Right, say we're in Herpinastan and I own a salt mine. You own a beef buillion cube company and need salt. Maybe local market conditions dictate you can pay $1 per pound of salt, but Americans will pay $6 per pound if we call it Herpina Sea Salt.

My salt would be exported and you may need to import some.

Sometimes the country made a deal to export a certain quantity of something by a certain date, but in the meantime domestic demand rose, so they have to fill the deal with exports, and import to cover what the locals are buying.

Sometimes, through a series of financial jiggery-pokery well beyond ELI5, it's profitable. Other times, there are differences that just don't show up in general statistics.

For example, the US both imports and exports crude oil. This looks crazy. BUT... the US refining industry is set up to refine the specific kind of oil they import, which is low in sulfur, and exports the local high-sulfur oil to places where they have a refining industry equipped to deal with that already in place. But why, I hear you ask, not refine local oil locally? It's more cost-effective to swap oils around than rebuild refineries.

Or another country might be importing and exporting "alcohol", which also looks crazy... but if one is high-quality alcoholic beverages and the other industrial-grade solvents... not so much.

It's often superficial similarities that get called out. Like crude oil. People talk about crude oil like it's all the same, when in fact it's very different based on where it's coming from: Not all countries have the capability to refine all oil.

So, it might make sense to import oil from a source that your country can refine and export your domestic-derived oil to other countries that can refine it, perhaps at a higher price or for geo-political reasons.

They mean they always use boiling water to wash their hands

It isn’t countries doing this. It is companies. Just because a company has access to a resource, and someone in the same country wants that resource, it doesn’t mean they have arranged to sell to the closer buyer. They may have a better deal to sell to someone in another country. The same goes for the buyer. They might have a better seller lined up elsewhere.

It sounds inefficient, but not necessarily, depending on how the supply lines are set up.

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I think research focuses on edge cases too much. We don't think of the number of times we have an urge to put a candy bar in our pocket at the store, put a fork in the garbage disposal, or dump a cup of coffee into the printer/our cubicle mates' lap. But I think it's all the same. Even just what if I didn't tie my shoes today, what if I didn't look back before I backed the car out, what if I flipped off that cop on the side of the road. All of these things are similar but less life threatening and don't really come up in the research as much. If at all. The focus on what if I throw myself off this bridge missed that...we have similar anti-social or destructive thoughts about things all the time. It misses some of the complexity of human experience when we only talk about extremes or edge cases. Imo.

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If I wasn't checked a few months ago I would be worried right now but my blood sugar levels are normal and I have no family history with diabetes. But anyways I will take the advice seriously and will check again soon. Better safe than sorry.

I am also surprised to hear that some people do not get thirsty after eating very sweet things. I mean, dont you feel a need to drink water after eating a dessert or something like a chunk of chocolate or a bar, or maybe honey etc.?

That's because of politics. And misinformation.

He's 5. He's not that good with numbers yet. He forgets how old he is.

I like how broad your definition is. Thank you very much.

Well my country is kinda screwed then. Our general population is not the best at making decisions. Brexit and the Conservative party to name a few of them

Politics is essentially the study of disagreements, and ways to settle them. This usually refers to the governments of nations when unspecified, but it more broadly applies to everything from company management to organized crime to school boards to homeowners associations. Anywhere two or more people disagree on how something is done and how things should be run, and it becomes a struggle over the power to decide, it's politics.

Okay.

Politics is trying to convince the people who make the rules to make rules you like, not to make rules you don't like, or to try to reach some sort of compromise.

You can do that by either trying to influence the actual people who make the rules, or the people they listen to.

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The sub isn't for literal 5 year olds

It's not fun.

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Lots of reasons

• General cognitive decline

• Loneliness/isolation causes them to be more trusting of people who are nice to them

• Not keeping up with the latest information on scams can make them unaware of the scam they are falling for

• Financial desperation can lead them to turn a blind eye to something most people would be suspicious of.

• Once they have been scammed they can be too embarassed to let thier family know and so keep getting scammed

(Going literal ELI5) Before cell phones and caller ID, when the phone rang, the only way to figure out who was calling you was to pick up the phone and talk to them.

During that time, most of the people who called you on the phone were people you wanted to talk to like your friends and relatives.

Today’s seniors grew up during that time and so they are used to picking up the phone no matter who calls and listening to what the caller says.

Scammers are then trained to speak very persuasively and instill fear into people to get those people to do what the scammer says.