5m9myw | - An Air Duct Company is using my cell phone number as "a mask" to call hundreds of people. Im now receiving hundreds of calls from these people. What should I do? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1vegl",
"dc1vt04"
],
"text": [
"Report them to the police and contact a lawyer to sue them. You should also call your phone company and tell them what is going on.",
"Have you tried asking one of these people what information they've gathered about this company? I mean, if you know it's an air duct company, what's the company name? Can you look them up? Other than that, put your phone in nighttime mode, and call the phone company and tell them what's going on, file a complaint. Wherever they are, they have to place that call on a phone system and inject that mask as part of their call stream. I don't know what kind of logging they have, but they might just be able to trace the activity back where the caller ID is equal to yours but doesn't come from you. The other thing they can do is look at the call record of one of the victims, whose numbers you now have, and trace it back that way. Ask one of the victims the time their phone says the call was placed and ask for their assistance in case the phone company wants to call and ask them questions. Good luck."
],
"score": [
11,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
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] |
|
5m9qhj | How and why do our limbs feel fuzzy when they fall asleep? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1wvud"
],
"text": [
"When the nerves in a certain area are deprived of their nutrients especially electrolytes, they begin to fire frantically. This causes the pins and needles feeling."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5m9rpm | how does sound escape an airtight room? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1wfj0",
"dc1w7vz"
],
"text": [
"Sound is not just a vibration through air, it's a vibration through anything with mass. The air inside the room will vibrate then the vibration will hit the walls/doors and cause them to vibrate too - the vibration propagates through the solids that make the walls/doors and then passes on to vibrate the air outside the room. The only way it couldn't is if the airtight room were a vacuum inside, then, if the sound source can't vibrate a wall/door, it wouldn't have any air to vibrate and sound would not be made in the first place to propagate through the air/solids.",
"The vibrating air causes the walls to vibrate which in turn cause the outside air to vibrate. Thus, sound."
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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]
} | [
"url"
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"url"
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|
5m9sah | Whats the difference between Computer Engineers, IT, and Computer Scientists? | A teacher had a great explanation explaining their roles with a car analogy. I can't remember it , it was something like one designs the cars internal parts and how they relate, ones a master mechanic that works on the car parts, and one drives the fully built/tuned up car to its destination, I'm not sure if it's how he said. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1wxzd"
],
"text": [
"Computer Engineering is about the hardware and making of a computer. answer the question: how does it work? and how do i make a new functioning one? how do i make a better one? IT is about using existing devices in an environment. answer the question: how do i deploy these devices in an office so that 100 people can access it and how do I maintain and service the devices using my IT staff during its serviceable lifetime? Computer Science is about the software and using the computer to solve problems (sometimes not real world problems) answer the question: if I had to walk 500 miles using a computer program, what kinds of algorithm would i need to 1) do it 2) do it efficiently 3) prove that its most efficient way possible"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5m9t17 | Why do we feel relief after we hit or break something when we are mad? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc21427",
"dc29xsz"
],
"text": [
"Aggressive reaction syndrome (ASR). It is commonly found in primates and is a response of the enlarged amygdala. When we get angry it's essentially the amygdala taking over and telling the brain it's time to get physical and assert ourself. Since we're social animals with complex hierarchies it's important to show others that we're strong and capable.",
"I don't think this is a universal feeling. If anything breaking something seems to ramp up my aggression and anger because I feel dumb for doing that."
],
"score": [
18,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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} | [
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|
5m9ve2 | When you have a cold, why do your symptoms feel worse right after you wake up? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc25lx8",
"dc23vyd"
],
"text": [
"This is similar to a previous topic, except [this ELI5]( URL_1 ) was saying you'd feel worse at night due to your cortisol levels dropping, which is what [this article describes.]( URL_0 ) Basically your cortisol peaks during the day and therefore your body is not actively fighting off infections or viruses, so you feel better. At night the cortisol drops and your white blood cells begin attacking your illness... so you experience a fever, headache, and other symptoms of your immune system going to work. In the morning, your body has been fighting illness all night so your face is plugged up, you're dehydrated, and you're having to get up and move around after lying down for hours, and it's unpleasant. Chances are you didn't sleep very well, and this will make you feel worse. So it's a combination of your horizontal position, combined with a restless sleep and an active immune system that makes your cold symptoms feel worse in the morning.",
"I always feel sick first thing and it wears off in the afternoon, and then at night it gets worse again... Maybe it has something to do with your metabolism and immune response?"
],
"score": [
23,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"http://www.intercoastalmedical.com/Blog/TabId/33253/PostId/2738/why-do-you-feel-sicker-at-night",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1taxui/when_we_are_sick_why_do_we_feel_worse_at_night/"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5m9x7u | Why does every human/household have a specific scent and why is everyone's different? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1xunz"
],
"text": [
"Every person has different bacteria in their skin that creates their own scent. Combine yours with your SO and it will a create a seemingly unique scent."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5m9xa9 | How do airplanes avoid issues with snow/ice on the runway when taking off or landing? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1xlev"
],
"text": [
"Runways are routinely plowed and deiced by airport ground crews. If it is snowing hard enough that the runway can't be cleared the airport is closed and traffic is diverted to other airports."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5ma2nr | Why does walking on a broken escalator make us feel off balance? Arn't they just stairs? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc1yqde"
],
"text": [
"The rise-over-run specifics aren't the same as regular stairs so we aren't used to the setup which makes us feel \"weird\" while walking up or down unmoving escalators."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5ma5kw | When a jar won't open, why does hitting it from the bottom, or tapping the lid on the edge of the counter, work to make it easier to open? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc20429",
"dc278q8"
],
"text": [
"A jar won't open is often due to pressure. Hitting a jar from the bottom rarely works for me. What I do is put it under running hot tap water for 30 s and it usually opens. When it's heated up, pressure in the jar changes. Someone please correct me if I am wrong",
"Tapping or tampering with the lid loosens the seal, allowing the pressure to equalise slightly. This makes it easier to remove the lid. I have personally found it most effective to tap firmly with a spoon all around the top edge of the lid. This creates slight deformations in the lid, weakening the seal fairly substantially. Jars are pressure sealed. This is actually usually a byproduct of the production process - the jars are filled hot and then cooled. When the contents cool, they contract (all materials, with few exceptions, shrink in volume/size as they cool). This creates a partial vacuum inside the jar, an area of much lower pressure. As a result, the higher pressure outside the jar forces the lid on tightly. You can do this yourself if you get some jars and make your own jam or other preserve. They're prepared hot, then poured into jars and left to cool."
],
"score": [
8,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5ma6xu | What happens if I own stock in a company and that company gets sold (or bought out) by another company? | Say I own 100 shares of company A. Company B buys company A. What happens to my stock? Thx | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc238ag",
"dc1zp98"
],
"text": [
"It depends on the specific of the deal as announced and approved by the shareholders, but most commonly the shared will be converted to shares in the acquiring company. Sometimes they'll issue only in full shares and pay cash for fractional shares and sometimes they'll issue fractional shares. As an example, I owned 15 shares in SolarCity, a solar panel recently bought by Tesla. Based on the transaction prices, that was equivalent to 1.65 shares of Tesla, which was issued to me as 1 share of TSLA and $127 (for the value of the .65 share)",
"Generally stock in Company A is converted to Company B stock at an agreed upon rate. If Company B is privately held then payouts for Company A stock will be part of the purchase negotiations."
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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5ma97d | Why does string theory require that there be 10 dimensions? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2e29d",
"dc22gbu",
"dc25dad"
],
"text": [
"Imagine a room with some 3-dimensional objects in it, like a sphere, a cube, a cone, a pyramid, etc. The room and the objects are uniformly white in color, and there's no light except for a flashlight that you can shine into the room from different locations. Every time you shine the light inside the room, you take a picture. After you've taken several pictures, you sit down and look at the results. Soon, you start classifying various shadows that you've seen. You have a bunch of shadows that are crescent shaped, a bunch that are sort or rectangular, etc. You compile a whole huge book of these shadows, and it's pretty impressive, but it's really hard to explain it all to other people because the location of the flashlight and picture make all sorts of subtle differences in the shapes of the shadows. Then, a breakthrough! Someone says, hey, those are shadows from 3-dimensional solids. The crescents come from a sphere, the rectangular ones from a cube, etc. Now, all of a sudden, you've got an easy way to classify all your 2-dimensional shadows simply by referencing 3-dimensional shapes that create them. This isn't what's happening in string theory, but the principle of being able to explain more with less by adding dimensions is similar. A great deal of what we know about light, heat, magnetism, and so on can be explained more simply by a universe with more dimensions. In this 10, 11, or 26 dimensional universe, everything we see is just one special case of a more general set of rules.",
"This won't be a satisfying answer, but you're asking a question that doesn't lend itself to satisfying answers. String theory requires 10 dimensions because the theory is simpler with 10 than it is with 4. And for the record, not all string theories require 10 dimensions. Basically any theory from 10-26 dimensions can be credible. 10 is just the most common result for supersymmetry theories.",
"to put it as simple as I can: - string theory is the theory that there are tiny dimensions we cant perceive but that do exist. you know, like the example that a piece of string/rope looks basically one-dimensional to you (length), but to an ant it is 2-dimensional (surface) and to a bacteria it might be 3 dimensional (volume/surface+inside). - the more dimensions there are, the tinier they can be and fulfill most quantum physics equations. - experiments have shown that the \"larger\" dimensions cant exist (or are EXTREMELY unlikely to exist, not sure which one), so basically to make the math work AND not violate what we already observed (aka be actual physics) the dimensions need to be smaller and thus you need at least 8 or 10 dimensions"
],
"score": [
8,
7,
5
],
"text_urls": [
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} | [
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|
5maqcd | How does the United States Treasury Department know how much money to produce, printing notes and stamping coins, each year? | How do they take in account people losing paper notes, accidentally throwing change away, destroying money, storing money for decades, etc. How does the Treasury Department calculate how much money to create every day, month, year? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2hc1d"
],
"text": [
"The Treasury does not know how much cash they need to create. They are told by someone else called the Federal Reserve Bank how much to create. People and businesses don't like to have too much cash laying around because it could be lost or stolen and you have to physically hand it to someone to use it. So they give their cash to a bank to hold for them. Banks don't like to have a lot more cash than their customers ask for in their vault because they can't do anything useful with it. They send extra cash they don't need to the Federal Reserve Bank. If they're running low, banks ask the Federal Reserve Bank to send them cash. The Federal Reserve Bank looks at the cash they are sent and if it is too old or worn they destroy it but remember how much the bank sent them. Banks have to tell the Federal Reserve how much cash they have and how much they think they'll need in the future based off of customer demand. If the Federal Reserve Bank has more cash on hand in good condition than they think other banks will ask for in the future they do nothing. If banks are telling the Federal Reserve that they expect their customers to need more cash in the future and the Reserve doesn't have enough cash stored up to meet that demand they ask the Treasury to make more."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5mb7y2 | how come spicy foods make your nose runny? Also, how come cold weather causes the same effect? | Always been curious about this. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc29l5b"
],
"text": [
"Two different reasons. Capsaicin as found in most peppers causes a runny nose because it irritates the membrane and mucous production increases to clean itself. Cold air causes a runny nose because cold air tends to be dry air, and lungs need to be wet inside in order to work. So you get a runny nose to keep your lungs wet. In addition to this, wet air from your lungs gets cold as it leaves and condenses into the nose, causing more fluid there on a cold day than on a hot one."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5mbair | There are definitely exceptions to this, but I was talking to a friend recently and we noticed that the phrases "Momma's boy" and "Daddy's girl" are a lot more common than "Momma's girl" and "Daddy's boy". What makes a child more likely to bond to the parent of the opposite sex? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2ey6l"
],
"text": [
"I think you're reading the inference of the phrases incorrectly. The phrases exist because they are exceptions to the norm. A Daddy's Girl is called that because it is worth remarking on(and vice versa) it being assumed that most children latch on to the parent of the same sex, therefore the phrases show a difference from the normal, assumed default."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5mbe6k | Why does soda make the spicy feeling worse after eating something hot? | Sitting here eating some hot wings and drinking soda. The soda seemed to amplify the spicy sensation. Why is this happening? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2atrv"
],
"text": [
"Capsaicin (the chemical that makes stuff spicy) is not water soluble. Drinking water or soda actually just moves the capsaicin around your mouth, spreading it so it's affecting a larger area. Drink something with lots of fat such as milk, as capsaicin is fat soluble, so it will stick to the fat and go down to your tummy."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5mbene | When someone is struck in the testicles, why is the pain often times felt in the abdomen instead of only the point of impact? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2aw74"
],
"text": [
"The testicles are formed inside the abdominal cavity and then drop down prior to sexual maturity. There is a nerve attached to the testicle that runs back into that area."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
5mbfsf | Why do we say that looks aren't important when we actually get attracted more by looks than personality? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2apz9",
"dc2c0a3"
],
"text": [
"We get initially attracted by looks, for sure, but they aren't enough on their own for most people. Neither is personality, of course. It is oversimplifying to say looks aren't important. But it is also oversimplifying to say we are more attracted by looks.",
"It's called \"lying\" and people do it to be polite. Those who have inadequate looks stay single for years or otherwise are settling for others who also are very unattractive. That's how the honest truth really is."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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]
} | [
"url"
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|
5mbhgi | Why does hot water feel significantly hotter on my face than on other parts of my body? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2bchl"
],
"text": [
"A more sensitive and dense pattern of nerves and minute vascularisation in your face. Your back/thigh/arm doesn't have the same amount or type of nerves as your face. Your head is highly vascular as well, and is the warmest appendage from the core. You regulate your skull temperature quicker to keep your brain in its happy stasis. Feeling hotter heat on your face is a sensory warning to protect your noggin."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
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|
5mbqpn | Can you sneeze in your sleep? | If so, why? If not, why not? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2d4j2"
],
"text": [
"Totally. And it can wake you up out of a dead sleep. Reason? Any number of reasons, something tickling your nose, allergies, respiratory infections."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
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5mbrg7 | If black coffee and diet pop are mostly water, why do they not hydrate the body? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2dasa",
"dc2dcds"
],
"text": [
"They *do* hydrate the body. They contain caffeine which is a mild diuretic (makes you urinate) but overall they do hydrate.",
"In general, they *do* hydrate you. Just less so than pure water, because caffeine is a diuretic (i.e. a chemical that makes you pee more than normal), so you urinate out more of the water content than you would for plain water (or something non-caffeinated). What *will* dehydrate you are strong alcoholic beverages, since alcohol is also a diuretic, and something with high alcohol content can make you pee out more water than the drink contained."
],
"score": [
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
5mbs3o | Why does prolonged screen time make me feel so drained? | I loooove reading stuff on Reddit and the interwebs. I'm constantly looking things up and reading on my smart phone or computer. You can learn so many things with the internet. The more time I spend in front of a screen reading,gaming or whatever, the more I feel like complete shit. If I have a really slow day at work where I'm on my phone piddling around most of the day, I will feel drained and irritable afterward. It's not a tired feeling either it's more of just being mentally drained. Is it something to do with electronics or is it because my brain is processing so much information? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2eqgt",
"dc2gs3g"
],
"text": [
"A lot of the tiredness comes from your posture. When we sit in front of a screen (or lay down in the same posture for a long time), our muscles strain and tense up. There needs to be movement in our muscles for proper blood flow. The strain in muscles is why we feel tired.",
"It's mostly because you're not moving, not drinking water, and you're doing a lot of shallow task switching. Not moving lowers your energy level, and the task switching (versus getting immersed in a conversation or a project) makes your mind work hard with no specific sense of accomplishment, sort of like driving in traffic. Or listening to a lecture where the teacher is bouncing back and forth from topic to topic and you're struggling to keep up. Same situation: no physical movement to keep the blood flowing, and lots of cognitive effort with no reward."
],
"score": [
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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} | [
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5mbt5s | How come soldiers today don't wear full armour that covers their entire body? Knights were able to move easily and with todays technology making a soldier bulletproof should be easy. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2du1x",
"dc2gn76"
],
"text": [
"You are incredibly mistaken on how easy it would be to make a soldier bulletproof. When you shoot someone they suffer bruised and/or broken ribs even with the hugeass vest and ceramic plates in it. This is assuming the bullet doesn't go through and cause them a really nasty injury if not death. The technology to make a soldier bulletproof does not exist, and by the time it does guns will be advanced enough to go through it anyway. And then you get into the issue that it would be hot as hell inside a full body suit, not to mention very expensive. In short it can't be done, especially not in a cost effective way.",
"Combat veteran and police officer here: For one, knights did not move around easily. They were mostly mounted on horseback. You could put a soldier in head-to-toe armor, but he wouldn't be able to physically move. The ceramic SAPI plates that US military personnel wear weigh about 30 lbs. On top of that, you've got a helmet, weapon, ammunition, and whatever gear you need for that mission. Going out on a routine patrol, you'll probably be carrying about 150+ lbs of gear on you in total. So there's a balance. You protect the vital organs, and train hard to avoid getting shot in the first place. On top of this, there's nothing \"bulletproof\" that a human can wear. You will still be injured if you get shot, and nothing protects against all types of ammunition."
],
"score": [
12,
8
],
"text_urls": [
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} | [
"url"
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|
5mbv01 | Why are Credit Ratings Agencies Private For-Profit Institutions? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2e3u3"
],
"text": [
"credit ratings aren't related to the government. it's a for-profit institution that benefits other for-profit institutions (lending banks). credit bureaus don't work for you the individual, they sell your rating to the banks."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
5mbvcp | Why do people breathe harder as they get fatter? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2e8qk"
],
"text": [
"Bigger body. More places for blood. Blood needs oxygen. More breathing. Same goes for bigger muscle guys too."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5mc1ha | Why does a goldfish die when you transfer him form muddy water to clean water ? | I understand it's an environmental shock, but I'd like to know what happens on a biological level for that fish to die when it's brought to an environment that should provide everything it needs. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc2fco2"
],
"text": [
"fish usually die because the chemistry of the water is significantly different. temperature, ph levels, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite levels, any other chemicals in the system. it's rarely a matter of mud vs clean."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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5mc4hz | Why do Kettle chips get different bags? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I haven't noticed that, but it's probably meant to make you think you're buying a premium product...",
"All part of the marketing. Brands want to have a point of difference. If Kettle is the exact same as another brand, what reason do you have to buy Kettle?"
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5mc7bw | Why does sunlight bleach/lighten things? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The rays, especially the ultraviolet ones, are breaking the bonds of the molecules of the colored compounds. So they lose their color. It is the more energetic photons, the higher frequency ones, which do this best."
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5mcane | Is there an advantage to using the Imperial System of measurement instead of the Metric System? | To the best of my knowledge, the Metric System is standardised and the conversion to higher or lower measurements is linear; is there a reason aside from tradition, as to why the Imperial system is used? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No advantage to the imperial. The changes are arithmetic only. The metric system being standardised in orders of magnitude makes it significantly easier to remember. It's worth pointing out they are (were?) both standardised. The difference is one is standardised in a much more user friendly way. Look at these two Imperial units list [this] ( URL_0 ) and [this] ( URL_2 ). These are *slightly* different from the ones the US uses, but comparable enough for this (it's a bit like the difference between US English and correct English :P ) Now look at [this]( URL_1 ) This one is much easier to remember.",
"The Imperial system is more closely tied to the size of the human body, and it is easier to measure things by cutting them in half or doubling them than it is to break out a scale.",
"A minor \"benefit\" I've heard mentioned is that a foot is 12 inches which can be divided more readily (2, 3, 4) without needing to resort to fractions. (Note: I am merely passing on what I heard and am not advocating that such a thing is indeed a benefit.)",
"In metric, all measurements are relatable to one another. You can easily determine how many joules of energy you need to raise the temperature of a kilo of water by one degree C, because all of them use base units of kilos, Celsius (Kelvin) & Joules. In the imperial system, however, the only way would be to resort to conversion equations or look up tables, since there are no standardised, relatable units. As someone else pointed out, before the days where we had easy access to a calculator, the imperial system's base in the number 12 would make it easier to divide it up, since 12 is easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, & 6, while 10 has only 2 & 5, with 3 as a very rough approximation. But these days that's no excuse to cling to it.",
"To my knowledge, there is no benefit. We Americans are just stubborn and like to be different.",
"\"United States customary units\" (that's the official name) are used in lots of things worldwide because changing would be inconvenient. Wheel sizes, camera mounting screws, electronic component spacing, are a few. The US continues using them because there isn't a big benefit to changing. Scientists and engineers all know the metric system and use it when it is advantageous. It has been widely taught in schools since the 1970's. Most people just don't care.",
"The advantage is that people are used to it. But in science and engineering, the disadvantages are legion. Converting units and dimensional analysis in metric systems are a snap, but in English units they are a nightmare, at least for me (I'm an engineer, btw). I'm American, and I far prefer to do calculations in imperial and convert back to imperial at the end. It's just easier. Probably my biggest peeve about the imperial system is the slug. The imperial unit for mass, the slug, is basically a formality, and most engineering texts use the concept of pound-mass, where they just take something's weight and divide by gravity, as most things are measured in pounds, not slugs. This may not sound like a big problem, but what it results in is that EVERY SINGLE EQUATION has an errant gravity constant (or lack of one, or one squared, etc) that is different that what I learned, and am used to using. So, when studying for my professional engineering test, every single equation had two variants: Imperial and metric. Thankfully, the PE test took answers in both forms, so I just used metric. Maybe it's just me, but I HATE working with imperial units. I wish we'd get on with the rest of the world and move on to metric, if only for the sake of science and engineering."
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5mcd4v | Why can't helium balloons float upside down? | in case you don't understand what I mean, I have a helium balloon with words on it, but when I grab the balloon and turn it upside down such that the words on it become also upside down, the balloon immediately becomes upright again. I would think that the helium would just cause the balloon to rise up while upside down, but it only ever floats upright. Why? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Gravity attracts heavier objects with more force than lighter objects. For example, if you drop a hammer in water, you will see the cheek sinking first, followed by the handle. That is because the cheek is made of steel and is more dense, therefore, heavier, than the handle, which is made of wood. The same thing is happening to helium balloons, but in reverse. They rise, but the heavier part of the balloon will always be closer to earth, due to gravity. Balloons are designed to be this way, in order to float orderly without entangling. In case you have cheap balloons that need to be knotted at the end, the knot is heavier than the bulk of the balloon. This is because the bulk of the balloon is stretched by the gas inside it, and therefore the rubber is less dense than the knot, which is not stretched. TLDR: think of the balloon as a piece of buttered toast. The butter is the knot and is heavier than the rest of the balloon. The heavy part is always at the bottom."
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5mcjql | What happens to a photon when it hits your retina? | The light from a faraway star takes billions of years to get here, somehow manages to not bump into even so much as a speck of dust, and finally hits your eye and then your retina. What happens to it then? Does it transform into a bit of electrical energy? And how can so little energy travel so far? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your retina has photoreceptors with specialized pigments which get modified by the inciding light. They change in conformation and affect nearby receptors, closing them and stopping a previously active influx of Na+ and Ca2+. Without the entrance of these positive ions, the cell membrane undergoes hyperpolarization (becomes more negative). This change in electrical potential is propagated until it reaches the end of the photoreceptor, upon which neurotransmitter vesicles sit. These neurotransmitters are usually released into the synapse on depolarization (the cell becoming positive), so in this case they will be *less* released. Nevertheless, the postsynaptic cell will detect this *alteration in neurotransmission* and will relay the signal to yet another cell, the ganglion cells. These ganglion cells take the signal to the lateral geniculate nucleus in your pons (part of your brain) which has another neuron that takes the signal to your visual cortex. There is more to it than that. For example, when one photoreceptor receives light, it hyperpolarizes, but it sends signals to the photoreceptors around it so they will do the opposite and depolarize. The neurons in the visual system aren't connected only vertically, but also horizontally, and these patterns are helpful for discrimination of contrast, geometric forms, and movement. Your nervous cells use several ion pumps to keep the electrical resistance greater on the outside of the cell membrane than on the inside. This increases the propagation of the current through the cell with minimal loss. Bigger nerves in your central nervous system also have myelin sheaths, which are layers of fat that make it even more likely that the currents will flow thorugh the inside. Note that not all cells in your retina are sensitive to a single photon, only those in the fovea, the place of highest visual acuity in the eye."
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5mcmua | I imagine that if I were in a position of power I'd be so overwhelmed with my opportunity to serve the people that it'd be all I could think about. How is it that seemingly every politician becomes self serving by the time they reach power? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because they cannot get to that position in the first place without being self serving, at least to some degree. Fully altruistic people never survive in politics long enough to get to any high ranks. Now there are a lot of politicians who have a large dose of altruism, but even these have problems getting to high ranks.",
"Well, you could make some cynical comment about only self-serving people wanting and getting into power in the first place. A different way to look at things would involve look at just how much power a leader really has. Most people in positions of power are only there because of the people who support them. Even the greatest autocratic dictators is beholden to his supporters. they have to keep the people who keep them in power happy. By the time anybody reaches the top they have so many strings attached to them that even the most idealistic person will be forced to do all sorts of corrupt and underhand things just to stay in power. You can't get into power and you can't stay there without being at least slightly corrupt even in a democracy. Power corrupts. That much is true. However the process of attaining power also corrupts just as much as the power itself will."
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5mcqoj | How do we define the age of a meteoroid? (so how old is this piece of rock from space, when it's older than the earth itself?) | After seeing this [post]( URL_0 ) I would have thought someone had already asked this question, because I'm really interested in how the actual method of finding out how old this piece of rock is done. Unfortunately I could not find someone who had asked this, or the answer. Is there anyone here who can explain it to me? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are most likely using Uranium-Lead (U-Pb) dating. There is a mineral called zircon that incorporates uranium while forming, but rejects lead. It is assumed that all of the lead content in the zircon is from radioactive decay. The uranium, specifically U-238 (238 being the mass number for the specific isotope), undergoes radioactive decay until it becomes Pb-206. The half-life for this decay chain is known (4.47 billion years), which means measuring the ratio of Pb-206 to U-238 can be converted to time."
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5mcu4l | How long should food take to journey from the mouth to the bathroom? | The time for me seems to have lengthened over the years and wondered if this is due to the fact that I have IBS and Diabetes. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is called whole gut transit time and it varies from species to species. In humans it can take anywhere from 10-73 hours. This is very person specific and based on personal diet, activity and genetics. For instance, eating a large meal typically induces a bowl movement as your body is preparing for more digestion. I mentioned different rates for different species so here's some fun ones: most birds have a WGT of about three hours and eat more depending on energy requirements or temperature. Tortoises have a WGT of nearly two weeks! Yet eat such poor forage they are essentially always grazing."
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5mcxa6 | fix: What is actually happening when an aquatic animal is said to be able to "hold its breath" for x hours. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not sure how this is confusing. It means the animal doesn't have to come up to the surface to take another breath for that length of time. What exactly are you confused about?"
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5mcypv | Why do you sometimes wake up with a headache if you've slept for too long (i.e. more than 9 hours)? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's usually dehydration. When you go 9 hours or more without drinking water you become dehydrated regardless of whether you're awake or asleep. Try drinking a glass of water before you go to bed and keeping another full glass by your bed so you can drink if you wake up during the night.",
"It could be one of a couple reasons 1. You slept weird. Your head was smooshed or your neck stretched and it gave you a headache 2. You didnt eat or drink while you slept did you? Sometimes when you get hungry or thirsty you get a headache 3. Some people grind their teeth when they sleep. That could give you a headache",
"Headaches are common when you oversleep, and they have a name: \"weekend headaches.\" For some people, it may be related to neurotransmitters. Your body follows a fairly consistent and precise schedule. When you oversleep, you throw your schedule off-balance and it makes your brain and body grumpy, literally. That's also why you feel groggy and a bit out of it when you sleep more than usual. It is also posited to be the result of caffeine withdrawal (you aren't tossing coffee into your face as early as your body expects it) and/or stress (thinking about stuff you left at work, thinking about everything you have to get done over the weekend, etc.). However, there's a lot that we just don't know. Oversleeping often can be a sign of a medical condition or illness, everything from depression to sleep apnea to diabetes to heart problems. And it's pretty bad for health outcomes in general. I mean, certain health websites list death as a complication of oversleeping, and they're not being entirely hyperbolic. Think about talking to a doctor if you regularly sleep more than nine hours a night. The dehydration stuff isn't a full explanation. Sure, you lose water when you breathe and you aren't taking in water while you sleep. But bodies are made to handle sleep--we aren't delicate creatures who wither overnight. Sleeping an extra hour isn't going to cause massive headache-level dehydration unless something is already wrong. If you have a dry mouth, it's probably because you sleep with your mouth open or snore. If you feel thirsty, it's because you haven't had anything to drink for a while. To be frank: if it's something you read on a website that also talks about adrenal fatigue and detoxification, proceed with caution."
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5mczvx | why can't jedis use the force to turn off their opponents lightsaber? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Probably the same reason Vader didn't just force choke Obi-Wan or Luke. A person strong with the force would create a small aura around them, somewhat repelling others using a simple direct force ability on them. Like a bubble pushing against another bubble.",
"For the same reason why you can Accio someone's wand, or can't crush a Jedi's throat with the Force. As a general rule of fiction, stronger wizards are at least partially immune to the more common forms of magical attacks.",
"Wouldn't your opponent just be able to turn it back on using the force as well?"
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5md4gs | Can't you simply guess a PaySafeCard pin since it only contains numbers? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In principle, yes. But how many valid PINs exist at any time? Let's be very optimistic and guess 1 billion. There are 10 quadrillion possible 16-digit PINs, so you have a 1 in 10 million chance of guessing a valid PIN. That puts it in the same ballpark as guessing the winning lottery numbers, and there are probably far fewer than a billion active PINs."
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5md7zt | Why is Uber losing so much money and how can they still afford to be up and running? | Thanks. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Uber is growing under the same strategy and mentality as Amazon - grow as fast as possible, gain as much market share as possible and do so at any expense. In a new market like ride sharing, the biggest and most popular will win in the long run. Profitability may be quarters, if not years, away but the prospect of going public is going to provide investors with real cash value in the form of shares."
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5mdaxu | How are charities able to feed multiple children with small individual donations of $7/day when here (USA) it would be enough for basically 1 maybe 2 children. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"$7 a day can feed multiple people quite easily here in the US, too. Go buy a giant bag of rice, and a few bags of dried beans. That can feed a single person for about $1 - $2 per day. Of course, you have money, and you're not starving, so you're not satisfied with just eating rice and beans.",
"This depends heavily on the charity, so this is in general for very large international charities. You aren'y buying wholesale prices. You're buying from a supermarket or other shop. There may be several different layers between the production of food and you buying it. With each layer the middleman needs to make a profit. On top of that each one often has taxes associated with it. Charities skip all of that and buy direct, tax free. Because they are charities and buy in bulk they can sometimes even secure discounts. Charities often don't have the same wage pressure other places do either. People are willing to either volunteer or be payed very low for their work. The combination of those two reduce the greatest costs businesses have: Wages, taxes, products. That cost saving is reflected in the feeding cost per person.",
"Food Banks can buy in bulk. Food Pantries and Soup Kitchens get more for their money and feed more people.",
"Food prices vary from country to country. A pound of rice in the U.S. might cost $1, but in SE Asia it might be the equivalent of 10 cents. Also, they are able to buy wholesale by the truckload rather than individual portions prices. Even in the U.S. while a 3lb. bag of rice at the grocery store might cost $3, a 30lb. bag at Costco might only be $10. Now, buy a truckload that starts at 1/10 the price, and cut out the middleman by buying directly from the producer, and they're paying a few cents a pound. And they are mostly providing cheap, basic staples like rice, beans, corn, etc.",
"You could buy several pounds of dried rice and dried beans for under $1 if you purchase it whole-sale and not from a super market. Considering both of those expand a ton when cooking, it's a very cheap and efficient food source. A pound of rice could be like $0.50 or less, and that could be like 4-5 cups uncooked, which could make 8-10 cups when cooked. That's a lot of rice."
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5mdezf | What happens if an animal who is supposed to hibernate is unable to? | What happens if an animal who is supposed to hibernate during the winter is unable to because of health reasons or even environmental factors (i.e. home being destroyed by forest fire or being snatched out of environment by poachers)? Does its body wear down and fall into a deep sleep regardless of the severe circumstances? Does the animal eventually get over the need to hibernate after pushing through the normal sleep cycle? Does the animal risk death if it doesn't hibernate? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A particular example: brown bears. If the bear doesn't get enough chow to get fat before hibernation, it's likely to wake up in the middle of the winter and go about looking for anything to eat. What you get is a шатун, a \"rocker\", which is willing to kill anything that gets in its way (including armed humans), and is likely to starve to death before spring anyway.",
"[White-nose syndrome]( URL_0 ) wakes up bats during hibernation: \"Hibernating bats awake repeatedly during the winter, burning up limited fat reserves. They often leave hibernation sites in late winter, dehydrated and in search of food, and ultimately dying.\" So, disrupting hibernation is generally a bad thing."
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5mdfbo | How is it possible that steel has a scent? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some metals produce volatile compounds when binding with oils from the human body, such as when they are handled. These can produce a taste or smell (the familiar taste of pennies for instance) even if the metal itself does not have much of either on its own.",
"If I'm not mistaken, the smell of most metals is caused by things on its surface reacting with it. For instance, oils on skin + copper gives the \"penny smell\" (and taste, too!)."
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5mdpi2 | How does stress cause acne? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Acne is predominantly triggered by hormonal imbalances. When you are stressed, your body produces excess stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. Just imagine your computer's available memory being your skin. In order for it to run smoothly, you don't want to clog it up by running a ton of unnecessary programs. In regular use, the computer does its job by allocating memory needed to run programs and allow you to multi-task. But if you try to render a 3D-model, while playing a game at its highest settings, while bitcoin mining, while aggressively compiling that stupid powerpoint with ugly wordart, all at the same time, you stress out your computer's memory. It has a harder time allocating/managing your memory resources, just like your immune system has a harder time managing the resources necessary to clear the acne-bacteria at its normal rate.",
"IANA biologist or doctor, but it is my understanding that stress reduces the effectiveness of the bodies immune system. Acne is caused by bacteria, and if your body is having a harder time fighting that bacteria then it will spread and get worse. Your body does a whole lot of different things at the same time, but it also has the capacity to 'redirect resources' from things that aren't that important towards things that seem to be really important right now. Stress is usually a symptom of your body focusing on something, for example, you have been staying up late and spending all your free time studying for a really important exam. Your body has recognized that you aren't sleeping well, that you probably aren't eating well and that you are using your brain a lot. In response, your body has redirected resources from your immune system to your energy production system so that there is enough energy to keep your brain and body working while you aren't sleeping and eating properly."
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5mdqhe | If a nuclear missile is launched, why can't someone just shoot it down while it is still high in the air? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Conceptually that is possible. However most of the time when we talk about \"nuclear missiles\" we are referring to the concept of an \"ICBM\" or intercontinental ballistic missile. That type of missile fires between continents which means that its most vulnerable time, when it it is first launching, happens deep inside the territory of the nation which is performing the launch. Other people can't shoot it down because it is over the horizon from where they are and nothing they have could get there fast enough even if they could see it. Other stages of the flight are even harder to interrupt. The main cruise of the missile happens in space, a near-orbit curve that can lob the missile halfway around the planet. It doesn't even need engines at this point (hence the \"ballistic\" part) and it is difficult to even spot the object much less get to it. Finally it enters the atmosphere over the target *screaming fast*. Modern missiles can come in at about 7 kilometers per second, which means transitioning from space until they impact their target would take less than 15 seconds. If you want to shoot it down you have to get something to it, and 15 seconds isn't long enough to take a decent dump in your pants much less hit it with a rocket.",
"They go really, really fast. It is like trying to shoot down a bullet with a bullet. There are anti-missile system out there, but they are very complicated, expense and not completely reliable. Any know what is easier then developing an effective anti-missile system? Building more missiles than it can handle.",
"The thing to realize is that, in an actual nuclear war, there wouldn't be a single nuclear missile launched. There would be *hundreds*, all aimed at different targets (and likely multiple aimed at each target). And ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) are *fast*. They actually go up out of the atmosphere into a sub-orbital trajectory, and then streak back down at speeds of about 4 miles **per second**. Hitting even one of those with another weapon is *very* hard to do, and doesn't always work. Hitting dozens of them aimed at a city, for dozens of different cities? Probably no gonna happen.",
"ICBM's are fast, they carry multiple warheads, and they are hard to track. There are so many missiles that the number of missiles required to destroy all of the missiles launched would be very high. Take into consideration that each ICBM carries multiple warheads, it further multiplies the number of anti missile missiles required. Some of the defensive missiles would miss. It would also be very expensive to make and maintain all of the defensive missiles. The best time to shoot down an ICBM would be at launch when all the warheads are still in one place. This would require satellites with anti missiles missiles hovering over the launch areas. There are anti satellite missiles that can shoot satellites down. This is truly an arm's race that for every new offense, a new defence was created or dreamed up. For every new defence, a new offence was created or dreamed. Thus, diplomatic solutions were the only real feasible solutions.",
"That is possible, but very difficult. ICBMs (Inter-continental Ballistic Missiles, aka the big nukes sitting in silos in Montana) are sub-orbital weapons. They fully leave the atmosphere before starting their descent onto the target. 95% of the missile you see only has the job of lifting the warhead. The nuclear weapon itself is contained in a very small reentry vehicle that comes screaming down from space at a ridiculous speed, trailing a giant streamer of superhot plasma behind it. Just tracking something that small going that fast is a very difficult problem. Actually hitting it with another missile is incredibly difficult and is made more difficult by the fact that modern ICBMs carry with them numerous very advanced penetration aids to confuse or decoy intercept systems. This is why early (and current Russian) anti-ICBM systems relied on nuclear interceptors with enhanced radiation warheads to fry incoming weapons with gamma rays and EMP. The problem there is that to intercept the nukes you're setting off hundreds of your own nuclear detonations in the sky above your country."
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5mdt0b | Why do humans laugh in bursts like "Ha ha ha" instead of one long "haaaaaaaaaaa"? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because it's caused by contractions of the diaphragm. The sudden intake or exhale of air causes it to be in short bursts. & nbsp; When your brain thinks something is funny, sends a bunch of happy hormones around your body. You diaphragm spasms, contracting your lungs, the expulsion of air causes you to need to breath, this cycle increases your heart rate to get oxygen to all the important parts of your body, which stimulates the release of endorphins, which increase pain tolerance, and make you happier. Why does it do this? We're not entirely sure. The leading theory is that it's a way to bond with a group (which is an important trait for primates). As laughter is often contagious, when everybody is getting happy hormones, they want to keep the group around.",
"I literally just burst out laughing for this one 😂 like I could hear the different laughters in my head god",
"Can you imagine that? You tell a joke and your friend just screams at you for a full minute",
"I do the \"haaaaa\" laugh, quite often. Family members laugh at my laugh. I would rather know why we pronounce in \"laeff\" when it is spelled \"laugh\". English language is strange."
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5mdxg2 | Is it really important to human in critical condition to stay conscious, and why? | In many action movies we see how paramedics etc. prevent injured person from loosing consciousness, like "Stay with us!" Is it true? Does this improve the prognosis? Why? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Is it true? Does this improve the prognosis? Why?Is it true? Does this improve the prognosis? Why? No, it doesn't help them live. But what it can do is identify health threats which would otherwise be difficult to detect. Someone who has hit their head needs to remain awake because a brain bleed needs immediate attention and is basically undetectable if the victim is asleep. If they are awake you could notice them becoming incoherent and falling unconscious. > In many action movies we see how paramedics etc. prevent injured person from loosing consciousness, In movies allowing your actors to fall asleep in a scene is generally bad for the movie because there is a really limited range of acting they can perform while miming unconsciousness.",
"> It does not. It is used to determine the patients ability to stay conscious. If it doesn't work anymore, the situation has gotten worse. As a side note, this method only tests their response to verbal stimuli. Another method is testing their response to painful stimuli, such as pinching the trapezius muscle or sternal rubs. These allow medics to place a patient on the AVPU scale of alert, responds to verbal, responds to pain, unresponsive. & nbsp; > As for the logic behind \"stay with me bro!\" etc etc it's to keep someone from going into shock and mentally shutting down, usually in a combat/disaster situation. If someone is losing blood and they think they're going to die, shock starts to set in and they get caught in the opposite loop. Instead of calmly fading out they get so jacked up that they are making their injuries worse; i.e. with a lost a limb, going into shock pumps the blood out faster so they're bleeding out faster. So while you're applying a Combat Application Tourniquet, you need to try to calm them down and get them focused on providing buddy aid/self aid and returning fire. If you can get them to calm the fugg down and return fire you can focus on saving the leg or whatever [From a similar question asked before.]( URL_0 )",
"The reasons are many and varied and it is important. Especially in a trauma situation the victims tend to be tight and tense, which is a very good thing since the tightening of muscle groups can cause a vascular constriction that can greatly aid in limiting blood loss. It so happens that in some cases, when rescuers arrive, the injured feel safe and relax, the result is often times not good. Also, as long as the person is awake, the will to survive is helping."
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5mdxu3 | Why is it that major internet service providers are starting to add bandwidth limits? Shouldn't service get better and less restrictive as infrastructure improves? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Major internet service providers are just like any corporation, they're out to make as much money as possible. They charge as much as they can for their product, and spend as little as possible on infrastructure. So, while prices have continued to go up, and new ways are introduced to place fees and fines on the users. ISP have spent very little on upgrading infrastructure over the years. So, as the number of users increase, and the amount of data used by application also increases, ISP's find themselves in a bit of a bind. They haven't made any significant upgrades to their network in a decade, but they have to move all this newly demanded data. The solution, get users to use less data by introducing data caps. This way, you can charge them overages if they use too much, you can continue to add new users, all while raking in profits. As a bonus, now you can put off all those network upgrades because people have cut back on data usage, so there is no additional spending. Network congestion solved, and profits continue to go up. Happy CEO is happy."
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5me209 | How can a touchscreen project black in a power saving way (details on the screen inside)? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"An LCD element is made so it is transparent unless you apply a voltage. When you apply a voltage to the element it is going black. It does not take much power to do this as you only need a voltage and no current. The electricity does not pass through the elements but still affects it. You can get window sized LCD elements that runs on tiny solar cells."
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5meb4s | why do we feel the urge to chew/pick at/mess with sores in our mouth, even though we know doing so will make it worse? | Is there a scientific reason we do this? My brain logically tells me that I should bite at the sore in my mouth, etc... but my body feels the urge to mess with it even though it only worsens the problem. ELI5 why this happens? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Great question! Two important mechanisms: innervation and gate control theory. First, innervation. What's very different from the inside of the mouth and the tongue compared to skin elsewhere in the body (except the fingertips), is that its greatly sensorily innervated! This means it is much more sensitive to physical stimuli. So abnormal sensations, like aphthae, that occur in the buccal mucosa or on the tongue, are brought to awareness much more than stimuli elsewhere. When something is continuously within awareness, it stimulates a response. Which will be you to touch/press on the painful/uncomfortable area. Have you heard of the *sensory cortical homunculus*? It's a cartoon that depicts the size of the brain areas involved in the sensory innervation of different body parts. You should see how big the lips and tongue are on the sensory homunculus, compared to the rest of the body. Google it (not the motor homunculus!). Secondly, the gate control theory of pain. There are different sensory inputs that are each processed slightly differently on neurological level: pain, soft touch, rough touch, temperature and proprioception. What this theory basically asserts is that when there is pain in a specific area of the body, applying non-painful stimuli (e.g. soft or rough touch) to the same body part closes the \"gates\" to painful inputs. Thus, non-painful stimuli can alleviate pain slightly by suppressing its neural conduction! This is also the reason why people are quick to put there hands on painful areas (e.g. hand on forehead when having a headache).",
"It's just the novelty of it. It's something odd and out of place on your mouth and I'm sure it may also be similar to why animals lick their wounds. The mouth *is* the fastest healing part of the body and maybe the constant exposing of damaged tissue to saliva may have a healing/anti-infection aspect?"
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5med4g | Why are we cool with moldy cheese but freak out over moldy bread? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most people I know are not okay with eating moldy cheese unless it's specifically cultured mold such as is found in blue cheese. Molds used in blue cheese are safe for human consumption and enhance the flavor, but they are a specific type of mold. The fuzzy stuff that eventually appears on both cheese and bread tastes horrible and has a risk of triggering an allergic reaction or some other negative reaction. Edit: I can't grammar.",
"The mold on bread is from random spores in the air. The mold on cheese is a specific kind that was used to make the cheese so it's edible. People don't eat just random mold that grew on cheese like cheddar.",
"There's a great program on Netflix called Cooked, they've got a super episode about the relationship between humans and mold/fungus that will make you appreciate both. Check it out!",
"A thing I am not seeing mentioned is mycelium (analogous to roots). In a hard cheese visible mould can be trimmed one inch in on all sides and this will remove the entire organism. In a soft cheese or bread, there is no guarantee that the mycelium has not already spread throughout and thus it is no longer safe for the public and/or you (but do what you want at home). E: - for /",
"At least in my experience, it is because cheese seems much less porous than bread. I can just cut the mold off of cheese and eat what is underneath, where as mold on bread seems to spread to the inside and throughout. Edit: I know this is not really the case, and mold is more than just on the surface. Im just pointing out what we can choose to ignore and what we won't.",
"Think about the density of those two foods. First, you've got a block of cheddar. Got a little mold on it? It hasn't permeated much past the *very* outside of the cheese. You can scrape/cut it off and you're good to go. Now think about a slide of whole wheat bread. It's not really an option to surgically remove the moldy parts, is it? And with all that air, the mold has probably spread further than you can even immediately see. Might as well throw it out.",
"Different kinds of mold. Some bread molds can be deadly, such as [ergot]( URL_0 ).",
"We are cool with a very specific kinds of moldy cheese, carefully cultivated to grow molds that tastes good and are safe for humans. Bread just doesn't keep long enough for this sort of work. If your bread is moldy, it is already getting pretty old.",
"mold is a grouping of many different organisms. some are toxic like black mold that grows in attics. others are not toxic, like bleu cheese mold.",
"White mold: Good stuff. Green mold: You gonna get sick. Black mold: You might die. The white color on brie cheese is actually white mold. In olden days and still alot of cheese were stored so they could mature in caves, because caves are decently steril and they are cold."
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5mefop | What are the main differences between the Canadian government and American government ? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Canada has a parliamentary system, and so they have a prime minister, who is elected from among the parties within parliament itself. In addition, their upper house (the Senate, equivalent to the House of Lords in the UK) is appointed by the government, rather than elected by the population. In addition, like many parliamentary governments, the Canadian system does not have a president as head of state (the nominal head of state is the Queen of the UK). It's important to note that, while the prime minister functions as the head of the government, he technically plays a different role than the POTUS in that he is not also the head of state."
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5mei4l | Why is it that some people don't know how to swim or even float in water? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Part of it might be the fact that your friend in amazing shape - muscle is considerably more dense than fat, and sinks while fat floats.",
"Humans have a breath holding instinct annnnd that's it. Swimming and floating (the latter being kind of a beginners version of the former) are learned skills for us. Despite the aquatic ape hypothesis, we *know* we evolved for a long time or dry, arid savannas, not a lot of call for swimming. Your friend should take a class - it's not *that* hard to learn enough to save yourself (at least to do a good float or something) and may save his life.",
"Our only real evolved instinct is holding our breath. Without basic swimming training most people will flail when submerged in water which causes them to sink in even very salt water. Basically, people need to be taught how to swim in order to swim. Most learn at a very young age at their local pool, river, lake etc but many dont either due to physical, financial or random reasons.",
"Humans don't instinctively know how to swim. Infants have reflexes that imitate swimming motions, and instinctively hold their breath when submerged but they can't keep their head above water or know when to breathe. What seems like instinct to you is simply because you were introduced to it at a young age. Many people don't go in water deep enough to float/swim until later in life. I'm 30, can't float or tread water, and I can barely swim (cover distance) but I plan on taking lessons at the local Y."
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5meqrp | Why do top nutrition advisory panels continue to change their guidelines (sometimes dramatically) on what constitutes a healthy diet? | This request is in response to a report that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (the U.S. top nutrition advisory panel) is going to reverse 40 years of warning about certain cholesteral intake (such as from eggs). Moreover, in recent years, there has been a dramatic reversal away from certain pre-conceived notions -- such as these panels no longer recommending straight counting calories/fat (and a realization that not all calories/fat are equal). Then there's the carbohydrate purge/flip-flop. And the continued influence of lobbying/special interest groups who fund certain studies. Even South Park did an episode on gluten. Few things affect us as personally and as often as what we ingest, so these various guidelines/recommendations have innumerable real world consequences. Are nutritionists/researchers just getting better at science/observation of the effects of food? Are we trending in the right direction at least? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The first commentor has it spot on but I would definitely like to double down on the notion that the science is young. It definitely is, we learn new things every day. When it comes to our bodies there is still a lot we don't know and sometimes we find out that certain cells interact with certain things in ways we didn't realize before. For example my first year of college I took anatomy and phyisology, after the first semester had ended we had to buy a new version of the textbook because some cutting edge genetic information had just been solidified and it was important to our understanding of the body. This filters out into the other sciences as well. Also, sometimes we perform long-term studies that take many years to realize that what we are using/doing is harmful. Take asbestos as an example. We used to use it in *everything* because it was cheap, flame resistant, and had many many other properties that were desirable. It was until much later that we realized that asbestos caused a good deal many health defects in humans and so had to complete revise construction techniques and methods. This also applies to things like nutrition, we find things out after studying long-term effects that don't match with what we already know and have to change it.",
"Food studies scholar here. It mainly depends on where culture stands at the time. If people think that certain things are clean and that health is defined a certain way, then dietary advice will follow. Take bread for example: brown bread used to be considered the stuff peasants ate and it wasn't healthful. In the middle of the 20th century, people thought that white foods were cleaner and therefore healthier. Now, white bread, white rice, and white sugar have been abandoned in favor of brown bread, brown rice, and raw sugar. Peasant foods are now good for you. New science also changes things. As we learn more about how the human body works, we can better judge how food affects the body. Brown fat, for example, did not exist in the imagination in the 19th century, when moderation and bland foods were put forth as better for the body. There are also powerful lobbyists who make their case. Using scientific studies (that they may or may not have funded) they petition to shape how we think about food at the level of public policy. This scholar has a lot to say about the matter: URL_0 . Marion Nestle's book is at the bottom of the list and is quite thorough in its study of how food policy and public stances on nutrition are shaped--and by whom.",
"I studied nutrition for several years before veering off into archaeology. I still have my textbook Nutrition: Concepts and Controversies, and it's that second one you want to focus on. The biggest Achilles heel in nutrition science is politics. Take the case of beef. Several decades ago the (I believe) USDA came right out and said \"eat less red meat,\" in response to sound science, and the beef lobby sued like crazy. The revised advice became \"reduce intake of lipid-rich proteins,\" which is nicely innocuous and also applies equally well to PEANUTS. The fact is the science is still very, very young, and meanwhile the politics of food have deep roots. Every time a new study that's both innovative and objective actually gets funded *and* published it's a goddamn miracle, and that'll be even more true in the next several years. So food officials jump on those studies like lions on a fat gazelle, and that's why things get massively shaken up from time to time. TL;DR - nutrition is a very new science and food is highly politicized, so new information will almost always be pretty game-changing.",
"One additional issue is that nutrition is difficult to study in a controlled fashion. First, unlike testing a drug, where you can give the control group a placebo and the experimental group the active drug, you cannot give a control group no/placebo food. You have to replace the food you are trying to get experimental data on with some other food. Want to test the effects of eating saturated fats? You have to create a control diet that replaces those calories with something else (or you run into another experimental problem where a lower-calorie diet may be producing the results you see), and it's impossible to know the full extent of what replacing those calories does. Do you replace them with unsaturated fats? Carbohydrates? Diets also tend to be very heterogeneous. This can be a problem when people like to compare population-level data (epidemiological study rather than a controlled study). People looked at the \"Mediterranean diet\" and saw people eating more monounsaturated (and some polyunsaturated) fats, but they tended to ignore MANY confounding factors, even things that probably have a significant impact like eating more whole foods rather than processed foods and even differences in total calories. Scientists don't tend to set up highly controlled studies where people all eat the same foods, but rather eat whatever they want (or what they are supposed to eat/avoid) and then report back occasionally, with varying degrees of accuracy. Early research on fats didn't treat trans-fats as a separate category and lumped them in with saturated fats, which may have helped create stigma against saturated fats (although there were a lot of political headaches that go into this history). Finally, different organisms handle different foods and macronutrients differently! Yet people (especially media reporting a new study) will often take results from a mouse study as if it applies equally to humans or other animals. TL;DR nutrition is complex, heterogeneous, and difficult to control in large experiments, forcing us to rely on less rigorous methods.",
"Dietitian here, also formerly worked at the USDA (the people who make the guidelines), also formerly worked as nutrition researcher (the people who do the science). The *science* isn't changing. If you look at all the scientific nutritional evidence in a row, it is going in a very clear direction and not swinging back and forth. More unbiased (well... not biased by big Agra) sources like WHO and AICR and even Kaiser Permanente have nutritional guidelines that are more steady and in sync with each other. The POLITICS are changing. The US Dietary Guidelines are frankly shitty. I sat in on those meetings. Pork people say you can't cut red meat. Sugar people say \"ok you can say reduce grams of sugar but you can't actually say drink less sugar.\" Egg people point to a couple biased studies. Etc etc etc. If you read the recommendations from the committee of experts (the dietary guidelines advisory committee made up of experts in their fields) then the advice is good. Problem is that USDA refused to use most of that info in their published guidelines. Sigh. I was glad to leave that place right after the newest guidelines were released. Also JOURNALISM - they'll take any research with a sensational headline and blast it onto the internet without any consideration of whether or not it is good science or pure shit. I recommend you read \"How Not to Die\" for a nice, easy to understand, entertaining read of the real science. Or watch this video URL_0",
"**RANT** What pisses me off is the food pyramid went from [horizontal rows of foods]( URL_1 ?) and the portions they recommend to [vertical wedges]( URL_0 ) of those same proportions. The only reason a pyramid was chosen was because it's wide at the base and narrow at the top. So the foods you are supposed to have more of are at the bottom and the foods you are supposed to have less of are at the top. By making it into vertical wedges, you defeat the whole point of having a fucking pyramid. It could be the food square, a food circle or a food icosagon if you're just going to negate the shape of the overall object and divide it into unequal wedges.",
"In addition to political issues, which have been well-covered, it's incredibly difficult to study human nutrition for the simple reason that you can't possibly control what someone eats 24/7. Every nutrition study has cheaters. It's not possible to know how they cheated, and therefore every study on the subject is subject to completely invisible skewing of the data. You could lock people in a facility and control what they eat that way, but that'd be unlikely to pass an ethics review. So, nutrition science is flying a bit more blind than other fields.",
"Much of it has to do with the fact that back in the day, sugar lobbies paid off doctors and health officials to make it out like fat is the bad guy. When in fact, it is sugar and carbs which cause most of our dietary problems. The food pyramid we were all taught as kids is complete BS and will give you plenty of problems if you follow it strictly. These days you must research everything on your own if you want real knowledge.",
"Don't discount the effect of powerful food lobbies. The American Egg Board, the US Poultry & Egg Council et. Al. fund a LOT of studies...all of which seem to confirm that eating more of THEIR particular product is good for you. This data is then used by researchers, cited to lawmakers, etc etc. The LESS flattering studies are buried forever.",
"I don't know that the advice necessarily has changed that much. I mean, there's certainly pop science although I think that has a lot more to do with marketing. Things like saying margarine is better than butter for instance. Here's an excerpt form one of my old cookbooks called the Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking. It was published in 1947. This is just a random paragraph from the section on meal planning but this and the rest of the book doesn't sound very different at all from advice you would hear now. \"To reduce small amounts of fat it is only necessary to cut down sharply on concentrated fuel foods (sugars starches and fats), being sure to meet all the other requirements of the basic four food groups. However a reducing diet should include enough fat to curb the appetite and carry a sufficient amount of fat soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids. Otherwise a person is likely to nibble between meals and often food available at such times, especially if one is away from home, are likely to be high in calories. By dieting correctly in this fashion, a new habit of eating will be cultivated which will hold over after dieting is no longer necessary.\"",
"Because it's a bunch of Bullshit pushed through by lobbyists. Anecdotal but I was on a low sugar high fat diet (healthy fats) and I never felt so mentally clear in my life. I could also comfortably get by eating once or twice a day.",
"Love this thread. This reminds me of the geochemist Patterson and his fight to get lead banned from food containers and other products. He was constantly fighting against so called experts who had vested interests. Another thing that royally ticks me off is the serving labels. Companies blatantly getting away with stating that there are 3.5 servings in what is obviously a 1 serving size chocolate bar is ridiculous.",
"The thrust is that we don't really understand human nutrition, and the attempts at doing honest, scientific research on nutrition through the 20th century has been bogged down in prejudice and confirmation bias, as well as good-intentions. For a longer answer, I highly recommend [The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz]. ( URL_0 ) It is an extraordinary piece of journalism about nutrition science through the 20th century. It focuses on how we came to vilify fat of all kinds, but it is extremely illuminating about how nutrition science itself has functioned (and malfunctioned). It clearly explains how the field has become so muddled with information, how it is currently trying to self-correct, and how the reader can be better informed about understanding health claims. Although, I don't strictly think a five-year old could read the book. At least, not your average five-year old....",
"You want super simply advice on what to eat that will out last all these changes? -eat real food -if it had eyes, eat it -if it came from the ground or a plant, eat it -if it doesn't have a food label, it's generally good for you; ie eat primarily single ingredient foods -eat a colorful diet; try 5 colors per meal -eat 6-8 fistfuls of vegetables a day -drink about 1/2 your bodyweight in ounces a day (ex: I'm about 170 lbs. I strive for 85oz of water a day.) - avoid anything that comes from a package as much as possible If you were to follow that advice 80%+ of the time, I'd be surprised if you weren't doing well. Add to that a little exercise, 7.5-9 hours of sleep, some stress management techniques, and a community to belong to and you'll grow to be a centenarian.",
"The quick answer is the science keeps changing, the more bitter answer is that a ton of corporate interest changed official policy for decades. Remember \"breakfast is the most important meal of the day\", and \"cereal x is part of a well balanced diet\". They went past slogans, they did \"funny\" research and pressured government to literally build the food pyramid based on it. Now people are questioning, so more actual science is happening, so things keep changing. As for flip flops, that's often media sensationalized. Gluten is somewhere between non-reactive and deadly to each person. You and I are on that continuum somewhere. My wife is mild celiac, she essentially gets the effects of food poisioning if she \"gets glutened\" as she puts it. Me, i get a big sluggish, but i had it for every meal so i didn't notice. So people said wait a minute, gluten could hospitalize that guy there, it must be terrible for me!! Then it was a panic, and some people went off gluten and went... wow i do feel a little better, and swear by it, but it's just that they're 2's on that nonreactive to death scale and someone else might be a 0, where's perfectly fine. Hence the swings",
"I do adherence for a nutritional research study. Basically I look at the subjects food journals and record if they're eating their prescribed amount of calories and the right amount of the food we're researching. I've looked at thousands of weekly journals and it's very rare that people actually adhere to these guidelines. From what I've seen, it's extremely difficult to maintain a viable control group and almost impossible to isolate a variable. Most of the subjects shouldn't even be apart of the study anymore, but sites are momentarily motivated to keep them on. I've lost all confidence in the validity of nutritional studies.",
"It's harder to control in experiments. Nobody would volunteer to stay in a facility 24/7 long enough to study so it's all self reported. And people almost always underestimate things and they forget snacks they eat through out the day. The show Secret Eaters touches on why self reporting is so inaccurate.",
"Better and newer scientific studies can lead to changing guidelines, but lobbying efforts can also play a role. Also a lot of it is translating nuance to general guidelines that the average person can understand, not an easy task. The Harvard School of Public Health has a great website called [Nutrition Source]( URL_0 ) which has detailed nutritional guides and nutritional information; it's all based on science.",
"I know I'm late, and /u/pctech86 mostly has it covered, but I wanted to add one more part to why I think these guidelines struggle: These sorts of guidelines tend to just offer a one-size fits all set of rules for everyone, in the interest of simplicity. Even though nutrition is still an immature science, we know that this is simply not the case - Nutrition is an individual trait that is as unique as the rest of our body. Some people will be okay with more of something than others. We all know people who eat a tonne of fast food and have no problems, whereas some people eating the same will become obese or have other troubles. Trying to fit everyone into a single set of guidelines will never fully capture proper nutrition, and will help lead to this constant pivoting in nutritional recommendations.",
"The guidelines change based on which industry is greasing the wheels. It used to be that fat is bad when the sugar industry paid for research. Now sugar is the enemy, and who knows in the next 5 years maybe we'll \"discover\" all protein is carcinogenic. All of this exists to mask a simple a truth. There is no obesity epidemic. There is only a shit food and sedentary lifestyle epidemic. Our grandparents didn't need crossfit or paleo diets to keep in shape. They ate healthy food and moved a lot. But it's hard to solve those problems now, when all the food you can buy in a supermarket is basically poison and all the jobs involve sitting on your ass in front of a computer.",
"Most Diet tips are scams. Listen to this: all you have to do it eat at or below your maintenance caloric intake (about 2500 calories or less per day for most people depending on body weight and metabolism) and make sure you balance the three macro nutrients, (fat, proteins, carbs) evenly balanced in thirds is good or even better higher protein and fat and only about 20% carbs. (Yes liquid sugar drinks like soda and juice count as carbs) but other than that you can eat anything, as long as you're below the maintence intake, when you go above your body gets into a state of caloric excess and stores the extra stuff as fat. Congratulations you just beat every diet fad, pill, fat burner, schedule, etc. on the planet. Make sure you include good vitamin rich food as well for good micro nutrients and better health."
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5metlf | Please explain the Star Trek Stardate calendar system. Is it nonsense or based on something scientifical? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the original series the stardates were made up just to sound futuristic. There have been some attempts to explain them, but the original writers didn't have a secret code. Starting with The Next Generation, they standardized them. The first number (4) represented the four in 24th century. The second number was the season of the show. TNG originally went for 7 seasons, but of course there was DS9 and Voyager meaning this number would go over 10, so that increased the the first number from a 4 to a 5. if you hear the first two numbers of the stardate, you get a good idea how many years since the TNG premier. The last group of numbers 000-999 was the progress of the show through the season. The decimal point was what part of the day it was.",
"/r/DaystromInstitute or even /r/startrek would be a much more accurate place to get information and an explanation than ELI5.",
"It's entirely nonsense. In the original *Star Trek* series, there are even a couple notable backlogs and duplicates. In *Star Trek: The Next Generation*, the writer staff had a guy dedicated on ensuring each use of a stardate was sequential. The fan base *may* have invented a calendar system around it that makes some sense, but I don't think any actual system is officially endorsed into the cannon."
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5mexjc | Why do some people have an overwhelming urge to playfully bite newborn babies? "I just want to eat them up!" etc. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's called [cute aggression]( URL_1 ) and it's due to [crossed 'wires' in your brain trying to handle the extreme emotional response]( URL_0 ) to cuteness.",
"In my culture it's pretty common for people to say \"He/she is so cute that I want to kick them in the face!\" Edit: Since everyone is itching to know what I am, southeast Asian, Lao, born and raise in the US.",
"In a similar vein is a feeling known as \"the call of the void\". It's that uncomfortable urge you get to jump when you near the edge of a tall building, or that super weird image that pops into your head of stabbing someone with the big knife laying on the table. There are several theories, but the one that makes the most sense to me is that it is an evolutionary safety mechanism. By calling these disturbing images to the forefront of your conscious mind, your subconscious is keeping you alert and aware of potential environmental dangers. The urge to jump from the building makes you hyper aware of the edge you are near. The image of stabbing people is your brain's fucked-up way of saying \"Sharp thing over there! Don't get careless!\" The urge to bite or squeeze a small, cute thing may be evolution's messed up way of calling attention to the fragility of those cute things. We get a weird urge to squeeze babies and kittens to death, but (at least for most normal folks) this urge is followed immediately by a feeling of distaste or disgust at our own thoughts - our brains have successfully alerted us to the fact that this tiny young thing is delicate and needs protection...and has done so in a super fucked up way because nature is terrifying.",
"Good smelling and looking food stimulates the reward part of the brain and makes you want to bite things. Good smelling and cute looking babies also stimulate the reward part of the brain, which makes you want to bite things. Another idea is that playful biting is a way for animals to show trust. URL_0",
"I like to \"nibble\" (kisses) on toes because it tickles them. My 3 yr old granddaughter once warned my 2 yr old grandson (different family) to \"watch your toes when Grandma's hungry.\"",
"[Here]( URL_0 ) is a fun podcast I found a while back on How Stuff Works about this very thing.",
"It's the fat and squishiness of babies. Their skin is so soft and ever so rounded, that it's calling you to bite it. You see a little foot, and you just know it's soft, and it's small enough to fit in your mouth, so you're compelled to bite it. You see fat little cheeks and you know it'd be tender, so you want to bite it. It's a sensation. It's like a stress ball that you can't help but to squeeze.",
"For me it's because the baby's reaction is so amused. He laughed the hardest when dad \"gobbles his belly\" I tried raspberries first but that wasn't amusing until year one or so. But nibbling/biting was a hit early on.",
"Serious: Is this a deeply hidden subconscious attempt to share germs with the baby to strengthen it's immune system? Could have survival value. Is it any different from wanting to bite your lover?"
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5meyqb | What is the uncomfortable feeling after laying on one side of your body for too long, making you want to switch sides? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Doctor here. Essentially when you lie on one particular side, you put pressure on bony prominences, and this pressure, actually makes it more difficult for blood to penetrate the skin on the pressure areas. That feeling is essentially your body telling you that your tissues under pressure are suffocating. You then instinctively move and think nothing of it. However, this can be a problem in patients with reduced mobility (cerebral palsy, motor neurone disease, even just frail elderly patients) and these patients need to be physically turned in order to prevent nasty pressure sores."
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