Recent comments in /f/explainlikeimfive

KoukiRin t1_ixy0c4a wrote

Imagine that you open your letter box, and inside there’s a crumpled-up paper ball and a letter addressed to you.

You find the paper ball suspicious, so you dump it, and you take the letter in. You open the letter, and its from your aunt, who is one of those chain letter types, and she’s sending this nice, handwritten postcard asking you to make 2 more such postcards and send it to people you love and care about.

Since it’s from your aunt, and you figure why not, after all the effort she apparently went through to put it in an envelope and all, and now you’ve made 2 more such postcards and sent them along to your friends/relatives/neighbors.

The letter in this case is like a virus because it has the instructions needed to make more of itself (the genetic material) and a packaging that it comes in (the envelope) that allows it to enter your house (your cells).

It’s not alive in the sense that it can’t make more of itself, by itself. The letter can’t make more letters without you (a cell), your ability to read the instructions (the enzymes that can replicate the genetic material and read it), and the printer/ink/paper in order to actually make the new letters (your ribosomes and DNA or RNA polymerases, depending on the kind of genetic material in the virus).

Now realistically, if the letter were to function like an actual virus, it might have instructions instead to "Print more copies until your printer catches on fire and explodes" and "Mail the letters to every person you personally know", and after this letter gets around for maybe a day or two, the law enforcement shows up to bust your chain letter syndicate by burning your house and all affected houses down (which is kinda analogous to the programmed cell death process of apoptosis), assuming your house wasn't already destroyed by that aforementioned printer. But that's a discussion for another day.

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Milocobo t1_ixxzmhh wrote

It's not about whether they exist or not. They definitely exist.

It's about "what is life?" which is a much, much harder question to answer.

The truth is, it's a separate question. It's easy to define what a virus is, but you can debate all day about what exactly is life, and whether viruses fit into the definition that you land on.

If you're asking what a virus is, it is genetic material, wrapped in protein, that infects other cells, usually very specific cells, repurposing the cell to create copies of the genetic material, wrapped in protein.

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pdpi t1_ixxzg1b wrote

Thats the point — the uterus also has nothing to do with urine, but actually does interfere with how often women have to pee.

Men’s reproductive organs don’t interfere with their urinary tract because they’re external (except for the prostate, which does join in on the bladder-bothering fun as men get older).

Women’s reproductive organs do interfere with the urinary tract because they’re internal, so they apply pressure on the bladder and just generally take up space that would otherwise be occupied by the urinary system and other internal organs.

I do mean that last bit literally — a friend of mine had a hysterectomy, and it took some time for her innards to adjust to the extra space.

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Tibbaryllis2 t1_ixxzd3z wrote

Imagine one of those firm silicone straws. While someone is drinking from the straw, try to stop them by only being able to pinch the straw with your pinky and thumb in one small space. Now try to stop them by being able to grab the whole straw with your whole hand.

Women, generally, have a short urethra with weaker muscles. Men have a longer urethra with stronger muscles.

Women also have smaller bladders, and the muscles involved in their urinary track serve additional roles with the uterus and anus.

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knightlife t1_ixxy0am wrote

AFAIK, it’s roughly kinda the same theory we have as to why/how life itself exists. Certain chemical compounds—in the right structure—could potentially spontaneously allow for reproduction, based on the physics/chemistry of those structures. Some of those eventually evolved into what we now are / know as “life”, while viruses are (in some ways) perhaps a more primitive version of that.

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usrevenge t1_ixxuznd wrote

Uh like an actual circle jerk?

It's when a group of people form a circle and masturbate. This also includes when a group of people form a circle and jerk the other person usually to their right.

Circle jerking on reddit is usually the phenomena where reddit comments will breed reddit comments agreeing if it isn't countered quickly enough. You see this a lot in terms of fanboyism or random hatred

Example is how everyone on reddit is hostile to Fortnite, ea games, and Activision. Going so far as to make stuff up about these games and companies.

The circle jerk there is how everyone joins in and beats the dead horse.

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explainlikeimfive-ModTeam t1_ixxuuft wrote

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AdmiralAkbar1 t1_ixxur4x wrote

Literally? It's when a bunch of guys stand in a circle and give a handjob to the guy next to them, jerking everyone off.

Metaphorically? It's a more vernacular way to describe a place where everyone pats each other's backs about how right they are, but there's no real insightful discussion or debate—the rhetorical equivalent of jerking each other off. It can also be called a "hugbox" or "echo chamber."

It's often used on reddit to describe subreddits where there's one overwhelmingly popular opinion, and any disagreement with that opinion is despised. For example, if someone says "/r/gaming is one big anti-EA circlejerk," they're saying that any post that's critical of EA, even if it's lame or unoriginal, gets upvoted, while any post that suggests EA isn't all that bad will get a bunch of downvotes.

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Intergalacticdespot t1_ixxtf8s wrote

Technically whichever company invented jpeg owns all pictures encoded as .jpeg. I'd imagine it wouldn't hold up in court because it's been unenforced for like 20-30 years now. But in theory jpeg itself is the same way. Was one of the earliest mass copyright attempts. And why I still prefer gif or png when at all possible.

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