theclash06013

theclash06013 t1_j9aqqfg wrote

When you make a TV show you have a contract with one network. However after you reach a certain number of episodes, usually 100, your show can then be shown on other networks, which is called syndication. So for example Law & Order ran on NBC, but because it entered syndication reruns are shown on a bunch of channels.

The reason that people want a show to reach syndication is because you can make a lot of money. In fact there are a number of shows where actors make more money from syndication than they did from the show. There's two ways this happens. The first is that the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) has what is called a "residuals schedule," basically an agreement about how much actors get paid for reruns. This is around 6% of your salary per episode. So, for example, the principal cast of Law & Order each make around $200,000 a year from residuals, which is good money.

The second way is that you can have part of your contract say that you are entitled to royalties, which is even more money based on the success of the show. For example the six principal stars of Friends each make around $20 million a year just from reruns and Jerry Seinfeld has made more than $400 million from Seinfeld reruns.

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theclash06013 t1_j29rq48 wrote

The answer varies from snake to snake. Most venomous snakes have special antibodies that make them immune to their own venom, though some are not. This immunity can range from full immunity to the venom of any snake of their species to a partial immunity to just their own personal venom. This is similar to the human body. For example when you transplant an organ from one person to another the recipient's immune system recognizes that the transplanted organ is not theirs and will attack it, a process known as "rejection," unless the recipient takes drugs that suppress their immune system. Similarly a snake's immune system can tell which venom comes from that particular snake, and in some instances can fights it off so effectively that there is no impact whatsoever.

Snakes avoid getting their own venom into themselves based upon which fang structure they have.

Vipers like the Diamondback Rattlesnake are known as solenoglyphous snakes. If you look at the first picture you can see that there is flesh and muscles around the fang of a viper. In the second image, which shows the skull of a Diamondback Rattlesnake, you can see that there is a hinge attaching the fang to the jaw. These kinds of snakes are able to fold their fangs against the inside of their mouth when they are not in use to avoid biting accidentally or biting themselves. You can also see how the fangs are curved, so they wouldn't bite the jaw of the snake even if extended. These fangs can be up to two inches long.

Proteroglyphous snakes, such as King Cobras, Coral Snakes, and Black Mambas have fixed fangs which cannot fold up. These snakes have shorter fangs that cannot reach the bottom of their mouth so they cannot accidentally bite themselves. They are also curved a bit for that same reason.

Opisthoglyphous snakes, such as the Boomslang, have fangs which are located towards the back of their mouth rather than up front. This means that they have to get a good hold of something to inject venom. Most rear-fanged snakes are relatively harmless to humans, but some of them, such as the aforementioned Boomslang, are incredibly dangerous.

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theclash06013 t1_iuj9cuz wrote

MSG contains glutamic acid, which is what causes things to taste savory, a flavor known as "umami." Umami is a major flavor profile in a lot of asian foods. In the USA it was difficult for people cooking asian foods to get their hands on natural sources of umami that are traditionally used, so a lot of asian restaurants, specifically Chinese restaurants, started to use MSG to get that savoriness. MSG was really not used in the USA or Europe to that point, Julia Child's The Joy of Cooking famously called it "the mysterious white powder of the Orient.”

In the 1960's and 1970's articles came about about how MSG could give people headaches or have other negative effects. Someone wrote a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine saying "hey, when I eat a bunch of Chinese food I have these symptoms, and some other people do too, and we think that it may be connected to overconsumption of MSG." This ended up turning into a New York Times article called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome Puzzles Doctors," which blamed MSG. The story took off and people blamed MSG for a number of things.

There were some studies claiming to support these conclusions that MSG was dangerous, but they were all deeply flawed and later debunked. For example one of the most notable ones, a 1969 study in Nature by Dr. J.W. Olney, concluded that young mice who had a highly-concentrated dose of MSG injected directly into their brains experienced markedly higher rates of obesity and even tissue death. The issue is that (a) the concentration of MSG being used was significantly higher than normal consumption and (b) you eat MSG, you don't inject it into your brain. That study, like just about every other on the dangers of MSG, was debunked.

There have been a number of studies done showing that MSG is not dangerous at all, nor does it cause this "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome," but the public perception already existed that it was bad, and changing perceptions is very difficult, so a lot of people continue to think that MSG is inherently bad, even though it is not.

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