Dataset Viewer
query
string | positive_document
list | negative_document
list | prompt
string | source
string |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Why do I faint when I see lots of blood from a serious injury?
|
[
" There's a short answer, and there's a long answer.\n\nThe short answer is that nobody knows why that causes you — or any of the many people like you — to faint. It's a complete mystery.\n\nThe longer answer, though, is that the *mechanism* by which you faint is well understood. It's called *vasovagal syncope.* Syncope is the medical term for a transient loss of consciousness; if you black out for no external reason and recover seconds or minutes later on your own, that's syncope.\n\nThis particular type of syncope is called vasovagal, *vaso* referring to the vascular system and *vagal* indicating a relationship to the vagus nerve, an important nerve in your chest.\n\nWhen it happens, your body's *parasympathetic* nervous response ramps up, while your *sympathetic* nervous response is diminished. In broad terms, the parasympathetic response is responsible for what they call \"feed and breed\"; it handles things like digestion and sexual arousal, stuff that happens to us when we're relaxed and feel safe. The sympathetic response handles what people commonly call \"fight or flight,\" which happens when your body is spurred into attentiveness and readied to expend a ton of energy in a short burst.\n\nYour parasympathetic and sympathetic responses are normally kept in balance, ebbing and flowing more-or-less in a rhythm. Your parasympathetic response makes you want to lay down and sleep at night, and your sympathetic response makes you want to wake up and be active in the morning.\n\nBut the vasovagal response upsets the balance of these two systems. It suppresses the sympathetic response and amplifies the parasympathetic response. This has several effects, but the ones that matter most are the *cardioinhibitory* effect and the *vasodepressor* effect. Basically, your heart rate slows down and your blood pressure drops. As a result, your brain is (mildly and temporarily) deprived of both oxygen and glucose, and you lose consciousness.\n\nBut as soon as you're out, the vasovagal response fades away, and your parasympathetic and sympathetic responses reassert themselves. Your BP and heart rate both come back up, and you wake up again, usually just seconds later.\n\n*Why* this happens is a bit of a mystery. Evolutionary biologists occasionally throw out the notion that the vasovagal response to stress is in some way an adaptation, that it's like a \"play dead\" reflex that deters predators … but nobody really buys that as anything other than amusing speculation. Too many things about our bodies just *work they way they do* and have no reason or rationale behind them.\n\nSo the upshot is that the sight of blood triggers your vasovagal response, which in turn triggers your \"sleep time now\" reflex, and you faint. As soon as you do, your body returns to its normal state, and you wake up again. The only danger is that you might bump your head on your way down, but aside from that, it's both harmless and *entirely* within the normal range. Not everybody gets the vasovagal response from the sight of blood, but many do, and *everybody* gets it sometimes, regardless of individual differences in trigger stimuli."
] |
[
" ELI5: When you are standing up, gravity pulls your blood down. When you faint, your body goes limp and the blood gets to your head more easily.\n\nELI15:Say you are walking around, then something happens, like you get a stroke, or your blood pressure drops rapidly due to blood loss, or any situation where blood can't get to your brain. As a medic, if someone is going into shock, we elevate their feet about a foot above the patient's head so the blood can get to their head. This will get the much needed blood to the brain as brain cells (generally) don't grow back. \n\nAlso, thats why if you see someone faint, then they \"wake up\" only to stand up and faint again. (Blood pressure in their head drops when they stand up). And if someone faints in a wheelchair... well they are screwed.\n\nEDIT: To answer your question... There is no kill switch for the brain. Its when the blood pressure drops too low and your brain *can't* function. That's why Air Force Pilots must be trained because the maneuvers they do go up to really high Gs which would cause MOST people to black out. \n\nAnd I think the only benefit of fainting is to get more blood to your head.",
" Yes you faint because you're brain gets less blood, but that happens because of a sudden drop in blood pressure. This sudden drop in blood pressure is a defense mechanism for when we are injured to keep us from bleeding out. For some people this mechanism is more sensitive and they'll faint at the sight of blood without being injured."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How do lymph capillaries collect the lymph?
|
[
" They are the lowest pressure in the system. They have no elasticity like arteries. Muscle movement raises the pressure outside them temporarily. So they fill.From there they journey and collect. It is not an active process. \n\nIf an IV infiltrates the skin turgor increases. Slowly this will drain away through the lymph channels. There are no little pumps working away. It is a drainage system."
] |
[
" Your heart pumps blood away from itself in arteries, these branch out into narrower arterioles, and these branch out into narrower still capillaries, which exchange material with the cells of your body. The capillaries then join back up into wider venules, which join up into veins, returning the blood to start the cycle over.\n\nBasically, veins and arteries are simply the largest branches of a huge network.",
" Cold causes the capillaries in the nose to shrink, squeezing lymph and other fluids out into the nasal cavity and sinuses."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Employers of reddit: Why do you put "minimum work experience of X years required" into entry-level job postings?
|
[
" I once saw a job posted online as an \"entry-level\" position for which, between 10 different categories of experience required to apply, they expected applicants to have a total of 60 years' worth of experience. I may be wrong, but I think the reason why this is done is simply to cut down on the number of applicants. You have to imagine that, for every job posted with the entry-level designation and no particular required experience, the HR department would have thousands of applications to sift through."
] |
[
" Used to work in recruitment. Now, what one needs to bear in mind is that recruiters will state what they *want*, but that's not necessarily what they'll *get*. Even they know this. But they pitch high, hoping that someone that fits that description applies for the job. They will get a bunch of people without experience applying too, and they may very well interview them and hire then. \n\nThis is often the case, but not always. A more cynical interpretation is that the company is looking for an experienced recruit but paying them on an entry-level salary, at least in their own scales. As far as that company is concerned, all entry-level positions require experience.",
" The job is going to pay an entry level wage, but managers selfishly want someone who is way overqualified and will be able to overperform for that low wage. They think those overqualified people won't need as much supervision. \n\nI hate this practice, but I had a manager that purposely put a wishlist of requirements in job descriptions. She put \"Adobe Suite\" in every job listing, even when it had absolutely nothing to do with the position, because she just wanted someone in the department to have that skillset. When I was promoted, she posted my old job, and I called her thinking there had been a mistake. I told her I've had this job and I don't qualify to apply! She had years of budgetary experience, managerial experience, and Adobe Suite listed. None were needed for the position. \n\nI personally HATE this practice, because it completely distorts who you get applying. Perfectly qualified people don't apply, because they don't have those unrelated skills. No one that overqualified is going to be happy at that pay, at least not for long. And, in my experience, a lot of the people who apply when they don't have those bogus qualifications, also don't have some of the actually necessary ones - they have a bigger tendency to overestimate their qualifications in general."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How does an LED bulb work? How is it different from fluorescent?
|
[
" When you run a current through a gas like mercury, it shoots off ultraviolet light. If you put a phosphorescent coating next to the gas, it absorbs the ultraviolet light and glows with visible light. That's how fluorescent lighting works. \n\nIncandescent lighting is slightly different, it's called black body radiation. Essentially the heating of an object causes it to give off energy in the form of light. \n\nLEDs use semiconductors, where a controlled number of electrons move through a piece of material with an excess of electrons into a material with \"holes\" or places for electrons to go. The free electron material generally has them floating at higher energy level than in the material with \"holes\" so when the current flows and electrons cross the junction they drop energy levels, emitting the photons or light. It's called the photo electric effect.",
" LEDs work because electrons and holes are created when a current is passed through a semiconductor material. The resulting interaction of the electrons and holes produces photons. \nFluorescent bulbs are an ionized gas producing UV light which hits a phosphor coating that brightens the room with the familiar light we know."
] |
[
" As far as I'm aware, it's simply that LED bulbs have a much smaller light-emitting region, so for a given brightness the light density is much higher. Fluorescent and incandescent bulbs tend to be frosted for consistency and aesthetics, whereas with LED bulbs you're often looking straight at the diode itself. There are frosted LED bulbs: I'd expect those to give you roughly the same experience as staring at the other two.",
" Incandescent lights work by heating up a strip of metal until it's hot enough to glow. This uses a lot of electricity and produces a lot of heat, both of which are bad things.\n\nFluorescent lights work by adding energy to mercury gas. The mercury stays high-energy for a little bit, then loses that energy in the form of invisible ultraviolet light. This light, in turn, hits a special coating inside the lightbulb which glows under UV light (much like your teeth glow under a blacklight). This is more efficient than incandescence, but still inefficient since there are so many steps to the process. It is not heat-based, so that is an advantage over incandescent lightbulbs. It requires mercury, which is toxic. Finally, it is not a steady process, but a series of very fast zaps of electricity, which produces a flicker (but the flicker is so fast that the human eye can't normally detect it). \n\nLEDs basically work the same as fluorescent lights, but cut out some steps. Instead, they directly send energy to a substance which produces visible light, instead of UV light like mercury does. With fewer steps involved, this is much more efficient, and can be kept \"on\" steadily instead of flickering like a fluorescent bulb."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why does touching something really hot sometimes feel cold for a second?
|
[
" Or vice versa, touching something really cold feels really hot. \n\nI believe it has to do with how your pain receptors work. First you touch something with a temperature difference which causes pain, and the pain you sense is just that. Pain. The neurons associated with pain will fire first. \n\nYou have to be above a certain threshold for this to hold true do, but as soon as you touch something that has a temperature that causes you pain, you will feel the pain and not the temperature first."
] |
[
" For the same reason why when you stick your hand in really really cold water, the first instant feels like fire hot. It's a sudden shock to your nerves and impulses to your brain saying \"HOLY COW WHAT THE HECK DONT TOUCH THIS.\" The nerves in your hand didn't have enough time to register heat in that fraction of second you first made contact, just really really stimulus.",
" The answer is actually that you're feeling different volumes of air. \n\nWhen you exhale with your mouth wide open and your hand near your face, you feel your hot breath. \n\nWhen you hold your lips together, you increase the air speed exiting your mouth, and this is actually pushing ambient air over your hand, and you feel cold because the pushed ambient air is removing heat from your hand due to forced convection. \n\nIf you bring your hand close to your face, and blow air with your lips close, you can feel the hot air that's actually coming from your mouth."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
What is the "reptilian" part of the brain and why is it labeled as such?
|
[
" The reptilian brain, also known as the basal ganglia, is the part of your brain that keeps your heart beating, lungs breathing, basic motor control, and other automatic, reflexive, and instinctive behaviors. These parts are very similar among reptiles, birds, and mammals, and to a lesser degree, amphibians and fish. This indicates those features were present in a common ancestor.\n\nThe cerebrum is responsible for thinking and reasoning and is the part that becomes much larger and convoluted in more intelligent animals.",
" A better way to say it would be \"This is the part of your brain that has changed very little and still has much of the same function as the equivalent area in other amniote tetrapods (everything that shares a common ancestor with both reptiles and us).\"\n\nThese are the areas of your brain that accomplish every deep, basic functions of homeostasis and very basic information processing. They haven't changed that much because they are already very well adapted for their complex function, and other parts of the brain have seen more changes in response to differing needs in organisms (in humans, for example, we have radically more cerebrum with a lot of folds to increase surface area because that's the primary area where our abstract and complex thoughts occur.)"
] |
[
" Reptiles (Reptilia) no longer exist. The group (clade) is called sauropsida now. You can see it come from saurian who mean lezard in grec. Your question is legitimate because it's exactly why we switched the classification.\nSo vulgarized, yep, birds are reptiles or at least, they are related by an common ancestor.",
" The left hemisphere of our brain generally controls the right side of our body, and vice-versa for the right hemisphere. \n\n\n\n\nThe brain can be divided into three sections. The R-Complex, the Limbic system, and the Neocortex. \n\n\n\n\nThe smallest is the R-Complex situated where the spine connects to our brain, overlapping that is the Limbic system, and overlapping that is the Neocortex. \n\n\n\n\nReptiles only have the R-Complex, it is sometimes referred to as the lizard brain. Mammals have both the R-Complex and the Limbic. Humans have the Neocortex. \n\n\n\n\nThe Neocortex is where language develops. Specifically in the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere focuses more on spacial awareness and motor control. A baby's language center develops faster than it's spacial awareness, an evolutionary advantage supported by how long human babies are allowed to develop before having to fend for themselves. \n\n\n\n\nSince the left hemisphere has more development early on than the right, babies tend to use their right hand more than their left."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why is anal extremely painful to some, "weird" feeling to some, and pleasurable to others?
|
[
" I think any person can experience pleasurable anal, it is just that a lot of people don't know what they're doing. You can't just raw dog it and shove your dick right up there for the first time and expect the other person to enjoy it. The anus needs to be played with and stretched until it can accommodate a penis. Most importantly of all you need to use lubrication. There is also a huge difference in pleasure between men and women because men have a prostate.",
" It really isn't painful to anyone, just extremely uncomfortable. It can be pleasurable to *every* male person, simply by stimulating the prostate.\n\nIf you are anxious about it and tense it will be more uncomfortable in the rectum.\n\nA majority of it is psychological but physiological differences including proper lubrication, size of anus and the object entering it, and stress levels.\n\nBut I think its safe to assume on any given night after a glass of wine and you are feeling relaxed, a lubed up finger in the butt can be fun for everyone."
] |
[
" Recent MSc neuropsychology graduate.\n\nThere is no single answer to the question as the human mind varies so greatly between individuals in how it copes with life experiences. Additionally, there are many types of fetishes, each with their own unique triggers to how one became enthralled in them. However, I can make some rudimentary associations. \n\nMild or \"vanilla\" sexual fetishes such as light pain stimulation, or stimulation of taboo body areas (anal regions) may arise from the simple discovery of pleasure when one experiences these sort of stimulations. They may occur naturally through self exploration or via an adventurous partner who pushes our line of comfort. In this case, an individual realize that they enjoy this sort of stimulation, and continue to explore this sort of fetish on themselves, and on others. The knowledge that a specific stimulation on one's own body causes pleasure, also produces pleasure when we provide the same sort of stimulation onto a partner. Thus, someone who likes to get their toes sucked, may also experience pleasure from sucking their partners toes. \n\nFetishes of attraction, such as attraction to older/younger partners, cosplay and incest seem to stem from the natural attraction an individual may have towards that source/person. For example, the common attraction to MILFs stems from the fact that men are naturally attested to their own mothers as children, and this may develop into an attraction for friends mothers, and eventually into an attraction for all mothers/older women. The same can be said about a \"sexy\" cartoon character which then stimulates attraction towards people in costumes for example.\n\nThe last type of fetishes will discuss are more hardcore, such as slave/dom relationships, cuckold, and more extreme pain and exhibition fetishes. It seems that these more extreme pleasures stem from the childhood, whether it was parental/social abuse which led to repeating the same patterns as an adult in the bedroom, or non-present parents which led to more extreme strategies to gain affection from future partners. Again, we are all human and differ widely. What may be a destructive pattern for one person, may be a form of pleasure another person stumbled upon.\n\nThere is alot more to talk about but its time for bed.",
" The anus and rectum are full of sensitive nerve endings. To some people they feel good when stimulated. \n\nMore importantly, in men, the prostrate can often be stimulated via anal penetration (which most men find pleasurable; often equating it to a woman's gspot). In women, pressure through anal penetration can reach their actual gspot through the tissues of the body. It also may impart a similar sense of \"fullness\" that one gets from traditional vaginal penetration. \n\nA buttplug is often shaped so that the part on the actual anus is thinner. This allows a larger object to be inside the body without putting continuous stress on the sphinkter. The flared end on the outside prevents it from moving too deeply into the which can be quite dangerous as, unlike a vagina, there is not an \"end\" to the area inside the body."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How is it that a very small wire sliver in my fingertip can hurt a lot, especially when moved, but a relatively larger sliver of wood sometimes won't hurt at all?
|
[
" The wire could have been much sharper than the dull piece of wood. Every movement jolted the sharp wire into cutting up your finger while the edge free wood was relatively stable. \n\nIt's kinda like the difference between getting shot with an arrow vs a musket ball. The arrow makes a smaller hole in your body, but every movement causes the sharp edges to tear your apart. The ball will cause a much larger hole butis more likely to wedge itself firmly inside you."
] |
[
" It's smaller, so the pressure doesn't get distributed across your skin. Smaller, sharper objects tend to hurt more. It doesn't help that LEGOs are almost completely edges.",
" iirc, it's because while a scrape is usually larger in surface area, it just scrapes off a few layers of skin. While a papercut will cut farther down to expose nerve endings which is why it hurts more than a scrape."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why are inner cities so universally poor to the point where "inner city" is a synonym for poor?
|
[
" You may be taking \"inner center\" too literally... many big cities do have a prosperous, nice center city where businesses, government agencies, and higher end housing is located. Elsewhere within the city proper there are poor areas, and then surrounding those are wealthier suburbs. \n\nFor example, Chicago's Loop business district is gleaming and full of skyscraper office buildings and flanked by parks and museums. The neighborhoods directly to the South (South Loop), West (West Loop, River West), and North (River North, Gold Coast, Streeterville) are all nice/expensive residential areas, and the nice areas extend well north (Old Town, Lincoln Park, Lakeview) and northwest (West Town, Wicker Park, Bucktown, Logan Square) from downtown. Further west of downtown and much of the South side of Chicago are what you'd consider to be \"inner city\" with poverty, crime, gangs, etc.",
" Well first of all, I suppose that your \"universal\" vision is in fact a US model where the city center, beside the [CBD]( _URL_0_), can have several boroughs poorer than the suburb.\n\nThis model is far from universal as the European cities have their \"inner city\" often overlapping the historical center that can be rather weatlhy, if not the wealthiest part of the city."
] |
[
" Where money and wealth are considered moral goods, and so the poor are considered moral failures, the wealthy tend to stigmatize the poor. This keeps the poor quite poor indeed.\n\nSo there is a vicious cycle of trying to keep the (ugly name for any racial or social out-group here) \"in their place\" offset to the tune of surprise that the economy isn't doing better.\n\nMeanwhile wealthy, middle-class, and even \"barely comfortable\" lower-middle classes don't want to move their families and businesses into some decaying hellhole.\n\nAnd there's nobody in that decaying hellhole to buy most products anyway so there's no impulse to move in nice stores that sell nice clothes and good food.\n\nIn the blue parts of blue states - and I phrase it that way because, in fact, most states and places are actually \"purple\" - suficent money is spent year-after-year to keep the schools reasonably funded and to socially de-stigmatize the poor and give the out-groups resources they need to bootstrap their lives into better circumstance. That raises incomes, which raises taxes, which both pays back the bootstrap money but also raises the entire standard of living and standard of services. This, in turn attracts businesses and families.\n\nAt the core, \"in my humble opinion\" of course, is the difference in the view of \"entitlement programs\" and \"giving\".\n\nOne type of person says \"I suffered, so I don't want to see anybody suffer like that\".\n\nAnother type of person says \"I suffered, so why should other people be spared from suffering like that\"?\n\nThe deadlocked ideas of \"people are only poor because they are lazy\", \"nobody helped me, so why should I help\", and \"charity is for the weak so I will neither give nor _accept_ charity\" taken as a whole perpetuate economic failure.\n\nGo to the net-giving areas and you will find healthy and reasonably vibrant communities for all the out-groups. People of color? yep. \"Questionably legal\" workers and their absolutely legal families? yep. Various religious minorities? yep.\n\nGo to the failing areas and you'll find a whole lot of \"you aint from around here, are you boy?\"...\n\nIt's strong correlation, but there's a heck of a lot of causation.\n\nBasically \"economically unwell\" areas are pathologically \"socially unwell\" too. Neither is the \"first cause\", but both create and sustain each other on an ongoing basis.\n\nThe desire to cut \"entitlement programs\" and other \"federal funding\" is just a symptom of that \"poverty is a moral failing\" attitude mixed with the implicit message that \"if my city, state, whatever needs federal funds then it must be a moral failure.\"\n\nThe the bad reasoning goes \"if we get rid of the charity then we'll obviously retake the moral high-ground\".\n\nPlus, of course, \"if my representative is encouraging such funding then he must be encouraging moral turpitude!\" just rides along.\n\nIt is, at its core, a failure of basic reasoning.\n\nNote that I am \"teh olde\" and when I was a kid the whole Republican Southern Strategy was in full force and I lived in, or very near, \"the south\". I would regularly hear \"If it's good for the ni & & ers it can _not_ be good for me\" in that many words.\n\nSo literally, the poor white racists _demand_ that the ni & & ers get nothing, no matter what it costs the poor white racists personally.\n\nThis isn't just a liberal rant. There's a cognitive bias that makes the bottom of the economic scale become very dog-eat-dog. It's a kind of risk/loss aversion. The poor racist doesn't want the poor black-fella to \"pass them\" on the economic ladder. So anything that benefits both of them is a danger to the one who perceives themselves as only slightly ahead.\n\nThis is the \"keeping up with the jones'\" mentality but down at the hunger games level.\n\nThe whole thing is just pernicious and stupid.",
" Because dealing with poverty by kicking all the poor people out of the city isn't considered an ethical solution."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Do I share DNA with all my ancestors, or just 2 branches?
|
[
" It's quite possible, likely even, that you do not have DNA from all of your ancestors. Chromosomes do recombine, which would keep the DNA in the family longer, but with more generations the likelihood that some genes don't make it into the next gets higher. You share more than two specific lines, but definitely not with everybody."
] |
[
" Because 99% of our *human* DNA is similar to chimps, but 1% of it is non-human DNA.\n\nHalf of your DNA comes from your mother, and half from your father. You are essentially a perfectly equal mixture of your parents. Your sibling is similarly a perfect mixture, but you randomly share half of your genes from the same parent, while the other half is from different parents. \n\nYou, your mother, your father, your sibling, all share half of your all-human DNA with each other. If you had an identical twin, then you'd have 100% DNA with no variations.",
" We don't actually share 50% of our DNA with siblings, half of our DNA came from each parent, but there's no assurance that your sibling would get genes in a way that you'd share exactly half of them (in reality, a vast majority of your DNA is \"Default Human\" DNA that everybody shares). It's just a convenient shorthand when talking about human to human genetic relations. The actual amount of DNA you share is random. It's possible, although *extremely* (like extremely, extremely, extremely) unlikely that you and a older/younger sibling could get the exact same genes and be genetically identical. It's equally unlikely that you could have none of the same DNA at all.\n\nThe \"99% with chimps\" is more like the overall human genetic structure (think of it like the \"average\" of all the humans) is very similar to the \"average\" of all chimpanzees."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Malaria and sickle cell anemia and why natural selection hasn't eliminated sickle cell disease.
|
[
" If you are a carrier of sickle cell, malaria has difficulty properly infecting you, and even when infected you recover quicker and with less symptoms.\n\nYou survive a malaria outbreak with others, you all do what survivors do, 9 months later babies born with a pair of the carrier gene express sickle cell and are sick. \n\nNatural selection selects for sickle cell because sickle cell is a survival trait. You see similar for Cystic Fibrosis in Caucasian populations where there's a high level of certain toxins which a CF carrier can deal with due to some unique mucosa/gut traits.\n\nPut 2 carriers together, and you have someone with a terrible disorder.",
" Besides the malaria thing, sickle cell isn't usually fatal in childhood. Anything that doesn't prevent you from reproducing natural selection has a hard time weeding out."
] |
[
" Lots of diseases are good for you. The two that come to my mind immediately are cystic fibrosis and sickle cell.\n\nFor sickle cell, being even a heterozygote makes you virtually immune to malaria. They believe that's what that particular disorder was selected for. Sickle cell was most seen in areas that are endemic for malaria. That's why the percentage is so high in black people. \n\nFor cystic fibrosis, it is thought that it prevents the devastating effects of vibrio cholerae. If your ion channels are messed up, you can't get the voluminous diarrhea. CF is also seen more in white people.",
" Disclaimer: I am not an expert on genetics, nor am I an expert on malaria. I only know what I know from the few years I spent as a biology student and from what I've read about malaria online. If I am wrong about any of this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE correct me. I'd rather be chided for telling a half-truth or untruth than give someone incorrect information. Thank you. Also, sorry, I'm not really explaining it like you're five, I'm more just giving a semi-technical explanation.\n\nSimply put, there is a link between sickle cell being prevalent and areas where malaria is commonplace, and this is because people with the sickle cell trait tend to be more resistant to malaria. The precise mechanisms are unknown, but you can find plenty of info by googling \"are people with sickle cell more resistant to malaria.\"\n\nTo get into a little deeper detail, you first need to know some introductory genetics. Many traits are passed down via alleles, which are forms of a gene (formed by mutations - hair color, eye color, and many other traits are determined by alleles. Eye color is a very common example) that get passed down by your parents. For any given allele, there's usually only one version per parent/chromosome. \n\nThere are many different ways that alleles can react with each other, but we'll look at the sickle cell allele simply as a \"has it\" or \"doesn't have it\" allele, in which having one \"has it\" allele and one \"doesn't have it\" results in mild sickle cell, two \"has it\" alleles result in severe sickle cell, and two \"doesn't have it\" alleles result in no sickle cell. This may be wrong, so as with any of this, I ask that someone please correct me if I'm wrong. I haven't dealt with genetics in a while, and I've never formally learned about the way sickle cell is passed on. \n\nSo assuming that the sickle cell trait is inherited purely by the presence of one of two possible alleles in a person, we can map out a simple Punnet square. That's a little tough to do without fancy formatting, so bear with me. So the two possible alleles for this will be \"S\", which codes for \"has it\", and \"s\", which codes for \"doesn't have it.\" Assuming that both parents have mild sickle cell (Ss), there are 3 possible outcomes for offspring, with different likelihoods:\nSS (25% chance) = severe sickle cell - while highly resistant to malaria, significant complications can result from the severe case of sickle cell.\nSs (50% chance) = mild sickle cell - resistant to malaria, but there is a chance of complications from the sickle cell disease.\nss (25% chance) = no sickle cell - no longer resistant to malaria, but also no sickle cell.\n\nIf one parent had the genotype SS and the other ss, you'd see a distribution of 100% Ss alleles. If one was SS and the other Ss or one ss and the other Ss, it'd be 50% SS, and 50% Ss.\n\nSo an answer why the \"races\" found in those regions are more susceptible to sickle cell is the same as why they have darker skin than Europeans: it's an adaptation to their environment. While sickle cell doesn't necessarily seem like a beneficial adaptation, it became so prevalent because it gave those with it a better chance of successfully reproducing. And ever since then, it's been passed down through the generations - even in areas without malaria - because we've found ways to treat it instead of letting everyone with sickle cell die young because of it. \n\nThe percentage distributions I listed above are by no means absolute, either. They're just in a perfect statistical world. So while you'd expect a much larger portion of the population to carry a sickle cell allele, but in reality, it turns out to be a far lower number."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why can't camera phones always film in landscape mode no matter what direction they are being held?
|
[
" Because the camera sensor is rectangular. You could have such a setting, but you'd have to lower the resolution of the final image.\nUsing this as an illustration:\n_URL_0_\n\nBlack outline is the phone, blue outline is the sensor (though it's far smaller in real life). The red outline is what would need to be used if filming horizontal video while phone was being held vertically."
] |
[
" If you're using a phone, it's because the lens has a wide field of view. \n\nSome lenses have the opposite effect.",
" Your phone camera has a wide angle lens. This allows you to fit more stuff into a single shot, but the side effect is that everything in the distance becomes smaller to fit into the frame.\n\nThe same thing happens with the moon. Since it is far away, it becomes smaller on a cell phone camera picture.\n\nThe opposite is also true: if you take a picture of the moon using a telephoto lens, the moon can appear absolutely massive relative to the foreground."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why, when making a bank deposit, does it take a few days for a check to clear yet direct cash deposit seems almost instantaneous?
|
[
" When you deposit a check at a bank or credit union, at that moment your bank does not know whether or not the check is good. There might be a stop payment on the check, or insufficient funds, or the account may be blocked, or half a dozen other possibilities. Your bank needs to contact the other bank first, and that can take a day or two (used to take longer, but nowadays the info is passed back and forth electronically instead of the physical checks themselves like they did ten years ago). \n \nSo, why does the bank usually make some of the money available right away? Well, that's because a federal law (Reg. CC) requires the bank to make some of the money available on a set schedule, even if the bank is not sure whether or not the check is good. Also, if your account is in good standing and you've been with the bank for a while, they will also make some money available right away based on you being a good credit risk. \n \nOkay, then, we live in the modern age, you ask, why can't the bank just contact the other bank at the time you are depositing your check to make sure it is good? Good question, but that's not really the way bank accounts really work. Banks and credit unions will \"batch\" all the transactions for the same business day, and then re-order the transactions based on a set of rules and policies. \n\nSo, for example, on Wednesday you have an ACH debit to your gas company at 9AM, a bill payment comes out of your account at 11AM, a check is presented against your account at 1PM, and you make a deposit at 3PM. At the end of the day, the bank reorders the transactions so the deposit counts first, then the other three transactions in order from smallest to largest. (FYI, that's just an example, other banks may have different ordering policies). \n \nBecause of this, if you contact the bank at a *specific* time of the day to check whether the account is in good standing, they can't really answer at that very moment - because the transactions could be reordered and there might be other transactions that happen after the call that may count first. \n \nThere's some more stuff (like the ability to place a stop payment *after* the check is presented, believe it or not, or force paying the item on the next day), but that's getting a bit more complicated."
] |
[
" They send you a fake check, per various laws, the bank must give you the money in your account before the check clears. Most people think that the money showing up in the account means it cleared, that's not true, you don't really know for about 2-3 weeks, and it can be even longer. The scammers tell you that 3 days is enough.\n\nThey either overpay and ask for some cash back, or just take the item your selling. A few weeks later it bounces and the bank takes all the money back, you're left with minus any cash you gave them, and without whatever item you were selling.",
" > When I paid for the early upgrade they got this payment almost instantly\n\nNo, they didn't. The money left your account instantly, but it took 3-5 working days for it to show up in their account.\n\nLikewise, when a refund was issued, the money left their account instantly, but takes 3-5 working days to show up in your account.\n\nThis all comes down to how banks operate. When money is transferred between accounts at different banks, it takes several days for the transaction to be verified before the money is released on the other side of the transaction.\n\nMost people just aren't aware of this, because most people aren't on the receiving end of this type of transaction very frequently."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why is Germany taking so many refuges?
|
[
" Lots of bad answers so far...\n\nWithout a doubt it comes down to the German people, at least so far, being extremely reflective upon the actions of their elders and ancestors during the time of the Nazi regime, and taking ownership of that legacy and a perceived obligation to better their society and be as much as they can a positive force in the world.\n\nGermany is a very interesting place. More than any other country that I know of, they wear the injustices committed historically by their society on their sleeves, and remember those injustices in modern decisions that they make.\n\nWhat other countries are so reflective? Many Americans prefer to downplay things like treatment of native americans and blacks, the japanese internment camps, our treatment of japanese war adversaries, and many other immoral or questionable actions that have been taken in the name of America. Our saving grace is that pretty much every other country is the same, they downplay their historical injustices. Germany is different. They own them. Even Austria, the country next door to Germany that by most accounts was at least as complicit in the Nazi regime (considering that Hitler was Austrian, and that he was more popular there than in Germany, and that more Austrian volunteered for Nazi military service than Germans as a percentage of population), to this day mostly denies any responsibility, considering themselves victims of the Nazi regime rather than mostly willing collaborators.",
" As a result of WWII, Germany adopted very liberal laws regarding asylum seekers. On top of that, Germany is seen as wealthy in the states where most of the refugees come from. That makes it a bit of a \"promised land\" for them."
] |
[
" The USA is in so many countries like Germany because the military presence they provide is a commodity. \n\nCountries like USA were on the winning side of the most recent wars. When Germany admitted defeat and surrendered, a part of their surrender was that we could maintain bases there. They were there for several reasons. Not all of them were \"bad\". The USA spent a lot of money, time, and other resources into rebuilding Germany into a functional country. Actually investing in their people and their country (very unlike the German defeat of WWI, which eventually lead into WWII).\n\nNow we have lots of military treaties, most namely, NATO. We're no longer in Germany as a requirement of past wars, but because of mutual agreements between countries.",
" There have always been refugees seeking asylum abroad. There have been Afghan and Somali refugees since before the crisis. But with the massive war going on in Syria, the number of refugees has increased dramatically as have the stakes. There's also been an increase because of ISIS along with new fears that ISIS members will sneak in disguised as refugees.\n\nBecause the numbers are so huge right now, some counties are trying to reevaluate their policies. \n\nAlso, Middle Eastern refugees are more likely to go to Europe because of geography."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Can someone please explain how a "space-time crystal" works?
|
[
" The article is kind of silly and wildly misleading, but the physics is actually pretty cool. Just forget you read it, a lot of what the writer said was outright wrong.\n\nSo, first, what is a \"spacetime crystal\"? Well, the defining characteristic of a regular crystal is that its structure is repeated and regular. The structure of quartz, for example, looks like [this](_URL_0_). Note that the same shape repeats itself over and over as you move along: in math and science, we call that *periodicity*. Something that is periodic repeats itself over and over. For example, the swinging of a pendulum is a periodic motion.\n\nTo be more precise (it's important), the structure of a regular crystal is periodic in space. If you go up, down, left, right, forward and back, the shape repeats itself. That means it's periodic in three dimensions, the ones we're used to.\n\nHowever, physicists always talk about time being the fourth dimension. What if there was a structure that was periodic in space, like a regular crystal, but also periodic in time? That's what a spacetime crystal is, and it's also where stuff gets a little confusing.\n\nThe basic idea here is that they've constructed a material that, under the correct conditions, has the traditional crystalline structure, and has the property that it is periodic in time. What that means (loosely) is that if I took a \"video\" of it, there would be no way of telling what I recorded from 0:00 to 0:01 and 0:05 to 0:06 apart (or 0:10 to 0:11 or 0:47 to 0:48 and so on). In the same way that you can't tell one part of the crystal structure apart from another because it's repeating itself, you can't tell different times apart in the recording because the system's behavior repeats itself as time goes on.\n\nNow, there's lots of things you're familiar with that repeat themselves in time: pendulums, watches, swingsets, wheels. The other key distinction between a spacetime crystal and those devices is that the spacetime crystal is in its lowest possible energy state.\n\nTo exploit the pendulum analogy, the lowest possible energy state of a regular pendulum is when it's not swinging at all. What that means is that as time goes on, a pendulum slowly slows down, because it loses energy to friction and air resistance and that sort of stuff. No matter how well you make it, it will eventually get to a point where it's not swinging anymore, because that's the lowest possible energy state, and thermodynamics tells us that things eventually always get to the lowest state possible.\n\nThe spacetime crystal, though, is exhibiting that swinging pendulum-like periodicity in its lowest state. It's like you had a pendulum that couldn't *not* swing, or a mechanical watch that never needed to be wound. This is obviously pretty cool (at least to me). The spacetime crystal will never stop spinning, as long as they keep their machine running (which maybe makes it sound less cool).\n\nNote also that this is *not* perpetual motion, at least in the traditional sense. You could not power anything with it: it has no spare energy to give away."
] |
[
" Digital clocks work thanks to Quartz crystal oscillation.\n\nBasically, if you take a quartz crystal and pass an electronic current through it, it will oscillate at a specific frequency. \n\nMost work at about 32,768hz, which is 2^15 cycles per second. Basically, a computer chip counts the oscillations. Every 32,768 oscillations, the clock moves forward one second.\n\nThis is very accurate and reliable, generally speaking. The issue is, pressure and temperature affect how fast the crystal oscillates. A 10C difference can cause about 2min/year to be lost, a 20C difference can be a difference of 10min/year. If your unit gets hot, or sits in a hotter than normal area (like over a heater, on a sunny window sill), it can have a noticeable difference.",
" Space-time is a concept of how our universe generally works. It's made up of three spatial dimensions, and one time dimension. Fabric in this sense refers to how space and time, while different in many ways, are actually fused together. They are a single construct, not two different things interacting with each other.\n\nIf you were to take all the threads out of sheet that were going left-to-right, the entire thing would be a useless mess. the threads that go the other direction are useless alone. They only work when woven together. Likewise, our universe only works when space and time are working together, neither can exist without the other, because they are the same.\n\nIts a difficult concept for humans to really process and imagine, because the idea is so distant from the way we interpret things. referring to it as a fabric makes it just a little easier on us."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How do members of Anonymous remain anonymous? How do they get caught?
|
[
" Anonymous is more of a movement than an organization. There isn't a fixed number of \"members\" behind Anonymous. In a sense, anyone can put on a mask and make videos on Youtube and claim being part of Anonymous. And that's what makes Anonymous so intriguing.",
" Just guessing here. But anyone can claim to be part of Anonymous, how can you verify it? Probably just go into a cafe with a spoofed mac and burned linux cd. There's no way you can hide from your home network, but then again who is really trying to catch them? The NSA isn't. I guess they're not a big priority to catch. Plus most of the attacks they launch are social engineering to get DNS accounts or just plain botnet attacks. It's hard to get the admin of a botnet, and you can use voip to call companies. Just some thoughts."
] |
[
" They hack websites and cause general malicious chaos. That tends to piss some interested parties.\n\n'Anonymous' is a catch-all moniker, not so much a group. You can hack a website, release a statement saying Anonymous did it, and now you're Anonymous, hurrah. There's no telling how many 'groups' are using this moniker, but since there really is nothing else to go buy, Anonymous is referred to as one group.\n\nSo for example, the guys that hacked one site may be entirely unrelated and disconnected to the guys that hacked site two, but they both call themselves Anonymous, so the media places the credit/blame on the \"group\" Anonymous.",
" Generally if its something credible the larger Anonymous twitter accounts will pick up on it to spread the word. If no major Anon Twitter account is talking about it you can generally just ignore it."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
If a movie production has $5,000,000 (estimated) Budget, must some of that money go to the actors? or only movie's production quality?
|
[
" The movie budget includes for the actors but also all the staff that is needed, equipment, supplies, costumes, stages & sets, etc.\n\nIf the movie is being financed by a major studio, it most likely is bound by union rules by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), which it is now partnered with the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (AFRTA) to form SAG-AFTRA.\n\nThere are standardized pay rates and benefits that actors must be paid, so this is figured in to the budget.\n\nThere are also guidelines for a movie that is being produced by an independent filmmaker with a low-budget (which is usually under $2.5 million) that uses actors that are members of SAG-AFTRA.",
" Yes, if its a 5 million dollar budget then it will most likely be a union show. This means that most if not all of the actors will be in SAG. SAG has minimum day rates for all performers. The bigger names in the cast will usually negotiate their rates through their agents and managers. Every crew member from the Director of Photography to the the production office to the lowly Production Assistants has a day rate that they are paid and if they are in a union its a set hourly rate, with overtime almost every day of production. Then theres cost for equipment rental location fees etc."
] |
[
" Budget. Most of your budget goes on the actors and the film crew. Script and soundtrack take a back seat.",
" In some cases actors are given producer credit rather than a raise.\nThis keeps production costs from getting out of hand due to salary demands, but let's the actors make up the money on the back end, including a share of sindication money for years down the road."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How is a FLAC file smaller than a WAV file without losing data?
|
[
" This is like asking how a ZIP is smaller then a TXT\n\nFLAC is compressed via [Golomb Coding](_URL_0_).\n\nYes this is like RAR file but for audio (kinda its complex).\n\nWAV is just raw samples of what the input voltage was at once time. If you decode/read a WAV file its literally\n\n0.0000: 0.5\n\n0.0001: 0.65\n\n0.0002: 0.75\n\nThey're huge",
" FLAC uses loss-less compression. Stuff like MP3 uses lossy compression.\n\nImagine for a second that you want to give me some information on a piece of paper. The information is \"01\" written a hundred times in a row. Wave would be just writing out the whole sequence: \"0101010101...\" all hundred times\n\nWith loss-less compression you remove redundant information. So maybe you just write \"01 x 100\". You have to tell me that that code means \"write a sequence of numbers with 01 a hundred times\". But once I know the code, this makes for way shorter messages. If the sequence was a random set of numbers, you would not be able to compress it without loss of information.\n\nLossy compressiom does the same, but in addition it tries to remove some of the least important data. This is probably easier to explain in images. Imagine you have a photo of your room, and you want to show me where you have hidden a treasure or something. For me to replicate the image, I need the color-values for each pixel. Some of them will probably be the same, so you could use loss-less and say that evey pixel named \" X\" is completely black.\n\nExtreme lossy compression of that image would be a simple line drawing. I don't need details or accurate colors. All the unimportant info is removed, and you're left with the essentials.\n\nDid that make any sense?"
] |
[
" Here's probably going to be the only reason to get a FLAC.\n\nMP3s are lossy which means some of the audio data literally just gets thrown away when encoded. That's why they are smaller. However the algorithms are really good at keeping the parts you hear, but not perfect.\n\nHowever, you will probably never be able to tell the difference if the MP3 is encoded at a good quality. Unless you have a good ear and high quality audio equipment.\n\nA FLAC is not lossy. The algorithm compresses what it can, but when it can't compress anymore it just stops. Where the MP3 would start throwing samples away to make it even smaller. This is why FLACs are bigger.\n\nThe problem with MP3s is if you ever want to re-encode it again to something else. If you re-encode an MP3 to a newer format it will never sound better than the original MP3. The audio data that was thrown away in the original encoding can never be gotten back and you'll lose more by re-encoding it.\n \nSo, one reason you may want to get a FLAC is if you want sort of a master version of the audio. Take the FLAC and make an MP3 of it for your iPod for now. But if a newer better audio format comes out in a couple years then you could go back to the FLAC and have the original source to make a better quality encoding.\n\nIf you don't care about that I would just get the MP3.",
" **Technical explanation:** The more you compact and condense audio information into a smaller filesize, the more audio detail you lose, particularly in the high end and low end. Think of it like a jpeg becoming gradually more grainy and blurry as you decrease the quality of the compression and lower the filesize.\n\n**Practical explanation:** Assuming you don't have crappy headphones or a crap sound card, do an experiment some time.\n\nDownload an album of classical music or something without much noisy instrumental to it (so no heavy metal or dubstep) in the lossless FLAC format.\n\nThen listen to the same songs but encoded at a standard 128kbps mp3 format. The FLAC will not only have more clarity, but more atmosphere to it (depending on how it was recorded).\n\nIt doesn't make a difference for all types of music, but if I am listening to something like the OST for Skyrim, you bet I am going to prefer it on a lossless codec such as FLAC or at least 320kpbs CBR mp3. Anything less and you start to lose details in the music. If the instrumental is grungy and noisy to begin with however, it becomes more difficult for each instrument and aspect of the song to be lost with the audio data being taken out.\n\nIt also makes little difference when recording singular things such as the human voice.\n\nThe downside to lossless is that the filesize is much bigger, which is why the current standard is a relatively low quality one. The smaller songs are on average, the more songs a company can claim will fit on their mp3 players."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
What is Confucianism?
|
[
" It is a system of beliefs based on the teachings of the Chinese philosopher confucius. It is based more in practical observation of the world than in any belief in some form of supernatural deity.\n\nIn other words, we should act in ethical ways because it is the right thing to do and benefits society as a whole, not because we could go to hell or be punished by God."
] |
[
" Feng Shui is a Chinese system of aesthetics which emphasizes that certain arrangements of design elements in a room or building can positively or negatively impact the flow of \"energy.\" This energy is qi (chi), which you may have heard about from martial arts films- it's the energy of the universe which we can channel through our bodies.\n\nFeng Shui has been around for a few thousand years, and there are a number of different schools. Some Feng Shui schools believe that the design of a place should be relative to the environment- nearby features like mountains or rivers have energy that should influence the design. Some Feng Shui is more astrological, orienting room design on cardinal directions, sun or moon cycles, or constellation houses. Some schools base themselves on the elements. Some base themselves around the individual- i.e. based on who owns the home, certain layouts match their their astrological traits, palmistry, etc. Some feng shui schools are more aesthetic.\n\nIs there a European equivalent? To some limited degrees. When you look into the designs of some religious buildings, you'll get some similar ideas. In a lot of traditional European magic schemas, like traditional Norse God worship, the altar is supposed to face north. \n\nAre their any lasting benefits, or is it all Chinese mysticism? Depends on the school. The existence or non-existence of \"qi,\" is highly debatable (depending on how you define it), but there really isn't any evidence to suggest that it exists. Probably the closest that you'll get to benefit is that some neuroesthetic research suggest that surrounding yourself with beauty is psychologically beneficial, and is feng shui is an organizing principle which allows for some degree of beauty, then it might be useful to you. I would personally be hesitant to suggest that your energy connection with the universe will be blocked by an ugly misplaced couch, but I think it's fair to say that having a nice couch that fits your room well will give you a certain sense of satisfaction and pride in your home.",
" I haven't seen anyone here mention Confucianism. There is a perverse strain of taking those ideas to the utmost extreme throughout Chinese history. Devotion to the state was a central tenant within the Confucian movement, and there are plenty of individual records I could point to where people allowed themselves to be subsumed to what they believed was their duty. I don't think it's a massive stretch to see the transition from monarchist feudal states to a broader communist state with the duty minded Confucian overtones."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
asking for a job
|
[
" Bring a resume with you and ask to speak to a manager if possible. Tell them you would like to apply for a job and chances are they will have their own application form you will need to fill out."
] |
[
" I often would wonder this myself. Especially when it's a minimum wage job. When I was a teenager and got interviews for the food industry, they'd ask \"So why here?\" And I would say something bullshit like \"Oh I love this restaurant I've always wanted to work here\" but in reality it's \"because you called me back and I need money\"",
" I said \"blah blah and... Because i need the money\" to get the job i have now. My employer said he was relieved because no one EVER says it even when it's obviously true. No one aspires to work in a gas station."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why does it appear to be much less turbulent within an aircraft flying toward the eye of a hurricane than it does flying into a thunderstorm?
|
[
" Turbulence is caused by unstable wind currents. It's when the plane gets swatted around in different directions in rapid succession.\n\nIf you look at [the air currents in a thunderstorm](_URL_0_) you have columns of air rapidly rising or falling. This will push the airplane up & down, causing turbulence.\n\nA hurricane is a cyclone - this means the air currents are mostly swirling around in a single direction. As long as you're not moving between \"bands\" of the hurricane, you're going to have a relatively constant wind. It might be a high wind, but it's not batting the plane around in different directions."
] |
[
" It's because the strongest winds of Irma are in its northeast quadrant, and are blowing water away from the region offshore of the Bahamas. In effect the winds are piling up water ahead of them, leaving a depression where the waters are blown from. This sucks in the surrounding waters, especially noticeable in the Bahamas which is a very shallow, broad submerged area in the direction of Irma.\n\nContrary to what others are saying here, it's [*mostly not the result of the low air pressure of the storm itself.*](_URL_5_) Pressure drops result in about 5% of the surge of a powerful hurricane, and that would be directly under the eye. Wind surge affects a much larger area and much greater height.\n\nThis makes sense if you do a back of the envelope calculation: One inch of mercury of pressure difference is about 13 inches of water. The center of a strong hurricane may be ~~two~~ three inches of mercury lower pressure, e.g. ~27 vs ~~~29~~ ~30, which converts to around three feet of water difference. So the sea level difference due to pressure is negligible- at most a bit over ~~2~~ 3 feet vs a total of 30 feet or whatever from a strong surge. \n\n In this case the effect of the wind-driven storm surge leaving land high and dry is exacerbated by the shallow shelf area that the Bahamas rest on.\n\nEdit: Normal atmospheric pressure is closer to 30 not 29 inHg, so adjusted my numbers. Also, [storm surge can be up to 50 feet, although such large surges depend on the interaction with seafloor and land topography](_URL_4_).",
" There are several different types of turbulence. \n\nLow down, just after take-off or before landing, the wind can become turbulent as it blows over buildings, trees and especially mountains. Also, the sun heats the ground, which in turn heats the lowest levels of the air - and hot air rises, so it's common to experience turbulence close to the ground on hot afternoons due to the air rising.\n\nIt can be turbulent inside certain clouds, especially \"cumulous\" clouds, which are the lumpy ones. Very big cumulous clouds are called \"cumulonimbus\", and they're what give us thunderstorms. These can often be so turbulent they are dangerous, and airline pilots will avoid them even if it means taking large detours.\n\nFinally, there's \"clear air turbulence\". This occurs at high levels, such as where aircraft cruise, and it's very difficult to detect. One of the causes (although it needs to be combined with other things) is the jet-stream - the very fast winds which aircraft take advantage of when crossing the Atlantic. Because of this, aircraft on trans-Atlantic routes will always be in contact with aircraft ahead to get weather reports, and if there are reports from pilots ahead about clear air turbulence, then it's possible to change level (or sometimes route) to avoid it."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why is "Lb" used for "Pounds" (Weight)?
|
[
" It's a hold-over from the Latin word Libra (scale or weight), specifically in the phrase \"Libra Pondo\", or a pound of weight.",
" lb stands for libra, translated literally: scale (like the one your drug dealer uses, not those on a fish). Oz for ounces is from the old italian \"onza\" which was presumably anglicized into ounces."
] |
[
" The British pound is a share in the British economy, it's value is determined by how many pounds there are AND what the future of the economy is.\n\nLikewise for American dollars, but it just so happens that while the American economy is a LOT bigger than the British economy, there are WAY WAY more dollars than there are pounds, thus a dollar represents and even smaller amount of an albeit larger economy.",
" Remember how many times reddit reminded you to use the search function before submitting a new post? First, the \"request an explanation\" button changes to \"please search first\". Then, on the submission page, this button is repeated.\n\nThe sidebar also states:Search before submitting with keywords from your topic. The search box is in the upper right corner of the subreddit.\n\nThen, when you type in your post it says: \n\n > submitting to /r/explainlikeimfive\nSEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST\nSEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST\nSEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST\nSEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST\nSEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST\nSEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST\nSEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST\nSEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST SEARCH FIRST\n\nSo let's see what a precursory search turns up:\n\n[ExplainedELI5:Why is the abreviation for pounds LBs?](_URL_5_)\n\n[Why is the weight unit \"pounds\" abbreviated \"lbs\" instead of something else that makes sense?](_URL_5_)\n\n[ELI5: Why do we use 'lbs' for an abbreviation to pounds? Where did it come from and what does it mean?](_URL_5_)\n\n[ELI5: In the Imperial Measurement System, why are \"pounds\" abbreviated as \"lbs.\"?](_URL_5_)\n\n[ELI5: Why do we use Lbs to abbreviate pounds?](_URL_5_)\n\nThe top one is flagged as \"Explained\", so that might be a good place to start. Or alternatively, this question is easily answered via a search engine."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Are all those buttons on airplanes and spaceships necessary?
|
[
" My oath they are! Every single one of those buttons and knobs serves a purpose. Whether it be pressurization, air conditioning, lights, navigation, radio, autopilot, fire safety, hydraulic control, engine bleeds, or any of the hundreds of other controls they are all necessary."
] |
[
" > Why exactly do aircraft that wish to turn left- or right-wards need to bank? I understand that it's necessary, but not really very keen on the why.\n\nBecause it allows you to use the entire surface of the wings to cause the airplane to change direction - whereas, if it didn't bank, you'd only be using the control surface on its vertical tail, and even it would have to fight against the airplane's inherent aerodynamic stability.\n\n > (Also, am I correct in assuming that banking in space would be needless/pointless, and that shows and films showing spacecraft doing that are wrong?)\n\nYes, airplanes need to point roughly in the direction they're moving because of air. In space, there's no air, so no matter which way you turn, you'll keep moving in the same direction.",
" Believe it or not, the controls in most conventional airplanes are not really so elaborate. For example, you have a control column or a joystick that rolls the plane left/right and pitches it up/down, just like the controller joystick. The rudders are there primarily to keep your turns coordinated (another lesson), but this is not as important in video games, and may or may not be part of the game controls. Your throttle or power/thrust levers essentially make you go faster or slower. There are a lot more systems for flying a real airplane (things like trim, propeller rpm, mixture/fuel, electrical systems) and most casual video games don't account for them, but overall the controls are the same.\n\nAs a fixed-wing (airplane) pilot, I won't comment too much on helicopter controls, but I do know the physics are a little more complicated, and the controls are a lot more simplified for most video games."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How do animals identify what is food and what is not?
|
[
" > But even artificial food made by humans like pet food is eaten fairly quickly by an animal that has never seen it before\n\nHmmm not so true for all animals. I don't know for others but rats in lab have a huge neophobia, like they fear everything new, including the food we give them.\n\nIn order for them to realise that it's food and that it can be eaten, you have to litteraly put them on food restriction so they are \"starved\" and start eating the food. They are really headstrong.\n\nAs for how does animals know what is food what is not ? I can't really answer you but I can tell you that rodents are very good at discriminating \"bad\" food from \"good\" food. They associate good food with salty/sugary aliments and bad food with acid/bitter ones, if they taste something bitter, they will (unless they don't have the choice) avoid the bitter food. \n\nAnd rats have a very good memory for bad food experience. Let's say a rat got a sick stomach from food A. Well if you put the rat in a room with food A, the rats will not eat it. And that works up to a year after a bad food experience."
] |
[
" Animals don't need any kind of logic or special thought to notice the absence of something. It's like how dogs don't have object permanence - they don't necessarily understand *where* it's gone and that it still exists, they just know that something was there and now it's not. Like understanding dark and light.",
" The answer varies depending on which animals we are talking about.\n\nMammals learn what to hunt and eat and what to fear from their parents. A baby gorilla will learn what is safe and good to eat the same way you did. It's mother will eat the plant and hand some to the baby. Whether you are a panda or a hedgehog this is basically the process, learning from your parents how to live, until they become adults and may sample new foods if they smell good, your nose is a tool that for the past billion years or so has evolved to allowed you to identify thousands of chemicals in an effort to keep you alive, it is decent at identifying things that you shouldn't eat. The smell of rotting meat makes you gag to get you to remove any rotten meat you might have accidentally eaten from your stomach. \n\nHowever for other creatures without parental care it is all instinctual, a rattle snake will strike at a mouse pretty much from birth it is hardwired with the knowledge that small warm bodied fuzzy creatures that smell like rodents are food. Some, like a jellyfish, just get lucky they make no effort to avoid predators or find food it is a floating trap and some certainly die from catching the [wrong creature](_URL_0_) in their tentacles."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Are 87, 89 and 91 octane really just the same fuel? Why can they come from the same hose but E85 and diesel need their own?
|
[
" 87, 89, and 91 octane gas is the same gasoline with a different amount of additives added to boost the octane. So if you accidentally put 91 octane in a car that expects 87 you likely won't damage the engine (and visa versa) unless you do so over long periods of time. And even then the computers in cars these days can usually detect it and control the parts of the engine to compensate.\n\nHowever, if you put E85 gas in an engine not equipped to handle it you will likely put holes in your fuel line as the extra ethanol requires a different type of plastic tubing than is standard in non-E85 burning cars.\n\nSimilarly, putting diesel in a gasoline car will likely damage your engine.\n\nSo they separate the hoses and vary the sizes of the nozzles to help protect customers from making a mistake that could damage their engines."
] |
[
" 88 octane won't do any harm, but it won't gain you anything either.\n\nRead the owner's manual, if it says flex fuel is ok, then you can use that. Expect worse mileage on E85 gas though.",
" 89 octane, or mid grade gasoline, is required by some engines, and the owner's manual will indicate this. If your engine requires 89, but you use 87 (regular), it will still run, but at lesser efficiency, and you may experience engine knocking, as gasolines of different octane ratings behave a bit differently with regard to detonation and exhaust products. Engines are typically designed with a particular grade of fuel in mind for smooth running and optimum efficiency."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Since marriage is a right, why do we allow the government to control it at all by issuing licenses?
|
[
" You have a right to spend your life with whoever you want. Getting married is just a practice recognized by the government to publicly proclaim your relationship. The marriage license is just a document that legally recognizes the relationship, and allows you to benefit from it (like filing taxes).\n\nThink of it this way: the government just controls who it *recognizes as partners*. A gay couple has the right to be together (married in all but legal status), but not every state recognizes their status (at least, not yet). I hope that makes sense.",
" Marriage is a legally binding contract, just like anything else you sign. Since it gives you certain legal benefits (i.e. taxes), the states need to know who is married and who is not. A marriage license is essentially just a license that says: you can now file your taxes jointly."
] |
[
" A marriage license must be issued so that two people can legally be married and receive the benefits a wed couple has (social security, tax, healthcare-there are thousands). You can have a *wedding*, but it would not fall under the governmental definition of a marriage.",
" Marriage certificates are granted by states, no the federal government. When the church performs a marriage ceremony that power is granted to them by the state, not the federal government."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why does Super Glue fasten my fingers together almost instantly but takes forever to glue anything else together?
|
[
" Actually, the superglue is cyanoacrylate, which is a compound that \"sets\" when it contacts water. Your fingers are moist while toothpicks aren't. Try dampening the toothpicks and they will set very quickly.This is why superglues have warnings about skin contact."
] |
[
" Many hardening glues need something to start the chemical reaction that turns it from liquid to solid. This is obvious in two-component glues. One component is the glue, the other is the hardening agent. \n\nThe hardening agent for super glue is in the atmosphere: water vapour. The air inside the bottle is completely dry, so the glue doesn't harden in the bottle. \n\nThis is why super glue (cyanoacrylate) is so good at gluing your fingers together: your skin contains a lot of moisture. In fact super glue is used in medical operations to close wounds without stitches.",
" I believe it's because as the glue dries, it loses volume and shrinks, and both the glue and paper are stuck, so it contacts and wrinkles."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
degrees of black belts
|
[
" Note that the whole belt system only dates back to the 1880s, so it is not exactly an ancient tradition. \n\nEvery school does their own thing. Your typical strip mall McDojo will pretty much give you all the black belt degrees you want, if you stick around long enough and your checks clear each month. In other schools, it might take ten years to get your black belt to begin with.\n\nAlso, beyond black belt, it becomes less about being a \"badass\". In fact, most martial arts are less about self defense, and more of a stylized fighting sport. You'll note that UFC looks nothing like Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee. Beyond black belt, other factors, like instructing, come into play.",
" It basically has to do with experience. I'm a first Dan in Taekwondo(first degree) and I should be testing for my second at the end of the year. The black belt isn't the end of the martial arts journey, but rather the beginning. Like another poster has said, many martial arts are more sports than anything else. So between your white and black belt, you're just learning how to be a black belt. See the colour belts as educational degrees, and the black belt is graduation. While you're in school, you're learning how to work in your field. After you graduate what do you do? You work. Dans or degrees signify mostly your experience. I'm a first Dan but I have beaten third and fourth dans in competitions. A higher rank doesn't mean you're better, but rather you have a lot more experience. So those girls weren't better fighters than me, but they've probably been doing Taekwondo for their entire life! Also, degrees can show where you are as an instructor. 1-3 dan is an instructor. 3-7 master. 7+ grand master, if I remember properly. Martial arts are sports but also education. \nYes, you test for your dans. Your master decides his pre requisites.\nIf you reach the level of your master or no longer really have one, you seek testing from someone higher. Eventually, yeah you test in front of a \"council\" essentially.\nFeel free to ask any other questions."
] |
[
" First thing to remember is that the belt rankings are a fairly recent innovation. They were created in the late 19th century.\n\nSecond creating a new ranking or degree is no different than any other arbitrary rank. A bunch of people agree on what this ranking means and you have to pass those standards to achieve this rank. \n\nThe important thing to remember is that because people are coming up with the standards there will be people that will be able to achieve those standards as soon as they are created. You are not going to create a standard that no one can achieve, you will pick somethong that is difficult but not impossible.",
" practice, practice, practice. I could state physics as an explenation of how it happens, but instead i'll use a quote from Bruce Lee that i saw playing the UFC game on Xbox\n\n > I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.\n\nwhen your punches, kicks, and blocks are perfected you have much more control over how hard and how accurate you can be. It's quite difficult to explain, but it's not some secret magic power you get at lv. 25+, it's practice\n\n\nsource: Blackbelt in Taekwon-do (ITF), we needed to break boards for our gradings and in competition, it was always my favourite"
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why is it perfectly normal in America to have churches, TV channels, etc... specifically for black people, yet terribly wrong if white people have those same things? (serious)(not a racist)
|
[
" There *are* white churches, and white TV channels. You may not notice it if you're white, because you think of them as just \"regular\". Look, nobody's preventing white people from attending \"black\" churches or watching \"black\" TV channels. It's just that when most TV channels show relatively little content aimed at black audiences, and lots of content aimed at mostly white audiences, it's useful to have one channel that focuses on things black people want to see. Anyone can still watch them.",
" They idea is that main stream culture is white. That since the majority of the population of the United States is White there is no need for special churches for them since all churches except for ones started by minorities are white. Mainstream news and entertainment is aimed at a white audience and uses largely white actors and reporters etc. The reason there are specific black churches and channels is to create a cultural space for black people in which there culture can be expressed and they can see themselves depicted media and religion. \n\nTldr. Mainstream society is white so black aimed TV and churches try to create a cultural space in which they feel represented."
] |
[
" Because most christians are taught incorrectly and believe incorrectly. They have heard that the hording wealth is good, that the poor are just lazy, and that sharing is the devil. It is a symptom of the southern baptist movement and wealth based preaching. In the past, it had different reasons, but this is the way it is in modern times. Look at all the six flags over jesus style mega churches...what denomination are they? Baptist.",
" One is a minority with a long history of being treated less than human, the other doesn't. That includes stuff like TV- if you want to find a show that's relevant/includes that culture, you often (not always) have to look specifically for a channel that caters to it.\n\nFor white channels, it's considered a faux pas, because it's the \"default\". You don't need a separate channel for a specific interest, because other channels already are. If you're trying to distinguish yourself that way, the assumption is you're doing so because you're racist, because you don't need to.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nA lot of these will go into more detail. They're all basically the same thing.\n\nedit:\n\nIt's been getting better than it was historically, but we haven't quite hit the tipping point. It's always going to be a mix of historical events + minorities are always going to have to band together because you won't find it otherwise.\n\nIf you want to think of a less controversial version, it's basically the difference between Tinder and Grindr, or okcupid and christian dating sites. Gay people on average are ~2% of the population. It makes a lot of sense to have their own platform\n\nedit2:\nAnd as far as exceptions- rap music is probably one of the biggest ones (and relatively recent). It's one of the few types of culture that has really been fully assimilated."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Epigenetics: what the heck is it?
|
[
" Epigenetics refer to the study of genes _beyond_ the DNA sequence. This often includes modifications of DNA - for example, a common modification is _methylation_, the introduction of a methyl group (-CH3). These can change how genes are expressed or how they're regulated.\n\nIn a way this revives [Lamarckism](_URL_0_), which states that changes during the lifetime is passed onto the offspring. This is very much against traditional Darwinism, but now we have a process by which such changes could be inherited, since physical strands of DNA - modifications included - are passed onto the offspring."
] |
[
" There's an exciting new field of studies, called epigenetics. This refers to changes in DNA expression of the gametes -- eggs and sperm -- based on experiences within the body of the person who has those gametes. Like they've found that if a child's father was starving at some point in his life, then certain genes in their children and grandchildren will be expressed, while other genes will be dormant. I don't know if this works with women because sperm is produced anew throughout a man's life, while the eggs a woman has all exist before she is even born.\n\nAnother way, potentially, is that when the fetus is in utero, the fetus is being exposed to hormones from the mother via the umbilical cord. This exposure could pre-dispose the resulting child to certain reactions to hormone exposure, such as a more dramatic reaction to stress hormones, or a more calm reaction to stress hormones.",
" DNA contains the genetic information for the development and function of the entire organism. However, which sections of genetic information get utilized differ from cell to cell, and that is regulated by something called epigenetics. These are basically chemical marks on the DNA that control which genes are \"on\" and \"off.\" Imagine a contractor handing out copies of the blueprint to all his workers, but redacting the parts that they don't need. The painter doesn't need to know about the electricians work, so his version of the blueprint has that information blacked out, while the part that matters to him gets highlighted. Each cell in the body works on a similar principle."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
1) General and Special Relativity 2) Why "Space-time" actually includes "time"
|
[
" Special relativity is the theory derived from the principle that the laws of physics are the same if you're traveling at any constant speed. General relativity is the theory derived from the principle that you can't tell the difference between being pulled down by gravity and being pushed up by some other force.\n\nIt turns out that if you apply geometry to both space and time taken together, the equations of relativity get a lot simpler. So instead of using the phrase \"geometry of both space and time taken together\", we use the phrase \"geometry of spacetime\"."
] |
[
" Simple Wikipedia is a great place to easily learn about this. \n \n > The central idea of general relativity is that space and time are two aspects of spacetime. Spacetime is curved when there is gravity, matter, energy, and momentum. \n \nSpacetime - is when space is viewed as the 3rd dimension and time is viewed as the 4th dimension. \n \nIf you watched Interstellar, you would have seen that people experiencing different amount of gravity experienced time differently.",
" You can split the theory of relativity into two part based. Special and General relativity. Special relativity is the effects of things moving RELATIVE to each other. In short, it states how time seems to differ based on how fast someone else if moving from your perspective. If you are moving very quickly, if you were to look out the window, you would see time move much faster for everyone else, and thus slower for you. This can lead to a version of time travel where you can sit in a very fast moving object for a long time and the world around you will have aged more.\n\nGeneral relativity is much more complex and deals with accelerations, and in particular, gravity. It explains that gravity is caused due to the bending of space and time. This is a very difficult concept to grasp, but it works the same was if you put a bowling ball on a trampoline. If you were to roll a smaller ball past the bowling ball, since the trampoline has dipped, the smaller ball will have its path curved towards the centre of the bowling ball. The same kind of thing also occurs with time. This means that things with no mass, such a photon (light) can still be attracted to planets.\n\nIm sorry its not very ELIF, but I can try to help if there was something you didnt understand."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
how does cryptographic salt and pepper work?
|
[
" When encoding information:\n\nSalt is/are random string(s) of numbers used when storing information. If you want to save a password in a database, you can't use plaintext, so you encode it. The sequence the encoder used to base its encription can be called the salt. You can now store the encoded password with the salt. The only way to check if someone used the right password is to run what they entered through the encoder using the matching salt. If what the person entered matches what you stored, it's the right password. However, this method is risky, as anyone using exactly the same encoder can still check passwords if they have the matching salt.\n\nPepper is related to salt. Using the same hypothetical encoder, pepper would be an action done consistently to every password before it goes through the encoding/salt steps (like adding \"s6hk4\" to the end). This adds an extra variable to be accounted for when checking passwords. With pepper, in theory, even if you have access to the same encoder, the correct stored(encrypted) password, and salt, you still would need to guess the pepper, which is stored in a different location.\n\n\n[phone spelling]"
] |
[
" So, I am sure you have done this or seen it on a TV show/move. Turn the alphabet into numbers. For instance, A=1, B=2, etc.\n\nSo, AES encryption works like that, but it uses bigger numbers, math and multiple conversions to convert the characters.\n\nAES encrypted data gets obscured by Salt, Pass phrase and an Initial Vector.\n\nSalt adds to the encrypted data so that even if it is decrypted, you have to know where the salt is and where the data is.\n\nPass phrase is used to help build the encryption key.\n\nInit Vector is used to initialize the translation matrix (number replacement pattern).",
" Public Key Cryptography in a nutshell:\n\nYou have two keys: a public key (that you can give out to anybody) and a private key (that — you guessed it — you keep private). Both of those keys can be used to either encrypt or decrypt messages. If you encrypt with one key, you can decrypt with the other. By giving out your public key, people can encrypt messages with it so that they know only you can read them (by decrypting with the private key). Encrypting with the private key is useful for digital signatures — we'll get there in a minute.\n\nHash functions in a nutshell:\n\nCryptographic Hash Functions are mathematical constructs that allow you to summarise data into a fixed size summary (called a \"digest\"), in a way that for the same message you always get the same digest, where you can't recover the original message from the digest, and where you can't easily find another message that produces the same summary.\n\nThis is quite useful, for example, for validating that a downloaded file is correct (For hashes in current use, digests are usually like 20 or 32 characters long, irrespectively of the size of the message being hashed), or for digital signatures (we're getting there!)\n\nDigital signatures in a nutshell:\n\nEncrypting messages is annoying, because it forces the people on the reading end to have decryption software at the hand to be able to read them. This is fine when you need to keep messages secret, but sometimes what you actually need is to prove to people that it was actually you who sent a message that can perfectly well be shared publicly.\n\nA neat way to solve this: You hash the message you're going to send, then encrypt the resulting digest with your private key. It's this encrypted digest that is called a digital signature. Then you add the encrypted digest to the message. The message is still readable as-is, but now it has the signature. Anybody who has your public key can then do the following:\n\n- Hash the message themselves\n- Decrypt the signature with your public key, retrieving the digest you calculated on your end\n- Compare the digest they calculated with the one in your signature.\n\nIf they match, then they have proof that you wrote the message yourself (the public/private keys ensure that you encrypted the digest, and the difficulty in finding two messages that hash to the same digest ensures that this is actually the right message)\n\nSo what's the deal with the request to Julian Assange?\n\nJulian Assange has published his public key in the past, and that key is widely known. By asking him to sign a specific message, that user was basically asking JA to prove his identity — Presumably, only JA has the private key that goes with the public key we know to be his, so nobody else would be able to sign the message such that the signature would be valid as coming from JA. By choosing the message himself, he made it impossible for a fake Assange to reuse a message that the real Assange had signed in the past as a way to \"prove\" his identity. There's also the question of whether Assange himself still has access to those keys."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why is the SATA III standard (6 Gb/s) needed if standard r/w speeds are much lower?
|
[
" Because you can have multiple drives on a SATA host. It doesn't matter much if you have a single drive, but if you have several drives, you'll need a faster bus speed to avoid becoming I/O bound."
] |
[
" Way too high system requirements made it slow as fuck at release. It needed over 50% of the ram on a standard pc back then. Like if windows 8 would need 6gb ram. For todays pcs the requirements are insignificant of course.",
" DDR3 is a memory standard. There are speeds (called frequencies) that RAM runs at. Very roughly, it's a measure of how quickly it can read and write data, so higher is better. DDR3-1866 is faster than DDR3-1440, for example (those numbers might be made up but it doesn't matter). Unless you're a really serious performance geek, your RAM frequency will make absolutely no noticeable difference, so it's not something to worry about. Your motherboard and processor will have certain allowed frequencies, so just get one that's compatible.\n\nDDR2 is the older standard, and it's not as fast as DDR3. I don't think you can really even buy DDR2 these days.\n\nThere's no such thing as DDR5 RAM. There's **G**DDR5, which is VRAM (video card RAM). Your video card is like its own little computer, and it has its own RAM so that it can do video card things. GDDR5 is very fast video card RAM. It's actually based on DDR3 RAM, I don't know why they pick the names in such a confusing way.\n\n/r/buildapc is a great general resource for this kind of stuff if you have more questions about actually choosing specific parts and stuff."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
how "cracking" a joint or your back in a certain area relieves the pain/tension you're feeling in that area.
|
[
" Great minds think alike. Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Why does it feel good to crack your back? ](_URL_3_) ^(_7 comments_)\n1. [Why does it feel so good when I crack my back? ](_URL_6_) ^(_ > 100 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What does \"cracking your back\" do, and why does it feel good? ](_URL_4_) ^(_10 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is actually going on when i pop my back? How does this compare/contrast to when I crack my knuckles? ](_URL_7_) ^(_ > 100 comments_)\n1. [Why does cracking your back feel so good? ](_URL_1_) ^(_2 comments_)\n1. [Why does cracking my back feel so good? ](_URL_0_) ^(_2 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why does it feel good to crack my back? ](_URL_2_) ^(_5 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why is it really bad to crack your Back and Neck? ](_URL_5_) ^(_14 comments_)"
] |
[
" I'll give this a brief go.\n\nIt isn't officially known what it is for definite which makes the cracking noise but it seems to be widely accepted that the cracking is the formation of a bubble between the bone joints (ie. The knuckles) as oppose to common thought being that a bubble is popped. \n\nAs for feeling good (once again this is all more theories than dead fact) it could be due to this bubble between the joints allowing more space for flexion, extension etc. So that could be why you feel better after cracking your spine for example. \n\nSource-Med Student",
" Yo ho ho! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [Why does cracking / popping your back feel so good? ](_URL_4_) ^(_47 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why does cracking your knuckles/back/neck feel good? ](_URL_7_) ^(_29 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: why does cracking your neck and fingers feel so good? ](_URL_8_) ^(_4 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What cracking your neck actually does. ](_URL_1_) ^(_2 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What happens when you pop your neck and is it dangerous to do to yourself? ](_URL_5_) ^(_5 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What exactly happens when you \"pop\" your neck or any other body part? ](_URL_3_) ^(_26 comments_)\n1. [ELI5:What happens when I crack my neck/back, and why does it give me relief? ](_URL_6_) ^(_2 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do we feel relief when we \"crack\" our knuckles/joints? ](_URL_0_) ^(_20 comments_)\n1. [ELI5:What happens when I crack my neck? Why does it feel better than just stretching? Is it harmful or helpful?? ](_URL_2_) ^(_1 comment_)"
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
how does fracking cause earthquakes?
|
[
" Well, it doesn't. What does cause earthquakes are wastewater injection wells. These are heavily used in the area of Oklahoma and Kansas that have seen a significant upturn in the number of earthquakes in recent years. These are called \"induced earthquakes\".\n\nFracking has gotten a lot of attention because of pollution of groundwater and so a lot of people get confused about the induced earthquake issue. But these are very different things.\n\nTo answer the meat of the question, from the [USGS](_URL_0_):\n\n > Earth's crust is pervasively fractured at depth by faults. These faults can sustain high stresses without slipping because natural \"tectonic\" stress and the weight of the overlying rock pushes the opposing fault blocks together, increasing the frictional resistance to fault slip. The injected wastewater counteracts the frictional forces on faults and, in effect, \"pries them apart\", thereby facilitating earthquake slip."
] |
[
" Fracking does NOT cause earthquakes! Disposing of produced brine water in disposal wells does IN SOME VERY LIMITED CASES. There are hundreds of thousands of disposal wells in the world and < 0.05% have been proved to increase seismic activity.",
" Fracking is a mining method to create cracks in deep ground formations. The goal is to break down formations and/or to open underground reservoirs of liquids or gases.\n\nIt is done by using frac liquids under very high pressures. These liquids cointain officially quite low relative amounts of chemicals (around 0.01 %). In reality the amount of used liquids is so tremendously high, that the used relative amount of chemicals could become a threat to the environment.\n\nNormally fracking companies are only allowed to frack in grounds which are naturally sealed, which means that natural rock formations create a barrier and the frac fluid cannot escape the reservoir.\n\nHere is why people all around the globe are against fracking: no one can can say if a reservoir will leak the toxic fracking fluid. There are numerous examples of fracking liquid contaminating the environment and contaminating natural drinkable water ressources (which are very important for everyday water usage). Once it leaks, it is impossible to undo the damage. Once water ressources are contaminated, the area is destined to die (plants draw water from the ground, animals eat the plants and so on)"
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why do some people have higher pain thresholds? Why are childrens'lower?
|
[
" There are both biological and psychological reasons that pain is different for different people. The sensation of pain is a complicated biological process with many places where genetic differences can lead to differential pain signaling. In particular, people with a mutation in a voltage gated sodium channel expressed in a specific population of neurons can be rendered completely insensitive to pain, while still being able to discriminate pressure and temperature. On the other hand, people can learn to tolerate more pain by exposing themselves to it and learning to control their reactions. This probably explains why children seem more sensitive to pain. \n\nTL;DNR: Genetics and environment contribute to an individual's uniqueness.",
" Pain has an obvious evolutionary purpose - when something injures our body, pain is the negative feedback we get to discourage us from doing it again. Someone who didn't feel pain would be less likely avoid dangerous activities, and less likely to survive as a result.\n\nPhysically, it's hard to know whether children feel pain more strongly than adults would experience the same event. However, pain can be more scary for children. They don't have as much of an understanding of things like why they're hurt, how long it will last, and what will make it feel better.\n\nAs adults, we can minimize our reaction when we experience pain because we understand why we're feeling it."
] |
[
" I can't remember 100%, but in uni I remembering learning about how genetics is a huge factor, but of course environment plays a role too. So neurons in general have to reach a certain threshold to \"synapse,\" and in the case of pain/sensory neurons, the synapse=pain felt. If you have a higher threshold to reach in order to have a synapse, then you'll be less likely to feel pain for certain triggers, whereas someone with a lower threshold will have neurons that are \"triggered\" more often. Different people are born with different thresholds, but like a lot of people are saying in the comments, environmental factors can modify it! So in theory, you can become more tolerant to pain.",
" Because leg pain means it's harder for you to live. Genital pain means it's harder for your child to ever live. Natural selection favored the one that had a bigger reason to protect his groin."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why is it considered bad table manners to use your hands to eat?
|
[
" It's not in every country (Middle east and southeast asia it is actually pretty common.)\n\nIn western culture it is because of the status symbol of silverware in the 1700's. If you were rich, you used silver-wares, spoon and forks (wares) made of silver, instead of your hands like the peasants. That carried into modern day as the divide between poor and rich was the way they ate their food. Now days, because silverware is pretty cheap, and because it is accepted custom that you don't use your fingers, everybody uses forks and knives because they don't want to be seen with bad manners (which came from not wanting to appear poor)."
] |
[
" From my personal experience this occurs only because of 2 reasons:\n\n1. You are in a formal/semi-formal setting where out of courtesy everyone leaves the last one for someone else who they think might really want it. But since everyone thinks the same way, no one ends up eating it. And if you do end up devouring that last bit, I must warn you that you're now THAT guy.\n\n2. There are probably occasions when the last portion left is either the most unwanted part i.e. the best stuff has been eaten and it's the least yummy part of the dish.\n\n3 (bonus). People you're dining with have such poor table manners that you it is no longer palatable. Risk being called a snob here.\n\nNot sure if this is what you were looking for or a more scientific explanation.",
" As for why some cultures eat with their hands, I think you will find that trend most pervasive in cultures that have flatbread or tortillas with every meal. The idea that people JUST use their hands is not really true. People use the bread as the utensil.\n\nIn Europe, the weather is very conducive for making risen yeast breads. European style bread is not as easy to use as a utensil, but nevertheless people did! They used stale pieces of bread even as edible plates called \"trenchers.\"\n\nNonetheless, spoons have been in use since ancient times, and are really the precursor implement to all cutlery. Combine the less useful nature of european bread with an improvement in woodworking and metallurgy and you have the ingredients for a silverware boom -- in addition to the individual historical incidences that actually made the shift real."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why are some actors referred to as "character actors"? Doesn't every actor play a character?
|
[
" A character actor is an actor who mostly plays unusual or eccentric characters.",
" A 'character actor' is one who plays character roles that the script writer hasn't really spent time developing. For example, the script writer may have a character who's simply described as an 'Italian Plumber' or 'Mad Scientist'. The writer hasn't really done anything to develop this character further (such as give the character a full name, background story, personality, etc.). Character actors are the actors who fill these roles and bring their own 'character'/personality with them to fill the gaps in character development."
] |
[
" Casting director here; we often use words like \"character\" to imply 'not classically handsome'. Our industry isn't exempt from political correctness or heightened sensitivity to people's social expectations; but that doesn't stop people from putting out casting calls using words like \"hot, sexy\" etc. \n\nThere's no shortage of confident and charismatic people that aren't conventionally attractive, and it's an actor's job to know what kind of roles they'd be good for. In fact, they often emphasize the very features that differentiate them from attractiveness expectations. If a role requires a seriously obese person, and that was effectively dictated by the casting call, it's common for actors to show up in outfits that emphasize that characteristic, which is at least a suggestion that they are going to be at least outwardly comfortable with the subject matter. \n\nOn the talent side, talent knows that being friendly and agreeable, even if they find the material offensive or distasteful, is an implied expectation; and if you can't hide your disgust for the subject matter, you're probably not a good enough actor to carry the role anyway.",
" It's sort of like how Will Smith in Fresh Prince was a character played by the actor of the same name. Certain elements may or may not play in, but they are otherwise a fictional representation of a person with the same name."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Do heart transplant patients need to be of the same blood type as the donor?
|
[
" As others pointed out the heart does not make the blood, that's the bone marrow. But the blood type for a heart transplant needs to match just as it would for a blood transfusion or there will be acute rejection.\n\nHLA compatibility is a factor, but blood type takes priority, and all heart transplants are cadaveric so there is less choice in HLA compatibility. You aren't likely to closely match a random person. \n\nThey do blood tests to determine HLA compatibility.\n\nThis is as opposed to kidney transplants where if you have a close relative who can donate then the HLA compatibility will be better. \n\nRecipients are given immunosurpressive medications to prevent rejection."
] |
[
" It has to do with something called the patient's HLA (human leukocyte antigen) haplotype compared to the donor's HLA haplotype. The issue occurs when a family member has a similar, but not exactly the same haplotype. Let's say the patient expresses proteins we'll label the \"XY\" haplotype on the surface of their cells. The patient's body knows its his/her own cells by seeing the \"X\" or \"Y\" proteins on those cells. A close family member has a haplotype \"XX,\" which is very similar, but not quite the same as the original \"XY\" patient. These \"XX\" white blood cells which only have the \"X\" proteins on their surface are transfused into the \"XY\" patient. The patient's body knows to identify its own cells by looking for the \"X\" or \"Y\" proteins on the cell's surface. So the patient's cells see the \"X\" proteins on the donated cells' surfaces and that is enough to satisfy the host body's cells to identify the donated cells as \"self.\" Unfortunately for the patient, the donated white blood cells are only satisfied by seeing the \"X\" proteins on the surfaces of other cells, and do not recognize the \"Y\" proteins as \"self,\" so when these donated white blood cells get into the patient's body and see foreign \"Y\" proteins everywhere, they attack everything in sight and the host immune system is unable to defend itself, because it sees the donated white cells as its own \"self\" cells.\n\nEDIT: In the case of red blood cell donation, this issue is often mitigated by both leukoreducing the blood packs through apheresis and irradiating the packs in some cases to make any white blood cells left unviable. The issue of family member donation being more dangerous is when tissue donation is involved when these same steps cannot be taken to reduce the amount of white blood cells being introduced to the patient.\n\nFor more information on this subject, look up graft vs host disease.",
" This is a very interesting question, and one that often comes up when considering organ transplantation.\n\nYou can think of your genetic makeup as coming from your mother and father equally (50% each). This is because, of the two sets of chromosomes in each of your cells, one set must have come from each of your parents.\n\nNow lets consider siblings.\n\nBoth your father and his brother also received 1 chromosome set from each of their parents. This means that there is a spectrum of genetic similarity that can exist between the two, because they get their genes from the same pool of possible genes (ie your paternal grandparents genes). In turn, they can range from being very similar, to being not similar at all. On average though, they will be around 50% similar, just due to probability. \n\nThis is why organ donation from a sibling can lead to much better outcomes, and a lower rejection rate, because there is a chance that their compatibility is greater than the unchanging 50% similarity you get with your own child. \n\nHope that helps. Source: Medical Student"
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why is it socially acceptable to vilify Scientology and other religious sects?
|
[
" You're confusing the vilification of a belief with the vilification of an organization. It's generally not alright to vilify someone's beliefs. There are villainous beliefs, of course, like \"muahaha I believe tha I should torture puppies for no reason!\", but the basic tenets of Scientology aren't so prima facia villainous, and nobody deserves to be vilified for accepting them.\n\nOn the other hand, the Church of Scientology, as an organization, has something of a nasty record for dealing with its people. All sorts of stories have come out over the years, starting with what is effectively slave labor, then moving on to kidnapping, beatings, and of course financial ruin. Often the members of scientology are not seen as villains so much as victims, while the leadership itself is vilified.\n\nYour question compares this to Islam. The difference here is that Islam is no longer a Caliphate, and there is no single voice that speaks for the religion as a whole. I can't condemn a muslim as a bad person because some other person claiming to also be a muslim thinks that Islam means that he should do bad things. The first person hasn't done anything wrong and claims to have different beliefs than the second person.\n\nIf I were a Christian, and some other person screamed \"praise Jesus\" before blowing up a building somewhere, I wouldn't expect people to hate me for it, and I extend the same courtesy to others.",
" There are three levels to this: individuals, religion, and organization.\n\nAt the level of individual, it is acceptable to recognize a person's religion (\"What religion are you a part of?\"), and to question them about the actions of an organization they are an active participant in.\n\nAt the level of religion, it is acceptable to question religious beliefs, the interpretation thereof, and to challenge those beliefs. Within certain limits, it is acceptable to parody or poke fun at beliefs.\n\nAt the level of organization, it is acceptable to question the actions of the organization, and the membership of the organization, especially when said actions are in service of the organization. And organizations are open to a much wider range of attacks, both in conversation, and in comedy.\n\nBasically, religion is most vulnerable to parody, organization most vulnerable to attack, and individuals protected to some extent from both\n\n\nThe problem is that in the case of the Church of Scientology, there is no clear line between the group of believers, the religion, and the organization.\n\nExamples: \n\n- Regarding Pedophile priests, it is not acceptable to question individual Christians (individual), nor other priests (religion), but it is acceptable to question the Church (organization)\n\n- Conversely, it's more acceptable to parody Christianity (religion) than any specific Church (organization). But parodying Christians for their belief is usually unacceptable, unless they are a member of an organization, or a public figure.\n\n- In almost all cases, individuals who merely attend religious ceremonies are insulated from the actions of both religion and organization.\n\n\nWith the Church of Scientology, there is a much less visible line between the religion of Scientology, the organization of the Church of Scientology, and the membership of the organization: partly because anyone who tries to practice Scientology outside of the Church is at risk of lawsuit. The Church of Scientology now is more like the Catholic Church in Europe before 1517 (when Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses): there is no practical difference between the religion and the organization.\n\nA Christian today can exist separate from the Church, from all Churches even; and participation with one Church does not imply membership in that Church: I can attend a service any church in the city I live in without having any connection to that church. \n\nHowever, all Scientologists are both practitioners of the religion of Scientology and members of the Church of Scientology. Which means that individuals, group, and organization are all the same. And therefore are all subject to the full range of parody and questioning. Because the Church has done so much to maintain its control over the religion, and has required people who wish to attend services to join the organization, it has opened up itself and its membership to the full range of socially acceptable parody and criticism; which also allows both to be more pointed."
] |
[
" The Church of Scientology is an organisation. That organisation has its own actions. All Scientologists are paying members of that organisation, and so share in responsibility for that organisation's actions. Those actions include abuses of human rights, government infiltrations, and sabotages of health care organisations, leading to the Church being considered a criminal organisation in many areas. Anyone who criticises these actions is declared SP and expelled from the Church, making them no longer Scientologists. There's no such thing as a Scientologist who opposes Church actions, so it's not and cannot be an \"only 30% are doing this!\" thing.\n\nBuddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism are not represented by a single organisation to which every single member belongs; even when Buddhists, Christians, Jews and Hindus are part of an organisation they do not *have* to pay to support it; and there are many Buddhists, Christians, Jews or Hindus who oppose some behaviours of their organisations.\n\n(Scientologists who continue professing their beliefs after being expelled are termed 'Squirrels'; there are an estimated 150-200 of them worldwide and there is a unit of the church, the Squirrel Busters, dedicated to keeping them under surveillance.)",
" The Church of Scientology is an organization devoted to the practice and the promotion of the Scientology belief system.\n\nThe Church of Scientology claims, based on its original study of cases and continuous affirmation from ongoing subjects, that a human is an immortal, spiritual being (termed thetan from the Greek word 'theta' meaning life force), that is in a physical body. The thetan has had innumerable past lives and it is observed in advanced Scientology texts that lives preceding the thetan's arrival on Earth lived in extraterrestrial cultures. Based on case studies at advanced levels, it is predicted that any Scientologists undergoing auditing will eventually come across and recount a common series of events. \n\nNow the reason that Scientology is so controversial is because they charge a lot of money for the courses and counselling (aka \"auditing\"). I know people who've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. \n\nThe church goes after critics, playing Nixonesque dirty tricks. They stalk critics with PIs and operatives, all sorts of appalling things. Google Operation FreakOut + Scientology. \n\nIf a member is expelled, they are declared to be a suppressive person. If he or she has family or friends in the church, those people will NOT be allowed to communicate with him or her, even if they are his or her child or spouse. So the church breaks up families. \n\nPhysical abuse of staff, particularly in the Sea Organization (Their \"religious order\". Not all staff are Sea Org, but many are). Bad living conditions in it. Insane punishment details. Google RPF+ Scientology (or Rehabilitation Project Force). Basically a gulag. \n\nthey take up more and more of a person's time and money. Lower to middle echelon staff work either during days or nights, but are supposed to come in other times for staff study. If their \"stats\" are low, they end up staying up very late to get more work done. They get far less than minimum wage and many go hungry. If they are in the Sea Org, they get food and board, but they are stacked up tightly in bunk beds, their stuff is gone through and sometimes confiscated, and the food isn't so good. Medical care is doled out and often denied.\n\nThe list goes on and on about why they are controversial but its for this reason that they are not a religion but a cult and the only reason they are considered a religion in many countries is due to their influence and their ability to infiltrate (perfect example Google operation snow white)."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why does it seem like being allergic to gluten is a trend?
|
[
" Because it is. Its become a very weird trend diet to avoid gluten.",
" It depends on where you draw the line. You can have two different reasons for a gluten aversion (probably more, but two that I know of): wheat allergy or Coealiac disease. A wheat allergy is pretty much your run-of-the-mill food allergy, where Coealiac disease causes inflammation of your intestines. This is bad, because your intestines are usually pretty busy trying to digest all of the stuff they're holding, and they don't have time for any of this bullshit, they've got a person to keep alive.\n\nCoealiac disease is becoming more well-known, so people who have noticed they often feel ill, or are anaemic (decreased red blood cells) or fatigued may try to cut gluten out of their diet, where in the past they would have just lived with it, with no idea what to try in order to feel better. Some of those people will feel better without gluten, either by placebo effect or because they actually are treating a mild case of Coealiac.\n\nNow you have all of these people running around saying that they quit eating gluten and they feel *so much better you guys you don't understand you have got to try it seriously, Coeliac disease is more common than you think, come on try it for just one week.* This is fair, because they actually do feel better, and they're just trying to help their friends. Their friends try it, some treat their mild Coeliac disease, some feel better by placebo, some just go along with it because this is now the most interesting thing about them (that third group is of boring people) and some go back to their old ways. The cycle repeats.\n\nAs a whole, people love to talk about what they eat/don't eat and why they're making a better choice than you in regards to their health. It's like when I say I'm on a diet, when I really mean I'm just limiting my beer intake so I can drop 15 pounds."
] |
[
" My cousin developed an allergy to gluten (celiac disease) at the age of 35. Talk about changing your way of life! There's gluten in so many things! I don't know how he developed it so late in life, but he did.",
" While a lot of it has to do with better detection of celiac disease and various grain allergies, there is a rather silly notion among a lot of people that food falls along a spectrum of \"purity\" and that \"lower-purity\" foods have a bunch of unnamed contaminants or toxins in them. In this light, gluten is seen as a product of people rejecting more \"natural\" foods, and is considered a product of our modern agricultural system. Supposedly, our ancient ancestors didn't eat gluten, so this means it must be bad for us. \n\nMy theory is that people have always, since ancient history, restricted their diets in order to feel a sense of purity, and this latest fad is an extension of that. Lots of people claim that they've felt much better since stopping eating gluten, even when there's no evidence that they have celiac disease or a grain allergy. But then, the placebo effect can be incredibly strong.\n\nThat being said, celiac disease is very real. My mom has it, and she can have a bad reaction just from breathing in a bit of flour dust. And she's gotten reactions from all sorts of products that you would never expect to have gluten in them, but upon further research, she's found out that they do."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Democratic Socialism
|
[
" Socialism is the idea that workers should own the means of production; that is, all the tools used to make things should belong to the people who use them, rather than capitalist investors.\n\n*Democratic* socialism is the idea that socialism should be achieved through democracy. The term exists to differentiate them from *revolutionary* socialists, who think that some kind of political revolution should occur and force socialism to happen."
] |
[
" Socialism can mean a lot of things, but the core concept is workers' control of the production. It's basicly the idea of \"economic democracy\". Some socialists advocates a decentralized economy of workers cooperatives (i.e. syndicalism or \"market socialism\") while others believe in centralized democratic control of the economy (\"state socialism\") . Most I think believe in a combination. \n\n\nCommunism is the percieved long-term result of socialism, when the classes and the state institutions are completely abolished and society is run through free associations alone. \n\n\nCapitalism is private control of the economy, and It's run through private capital owners using money to make more money. Those who suceed - no matter how - expand and those who don't disolve. Thats the core logic of the system. Simple but dynamic. \n\nSocialists are against capitalism for two reasons: because it's not democratic and because socialists don't believe in Adam Smiths idea that actors competing for egoistic motives will bring about the most favorable overall result. Instead they think that human needs and wants would be better satisfied through democratic decisions in some form or another.",
" Worth pointing out that in most places on earth other the the US, what Americans tend to think as Democratic Socialism is actually Social Democracy."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why Did Princesses/Princes Get Forced to Get Married For Alliances Instead of Just Forming an Alliance?
|
[
" Marriage solidified the alliance. Back when divorce wasn’t really an option that was allowed, alliances wouldn’t break if thy were bound by marriage because it would pit husband vs wife, and if that happened then both sides would be in trouble with the church who, while they had less outright power than the crown, still held a lot of power with the people (as they were a tool used to sway the people)"
] |
[
" Because modern political alliances are based on modern political conditions, not on historical colonial relationships. If conditions change, relationships will change.",
" Historically marriage was a ceremony for joining two people in union and often had a economic benefit. For example a family with a a young daughter might take a dowry (large gift) to give her hand in marriage to a guy who was courting her. The family might receive livestock or something valuable in exchange for giving their daughter away. In many places having kids before marriage was also considered taboo so getting married was necessary to procreate and to have kids. To me these are the primary reasons people got married.\n\nNowadays there is really no reason to get married. There is really no economic benefit of getting married. In many places common law couples have the same taxable benefits as married people. It is also more culturally acceptable in the western world to have a kid before marriage. Furthermore, the average initial start up cost of getting married (large venue, wedding dress/cake/photography, reception dinner, honeymoon etc) act as a deterrent to many people. \n\nMy belief is that in the next few generations marriage will be less and less common."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
What is with "German" engineering?
|
[
" I used to work for a German company. German products are often over - designed. Since German engineers get paid if anything they have a patent on gets used, they force their patented technology into everything, even when it isn't appropriate.",
" There is certainly a degree of truth to it, perhaps even a high degree of truth.\n\nMuch of the association is historical, but many German firms are reknown for producing products that are of remarkable high quality. It may be something simple such as using a higher grade of steel in a part where a lower grade would suffice, tightening machining tollerances to a level beyond that which is strictly necessary to ensure mechanical compatibility, or using a heavy rubber sheath on a power cable that is expected to be dragged along rough surfaces all day rather than a cheaper plastic one.\n\nWhat it boils down to is that there are a limited number of products in the world which one can look at and say \"someone put some serious thought into this\" and a lot of them happen to be produced by German manufacturers.\n\nFor example, consider C. & E. Fein GmbH. Compare a Fein powertool to one produced by Bosch (another German manufacturer), one from DeWalt (American), and one from a DIY private label. The Fein powertool will be 1.5x-3x the price of the Bosch/DeWalt powertool, and 5x the price of the DIY tool. The functionality between them is roughly the same, but the Fein powertool looks like it will last forever."
] |
[
" I don't know about reliable when it comes to German, but quality I suppose. Cars come to mind as the common focus of German quality. If we look at cars we see that the last decade or so German cars have really embraced plastic, including under the hood. Think plastic trains fluid pans that warp, plastic dip stick tubes that crumble into the motor, plastic all the things! BMW had coolant leak related problems across a wide range of their engines. That problem was incredibly expensive to fix, many thousands of dollars, so people came up with bodge job products specifically for those engines to avoid fixing it the factory way which required basically disassembling most of the engine.\n\nNot sure if German quality is anything more than a legend at the moment, at least when it comes to cars. I will never own a second hand German car again, ever ever ever, sell that shit before the warranty runs out.",
" Because the german people are hardworking and industrious.\n\nSame with Japan.\n\nDemography is destiny, as they say."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How do people who wear corrective lenses(concave) are able to see far off things a bit clearer when looked through a very small hole (without wearing glasses)?
|
[
" Every point in a scene you're looking at sends out a bunch of light rays in all directions. A bunch of those rays arrive at your eye, in different locations and slightly different angles. A properly shaped lens takes all of those rays from one point in the scene, and focuses them back to one point on your retina. If this happens for every point in the scene you're looking at, you get the whole scene clearly in focus on your retina.\n\nIf the lens is not shaped properly, however, light rays from one point in the scene don't focus to a single point on your retina, they each focus to a slightly different place on your retina. So rays from that point gets blurred, and overlapped with blurred images of every other point in the scene. So you can't see clearly. The important thing here is each ray is still focused to a point, but the multiple rays from the same point in the scene get focused to different points on your retina.\n\nLooking through a tiny hole restricts the incoming light rays that can hit your eye. In the case of an infinitely tiny hole, only one light ray from a given point makes it to your eye. The lens focuses this to a single point on your retina, so it looks sharp. The same happens with light rays from every other point in the scene, so you get a sharp image.\n\nThe down side is the smaller the hole, the less light can get through. So as the image get clearer, it also gets darker. That's why our eyes have a lens in the first place rather than a tiny hole, and why pinhole cameras need such a long time to expose film.\n\nI'm leaving out diffraction since that would just confuse the explanation of why looking through a small hole helps."
] |
[
" Squinting shrinks the 'input' hole for your eye; the light that enters. What this does is effectually shrinks the [aperture](_URL_0_) of your eye. Just like a camera, a smaller aperture allows images to be focused clearer at longer distances, since the light is less dispersed and more focused on a point (think of a garden hose hole vs a fire hose hole). The trade-off is of course, there is less light entering the eye/camera, and so therefore the image you \"see\" (the world) becomes darker. This is also the same exact reason why as it get's darker out, your depth perception tends to get significantly worse, and why when it is super bright out, you can often see floaters and all sorts of weird stuff in your eyes. If you've ever had your eyes dilated, such as during an eye exam, you know that it is nearly impossible to read things close to you. This is because the aperture (your pupil) is so large, the light cannot be accurately interpreted at short distances. Hope this helps.",
" Okay, sorry for the repost, but a bunch of incorrect answers are getting voted up, so I'm reposting my reply in another thread to a top level answer:\n\nIt's actually an effect surrounding what is called the Acceptable Circle of Confusion.\n\nThere is only one mathematical point at which a lens focuses light beams onto a surface. In this case the lens is the one in your eye and the surface is your retina.\n\nWhen everything is perfect then that focus area is a very small point. If it's not perfect then your lens is putting the focal point either slightly behind your retina or slightly in front.\n\nIf you imagine light coming through the lens and converging as an hourglass on its side, you are in focus if the middle of that hourglass it perfectly centered on your retina. Where that hourglass intersects your retina is called The Circle of Confusion, and when the hourglass is in the right place the CoF is at it's smallest and everything is sharp. \n\nBut consider what happens if the lens isn't doing its job and the hourglass is a little too far forward or back. The more off it is, the bigger that circle is because the hourglass gets wider and wider as you move away from the exact center. The bigger that circle is, the more out of focus things are.\n\nSo why does squinting work? Because you are artificially looking through a smaller hole, and smaller holes essentially stretch the middle of that hourglass, so that even if it's a little too far forward or too far back that circle stays small.\n\nYou also don't need to squint to see the effect. Photographers take advantage of it when they close down the iris on the lens of their camera to increase depth of field, or you can use a small hole in a piece of cardboard as makeshift glasses.\n\nIf you want to see a diagram of lenses and how irises affect the Circle of Confusion [they have one on Wikipedia.](_URL_2_)\n\nHope that helped.\n\n**EDIT:** Regarding the ophthalmologist's answer involving the pinhole occluder -- partial credit for that answer. Looking through a pinhole, even an ophthalmologist's fancy pinhole, is the same phenomenon as squinting and has the exact same effect.\n\nI spoke above about squinting creating a very small hole and decreasing the size of the Circle of Confusion -- that's exactly what a pinhole occluder does too.\n\nTo say, however, that its effect is only due to sending light directly into the center of lens, and the focus improvements result because that's where the lens aberrations are minimized is not entirely correct. Or at least it's a little misleading. Think of it this way:\n\nSomething being out of focus, or having a wide Circle of Confusion, is a *convergence error.* Light rays that head straight into the eye aren't bent at all, so it doesn't matter there, but light rays that hit other parts of the lens are bent so they (try to) converge on the focal point. If the lens is not focused correctly, the bent beams don't converge into a tiny spot, they converge into a wider messy spot -- a wider Circle of Confusion.\n\nWhat the pinhole occluder does is ensure that all the light is coming straight into the eye so there's nothing to converge. No convergence means no convergence errors which means we're back to a tiny Circle of Confusion.\n\n*But...*\n\nThe place where the statement is misleading is the implication that you get your focus benefits because you are avoiding problems in the lens. The reality is that you would bring more things into focus by squinting or with a pinhole occluder *even with a perfect lens.*\n\nIf you have a lens that is perfectly focused and defect-free at 10 meters, and then put an iris in front of it you can make it perfectly focused from 9 meters to eleven meters. Close that iris even more and everything from 5 meters to 15 meters is in focus because you're forcing light to come in straighter and straighter and minimizing your convergence error. So your Circle of Confusion gets smaller and smaller simply by virtue of closing the iris.\n\nFinally, take it to the extreme, and make the iris very, very tiny and throw away the lens -- that's a pinhole camera, making in-focus pictures simply because of the tiny hole."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
What is the engineering and science involved in making the weather forecasts accurately ?
|
[
" Modern forecasts are generated using computer simulations. Several times a day supercomputers operated by a variety of countries will ingest data about current conditions around the world. The data comes from satellites, radars, weather balloons, ground monitoring stations, and various other sources. The supercomputers will then run models to simulate what is likely to happen several days into the future.\n\nDifferent models are going to produce different results, so the job of the meteorologist is to use their training and local knowledge to consolidate the different model outputs into a single cohesive forecast. For example, a meteorologist might know that a particular model tends to overestimate rainfall in a certain area or perform worse in certain conditions, and correct the forecast accordingly.\n\nThe science and engineering that goes into improving forecasts tend to fall into one of several categories. You can try to improve the programming behind the models, which are based on our understanding of how weather systems work. You can build faster supercomputers so that you can run the models at higher resolution. And finally, you can improve the quality and quantity of data going into the models, by launching better satellites and installing more ground equipment. There are lots of people who work on all three areas."
] |
[
" Climate data and weather trending, ist' an inexact science but you can make some really good predictions. When you factor in climate data and monitor the position/trends of climatic events, you can get a fairly accurate prediction of what will happen.\n\nMeteorologist have a wealth of data at their disposal and train for literally years to be able to accurate predictions. Often enough there will be repeat events or patterns that make it easier to predict what'll happen in the mid to far future, for example:\n\n & #x200B;\n\nYou had a particularly hotand dry summer but comparison you can say there's a good chance you'd get a colder and wetter winter. conversely the same is true, a cooler summer, could indicate a warmer/dryer winter.\n\nIf you then need to consider event like El nino/La nina which have global implications, and may alter the outcome you were expecting.\n\nThen look at the varying degreee of annual events, such as how much as the gulf stream moved? what was the median ocean temperature in the last 3 months.\n\nPut it all together and there's your prediction. The Met office continuously gathers, processes and forecasts so that they always have an accurate model of what will happen based on what's happened and happening. \n\n\n & #x200B;",
" Weather forecasting will never be perfect.\n\nWeather is hard to predict because tiny differences in the current weather can have large effects on the future weather. You can't measure the weather with perfect precision, so the measurement uncertainty is enough to ensure that there are always tiny differences.\n\nDangerously oversimplified but hopefully instructive example: you don't know if the temperature at a weather station is ACTUALLY, say, 56.71736 degrees or 56.71800 degrees Fahrenheit because your instruments aren't sensitive enough to detect that difference. However the difference could have a large effect on the future weather because tiny differences get greatly magnified."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
What is the state of matter "plasma"?
|
[
" Sorry if I don't explain this as well as you would like. Plasma is the 4th state of matter. It is a superheated gas with positively charged ions. It is created in fusion reactions and can not be contained as of yet. The longest it has ever been contained was about 5ms by a company called Tri-Alpha. When it passes through living matter it either tears it apart or causes defects; for example cancer",
" Plasma is the next state of matter after gas. If a gas gets hot enough, its atoms are \"broken up\" into elections and ions. These particles can be affected by electric and magnetic fields, which is what makes it different from a gas (gas cannot be contained by a magnetic field, for example).\n\nWhat's interesting is that most people only learn about the first 3 states of matter, even those those states only make up less than 1% of the matter in the universe. Plasma makes up the other 99% (this is because stars are primarily plasma, not gas as is often said).\n\nYou can also see plenty of examples of plasma on earth. Lightning, neon signs, and fluorescent light bulbs are all plasma."
] |
[
" You are seeing photons emitted as atoms combine to form molecules. In the case of fire in normal air, you're seeing atoms of oxygen combine with whatever is burning. \n\nThe flames are a gas.\n\n(It is not a plasma. A plasma is a state of matter where the electrons have been stripped from the nuclei of their original atoms. It is similar to, but is not, a gas.)",
" Plasma forms when you heat up a gas to really high temperatures. The electrons get ripped away from the atoms due to their high energy. This is called ionization. This makes plasma highly electrically conductive. Plasma is its own state of matter because its properties are so fundamentally different from a gas, in the same way that a liquid's properties are fundamentally different than a solid's."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How do zip files compress information and file sizes while still containing all the information?
|
[
" Most of these explanations are not eli5. \n\nZip files compress information in the same way you do in conversation every day, they're just more efficient at it. For example, when I refer to them in this sentence, notice I'm not repeating the words \"zip files\" over and over again, that'd be too long. Instead I replace their full name with \"them\" or \"they\" because of the context you know what I'm talking about. File compression works in much the same way. With context you can express much more complicated ideas with fewer bits of information. It's just in file compression, that context is something that's more meaningful to the computer than to you. Never the less, it allows the computer to store information in a much smaller footprint.",
" Zip uses a compression algorithm called DEFLATE, which is really just 2 other algorithms packaged together, LZ77, and Huffman.\n\nLZ77 basically records runs of the same or similar data, and Huffman assigns the most common bytes shorter bitstrings."
] |
[
" hopefully this is a simpler answer than the others. basically imagine a file is a book with a bunch of words in it. you have words like \"the\" and \"because\" and \"Mississippi\" and some are repeated many times and others are used more rarely. what zip does is it goes through the book and matches each word to some sort of shorter series of characters. for example, the word \"the\" probably appears a lot in the book, so instead of using the word \"the\" you could have a table that says \"the\"=1. So you would go through the whole book and replaces all the \"the\"s with 1s. You would have the space that \"the\"=1 takes up minus 2 characters for all of the the- > 1 substitutes. you do this with all of the words and the file can come out smaller than the original. of course to be read again it would need to be decompressed, but thats easy since you have the table. on computers, instead of words there are bytes and bits and what not and if the file repeats a lot of the same byte patterns the file ends up smaller. of course it i also possible for file compression to make files larger to.",
" Technically speaking, you could compress a near infinte amount of data into a small size if the data is uniform. A Zip Bomb is a form of this. You can put terabytes of all 0's into a small file. Since it is all 0's, there is only one pattern that needs to be compressed. This could be represented in a simple form like \"this file has a zillion 0's\"."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
What jobs are there which only a citizen, and not a permanent resident, can do? Why is this the case?
|
[
" Federal jobs require a citizen. You also have to be a citizen to hold certain positions in the military.",
" Generally, only jobs regarding national security are reserved for citizens. Governments assume that non-citizens might be less loyal.\n\nIn some countries only citizens may own land or do certain economically powerful activities. This is a way of trying to avoid foreigners \"taking over\" a country's economy."
] |
[
" Because they didn't want to give those rights to non-citizens, because then people could just walk across the border and demand things without having to be born here or go through a process to make them american.\n\n > Also why can the NSA spy on non-citizens outside the US?\n\nBecause everyone does it, and no one really wants to do anything to stop it.",
" The is nothing to be explained other than the person that hire those illegal immigrants are of the same nationality of the person that complains about it. \nVery often those who hire illegals are complaining about it too since they feel that they cannot compete legally. \n\nFinally, \"Taking jobs\" that most citizens don't want is a very bad argument. Most of the jobs that illegals \"take\" are daily jobs with little money that provide no income security nor benefits."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why do I always wake up early after I drink alcohol?
|
[
" Alcohol is a depressant. Your body tries to counteract the depressant by releasing stimulants. Alcohol wins the race so you go to sleep. However, your body processes the alcohol out of your system and you are left with the (longer-lasting) stimulants, which is why you wake up earlier.\n\n_URL_0_",
" Alcohol (something that will stop you from growing big and tall if you keep drinking at such an age!) pulls the water from your body and makes you go potty more often than you usually would. Your body wakes you up early because it is thirsty. If you drink some water before you go to sleep, though, you should be able to sleep in a bit longer without your body waking you up out of thirst."
] |
[
" On a side note, if I ever encounter severe insomnia, I usually try to stay awake thought the whole day and not touch my bed until it's bedtime, I almost always fall asleep after imbibing a beer, since alcohol makes me drowsy and calms me down a lot. Maybe it counteracts the adrenaline/cortisol.\n\nI guess this isn't something I should reccomend, but it has worked for me.",
" I wake up at 6am after drinking heavily, but with a hangover."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How does the octopus know what colors to change to?
|
[
" You're aware of your environment; if a tennis ball is thrown at your stomach, you know where it'll hit and also exactly what muscles to tighten to protect yourself and/or dodge out of the way.\n\nYou also know how to hide behind a tree, for example, and whether you're actually hidden, from the point of view of the person who is trying to find you.\n\nCamouflage is similar to hiding; the octopus sees the surrounding environment, and \"knows\" which [pigments to squeeze](_URL_0_) on the surface of its skin to mimic the environment."
] |
[
" Damn. Came in here hoping there would be answers to how animals like chameleons and octopus know what colour to change to (if they actually do know).",
" The how is like everything else in evolution. At some point, some ancestor of the octopus genetically mutated and found itself able to somewhat change its appearance in either texture or colour. When this helped it survive (by hiding), it passed on this mutation. Many similar mutations later, each one reinforced by superior survival (and hence a greater chance of reproduction), some species were now capable of very advanced camouflaging.\n\nThis also covers the why. *To survive, and breed.*"
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
how can single celled organisms form a multi celled single organism?
|
[
" The in-between state happens when a single-celled organism forms a *colony.* In other words, it reproduces but the new cells stick right by the parent cell.\n\nIn the next level, the cells start to *specialize* a bit. For example, the cells on the outer edge of the colony form a protective exterior, but those inside the colony don't.\n\nFor an amazing example of such a transitional organism, check out *slime mold.* Very impressive.\n\n_URL_0_"
] |
[
" Mitochondria divide on their own. In single-celled eukaryotes such as protists, the mitochondrial division is synced with the cell division so that the two new cells both have mitochondria. In multicellular organisms such as humans, mitochondria are completely independent and divide when the cell needs more energy. Thus, for multicellular organisms the new cells just get whatever mitochondria happen to be present at the time they're split.",
" Single cell organisms came together and evolved into more complicated species. The mitochondria is thought to have external origins and even has its own dna."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How did people discover that some poisonous foods (such as blowfish) are edible if prepared a certain way?
|
[
" Based on assumption, trial and error. Let's say there is an abundance of bananas in an area. Many people would grab the bananas and attempt to eat it whole, based on the way they eat other fruits. People will do this and quickly realize that the skin isn't very edible. However, humans' natural instinct to eat will eventually lead to them finding a way to consume that banana. They will use their past knowledge and the knowledge of others in order to find a healthy and safe way to consume the fruit.\n\nThe same holds true for poisonous delicacies such as blowfish, except the process is much deadlier. Many people would have died before they realized that there is a specific way to prepare the blowfish that will allow for safe consumption. Basically it all rides on human determination and ability to apply past knowledge to a new situation.",
" As far as I know, the most poisonous parts of blowfish are the organs, which sequentially tend to be eaten last. Most of the meat itself isn't all that toxic, as its not the blowfish itself that is deadly but the bacteria present in its organs that it itself is immune to.\n\nEven in primitive times, it didn't take a genius to make the connection when people would be totally fine eating the flesh, but then keel over in paralysis after eating the organs."
] |
[
" I'm reminded of some science fiction stories by Vonda McIntyre, where the ambassadors from Earth and from the Four Worlds (the aliens who were sponsoring Earth's application into the Galactic Civilization) had their first, tentative, gathering: the hors d'oeuvres were water and cotton candy—of all five species present, those were the only things compatible with everyone's metabolisms.\n\nThe answer really depends on how alien that life is: if it uses silicon and ammonia where we use carbon and water, then there's no hope: everything there is toxic and might even burn us to touch it.\n\nIf it's mostly like Earth life, but there's a little twist like it's version of DNA uses arsenic instead of phosphorus, then that's even more annoying: it might smell and taste delicious but be totally poisonous to us.\n\nThe best scenario is where it's really, really Earth-like. Then we'd do it exactly like PoundNaCl says: it might be surprising but we don't have a fancy tricorder that would scan the alien life and say whether it was good to eat or not: if it's close enough to be remotely digestible, the only way to know whether it has hidden poisonous properties is to do exactly the same thing we do with mysterious Earth berries or whatever: taste a little tiny bit and wait to see if it makes us sick. Repeat with larger and larger amounts until you're satisfied.",
" My first reddit contribution, here goes nothin! \n\nThe human brain changes the way it perceives certain flavors as a survival mechanism. For instance, we develop a tolerance for the spiciness of peppers after the brain becomes aware of the good nutrients they contain. \nAnother example is a dude lost on a raft at sea for months but has a steady supply of fish he can easily catch. He just eats the meat at first, but after a time he gets cravings for the parts he originally found repulsive-organs and eyes- which contained vitamins he had become deficient in. His brain's innate ability to adjust his flavor perception kept him in good health by making him want to eat nasty stuff. \n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\nEdit: thanks to Roscoj for the vid link. Putting it here at the top. Skip to 8:10ish for the part relevant to this topic."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
What is Unraid?
|
[
" It’s an operating system you can buy for a computer. Like windows or Mac. But it’s intended for storing files and making them available to other computers on a network at home or in an office. It’s in the category of things we call “NAS” or Network Attached Storage. Unlike your computer, it’s typical for NAS servers to have more than one hard drive. \n\nIt’s called Unraid because most NAS or file serving computers rely on a concept called RAID to prepare for and recover from the failure of one of the hard drives. The goal for most NAS systems is for it to be possible for one drive to fail without causing the server itself to fail. When a drive fails, it can simply be replaced and no data is ever lost in the process.\n\nAs I mentioned, RAID is the way most systems do this. Some people feel that RAID is too complicated a technology and prefer a simpler approach. Those people worry that in a RAID system, if one drive fails you can’t simply read the data from the surviving drives: you have to replace the failed drive and allow the RAID technology to rebuild your data from the surviving drives. (These people are reminded that one must back up all file servers, whether they are protected by RAID or not.)\n\nUnraid also provides protection from a scenario when one hard drive fails, but one important difference is that after a drive has failed, whatever data is on the remaining drives can still be read, even if those drives are removed from the system and installed in another computer.\n\nI use Unraid at home to store video files and make them available on my TV, among other things. AMA."
] |
[
" Unsolved and unsolvable are different (if potentially overlapping) categories. The [halting problem](_URL_1_) (Entscheidungsproblem) is a problem that has been proved to be *unsolvable* - it is impossible to determine whether an arbitrary program will halt or run forever. (You can simulate the program and maybe determine whether it will halt given a particular input - but you can't come up with a general way of determining this for *any* program.)\n\nOn the other hand, there are many problems which have not been solved, but which have not been proved to be unsolvable. It is possible that a solution will be found in the future. For example, Grigori Perelman solved the Poincaré conjecture, one of the seven [Millenium Prize problems](_URL_0_), in 2003. (These are all very complicated problems, most of which I do not particularly understand.) They are not unsolvable, merely very hard to solve.",
" THAAD stands for **T**erminal **H**igh **A**ltitude **A**rea **D**efense and is a missile system placed in South Korea by the US ostensibly as a defense against North Korea. China doesn't like it because it reasons it could be used against China, so has taken lots of actions against South Korea as a form of protest or objection."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How fast would the earth have to be moving through space for us to feel it (if we could feel it at all)?
|
[
" You cannot feel speed. You can feel acceleration, but we could be going near the speed of light and you wouldn't feel anything.",
" You dont really feel speed. What you feel is a change in momentum. The earth is rocketing through the universe at a ridiculous speed. If it suddenly slowed down or sped up 1 mile per hour you would feel it, but then the momentum of your body would catch up or slow down and you wouldnt feel it any more."
] |
[
" You feel acceleration, not speed. The Earth is not accelerating. Or at least, not at a feelable speed.",
" There really isn’t a good answer to this without some speculation being involved. The universe as we know it is constantly expanding from what we believe is an event known as the “Big Bang”, which unleashed an incredible amount of energy and mass. To observe what’s beyond the universe you would need to move very fast for much longer than the average human lifespan. \n\n\nModern science estimates the speed of expansion or Hubble constant to be about 71.9 kilometers (44.7 miles) per second per megaparsec (one megaparsec equals about 3.3 million light-years). Assuming you could move faster than the expansion, and you lived long enough to reach the “edge”, you might find another universe or absolute nothingness. For all we know you’d find a tentacle monster that would fall in love with the human species if you’re a fan of Futurama."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why would you put a severed toe/finger on ice to preserve until reattached when they would amputate it if frostbitten?
|
[
" First off, only incredibly severe frostbite requires amputation, mild frostbite will heal on its own or at worst leave minor scarring. \n\nNow, frostbite occurs when blood flow is restricted to your cells for an extended period of time, causing them to die. Since the finger or toe in question is already severed, that's not really a concern (or, more accurately, you're already at the worst-case scenario). \n\nSecondly, frostbite typically occurs at temperatures *well* below freezing. The lowest a finger on ice would get is 32 degrees F. \n\nFinally, cold really is a great preservative. It slows the degradation of your cells and prevents infection. While you certainly wouldn't want to keep a finger on ice for days, having a severed finger in an ice bucket for an hour or two while you make it to the hospital can definitely help preserve it for reattachment."
] |
[
" I had a first joint almost full amputation of my middle digit finger (basically cut off my finger to right below the cuticle). I had to have a snip of finger bone trimmed that was approximately 1/8th inch long. \n\nThe surgeon I had to repair it was fresh out of medical school, and told me the tip of my finger had the potential to regrow due to recent studies of cuticle tissue. \n\nIt's been 4 years and although my finger doesn't look perfectly normal, I have gained at least a 1/4 inch and re-grew a fingernail.\n\nThe body regenerates some, atleast on your fingertips! \n\nEdit.) link for the interested \n _URL_0_\n\nThis only talks about children, but I was 24 when I slammed my finger in a truck door. I don't believe it's limited by age.",
" I do this for sprained fingers often, see cold water immersion or ice therapy. Pretty safe in my book"
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why are highway and street signs usually white text on green (at least in the US)?
|
[
" You're correct that white and black would provide the greatest contrast, but the primary issue isn't contrast. Highway signs are \"retroreflective,\" meaning that at night, when you shine your headlights on them, the light not only illuminates the sign, but the sign also directly reflects a good amount of that light back at you. Black backgrounds would not be efficient retroreflectors (since black absorbs most light, reducing reflectivity), plus they would be difficult to see at night since the sky is black. Green was chosen since the eye is highly sensitive to green, it is clearly visible day and night, and it is a good retroreflector. Green is a common choice in many countries, including Canada, Japan, China, and Australia. Many European countries opt for blue backgrounds with white text or white backgrounds with black text."
] |
[
" Most local jurisdictions have codes that specify what color an exit sign needs to be, so builders just follow the building codes in their areas. Most building codes require either red exit signs or green exit signs or they give the builder the option to choose.\n\nRed and green have become the most popular choices because those colors tend to stand out in most buildings and they are also more visible through smoke, etc. than other colors.\n\nRed is chosen in a lot of places in the US on the theory that red is an emergency color (and easier to see than most other colors). However, some people criticize red because it's also the color for \"Stop\" and \"Do Not Enter\" which could confuse non-English speakers.\n\nGreen is chosen a lot elsewhere in the world because, like red, it's easy to see in hazardous conditions compared to other colors. It's chosen over red because it can't be confused with flames or fire (being green), green typically means \"go\", and it supposedly has a better psychological effect on people in general.\n\nThe National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is an organization that recommends fire safety regulations for local governments in the US and some other countries. They don't take a stance on a particular color and instead just say it should be \"distinctive\"\n\nThe International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recommends a pictograph sign in green with a man running through a door, like [this](_URL_0_).",
" The two answers so far are pretty spot on. For interstate routes, even numbers run East-West and get higher as they go north, odd numbered roads run North-South and get higher as they go east. These are the roads with blue and red shields. 3 digit road numbers are related to the roads that share the last 2 digits with it, such as being a bypass, loop, etc. For example, I've seen various instances of I-495 connected to I-95. I-99 is famously out of place, due to politics. The ones with white shields, US Routes, are pretty similar, except that the numbers get higher as you go south and west."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
The r/atheism mod fight
|
[
" Basically. /r/atheism is a default sub (you're automatically subscribed to it when you make a reddit account). The \"founder\" of the sub /u/skeen had been a very inactive mod for his entire tenure as the head moderator. This led to a lot of low quality content making it to the front page of /r/atheism and subsequently /r/all \n\n/u/jij saw that skeen had been inactive for a while, basically skeen hadn't looged onto his account or done any actual modding. So jij did what any right minded person would do, assumed skeen was away permanently and requested to become the head mod of /r/atheism \n\nThe head mod is above all the other mods i.e they can't be removed by mods unless they break the ToS. jij seeing the place /r/atheism had become with its low quality memes and facebook \"pwns\" decided that all image submissions had to be made in a self post to try and balance out the submissions so higher quality content was making it to the front page.\n\nThe drama started when the petulant teenagers, [a \"40 year old PhD graduate\" who later turned out to be a fraud](_URL_0_) and a host of other people started having a tantrum over the whole thing.\n\nThey were either not listening, or were just too enlighhtened to understand that images weren't banned they just had to be made in the form of a self post. Lots and lots of drama followed. But to be honest, the quality of /r/atheism (minus the bitching) has improved 100 fold since the new rules were brought in. I hope they stay."
] |
[
" Mods are people just like anybody else, and this means that they have a political leaning of one kind or another. In this case, mods of r/news decided they didn't want it known or publicized that a radical Islamist was responsible for killing 50 people, because it disagrees with their worldview. By removing posts that point out the religion of the terrorist, the mods were hoping to prevent people from blaming Islam for the attack.",
" The short answer is the libertarian streak in Atheism. \n\n(Major) Religion (generally) works well to create a hierarchy where men are on top. However, without this religious hierarchy in place, women have no need to be subservient to men. This is where male atheists get upset: that accepting atheism means accepting women. The backlash against feminism is an attempt to preserve this hierarchy within a secular framework."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why is it better to inhibit reuptake (SSRIs), rather than just agonize receptors?
|
[
" ELI5: When you tickle someone really hard for a long time, eventually they will get tired and the tickling won't work anymore. Instead, it's better to tickle them medium-hard so you can have fun longer.\n\nWell the short answer is that it isn't better, it just appears to serve a different purpose, clinically.\n\n[There are lots of useful serotonin receptor agonists.](_URL_0_)\n\nNow, hopefully a pharmacologist will come and elaborate, but I would guess that it may have to do with increased tolerance development with agonists as opposed to reuptake inhibitors.\n\nTolerance develops when the brain produces more receptors to make room for an increased level of the molecule. An agonist would be drastically increasing the available molecules. Conversely, a reuptake inhibitor doesn't increase the total amount of available neurotransmitters rather it just forces them to remain available to stimulate receptors for a longer period of time.\n\nSSRI's usually are prescribed at a dose that does not change once a therapeutic level is achieved and can remain at this dose for a long time. Agonists would need to be increased exponentially over time and lead to dependence and withdrawal when used over the same time frame.\n\nEDIT: forgot to explain like you're five"
] |
[
" Because there are other, related classes of drugs that inhibit reuptake of serotonin *and* something else - most commonly, norepinephrine (SNRIs) or dopamine (SDRIs). The \"selective\" means that SSRIs *only* inhibit *serotonin* reuptake. SRIs are the whole broader class, and include various antidepressants and also cocaine (which inhibits reuptake of serotonin, norepinephrine, *and* dopamine), among other things.",
" I'll just touch on the most common type of antidepressant, which are SSRIs, or \"selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.\"\n\nSerotonin is a chemical transmitter that we understand to be important for regulating mood and other \"higher\" functions. It's released from neurons in certain parts of the brain, where it binds to neurons elsewhere and tells them to do things. Without getting too complicated, this brain activity helps make us feel \"normal,\" or not depressed. People with depression tend to have low stores of serotonin to release, or don't release as much as they should.\n\nThe purpose of an SSRI is to make that available serotonin last longer. Naturally, the brain recovers serotonin that's been released, and recycles it for later. As the name implies, a \"reuptake inhibitor\" will stop the brain from recovering that serotonin, so it has more time to float around and do its job.\n\n**True ELI5 Answer:** If you imagine serotonin as kids running around being happy in a playground, SSRIs are equivalent to giving them snacks and water so they can play all day. That, or like slashing their parent's tires so they literally can't leave."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
why does humidity make it so feel so much hotter?
|
[
" Humidity makes it feel hotter because it interferes with your body's cooling mechanism: sweating.\n\nThe point of sweating is that the sweat must evaporate. Evaporating sweat costs energy, which comes from your body temperature, which is why you cool down. But, if the air is too humid, your sweat can't evaporate as easily, preventing your body to cool down, and therefore making it feel hotter.\n\nAlso, your mind has learned to associate sweat with heat. More sweat = \"gee, it's hot\"."
] |
[
" Another fun fact, the temperature can never be lower than the dew point. As water evaporates into the air when it rains, it raises the humidity in the air and the dew point goes up as the temperature goes down. This is evaporative cooling and it is why it is cooler when it rains and you feel cold when you are wet.\n\n It also partially explains the \"heat index\" as when it is hot with low humidity your sweat evaporates much faster and helps cool you. When it is humid, no as much evaporation occurs and you feel hotter. This is why 95 degrees with very high humidity can feel more uncomfortable that 105 with low humidity.",
" Most likely due to less humidity inside, drier air tends to feel cooler because it interferes less with your body's ability to shed heat through sweating.\n\nCould also be due to not being exposed to the sun."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
If Carbon Monoxide is colorless and can not be seen, how do CO alarms detect it?
|
[
" Just because it is colour less and can't be seen doesn't mean t can't be detected. The same thing could be said for air, or helium, or any number of gases. As it was said, there are ways to detect it chemically.",
" Google says they contain a gel that changes color in the presence of CO. Sensors detect this color change and trigger the alarm."
] |
[
" CO isn't manufactured or stored, like natural gas or propane. Carbon monoxide is usually generated because of an improperly operated or maintained machine; you can't really \"add\" a scent to a product of poorly executed combustion, without using some kind of CO detector that releases a foul smell when it detects CO. At that point, it's more effective to just sound an alarm.",
" If the part of your blood that carries oxygen sees carbon monoxide AND oxygen, it would much rather carry the carbon monoxide. This has to do with the energetics of the chemical reaction. Carbon monoxide slides nicely into the space that was supposed to carry oxygen via you blood to the rest of your body. \n\nIn the end, your cells need oxygen to carry some electrons after a ton of chemical reactions in order to make energy. Carbon monoxide prevents that from happening, and you can no longer make energy aerobically. Your body might be able to create energy via alcoholic or lactic acid fermentation for a very, very short time, but you'll soon pass out and die (and likely experience severe cramping beforehand). \n\ntl;dr - you breathe it in (even mixed with oxygen), it out-competes oxygen for a spot on your blood cells. Your blood cells deliver CO instead of O to your tissues, which can't use the CO in the same way. Individual cells die all over your body until you lose consciousness, stop breathing, and the rest of your body wastes."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why did Star Wars start on Episode IV back in the 70s and not Episode I ?
|
[
" The original film was titled \"Star Wars\", the subtitle (Episode IV: A New Hope) was added in later releases to make it constant with the sequels. Episode numbers started with V in \"Empire Strikes Back\", when Lucas decided to write backstory for many of the characters which could be (and were) made into prequel films.",
" Lucas had an overall story in mind when he started out, but looking at the early drafts of the first Star Wars movies that story doesn't seem to have much in common with the one we eventually got.\n\nThe whole idea was to make a movie based on the stuff he enjoyed in his youth (which is something that is true for almost all his projects) and ended up making something that was a lot like the Sci-Fi serials of old. There are numerous nods and references to that legacy even in the newer movies. He mixed it with standard mythology motives like following the Campbell's \"Hero with a thousand faces\" to give the whole thing more epicness and adding touches from WWII war movies and Kurosawa movies.\n\nWhen the first Star Wars movie started taking form he created something that had both a history of stuff that had happened before and a future of stuff that might happen later, but it was mostly a stand alone story without and Episode number.\n\nWhen the whole thing was more successful than anyone expected, Lucas decided he could add somethings from the stuff he had earlier cut out and dropped.\n\nTo give it more of serial feel he renamed and numbered the first movie as Episode IV: A New Hope. That gave the whole thing a certain in-medias-res quality like watching a serial episode halfway into the series without having seen the first few episode.\n\nIt made everything look grander and more epic and opened up the possibility of creating prequels to show the first three episodes and the adventures of a young Anakin Skywalker. Which is what he eventually did."
] |
[
" Frankly, it's because people are *much* less creative than they think they are. Most of what we create is actually a mash-up of things we have already seen. Consider: Star Trek is basically a World War II Pacific-theater naval adventure moved to outer space. Star Wars Episode IV is explicitly a remake of a Western cowboy adventure moved to outer space, converting at the end to a World War style aerial battle. Lots of fantasy realms are basically The Hobbit or Knights of the Round Table.",
" All of the other answers are using specific examples that might be confusing to someone who has not seen the movies, when it's really as simple as this: George Lucas decided to use computer special effects to make numerous alterations to the original STAR WARS films, both to improve elements he personally thought were lacking or wrong and to make things more in-line with the prequels that nobody likes. The mere fact that the films were altered from their original presentation irks people, especially because the original versions are not widely available in an acceptable format."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why did we evolve to the point where we have to wipe our ass when no other animal has to do so?
|
[
" Who says we have to?\n\nMainly we wipe our asses because with our bipedal body plan we can't exactly get our own heads back there to lick them clean like every other animal. So we just have to make do.",
" we didn't evolve to where we have to wipe, we evolved out of the ability to lick our own a-holes and into the ability to understand teamwork and hierarchy."
] |
[
" The basic answer is because we (and they) evolved that way. Remember the evolution starts as something random.\n\nTake a bird. One day a bird is born with a longer beak. This longer beak allows the bird to reach deeper into the ground for food. Over time that bird has kids and they have a longer beak. Then their kids have a long beak. Eventually there is a drought and there are no worm to be found near the surface of the ground. Only birds with long beaks can get food. So the short beaked birds die and the long beaked birds survive.\n\nSomething similar happened with humans a long time ago. Instead of evolving to be stronger or hairier we evolved to be smarter. Being smarter meant we don't need brute strength to survive. Instead of being strong or fast or having claws we learned how to make spears. Instead of growing longer hair or fur we learned to make clothes. So strength, agility, or other features weren't necessary.\n\nOther animals didn't evolve to be smarter. They evolved in a different way to survive. Dogs evolved for speed and agility. They also evolved to have fangs, claws, and fur. This allows them to survive in the cold and hunt prey.\n\nApes and monkeys took a different path than us. They didn't evolve to be very smart. They evolved to have more strength and less brains. This allowed them to survive challenges that they faced.\n\nVery few animals that are smaller than humans are actually stronger. Some are, such as apes or monkeys. Physically this can be explained by their physiology, or how their body is made up. They contain a different ratio of kinds of muscles that allow them to \"burst\" strength better (but at the cost of being able to be strong for long). Their muscles also attach to their bones differently, giving them more strength at the cost of fine muscle control. Other animals, such as dogs, are not stronger than humans. They can appear that way as when they're trying to do something that they're good at. Consider how much a human can carry compared to the animal in question. Humans can carry over their body weight, if properly attached to themselves, for quite a long time. Other animals will struggle.\n\nTLDR: Humans evolved for intelligence rather than raw physical capabilities. We also evolved for fine muscle control and stamina over brute strength. Very few smaller animals are stronger than humans.",
" Because we were first to reach the threshold of self awareness. Since then we have beaten down and destroyed anything that hasn't curled up at our feet or ran away at the very sound of us coming. You know what we did to Neanderthals? We ate them."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How did Helen Keller learn to communicate and what would her thought process be like while doing so?
|
[
" Read her autobiography. There is a way for blind deaf to communicate through touch. Helen Keller got a teacher who knew this technique and would teach both Helen and the rest of her family how to communicate by touching the palm of the hand in special patterns based on the letters of the word. The way Helen learned the language was the same as any other kid would learn language, by repeating the words back to the teacher as it is associated with things. For example one of the first words Helen learned was \"water\" as this was a very distinct feeling she could touch. So the teacher would put her hand under water and sign \"water\" to her repeatably until Helen herself signed back. This process would be repeated for every word."
] |
[
" There's a great picture in my psych 101 book that shows a since-birth blind deaf kid on a swing glowing with a huge smile. The caption was something like 'emotions are experienced, not taught'. Same with 'abstract' words like those. There was nothing wrong with Helen Keller's brain and she would felt the same emotions as everyone else, perhaps frustration more than anything. As an example, she would have experienced profound triumph in that little hand-under-running-water scene where she learned that the symbols being spelled on her hand MEANT something. \n\nFrom there, it's only a matter of intelligence to read that word \"exquisite\" in a novel somewhere, once she learned to read braille, and apply it to her own emotional experiences and memories.",
" She does describe this in her book. First off ideas is not based on language, that is just how you perceive them. So even if you are blind, deaf or both you can still manifest thoughts and ideas. Helen Keller were also able to learn several different ways of communication. For example she were fully able to read and write braille. And the process of writing a book does not end at the authors typewriter but goes though a lot of people at the publishers who will suggest and make different kind of changes. An author is rarely responsible for the typesetting for instance. So the publisher would need someone to translate braille to Latin characters. I also suspect there was a lot of changes suggested by the publisher to make the sentences flow better as rhythm and flow would be things that Keller would be unfamiliar with."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
How does standard deodorant really work?
|
[
" Deodorant just covers the smell. Like spraying the room after you fart. Fart is still there, it just is now covered by roses and tropical breeze. Antiperspirant blocks your sweat glands so you don't sweat as much. That's like a glue keeping your butt from farting in the first place. That's what the aluminum does. I dont think antiperspirant and deodorant stop bacteria from growing. That's what showers are for."
] |
[
" Antitranspirants lower the amount of sweat that leaves your body. Usually by clogging up the pores (afaik that is what the aluminium salts are for) or making the pores close up by themselves and forcing your body to get rid of the sweat another way (which it surprisingly can). A deodorant only prevents the build up of bacteria (your sweat does not smell but the bacteria that feed on it and break it down produce the smell). Some really bad ones just mask the smell. \nThat is why perfume is no substitute for deodorant but a different thing that should never be put under your arms.\n\nThey are safe to use but some sources claim aluminium salts are unsafe because aluminium builds up in our body and causes major harm. If you suffer from excessive sweating you might want to see a doctor. Last I heard BOTOX into the armpits deactivates the sweat glands there. Otherwise I recommend using deodorants. It lets your body sweat to control the temperature and it kills the smell. I recently bought an all natural deodorant and it surprisingly is the best one I had to date. Insanely expensive though and smells of white chocolate since cocoa butter is the main ingredient.\n\nAntiperspirants usually feature deodorant like qualities as well. If your problem is smell but you do not have a problem with the moisture you need to find a deodorant that works for you and very importantly a soap or shower gel that cleanses you well because getting rid of old bacteria is half the effort of preventing smell. After a day almost everyone develops a mild smell, even with deodorant. Regular showers are imperative to fight body odour if you have any.\n\nAlum works to some extent because it is an astringent that pulls the pores closed. It is not particularly strong though and only works for some people. For me it did not.",
" I'm in a similar situation, OP. A cheap and extremely-effective alternative is to use sodium bicarbonate, better known as baking soda. Not only does it dry your underarms, but it works by counteracting the smelly chemical those bacteria make, called propanoic acid. Thus, the bacteria never develop a resistance to something that doesn't affect them, and your underarms remain smell-less and dry for much longer than I have experienced with deodorant. Also, baking soda has no smell, so there is never this over-powering perfume smell."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Can languages be more efficient than other languages? If so what's the most efficient?
|
[
" Languages aren't inherently more efficient, but some words do not have translations in other languages, or are difficult to translate without changing the meaning.",
" There was an article in Forbes, in 1987 about how Sanskrit is the most efficient language for AI and computational purposes. I have not read that issue, but I have learned a little bit of Sanskrit in school & it was an extremely versatile language. The constructs and grammatical twists that one can accomplish in the language seem limited only by one's creativity. There was this poem that in it entirety told two different stories, one of them absolutely false, so you knew which story it was talking about. Also, contrary to common world opinion, Sanskrit is not yet dead, there are very small pockets in India where Sanskrit is still spoken."
] |
[
" The same reason there isn't one car or one phone to rule them all. Different languages have different uses - some are better for writing high-performance game engines, some are better for building websites, and some are better for writing large data systems. Also, people have their own preferences - some people like Java, others like C#. No language is perfect, and each language has its advantages and disadvantages.\n\n > It just seems to me with the thousands of languages out there, somebody somewhere had to have said \"i'm gonna fix this.\"\n\n_URL_2_",
" Hmmm. This is hard because a lot of languages are general purpose, and there are few hard rules, but I can give an overview of the general cases.\n\n* C: systems programming, writing operating systems, and \"low level\" services that need to be very fast, such as web servers, and often other programming languages. The Apache and Nginx web servers are written in C, as well as the Linux kernel, and languages like Python and Ruby. Also, embedded systems are written almost exclusively in C or C++. Things like microwaves or industrial robots, etc.\n* Java: server-side application programming and cell/smart phones. Many websites are written in Java, especially big ones because it's quite fast. It's not as fast as C, but it's easier to use so it's considered better for making specific applications (eg _URL_0_) instead of generic applications like an email server (a load of people). It's also the main language used for the Android smartphone operating system, as well as the Blackberry OS, and on many types of dumbphones.\n* Python: Wide variety of things. Web applications like Java, developer tools like package managers and version control systems, and interestingly, lots of games. Civ 4 and Battlefield 2 use Python extensively. Python, like many scripting languages, is used where describing what you need to do is more important than describing how to do it in very fine detail. For example a python program may describe the menu system of a game, and all the options and those interactions, because typically you click less than 60 times per second so speed is less of a priority.\n* Ruby: a lot of similar things to python, though it's most popular as a web application programming language. For a while it was considered a one-trick pony in that regard, though it's usefulness as a general scripting language has evolved.\n* C++: This language is serious shit. It's notorious for it's complexity and difficulty to master, but it's extremely powerful. Projects which have both extreme performance and complexity requirements such as game engines are written in C++. Google also uses C++ for their web services, but they are one of the only companies who does so, because C++ is so \"hard mode\".\n* Javascript: a programming language that used to only run in the browser, it now runs as a regular scripting language thanks to work done by google and joyent (v8 and node respectively). It's used to write glue code for user interfaces, especially websites but increasingly it's being used for actual desktop interfaces. Gnome3 for Linux is one such desktop environment that uses javascript. It's also seeing limited use on servers for certain types of applications with specific requirements.\n* Objective-C: Apple. Used for desktop applications on Mac OS X, as well as apps on the various iDevices. Little to no use elsewhere.\n* C#: Rip off of Java, though arguably a better language (learning from Javas mistakes), similar uses to Objective-C but for Microsoft Windows.\n\nIn general, there are two types of languages. Compiled languages and scripting/interpreted languages. Compiled languages like C, C++, Java, Objective-C, and C# all are designed to run pretty fast, but are generally slower to program in. They also tend to have more facilities for writing extremely large programs, especially Java.\n\nScripting languages like Python, Ruby, and Javascript are designed to be easy to write in, and don't need to be precompiled. They usually feature dynamic runtimes, which has a lot of additional implications but essentially it means you can do really sweet stuff really slowly. Slow is relative, for most simple programs at the scale a 1st or 2nd year student is working at, the difference will not even be noticeable. In this day and age you need to have billions of something trying to happen to notice a significant difference, thus the recent rise in popularity happening for scripting languages as general purpose languages."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
Why is prostitution allowed in some countries, but not brothels?
|
[
" In places that dont allow brothels but have legal prostitution they kinda self employed or contractors. They might work at an escort agency, that \"manages\" clients and the hookers simply travel to their homes, or hotels. some times a building might exisit that they can conduct their work with security and lights and stuff like in Nederlands and the De Wald district or in berlin where they allow prostitutes to access a hotel for the sole purpose of conducting their business. \"Street Walkers\" don't exist in these places as the transactions have safe or regulated enviroments provided. \n\nCountries might prefer a self employed model over a brothel because Brothels can become large corporations that focus too much on profit. They tend to abuse legislation that helps more legitmate businesses be profitable, for example bringing in Visa workers. They also lack some legal framework like standard employment contracts, labour unions, government regulation or a government regulator organisation. \n\nYou might ask why they don't just create all those laws and regulations. Governments chose to ignore its presence because creating all this legal framework is time consuming, and most politicians think the electorate would never appreciate such measures being funded by the government. It more convient to adopt a self regulating model that gives the power to the workers as opposed to the employer",
" I think it's to ensure sex workers are doing it of their own free will...brothels can hide a lot of secrets like trafficked workers whose passports have been taken and live in fear each day and are therefore deterred from speaking out to authorities"
] |
[
" short answer. prostitution is illegal because the governing body of a locality (aka government) deems it illegal.\n\nlong answer. most governments are rooted in religious background and just haven't caught up to modern times. there is also the issue of human trafficking or forced sexual servitude, by making prostitution illegal, you [un]successfully prevent/reduce those crimes as well.",
" Many communities find prostitution to be immoral and as a result don't want to allow in their areas. Many countries have legal prostitution and in the US prostitution is decided at the state level."
] |
Given a question, retrieve the highest voted answers on Reddit forum
|
eli5
|
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
README.md exists but content is empty.
- Downloads last month
- 26