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AskReddit/dm9ca1g | 6wn0e6 | What's a sure-fire way to tell the difference between a bee and an adult human who is merely wearing a bee costume? | Have a firm handshake (leg-shake?) with all six arms/legs. A human in a bee costume will have a limper handshake with 2-4 (depending on the costume) of the limbs. | 3 |
AskReddit/cj8r0yi | 2btknf | How do you deal with idiots on Reddit? | For trolls: Vote them up or down towards 1 point, so they get absolutely no attention whatsoever, and ignore them. For people spreading disinfo: Post sources going against the false claims. Ignore troll responses from OP. Answer clarifying questions from others. For people just being idiots: Ignore them. | 2 |
AskReddit/eqmh6hy | byw5n3 | What is the best way to stop smoking? | The hardest thing for me was dealing with people smoking around me, taking smoke breaks at work etc. I found that whenever I had a craving, using nicotine gum/ nicotine mints, while fiddling with a toothpick in my mouth worked for me. It took me about 2 months to cutting down to just chewing regular gum. | 2 |
AskReddit/c5j8cb8 | x4x8d | If you could only listen to two Music Artists for the rest of your life, which two do you pick? | Definitely Marilyn Manson. I've never heard a Marilyn Manson album I didn't like, and I listen to him constantly even with the benefit of a loaded iPod with way more than two artists to choose from. As for my second I guess it would have to be HIM, cause I've been a fan of their music since high school. | 2 |
AskReddit/cjetj7i | 2cf1g5 | What recent trend is looking like it will take hold permanently (for better or worse)? | Well, the trend of the recent design of smartphones. They all look the same now. A big touch screen, a lock and volume button on the side, and shaped like a poptart. I miss the innovative designs of smartphones back in 2006 when they were all gimmicky and stuff. The screen would rotate and open. The phone would open up and become a physical scientific calculator. It's a permanent change for the worse. Edit: People, it's my personal opinion. Please stop confronting me and challenging me to prove that the modern design is better. | 276 |
AskReddit/db4tciu | 5i27ne | What is a useful gift to give a family member, something they can use everyday? | A picture frame of you and that family member(s). Me and my sister gave my dad a picture of all 3 of us on Fathers Day. 2 weeks ago when he moved out of the house, he said that the picture frame means a lot to him. He doesn't get to see us everyday now so I know the gift is close to his heart. | 2 |
AskReddit/eu2p42w | cehy9i | What’s the stupidest thing you remember doing as a kid? | Singing the birthday song in Spanish to the music teacher in front of the whole class. It was just me. No music, no help just my voice. And the thing is no one asked me to do it. I just volunteered because i thought I would do amazing. I mean i didn’t do horrible since I wasn’t nervous about it but at the end when I finished, no one was clapping and I thought to myself; “wtf were you thinking.” The rest of the day was normal after that. No one teased me about it and good thing I moved to a whole other town during the summer but it’s one of the things that still keep me up at night sometimes. | 2 |
Ask_Politics/cubjle6 | 3hxc4x | Why has South Korea really started playing their propaganda loudspeakers for the first time in a decade? | Nk planted a landmine in sk border patrol path, 2 people got injured and now sk is reactivating their loudspeakers after they stopped in 2004 as a revenge | 8 |
AskReddit/c0o9ljk | brx52 | What do I need to do if I didn't file my tax return last year. and late this year? | I filed 2001 and 2002 around 2006. It's really not that big of a deal. Just download the appropriate forms from IRS.gov, and submit them now as if they weren't late at all. If you would have been entitled to a return for those years, you probably won't even have to pay anything. If you did owe taxes, the fees and interest really aren't too bad. I owed around 2000 bucks, and I think the fees and penalties were only like 90 bucks. | 4 |
explainlikeimfive/efz623z | ao98q0 | How come when your nose is stopped up, it seems like the snot gets dissolved when you stand? | I hope I understood your question properly. There’s this life hack saying if you do 5-10 quick push-ups you’ll end up “unstuffing” your nose. This happens because doing such a thing requires a lot of oxygen intake, and your body tries to make it easier to breathe it in through your nose. Basically, your sinuses stop trying to make mucus that blocks air supply into the nasal cavity. | 3 |
AskReddit/c540yzi | vfiar | How far do you think the freedom of religion should extend? | Freedom of religion was never intended to give people the right to follow any and all practices of any and all religions they want. It is meant to protect people from being persecuted for their beliefs. The federal government is not allowed to throw people in prison for not following a certain religion. The federal government cannot refuse a citizen for running for public office because they don't follow a certain religion. That is freedom of religion. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to do whatever you want in the name of religion. The society, through the power of government, has the ability to limit actions. we can write laws that ban or limit certain behaviors, and freedom of religion does not offer an exemption. Even if those behaviors are 'important' to the religion. As long as banning the behavior is justifiable, as in you aren't banning it purely to oppress members of the religion, then it can be banned. | 6 |
AskReddit/di1mf03 | 6dcopo | What are the benefits of living in the USA? | Low taxation in comparison to the majority of first world nations. This means you earn your keep and you can build a life for yourself with regards to your own resources. Our rights tend to be rights rather than "rights.but". An example of this would be how we have freedom of speech in the United States. This includes negative speech. You can be a racist, a sexist, a bigot, a xenophobe, etc. The only real restrictions we have on speech are calling for acts of violence and threats of violence. Those are really the only restrictions we have. Our political philosophy is different from most European nations. European nations, for the most part, have a philosophy of your rights being created by the state. The state gives us our rights and we live our rights from within the standards of the state. The United States doesn't follow that system. The system is a government built around our already existent rights. The rights are inalienable regardless of the state. The state simply recognizes them after the populace has declared something to be a right. (example being the female vote or the end to slavery). Those things were always wrong and the rights of those people always existed. The philosophy of the citizen is that our rights exist whether the state recognizes them at the moment or not. They are inalienable and without creation by any institution of mankind. We are a nation of nations. What that means is you can find a situation which suits your specific political and cultural needs by just traveling to the various states. If you like a more "European" or "Multicultural" status of life, you might enjoy Manhattan. If you enjoy a rural and country form of living, you might like a variety of states within the middle of the United States. Some can be extremely rural and private and peaceful. There is no single way to be a true American and this is evident in the variety our country offers. We aren't an ethnic nation. Europe as a whole tends to be a series of ethnic states. No matter how much you might love Germany and feel at home in Germany, not being ethnically German can make you feel like an outsider. The same goes for France or Poland or Sweden or so on. The United States is a nation of immigrants. Everyone who is here has come from somewhere else (not counting the Native Americans of course) so that makes us even. We obviously have our racists and bigots who believe America is a white Christian nation.but on paper, we are all argued as being equal. We all came here from someone else and we are all equally able to become free citizens of the country. There isn't an underlying cultural endorsement by the state (No national language, no ethnic identity, no cultural history which is specific to a single ethnic group) | 13 |
AskReddit/eb04psm | a2o3ul | What has someone done that single handedly destroyed your relationship with them? | Found out a friend had died when I was commuting to work one day, told my boss when i got in, he just handed me a jobs list and told me to crack on, his lack of empathy destroyed any respect I had for him in that instant. | 3 |
AskReddit/d02hn3a | 464uvm | Which cancelled TV-show, actually had 'a couple of more seasons in it'? | Star Wars: Clone Wars was supposed to last for 8 seasons, but when Disney bought out Lucasfilm it was canceled in the middle of season 6 because Disney wanted to do their own animated show on their own network (Star Wars: Rebels). | 7 |
AskReddit/cupney6 | 3jj0bb | How do you whistle with your fingers in your mouth? | Curl your tongue back and get your pointy and middle finger from each hand and stick it in your mouth. Push the under side of your curled tongue in and just blow air out of your mouth. That's how | 3 |
AskReddit/drx9tvv | 7mwqrt | What is a detail you notice in a well known movie that no one else seems to notice? | I'm sure enough people know about this now, but the kid that points to his crotch at the end of Back to the Future 3. I can't believe the director, actors, editors or anyone working on that movie never noticed it. | 2 |
AskHistorians/cvu9i66 | 3o5n9k | Has carbon dating of The Dead Sea Scrolls ever been performed? | Yes. Material that was found with them were one of the first things ever dated by Willard Libby, the inventor of carbon dating. He dated some linen found in the caves with the scrolls. At the time the amount of material needed to properly date something was quite large so he initially didn't date any of the scrolls directly. By the 1960s Libby had improved the process sufficiently he tested one scroll directly. That was it for a few decades. Then in the 1990s several rounds of testing were done in both Europe and the US on roughly two dozen fragments. Each test of course provides a range of dates rather than a specific date. And the various scrolls seem to cover several centuries. The oldest item comes from around 400-200 BCE. The youngest comes from around 300-320 CE. | 18 |
AskReddit/cjighxm | 2cs886 | What is the most interesting useful analogy someone made for you , to explain complex scientific ideas ? | When explaining why it is that the universe is expanding, yet the Andromeda galaxy is going to collide with us eventually: It's like a balloon with magnets all over it. As we inflate the balloon, the magnets drift away from each other like the expanding galaxies. However, if two magnets happen to be close enough, they are still attracted to each other in spite of the inflating balloon because their magnetism is stronger than the distance being created between them by expansion. Same idea with the universe. The Andromeda galaxy's gravity is close enough that it gravity is stronger than the expansion of space being created between our galaxies. | 2 |
AskReddit/d7try5u | 53k65y | Who's your favorite artist or band, and what are three songs you'd recommend to someone who hasn't heard said the artist/band before? | Electric light orchestra: Diary of Horace wimp Mr. Blue sky Last train to London These are their most popular songs, but check them out, and if you like them, then you'll love the band | 37 |
AskReddit/c2qpzir | l8tls | What is the best episode of the Simpsons? | The flying hellfish episode is my favourite. There's a genuine element of excitement and intrigue in the plot, like a thriller mixed in with the top notch Simpsons humour. Second favourite is probably whacking day. I love all the little skits, like the whacking day choral song, Apu's kwik-e-mart promotion, the Itchy and Scratchy episode guest directed by Oliver Stone. also there's a great plot which holds the episode together too. | 38 |
AskReddit/ex2fz9n | cr76bd | What are some misconceptions about hacking & hackers? | One thing is the idea that hackers 'break into' systems like they're cracking safes or breaking some virtual perimeter. Sure, there's methods to guess passwords and scan servers for vulnerabilities, but often hackers overcome security measures simply by fooling people into giving them access. Social hacking has been far more effective and detrimental than any other method. | 3 |
explainlikeimfive/cmxlze4 | 2pkmhm | How is a currency's "value" determined? | In much the same way as the price of anything is determined, by buyers and sellers. Let's say you have a load of Sterling, and want to buy something in the USA. You need to buy Dollars from someone to do so. You ask around for dollars, and since any dollar is as good as another, you'll buy from the person who offers you the most $/£. If hardly anyone wants to buy dollars, and lots of people want sterling then I'll be inundated with bids for my sterling, and so get a good price for them. If on the other hand there are plenty of people offering sterling for dollars, I'll have to lower my expectations and accept a low offer. Banks will buy dollars for £0.7, and sell the dollar back again for to someone else for £0.8 making a profit margin. If demand for dollars drops off, they'll have more people selling then buying dollars, which will run the bank out of dollars. In this case they'll need to adjust their prices to keep the buying and selling demand in balance. Alternatively in some countries they define a government exchange rate of their currency to a different currency. This is called a "peg" such as the Argentinian currency being pegged to the dollar for a long time. When a government stops the peg (as they can no longer afford to swap one for the other), this results in a sudden change in value of the currency. | 8 |
explainlikeimfive/dn89roi | 715jxt | Why do words spelled correctly sometimes seem to look like they are spelled wrong or "weird" after I focus on the word or multiple repetitions of the word for a long time? | It's a phenomenon called "semantic satiation". You can look it up on Wikipedia. The basic idea is that a specific group of cells in your brain is involved in recognising each particular familiar word. If you repeatedly read a particular word that is familiar, the cells associated with that word get tired and your brain instead uses the group of cells it would normally use to decipher unfamiliar words | 10 |
AskReddit/c2b2q3z | jcx02 | What's your worst first day on a job? | My first day in my newest retail opportunity began at 10 am on September 11, 2001. The boss called me at 8 am and stated "We're still opening." I got there and the mall announced they were closing in 15 minutes and locking the doors, so everyone should leave immediately. Had to deal with a group of rednecks who just could not comprehend why the mall would close because of a simple plane crash on the other side of the country. Wound up being an awesome job anyway. | 30 |
AskReddit/cww1tyl | 3scs9a | What is honey good with besides tea? | Peanut butter, fried chicken, toast, yogurt, oatmeal, pancakes. It also makes a good face mask, assuming you have real honey. | 3 |
AskReddit/c1t7b31 | h7mvh | What do people find so appealing about sports? | I like basketball. That's about the only sport I like because in school it was the one sport I was good at. I'm short. But I had good accuracy and could knock down a shot most couldn't pull off. For me it's always about rooting for the player or team that is the underdog, because, for years people underestimated my abilities. I don't get super serious about it but when there is a game on I'll watch and cheer for the underdog just based on my personal experiences. Also, during The Superbowl there's usually funny commercials.other than that I don't watch sports. | 3 |
AskReddit/c0m9xlx | bduxo | What is the worst task that you've had to complete at work? | I used to work at a SCUBA Dive shop. People would return wetsuits without washing them out or drying them. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but remember that many people just urinate in them (cold water makes you need to wee). Then they throw them in the back of the trunk for a few days, in the heat, before returning them to me. The smell was horrific (not the worst thing I've ever smelled, but close). I had to reach in the arms and legs to turn them inside out, still dripping with lake water, urine and whatever had started to grow in it. Imagine the swamp thing. now imagine the swamp thing with a rampant case of body odor and halitosis. | 13 |
explainlikeimfive/c2h4a9e | k2xiq | What exactly does Hess's Law mean? | Hess' law states that enthalpy change is a state function - it doesn't matter what path you take to get from reactant to product, the enthalpy change remains identical. So if you want to find the enthalpy change for a particular reaction, you can add up the enthalpy change of different reactions if these equations add up to your original reaction. Let's say I want to know enthalpy change for A + B -> C. If I know the enthalpy change for A -> D, and B + D -> C, I can add those up to get enthalpy change for the original equation, since: A -> D B + D -> C Add the two up: A + B -> C | 2 |
askscience/c9ndvgu | 1d6jx8 | What happens physically and/or psychologically when you have a "bad trip" on acid and what causes long term damage? | there's very little 'long term damage' associated with acid, beyond that which might be attributed to psychological impact. Bad trips are unpleasant, but any lasting effect is more about memory and shattered perception than anything else. | 2 |
AskReddit/cqhk2m4 | 334vcu | Why do people hate America? | We don't hate you (the "average" American) or much of your culture/ideals but your security organizations (in particular the CIA) and politicians have a nasty habit of attempted global manipulation that we find annoying. For instance, most of the world is still angry about the whole "weapons of mass destruction" pretext for the Iraq war. That was compounded by the encouragement of a civilian uprising by GWB which resulted in the US abandoning them mid-uprising, wherein they were rounded up by the Iraqui government and detained and/or executed. In many ways, the hatred for America in the Middle East is the result of decades of CIA activity and foreign policy (standing by Saudi Arabia and Israel regardless of the legality or appropriateness of their actions). | 3 |
AskReddit/di4gzp1 | 6dnw3h | What are some of the funniest conversations you've overheard in public? | My husband and I were the funny conversation for someone else. We're at a diner type restaurant, close tables, and he'd just finished his shift volunteering with the penguins at the Boston Aquarium and was telling me stuff about it. He was telling me about how because of conservation and population/breeding control, sometimes when the penguins lay eggs they take the eggs and either destroy/study them or to send them to other facilities, etc. Penguins, apparently, cannot handle this egg separation, they get really depressed and will refuse to mate again and get sick and all this. So, when they have to take the eggs, they put in a wooden egg in it's place that the penguins take care of instead so they don't get depressed. So I am completely bewildered by this, and I'm going on about those poor penquins! Taking those poor penguins' eggs! How sad for them still, caring for that egg all the time and it never hatches! "Oh you were expecting but you don't get a baby, YOU GET A FAKE EGG!" And my husband is trying to reassure me that's it's just fine, the penguins are perfectly okay with the wooden eggs, etc. And we realize this guy next to us, eating a salad, is just shaking with contained laughter. We stop talking and look at him and he just is shaking his head, and chuckling and goes "I'm sorry, I just.I don't even know what to make of this conversation but it's the best thing I've heard all week." | 34 |
AskReddit/c7vznst | 16gzhw | How do you get friends all over the world because of internet? | Back when Facebook's groups had a different format (Description, pictures, wall) around 2007 I joined a group for fans of a movie I liked. There were maybe about 50+ members but there was a core group of me and about seven other girls from different countries that posted on the wall every day talking about everything BUT the movie the group was about. We all became FB friends, and started Skyping and sending letters and packages (foreign chocolate) to each other. Six years later we all still keep in touch, and I actually met a couple of them IRL. | 3 |
AskReddit/c3gi8fo | oe34f | What are some accidentally racist things you've done to people? | Not me, but someone I know thought that answering the phone by saying "Herro!" was cute. She had no idea she was being horribly racist. Also, I was in Panama with my wife and her co-workers (on a Presidents Club vacation thingy). We had taken a day trip to another part of the country, and in the town we went to, there had been one home with a pet monkey that was leashed and tied to the railing on the front deck of the house. One of my wife's co-workers wouldn't stop talking about the "porch monkey" on the drive back to the hotel (yes, there were black people with us). | 16 |
AskReddit/cjopvq9 | 2dee81 | Is there a movie you watch over and over? | Well can't say I have any one movie, but the main one I've seen easily over ten times is Master and Commander: Far Side of the World. It's an amazing movie and the soundtrack is great, too. If you have some spare time and want to watch a French Man O' War and a British Ship of the Line go at it in a gunpowder fueled frenzy, check it out. | 2 |
AskReddit/efsflul | and32x | What does your family do that you’ve found out is not normal for others? | I know my friends family eats their cereal with a slice of kraft singles. He was shocked to find out that most families don’t eat their cereal with kraft singles. He was well into his early 20s when he found out | 4 |
AskReddit/elesckh | bfmj99 | What's the shortest time you have lasted at a job before quitting? | 1 Day and it’s a bullshit story I was hired for a retail job but wasn’t told that not only was the shop closing but that they were having major sales going on throughout the store. First day was 70-90% discounts on everything and our customers were teachers (as the store sold teaching supplies for teachers) and ALL of the teachers went there on that day. It was so much that the local news came to the store and started doing a story about how the store had been opened for over 80 years but now had to close its doors. I was not a trained employee learning how to run the store with two other girls who were more experienced than I was and who didn’t know anything about the store. I was basically another set of hands and hadn’t been warned about this. The next day I told the store manger I quit and he gave me my $200 dollar check for the 8+ hours I put in for that day. The store closed a week later btw. | 2 |
AskReddit/dz5cmzs | 8k75ok | What little things do people do that make you lose respect for them? | Anything to do with distracting an entire movie theater. Pulling out a phone, talking, fake laughing at scenes , not stopping a kid from mucking about. I see this it's an instant 'respect lost' moment. | 2 |
AskReddit/c117h7r | dlzi4 | What is the most mind-blowing thing you saw with your own eyes? | I was working at Kennedy Space Center -- must've been about 1992 -- and had seen my share of shuttle (and rocket) launches. Landings, however, had always been done out in California at Edwards Air Force Base. They had built a landing strip at KSC, but had yet to use it, except for landing the special airliner that carries the shuttle back from California. On a day when the shuttle was scheduled to land in Edwards, I was at work as usual. Word started spreading around the building that, due to a weather pattern approaching California, they were going to land the shuttle, that day, right outside our building instead! Everyone filed out at the appropriate time, and waiting in the parking lot that was pretty much right across the street from the landing strip. The funny thing was, no one knew which way to look. We knew it would be coming from the west, but also that it would have to circle a few times to lose speed. So eyes were pointed in every direction. Finally, someone spotted it, directly overhead, so high up that you could barely see it. Everyone cheered, for the first time of three. We watched it begin to bank into its turn. Two minutes or so later, the double sonic boom hit us -- BOOM! BOOM! Car alarms went off, and everyone cheered again. It pulled a descending curve over our parking lot, and we could begin to see details on the shuttle itself, as its jet fighter escorts pulled up alongside. But to everyone's dismay, just before it was to do its final, unimaginably steep descent towards the landing strip, it disappeared behind a cloud bank. We were going to miss the landing! It was hard to tell just how thick the clouds were, and where they stopped. Finally, just as the shuttle was leveling off from its descent, it burst MAJESTICALLY out of its cloud bank, almost directly towards us, and everyone went nuts cheering, one more time! Not that the astronauts could possibly hear us; it was just an unbridled outburst of joy amongst a bunch of space geeks. Finally it dipped below the trees across the road and made its landing. We all went back to work with big stupid grins on our faces. tl;dr - Saw Pamela Anderson sunbathing topless. | 140 |
explainlikeimfive/cfmps59 | 1ypwwi | Why does aluminum foil hurt your teeth and head (when touching it) when you have fillings? | The human body has a small amount of electrical current running through it; it what keeps the heart beating, the nerves operating and was the basis for the reason the Machines enslaved humanity in the Matrix. When you bite on aluminum foil with a metal filling, you're basically creating an electric circuit (the metal mixed with saliva and the filling in the tooth) that delivers a jolt of volts to your body. | 2 |
AskReddit/c24uwvi | im1dc | What happens if you start your car while pumping gas into it? | I have been a gas station attendant for the last eight years, and I have had extensive training on safety-related issues. Having an engine running while pumping gas is a violation of federal law here in the USA. There are many ignition points on the underside of every vehicle, which is understandable when you realize that the internal-combustion engine is a heat engine. In the event of a gas spill while pumping gas, the spill can easily give off gas vapor which may come into contact with an ignition point on the underside of a vehicle, causing a fire. | 23 |
AskReddit/c2gp0c7 | k107h | Where is the weirdest/coolest place you've found money? | I was taking the enclosure off of my PC to clean it out a bit, and found $150 Inside along with my favorite money clip. I forgot I had put it there three years prior. | 2 |
AskReddit/cqrdnxd | 345cs1 | How do you feel about the Bali 9 ring leaders imminent execution? | I strongly oppose the death penalty, but I don't think this warrants front page news every other day for several months. I also don't think our leaders should be trying to violate Indonesia's sovereignty on the issue. It's a whole lot of diplomatic tension for two convicted drug smugglers (which, interestingly, we wouldn't extend to other types of reformed criminals). | 3 |
AskReddit/c6jznv0 | 11748r | What is something that 50 years from now our grandchildren will think is commonplace that you refuse to use? | 50 years, it is here now. Cell phones. Hate those bastards with fiery burning passion. No, you don't need to be able to get a hold of me 24/7 and for fraks sake put the thing down when we are eating out. | 2 |
AskReddit/dl4590e | 6rdcmv | Why do a lot of comments on Reddit say "score hidden"? | Some people vote based on how upvoted or downvoted something is; hiding the score for a limited time helps properly foster discussion and prevents "Hivemind Voting". | 2 |
AskHistorians/c5hd6ti | wv47u | What was urban life like during the late Qing dynasty? | These are all great question and I am sorry a period specialist didn't answer this. My specialization in Chinese history--insofar as I have one, which I don't--is much earlier, so I can't answer these questions for the big cities like Beijing and Nanjing. I know more about rural areas, but will answer as best I can. The main mistake people make when analyzing China is equating it to individual European countries, like Italy or Britain. However, in its size and diversity China is much more like the entire continent of Europe. In, say, 1750 there were some areas of China that were as wealthy as England, and some that were as poor as the Ukraine. There was no average Chinese experience any more than there was an average European one. That being said, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth China was undergoing the pain of a protracted state failure. This was due to several factors, including European quasi-colonialism, but it should be remembered that the Qing was already undergoing some civil unrest, unrest along the borders, and economic contraction before the Opium Wars. Still, the European entrance into China was catastrophic, not the least because of the blatantly extortionist treaties that caused a massive outflow from the Imperial treasury. This caused a weakening of the central state and the basket of problems that go along with that, such as unrest and increased crime and banditry. Put simply, China has seen better days. There were enormous income inequalities in China, with all possible wealth levels represented. There were grindingly impoverished laborers, comfortably poor craftsmen, middling shopkeepers, prosperous landlords, and extravagantly wealthy merchants. Whether there was a "middle class" depends on how you define the term. It wasn't like Europe (although it should be remembered that even in England the middle class was only something like 20% of the population) but there was a large number of economic ranks one could fall into. It wasn't "the rich and the rest". Broadly speaking, yes, Beijing was overflowing with poverty, but there was also a substantial middling income. There were a variety of leisure activities. Gambling was a big one, much mentioned by missionaries and Communists. The theater was a huge source of popular entertainment, comparable in many ways to Bollywood in India today. I'm not sure about sports exactly, but cricket fighting, which is an awesome blood sport with none of the moral qualms, was at least as popular then as it is now. Bars, restaurants, and brothels existed in abundance. The archetypal Chinese urban dwelling was the siheyuan, a quadrangle style building similar to Roman insulae. These would be strung together to make a neighborhood structure called a hutong. Many of these remain today, often serving as lower-class dwellings. | 6 |
AskReddit/deswess | 5ytoki | What do you respond to faster and why- phone, text, or social media? | Text. I'll answer a phone call if I'm expecting one, but otherwise I wait for it to go to voice mail. If it's a friend calling and I can't answer I'll text to see if it's important. I don't really like talking on the phone with some people because I hate the long pauses in conversation and knowing they're distracted. I also get terrible reception in my room so I need to go stand in the next room to talk | 2 |
AskReddit/c2i7m9u | k853d | How do I get people to come to an acoustic show at a local coffeehouse when the town shows apathy towards most music? | Do you have a website or something where people can hear your music before the show. Almost nothing would get me to come to see an accoustic performance at a local coffee house [no offense -- I've been to many, of which 1 was worth seeing], but if there was someplace people could check out your music before hand, it might be helpful. | 2 |
AskReddit/dxogsby | 8dnhv8 | What was that one situation where you never expected that the people around you helped you (for something), and it made your heart melt? | I work at a shoe store and an extremely annoying family with 7 young kids were running around the store unsupervised. The kids ended up knocking over a hug pile of about 50+ shoes, parents did nothing, and almost every other customer in the store helped me pick the pile up. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/e8ahker | 9qo2eo | Why did Sears fall behind companies like Amazon when they pretty much wrote the book on mail order shopping? | Because amazon room advantage of a disruptive technology, the internet. Sears was making a lot of money and they had a steady revenue. They wanted to protect thier stable profit and make sure they built the core business. Moving towards online would have been at the sacrifice of a stable and growing business. Large corps are not agile. Conversely amazon sold books online. Focused on building a retail platform online only. The process and culture they built staged them perfectly for this. By the time Sears realized they were screwed thier steady income was in jeopardy. Instead of paying for new strategy they streamlined, closed stores and sold brands. They were still loosing money and building debt. Basically they were to slow to adapt because @why would the good times end, we're Sears" | 16 |
AskReddit/dl5rd0r | 6rkndn | What is something you realized you have been doing wrong your whole life? | High school girlfriend broke up with me and her friend told me it was because I was too clingy. Spent the next 10 years of my dating life actively being more alof and distant with girls I was dating. Recently ran into that ex and found out that that wasn't the reason she broke up with me. I feel like I have been dating wrong for the last decade | 20 |
AskReddit/d0m6efr | 48ryif | What are the craziest under-reported world events to take place since the year 2000? | International Workers Day (May 1) has mass demonstrations every year throughout the world. The day was founded in solidarity after some workers were killed in Chicago. In general, the US population doesn't even know about it. | 9 |
AskReddit/c0cq5mv | 9gtp4 | How, in the future, might we enhance our bodies and minds? | Brain Implants - This has already been researched and been successful. Basically we will be able to connect to the Internet and conduct similar activity within our brain, although I am not sure how we would visualize the World Wide Web? Would there be a position in our vision for the web browsers? We could also enhance our thinking using brain implants, there's a possibility of speeding up our visual sense so that we can perceive time slower, although this adds the annoying disadvantage of perceiving a slower world, but with the improved advantage of greatly enhanced reflexes. Slowed Aging - We will be able to live longer, because scientists will be able to elongate the life of cells and reduce cell decay in our bodies. The longer you live, the more you can do in your life. Superhuman Strength, Hearing, Sight, and other senses - This is very useful since humans can current see a very small range of light frequencies, hear a small frequency of sounds, etc. Also, being really intelligent creatures, us humans are surprisingly very fragile, we could do with some strength. There's a lot we can do with our body, but it won't be considered necessary since we can do better using machines. For example, no matter how fast a genetically engineered human can run, a car will always outrun him/her (it's very unlikely given the structure of our body, that we will ever outrun a car). The best we can do with our bodies is to enhance our brains, possibly giving us the ability to perform complex and precise mathematics in our brains quicker than it would take us to pick up a device to punch in our desired query. We could also take a lot of help from imaginative comics, like X-Men, they have a few ideas that might be practical enough. That's it for now, I can't really think of anything else we might do with our bodies. | 4 |
AskReddit/ca8d3ns | 1faihw | What are the most dangerous jobs known to man? | Alaskan Crab Fishing. Have you not seen deadliest catch? Rouge waves, unpredictable weather, Freezing rain, slippery deck, tons of equipment unstably swinging around, tough repair jobs, and of course, the possibility of poor morale and little sleep. Only the toughest of tough can make it through half a season. The rest of the men are just plain nuts. Kudos to all those men who seek crab in Dutch Harbor. | 5 |
AskReddit/cc6ffim | 1m78h0 | What is your biggest pet peeve on a first date? | Shrimp breath. Oh yeah it happened. I was on a date and we were talking about what we liked to eat and I had just told her I was allergic to shrimp. Well we went to order or dinner and she orders a huge shrimp plate thing. It wasn't a big deal. So we head over to my house and then she tried to kiss me. I was like ummm no. She got real offended and said something to the effect of "I'm to hot for you anyways." I said "Yup you sure are. If I kiss you I would die, swell up and die from the shrimp you just ate." | 2 |
AskReddit/cacusz1 | 1fqqd9 | What is the best way to handle tip money? | It depends on how tips are collected. If they are in a jar, your boss will pool them, then dispurse. if this is done, you will get a 1099g, which is reported a income to the IRS and therefore taxable, so do what you want with it. If the tips are pocketed, you are 'supposed' to report it to the IRS, most don't, but don't get caught if it's a lot of money, there us a significant penalty for not reporting large amounts. Anything you put in the bank will earn you interest, which is taxable as income (the interest), but is miniscule in most cases, not something a would worry about. | 3 |
AskReddit/dl6exmr | 6rnq1b | What are instances of actual cultural appropriation? | I think people confuse culture with fad a little too much. Culture is something that is a heritage with a deep meaning. That could be a hairstyle or a language or something that is unique to your close knit group of people. A fad is something that is new and popular. For example, we use culture appropriation when some group of people start doing something that another group "started". Things like clothing can be cultural, but more often than not, it's a fad that will go away. Culture is something that persists through the years. Rap might be considered a new culture among blacks, and white people "stealing" it could be considered cultural appropriation. But I think things like western women wearing burkas is more close to what cultural appropriation is. Burkas in the middle East is a strong cultural thing there. It's been around for a long time and has a deep meaning to the people that live there. I think most people today associate barbeque as being something that white southerners are famous for doing. It was actually black slaves that would barbeque the unwanted parts of meat like ribs. And they were very good at it. We can debate on if that was a real culture at the time, but I'd say barbeque is more of a culture today than it was during slavery. | 2 |
AskReddit/dlh6dl0 | 6t1irs | What's the worst episode of your favorite show and why? | The Sopranos: Final Episode Yes, I understand the director wanted to make the ending so that the viewer could end the show how they wanted in their mind, but that ending was really unsatisfying. Worst ending in history IMHO | 2 |
AskReddit/eerxrb9 | aj1d8g | What was a red flag you ignored and are happy with that decision now? | My girlfriend and I share different political views, which was a red flag because it's very rare for two opposing views to not get in a disagreement about everything, but I decided to stick through and to this day were happy, and when discussing politics it's more about how we would run things, and this led to both of us becoming open minded and finding out that we are pretty similar. ​ My advice is don't think that just because they're title (republican, democrat, etc) is different, that they don't share the same ideologies. Stick through discuss policies and find out what y'all agree on. | 5 |
explainlikeimfive/eputk0d | bw30nj | Why do scabs disintegrate after prolonged exposure to water? | Scabs are principally clumps of clotted platelets (one type of cell in blood) the air-exposed part of which dries out and hardens. Rehydration can restore the "wet" version of scab in part and make it less structurally stable. Add movement (such as the flow of water in a shower) and the sloughing away of the clot is relatively easy under wet conditions. | 7 |
AskReddit/d92h2r0 | 58qgsv | In your opinion, what did your parents do wrong when raising you, which bothered you? | My parents monitored and limited my every move. Instilled fear and distrust in me, ill prepared me for life. I have a neutral emotional disconnect from them. Its pretty unfortunate | 3 |
AskHistorians/eomysw2 | bs91yh | How common was it for German immigrants to hide their cultural heritage in the 1920-30s? | I can't speak to your question about the role of radio and as frustrating as it might be to hear, the best answer to your question is likely going to be, "it depends." In effect, a German immigrant answer to the question of showing public pride in their origins or working to hide any vestiges of the old country would depend on where they settled. One of the ways we can better understand the immigrant experience is to look at what was happening in schools in the location and in in the era of the immigrant's arrival and the German experience was particularly diverse. Had your ancestors settled in St. Louis, for example, they would have moved seamlessly between German and English no matter where they were in the city. Virtually all schools had a native German teacher who taught native English teachers conversational German and children were generally encouraged to speak in whatever language was most comfortable to them in the moment. This was made possible due to the school district's leadership and the presence of first and second generation German Americans on the school board and in positions of leadership. This German positive approach continued in the city until well into the 20th century. However, in most east coast cities, German would be welcome in one neighborhood, but absolutely verboten one block outside the particular neighborhood. Buffalo, for example, had a German Catholic church and school less than a mile from a Polish Catholic church and school. (There was also an Irish Catholic church and school and unsurprisingly, an Italian one.) Each community was able to support their own K-8 school until well into the 20th century. Immigrants experience in South Dakota and Nebraska would likely be highly dependent on the town and the individual school teacher or town leadership. The groups of single white women who moved West to be teachers in the mid-1800's included native German speakers who taught German to their students as a way to fill the time while waiting for textbooks to arrive and as such, German language and culture became a part of the school culture. These teachers would often tutor new German arrivals in their town to help with assimilation and in some cases, were active in creating German American social clubs that facilitated the movement between English and German, between American and German culture. There are first person accounts, though, of German speaking teachers in other towns being told by the residents that German wasn't welcome and instead, students should speak only English as the town leaders wanted children to be fluent as quickly as possible. It should be said World War I, and tensions before the war, negatively impacted the dynamic between German Americans and their neighbors. Indiana and Texas, for example, had been a welcome place for German immigrants, including mandated German instruction in most Indiana high schools as a way to explicitly draw German immigrants to the state. (Basically, they were saying, "your child will do well in at least one class in school and we're cool with them speaking German." In 1900, more than 200 American public schools in more than a dozen states used this approach to appeal to German immigrants.) Steps, though, by xenophobic Americans brought a swift halt to German language and cultural education. Many of the men advocating for an end to anything and everything German in schools were engaged in what can best be described as "superpatriotism." They saw it as their responsibility to rid their schools of any vestiges of the enemy, even though they had lived side by side with German immigrants for generations. But again, it was location dependant; New York State offered German language high school courses and corresponding exit exams until well into the modern era. Generally speaking, the pushback against Prussia in American schools during and after World War I was a general prejudice against all things German. A great deal of this was tied up in how white Americans have set and shifted the boundaries around who counted as white. That is, German Americans weren't kicked out of the tent of whiteness - German speaking children were still allowed to attend public schools and German speaking adults were paid the same as other workers, whereas Black Americans were still barred from schools and paid less. So, while a German immigrant in the 1920's and 1930's may have felt the impact of nativism and xenophobia and elected to minimize the things that would draw attention, it would have been a matter of choice. The sentiment of the xenophobia would shift from German culture in general to German American children in specific by World War II. As an example, the topic of "disordered" thinking of American children raised in households speaking in German was a popular topic for dissertations well into the 1950's. All of which is to say, the question of being publicly German in the 1920's and 30's was highly idiosyncratic, based on a German family's school, town, and state. | 6 |
AskReddit/cwyzwpq | 3sncq3 | What do you do after you knew that your world just fell apart? | OP, just looked at your post history. I'm sorry for your loss and I know you must be going through an incredible amount of grief at the moment. There are moments in life where it does feel like it's fallen apart. I've had a few myself. For me it was the time I lost all hope and wanted to kill myself. I had faced major depression for a long while and in that moment it felt like it could win. But I had to go on, if not for myself then for my family. For my friends. People were relying on me. People needed me. Once I accepted that people needed me, ending my life was no longer an option. It took a huge realization afterward to realize I needed myself too - to be stable, happy, and able to both give and receive love. OP, it may feel like your world is falling apart and I'm sure I'd feel the same way you do. But right now, your girlfriend needs you. You are not a passive person that goes through this world alone - each human is a knot in a web. We rely upon other people and they rely upon us. Take some time right now to be there for your girlfriend, but take time for yourself. Allow yourself to grieve and to feel sadness, despair, and pain. Take time off work, away from school, whatever you need to do. But also remember to be strong for those who need you and while you grieve, make concrete steps to get through this. See a grief counselor with your girlfriend. While respecting this as a time for grief, also realize you cannot do so forever and work on positive ways to cope with your loss, and realize that it is not selfish to do so. Because we are counting on you. All of us. And we need you. | 33 |
AskReddit/cpg5kf2 | 2z6j3n | What do you envy from the opposite gender? | The only time I ever found myself envious of the opposite gender (female) was when my wife was pregnant. There was morning sickness, aches and pains, hot flashes, etc. I did not envy that. What I did envy was that she got to feel every kick. She got to spend nine months bonding with our kids in a way that I could not. To this day I'm still a little jealous of that. | 34 |
askscience/dnwb8x6 | 7488gn | Why doesn't the glass inside optic fibers break? | The individual optical glass fibers used in cables are very strong and very flexible because they have a large tensile strength and small diameter. This is the same material used fiberglass boats, ladders, etc. When bundled together inside a coating, along with strengthening components such as Kevlar, and then wrapped in extra material (the cabling) to protect against dirt, bending, crushing, etc. you have a very tough fiber optic cable. Having said that, breaks and faults in fiber optic cables are not unheard of. | 57 |
explainlikeimfive/ej6fygq | b4en6m | What is the goal of all the "sexy girl" fake profiles? | There are (or used to be) dating sites that would pay you a smell amount of you got someone to subscribe. I had a friend who did those fake profiles to get guys to subscribe. He made a couple thousand bucks a year from what seemed like a lot of time to me | 307 |
AskHistorians/czn0bas | 4400e8 | Can someone give me an insight or a summary on the emergence of papacy during the dark ages? | The really short and quick answer is that the Papacy begins as bishop who claims special connection to St. Peter but keeps mostly to the affairs of Rome. In the 11th century, popes begin to assert themselves and what they see as their rights and authority over other bishops and ecclesiastical affairs at the expense of local kings. Here is a longer, more detailed answer. The papacy underwent a large number of changes during the middle ages. Most of the authority people assume the pope has always had did really begin until the latter half of the 11th century, and it wasn't until the end of the 12th that they were really firmly cemented. For starters, during the early history of the papacy the pope was principally thought of as the bishop of Rome and not some sort of sovereign over all ecclesiastical affairs in Western Christendom. As with much of the politics of the time, church affairs were primarily local affairs. The pope was believed to be an important bishop, as not only did apostles Peter and Paul die in Rome, but there were also a large number of other saints and relics in the city as well. However, popes of this period did little to influence the affairs of the rest of western Christendom, and and If you read Gregory of Tours's History of the Franks, he mentions the pope very little, except at the end of his work when he comments on the future Gregory I and his desire to convert the British Isles (a large part of which was already christian, but that's another issue all together.) Anyways, back to Gregory I. Gregory I, also known as Gregory the Great, was one of the first very active popes in the early middle ages. He as a prolific letter writer and we still have many of his letters. Unlike many popes before him, Gregory was very active in the affairs of Christendom across the Mediterranean. not in the sense that he made decrees and enforced rules. Rather, many people wrote to him with questions and for advice relating to church matters. As i already mentioned, Gregory sends a mission to convert the British Isles back to Christianity. His delegation succeeded, and Christianity gradually spreads across Britain from the south up to the extent of Irish Christianity which moves from the north down to about modern day York. One key difference between the Irish Christians and the new "roman" Christians at this time is that the roman Christians look to Rome and the pope for spiritual guidance and authority. All because it was Gregory I who sent that first mission. Fast forward to the 11th century. A group of churchmen who many historians now refer to as the "reformers" or the "reform party" decide that the state of the church is no longer acceptable. They cite numerous flaws such as clerical marriage and a lack of monastic rigor. However, their biggest target is the practice of Simony, or buying and selling church office. Before the reformers simony was considered something akin to modern political corruption and taking bribes. While it was never considered acceptable, it was none the less a very common practice. The reformers gain key positions of power within the church by allying themselves with the then Holy Roman Emperor Henry III, who places them into key positions withing the church in exchange for political support, including the papacy. When Henry III dies his son Henry IV is a mere 3 years old. His regency and early reign contain a great deal of turmoil. During this time the reformers continue to advance their own agenda, principally denouncing simony. In the year 1073 a man named Hildebrand become Pope Gregory VII (it is not a coincidence that he chose Gregory). Gregory went a step further than the rest of his counterparts in denouncing simony. Not only was someone who bought his church office a simoniac, so too was the man who was made bishop by a king. Rewind to Gregory of Tours. Gregory writes a lot about bishops and the drama involved in a bishops succession. He mentions a number of ways in which one can become bishop, and it often involves a king stepping in and proclaiming the new bishop. However, he never mentions the pope in any of these incidents. Gregory's claim that only the pope had the authority to invest bishops, and that any king or nobleman who gave a man a bishopric or who received it from him were simoniacs flew in the face of established methods of succeeding bishops for hundreds of years. Even many of the reformers received their office from Henry III which could have been call simony by Gregory VII. When Henry IV came of age he tried to do as his father did and invest men of his choosing into church office and Gregory VII tried to stop him. The conflict between the two sparks the Investiture Conflict, or the conflict over who has the right to nominate new bishops, the king or the pope. To cut a very long story short, Henry ends up briefly submitting to Gregory, but reverse his position and invades Italy, partially with the intent of ousting Gregory as Pope. The conflict is not resolved with either mans death, but the damage had already been done. The papacy had made a claim about it's authority over spiritual affairs that one could say lead to a very gradual separation of church and state. This is not even close to the whole story of the evolution of the papacy in the middle ages, but I think it answers your question in terms of its evolution through the 'dark ages' | 7 |
askscience/c5rxrox | y2scm | What would happen to an astronaut stranded on the moon? | There was a thread on here a few months ago that linked to some documents the suggested (but it wasn't outright) that if it were clear that an astronaut was going to die, NASA would shut off all communication permanently. I think the thought was that NASA should not be forced to listen to the ravings of a stranded, delusional man. Who knows if this is true or not. | 7 |
AskReddit/ctj01l3 | 3ewh4p | What is the reasoning behind staying together "for the kids" when a marriage no longer seems beneficial to either person? | Personally, I think staying together "for the kids" is the wrong thing to do. My parents were divorced before I could remember, and while I didn't have a great childhood, it was certainly better than it would've been had I grown up in a household with constant screaming and physical altercations. I realize not every family is like that, but in our situation, the split was the best option for everyone. | 3 |
AskReddit/eanh4jt | a182tz | What was the most gratifying bridge you've burned? | I burned a literal bridge when I turned 16. I built a tiny wood bridge in the woods by my house when I was a kid. The figurative burning was to decide not to go back to the woods to get high ever again. Haven't crossed that bridge since. So that one! | 5 |
AskReddit/deut7sm | 5z2owk | What are the best card games not a lot of people know about? | Netrunner is super good. Everyone I know, even those that are hard into MtG, have never heard of it. I even tried looking around my local game stores and card stores for places that have Netrunner events and couldn't find even one in my entire city + neighboring city. | 3 |
AskReddit/dqbkled | 7fg7mr | What's the worst thing you've seen someone do and NOT get fired for? | Somebody jumped off of the 3rd shelf (about 21ft up) into a pile of boxes. The manager yelled "WTF were you thinking? Are you okay?" when the guy said "Yeah, I'm fine" the manager said that was awesome and if he did anything like that again he would be fired. The manager laughed and walked away shaking his head. | 37 |
AskReddit/e4nk1ew | 99gtkh | What weird/supernatural/paranormal thing has happened to you or someone you know? | An ex of mine told me that when he was young, he used to live in a very old house in a historic part of town. The house was so old that the closet in his room had a pulley system that he used to bring his dirty clothes down to the laundry room. He also told me a bunch of eerie things that happened when he lived there. Once, he was sleeping in bed and felt the weight of someone sitting on the corner of the mattress - it startled him while he slept so he woke up, but saw nothing. The mattress was sunken in at the bottom, like someone was sitting on it, but then he saw it move back to normal, like someone had stood up. It freaked him out so much he told his parents. They didn't believe him and chalked it up to bad dreams. A couple weeks later his mom was cleaning a room and had a large picture frame on the floor leaned up against the wall. It was pretty heavy, but he said while she swept the floors, the frame had somehow tipped off of the wall and fell on top of her. She started to believe that maybe the house had something going on inside that they weren't aware of. Sure enough when they looked into the history, they discovered the house used to be a boarding house and infirmary for young boys. The pulley-system closet was actually for transporting the dead bodies to the "morgue" which was in the basement, and many young boys had died there. Safe to say they listed the house soon after. | 2 |
AskReddit/c85r2ay | 17ici0 | What is your nickname and how did you get it? | My parents call me Pickle. Apparently when I was a little nugget I had this stuffed animal type thing, only it was a pickle. Said pickle was also a superhero. It had a cape and everything. I was so attached to Super Pickle that my parents just started calling me that. I always wonder what happened to that thing. Oh well, still have the nickname. | 2 |
AskReddit/d7gghjv | 520t1c | What song makes you rethink life in a deeper way when listen to it? | Time - Pink Floyd It is a very true song as well as being bipolar, on the one hand it's depressive since it depicts the "short" duration of life, on the other hand its soothing since time is inevitable and therefore it is useless to panic over it.It's one of the few songs that the lyrics drew me to such an extent. | 2 |
AskReddit/d1gfjt2 | 4caomc | What is the difference between being poor and broke? | In my mind, poor means low income while broke means that at that particular moment, you have no money. Like I get paid once a month which sucks. By the end of the month, right before my next paycheck comes in, I'm usually broke and pinching pennies for a few days. But I am not poor. I make good money. | 4 |
AskHistorians/d8wzuh0 | 577sqb | How accurate is the Netflix movie, The Siege of Jadotville? | The battle is somewhat accurate. But that's about it. The movie implies De Gaulle was directly involved in sending troops to counter the UN. That's just speculation. It makes out the fighters to be former (that's unclear) French legionnaires, when they were mostly Belgian mercenaries. The character of general McEntee is pure fabrication. The commander of the UN forces in the Congo at that time was General Sean McKeown, a highly regarded general at the time. In the movie, he is portrayed as a weak man with little involvement or power. Not sure how they got away with that as it's borderline defamatory. The filmmakers also conveniently chose to leave out that Dag Hammarskjöld's (UN Secretary General) plane was shot down over Rhodesia. It is believed that it was shot down by the British. Britain's involvement in the events is seriously downplayed. In fact, there isn't a single mention in the entire film of British presence and power in that part of the world. | 6 |
AskReddit/erb3m32 | c16amg | What are good paying jobs to get without a degree? | Dental assistant I worked as one for about four years and received free dental work. I only had to pay lab fees. I got all my neglected cavities filled, Invisalign, and a night guard for under $500. Made a good hourly wage plus health insurance. | 2 |
AskReddit/drazlrn | 7k25sy | What made you smile today? | My boyfriend competing with me over who loves who more (insert CHEESE HERE) and going to the effort of yelling it out a window to me as he drove away . lol. (PS: Craig, I feel horrible about this, but I look at Facebook pictures of high school friends who were string beans and are now ballooning up -- and as someone who has been voluptuous since birth? It makes me smile a bit.) | 11 |
AskReddit/ci84cr5 | 287ejj | When and how did you get into playing video games? | My first gaming experiences were the Castle of Illusions (a mickey mouse game) on Sega Genesis, and Kings Quest 4 and DOOM on PC when I was 6 or so. My mom got really angry with my brothers for letting me play DOOM. | 2 |
AskReddit/dg5cr7j | 64vafc | Which moment in a TV show hit you the hardest? | When the 10th Doctor and Rose got separated forever at the portal. I don't think i've ever been so shocked while watching a TV show. Like by that point you're so used to the Doctor fixing everything so when he finally can't, it's like.whoa | 2 |
AskReddit/cjfdty7 | 2cgsat | What are some things we are in the golden age of? | The USA. We don't know for certain what will happen in the future, but it's likely that historians will view the period from 1945 to whatever point in the future America economically and militarily falls behind a rival as the golden age of the US. | 88 |
AskReddit/dizsg0g | 6ho0an | What old school arcade games did you dump the most coin into? | The original Space Wars. Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington had one. It was 1973 or so. There were no similar games anywhere else. My buddy and I ended up spending hours playing it. Edit: also the sit down version of Night Driver in black and white. I had just gotten my driver's license and hadn't driven highways much. When I crossed the country to go to college my Night Driver experience made it much easier. Edit 2: 1981 during spring break we went to Disneyland and found this amazing game that unlike other ones involved mostly running away from the things that were trying to kill your character rather than shooting those things. We probably spent two hours of our time at Disneyland buying that game, Pac Man. | 2 |
AskReddit/cuos6kj | 3jfh48 | What is your most unfortunate coincidence? | One time I was walking out of Costco and was clicking the unlock button on my keys as I walked. I noticed a car that looked exactly like mine with its lights flashing. I got to it and opened the door, half got in, but noticed that it absolutely wasn't my car. I stepped back and turned around in confusion.just in time to see a young family standing there, staring at me with the most confused yet concerned looks on their faces. I tried my hardest to mumble out an explanation about how their car looked exactly like mine, but nothing I could say made me look any less like a complete lunatic. Pretty tame in terms of unfortunate coincidences, but super awkward. | 2 |
AskReddit/c1yev3z | hu8w1 | What is your absolute best and absolute worst quality? | Best - Sense of humor. I can make anyone laugh, but only once I get comfortable around them by getting to know them well enough. Or drunk. And this leads to my worst quality Worst - Social anxiety. I have a hard time getting to know people because I always feel like they are judging me, so I usually keep my mouth shut for a while. | 8 |
AskReddit/cauc6qn | 1hhcn3 | What is the craziest/strangest/most unorthodox animal you've ever owned? | Once I owned a mouse that crawled out of my shower drain. I named him Godzilla. Another time, there was a squirrel in my back yard. My dog saw the squirrel and bit down on it and then began to shake it rapidly. The squirrel ended up a bit retarted, but we kept him. He was cute. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/cjlnek1 | 2d3det | Why do kids need to take naps? | Kids need more sleep in general (and eat more) to sustain the rapid growth they are undergoing. Same reason teenagers sleep in, just a different time of growth. Small kids are unable/unwilling to operate tired so will commonly take naps during the day. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/dt4t523 | 7shofy | How do pressing charges work? | IANAL, but my understanding is that all criminal charges are brought by the state, not an individual person. It is the decision of the government (by way of the prosecutor) whether or not your case will be brought to a grand jury, where charges will be decided, and then to a court, where a verdict will be issued. If the states wants to charge you, it has the sole authority to push the case forward. Now, that said, very often the state's case will hinge on the testimony of the victim to attest that the action was in fact criminal. If the state claims that you assaulted me, it is tough to make that case unless I (as the victim) testify to that fact in court. When they ask if you want to "press charges" they are asking if you want to make an official complaint that will be entered as evidence against the accused. | 13 |
explainlikeimfive/c65s5km | zlyll | Why has the national debt gone up by so much since 2008? | The deficit (the different between government spending and government income from taxation) was already very high in 2008. The economic downturn caused unemployment, which decreases the amount of tax revenue the government was taking in. It also necessitated emergency spending by the government to decrease the effect of the downturn. Both of these increased the already high deficit to extremely high rates, which caused increase in debt. Both of those changes are short term though, and should resolve themselves over the next 5 years or so, but that will still leave us with the high deficit (and therefore increasing debt) from prior to 2008. | 2 |
AskReddit/db1z43j | 5hpoek | What do you hear way too often? | After bouncing for around four years, I got real sick of the phrase, "We're just trying to have a good time." Seriously, I heard that EVERY night when I worked the door, and at least half of the people I kicked out when I worked the floor would say it. Guess what. I'm just trying to do my job, and your "good time" is ruining other people's good time, putting them in physical danger, or it's illegal and will cause my coworkers to loose their jobs. It's been almost three years since I worked at a bar and I still can't hear that phrase without rolling my eyes. | 12 |
AskReddit/d9lmy3s | 5b4aar | What slang word is too overused? | Jawn. We get it. You're from Philly (More likely Delco) and you saw the Buzzfeed article about slang words. You say jawn to fit in. If you have to force it to appear "Philadelphia" then you're pretty obvious about it and it feels stale coming from you. If you do use that jawn sparingly and naturally, it just feels right. | 3 |
AskReddit/du48khc | 7wyv69 | What's something that people think is really dangerous but is actually totally safe? | Traveling by air. I know 9/11 scared a lot of people. Heck, I know being suspended thousands of feet in the air scares a lot of people. But so many precautions are taken for plane travel that it's one of the safest modes of transport. Plane crashes become big news stories when they do happen, but they happen rarely. Things that are literally statistically more likely to happen to you than being in a plane crash: Being elected president Being born with 6 fingers on each hand Death by meteorite Living to be 100 years old Having Siamese twins Getting killed by lightning Dying from food poisoning Dying from a car accident | 15 |
AskReddit/ca9mctn | 1fepkc | What's the smoothest thing you've ever said or done with someone you've been attracted to? | I was standing outside a bookshop talking to a guy acquaintance who I was very much attracted to. I pointed to an artbook displayed in the window, on the cover was Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss". I told him it was one of my favorite paintings and he asked what it was called. I leaned towards him, kissed his cheek and whispered softly "The kiss". My friend called me over a few seconds later, so walked over to her, leaving him standing there smiling and looking pretty shocked. Uncharacteristically smooth for me, i assure you. | 4 |
AskReddit/d0ngouk | 48xqs7 | Do you think that cavemen had hobbies? | Before the Agrarian Revolution, hunter gatherers had abundant leisure time. Hunter gatherers had no property, therefore they didn't accumulate property. They kept the birth rate low because they were often on the move and again, because they had no reason to produce lots of children. We think of hunter gatherers as poor because they don't have property, but also because modern hunter gatherers have been pushed to the most remote locations in the planet. Before the Agrarian Revolution, they lived in places where food was abundant and easy to find. Fishing was a major source of food, for example, and the fish were plentiful. So yes, they had hobbies. They had lots of spare time. | 2 |
AskHistorians/c8quc0d | 19rvzc | How much warning did the peasantry typically have before an army sacked a town in medieval times? | I don't have the expertise to give an authoritative answer, but I'd recommend looking at Jonathan Sumption's The Hundred Years War II: Trial By Fire, especially the section about Edward III's 1359 chevauchee. Chevauchee was a tactic used often by the English in the Hundred Years War and involved intentionally destroying the land in order to bring the French army to battle. Edward's 1359 campaign failed because the French did not offer battle, and individual towns were able to organise enough of a defence to hold out until the English army ran out of food and had to move on. I'd venture, therefore, that word spread of an approaching army quickly enough for preparations to be made; the scale of movement by merchants between medieval towns would have made this realistic. On the other hand, it may have been that, since the French were well aware of the threat posed by English armies, that the majority of preparations would have been made well in advance, and not in response to the 1359 campaign in particular. I'm sure that somewhere in Sumption's extremely detailed narrative he discusses this issue. As LeftoverNoodles points out, there would have been large movements of people into towns during war; under these circumstances, there wouldn't have been much chance to escape if the town fell. I can't speak about medieval refugees travelling over longer distances, but, again, I'm sure that Sumption discusses it. I think we can be fairly sure that warning the enemy in advance was not normal practice; it wouldn't make sense to give them time to prepare or send word to their armies about the movement of one's forces, and the psychological effect of sacking a town would be reduced without some element of surprise. It wouldn't necessarily have been a case of flattening everything, since aside from the fact that you might be destroying territory you aim to control, it was risky for armies to stay in one place. As Edward's 1359 campaign shows armies operated on a thin trickle of supplies and would exhaust the resources of the land if they stayed in one place for too long. An army would also be vulnerable to attack when in the process of sacking a town, so stripping the place of its value and moving on quickly would be the priority, leaving the town damaged and desolate but essentially intact. I hope that helps! | 40 |
AskReddit/c96rt53 | 1bhres | What is one conspiracy theory that if proven to be true would drastically change our world? | Some conspiracy theorists say that "virtual money" (credit and debit cards) was created by a secret group that plans to dominate the world: According to these theorists, the plan is to completely eliminate paper and coin currency so that everyone relies solely on electronic banking. Once this goal is achieved, that secret group will cause a worldwide electronic blackout, which will simultaneously erase everyone's bank account information, creating chaos and panic. Apparently, the motivation behind this plot is to reintroduction of slavery into the modern world. Those that would benefit vary depending on which theory you choose to believe. | 18 |
AskReddit/c3j1588 | opmax | Is it legal to shut off electric for non payment in a home that needs it for medical purposes? | I'm sorry that your mom has medical issues that would kill her without having electricity, but that's all the more reason to pay the electric bill. > life happens some times. Yeah, it does. But that doesn't change what you already acknowledge. | 7 |
AskReddit/eq57bj2 | bxc7z8 | What are some historical equivalents of someone using the reverse UNO card? | The second and third punic wars. In the second Hannibal of Carthage led his army of men and war elephants across the French Alps to attack Rome from the north. He failed miserably and was killed in the battle. The third consisted of the Romans sailing South to Carthage, killing every man woman and child in the city-state, burning everything to the ground and salting the ground so no plants would ever grow there again. That's not just a reverse card. It's the person after you getting the reverse and then playing the wild draw 4. | 2 |
AskReddit/eg8on26 | apj35k | Where you work, what are ways for customers or clients to get the best deals or highest quality services? | I don't know about highest quality service but where I used to work if clients threw a big enough fit and demanded to talk to a manager enough about getting a discount they would eventually get one. which was a great way to ensure that behavior became a regular occurrence. | 2 |
AskReddit/dck77iu | 5okvyz | What's the most bizarre text message you've gotten that wasn't meant for you? | The woman I babysat for in college was in the middle of a divorce and accidentally sent me a strings of texts meant for her friend about all the horrible things her husband had done and how badly she wanted to get back at him. Sure made it awkward seeing both her and the husband those next few times i babysat. | 2 |
AskReddit/e6x1ns3 | 9k5r1v | What are your tips, techniques & recipes for making the perfect grilled cheese sandwich? | Today, I told my wife I wasn't feeling well. I've picked up a cold or sinus infection from one of the sick kids (we're passing it around) and she asked me to stay in bed. She made me a grilled cheese sandwich - basically heavily buttered white bread toasted with american cheese and bacon. The sandwich is delicious but the love and care make it, and her, the best. | 6 |
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