a) For an ELI5, this is like asking for a full course in the "basics" of networking. Too much

b) It is technical. There is no way around it. It is like asking for a lesson in quantum mechanics without referencing physics. Not really meaningfully possible.

c) There are logical functions (translation of symbols/information) and physical hardware and then actual products (which incorporate a variety of functions and physical hardware). Think of it as a home address (logical/symbolic) vs the home (physical) and the postal service (a combination of using logical function and physical to provide a service). Without a clear appreciation of the differences (again technical), it would be hard to explain all the things you asked.

A starting point might be the OSI model to understand the conceptual framework of networking and communications. Then the various functionalities etc will make sense.

Water systems even if owned privately for profit are a regulated monopoly and behaves as a public utility (through regulation).

Certain systems are natural monopolies since it would be infeasible for multiple providers to set up and run the system. It would simply be too expensive for the consumer.

Capitalism isn't solely about consumer choice. It is related to the use of private capital for the provision of goods and services. There are many instances of cities collecting taxes and setting up municipal owned water systems (which is the complement of capitalism - the use of public capital raised through taxes).

Neither public nor private funding guarantees access, quality of services or low cost of services. So it would be a mistake to conflate one with the other. There is no free lunch - one way or the other someone has to pay for the service. Declaring something a "human right" is rhetorical because it says nothing for how such a "right" is to be provisioned or provided. (I can just as easily claim that everyone being a millionaire is a human right, but that doesn't make it happen without bad consequences)

It is another person/organization. It could be the company itself but the company is rarely a big purchaser of their own stock on a day to day basis. The entire purpose of the stock MARKET is to provide a place for buyers and sellers to meet, agree on price and transact their goods (stocks in this case). In the past this was an actual physical space (like a real market) and brokers would shout out buy and sell requests. Today it is mostly electronic trading on computers.

A modern stock market is designed to be really fast and efficient in transaction. The major stock markets has some things working in the background. For many stock markets, some "special" companies will "make the market" for some particular stock. They will be the counterparty (ie if you buy they will sell and if you sell they will buy) to transactions for the company they are the market makers for. Since buys and sells generally balance out over time, these companies just make transactions work quicker.

For small retail investors dealing with a broker and small transactions, the brokerage themselves can act as a counterparty (essentially you're selling and buying from your broker and the broker consolidates all these customer transactions and balances it out by the end of the day by going to the market and squaring it off)

Not really 13*28 = 364. We'd be 1 short of a year plus an additional day every 4 years.

13 is also prime - so things like half year, quarter year etc falls in the middle of months. If we agreed, it would just take a bit of getting used to.

There isn't going to be a very nice division - no matter how.

Yeah, well there are a lot of "natural" animal behavior that would be considered odd for humans. So it isn't clear why this would be normal for humans either.

Human psychology cannot be simply equated or compared to animal instincts or social behavior.

You might be a little confused. SS is a retiree payment scheme generally dependent on AGE. It is NOT payment because you are unemployed. There are some unemployment programs but nothing as significant as the SS program and targeted at poverty more than anything else.

Yes. SS and voting remotely is allowed as long as you remain a US citizen.

"If anything it just reduces potential profit on release for the new books."

So you think that publishers that have been in the business for many decades don't know how to optimize profits? It is reasonable to have an opinion but basing it on others being stupid is interesting.

If you think everyone is stupid, perhaps you should consider who is really the stupid one here.

Although we've known a long time about electricity and magnetism, a broad based theory about them is a fairly recent discovery. (maybe 1800s). This was preceded by the metric system which was introduced in 1795 - so a lot of standards were already "established" before measures like volts and amps were defined.

Things like weights and distances, though, are very common measures and every civilization needed them even from ancient times thereby resulting in many different measures. By the time things like voltage and amperes came into broad use (outside of scientific circles), the SI system was already firmly established and there was no reason for alternative measures.

Note that the watt is a standard unit of power in the SI system. However we still use things like horsepower (1 HP = 746 W) and BTU/hr as non-SI unit measures of power. One used even today for engine power output and the other for cooling and/or heating systems. So not quite "standardized".

That would be like stealing a menu from a restaurant and thinking that you could recreate the dishes from it.

In an IPO, the shares that the angel investor owns is now traded publicly. Each share is now worth the open market share price and can be sold for cash.

If the startup is acquired, the amount the purchaser pays is distributed to the existing shareholders (angels, founders etc) according to the portion of shares they own.

Shares represent ownership. The buyer has to pay the owner to purchase. That is the straightforward concept.

A speaker doesn't "know" frequencies. It is a device designed to create a pressure wave in the air that we interpret as sound. So it moves according to the signal given.

The signal itself is a single wave that consists of a combination of waves of different frequencies.

That's it.

For a non ELI5 explanation, this would require some knowledge of waves and possibly Fourier transforms etc.

While steel melts at a relatively high temperature relative to other metals like copper, aluminium, gold, silver and tin etc, it is not at a temperature that is unimaginably high. (maybe 1.5x to 3x).

Things like stone, ceramics, clay and sand can easily withstand the melting temperature of steel. All you need is to make the container out of this kind of materials. (This is why the forge doesn't melt when steel is melted)

There are also other metals that have higher melting points than steel - titanium for example. But titanium is way too expensive to make into forging containers - a simple clay container is sufficient.

At a fundamental level (ignoring macroeconomics for the moment), money is a measure of value. Money is used as an intermediary to exchange of real goods and services.

Start with the idea that there is a deserted island with 2 people, A and B. A grows coconuts and grows 10 per year. B grows mangoes and grows 20 a year. Without any money, they decide to split their "production" through trade. B gives 10 mangoes to A in exchange for 5 coconuts.

Now they decide that they will "print" 30 dollars. Initially split between them equally ie 15 dollars each. Since this 15 dollars each is used to trade for their equal share of the goods, 5 coconuts trade for 15 dollars ($3 per coconut) and 10 mangoes trade for 15 dollars ($1.50 per coconut). At the end of the year after all that trading A and B both still have 15 dollars each and would have traded their goods through money. This is a stable situation that can simply repeat year after year.

Now say they decide that instead of 30 dollars, they want 300 dollars in their economy - so they print 270 dollars more and each now have 150 dollars each. Are they now "richer"? Do either of them get more mangoes or coconuts?

If you understand this example, then it is a start to understanding why printing money does nothing (at an ELI5 level) to make people "richer". People consume goods and services - money is just a means of exchange. More money without more goods and services is essentially meaningless.

Didn't explain the controversy as much as it highlighted the fraught, identity politics driven narrative that walls off demands for authenticity behind strict race barriers.

And when all else fails to persuade, throw in a paragraph of white oppression politics in the publishing industry.

Not sure about the book, but this is one lazily written and intellectually paralyzed explanation.

Because it is a very controlled situation. Juries are instructed on what the law says and how it is to be interpreted, and are presented with facts relevant to the case. They aren't supposed to make their decisions based on feelings, guts, ideology, intuition, attractiveness etc.

In many cases, the legally relevant facts, when presented clearly and interpreted according to the law, are very clear. There are, of course, notable exceptions.

Imagine a really large powerful set of magnets arranged in a row with all their alignments of the N pole pointing the same way. Now try to move another magnet of the same N pole towards the magnets. It's all "empty" space but the magnetic fields won't allow the other magnet through the first set of magnets.

The point is that "empty" is not really a good way to think of it. There are charges that cause an electric field (usually electrons) and whatever you think of "phasing" through also has charges. Those fields repel each other. Therefore the "phasing" won't work.

A rather unconventional use of the term GMO.

Are you just trying to make things fit your political bias?

We don't have universal currencies because it would be very bad for many/most countries. One means that markets adjust for productivity, labor cost etc is through the exchange rate differences in different currencies.

If all countries shared the same currency, this "average" price will make labor in highly productive countries very cheap and labor in low/developing economies too expensive. This means super high unemployment and low investment into developing economies. The rich countries get richer and the poor countries get poorer.

Government grants and open research etc are still subject to the distribution of resources. A government gets money by taxing income and profits. So it is taking from someone and giving to another. It is resource allocation by fiat that wouldn't be possible without excess generated by production and labor.

If everyone could only grow enough food to feed themselves and could not generate excess, then there is no excess to distribute. From whence then comes a "free" exchange or development of ideas. There is no "free" in this - only what one recognizes as more legitimate and less legitimate forms of distribution and allocation of resources.

Again, irrespective of ideology, societies only develop new ideas and technology when society generates excess. If a society produces more than enough for the basic needs of their society, then some people can explore other venues of value creation (again, being agnostic about what is value).

Profit isn't a goal into itself - that is a strawman. The problem is distributional both in the resources to create and develop the idea as well as the resources needed to bring the benefit to society at large. Otherwise we end up subscribing to magical thinking as far as how ideas can develop and how ideas either in the form of knowledge or products are distributed.

I suspect your thinking is incorrect. How does one measure "societal contribution"? Society will never benefit if ideas remain in the lab to be enjoyed by a small group of specialists. You have to connect these ideas to actual objects that society in general can use and create value out of.

This idea that profit is somehow evil is misguided at best. If no resources are allocated to design, produce, distribute, educate and utilize ideas, the ideas are generally not valued. The concept that these resources and processes are extraneous to societal contribution is illogical. Why would millions of people be employed today in technology industries without the logic of value creation and appropriation?

There is no magic wand that makes computers, write the software, understand the problems and creates solutions. The idea of it not being profit oriented is to completely miss the idea of how value is created and distributed in any human society in any era under any ideology.

Bowing is generally a sign of respect or recognition of appreciation or gifts.

Different cultures do it differently and in different times. Some do have a fairly elaborate culture of bowing and greeting others - others don't. Yes, there are places where bowing when meeting someone in workplaces or when first greeting someone in their homes.

In most places, bowing is considered a fairly formal gesture. It is less likely to be used in informal gatherings and between friends.

" What is it that lets them put their faith in the model given that the model is something purely mathematical and not instinctual? "

The counter question should be asked. Your question implies that instinct is a better way to develop trust in knowledge rather than logic and mathematics? Why do you believe so? Can you appraise your own "knowledge base" and determine how much of what you believe you know, you developed through actual observation and consideration? How much of what you think you know is "borrowed" from someone else's experience and knowledge? Why do you trust your knowledge in this circumstance? How do you make this evaluation?

One example, most people "know" that 1+1 = 2. I am confident that most people don't know how to prove this. Yet they believe this to be true? Why? It cannot be instinct, surely?

While it is possible to construct the rules around the notes of a scale that belong in a key, the key itself really makes sense when paired with music. It is the music that determines the key signature that would be "correct".

One way is to play the music and see how the melody resolves to a "home" note. That would usually be the "correct" key signature.

The other way is to let the composer decide how they intended their composition to be interpreted.

At the end of the day, this is "music theory" not "key theory" or "note theory". So let the music guide you.

EDIT: Once you figure out the tonal center of the song, then the notes to use for the scale must have (and this is always true) ALL the notes "A, B, C ... G" in some sequence which tells you whether to use the flat or the sharp. For example, you should not get B, Dflat, Eflat... because you skipped C. It would be B, Csharp, Dsharp.

Plagiarism is maybe best thought of as an ethical violation. There are a whole lot of contexts to it. There is a difference between plagiarism and copyright violation.

I am not a lawyer but plagiarism, in many circumstances, (depends on location! so beware) is not a crime.

Can someone be sued for plagiarism. Sure, it might be possible. If you're taking someone else's ideas and passing it off as your own, then it probably increases the chances. So it might be wise to attribute it - at least that is transparent.

Saying that, there are instances of uses such as obvious satire or parody that are probably not going to be actionable.

In terms of music, lots of things have to be in context. It is hard to claim copyright on simple and obvious things (simple chord progressions, a few notes in a bar or two of music, short phrases in the lyrics etc). People have tried, but it is a hard and expensive case to win.