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5ph6yo | Why is climate change a partisan issue in the United States? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are a lot of reasons, but chiefly money and jobs. The cold hard truth is that a lot of people make a lot of money from big oil. A lot of jobs in the Houston, TX area are based on that. On top of that: big oil does provide a lot of jobs, especially for coal miners. If you switch the nation over to a different power source you lose all those jobs, put a lot of people out of work, and generate even more angry voters. For that reason, some politicians (particularly those in the coal mining areas), know it's easier to just deny climate change science and secure re-election. So on one hand, you have politicians in safer districts where big oil doesn't have much power who listen to the scientists and push green energy. Whereas in districts where big oil has provided a lot of jobs, those politicians deny climate change and push for pro-oil policies. The end result is a heated political debate with a lot of misinformation. Inevitably, it leads to entrenchment and partisanship rather than cooperation and reaching across the aisle. Hope that helps!",
"In addition, the Koch Brothers, aka big oil billionaires, contribute to the Republican campaigns all over the country, claiming they are promoting \"family values\" (anti-abortion, etc.). The conservative voters don't have a choice but to believe what their party is telling them. Otherwise, they feel like they are going against God's will.",
"Largely because environmental regulations are an expense for big businesses. Big businesses are powerfully politically, and they have selected the tactic of questioning climate science in order to avoid what they see as costly and unnecessary regulation. The politicians that identify with these businesses get voted into office, or are promised campaign contributions, etc, and begin making denial of climate change science a matter of public discourse. Now, at the risk of editorializing, because the voting public is lazy, particularly when it comes to understanding complex issues, a good portion of them simply buy into this nonsense, believing propagandistic statements like, \"climate change is a left-wing conspiracy,\" and so on. The public then becomes divided on the issue. An objective fact is now a political issue. If you're thinking, \"but wait... that's unbelievably stupid!\" then you are correct"
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5phlhw | Why social media sites, such as reddit, tend to have a heavier presence of politically left people, than is representative of the population? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Young people tend to be much more liberal. The age group 18-26 was recently characterized as being \"extremely liberal.\" Social media, including Reddit, has a high concentration of people in that age group and thus reflects more liberal thinking than the country as a whole.",
"If you're an American, it's important to recognize that what Americans call *liberal* much of the rest of the world calls moderate. Reddit is an international platform, and a large number of people on Reddit would accurately describe themselves as being moderate, not liberal, but from an American perspective, they are liberal. It's also worth pointing out the polarization of American politics has created a shift in perspective, where the right is getting more and more right, again making moderates *appear* to be more liberal than they are. That also leads to more closed-group echo chambers like r/The_Donald: the conservatives concentrate themselves into smaller areas and become more vocal while moderates and liberals spread out more. Finally, it's worth noting that in addition to polarization, there are topics which have become very politicized which aren't political issues. The best example of this would be global climate change. It isn't \"liberal\" to believe in global climate change, it's common sense, but the issue has been made political so that [many] conservatives *don't* believe it to be true as part of their party line. Not believing in climate change is a *fairly* American conservative idea, although by no means unique to American politics. Likewise, denying evolution is a fairly American thing. What is perceived as \"liberal\" bias in social media may just be the overwhelming consensus of the rest of the world accepting those things as factually correct - something the right is more or less unwilling to do.",
"In the US at least there is a pretty strong correlation between liberal/urban and conservative/rural populations. Since internet access is widespread in cities and generally really bad in rural areas, this is going to affect internet demographics. I also wouldn't be surprised if age played a part in it too. A lot of legislation that had no chance of being passed 20 years ago (see: gay marriage) is or has been passed more recently. One could argue that overall the younger demographic is more liberal and much more internet-savvy than the older demographic.",
"Reddit seems pretty heavily right-leaning, given that the front page is usually dominated by r/The_Donald and all their little off-shoots. Anyways, social media users tend to be younger. In general, but not always of course, younger people lean left and older people lean right.",
"First off, overall voting patterns and opinion polls on topics suggest more liberal viewpoint voters -- Hillary got 3 million more votes in the election, polls show strong majorities in favor of ACA, gay marriage, etc. Secondly, young voters tend to be more liberal/left-leaning, while more conservative voters are older. The typical 70 year old retiree in Florida isn't spending his day on Reddit or Snapchat, and if he's on Facebook it 99% to see photos of his grandkids rather than debate politics.",
"Disclaimer: Answer is part speculation, but mostly educated guesses backed by facts with cited sources. A lot of small things that add up. First off, remember that Reddit obviously is not the only online social media site. Facebook [trafficked]( URL_4 ) a large amount of fake news, and regardless of how you categorize this argument, many people on Facebook reposted these stories, and many Americans, both conservative and liberal, are prone to [believe]( URL_6 ) very erroneous news stories. Based on these statistics [here]( URL_1 ), you could sort of draw a correlation between more Facebook users and more liberal-minded users, but that's a bit dubious, and this is one of the few times I'm dubious of this survey. Facebook [clearly]( URL_3 ) figured out an [algorithm]( URL_5 ) to identify users' political ideology, but AFAIK hasn't shared its results, and hasn't shared its accuracy. So where does this leave Reddit? Well, a [recent]( URL_2 ) poll indicated that more were liberal than conservative users, but the differences were not overwhelming, although there were far more men than women. Many users self identified as \"moderate\", which partly answers the question. If slightly more users are liberal, or have liberal than conservative leanings, and a larger number are \"moderate\", then in reactionary or controversial stories *where moderate users will typically remain distant or neutral*, more conservative users may find themselves in a minority, and their stories gaining less attention. Now, this will not happen all the time or with every story, but as I noted, partly answers the question. Another reason that partly answers the question is the current political climate has hyper-polarized political views [no citation necessary], and a user with what was once a moderate conservative (or liberal) viewpoint will consistently find himself or herself forced to align with increasingly right (or left) positions to find allies, or simply abandon that position completely. This occurrence is not only on Reddit, but in general. This is significant here, because conservative/liberal views are increasingly being identified with more radicalized positions. Examples would be Republicans at least implicitly supporting Trump's stance and attitudes toward women, or Democrats supporting Hillary Clinton's (from Bernie Sanders) College Affordability Plan. Individuals will react to this in a variety of ways, further increasing the complexity and difficulty in answering this question. Conservatives who are emphatically in favor of women's rights may feel nervous about posting and defending Republican positions, or they may double down and defend the position and candidate even harder. Liberals may point to real or perceived offenses from conservative counterparts in their posts, thereby driving a deeper wedge between liberals and conservatives and strengthening unity among liberals. Continuing with the previous reason, Trump [communicates]( URL_0 ) with his supporters via email and Twitter, which in itself would not preclude supporters from being active on Reddit, but at the same time not necessarily encourage more active involvement in Reddit instead of Twitter. Inertia also plays a factor. Users who, by chance or any other reason, happened to start using Reddit initially, will tend to keep using Reddit, and will tend to gravitate toward and prefer similar-minded topics in their news and discussions. TL;DR Many small reasons",
"The internet as a whole skews younger, more urban, more tech savvy and more educated. All of those demographics are more liberal than the general public."
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"http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/",
"http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/25/reddit-news-users-more-likely-to-be-male-young-and-digital-in-their-news-preferences/",
"http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/25/the-political-environment-on-social-media/",
"http://www.businessinsider.com/fake-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook-before-us-election-report-2016-11",
"https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/us/politics/facebook-ads-politics.html",
"http://www.journalism.org/2016/12/15/many-americans-believe-fake-news-is-sowing-confusion/"
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5phqld | What's the difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Back when diet sodas were introduced, they were kind of terrible. So bad, in fact, the Coke didn't want to tarnish the brand of their regular soda...instead they created a new brand, marketed mostly towards women, called Tab. That was their marketing plan, and they stuck with it for nearly 20 years. Upstart Pepsi took a different approach. Their soda's consistency and flavor lent itself to artificial sweeteners a little better, so they were able to formulate a diet version that was slightly less terrible. The marketed it under the Pepsi brand, and it slowly grew to dominate the diet market. By the early 1980s, Coke had had enough and decided it was time for their own Coke branded diet soda. But the same factors that made Diet Pepsi successful worked against them...try as they might, they just couldn't make the Coke recipe work with the sweeteners of the day. They stopped trying, and invented a completely new recipe (one many say was more like Pepsi), and marketed that as Diet Coke. It was wildly successful, and very quickly started to take market share away from Diet Pepsi. In fact, Diet Coke was a bit too successful. A few years later, facing stiff competition from Pepsi in their regular cola line, Coke abandoned their nearly century-old recipe, creating a regular version of Diet Coke, which tested better than the old Coke or Pepsi. When they didn't anticipate was the extreme nostalgia for the original Coke, and \"New Coke\" went down as one of the biggest marketing blunders in history. Coke eventually was forced to reintroduce the original as Coca-Cola Classic, the public never acquired a taste for New Coke, and it was eventually phased out. Finally, in 2005, with new sweeteners available to them, Coke took another swing at a diet version of the original formula, and came up with Coke Zero. Claiming it was \"indistinguishable\" from regular Coke, it has largely been marketed towards men, and has gained a significant share of the diet soda market. To recap: * Diet Coke = Diet New Coke before New Coke existed * Coke Zero = Diet Old Coke Hope that clears things up.",
"**Coke Zero:** Same taste, artificial sweetener. **Diet Coke:** Different taste, artificial sweetener. **Coke Life:** Same taste, mix of artificial and natural sweetener (so 60% less cal instead of ~0cal).",
"Diet coke uses a different flavor profile compared to regular coke, as at the time of its introduction, a sweetener blend that could result in a similar flavor as regular coke was not readily available. New Coke was based off the flavor of diet coke, but using sugar as a sweetner. Coke zero uses a different sweetener blend while maintaining a similar flavor to regular coke.",
"My brother used to work in a job that had him go to the big food trade shows, and I actually had him ask the Coca-Cola booth that question! Diet Coke was developed around the time Coca-Cola was developing the New Coke formula, and that is the cola flavor on which Diet Coke is based. Because it was a new product, and people were diet crazy, it took off despite the infamy of the New Coke launch & quick return to Coke Classic. So 2 decades later, Coca-Cola decided to develop a diet version of the classic Coke formula, and that is Coke Zero.",
"An important part of the flavor difference is that Coke zero has more phosphoric acid, the ingredient that gives it that rust removing ability."
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5pi7dy | How did the newscaster cadence come to be? | You all know what I'm talking about. The specific way a news reporter has voice inflections, pauses and such that specifically denotes that this is a news story. Why is this is a thing and where did it come from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lifelong newscaster here and I'm just making up the answer. Early radio broadcasting wasn't especially clear. It helped to enunciate and speak clearly. Most of the early radio people came from stage work. They ported their diction. And no one wants to hear someone mumble when giving the news. It's serious. As for the \"modern\" news delivery style, I don't much care for it."
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5pi98e | What is the difference between an atheist and an agnostic? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Knowing versus believing. Agnostic: \"I don't know that a god exists.\" (note: this is not the same as \"I don't know *if* a god exists\") Atheist: \" I don't believe that a god exists.\"",
"It depends on how you define it. Some view it as three linear positions: Theists say there is a god, agnostics don't know, and atheists say there is no god. Others, myself included, prefer to differentiate between what is claimed to be known and what is believed to be the case. A theist believes a god exists and an atheist does not. An gnostic thinks that the existence of a god can be known and an agnostic thinks that the existence of a god is unknowable. It should be noted that the Gnostics is a Christian group so this might cause confusion, but I don't think it is a problem any more than calling a government a democracy even if it isn't run by the Democratic Party.",
"Atheist: There is no god. Agnostic: Doesn't know whether or not there is a god, probably impossible to know for sure.",
"Atheist: They know there is no God. Agnostic: They believe there may or may not be a god, but that there's no way of telling. Theist: They know there is a God.",
"That's a big \"it depends\", as there are multiple definitions of those words. The most common definition is that an atheist doesn't believe in gods, while an agnostic is personally uncertain, to the point they do not follow a particular religion. There is a more technical definition of agnostic, where the existence of gods is inherently unknowable. Agnosticism would not be a personal uncertainty, but an inherent state of the universe or a limitation of human intellect. The atheist community often like those treat theism and gnosticism as independent qualities, where [a]theism describes belief, and [a]gnosticism describes certainty. A gnostic theist is certain gods exists, which an agnostic atheist lives their life as if there were no gods, but does not profess certainty."
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5pj7wk | Why did people in the late 1700's dress so exotically? | Watching the movie Amadeus, I realized everyones attire was so over-the-top compared to what people wear today. Why was this? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The events you see in Amadeus are roughly equivalent to what you would see at an exclusive Hollywood club today. They are not representative of what most people wore at the time. What more, most people in that movie represent the idle rich, who have nothing better to than spend a month planning what they would wear to the big ball, then having their servants put it together.",
"Fashion goes in cycles. Someone from 1951 would see hippie clothes from 1971 as over the top. Look at what we think today of 1980s fashion. Historically, only the rich could afford high-quality fabrics and showed their wealth through the clothes they wore. You will notice that the architecture of the time (Baroque) was also deliberately ornate, curvy and \"exotic\" compared to previous, more austere design and colour preferences - and those preferences were partly dictated by what was technologically possible and affordable (going further back, the invention of the flying buttress and with it the whole gothic cathedral made large, colourful windows possible, whereas previously, tall walls had to be thick to support their own weight and didn't allow large windows. Clothes and anything else that humans like to be pretty would be under similar \"technological\" constraints.) Bill Bryson covers historical changes in fashion in his awesome book [At Home - A Short History of Private Life]( URL_0 ) and notes that only in the 19th century did something like a \"butler's uniform\" become common because by that time, the Industrial Revolution had made good fabrics available to everyone and the rich needed some other way to distinguish servants from themselves. At the same time, the now powerful bourgeoisie chose a more sombre style - all those dark suits - to distinguish themselves (hard-working) from the aristocracy (lazy and outdated) and its over-the-top style."
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5pjh3t | Why is it children and adults pay different prices for the same things | Such as why do they pay different prices for the bus or entrance to sports games | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"to encourage them to participate. If you charge full price for everyone, the whole family might stay home. so call it a group discount for people that are not income earners. might be some logic that kids spend more in the park? alcohol is hard to outsell, but merchandise and other frivilous shit that kids tend to reach for can be profitable.",
"Because adults who have small children can't just leave the children at home, so they have to either pay for childcare or pay to take the children wherever they're going (unless they have a friend or family member willing to watch the kids for free). So if you own a business and those parents are your potential customers, you're losing out on their business if they can't afford to take their kids. If you offer a discounted price to the kids, you're making it a lot more likely that those parents will also come, and pay full price for their tickets.",
"When someone has a child they have two choices when going somewhere. To either get someone to watch their child (Which usually will cost money to hire someone) or they can take the child with them. Much younger children may not even remember going to sport games or amusement parks (Most children discounts are for ages 3-9) and therefore can be seen as paying for something unneeded like 2 parking spaces. And children are more likely to want shirts and souvenirs from places which will in turn with the ticket for the child cost more than the adult ticket.",
"It is a marketing ploy to encourage families to attend. Without the lower prices for children most families will simply stay home and the event gets no money from them."
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5pjjwp | Why is a perfect quarterback rating 158.3? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a very complex formula, described [here.]( URL_0 ) Key sentence: \"If the result of any calculation is greater than 2.375, it is set to 2.375.\" In other words, the calculation has arbitrary built-in limits."
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5pk58y | Why football leagues sell players as opposed to trading players like in American football. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In American professional sports leagues, they operate under a closed system with the franchises cooperating financially to grow revenues for the league. In this system every franchise is roughly on the same playing field, and selling players for cash is discouraged or outright banned. In European Football, the clubs are independent entities that don't cooperate with one another financially. It's a free for all with mega clubs and tiny clubs who are in no way, shape, or form comparable. In this system the smaller club benefits massively by selling star players to larger clubs. It can provide a major influx of cash that can allow them to grow their operations."
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5pk7vn | What is the difference between street art and graffiti? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Street art is often commissioned or approved in advance, whereas graffiti is vandalism. Example: I pay you $XX.XX dollars to decorate the outside of my house with paint, it's \"street art\" (for all intents and purposes). Now let's say instead of me paying you, one day you randomly drive by my house and spray paint your name on the exterior of my house -- you've now just vandalized my property and committed a crime. Cities often hire artists to paint murals on their property, but doing so without permission is a form of destruction."
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5pk8ii | Why do we gauge success of films by money made rather than the number of tickets sold? Wouldn't inflation hinder these 'popularity' results significantly? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because film making is a business. Who is more successful: someone making $40,000 today or someone making $30,000 in 1920? Clearly, the guy in the 20s was far wealthier. Studios measure the success of a film by how much money it makes for them. Just like any other business.",
"The studio is in the business of marketing their film. If they can claim their movie is the most popular of all time based off of revenue, and this will convince some gullible sucker that doesn't understand basic economic phenomens like inflation to go see it, they're going to do it. In reality, when accounting for inflation, the same Handful of movies are still on top(Gone With the Wind, Original Star Wars, Titanic etc)."
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5pkeme | Why did black and white striped fabric become popular for "deviant" groups (ie the Addams Family, Tim Burton, Sweeney Todd)? | It seems like any media, going back to Victorians or Edwardians, shows any "not normal" character in black and white stripes. Either in clothes, stockings, accessories like umbrellas or in home decor. Now it's become kind of a goth thing. Just wondering where it came from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"According to [this]( URL_0 ) > In Michel Pastoureau’s comprehensive book, *The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes*, the author details how in the Middle Ages, wearing stripes was a perilous act. He recounts how in 1310, a cobbler in northern France was condemned to death because, according to local archives, 'he had been caught in striped clothes.' At that time, striped clothing was considered 'demeaning, pejorative, or clearly diabolic' and was worn by social outcasts, such as prostitutes, jugglers, clowns and cripples. Pastoureau traces back to a group of Carmelite monks, who donned brown and white striped cloaks. Their dress was thought to be inspired by the prophet Eiljah, who supposedly vanished into the sky on a chariot of fire, leaving behind a habit singed with brown stripes. When the monks arrived in Paris from Palestine, their uniform saw them nicknamed les frères barrés or barred brothers, and they were assaulted wherever they went. They resisted 25 years of orders from eleven successive popes to give up their cloaks, but were forced to find an alternative when Pope Boniface VIII banned striped clothing from all religious orders in 1295. > > Pastoureau was not able to prove a link, but bold stripes went on to become inmates’ prison uniform in the US in the 1800s. Horizontal stripes in black and white were adopted to signify the enclosure of the prison cell, and made its wearer easily identifiable should he (women prisoners were not given striped clothing) succeed in escaping. Many states in America began to abolish the graphic uniform early in the 20th century as its use as a badge of shame was considered undesirable.",
"It's probably worth mentioning that Sweeney Todd is a Tim Burton production, and it exhibits a lot of his design flair. And pretty much every one of his films incoporates a striped motif somewhere. It's sort of his trademark.",
"I imagine they're a reference to prison uniforms?"
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5pli2g | What are the leading theories on how humans started to use fire, and what are the flaws in these? | As a sidequestion: How far apart timewise was the use of fire for warmth contra the use of fire for cooking? E: Used culture as a flair, but don't know if that's the most accurate. Please tell me if I should change it. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's widely assumed that people initially found fire in the wild, since it occurs naturally as a result of lightning strikes. They would have immediately detected that it's warm, and kept burning stuff around if it was winter. They would have found animals that died and were naturally cooked by the fire, and discovered that they were not only edible but extra good."
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5plnew | Why do people want to see Trump's taxes? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"All Presidents in the last few decades have done it to prove they have no illicit income, foreign gifts, or anything else unsavory. They do it voluntarily to prove that they are honest and have nothing to hide Trump refuses to follow this tradition. Although he is not required to do so, the fact that he does not indicates he has something to hide,",
"Tax returns would contain information about potential conflicts of interest. People want to see Trump's, in particular, because one of his core campaign promises was a (dubious) claim that he was very rich and therefore awesome."
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5pmmxz | Why does the media refuse to call "alternative facts" outright lies? | I keep watching news anchors discussing "alternative facts" and doing everything they can to explain that they are lies without actually saying it. Are they afraid of being sued? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Entertaining the possibility that false statements *might* be true, and bringing on panels to speculate and debate whether or not they're true fills more airtime than immediately dismissing them as false."
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5pmvty | What is the Women's March actually supporting/protesting/marching for?? (I'm Australian) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are two basic reasons that I have seen given for the marches: 1.) Organization/show of force from women's groups. Basically, a way for people concerned about more conservative policies on a broad range of \"women's issues\" (ranging from abortion to childcare to issues of race and power) to demonstrate that they have numbers and to set up the basis for more specific protests later on. This is less about Trump specifically and more about the incoming conservative government. 2.) To prevent \"normalization.\" In the U.S. many groups, mostly liberal, but some Conservatives as well, have expressed concern with what they see as Trump pushing the boundaries of the system in troubling ways, while being enabled by ends-focused conservatives. Such a large protest immediately after the election sends a message that things are not \"normal.\" Of course, your mileage may vary on these issues. There have been a couple other asks of this question in the last few days here, and you may find a better answer searching.",
"I tried to simplify, here's my take: It was not just about protesting Trump (though he clearly took a lot of heat). It was about protecting the rights and equalities that we DO have, and not taking steps backward. It was about recognizing that, while we have certain rights and equalities, there's still work to be done and we need to keep going FORWARD not backward. It was about sending that message to the incoming administration. NOTE: yes there were many more specific reasons that people marched, this is my answer in the interest of keeping the explanation short and simple."
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5pn59t | How are people tried for war crimes? | I always thought war was chaotic. After months and years how is there any substantial proof of abuse or misconduct? furthermore, many potential witnesses might have been killed. How do they even begin? wouldn't it be extremely unfeasible to conduct a thorough investigation, let alone a trial? Found this: URL_0 But, im curious of the process. Surely it would have been a cumbersome and lengthy process. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not a quick process and there are lots of potential dilemmas, so actually putting someone on trial is not something that happens often, so we rarely hear about it in the news. It's not necessarily a fair process either; the victors of a war are the one's who decide who \"war criminals\" are, and this decision is usually one to seek revenge on an enemy, and most of the time the victor is not going to go after any of their own people, even if they are guilty of war crimes. The 2 links below explain the process pretty well and give examples to illustrate all of the points they discuss if you have the time to read. URL_0 URL_1"
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5pnvoe | Why are presidents who are giving speeches not afraid of getting assassinated? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are afraid. So they do it in front of 4 inch thick bullet proof glass at things like the inauguration: URL_0 You just can't see it because of camera angles or the cameras are within the glass barrier.",
"Lots of security surrounding them and multiple snipers perched around. You're pretty much guaranteed to die if you try."
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5polgu | Why are the plots of soap operas some repetitive and uninspired? Has it always been that way? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Soap operas as a genre were developed in the mid-20th century to serve audiences that were mostly housewives whose kids were at school and husbands at work. What that demographic tends to find interesting are changing combinations of interpersonal relationships. Since there are only so many possible variations on affairs, romances, and ridiculous plots motivated by them, the results are (as you say) repetitive and formulaic. Character logic is irrelevant, just that they keep being thrown together in new combinations. It's the same way that logic is irrelevant in most action-oriented genres targeted at men - what's important is just that people fight and things explode in various ways. In a soap opera, it's just a bunch of excuses to show swooning kisses and sobbing."
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5pov00 | How did teaching going from being a highly respected position to a low-paying, mediocre job? | How did teaching going from being a highly respected position to a low-paying, mediocre job? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I guess it has something to do with offer and demand, at least, where I live. Becoming a teacher is easy (easy bachelor, little skill needed to get a job and keep it) and there is a lot of people who wants to be a teacher. On the otherside, it ia not hard for a school to find and hire teacher. Where I live, teachers fresh out of school have to wait something like 5-10 years before having a full time permanent job. So you have a high offer and a low demand...no need to pay a lot of money to the teachers !",
"I am not sure what time periods you are comparing. Prior to the 1960's, it was very rare for a woman to have a professional job. It was mostly motherhood, and maybe nursing or teaching. So the teaching profession had a lot of extremely smart and well educated women. Those kinds of women, by and large, today are now doing professional jobs like being doctors, lawyers, accountants, economists, engineers, professors, etc. They have been basically replaced by people who probably wouldn't have even gone to college in the 1940's and 1950's when there were a lot less colleges and they were very expensive (no student loans back then).",
"When was it a \"highly respected position?\" K-12 teaching in the US has always been relatively low-skilled, low-payed and one of the few jobs women were \"allowed\" to do - until they got married that is.",
"define \"low paying\"? around here, average teacher salaries are around $54k per year. Entry level is around $35k.",
"I'm not sure there's an official answer to this so I don't mind guessing at this. Personally I'd look at unions. Unions used to be pretty respected because they did a lot to improve workers' situations. However as of late unions have lost a ton of respect as many people see them solely to allow workers to slack off and not get fired. One of the most popular teacher caricatures is the lazy teacher who can't get fired because of the union. There's some truth to this, specifically in NY they used to (and may still) have 'rubber rooms'. Basically a teacher would in some way sexually harass, molest etc. a student but due to the unions it took super long to fire the teachers. Since they didn't want them near the kids they paid the offender to just sit in a room for 8 hours doing basically nothing.",
"Like healthcare, when women became the majority of the workforce, the average wages and respect went down. On mobile, but Michael Sedlak wrote an article about it for MSU.",
"There is a concerted political effort to discredit teachers and the effort is two-fold: 1. Politicians arbitrarily raise \"standards\" for student test performance so that when the performance of a student isn't met it is blamed on the teacher. 2. Teachers are caricaturized by the charter school lobby and big corporates who seek to capture the public education revenue stream by providing less services for the students and smaller teacher pay. As a result, states are already experiencing shortage of teachers, and there is a huge plunge in university enrollment into teaching program, which means the shortage is only going to get worse.",
"IMO it is because of a cultural shift; there are so many success stories about high-school dropouts becoming millionaires and, conversely, about how many college graduates are stuck living in their mom's basements - society starts to value education less and therefore pay less for it. Also teaching is a profession that is in an odd place because it's not like other jobs where it outputs anything tangible. Compare it to an engineer, doctor, or even athlete. All of these high-salary positions are directly correlated to the kind of value that they bring in. Engineers design/build products that can be sold for a profit and therefore the engineer reaps the rewards of that profit. The doctor performs a service that people are willing to pay a lot for, therefore he gets paid a lot for doing it. Athletes bring in millions of dollars in revenue from people who are willing to pay to watch them perform and therefore get paid big for bringing in all that money. Teachers, on the other hand - do not do any of that. Not many people are willing to pay to watch a teacher perform, and the teacher does not create anything that can be sold for a profit. It is hard to see a direct correlation of what they produce and the value of that product, and therefore it is difficult to compensate them adequately."
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5pp7vz | How did sentences like "shouldn't you be working," and "don't you like it," become normal? | I have a roleplay character in the process of learning English, so I have to break down sentences in ways the others in my roleplays can understand what I'm taking about but still make it obvious my character isn't all that great at it. One of the thing I wanted to say once was, "shouldn't you taste like rice?" (Don't ask.) This is where I realized that sentences like the ones shown in the title there are really weird, being "should not you be working," and "do not you like it," respectively. How did this happen? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Languages evolve, often toward laziness (or efficiency if you're being generous), but they are always in motion. It's easier to say \"shouldn't you be working\" rather than \"should you not be working?\". And honestly, today that would sound a little old-fashioned. I don't believe \"do not you like it\" was ever correct; 'do you not like it', which then got rearranged and shortened.",
"Doesn't it have something to do with words changing positions in a sentence when they become questions? Like the actual correct sentence is: You should be working. Question: Should you be working? Negative: Shouldn't you be working? *We make questions by: 1: moving an auxiliary to the front of the clause:*",
"Don't and shouldn't kind of became words on their own, they aren't just contractions but negative forms of do and should."
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5ppj0k | why can't Jewish people eat pork? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a theory that Jewish dietary laws were a way for people to avoid unsafe food. Before modern food safety, pork often carried diseases. Like all religions, there's a spectrum of how devout people are. Many modern Jews don't care about these dietary rules and eat pork anyway.",
"Pork is hard to cook without modern technology and pigs are more prone to parasites than say other livestock. People ate under cooked pork and it made them sick. Must mean god doesn't want them to eat pork. Most religion starts as a way to explain natural phenomena we don't understand.",
"It's something called a \"Chok\" (read with the CH as a back-of-the-throat gurgle) which is a law that we simply don't understand. There's no reason given and there's no reason apparent, it's just a law that god dictates. There's quite a few of these in Jewish law - no shaving with a straight razor, no eating clam or lobster, no mixing meat and milk. We do them because that's the tradition, not for any specific beneficial reason.",
"Conversely, you can ask why Christians do eat pork, since no other Abrahamic religion may. God said not to each animals without certain features, and pigs lack these features. You can also look to hygiene/ cleanliness explanations. Christians, however, are allowed to eat pork and technically should be allowed to do most things forbidden to Jews (and Muslims) because they believe that Jesus died for their sins and fulfilled the Torah's (Old Testament's) commandments.",
"Well the short answer would be that god told them not to eat pork. The longer answer is, pigs have more communicable diseases to humans than cows or goats, so it is possible that certain early near-east societies began shunning pork after coming to believe that it made people sick.",
"Those are religious dietary laws and it boils down to \"God Said So\". Now there are theories that there may be some scientific reason due to food safety in a world without refrigeration, but that does not really matter. The reason is that they believe God Said not to eat it.",
"As mentioned on the more amusing thread, it's to do with how dirty pigs are. Aside from wallowing in dirt, they also eat anything - including their deceased offspring. This is considered too impure to eat.",
"You can mean many things by this question. Some people mean \"anthropologically speaking\" and others mean \"theologically speaking,\" for example. I'll toss this out: The word that is translated as \"abomination\" probably means something closer to \"confusing.\" Ancient peoples often thought there were three realms: water, land, sky. What is a \"proper\" water animal? Has scales and fin. What about a clam? It's confused. It thinks it's a land animal, better not eat it. What is a \"proper\" land animal? Has legs and chews grass. What about a snake? It's confused. It thinks it's a fish, better not eat it. So you will notice this theme in the kosher rules. \"Confused\" animals are best not eaten. Pig is different though. It's banned seemingly for another reason. G-d gives his reason for banning it: so the Israelites will be holy. Holy in Hebrew is \"Kadosh\" which means separate. A kiddish cup is holy because it is separate from other cups. Sabbath is holy because it is separate from other days. The sacred is holy because it is separate from the profane. Thus the Jews don't eat pork so that they are holy (separate from everyone else). Anyway, just adding to the discussion...."
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5ppq08 | Why does Congress get involved in professional sports? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because their constituents have an interest, and---like many things---professional sports tend to be bound up in wider issues. Congress actually has a fairly broad mandate, conceptually. Sure, their powers are limited, but there's no reason that regulating interstate commerce wouldn't apply to billiom dollar baseball leagues the same as trucking. Likewise, Congress is intended in part to be able to investigate things on behalf of the people, even if the legal application isn't immediately clear. And many times sports are tied up in real issues. Deflate gate ended up being a serious arbitration case, that sets real precedent outside of sports. Baseball effectively gets a pass on monopoly regulation, inviting closer scrutiny to protect consumers. And so on."
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5pqa7d | Why do we call W double U, and not double V? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As I recall, in latin, U and V were the same letter. When the evolution of language needed a new sound, \"uu\" or \"VV\" were introduced to interchangeably represent that sound. At first, it was not its own letter, much like the \"th\" \"sh\" or \"ch\" sounds in English. Over time though, VV took preference over uu and was often written with the V's overlapping, appearing as one symbol instead of two distinct symbols. Over the evolution of language, it eventually became its own letter.",
"The French do call it \"double v\". It depends on font. Many fonts do show w as rounded to look like two u's.",
"I've been asking this for years. Or better yet, since almost every other consonant is pronounced phonetically as its consonant sound plus a long-vowel sound, why not just say it as \"we\"?",
"> The sounds /w/ (spelled ⟨V⟩) and /b/ (spelled ⟨B⟩) of Classical Latin developed into a bilabial fricative /β/ between vowels in Early Medieval Latin. Therefore, ⟨V⟩ no longer adequately represented the labial-velar approximant sound /w/ of Germanic phonology. > The Germanic /w/ phoneme was therefore written as ⟨VV⟩ or ⟨uu⟩ (⟨u⟩ and ⟨v⟩ becoming distinct only by the Early Modern period) by the 7th or 8th century by the earliest writers of Old English and Old High German.[3] Gothic (not Latin-based), by contrast, simply used a letter based on the Greek Υ for the same sound. The digraph ⟨VV⟩/⟨uu⟩ was also used in Medieval Latin to represent Germanic names, including Gothic ones like Wamba. > It is from this ⟨uu⟩ digraph that the modern name \"double U\" derives. The digraph was commonly used in the spelling of Old High German, but only sporadically in Old English, where the /w/ sound was usually represented by the runic ⟨Ƿ⟩ wynn. In early Middle English, following the 11th-century Norman Conquest, ⟨uu⟩ gained popularity and by 1300 it had taken Wynn's place in common use. [Source]( URL_0 )",
"Write a \"w\" in cursive, you will see it absolutely looks like a double \"u\", and not a double \"v\". If you didn't learn to read cursive (likely if you are < 25 and went to public school), [here is what a cursive \"w\" looks like]( URL_0 ).",
"In Denmark we call it \"double V\". The thing with \"W = double U\" in English has always made me wonder, why?!"
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5pqkov | How can Madonna say "she's though a lot about blowing up the white house" and not be arrested on site? | I have 0 interest in politics so I'm not trying to engage in some conversation about politics or womens rights. Whether it's Madonna or just some random speaker saying it, how did that fly? The first thing that pops into my head are all these swatting incidents where its just hearsay but swat will show up at your door. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Thinking isn't a crime, especially in the US. In the US, freedom of speech allows you to say \"I think the country would be better off if someone blew up the White House.\" Even saying \"I plan to blow up the White House\" could be taken to mean \"on Twitter\", and you'd get questioned, not SWATed. Hollywood blows the place up in some movie every year, it's an action movie trope. What Madonna really said was \"Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House ... but I choose love.\" It seems that the FAKE NEWS folks on the right always seem to leave off that part of the quote. Part of the professionalism of the FBI is that they don't go off without checking all the facts, unlike some city SWAT teams without enough real crime to fight.",
"Because it's not illegal to think about blowing up the White house. We have not yet devolved into a country where thinking specific things is illegal.",
"Because that's the equivalent of locker room talk. She has never blown up the White House and will never blow up the White House because she has a lot of respect for the White House. No one has more respect for the White House than Madonna.",
"She said she thought about it and decided against it. What crime is there in that?",
"She might be investigated but you don't need to be arrested for that. To be arrested the government would have to prove that she was making a credible threat. To make a credible threat there needs to be evidence of an actual plan in place.",
"\"Artistic license\", freedom of speech, stuff like that... Same reason rappers can make music about killing cops, beating women, doing/distributing drugs, etc... Just saying something might get you looked at, but with no actionable/viable threat, it's just words. Same as chasing a sibling around the house yelling \"I'm going to kill you!\" because they took your toy or at the last hot pocket. Unless you are also brandishing a weapon and they have a legitimate fear for their safety, it's just a \"turn of phrase\""
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5pqltr | How much power would Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education, actually have? I know she has a history in Michigan of expanding charter schools (among other beliefs) but what can she actually do to impact schools across the country? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not much. States have a lot of control (thank goodness). The worst she could do is withhold federal funding, but then the states would sue her. As a public school teacher, I have not made a decision about how I feel about her. Too many people want to make someone a boogeyman based on memes and click-bait. Until I've read her platform, I will not jump on the bandwagon. BTW, I believe in school choice even though I teach at a public school.",
"Exceedingly little, especially given the tone of the administration surrounding her. Currently schools are largely controlled by local school boards and parent committees. They receive state and federal funding, and must abide by state and federal regulations. She *could* totally federally de-fund public schools, but that's already a pretty small amount. Only the poorest of school districts would see a hit from that. She *could* do away with Common Core guidelines and replace it with something else even more stupid, but local school governments would have to approve it anyway. Her policies *could* make it easier for private schools to solicit business away from public schools, but that still requires parents to get involved enough in their child's education to fill out that paperwork AND kick out the bucks to do that. If she really had the full-force of the administration and congress behind her, the Department of Education *could* start overruling local school district leadership, and force change at the local level. But this would be obscenely expensive and require just about all the political capital The Don has available. In the end, it's going to be up to the parents and the general public to give a shit about their local politics. It's boring, but generally speaking, there's nothing she can do that doesn't require local approval."
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5proh4 | What is happening to US Healthcare? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"US healthcare has been a problem for decades: complex and expensive, and worse outcomes than in countries with universal health systems. Obamacare was the first real attempt at reform; it was an incremental, toe-in-the-water kind of thing--Obama basically adopted the conservative Republican plan--but within those limits it did pretty well. However, because it left our complex system in place, Obamacare itself was complex and nearly impossible to explain to Joe and Jane Sixpack. (I wrote [a comic explaining it]( URL_1 ) if you want the full background). That left a vacuum where Republicans could make up whatever they wanted about it. They gleefully did that, making Democrats suffer politically for six years for the crime of improving healthcare. Now Republicans are in charge, but they're imprisoned in their own rhetoric. They can't suddenly like Obamacare (even though it was originally their own program), they can't embrace a more liberal program, and they can't put forth a more conservative plan that makes sense because Obamacare is basically the bare minimum of rational reform--no more conservative plan *can* make sense. They can, however, just plain torpedo it. That doesn't necessarily mean repealing it--Obamacare's complexity makes it fragile, and simply disabling certain aspects of it (as Trump has [already ordered]( URL_0 )) will make the other aspects break down. Yes, that means taking away millions of voters' health care, killing a not-inconsiderable number of them. But Republicans have already shown that they're willing to do that, and people will vote for them anyway. Some states will resist these attacks, some will not. So: many people may well lose their healthcare, and if your boyfriend has a pre-existing condition, he's right to be worried. If you don't like that, let your representative and senators know. I literally just finished [another comic about the current situation]( URL_2 ) if you want more detail.",
"America is trying to solve the problem of the \"Hobo hit by a bus\". A man with no job, savings, or health insurance is hit by a bus. He is taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital, and will require $200,000 of immediate emergency care or he will die. Truly \"Free Market\" healthcare says the hospital has the right to let him bleed out and die in the waiting room. Unless someone with a load of cash is sitting around that waiting room (like a charitable donor), he has no evident ability to pay and they will have to kick out $200,000 of their services to save him that could be spent elsewhere. While this is horrific, it's just good business. Why would a restaurant routinely serve homeless folks that never pay? Truly \"Socialized\" healthcare says he gets treated back to full health, and one way or another the government/taxpayers kick out $200k for his treatment. He receives the same treatment as anyone else. This doesn't set well with healthy working folks, as it's their taxes paying for his healthcare. Americans don't care for the idea of covering the heart attack and cancer treatments of 400lb unemployed smokers. Also, this will incur a big spike in taxes. Sure, everyone will save money by not needing to purchase insurance, more taxes is bad because you can spend your money better than the government. Pre-Obamacare healthcare legally mandated that hospitals treat all critical patients until they're no longer critical. Patients were responsible for their own debt, which was usually covered by a health insurance plan. However, pre-ACA plans typically had lifetime and per-issue caps, mitigating the risk for the insurance company. For the fat unemployed smoker, he'd never be covered under private insurance because everything is pre-existing. It's bad business for an insurance company to write a policy for someone with so many health expenses. For him and the Hobo, the hospital would incur $200k in expenses patching him up, sue him for the $5 in his pocket, then file the rest as a loss on their taxes. That denies the taxpayers the 20% on that lost revenue that we would have made otherwise, so again, the taxpayers are still stuck paying for their treatment. Obamacare was the solution everyone could agree to hate. The ACA mandates that everyone have insurance or pay an extra tax. This gives the hospital reasonable assurance that everyone has the ability to pay, and insurance companies were mandated to actually cover folks for all of their medical expenses. However, this also means insurance premiums (monthly payments) have gone up drastically. Turns out when the insurance company has to pay for ALL of your cancer treatments instead of dropping you to let you die, it gets expensive. Meaningful Trumpcare specifics haven't been announced yet. Mostly, because nobody can pick a system that we can all agree on. He did sign an executive order mandating that everyone restrict costs related to the ACA as much as possible, but that means virtually nothing. It's just something to sate the populists until the Republicans in congress can figure out a better solution to the \"Hobo hit by a bus\" problem."
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5prqo7 | How did the notion of dominance/control/power come to be associated with being "above" or "on top" of whatever is controlled/dominated/etc.? How did submission come to be associated with "below"-ness? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Have you ever seen a physical altercation in humans or animals? The dominant one is never the one on the bottom. Nobody lays on their back to assert dominance. Some animals do however lay on their back to show submission to the dominant animal. TL;DR that's how it works."
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5ps1jn | Why are trick plays in American Football so rare? | They seem to work profoundly well if done correctly. I thought the whole point of football offensive strategy was to creatively devise a plan (or a play as they are called) to get the the touchdown by catching the defense off guard. Trick plays are just really creative plans. Also it would sell a lot more tickets wouldn't it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because trick plays only work if the defense isn't ready for them. If the defense correctly recognizes a trick play as it happens, they are easy to stop, usually for a big loss. Take the simplest trick play, a \"reverse\". The whole offense flows to the right as if the RB is running a sweep right, trying to get the defenders to commit to stopping a sweep right. Then the RB flips the ball to a WR heading back the other direction, trying to sweep around the left side. This play only works if the backside defender (usually a DE or OLB) has completely bitten on the fake sweep. If not, he's right there to stop the WR in his tracks for a 6-8 yard loss. On a well-coached team, defenders are often coached to \"stay home\", which means to stay in their assigned area and not chase plays that are headed to the other side of the field, for this very reason. If they go chase the play elsewhere, they leave their area vulnerable to a trick play. The reason that trick plays *sometimes* work is when the offense has established power over the defense. They keep running sweep right again and again, picking up good yardage every time. If they keep running it again and again, they'll grind their way to a victory. So the backside defender gets frustrated and impatient, and he abandons his area in an attempt to chase down the sweep before it gets any yardage. Once he starts doing that, *then* the offense hits him with the reverse for a huge gain.",
"Trick plays do not have a terribly high chance of success, and usually put the team in a bad position if the play fails. So they are pretty rarely used and mostly reserved for last-ditch attempts."
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5psv53 | How were early humans able to create things like a written alphabet and spoken language, and have it spread throughout the world? | (sorry in advance for the terrible wording) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What happened was we developed agriculture. That meant that, for the first time ever, we had a surplus of food, so we needed to store it. And when you store stuff, you need a way to figure out who it belongs to. So you start making a symbol on your jars and other pottery that indicates it's yours. And then you figure you can make symbols that mean other things. And so on, and so on. And as humans spread around the world, they take that with them and then move it in different directions. And likely these kind of things happened independently in various locations.",
"Evidence suggests that alphabets were invented more than once but didn't always click. Finally one clicked, the one used by phoenicians who were great international traders. When people saw how useful it was, they wanted an alphabet too."
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5ptke4 | why do we read closed captioning even when we can understand what they are saying? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because our eyes have gotten used to reading. Reading is just patterns you can place into context. If you are reading English and you understand it your eye will go to those words. If you turned on Mandarin subs you would spend far less time on them because they don't mean anything to you."
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5pulls | Why is the Middle East so instable compared to the rest of the world? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lots and lots of reasons. But I'd argue it boils down to one essentially inescapable fact - location. The name says it all - the Middle East. It's smack-dab in the middle of the world's powers - America, Russia, China, and Europe. What that means is that it is inevitably a stage upon which power players meet. Countless proxy wars have been fought on those grounds - US and Russia and China all funding and arming different groups to fight for power against one another without actually coming into physical conflict directly. And the Middle East is essentially helpless - it can't escape them. The US is comfy in its own continent. Russia and China have massive land masses with water buffering multiple sides. And stuck in the middle are a bunch of much smaller nations and states which have variously been carved apart by colonialism (instigating tribal conflicts much as happened in Africa due to colonialism), plundered for resources by stronger, resource hungry countries, and used again and again strategically as a sort of pseudo-battlefield. You'll hear people blame the religion, the tribalism, the history, etc. But in the end, like almost everything else, it boils down to land. Geography. They were unfortunate to end up isolated and surrounded by larger bullies who don't really like one another, but can't hit one another, so they spend their time using the Middle East like a chess board, playing out various wars, gathering intel, massing troops on one border or another.",
"While the statement itself is dubious in presenting the rest of the world is stable (e.g. Africa, South America, etc.) understand that were this 100 years earlier, people form the middle east would likely be saying \"why is Europe so unstable compared to the rest of the world?\" That aside, the middle east is the intersection of 3 continents (Europe, Asia, Africa), native region to several ethnic groups (Arab, Persian, etc.), and has a long history of religious important to 3 different religious groups. Just as Europeans waged war over religion from the middle ages until about the 17th century, those in the middle east do the same, except they are also fighting over who gets the holy land, depending on what religion you are looking at. It's also obvious to note that the regions aren't western in culture historically, so there's also some internal conflict between states who ally with western powers and those who believe in conservatism. Another unfortunate occurrence is that the imperial powers did as number on the political structures of many of these states during the 19th and 20th centuries and the end result when the imperial powers left is that the newly freed nations duked it out for who controls the new government and there is quite a bit of civil insurgency as a result (see Syria)."
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5pvecl | Why do Americans hate unions? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Grew up in a big union area. I'll throw out some key items, some of them overlap. 1. Unions got greedy. It simply became very easy for manufacturers to leave 2. They don't do this so much anymore but unions would strike in a manner that people found unbecoming.. i.e. - when nurses strike, people suffer. When teachers strike, students suffer. 3. Jealousy - often the most well off families in town were union 4. Related to jealousy - often the well paid union members was dumb as a box of rocks. 5. Efficiency part 1 - everybody has stories about the new guy being told to slow down (threatened) because they were working too hard and making it worse for everybody else. 6. Efficiency part 2 - everybody has stories of trying to get things done in a union shop but due to union rules, the simplest tasks (sweeping up, repairing/maintenance) made ridiculously time consuming and expensive because doing said task had to be completed by specialized union members. 7. Efficiency part 3 - (I'm going to generalize based on personal anecdote) it you are an engineer working to improve assembly line at UAW shop, is hard as hell to just go out and change things up because changes are frowned upon. Job protection is number 1. It was easier to change things up at another facility where they were Teamsters. I imagine it would be super easy at non union shop. 8. Mob influence - not an issue so much now, but it does exist. Criminal gangs ran union leadership. Family member worked at union HQ where bomb went off during internal war. Odometers were rolled back for free just because. I'm giving personal anecdote. Big picture, think Jimmy Hoffa types. Non union people working in the community see and hear of this kind of crap and have watched the jobs leave and they blame the unions. Personally i think much of the criticism is justified, but I don't think that justifies letting 3rd world manufacturing import at no cost. I'm sure I've forgotten other reasons. Source - multiple family members work(ed) for GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Teamsters, and other miscellaneous parts and suppliers. Multiple UAW members. Some went into management/engineering. I was briefly a Teamster. Edit - I can appreciate union membership. There is no doubt that the personal benefits can help. Still, I have many family members who have drank the Kool Ade and the union can do no wrong. Some like me have at times really resented the negative effects of unions.",
"Was labor lawyer for a long time. I think it is 3 things: (1) Our labor laws create dumb incentives for unions. A union has to represent a terminated employee and will try and get jobs back for members who hide all day and sleep, cause massive damage due to laziness and incompetence, fight, bully, are insubordinate, etc. I always implored our union reps to focus on wages and benefits and working conditions and to quit fighting for the lowest common denominator employee. Americans don't think its fair for someone who gets caught stealing to get their job back and hates the union for trying to. Also, America has a very strong \"at will\" employment ethic which people generally support - you should be able to be fired at any time. (2) PR. America has a weird political system where a small number of billionaires have created a small number of think tanks, almost exclusively funded by billionaires, to create junk \"science\" and PR which is then widely disseminated and used by rightwing politicians to turn people against their own interests. It is a relentless, well oiled machine. It is a frequent refrain that unions cost jobs and cause companies to offshore. I was part and parcel of this machine, which we used in union campaigns to convince these poor dopes that the union was going to cost them their jobs. My mother was a nurse who complained for 30 years about how terrible and arbitrary her employer was, and I would keep telling her how they are violating various labor laws, but she hated unions because a talk radio host repeated the Heritage Foundation talking points over and over (and to be fair used actual anecdotes about bad employees getting their jobs back) and suffered her whole career because of it. (3) Fairness. Unions actually do a great job at raising wages and benefits (though the threat of a union accomplishes almost the same). As a consequence union workers are paid six figures despite not having even finished high school some time. If the union is a pain (see #1) and workers refuse to do anything they don't have to (like if there is trash on the floor and they refuse to pick it up because it's not in their contract), Americans find this lazy and unfair, especially when they are paid a lot and especially if they cant be fired for it. As a final subpart I will say unions have had a history of corruption and mafia ties so Americans find that unfair.",
"Unions have done really amazing things. Most labor gains including wage increases, standardized work weeks, and even safety standards were the result of unions. But unions need certain things to function effectively including enrollment in order to bargain collectively. Legislatures have been slowly eroding the power of unions. For example: unions still require employee contributions to survive but state legislatures have made contributions to unions optional. Thus, while the gains won by unions are paid for by the few, every employee benefits. Unions have also had to endure decades worth of smear campaigns. They're blamed for the company's mismanagement, for greediness, and for being ineffective.",
"First we need to distinguish a difference between Trade unions (Carpenters/Welders) and Labor unions (United Auto Workers). Generally speaking, everyone respects Trade Unions, as they actually train their people, and deliver on promises. Labor unions are the ones giving organized labor a bad name. To form a Labor Union, all employees within a given designation (say floor workers) at a particular employer vote to unionize. If more than 50% vote YES, 100% of employees within that designation are now in the union, may appoint a representative, and the employer MUST bargain with them collectively. Anyone that joins the company within that designation must also join the union. Labor Unions are pretty objectively bad for the employer, but that's also why they get started. Employees that vote for one have usually been asking for raises, sick leave, or generally not-shit work environments, and unionizing forces the employer to fix shit. Otherwise, the union will go on strike, and the employer will have to either negotiate or replace 100% of their floor workers, likely including those that train the floor workers. Labor Unions are objectively good for society by creating a better/safer work environment, and generally forcing the employer to do right by their employees. However, eventually things reach a happy medium, and then Labor Unions start having problems justifying their membership dues without something to \"fight\" for. That's when they start making unrealistic claims, and threaten to choke out the management. By their nature Unions have to be 100% either way. All of the value for the members comes from collective bargaining. Without the 51%=100% rule, Labor unions are neutered, as an employer really could live without 50% of it's workforce when they fire all the strikers. \"Right To Work\" laws make union membership optional in most workplaces. It seems attractive to someone just getting in, as you might get a marginally higher wage than your union peers, AND don't have to pay dues, but you also don't have the same days off or health benefits. If enough people don't join, the union has no leverage to negotiate with, and working conditions start slipping back to their pre-union days with no way to fix it (because they don't have to negotiate). TL;DR: Unions can be objectively good, but they need to get better at leveraging their purpose in society. If they don't figure it out soon, Right To Work laws are going to kill them forever.",
"Union member here. The argument against often comes down to pay-by-merit argument: that worker 1 can do X amount of work while worker 2 does 2X amount of work and they get paid the same.",
"I work for a union and I dislike it because it is very hard to get rid of someone. I have a few co-workers who are very lazy and don't do their job but no one can fire them because it takes too much effort to get rid of them. If you have a decent employer that doesn't try to screw you over the union doesn't do anything for you if you work hard and do your job correctly. -A American",
"In good times, the unions would help working people get better job conditions. This is usually required, because a company's primary focus is getting money, and money going to workers does not help that in their eyes. In bad times, companies struggle to make it at all. Unions tend to oppose any and all cost-saving plans, so far as a company can go bankrupt. Then the workers are without a job, and worse off than before. Unions only work well when the economy is good. In bad times, companies will start to work around it (contracts for a very short time), and hesitate to give anyone a job at all, at a time when the country and worker needs it the most.",
"I don't hate unions as a whole but I have hated every union I've been a part of (mainly grocery unions) by seeing people unable to get raises when they worked harder than everyone else, unable to get full time because that allowed the company to prolong the time it took employees to get raises because raises were based of hours work (I didn't get a raise for 2 years then got promoted to full time and received 3 raises in a year and a half and most people quit before they reach the first raise because they would watch people get hired at the newly negotiated minimum wage for the company while they were still making the previous minimum and couldn't receive a pay bump), union would routinely get people who deserved to get fired for work performance their jobs back and wouldn't fight for people who got fired for blatant lies against them.",
"In theory, I don't really mind unions. However my own personal experience with them was not so great. My group at my old workplace was a bit further along than expected and we needed these big server racks in place in order to continue. The union guys were unpacking the racks from these shipping pallets. They needed three people per pallet and had five. Since I had nothing else to do, I asked if I could help. They said yes and we got things done fairly quickly. Well, the next day some dude I'd never seen walked in with a few of the union guys, who pointed me out, and he slapped a paper down on my desk and informed me that my project was being fined a thousand dollars (or something roughly that) for taking union work. The looks on the faces of the union guys (that had seemed like decent people the other day) was so smug as they looked at me. I went over to my boss and handed him the paper, he just shrugged and said \"If I could pay a thousand dollars to get a day ahead of schedule, I'd take that trade any day. Don't worry about it.\" So yeah...unions...",
"Having worked for a Union based company for a long time, I can try to provide some insights. & nbsp; It doesn't matter how much you know, or how amazing or capable an employee you are, everyone under the same job title and contract is paid exactly the same. & nbsp; From the employee who knows everything there is to know about the job inside and out ( your go-to type ), to the one who couldn't do this job if their life depended on it. The pay is the same. & nbsp; This causes two problems. 1: Eventually, your super employees realize their efforts are for nothing as their pay is exactly the same as the idiot warming a chair two cubicles over. As a result, over time, they tend to do less as they realize there isn't any reason to continue busting their ass. 2: Your less than stellar employees will never do more than the bare minimum because they realize that doing as much work as the super employee doesn't pay any more than they're already making. As a result, there is no motivation to put in any additional effort. & nbsp; Note: The less than stellar may have once been the Rockstars of the group. Over time, they've come to the realization that their extra efforts go unrewarded and eventually become the employee they've hated for much of their career. & nbsp; It is also notoriously difficult to fire a Union Employee unless they do something just completely outrageous. The paperwork and steps involved to fire someone are so immense, that most companies won't even bother to mess with it. The craftier ones know this and get away with quite a bit. & nbsp; You could probably strip naked, smear yourself in Nutella and go stand on the roof armed with a rifle shouting obscenities at the homeless and still not get fired. They'll put you into some sort of Employee Assistance Program for a month and let you come right back to your job :| & nbsp; In larger companies, multiple Unions can be involved all of which are under different negotiated contracts. Imagine working next to someone where they are paid more than you are to do the exact same job and you have ZERO ability to re-negotiate your pay. & nbsp; Imagine how you would feel about Bob making 10% more than you do, while doing the same work, at the same location, during the same hours. & nbsp; Demotivating as hell. & nbsp; Finally, the Unions themselves don't give a damn about their members. They like to pretend they do. They put on the big show like they do, but they don't. & nbsp; They care about exactly two things: 1: The number of Union jobs in a company 2: The pay level of those jobs in a company & nbsp; The Union will fight for the two items above fiercely because Union Dues are typically a percentage of a Union Members base pay. As a result, if more Union jobs are created or current Union jobs receive a pay increase, then the Union pulls in more Dues. It's a self serving fight for them. & nbsp; They like to tell you they're fighting for YOU but, in reality, they're fighting for themselves, just using the members as a proxy to do so. & nbsp; This becomes evident in things such as healthcare. They don't fight for it at all because they've already got their money from you. Since your dues are a percentage of your base pay, the fact you have to pay extra every year in healthcare premiums isn't their concern. & nbsp; This is why I cannot support the Unions any longer. I'm lucky to reside in a State where I have the choice of joining the Union or not instead of it being forced on me. It is noteworthy, however, that joining the Union is far easier than leaving one. They intentionally make it difficult to leave to dissuade such things. In my company, joining up is as simple as signing a simple piece of paper. To LEAVE it, you have to send in a certified letter explaining your intentions to leave, during a ONE WEEK window of the year based on the date you joined. Miss that window, and you're stuck with the Union for another year. :| & nbsp; Based on my experiences with them, they're just not worth it any longer.",
"The same reason we hate that movie theaters charge $20 for popcorn, candy and a coke. You can buy the same stuff at the gas station for like $4. A union employee charges $50/hour for the same task someone outside the union will do for $20/hour. It's viewed as a ripoff.",
"This thread is funny to me. First, I would like to see data for the supposition in the question \"Americans hate unions.\" And second, all the responses are pointing to the faults of unions. Maybe the most reasonable answer is Americans are dumb, or at least easily manipulated. Good example is my grandfather who recently retired from Union Pacific. Ok he worked there for 35 years and was making something like 45k when he retired - a nice middle class wage in a rural part of the country, but he wasn't living high on the hog. He was a very hard worker. But he disliked unions and always complained about paying dues. What he didnt / doesnt understand is that it is precisely because of the bargaining power of the union that he was able to make $20 an hour or whatever unloading crates and supplies. Like in a pure free market system, he would have made poverty wages, he never would have owned a home, he would have no savings. In his world view, he is sanctimonious because he worked so faithfully and never drank or did drugs and never skipped work etc etc. But the reality is, if he had happen to be born at a time without unions, his life would have been miserable. Like a typical baby boomer, he benefitted from the sacrifices of generations before him (I'm talking about the very bloody labor movement in this country) and get's to judge the generations coming after him when the latter gets pulled up.",
"I don't think that there is one single answer to this question since it is based mostly on people's opinions. Why I don't like unions is because they empower lazy workers, also the pay scale system. If I'm a more productive employee I should be compensated as such and not have my wages based on the duration of time I've worked at the company.",
"reasons mentioned below are pretty spot on. Unions were designed to help fight for workplace rights but now protects the workers that are extremely overpaid because of the negotiating power of the union. Mfg labor for machine operators normally runs $10-15 per hr but union positions are more like $30 per hr and with amazing insurance and benefits. Sounds good to the worker but what happens is that the product the mfg becomes so expensive because of the overhead cost involved that it puts strain on the business to continue to operate with such costs involved (pay, insurance, etc) Then companies like Honda and Toyota come in and build better and more efficient products that cost less and initiates the collapse of the american auto industry. Union workers will tell you to buy american because they feel entitled to their bloated salary but in a capitalized economy may the best product win. Unions have allowed unskilled workers the ability to pay for a family and insurance which is great but unions have transformed into a power struggle by any means necessary. This is the world we live in today. Unions had their place but have placed strain on the economy.",
"One needs to look no further than the deplorably shitty cars America produced during the 70s-90s to see why unions are looked down on today. Union stranglehold sucked all the capital out of the US auto-industry, leaving little room for innovation or efficiency, which lead to its near demise as cheaper, higher-quality foreign cars flooded the market..",
"From what I remember it all started in the 80s when Ronald Reagan was president. The 80s was when a lot of corporations sent their manufacturing jobs over seas, especially car manufacturers. Right wingers, in an effort to protect their corporate masters managed to pin all the blame on \"greedy unions\". Republicans have not stopped this rhetoric since then because it works. I know too many working people who hate unions and when I ask them why, they usually repeat the Republican talking points that have been repeated over and over.",
"American society is just not good at collectivism. We are good at teamwork, but it's easier to get rid of a member of a team who is not pulling their weight than it is a member of a collective.",
"In my (limited) experience, the unions where I work protect workers who shouldn't be there and do nothing for workers who should. Story: there was a unit operator who would regularly watch porn in the control room on a company computer. Like, a lot. He wouldn't even try and hide it. If you approached him to talk, he'd pause his porn, discuss whatever you were there for, then resume watching porn. The company did not like this, so they began proceedings to fire his ass. The union abritrator said that since the company IT policy did not specifically forbid using the internet to access pornography, how was he to know that it was a fireable offense? The policy was changed (from \"adult material\" to \"adult material, including, but not limited to, pornography\") and dipshit kept his job. He continued to regularly watch porn on his computer. The company tried to fire him again, and failed again. This time the arbitrator pointed out that the porn was coming in through his emails. How can a person be expected to control what he receives through his email? Kept his job both times, thanks to union protection for no fuckin reason.",
"It's hard to strike a fair balance between the needs of a union and the needs of a business that employs people. The core issue is that unions tends to overprotect their members to the point where incompetent workers cannot be fired. Conversely, businesses desire to exploit workers to lower their costs. These two needs are directly at conflict with each other which is why finding common ground is nearly impossible. Unions are not all the same, and some caution is needed when lumping them together. Certain industries (like public transportation) foster more entitlement amongst their union members. In other fields like education a union is absolutely required because the primary function of school administrators is to withhold pay raises, withhold cost of living increases, and harass experienced veteran teachers until they quit in order to hire younger, cheaper, and less experienced teachers solely for the purpose of hoarding money. Also be aware that conservatives paint a strongly negative perception of unions because they represent the interests of businesses more than they do of the people. Often some of the biggest critics of unions are people with a vested interest in the needs of some business they are tied to. Unions aren't perfect but they are necessary as long as businesses want to exploit people. And for as much as people may act like unions are bad, just look at how life was like before unions existed.",
"I have several union friends. They brag about how little they do to get paid $45/ hour. I know there are benefits but when I see my economy going to shit because if stuff like this, it kinda pisses me off.",
"FYI - most of the complaints listed here about unions apply just as well to other highly structured (read: seniority based) employment. In particular, the enlisted military is rife with the same issues, only the pay is worse (but the benefits are amazing). Also, weirdly, big law firm jobs (first several years, anyway).",
"I worked in a meijer that was union. I also know that a 3rd shift worker worked in receiving and regularly shit him self. He touched every item of food that entered the store whilst reaking of shit. Even with the personal hygiene nightmare the union made it so it was near impossible to fire him.",
"Joe does x for work. He is at a non-union job. Joe sees Mike, and Mike does what Joe does, but gets paid twice as much. Joe has two ways to see it: 1. Mike does the same thing as Joe, and so Mike should be paid as much as Joe or 2. Mike does the same thing as Joe, and Joe should be paid as much as Mike. For many reasons in the US, people go straight to #1, rather than #2.",
"As a union worker, I can say there is good and bad. The bad is the union protects the ba workers. Guys who abuse the union and have poor work ethic. The good for me because I take pride in my work and have a strong work ethic is simple, it protects me from being fired for bullshit reasons. Without union agreements a manager could fire me for any reason without just cause. It could be personal and he would get rid of me no questions asked. Having working agreements are a good thing. As a worker I want protection for myself. If I were to go into management I would be more against unions but know it does have good purposes. Unions are just like everything else, a system that has both pros and cons."
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5pvvb6 | Why do people go for coffee/tea/a drink as a way of meeting each other for a chat? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's an open, public place, and it's something fairly non-committal. If you sit down for a full meal, you're there for probably the better part of an hour. If you grab a coffee, you can chat for as long or short as you like depending on what's going on. It's also pretty cheap, only spending a few bucks for a drink rather than maybe $20 or more for a full meal. Timing is also more flexible. You can grab a drink whenever, but going for a meal at something like 3:00 in the afternoon is a bit odd.",
"It's a common practice that is done in a public non threatening location. Nearly everyone drinks coffee, tea, cocktails, and or other beverages, otherwise they... you know... die. Also, this doesn't require a lot of time or cost by either party so there is a low risk/reward threshold. I'm not sure what could be more cost effective... maybe meeting for gum on a street corner?",
"All of these answers are totally spot on but, also, caffeine and alcohol make you want to talk. Caffeine is a stimulant so you naturally want to converse more while alcohol decreases your inhibitions and removes many social anxieties because of it. You naturally want to talk more, are more engaging and can leave if it gets weird.",
"Because tea is fucking brilliant. It's cheap, not many people like spending lots on a first date. Also, it's a public place where someone could make an excuse to leave if they wanted to, unlike some other dates (E.g. dinner or bowling, which you will have to stay there for the duration).",
"Why don't they go for caramels? It's as arbitrary as drinking coffee.",
"It's also just something to do. If you meet a friend and sit in a chair and just talk, it's not that memorable. When you have a store or a good drink to connect it to, more of your sense are connected to that memory, therefore that memory is more engrained in the mind. The more sense you use in a situation, the deeper and more real that experience becomes",
"Especially as a strong coffee almost makes me want to crap myself within minutes of finishing it",
"In addition, it is not romantic, so less chance of someone mistaking it for a date. You are going to a bustling, well-lit public place for a fairly short period of time. You are drinking something to make you more alert, as opposed to alcohol which will make you less alert. I can ask a male colleague to discuss a project with me while we get coffee, but if I said \"Let's discuss it over lunch,\" \"Let's get a beer and talk it over,\" that could have very different implications.",
"Sharing a drink of some sort has been a social ritual of long standing. In ancient times, the sharing of tea was a time when differences were put aside for a few moments and people were able to get along, even if they were enemies. It was also a ritualistic way for a host to demonstrate to the guest the honor that the host felt in having the guest in their presence. These rituals were slow and took much time. In more modern environs, coffee has been added to the mix of beverages; as well as a shot of good bourbon in some boardrooms.",
"It's a time honoured tradition. Offering a drink to visitors goes back centuries. They just didn't have baristas and teeny tiny shortbreads back then!",
"Less time commitment than a dinner, and there's still something in common to talk about. Dinner is a guaranteed longer time period, and people don't want to do that without knowing a bit more about someone first. Going out for a drink is a short time period that can be extended if both parties want to.",
"I have a friend that I meet once a week for coffee. For us, the timing is key. It's right after we drop our kids off for school, but an hour before work. It gives us about 45 minutes of uninterrupted time to catch up. When we spend time at each other's houses, our conversations are constantly interrupted by kids needing things, etc. This gives us a chance to chat without kids, pets, spouses, chores, or messy houses interrupting and distracting from the conversation."
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5pwdyy | What rights don't women have in the US that men have? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A big fuss over the past few weeks is involving healthcare and reproductive rights. Republican governments in particular have been criticized for campaigning to reduce access to family planning resources, and the recent assult on the ACA isn't helping out here.",
"It's not so much about *actual* rights, but some *implied* rights and about *equality*. Women are still discriminated against in many cases. They often get paid less, for example, and there are many employers who will chose a less qualified man over a more qualified woman because there's a perception that women aren't as good as men in some fields. Furthermore, the US administration has just changed over to someone who is widely perceived as a misogynist, who has very often dismissed women based *solely* on appearance. The platform of the ruling party includes actually *removing* civil rights from women, which they have been working at long before being in power (e.g., banning abortion). Also note that the recent \"Women's March\" was a \"Civil Rights for *Everyone*\" march, not *just* for women."
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5pwvsy | Why so many people LOVE Calvin and Hobbes? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In many ways, C & H was a pretty adult comic; as much about philosophy and nostalgia as it was about a kid having fun. Watterson pushed the boundaries of his medium; he did beautiful work with watercolors and Japanese-inspired minimalist landscapes, and he won several fights with his syndicate: he got to ignore panel boundaries on Sunday comics (something which used to be set in stone), and he was able to avoid merchandising Calvin and Hobbes. There are no stickers, no lunchboxes, no stuffed animals, no page-a-day calendars, and no Saturday Morning cartoons."
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5px08v | If biological fathers do not have the right to object to or be notified of an abortion, why must he be forced into child-support payments if he did not agree with bringing the child to term? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As a man who was raped by a woman, who then got pregnant, and now I pay her child support, I can say the whole system is broken. I don't even get to see my son but I pay so much that I can't afford to live on my own. If I wasn't married to someone now I'd be living on couches working a full-time job just to feed myself. And I have a decent job.",
"It' a paradox that has no answer. A man shouldn't have a right to object to an abortion because it's not his body, and yet he is in part responsible for a child who didn't ask to be conceived and is dependent. That dependency should default to those who are responsible for it's conception. What's interesting is that both parents can absolve themselves of financial obligation, through adoption, but if one is onboard, they can force the other through child support, whereas I would expect even through adoption both parents should still be obligated to financial support. > but men are then on the long-term (financial) support hook with no recourse This implies so too is the mother; saddled with a child without rearing support from the father, she has to do the child rearing of two people. What recourse does she have, if she doesn't want to abort or abandon their child and the father doesn't want to stick around? It doesn't make sense to me that either parent can ever absolve themselves of any responsibility or obligation at all, like I said, that adoption can absolve both. What about the child who didn't ask to be here?",
"Child support is not for the mother but for the child who did not choose to be brought into the world. An abortion is a medical procedure being carried out on someones body who may also have moral objections to it taking place. Without the authority of the state nobody has the right to decide someone MUST take a medical procedure. The two aren't comparable."
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5px1o7 | How does a "muse" work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"For me, the muse IS the creativity. Sometimes, it's easy to be creative. Sometimes, it's hard. The more time you spend trying to be creative, the better you get. You can exercise your creativity."
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5pxhqa | what does the freezing of hiring federal civilian employees across all boards of the executive branch mean to the average young American adult? | With the exception of military. Thanks | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It means that one of the country's largest employers is not hiring for an indefinite period of time. It is likely that some federal government agencies will be left short staffed, so your interactions with them might be harmed. Your tax dollars will likely go towards ~~hiring private contractors to fill demand if possible, or to~~ (edit: contracting is prohibited by the [memorandum]( URL_0 )) providing overtime compensation to current workers.",
"To the average young American adult, not much. The only people effected immediately will be those who are seeking employment with the Federal government. If you fall in that category, it sucks to be you. Over the long term, we will see the problems begin to mount as organizations lose efficiency. Most young adults don't rely on government agencies for things like medical care or retirement benefits, so it won't really make a difference. For people who do depend on the government (like VA patients, for example) the already inefficient systems will go from merely miserable to absolutely terrible, and they will start to suffer for it. And then they'll all realize that hiring freezes usually cost more money than they save and have absolutely no effect on clearing out bad employees, but at least it made people feel like Donald was sticking it to the man, so they might be happy about that.",
"IT means you aren't getting a job with the Federal Government for awhile unless you work in the defense sector. It also means any interaction you have with the Federal Government will likely take a little longer.",
"It means there will be an increased cost to the government resting in unnecessary debt, reduced efficiency of government as missions change and personnel cannot be hired to efficiently take care of them. It means a possible delay in any number of necessary federal services and no actual benefit to the country or the citizens.",
"It means you cannot apply to work at the postal office, work as a federal clerk, apply to the FBI (this might actually be allowed with the national defense exemption), apply to the IRS, etc."
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5pxmx5 | Why are the majority of the reddit population male? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Why are most subreddit populations comprised of men moreso than women? Check out the history of reddit: [Here]( URL_0 ) It's a lot of good content to read through. For example, check out the growth and popularity of subreddits over the history of reddit: [Here]( URL_1 ) Or here, take a look at reddit in [2007]( URL_2 ). Now, if you look at the data, the earliest popular subreddits were programming, science, politics, and porn. I won't get into why men are more likely to be discussing these topics/professions, that's a whole different ELI5, but because that tends to be the case, it is not rocket science to figure out why Reddit tends to be populated my men. It's been cool that reddit has grown SOOOO much and now has better representation of women, but to understand why things are the way they are, you have to appreciate the history of a thing. Reddit began as a place to talk about computers, science, and boobs. That drew in a predominately male population for obvious reasons."
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5pxznh | What is the REINS Act? And what are the positives and negatives of such a piece of legislation? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The REINS act is a law that would require that Congress approve regulations and rules developed by administrative agencies before those regs/rules have the force of law. Currently, the system works like this: Congress decides that some area requires specialized knowledge, relative depoliticization, significant flexibility, or high detail (or some combination) in order for government to be effective. So Congress sets standards and creates an agency with power to create rules that meet those standards. A classic example is something like nuclear regulations, where the average congressman might not have the capacity to understand the relevant differences between two specific rules, even if they had the time. So you create the EPA, staff it with scientists, tell them what the regulations should generally do, and give them the power to make rules. To regulate that process of agency rule making, Congress then created a whole set of rules for how agencies can make decisions and how they engage with the public, helping to make sure the rules are relatively transparent and that court challenges are possible. And, of course, Congress indirectly influences rule making through their control over appointments, power to find and defend, and power to investigate. And, of course, Congress could always pass a new law that would overrule any regulation, since ultimately a real law trumps any administrative action. But, the trick is that laws require the presidents signature, and for the most part, the president runs the agencies. So, if a rule/reg was approved, that almost certainly means the president is on board, making it tough for Congress to pass a law to block or overturn the agency action. Enter the REINS act. Basically, the act adds a requirement that before a regular becomes effective, congress has to actually approve it. Merely not passing a law overturning it isn't enough. Thus, any one house of Congress can stop a regulation that falls under the act from taking effect by not approving it. Supporters like it because it reins in the executive and provides another check on regulations that might be onerous, making the default no change rather than change and ensuring direct input from \"the people\" via the legislative branch. Others oppose it because it undercuts the reason you have agencies in the first place, and may lead to a system where it is impossible to create any new regulations where there is even slight congressional opposition. There are also concerns that Congress is simply too disorganized and slow acting, meaning even regs they'd approve would get lost in inertia."
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5py9id | What political change results from peaceful protest? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Martin Luther King, Jr. is a good example of getting effective results through peaceful protest. When people turned on their TVs, they saw peaceful protesters getting beaten up and arrested constantly. Protesters who were arrested were able to argue their cases in court and get it on record that the laws were ridiculous. Also, by remaining peaceful, they held the moral high ground and were able to sway public opinion to their side which created enough political will to enact the Civil Rights Act. If you act violently, it's easy for the other side to dismiss your cause. For example, look at the Black Lives Matters movement. The underlying cause is good, but because a lot of people acted like jackasses in the name of the movement, it's easy to dismiss them and paint the whole cause in a negative light.",
"In many cases, politicians will change their actions because they will be aware that there are a large, motivated group of people who could vote them out of office if they support laws that the protesters didn't like. Politicians require the good will of the people to get elected, and protests show where those people are.",
"Depends on the situation. For example, India freed itself relatively peacefully, with the lion's share of violence coming from the partition of India and Pakistan rather than the protests against the UK. The main thing is that if you're not willing to disavow violence, your opponents will see no reason to disavow it, either. Otherwise, you can't have an orderly, peaceful transition of political power."
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5pz4ft | Why did throwing money into public fountains become a sign of good luck and associated with wishes? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the past (and still today in many areas of the world), access to clean water was a luxury. Centuries ago, this clean water was considered a gift from the gods. Many people actually believed that gods or deities lived in the water, in fact. So, they would sacrifice what little money they had to these gods to appease and honor them, to ensure that the clean water kept flowing. Eventually, these offerings were accompanied by little requests from the gods. Nothing major, maybe a small request to help a loved one recover from an illness or a request for a bountiful crop. Eventually this led to wishing wells and throwing coins into fountains to make a wish. In Norse mythology as well, they had the \"Well of Wisdom\" which was to grant infinite wisdom if you sacrificed something you held dear. For most people, what they had that wa valuable was money. Odin, the Allfather of the gods and ruler of Asgard, took that a step beyond; he threw in his right eye to in turn recieve the wisdom of seeing the future and the understanding of why things must be."
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5pzc4d | People in rural America claim that guns are necessary for their way of life. How do rural residents of countries with stricter gun laws get by? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So, the only place where this really is the case is Europe. Europe has no predators or other large and dangerous animals; they've all been killed off over the millennia of humans living there. By comparison, North America has wolves, bears, mountain lions, moose, bison, and elk, all of which can cause pretty extensive damage to personal property, can can easily harm or kill people. In addition, there are a large variety of pest animals (like coyotes) that aren't a direct threat, but can cause all sorts of damage if they can't be driven off with firearms. In addition, Europe is pretty heavily urbanized, such that the police really aren't that far away, ever. Take, for example, Cherry and Sheridan counties in rural Nebraska, which are out in the middle of nowhere, have essentially only ranchers living in them, and (combined) are **roughly the same size as Slovenia**. So yeah, we have local police forces (and we're not talking LAPD all-black military-grade equipment police forces, but Jim-bob and his beat-up second-hand pickup police forces) who are responsible for territories the same size as entire nations. Out there, you need to be able to protect yourself, because the police may take *hours* to get to you, and that's in *good* conditions. This same part of the country averages *feet* of snow in the winter, and it only get's worse as you go further north. Finally; even Europe allows rifles with relatively few legal hangups, and rifles are what rural gun owners really want to have access to, which shouldn't be a problem given how few people are actually killed with rifles in any given year.",
"The \"way of life\" argument classically refers to hunting -- which uses long guns, which can be obtained in most countries with a license, and which no one in the USA actually proposes to ban. Some people stretch this argument to refer to target shooting using pistols -- this is a hobby, and it's quite a stretch to call it a \"way of life\" any more than using reddit is a \"way of life.\" All of this is sometimes just a distraction, because the deeper argument isn't about \"way of life\" -- it's about the belief that an armed population is the best way to prevent tyranny by an overreaching government.",
"In Australia you apply for a license and you get a gun. There is alot of hunting and culling here. There are restrictions, but it doesn't seem to be that big a deal really. URL_0",
"In New Zealand you apply for a firearms license and you get a gun. Ownership of pistols and \"military style\" weapons are highly restricted; shotguns and rifles are pretty standard and can be bought mail order (once you have a firearms license). Gun ownership and hunting is very common/popular here. It is against the law to use firearms for self defense. If, when you apply for a firearms license, you even hint that that might be the reason you want a firearms your application will be denied. Valid reasons are hunting, livestock management, target shooting, competitive shooting, etc.",
"In England most Farmers have guns, usually shotguns. To possess a gun you need to get a licence, and for that you need a proper reason to have a gun. Guns are definitely present in number in rural England, but just regulated and the Police know exactly who has a gun and what guns they have e.t.c",
"Canadian here, We have a strict system for people wanting to get their firearms license, but it is not overly complicated. There's a safety course involved, and then a background check and 30 day waiting period before the application is approved. This helps weed out people who want to obtain firearms in anger. This process is longer and stricter for possession of handguns, and the only legal reason for a civilian to own one is to target shoot at an approved range. Long guns (rifles/shot guns) are easily accessible once you have your PAL (possession and acquisition license). As also mentioned earlier, we do not have any Castle Laws, and there are very strict rules around using a firearm for anything other than hunting & target practice. Basically if you are going to threaten to use it against another human you are in the wrong and can be charged. I'd say we get along just fine with the strict rules we have here, and as a bonus there are less (not zero) shootings per capita than our Southern Neighbors.",
"in rural France, there is still a lot of hunter, so it's not that uncommon to see a cabinet full of hunting rifles in a farm. However, laws on self defence are pretty restrictive and (not a lawyer) you will likely be the one ending up in jail if you use them against a robber (I wonder, but it's may-be pure speculation if that's not one of the reason why house robber won't use a gun since they know you won't use one) That said, density population is higher and rural Europe had to deal with outlaw all along history. (not an historian but) it's likely the reason why you have village every 2-3 hours of walk (our ancestor didn't had a car) meaning that police (and all other public services) are close by. Finally, with modern state we don't have anymore outlaw groups who hides in the forest and sack villages once every so and on as during the middle age. But I think that U.S. are not anymore at the *western* Era and that the number of active criminals in far rural land is quite low."
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5pzp24 | Why are most public restroom doors push to enter and pull to leave? | The other way seems more hygienic. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a general safety measure. If an enclosed area only has a push to leave, it can potentially be blocked from the outside, trapping the occupants inside which can be a fire hazard among other things.",
"Door swing direction actually has a lot of thought put into it. Doors for escape usually open out so that a group of people trying to escape won't trap themselves against the door unable to open it. This is part of the International Building Code. Any high risk building use all doors will open out, and other uses of more than 50 people require it. Other than that, it's the decision of who designs/builds the building. Bathroom doors usually open in because they are smaller areas with small amounts of people inside, and they often open into hallways where the door opening out would block the exit path."
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5q06oh | How do poems translated from one language to another still rhyme? | I am reading a poem for a college course and it was originally written in Russian but has since been translated into English. It still rhymes, and I was just wondering how it went from one language to another and still rhymed. Sorry if this is a dumb question | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The translated form is altered in order to rhyme, almost always. Usually the translator is also a poet who understands the original poet's style, so they'll try to keep the meaning and meter (if necessary) as close as possible to the original, while finding rhyming words that fit. EDIT: Here's an example from Charles Baudelaire, from *Benediction* **Original French (rhyming):** Car il ne sera fait que de pure lumière, Puisée au foyer saint des rayons primitifs, Et dont les yeux mortels, dans leur splendeur entière, Ne sont que des miroirs obscurcis et plaintifs! **More literal (non-rhyming) translation:** For that crown will be made of nothing but pure light Drawn from the holy source of primal rays, Whereof our mortal eyes, in their fullest brightness, Are no more than tarnished, mournful mirrors! **Rhyming translation:** Because it will be only made of light, Drawn from the hearth of the essential rays, To which our mortal eyes, when burning bright, Are but the tarnished mirrors that they glaze. You can see that word order and word choices have been fiddled a bit in that last example to make things rhyme. But it mostly keeps the effect of the original, if the translator knows their stuff.",
"Because it's not a literal, word-for-word translation. The translator had to take liberties with the poem to get it to rhyme in English. Here's a very short example from a rhyming English translation of *Tartuffe*, originally a rhyming French-language play. Rhyming French: *C'est véritablement la tour de Babylone,* *Car chacun y babille, et tout du long de l'aune.* Google Translate output: *It is truly the tower of Babylon,* *For everyone there babbles, and all along the yard.* Rhyming English translation: *Parties are towers of Babylon, because* *The guests all babble on with never a pause*"
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5q0bui | what is the significance of "auspicious" in Chinese culture? | I've been watching Marco Polo (late to the game, I know), and I've noticed that they often describe many things as "auspicious." written as 吉利 in Chinese. Events, timing, meetings, battles, etc. When googling, the only results I find are sources talking about why certain things ARE auspicious, but not why Chinese history is so symbolic in its nature. Why are things auspicious when they can simply be described as "favorable?" | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Auspicious is a slightly different meaning than favorable. Auspicious implies a bit of superstitious luck. Seeing an eagle before a battle doesn't really do anything to help your side, you just see it as \"a lucky sign.\" Like many countries, china has a lot of superstitions.",
"Sometimes when translating Chinese to English, some meaning is lost in the translation. Auspicious/吉利 can be described many ways in english, and may mean something slightly different because Chinese/mandarin is a high context language. Culture comes into play as well. Superstition is also very relevant in the Culture especially during the New Years celebration period, where it is taboo and frowned upon to speak in a 'non-auspicious' manner. the Chinese language is indeed symbolic and high-context because a lot of the meaning is derived from historical stories and lessons. chinese proverbs may come in just 4 characters - which can be used to describe a whole host of ideas. The language can also be regarded as concise but you'd have to understand the history and context behind the phrases/proverbs to use them effectively; this is another reason why it is often quite difficult to directly translate chinese to english and vice versa. hope this helps :)"
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5q139w | What is the reasoning behind the US Constitution so adamant about checks and balances and separation of powers, yet lawmakers are the ones who get to appoint and select the only people (judges) who could hold them accountable? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"They don't select the judges. The president chooses the judges, the Senate confirms them. Perfect balance of power. It takes the executive and the legislative to put someone on the judiciary."
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5q2piu | Why is music from each decade post the 1960s so distinguishable? | This question is about music in general and not necessarily on specific artists. Songs from jazz singers like Julie London, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Darin etc.. all have a 50-60s feel, however I personally can't pinpoint which decade let alone year unless I know the album. However music in the early 60s is very unique compared to 70s music, 70s is unique to 80s and so on. Although I haven't heard or don't remember any songs from The American Breed apart from 'Bend Me Shape Me' (Futurama), I would almost certainly not confuse their songs with anything from the mid 70s even if the singers from different bands sounded similar. The style of music they have and others in that era had (The Beatles, The Archies, B.J Thomas etc.) is distinguishably different from latter decades. One more notable example I think is Sting. He produced music over two decades. The first was in the 80s with The Police until the group disbanded in 1984 and then he went solo and released a few albums until 1993 when he took a pause. His song 'If I Ever Lose My Faith In You' has a 90s feel to it compared to his 80s songs like 'Every Breath You Take' and 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic'. What causes this trend in music among the same artists over time and bands/artists in general? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I would say that part of these changes over time are advances in instrument technology and recording technology. In the 60's distorted guitar broke into mainstream, either by broken electronics in amps, or by taking a razor to the speakers. This lead to distortion and fuzz units coming into being. Then there's innovation in synths, all being analog of course, including the mellotron which was like an analog sampler. These were pick up by bands like Pink Floyd, ELO, Tangerine Dream. The later 70's saw analog synths solely being used to create/push the disco sound with Moroder's I Feel Love, I think it used either a step sequencer or arpeggio... but it was a shape of things to come for certain. Around this time we are seeing scratching and mixing being discovered and the brith of ElctroBoogie, then hiphop. Whilst Hiphop was going ground, KrafWerk took electronic music to the next level with a completely new sound akin to hearing the thoughts of a computer in melodic form. Whilst using only electronic instruments there was no real sequencing solution of the time (for reasonable sums that is!) and thus KraftWerk played each part themselves. The 80's also saw digital sampling and the sequencing hitting mainstream Paul Hardcastles 19, and Mars pump up the volume, Chicago Jack, then House, and finally the birth of EDM. All this was made possible with MIDI control of digital synths, with this you could make up nearly an entire song on the computer screen (struggled with vocals outside of small vocal hits or hooks \"nnn nineteen etc). The next change came more with increase in computing power and cheaper memory. The digital synths no longer needed to be physical units and could exist as a program in the computer. the computer also became able to record, manipulate and playback many tracks of audio. This finally freed the electronic music world from it's traditional niche of dance, all music was recorded on a computer (for the most part). The last step is Antares auto tune. I think we all know what this sofware did, but a recap. It can take an audio track, and correct any intonation mistakes almost inaudibly. This was first used as intended as a correction tool, but soon became a special effect in its' own right starting with Cher's Believe. We all know how that went, from unleashing every other tv celeb to punt at a pop career, and the endless robot voices that saturated the times. That's about it for my quick run down, not saying these are the entire reasons behind the changes, but a large part of them.",
"You listen to a lot more of it compared to older eras. That familiarity lets you get into the subtleties of everything. It's the same way when people who listen to metal can tell the difference between black metal, death metal, doom, thrash, even though a layman just hears \"metal\". Also, listen to some really old jazz like from the 1910s and 20s and you can more readily notice the difference. My local NPR station has a show that focuses exclusively on recordings from that era and its very distinct from later records."
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5q2q4z | How do voter ID laws suppress votes? | I understand that the more hoops one has to go through to vote, the fewer people will want to subject themselves to go through the process. But I don't fully understand how voter ID laws suppress minorities specifically, or how they're more suppressive than requiring voters to show up in person at the booths (instead of online voting, for example). EDIT: I'm not trying to get into a political debate here, I'm looking for the pros and cons of both sides. Please don't put answers like "Republicans are trying to suppress minority votes" as the answer, I'm trying to find out *how* this policy suppresses votes. EDIT: Okay....Now I understand what people mean when they say RIP inbox...thank you so much for this kind of response, wish me luck, I'm gonna try and wade through all of this... | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A lot of laws that affect everyone can be used to specifically target groups that are disproportionately unlikely to be able to follow them. The more hoops that a person has to go through, the more that a lack of education or a lack of time could stop them. The lack of education thing is important because someone with some college or even just a high school diploma is far more likely to have the patience to deal with large volumes of paperwork. I have a college education, which means I only have to work one job. I have the time and attention span to jump through lots of hoops to be able to vote. Others with less education or in worse financial situations are less likely to have the time or motivation to go through the long and arduous process that registering to vote could be. As an anecdotal example, when my wife and I (white US citizens in our mid-20's) first moved to this state (Virginia), she wound up having to take 4 trips to the DMV to be fully registered to vote, which was incredibly tedious and discouraging. If she weren't so determined to exercise her rights, she would have stopped once she got her drivers license. This wasn't even due to excessive laws in the state, it was just the DMV. If she had to work 2 jobs (more likely for minorities) or if we had family relying on us (more likely for minorities) or if she had less education (more likely for minorities) then this process could have likely stopped her early. Fundamentally, it's all about the kinds of people more likely to be lost at every hurdle. A law doesn't need to directly target minorities to disproportionately hurt them. EDIT: To clear up a few things: 1. I'm not talking about total suppression of some minorities. Making some part of the process slightly more difficult will not block out an entire group. But if a law is put in place that stops 1% of the rich and 5% of the poor, then it is disproportionately hurting the poor. It doesn't take much to do this, and it often doesn't take much to tip the scales. 2. My wife's situation was made worse by a fuck-up at the DMV. There were no extra laws getting in her way, but the process was made much more difficult regardless. This is an anecdotal point and only serves as an example of how simple little issues can prevent less motivated people from registering. I don't believe that her situation represents the majority of people in Virginia. 3. As a lot of people have brought up, I'm improperly using the term \"minorities\". The group that I'm referring to is really anyone who is not part of the social or financial elite who may be disenfranchised by laws that make voting more difficult for everyone. Most of this group is poor, and is disproportionately non-white, hence my misusing the term. Plenty of white people are affected negatively by increased difficulty in voting, and plenty of racial minorities are not affected by it.",
"Most prominent case I can recently remember occurred in [Alabama in 2015]( URL_0 ). The Alabama state house decided to close over 30 DMV offices across the state for budget reasons. However, these 30 DMV offices were all from counties that had a higher percentage of minority residents. This required residents to at times drive (or ride a bus) several hours one way to a DMV location if they needed to get a new ID. This did result in a federal investigation by the Department of Transportation as to why these locations were singled out when other low traffic offices were left open. Alabama ultimately redacted their closing of majority of the offices, instead leaving them open on a limited (1 or 2 days a week) basis.",
"Here's a simple example to explain how voter ID laws can suppress votes from 2012... > Many ID-issuing offices maintain limited business hours. For example, the office in Sauk City, Wisconsin is open only on the fifth Wednesday of any month. But only four months in 2012 — February, May, August, and October — have five Wednesdays. This is the office for non-driving voter ID. If you want a drivers license (has a fee), you can get one at any DMV, however only select locations with obscure and select hours offered the free ID.",
"Voter Id's should be a national ID card, like a passport. BUT, free to get, at a post office, and using SS card or citizenship doc and biometrics; eye, finger, face. Post offices are everywhere and are government run. Yea, i get it there would be a huge security infrastructure build behind this but the benefits would be across the board. Imagine being able to vote at any polling place at anytime just using a card. You have to get up early to get to work in the city on a long commute and stay late, your polling place is across town from your home. If there is a polling place next to work you could use your card to vote there.",
"One fun detail to note is that the *types* of ID accepted are quite politicized. In a famous American example, a voter ID law was passed that considered a gun license valid but a student ID invalid. For millions of young people, their student ID *is* their photo ID, and is usually accepted as one, while gun licenses are generally not. Because university students tend to be left-wing and gun owners tend to be right-wing this had the effect of shifting the political spectrum. Every single voter ID discussion involves debate over what forms of ID should be acceptable and it's impossible to escape the fact that certain forms of ID tilt heavily towards political demographics. But really, the motivation is usually the knowledge that large demographics *don't have* ID. And there are a lot of reasons you may not have ID, primarily poverty. There are places, especially in the US and Australia, where you must travel 100, 150+ miles to get to a place that issues ID; in a rural area that place is often not open on the weekend, which means that you need to take a day off to alternate buses for hours to get you there and back. Which means you can only book appointments for the middle of the day, and there are likely nowhere near enough mid-day appointments available to get everyone their ID by election time, even if they were all willing to pay the fees for it to get a vote, which isn't an option for a lot of poor people -- and poor people are often unable to take a day off work anyway. And you'd better hope your rural area has the public transport to get you there, which it usually doesn't. You've gotta drive, but you can't afford to drive, because you're poor. And a lot of poor don't actually have the requisite documents to get ID. This is way more common than you think especially for older people and especially black people born during the segregation era, who were much more likely to be delivered outside of hospitals and never issued a birth certificate. If you have zero paperwork, how do you get your ID? Go get your birth certificate, they'll want ID documents of their own. You can get around that depending on area and luck, sometimes, but usually only by knowing details relating to the existing birth certificate they're looking up. Didn't get issued one because you were born black in 50s Alabama? Go ask them to issue one for you now, it's gonna be a bureaucratic nightmare. Realistically you're screwed. I've tried to help people in this exact situation, it is incredibly frustrating, time-consuming, and often expensive. And it always costs money to get the documents. Put simply, if you make an ID a requisite of voting, you are making paid fees a requisite of voting, and stripping people who can't afford those fees of their right to vote; additionally you are stripping people of the right to vote due to circumstances outside their control that disproportionately affect certain demographics; additionally there is no real list of valid IDs that doesn't favor a specific political demographic. Every voter ID law you look up will coincidentally happen to result in opening things up to voters supporting the proper's party/viewpoints and closing things off to voters opposing them. You might want to look up voting eligibility tests for some fun historically-relevant examples of proposals that seemed entirely reasonable on the face but were used to block certain demographics from voting, typically black people. For example, Louisiana in 1964 required that voters take a literacy test, which would be graded by an election official to determine if you were allowed to vote; people generally agreed that it was only reasonable to require that voters be literate, a basic prerequisite to being well-informed. Here are some of its questions: > Above the letter X make a small cross. > Spell backwards, forwards. > Print a word that looks the same whether it is printed backwards or forwards. > Draw five circles that one common interlocking part. (sic) > Write every other word in this first line and print every third word in same line, original type smaller and first line ended at comma, but capitalize the fifth word that you write. > Write right from the left to the right as you see it spelled here. There were 30 questions like these; you had 20 seconds to answer each one, with a single wrong answer costing you the right to vote. The trick was that every question could be interpreted in multiple ways. Are you supposed to spell the word 'backwards' forwards, eg, write 'backwards'? Or are you supposed to spell backwards the word 'forwards', eg 'sdrawrof'? Are you suppose to write 'right' from left to right, or write right (write correctly) 'from the left to the right'? Are you supposed to write a word that would look the same in a mirror (eg 'bed') or just write any word, since it would have looked the same if you wrote the last letter first, then the second-last to the left of that, etc (eg any word at all)? Are you supposed to put a cross above the letter X in the question, or draw a new X with a cross above it? They're all valid answers, and it was totally up to the election official to grade you. The election official would grade the same answer as correct for one person, but incorrect for another. Because they didn't care about the answers, it was an excuse to reject people from the wrong demographics (where 90% of the time 'wrong demographic' meant black, civil rights groups repeatedly had black and white members answer tests completely identically and showcase their different grades, but no one really cared). And if anyone criticized the system, they were mocked because what idiot doesn't want voters to be literate? [Louisiana voting as a game show.]( URL_0 )",
"To start, ID in the US isn't required for day to day life so not everyone has one. ID cost money to obtain which means the poorest citizens often don't bother because they need that money for other things. ID also has to be obtained at specific locations which means those who are not living near one of these locations must find a means of travel to go get an ID. Again the poor often don't have access to the transportation needed to get the ID. Even those in cities who are poor, often can't take the time or money to get an ID due to life situations. Therefore those who are poor or in rural areas without transportation to where they can get ID are unable to vote as a result.",
"I feel like this entire issue should be simplified that way no one can complain of fraudulent votes. In order to vote, you would need an ID, plain and simple. But make it super super simple to get one. When a citizen turns 18, send them a free ID. If they do not have a registered address, that's another issue obviously, but then they should send an official out to find the person to get them the ID. I don't want to oversimplify the issue, but voting is one of the biggest hallmarks of our society, and the nation should do everything it can to make it the easiest and most legitimate process possible. Just my 2 cents!",
"I live in Canada and I actually have experience working as a deputy returning officer for a provincial election a couple years ago. When I was working, I required that people had at least one of three things in order for them to vote. a) A voting card, the card had 5 or 6 digit numeric code on it, used for the purposes of identifying the voter. They were mailed out to addresses prior to the election based on census data and other info collected (for example, when you received an ID/Drivers license, you have to provide an address) b) If they didn't have a voter card, they had to fill a one page form so that they could be entered into the system. I would enter this information in to ensure that they didn't vote twice and wouldn't have to deal with this during the next election. c) If they had no form of ID, and no voter form, they also had to fill out a declaration stating that they are who they are, and if they lied about the information provided, they could be charged under the elections act. Voter ID really wasn't that bad. It was the people, primarily older folks who were the pain. They would have no voter card, and did wish to provide any form of ID or sign any form to vote. Eventually when they realized that we were not going to allow them to vote if they did not comply, did they produce their driver's license. In my experience, the DMV in Nova Scotia is normally open until 7pm and getting an ID costs max $15. As well we also took birth certificates, and even registered mail as proof. You don't actually need ID to vote here, but if you do, it makes the process significantly easier. Voter turnout for that election I worked was 59% which was unchanged from the previous eleciton, in comparison, voter turnout in the last Presidential election was 55%.",
"Australia has a system where you require ID to enroll to vote, but once enrolled ID isn't required at the booth but your name is crossed off and cross referenced with your address on the roll you previously registered with, with your ID. Given ID is required at one stage in the voting process, it is an ID requirement voting system, nobody has accused our voting system of being racist or of suppressing votes. We could even have a requirement of ID to vote on the day and it would make no difference. People need ID to do a huge amount of things, buy certain products, drive, open a bank account, board a plane. To assume requiring ID is 'racist' is also assuming that certain races are more prone to not having a bank account or buying booze / cigarettes or air travel. URL_0 ID laws on voting are harmless in Australia. I will concede that, if the process was onerous, expensive and daunting to get ID then it may detract some people from voting. That however, is not relating to voting as much as it is to the State issuing ID's generally. That is where the improvement should really be.",
"Lets just be clear about what anyone who opposes voter ID is saying. Black People apparently don't: -drive cars, -board planes -buy alcohol -adopt pets -get prescriptions -visit casinos -open bank accounts -purchase cigarettes -apply for jobs -rent homes -get married Democrats not only think that blacks are mentally retarded to the point that they don't function in society but that they are some kind of societal outcast cave hermits living off the grid. That to me is far more racist than anything I have heard coming from the people who want ID requirements",
"To keep saying that it's too difficult to get ID is ridiculous. You need one to open a bank account, or to apply for a job to fill that bank account. You also need an ID to file for unemployment, and to apply for welfare, and Medicaid, and food stamps. You need a photo ID to apply for Social Security And to buy a home, and apply for a mortgage, or to rent a home. You need a photo ID to drive a car, you need one to buy a new car, to buy a used car, heck, you even need one to rent a car. You need a photo ID to get on an airplane, and you need one to get married, and you need one to check into a hotel room for your honeymoon. You need a photo ID to buy a gun, and to apply for a hunting license and a fishing license, and even to adopt a pet. You need a photo ID to pick up a prescription, you need one to buy certain kinds of cold medicine, and you need one to donate blood. You need a photo ID to enter a casino, and you need one to buy lottery tickets. You need one to buy a video game that’s rated M for Mature, and you need one to see a movie rated NC-17. You need a photo ID to buy a cell phone and apply for a coverage plan and, in perhaps the greatest irony of the entire Voter ID debate, you need a photo ID to hold a rally or protest, such as a rally or protest against requiring a photo ID to vote.",
"I can't explain the full, national issue, but I'll provide one specific example I'm familiar with. When the State of Texas first passed it's voter ID bill, it allowed most government ID's to count is legal identification for voting purposes. They allowed CDL's, NCL's, state-issued ID's, and Concealed handgun permit. They did not, however, recognized state-issued college ID's, even though they were arguably harder to get than a DL. So if you were a college student who didn't have a DL, you'd have to go to the DMV, wait in line, fork over $30, just in order to vote, even though a state ran educational institution issued you an ID. They accepted concealed gun permits, which are predominantly held by conservatives, but not college ID's, which pretty much half of the liberals in Texas hold. And the very poor, who generally don't have state issued ID's, were simply disenfranchised if they didn't go and purchase a state issue ID. It functioned as a de-facto poll tax, because you've got to buy something to vote. So while it could be argued that the law didn't DIRECTLY prevent anyone from voting, it was a notable hassle compared to the fact that voter fraud is time and time again shown to not be an issue. Simply put, Texas' law made it hard to vote on more liberal leaning audiences, and the body that passed it made little effort to hide that fact.",
"I dont understand it either as it seems to be a big deal in the US but it [doesnt seem to be an issue in Canada]( URL_0 )",
"Mississippi checking in, Here in the grand state of Mississippi (you can count on us), you aren't legally required to have ID unless you are driving. Fortunately, I live in a larger town, we have a DMV open 5 days a week. Most of my students come from more rural areas and if they're lucky, they have a DMV within 50 miles of there they live, usually it's open only 1 day a week. Some are only open every third or fourth week for a day. Take your Local DMV, move it to at least an hour away, make the hours very few, imagine you have no car or no one to take time off on the one Wednesday that they are open and drive you to the DMV. Things like that actually do make a difference here.",
"It's also key to understand that the US has a history of voter suppression - so much so that we have a direct amendment to the bill of rights forbidding one form of it (Poll Tax) and other silly things like taking a quiz to be able to vote. The general idea is that by allowing certain malicious individuals power to turn away voters - it will lead to more suppression. They could simply tell them that's not the right ID or say they're not registered properly and turn them away. For example, there's a couple of counties that allow foreign language ballots due to the size of a certain demographic but even then, you hear of voters being refused these ballots that were already printed and distributed to the polling place. Lastly, you will see even without voter ID laws, a lot of advocacy organizations and nonprofits have volunteers sign up to be poll monitors to report any suppression that is occurring - especially to minorities and people with limited English capabilities.",
"I can give you a personal experience, from GA. The new I'd law here has you produce a birth certificate, a SSN card, your old id and two froms of proof of address like a bill or whatever. So you can get your id without this but with out all of the above you don't get the little star that says you can vote with it. Sounds simple right? Well if your like me and your parents lost your SSN card and birth certificate and you only have your current ID it becomes a pain. So you have to go to the SSN office and get a card, which is like a day's worth of waiting in line. What do you need to get it? an ID and your birth certificate lol. Luckily I had a passport and that worked as well but had I not had that I would have been screwed calling all over to hospitals to find a copy of it. Most people don't have passports and they hit a wall here. In my state it is easier to get a passport then to vote. And no they won't take the passport to get the vote id in the first place you have to have those two things the BC and SSN card. Both made of fragile paper and as old as you are. So if you have time, money, and/or responsible parents your probably in the clear but if you hit a roadblock it could take you weeks worth of screwing around in gov buildings to get it and some people can't afford that/have the time for it. One good thing about GA is that once you get it your set for life here.",
"In many parts of the country I get why this seems far fetched. I live in a major city and everyone I know has ID. You pretty much can't get by without it. And if you don't, there are a half dozen places where you can get one that are easily accessible by bus, have information in multiple languages, and there are groups that will help you pay the fee. But lots of places are not like that. In rural areas you may need to get 20-30 miles to get an ID and there are no buses or other means to get there. Even if they can get there, the fees can be prohibitive or they may have language issues. Unlike denser areas, there are no groups offering help with the fees nor services to help people who do not speak english. They also may have trouble proving who they are. There are lots of people in this country without birth certificates or other forms of documentation. Even if one does exist for them, that is another long distance trip to make and another fee to pay. It's also something people have never needed before. Many people in impoverished rural communities don't have cars, bank accounts, much less the resources to fly some where. They have no other need for a government ID aside from new voting laws. Laws which they may not even know about since they also might not have internet or cable TV. While there are certainly plenty of poor and senior whites that are impacted by these laws, many of these areas are predominantly black or hispanic. By the way. having to go to the polls can also be used as a form of suppression. States and counties can choose where they put them and in some cases intentionally put them far from areas with high percentages of minority voters. Or do not provide enough so that there are long lines or an inadequate number of ballots.",
"I heard someone say that minorities have very shity jobs and don't have time to go get an iD. I sound weird to me because ib my country having ID is mandatory and it's required to every paper work or even to pay with credit card (the clerk will check that your name in the card and in the ID are the same in case it's a stolen CC).",
"As I've been reading a lot of histories lately, I want to actually answer your question by tracing the roots of the problem back through American history. At the founding of our country there was a delicate balance established between the rights of the individual states and the right of the country as a whole. The states were responsible, for example, for handling election balloting. (See Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution). Thus, it fell to each individual state to determine who was eligible to vote. Fast forward a little bit to the foundation of political parties. Despite the desires of many of the founders to not have a party system, quarrels in the early 19th Century prompted different political parties to be formed. Each had their own idea on what was important to the nation and what steps should be taken to do those things that they felt were important. Each individual party would seek any advantage they could gain over the others. At the conclusion of the Civil War (fought initially over the issue of states rights but later slavery as well) came the question of reconstruction - how to bring back the rebellious states into the nation once more. Because slavery had been ended following the passage of the 13th Amendment, some states in the south attempted to pass laws that prohibited newly-freed slaves from being able to vote. The Republicans, who were in power at the time, knew that the newly-freed slaves would likely vote Republican (as Lincoln was a Republican and the governments of 1860 onwards were Republican) and there was concern over the denial of the right to vote. To take care of this and some other issues which had arisen from Reconstruction, the 14th Amendment was crafted and passed. This Amendment served several purposes - it prohibited the states from creating laws which would deprive anyone of their fundamental rights (life, liberty, property), and established that ALL male (later removed) inhabitants of all states were eligible to vote. The issue still persists to this day, however. States see the establishment of state IDs as a means of helping ensure the validity of the vote. However, it costs money in most states to obtain a state ID and there are a number of requirements... birth certificate, proof of where you live, etc. Because the right to vote is guaranteed to ALL people in a state, any law that would place a burden on the individuals falls under the 14th Amendment and would be nullified - which is what we have seen lately. If you're poor and can't afford an ID, you shouldn't be unable to vote. If you lost your documentation in a fire or never were given a birth certificate, you shouldn't be unable to vote. So for a TL;DR - Political parties were seeking to gain advantage in any way possible to put their people into office. An amendment was added to the Constitution that made it illegal for states to pass laws that would deprive any portion of their populace of the right to vote. Laws that are passed which require a burden on anyone - money for a specific ID (or even the existence of a specific ID), documentation, etc. - run into trouble with this amendment. (Sources, for those interested... \"The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace\" by H.W. Brands, \"Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln\" by Doris Kearns Goodwin, \"The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution\" by David O. Stewart)",
"> In his wallet, Anthony Settles carries an expired Texas identification card, his Social Security card and an old student ID from the University of Houston, where he studied math and physics decades ago. What he does not have is the one thing that he needs to vote this presidential election: a current Texas photo ID. > > For Settles to get one of those, his name has to match his birth certificate — and it doesn’t. In 1964, when he was 14, his mother married and changed his last name. After Texas passed a new voter-ID law, officials told Settles he had to show them his name-change certificate from 1964 to qualify for a new identification card to vote. > > So with the help of several lawyers, Settles tried to find it, searching records in courthouses in the D.C. area, where he grew up. But they could not find it. To obtain a new document changing his name to the one he has used for 51 years, Settles has to go to court, a process that would cost him more than $250 — more than he is willing to pay. [Source.]( URL_0 )",
"I worked for a homeless shelter for a number of years and often we had to assist in getting basic identification documents..... you may think that shouldn't be a problem but it is in fact, often, incredibly difficult. One reason for difficulty is that you need ID to get ID.... you also will need money to get copies of birth certificates, transcipts, new state ids.... etc. If you are a poor minority that $15-$20 is far more of a burden than one might think. Basically... many in power know that if you implement certain rules you can eliminate a large minority population from voting. edit: downvotes?",
"First off, there have been very, very few cases of voter fraud... certainly nowhere near the amount to justify the attention the issue receives. And the issue is being tactically used to disenfranchise certain pockets of voters through the combination of laws and additional burdens it imposes. - Minorities were more likely to not have the needed documentation to get an ID, especially in states that have made the requirements much harder... think immigrants from 3rd world countries who are now citizens, elderly born in rural areas at home, etc. who may not have an official birth certificate with stamp, seal, etc. - IDs cost money and take time to get (during limited hours). The poor move more often, have less money, and are more likely to have jobs that they get paid by the hour when they are there working, but may have to take time off work to get an ID. So there's a larger burden of time and money to keep updating IDs for the poor. - Poor/minorities, the elderly may not have easy access to transportation. Alabama closed all their DMV's in Democratic areas, forcing people to travel further to get an ID. - Wisconsin passed new voter ID laws and advertised these changes/requirements across the state -- EXCEPT IN MILWAUKEE! The biggest city in the state also happens to be the largest pocket of minority voters.",
"If people don't have the time, patience, or motivation to get ID, should they really be allowed to vote for the \"leader of the free world\"? How much effort into determining the best candidate are they likely to have made?",
"To add to what was said here, a bigger part of the voter ID laws in the context of this election was how the VRA allowed local governments to close certain DMVs and places where people could get ID. So, instead of having a 30 minute wait at a DMV five minutes from your house, you'd now have to drive 45 minutes and wait two hours. When you have extenuating life shit going on, that's completely prohibitive. And in certain municipalities, they literally researched how to strategically close/relocate to affect certain demographics ability to get IDs.",
"It's not so much the what, but rather the how. Photo IDs do not suppress voters. Hell you need a photo ID to be able to apply for government benefits, purchase alcohol/tobacco, and drive. These are all activities which many of the alleged victims do just fine. The problem comes from the how. If suppression is the goal you make the IDs available only by in-person, hand written, paper application. And only make the offices available from 11am-2pm. And make the offices as far away from the areas you are trying to suppress as possible. Now if instead you said \"All government photo IDs are valid for voting, yes that includes Drivers license, WIC, EBT, passport, etc.\" There wouldn't be as much of an issue with them, because many of the people who claim they would be unable to get a voter ID, are perfectly able to get IDs required for other things (Benefits, alcohol, tobacco, driving) Look at [India]( URL_0 ). More people, lower GDP, yet their ID is not \"suppression\". Every voter has one, and is entitled to one, for free. It's not about the what, it's about the how.",
"I feel like a lot of people are missing that it isn't just a matter of having the ID but if it being accepted. I'm in Texas and the rule is that it has to exactly match the name in the registry and if it doesn't then the elections judge gets to decide if it's close enough or not. So here's some examples. Married women: My mother's driver's license has her name as Firstname Maidenname Marriedlastname because when she got married the law was that your driver's license would have your maiden name as your middle name. Her voter registry correctly shows Firstname Middlename Marriedlastname. She vote at a judge's discretion. There was a judge in Texas that had to vote provisionally because of this and that takes longer and is often not even counted. Cultural traditions. Some cultures have multiple last names. If your name is Miquel Juan Chavez Remirez in the registry the clerk can turn you away if your license says Miquel Remirez or Miquel Chavez. It doesn't match. Spelling: The less common a name is the more likely it is to have a data entry error somewhere. Is Lakeshia the same as LakesCia? What about Dhora Patel and Dora Patel? Especially when the name is transcribed from a diffrent writing system. Keep in mind in all of these cases it falls to the discretion of an elections official who at least in my area is usually the member of the areas dominant political party. They can refuse to allow any of the people above a vote but choose to allow Michael John Smith to vote for Michael Adam Smith as happened to someone I know who's father took it upon himself to vote on his son's behalf.",
"I am from Texas, you must show your driver's license and can only vote at a specific location based upon your address. Clerical errors can be a problem, I was almost not able to vote because I didn't show up in the computer lookup for my district. Only after insisting the error be looked into was I able to get results and eventually vote (the staff were content not bothering with it and said I must not have registered). Overall, I was there nearly 30 min. It is not a system that encourages more votes, based on my experience.",
"You'll get different answers if you ask college educated types that are taught that it's racist, vs regular people that just go get ID when they need it or register to vote when they want to vote. [I would definitely recommend watching this video]( URL_0 ) before you give too much weight to the well worded speculation from the college educated types. This isn't the 20s. There is no reason in modern America why voters shouldn't get ID just like they do for everything else. How in the hell is it ok to require a license to drive/buy alcohol/cigarettes/marijuana, or in some states to get a permit to exercise the 2nd amendment, or to board a plane... but voting? voting... it's too much to ask that voters get ID just like the rest. Ridiculous. This is why there's so much questioning about operations to bus in voters/illegal migrant voters, and with undercover videos exposing people actually talking about having done it and planning to do it, it's not unfounded speculation.",
"I'm in Wisconsin. I remember when Governor Walker wanted to enact a voter ID law that also closed down several DMVs throughout the state exclusively in Democratic areas. Do the math. That is the mentality behind these voter ID laws.",
"In order to vote you must be an American citizen. In order to deter those who arent citizens from voting (and also to deter people from voting more than once), you must identify yourself. Minorities have and are capable of obtaining ID's. To say that they are less capable of obtaining ID's or even less likely to have them constitutes the exact slander that is so often used against those who support voter ID laws. Many states will waive the 10-20 dollar fee for a state ID (non drivers ID) if your income is below the poverty line. We are all capable of making a trip to the DMV, paying 15 bucks and having our photo taken once every 4 to 6 years.",
"The main issue with voter ID laws is that it is a solution without a problem (which makes many people suspect other motives.) There is almost no voter fraud and when it does occur its easy to discover and would need to be done on a huge level to change elections. Take one of the rust belt states that went for trump. In Wisconsin Trump won by ~23,000 votes. So it was close for elections, but think of what would have needed to happen if just 5,000 of those votes came through fraud that voter ID would have prevented. So for voter ID laws to stop voter fraud, you would have to believe that it would be logistically possible to get dozens if not hundreds of people to conspire to commit fraud at different districts through the weeks and months leading up to the election. Basically it would comprise a huge RICO-style conspiracy in which hundreds if not thousands of co-conspirators would commit over 5,000 federal felonies together. If just one of them talked the whole conspiracy would crumble and everyone would go to jail for decades. Of course if a significant number of your populace doesn't have ID and they tend to vote for the other party, then all you have to do is require ID to prevent them from voting, ensuring your win. So that's the big issue with voter ID laws, there isn't a problem they are solving when it comes to voter fraud, it just doesn't exist like that.",
"In Norway everyone above 18 (or that turn 18 in the year of the election) gets an official voter card in the mail they're registered on. This is a document we bring along to vote, but we can also use driver's licence, passport and credit card as long as it's with a picture on it. It's a decent system.",
"Im kinda late to the party here. Please forgive me if this has already been addressed, but why aren't polls open longer? The 8am-5pm work day is an outdated concept.",
"Those who believe that voting laws suppress voters believe that those voters are idiots. Somehow those [uneducated and overworked people]( URL_1 ) are still able to commit massive voter fraud throughout the country. India has much worse poverty and education problems and [they have many more voter laws]( URL_0 ) and still have large turnouts...",
"You answered your question when you said more hoops. You can't goto a playground and say all boys can't play with dolls. It's unfair to boys. So you make a rule that eliminates boys, but indirectly. To play with dolls you must wear a dress. You can now argue that ANYONE can wear a dress. It will impact boys more because besides wearing one, many will have to go out and get one, needing a ride, knowing how the sizes work, affording it etc. So in this instance you ask, why is this a policy? Do the toys last longer when people wearing dresses play with them? If the only difference in the outcome is that less boys play with dolls, and that's it, you can argue that is the intent of the rule. With voted ID laws you have to ask what outcome you're trying to change. Is there massive coter fraud? No, so what is it the law is actually affecting?... Bingo.",
"Aren't those hurdles of getting the ID similar to the hurdles of voting: taking time away to go vote, transportation, etc? The way I see it, preventing fraud is more important than inconveniencing people. If a person doesn't want to go through the hoops to vote, then it's not important enough to them. Where there's a will, there's a way, right? Or are we trying to tell people they can do anything while talking out of the other side of our mouths by saying they can't because things are too convenient and it needs to be easier? Also, who's to say that if fraud isn't a problem now that if we made it super easy to get ID that it wouldn't end up being a problem? If no one has robbed my house, obviously it's not a problem for me. But, if I leave the door unlocked just so I don't have to unlock it when I get home, then it can and will become one. Obviously, getting voter ID is not as simple as locking and unlocking a door, but the principle is the same.",
"For many people, getting a \"proper\" ID can be difficult. Sometimes it's due to financial reasons, clerical errors and even schedule conflicts. For example, I recently changed my name here in Colorado. It took me 3 tries and several weeks to get to the DMV during their normal hours. I had to do multiple trips because I either wasn't given all the paperwork, or I was provided with the wrong information (turns out I had to change Social Security first). It was a PITA and wound up costing me about $40. Now I have a good job, so I was able to take the time off and afford it pretty easily. But I've also worked in places where that would have been horrible and nearly impossible. But these people shouldn't have their votes taken away because they can't afford or can't get an ID. I know it's hard to imagine not having a driver's license, but it can be quite difficult for some folks. Just getting my birth certificate, which was one of the things i needed for my original license took forever, because my father wasn't listed on my birth certificate (mother passed away) and without an ID, I couldn't prove who I was.",
"The ID laws are over-structured and work best for middle class suburbanites: people who don't move around a lot, and have to maintain a driver's license. So for instance, you might have moved from Texas to Florida and registered to vote in Florida. But your Texas ID will not be accepted to vote in Florida. You must get a Florida ID to do this, and it takes quite some time and energy to get your Texas ID converted into a Florida. The Texas ID obviously proves who you are. That is not in doubt. The extra requirement that it be a Florida ID doesn't add any new information about you. Some states don't accept the US passport to vote. Can't think of a better document to prove citizenship and name simultaneously but no, has to be a state ID, US passport not accepted. (Ohio rejects the passport, but accepts a utility bill. Now you may think that makes little sense from an identification perspective, but the utility bill is harder to get, you have to own a home or have a lease in your name to get the utility bill. It filters people quite differently in regards to voting.) On that note, REAL ID act proof of address requirements make getting a new ID rather complicated. Again, if you live in the same place, like you own a house, it's not too hard to get the right paperwork together to prove your residence. But if you move around a lot, or are effectively homeless, etc, proving address is difficult and will prevent you from getting a REAL ID compliant ID. Some states are strict on the expiration. Driver's licenses get renewed when they expire because it's about driving. State ID cards may expire but renewing them makes less sense, as long as they are accepted as ID. But many states will reject them for voting. And poor people have little reason to pay to renew an ID card if it's still being accepted for their other errands. And birth certificates have gotten expensive. If you lose it, ordering a new one can cost as much as $50. That's a major disincentive to get an ID to vote even if the ID is free. What about those free IDs to vote? Some states, like Texas, print on them they can only be used for voting [and can't be used for identification.]( URL_0 ) It's a lot of effort to get an ID card which...somehow isn't an ID card.",
"It's not that people don't want to vote because they don't want to identify themselves with ID cards. In the US, many people don't actually have ID cards. So requiring ID cards to vote means people first need to bother to get one. If the only reason to go through the effort of getting an ID card is to have your 1/100.000.000ish say in who's becoming your president.. I don't know if I'd bother either.",
"Voter ID laws aren't racist no matter what anyone says. At most they are anti-poor for all the various reasons other's have listed. However because of demographics, that means more poor white people are effected by these laws than there are minorities effected by them (nearly more than all minorities combined actually) in discrete numbers, even if minorities have higher proportions that are poor. This is assuming that the poverty line is the cutoff for being considered poor in this context, which seems appropriate considering that getting an ID costs about $20 which while someone in poverty might struggle with, anyone over the poverty line could afford. That being said, IDs in the US aren't some extra thing that's nice to have but most people don't really need. Living without an ID makes things tremendously inconvenient (regardless of income) and makes the one trip to the DMV every 5 to 30 years worth a hassle even to poor individuals. Without ID you can't open a bank account, buy booze or cigarettes, apply for a job, get welfare/food stamps/unemployment, get married, rent or buy a house, operate/buy/rent a car, fly on a plane, get a prescription, get a cell phone plan, etc. Basically any inconvenience or cost that people claim getting an ID causes is tremendously outweighed by the inconvenience and cost of trying to live without an ID. It's also worth noting that the vast majority of (nearly all) modern democracies have had Voter ID laws for a long time and we have never once heard any complaints about them being racist, or even anti-poor people for that matter, in all those other countries. Even in countries that have similarly disproportionate poverty rates among minorities."
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5q2u04 | What is the need for marijuana legalization? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The real need is that things that are relatively harmless shouldn't be illegal in the first place. For instance, alcohol is much more deadly than marijuana, and results in a **ton** more secondary crime. It makes more sense for alcohol to be illegal than for marijuana to be illegal. So the law is kind of nonsensical in the first place. Things should be illegal for good reasons, and that's just not the case with marijuana.",
"There isn't a specific need, it's just a recreational activity that people would like to be able to take part in legally. One could equally ask what the need for alcohol to be legal is, and there isn't one, it's just a thing people like to consume and don't want to be illegal."
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5q3gen | What will the new Immigration Executive Order mean for international students in the US from the relevant countries? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Students are not immigrants. They have temporary, specific visas that are not affected by the order unless you are already breaking the law and saying past the visa duration."
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5q3kkh | Why do people claim voter IDs in the USA equate to voter discrimination? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One issue is that some people don't have the proper documentation. If someone's name doesn't match their birth certificate because their parents misspelled it, got remarried, etc., then that could become a costly issue to fix. Not only are poorer people more likely to be missing that sort of paperwork, but they're also the ones who can't afford to pay lawyers to fix the problem. Another problem is difficulty obtaining the proper ID. In some rural places in the US, it can be over a hundred miles to the nearest state office that makes IDs. If you're too old drive, too poor to have a car, or don't have a driver's license, that's a difficult trip to make. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the people most likely to be affected by these things in the US are poor minorities.",
"IDs are not required of US citizens. Certain activities like driving, buying alcohol, etc require it but we do not actually make citizens that do not want to participate in those activities get them. They are also not given for free. They are not expensive by any means, but it does take some money and time to get."
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5q3u3a | Jury duty | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You are summoned to appear before the court to potentially serve on a jury to determine whether or not your fellow citizen is guilty of the crime that the State accuses them of, or to potentially serve on a jury to settle a dispute between two private citizens, or a private citizen and the government(lawsuit)"
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5q4s4b | How can the president order media blackouts? | Doesn't this infringe on our first amendment rights? I realize an official social media page for a government agency is not the same as a personal one, but still, how does he have the power to control it? Where are the checks and balances? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The First Amendment prevents Congress from making *laws* abridging your freedom of speech; what it doesn't do is prevent the President from telling government agencies what information they should and shouldn't make public. After all, if the First Amendment protected them against that, the president could do nothing to prevent them from tweeting, say, porn. The president has the power to control it because these agencies are part of the executive, and not Congress. Basically, it is now simply government policy for government agencies not to tweet about climate change.",
"You can still say whatever you want, but you can't do it as an official on behalf of the agency that the president runs. Which is most federal agencies.",
"The President is the boss of all the people in the Executive Branch. He can order what the employees do during their work. The order, which is not that uncommon, says \"no more media sessions until your new department head is in place to give you media marching orders.\""
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5q5qme | Why do people place such high value on traits like confidence,charisma and appearance? Why are people so quick to overlook logic and facts simply because someone is considered to be well liked for whatever reason? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For the most part, it's simply how humans are wired. Not necessarily in the fashion that we're wired to respect confidence more than logic; it's because the best way to get us to do something is to get us to *feel* something. Perfect example: many cases of people with depression bad enough to attempt suicide usually do so on one of their \"good\" days. Because then they actually have the will and drive to go through with it. The same thing happens with charismatic people. Listen to the tone of a speech-giver's voice. It always rises and falls very dramatically, and has a sort of rhythm to it. Their word choice is also very deliberate: they pick words intended to get an emotional response, and put particular emphasis on those words. Someone trying to get an argument across on nothing more than logic, on the other hand (taking the Vulcan approach), just comes off as boring. In terms of attractiveness, well, imagine you're talking to a really pretty girl at a bar. You're hitting it off, she says something you slightly disagree with. It's not in direct, offensive contradiction to anything you believe, but you're not in complete agreement. Chances are, you'd let it slide and nod appreciatively, whereas with someone you're less physically attracted to, you might call them out. It might not even be directly antagonistic and phrased as a joke, but it's not letting it slide. Hopefully that makes sense. tl;dr, emotion beats logic every time, no matter how much of a Vulcan you try to be.",
"Human beings are at the base irrational beings. We try to avoid falling into emotional/primal traps but nobody is perfect.",
"A couple reasons I think: * The former traits are things that can be observed and appreciated without too much cognitive demand whereas the later require more effort. * Most people put too much stock in their emotions and assume that, because they feel something, it must be true or right. I think it's why we attribute so many other positive qualities to people we're attracted to."
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5q5quk | Why do people have an accent when talking in a language that is foreign to them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Quoting /u/BreadPresident: > \"A\" is pronounced in English as either \"ay,\" \"ah,\" or sometimes \"eh.\" In German, \"a\" is usually pronounced as \"ah.\" \"E\" is pronounced as \"ee\" or \"eh\" in English, but usually as \"ay\" in German. A German without specific training to eliminate their German accent in English will tend towards pronouncing their letters in the way the German language uses them, rather than the English pronunciation. You see, that's not enough. Most Germans who have learned to speak English know that \"tree\" is *not* pronounced \"tray\"; but still, when they speak English, unless they are extremely good, they still don't sound *perfect*. When you say that the German \"E\" is pronounced \"ay\"... that's not quite like the English pronunciation -- it doesn't rhyme with \"hay\", and if you pronounce it like that, you will sound very, very wrong. It becomes clearer if we use a system called the International Phonetic Alphabet. This is a set of symbols linguists can use to describe the way sounds are pronounced. If \"E\" is pronounced like \"ay\", then the German word \"nee\" should be pronounced like the English word \"nay\". But if we use the IPA to record the *actual* pronunciations, we get this: * English \"nay\": /neɪ/ * German \"nee\": /neː/ The English \"ay\" is what's called a diphthong: one vowel that sort of morphs into another vowel. It begins with the sound /e/, which is a bit (but not quite) like the \"e\" in \"bed\", but you then move your tongue as you say it so that it ends with the sound /ɪ/, which is like the \"i\" in \"sit\". But in German, there is only one vowel, and the thing that looks like a colon after it means \"make this vowel long\". But unlike the English pronounciation, you don't change the vowel sound: you start with /e/, but then you stick with it and just say that sound for a longer time than normal. If your native language is English, when you try to pronounce the German \"nee\", your tendency is to turn the vowel into a diphthong. It's very difficult to stop yourself doing that, because you've been doing it all your life, and you're probably not even aware you're doing it. Conversely, a native German speaker, when trying to say the English \"nay\", will find it very difficult to say the sound while at the same time pulling the tongue back and up to make the diphthong. If he can't do it properly, his pronunciation will be slightly off, although he may not even be able to hear the difference. And that's why it's so difficult to speak a foreign language without an accent. You're having to move your tongue and jaw in ways you're not used to, and you will probably not be able to get it exactly right.",
"Every language has its own sound inventory and rules. For example, Vietnamese has words beginning with ng, like in Nguyen, whereas English only uses the ng sound in the middle or end of words. Some sounds exist in some languages that don't exist in others. The vowel in the English word \"sit\" doesn't exist in Spanish (the closest thing they have is the \"ee\" sound in \"mexIco\". It's hard to retrain our brains to make sounds that don't exist in our mother tongues, and we often can't even hear the distinction (like Koreans and the R/L distinction). Certain African languages use different clicking sounds, with instances where different words only differ by the type of click used (clicking sound done on teeth vs. done on roof of mouth, for example)...so an English speaking them will need practice making these distinctions and will have an accent when speaking them. Same thing goes for intonation and pitch, which differs between languages. French words don't have pronounced stress like in English, so it is fairly monotone--as a result a French starting to learn English will have a different and foreign-sounding intonation to their English, whereas an American speaking French may sound oddly sing-songy to native French speakers. Edit: Extra example: click on the button to listen to the Chinese--each of these 7 words/syllables in this nonsense phrase starts with a different consonant, yet to most Americans it would just sound like s's and sh's so they often can't pronounce these different sounds easily and convincingly. URL_0"
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5q5t8k | What are the limits to the things the American president can decide single-handedly without approval from anyone else? | As a non-American I am quite surprised about the amount of decisions the President can make without approval from the parliament. This would certainly not be possible in a lot of countries, is there any limit or can continue ruling like that forever? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the US, the President is essentially given power to make any actions by Congress. So congress will pass a law, let's say Congress passes the Build a Bridge Across the Potomac act (a river running near Washington DC), that authorizes the some agency to spend $1 billion dollars to build a new bridge and sets some rules for how the bridge should be built (it might specify how the contractor should be chosen and that the bridge should allow at least 3 lanes of traffic, or needs to facilitate river shipments below a certain height, etc). But that act won't include all the details of the project. So when the act is vague or doesn't mention something. The President has the authority to tell the agency that received the money how to do the details (if he doesn't tell them anything the agency head would have the authority within the law). Remember agency heads all work for him, so he's their boss. Maybe the president wants the bridge to be a suspension bridge, or to only consider contractors incorporated in the US, or the bridge to be painted blue. Many laws are relatively vague, Congress passes lots of laws with fairly general proposals, so the president can claim pretty considerable wiggle room, while still operating within the language of the law. As a real example, here's an exerpt from the executive order to put the Japanese into internment camps: > Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in **Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533**, as amended by the **Act of November 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220**, and the **Act of August 21, 1941, 55 Stat. 655 (U.S.C., Title 50, Sec. 104)**; The executive order makes a case that the acts referenced (I've bolded them) give the President the authority to take the specific action of: > Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas. > I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as he or the appropriate Military Commander may deem advisable to enforce compliance with the restrictions applicable to each Military area herein above authorized to be designated, including the use of Federal troops and other Federal Agencies, with authority to accept assistance of state and local agencies. > I hereby further authorize and direct all Executive Departments, independent establishments and other Federal Agencies, to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid, hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities, and services.",
"The main limitation is that the president can't just allocate funds to do as he likes, that's Congress' job. An example is with Obama wanting to close Guantanamo Bay. He was ready to do it, but Congress refused to pay for it, and I believe they specified in the budget (or some other laws) that the funds could not be used to relocate the Gitmo prisoners.",
"The way the US government works, Congress makes laws, the Executive branch (over which the President has almost unilateral control) takes action, and the Judicial branch sorts out what actions and laws are legal and constitutional. Effectively this means that the President's power is not limited by scope or field (some restrictions apply). He cannot write new laws, i.e outlaw or legalize something. He cannot collect or spend more money than congress allows him to. Congress can force him to use the money only for specific things or prevent him from using the money for specific things. He can only deploy troops for a maximum of 3 months before he needs approval from congress. He cannot declare war or approve treaties (but he can make executive agreements which are basically treaties without all the formality).",
"there's nothing set in stone, but he is the head of the executive branch, and the executive branch's function is to carry out and enforce laws. so basically anything within the law, within the budget, and under the purview of the executive branch (all the departments and agencies and bureaus fall under the executive branch) is fair game. when it comes to building a wall, he can't do that unless congress agrees to pay for it.",
"Adding to things others have already said: * The president cannot fund anything he orders. Congress must approve of any orders he makes enough to give them funding. * The president can take any military action for (i think) 72 hours, after which time, approval must be received by congress for action to continue, or forces must be repealed. * The president cannot declare war. He can, however, incite an opponent to declare war against the US."
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5q7u03 | Why is Russian water a she, and why does she become a he once you have dipped a tea bag into her? | Curious to see if anyone had more after this: URL_0 | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Russian has what's called [*grammatical gender*]( URL_0 ). That means that every noun- even when the thing the noun refers to doesn't have a sex- is assigned to one of three genders, masculine, feminine, or neuter. When you use a pronoun to stand in for a noun, you have to use the pronoun that matches the original noun's gender. You might argue that English has this system, too: every English noun is either masculine, feminine, or neuter, and you have to use the correct choice of he, she, or it to stand in for it. It's just that almost all English nouns, except for people and animals, are neuter. That isn't the case for Russian, or for many other languages with grammatical gender, like French, Spanish, or German. In those languages, whenever you learn a new noun, one of the things you have to learn about it is what gender it is. In Russian, water, *vodá* (вода), is feminine, but tea, *chay* (чай), is masculine. Don't imagine, though, that an object's grammatical gender is the same from language to language. In Russian, the word for bridge, *most* (мост) is masculine, but in Spanish, *ponte* is feminine. In very closely related languages (think Spanish and Portuguese), *most* similar words have the same gender, but even in that case, there are so many differences that you have to learn each word's gender in each language. Anyway, Russian is unusual because so many other parts of the sentence have to match the gender of a noun. You have to use, for instance, the right form of any adjectives that apply to the noun; the right form of verb to match the gender of the subject of the sentence; the right form of *this* or *that.* It's also somewhat unusual in that gender doesn't apply to plurals."
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5q7ued | Why is it easier to see physical differences in your own race vs other races? | Of course not all look the same of a different race, but it's easier to see many more variants of facial features of your own race. It my experience, the more people of that race that I'm around the more variants of facial features I can see. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically you tend to notice and remember just the details you really need to remember things. If you only know one black person or one Asian person or whatever, you don't really need to remember anything else. Your brain just kinda goes \"Matt is my black coworker\" and doesn't really bother with his exact facial features. I had my own version of this while I was living in Japan. Pretty much everyone I knew was a thin person, with similar hair and about the same age. After a few months it gradually became much easier to tell everyone apart."
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5q8gdk | the case for undocumented students | not trying to offend anyone and not gunning for anything political here, honest. just a little confused as to why some universities are willing to aid undocumented students in staying at school? isn't that illegal? how does the government not find and deport these students once they are registered at a university? additionally, why recently has there been a string of people (particularly students) publicly "coming out" as undocumented in published op-eds, social media, etc.? doesn't this endanger these people and their families? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not taking a stance on this, just explaining as best as I know. Typically, the story with undocumented college students goes like this: One or both parents brought them across the border when they were two years old, and they've been living in the US ever since. They didn't really have a say in the matter of their immigration status, having been two at the time. (And that's really the crux of the argument - should people be punished for actions their parents took when they were still in diapers?) Now they're 18, graduating high school, and a lot of the typical things available to college-going students aren't necessarily available to them. Can't prove residency, so in-state tuition is out. Can't file a FAFSA, so financial aid is out. Is there a danger of deportation if they \"come out\" as undocumented? Yes. Is the government actively looking to deport them? Maybe, maybe not.",
"I have no official insight, but rather personal interpretation. My parents were both teachers and I think that it's important to note universities are meant to be an equalizer. Many in the education system feel that it's not a matter of who you are or where you come from, but that you want to better yourself and those around you through learning. If this is the case you should have the opportunity. That said you'll see in the first paragraph under the image of this page ( URL_0 ) that University of California requires undocumented students be AB 540-eligible to receive financial aid. This condition essentially means that the student was moved as a minor (I interpret this as parents moved the family and kid didn't have a say) and has been in state for an extended period of time. California is essentially saying \"it's not your fault, we'll consider you a resident of the state\". *note this only makes them eligible... it does not guarantee them funding of any sort if AB 540 is not met, or in situations like Notre Dame, Yale, etc... the students are able to attend by paying tuition like everyone else. Overall the rose-colored version of it is a semi-uniform stance by a selection of universities who has determined that kids who have been relocated without consent should not hit a ceiling after high school graduation, provided their performance meets the collegiate entry requirements.",
"I'll try to answer your questions as best I can here. 1. Universities are willing to provide \"aid\" to undocumented students because that's what they are, institutions of higher education. They see the value in a diverse student population. Most of the western states provide instate tuition to undocumented students in they attended high school in the state also, now this does not mean that they receive financial aid, that has to be through a private scholarship or they have to pay everything themselves. So at the end it all comes down to merit, and who wants it more. 2. Is it illegal ? No, and a lot of this comes down to state rights. Universities are schools and not ICE. If there was a law requiring them to turn over students than it would be illegal, yes. 3. People are coming out for the exact reason that you are posting this, to let people know they exist and are not just a talking point for the left or right. To get people talking about it, it's easy to have an opinion on this subject without knowing who is actually affected by this but in fact these undocumented immigrants could be your friend, your neighbor or your co-worker and you would never know unless they spoke out about it. To clarify, I am an undocumented immigrant. Was brought here was I was 7."
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5q99r6 | How do Philosophers make money? How did they do in the past? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a few jobs that require a degree in philosophy. Most of them is professors in philosophy or other teaching positions. However some companies and governments do hire philosophers to help them make decisions. Philosophy is a mostly a useful trait in most jobs, especially scientific. A professor in philosophy is often teaching philosophy in the other faculties. This is also how they made money in the past. Philosophy is the foundation of schools and science so they would make good money by teaching. Technically all university students are philosophers but only a few of them have specialized in it and have a degree in philosophy.",
"- Teacher (in place where highschool senior can follow philosophy course) - Academia (Same as before but at university + mandatory number of book/publication to write). Some of them will be found by real industries (I know a philosopher working on the acceptance of technological progress who is founded by the nuclear industry) - Culture, like working in museum or library it's not a philosopher job anymore but will pays a philosopher rent and food - Superstar that write popular books and are seen on the TV (one or two per generation per country)",
"Philosophers in the past typically were sons of rich businessmen, people who wanted to (or were pushed to) persue a 'noble' profession. (Hence Natural Philosopher was a Scientist back in the day). They were funded by other people, like professors today. People who have the title of philosopher today are practically all professors. Otherwise it can be used as a stepping stone for a further degree. I know a lot of people who were majoring (BA) in philosophy but planning on going to law school.",
"Let me start with this: my undergrad is Philosophy. Today: Lets make a distinction between Philosophers - people who DO philosophy for a living - and philosophy students - people who use the general tenets gained by in-depth study of philosophy in their day-to-day jobs. Philosophers, those who do, tend to be employed in very limited fields, traditionally academia. These are university professors and authors. They make their money by teaching others philosophy in classes and through media (books, videos, whatever). I fall into the latter category. I use my background in philosophy in the workplace. This is what typically happens if someone does their undergrad in philosophy and gets a decent job. I \"sell\" skills like inductive and deductive reasoning, rational inquiry, the interpretation of complex material into simple terms, and excellent oral and written communication into a position I am interested in (I work in organizational development). Because I sell these things, plus experience, I can get a job that provides. That is how I, and many others, make money from philosophy. By no stretch of the imagination are we Philosophers (other than the shade-tree sort). But, if you are interested in pursuing the degree, know that it is possible to live (in the US, pretty well) if you market it well. Many use philosophy to pursue advanced degrees or positions in Law (my friend Joy), Economics ( my friend Sara), Business (my buddy Nate), or Industrial and Organizational Psychology (me and two others from my grad school cohort). Back in the day: It depends on how far we go back. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and company survived because of two reasons. First, ancient Greece had a slave culture allowing for significantly larger amounts of free time to engage in activities like \"thinking really hard about stuff.\" Second, they charged for much of their teaching; for example, Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle. Marcus Aurelius, not the founder of Stoicism, but certainly one of its greatest voices, was a General and, later, Emperor; that's how he made his living. Thomas Aquinas was a member of the catholic clergy, as was Augustine. Descartes tutored the Queen of Sweden. John Locke was aristocracy and funded himself variously through positions gained with his connections to the wealthy elite of Europe. And so-on, and so-forth. I will always remember the opening words in my freshmen \"Intro to Philosophy\" text: Philosophia non panem torrit. Philosophy bakes no bread. Philosophers, today and throughout history make very little from doing actual philosophy and very much from applying to something whether it be teaching others, solving complex problems, or maintaining an organization."
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5q9hr3 | What does a misspelled word or bad grammar look like in Chinese? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I kind of get what you're asking. Well, first thing is, you can't \"misspell\" Chinese per se. Maybe you can get the strokes wrong or have missing strokes (Like writing 日 or 由 when you actually wanna write 田), they can be two totally separate characters. Or, you can just use the wrong character (since Chinese has limited sounds, a lot of words share the same pronunciation, like 鸡蛋 (chicken egg) and 鸡弹 (literally \"chicken bomb\", but just FYI this isn't a thing, just an example) are pronounced exactly the same, but if you wrote the latter the teacher would probably underline it, because that isn't a thing. Grammar wise, I guess the order of the words matter? Like in English. “Home I am\" is grammatically incorrect, and it's similar in Chinese.",
"I'm a Singaporean who has been learning (Mandarin) Chinese as my second language from young, so maybe I can help. It's my first time answering a question on ELI5 so I hope my explanation is easy to understand. You might know that Chinese uses logograms, which are like pictures instead of stringing letters together to form words as in English. Just as how pictures are drawn using lines, logograms are also formed by drawing lines. In English, a misspelled word is one with, well, a wrong spelling, like spelling 'word' as 'ward'. I think you can agree that the letters 'o' and 'a' are both circular and thus may look similar to a person who is unfamiliar with the Latin alphabet, but they are different. Now, take a look at this three Chinese characters. 己 已 巳。They all look the same, yes? But they are really different--you can see that the vertical line on the left does not protrude out of the middle horizontal line which leaves some sort of gap or cave, or it's only drawn halfway, or it's drawn fully which closes up the gap or cave. The first character has the meaning of 'self', the second of 'already', and the third of 'snake' or '9am to 11am'. They look the same, but their meanings are vastly different. \"My friend is in hospital word one.\" Huh??? With respect to ungrammaticality, Chinese does have grammar (surprise!?). Just as in English where a word order wrong make your sentence nonsensical may, the same thing applies to Chinese. If you were to swap the positions of the first and third characters of the sentence 我吃饭。 to get 饭吃我。, you would have said that \"The rice eats me.\" instead of \"I eat rice.\" A person who speaks a language with an Object-Verb-Subject sentence structure may find it hard to get used to the Subject-Verb-Object sentence structure in Chinese, and may potentially use words in the wrong word order which leads to ungrammaticality.",
"Chinese American here. My only example of \"typo\" was when I was in china trying to speak to locals for help. I was in Starbucks desperately trying to use their wifi but I didn't have a Chinese number to receive the pin. I went up to a girl and kicked it off with \"Excuse me, I don't have a Chinese cellphone\". Little did I know, instead of saying \"手机” which means cellphone, I said \"小鸡”. Both sound very similar to a non-native speaker. The literal translation is \"Small chicken\" but the slang means \"Small Cock\". So I went up to a random girl in China and said I didn't have a Chinese small dick. Her face went from concerned to humor when she saw I was waving my iPhone (without a SIM card) in my hand. Edit: Fixed less to small (少 - > 小) I used the pinyin shao instead of Xiao by mistake",
"In Chinese, we have what we called [measure words.]( URL_0 ) > \"Unlike English and most European languages, Chinese does not distinguish between singular and plural, so nouns are simply abstract in number, with context determining whether something is singular or plural. But when you have to specify a certain number of something, you combine the number itself with a measure word, followed by the noun.\" In English, you ask \"How many people?\" In Chinese, it would be 几个人 (jĭ gè rén)? 几 is how many and 人 is person/people while 个 is the measure word for people. A lot of people who are learning Chinese for the first time tend to omit measure words. *** Also another common mistake would be the usage of number 2: 二 (èr) and 两 (liǎng). Using the previous example, if I was to answer \"Two people,\" 二个人 would be incorrect. The correct answer would be 两个人. 二 (èr), is when you want to refer to the digit, for example when you are count from 1 to 10 or when you are telling someone your phone number. 两 (liǎng) is used when quantity is involved. Like the example I showed above, two people- 两个人.",
"People have mentioned the writing aspect, but no one has really commented on the grammar part of the question. I don't speak any Chinese language, but I know a fair share of linguistics. So, every language has a system of grammar that allows you to say stuff by putting words in some framework. There are lots of things going on there that one might not immediately consider part of grammar - not only does grammar dictate what shape words take on (morphology) but also how they're arranged (syntax). Chinese is known for having very little morphology (or at least morphology as is understood from a european context) but it most certainly has syntax rules that you can break. But to make an example governed by morphology: in east asian languages there is a thing where usually all or most nouns behave somewhat like english mass words (e.g. you can't say \"three breads\" in english, you have \"three loaves of bread\"). Using the wrong counting words would then be bad grammar. Also there's apparently some 700 page tome on mandarin grammar. Languages are complicated once you look at the details.",
"Chinese here. One thing that people actually do and is wrong grammatically is speaking an incomplete sentence. When a sentence is really long, sometimes it would miss crucial elements, like objective or subjective. sometimes it is very difficult to tell that if a sentence consist of two or three sentences. I remember doing a lot of those questions in the Chinese equivalent of SAT/ACT but I can't really think of an example right now. most \"typos\" would consist of using a character of the same pronounciation but different writing. It is somewhat easy to tell, unless it involves some less used characters. the most common type of mistakes is the misuse of idioms. Unlike English idioms, Chinese idioms are usually based on some ancient text and consist of 4 characters. For example, \"空穴来风\"/empty cave causes wind means a rumor is not unreasonable. but some people think it just means the rumor is unsubstantiated, and they'll use it wrong. there are hundreds of idioms like that, and some have even changed meanings during the years. This is by far the most common \"typo\" or grammatical mistakes in Chinese imo.",
"I'll give you an example! This is some of my graded Chinese work: URL_0 I'm a Mandarin student in college, I've studied it for four years now. In Chinese it can be hard to figure out how to phrase things and how to order phrases within a sentence. I recently started the spring semester at my college and our first assignment was to write about our winter breaks. I visited my brother in Singapore. She highlighted the poorly written sentences, numbered them, and rewrote them below. I'll do a literal translation of the first one: I wrote: 去年九月，我哥哥和他家人（老婆，两个孩子\u0005）都去了新加坡。我哥哥工作的公司给他们这个机会 Translated as literally as possible: Last year in September, my older brother and his family members (wife, two kids) all went to Singapore. My brother's working at company gave them this opportunity. She corrected it to: 去年九月，我哥哥因为工作的关系和家人一起搬去新加坡。我哥哥和我嫂子有两个孩子。 Translated as literally as possible: Last year in September, my older brother because of his work connection, with family members together go to Singapore. My brother and my sister in law have two kids. I think they way I wrote \"我哥哥工作的公司\" (my brother's working at company) didn't sound so good. Also, see at the bottom the one character in red, I meant to write 南 (nán south) but instead I wrote 男 (nán male) In Chinese, the common way of typing is by using Latin characters to spell the sound of the Chinese character, and then the computer guesses which character among the many homophones you're trying to write. Looks like this URL_1 For the most part, we aren't taught that many grammar structure rules, we just kinda get a feel for them. When I ask my Chinese friends why a certain sentence doesn't work, they usually just say something like \"it doesn't sound right\". One thing we are taught about sentence structure though, is that you should start with time then subject. Don't say \"I yesterday went,\" say \"yesterday I went\" Interesting tidbit, before the early 1900's written Chinese and spoken Chinese were kind of like different languages with different grammar rules. The revolutionaries in China who wanted to modernize the country pushed for people to write how they speak. So I guess in that sense, written Chinese is relatively new. Maybe I'm missing part of the story though, this is just from reading wikipedia articles. Tl;dr word order, make it sound right",
"Reminds me of when I was in school - Back in the late 90s a lot of people came to the UK from Hong Kong because of the Handover back to China, so we had a few Chinese people join us in our school. Ended up being good mates with one of them, and I was trying to copy a phrase he had written (Probably happy birthday or something). He laughed at my attempt, and his sister corrected it saying that my attempt was based on my friends terrible handwriting which made it nigh-on unreadable! So, I know for sure that bad handwriting is a thing!",
"I've seen enough people complaining about others don't use 地的得 correctly, I believe it's the equivalent of complaining about your/you're, would of/would've.",
"Native Chinese speaker here. Recently people in BBS argue about the usage of \"remake\" because they use this word in a meme ( URL_0 ). Grammar Nazi insists the word \"重制\" is preferred, while many argue that \"重置\" is also correct, although these two spell the same and have similar meaning.",
"Chinese here. An example of a misspelled word: 自由 < -- > 目田 Liberty < -- > eye field (not a word) An example of bad grammar: (from an interview of former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd) wrong: 我参加学校 I partook school. correct: 我去上学 I went to school / attended school. Another example of bad grammar in terms of omitting some essential words denoting the tense of the sentence (tense in Chinese is implicit): wrong: 你看最新的星球大战电影？ Do you see the latest Star Wars movie? 我看。 I see. correct: 你看过最新的星球大战电影了吗？ Did you see the latest Star Wars movie? 我看过了。 I did.",
"There is a word for spell in Chinese, but it would only be for pinyin or a foreign language that has an alphabet. Any paper written in Chinese above a very young age will be all in characters, not pinyin. I would say that the equivalent of a misspelling in Chinese is using the wrong character, either because of mishearing or simply not being familiar with the correct character to use. An example of mishearing in English would be \"lacksadaisical\", because it's similar to \"lax\", which has a similar meaning. \"All intensive purposes\" is another. This can happen in Chinese, too, as some characters have a certain meaning by themselves and sort of make sense if you mishear the word or idiom. \"Misspellings\" on on a computer or phone are quite easy. Imagine autocorrect is always on -- you type a long sentence in pinyin and the autocorrect figures out exactly which characters you probably want. If you don't proofread, you can have some big mistakes. For example, \"nine o'clock\" and \"hotel\" have the same spelling in pinyin, so it's possible the autocorrect thinks you want to write \"I hotel arrived\" rather than \"I nine o'clock arrived.\" Another \"misspelling\" would be a word that people say often but don't write, especially if the character is highly complex. The best example is that 90% Chinese people cannot write the last character of the word for sneeze (打喷嚏). In this case, using a computer or phone actually solves the problem. For grammar mistakes, keep in mind that all languages have grammar patterns or certain words that always go with certain words. \"Be familiar to\" would be wrong in English, as would choosing the wrong preposition in Chinese after the word for familiar. Students spend a lot of time learning Chinese characters and grammar, so I'm guessing they have fewer grammar mistakes than an English speaker would. One reason is that they spend less time on other concepts. Punctuation in Chinese is easier than in English. For example, comma splices are OK, you can just put two clauses or sentences together with a comma, like I just did. Chinese students also spend a lot less time on the organization and logical flow of the papers they write. EDIT: Spelling, of course.",
"I'm not sure about Chinese, but with in Japanese (which uses Chinese characters extensively, known as kanji), there's a phrase called \"henkanmisu\" (変換ミス). This refers to the type of typographical error when you select the wrong kanji when word-processing. You type Japanese phonetically, so to type 変換ミス I type 'hen kan mi su'. The Input Method Editor which converts this into Japanese pops up a little window showing the possible kanji used in the phrase 変換ミス. Now for that phrase the IME I'm using shows only one possibility. but if I were to type 'ha', the IME shows possibilities such as 葉 歯 派 and a few others, since there's a lot of kanji that can be pronounced 'ha'. So an example of a henkanmisu would be I want to type teeth (歯) but I misclick or hit space too often (which cycles through the options) and woops! I've typed leaf (葉) instead. Note that this only applies to typing.",
"Not fluent, but i did study chinese in china. Since chinese uses symbols, while some words sound similar, you're more likely to use a wrong word (like the cake vs egg bomb example here), or use the wrong root word (讲 vs 进），than an extra stroke. But do consider i was learning chinese as a second language, not as first so it may be different. Conversations tho, i learned the trick is to just say it really fast, so the wrong accents are less emphasized :))",
"Chinese characters are made by mashing up [these 200 radicals next to each other.]( URL_0 ) It's possible to \"misspell\" words by writing the wrong radical for part of the character, for example writing **肢** instead of **肤**. It's like if I wrote 'he undercat my prices'. You probably know that I meant 'undercut'.",
"Is there a version of Google or Baidu that shows corrections?: 草泥马 (Cǎo Ní Mǎ) #Did you mean? ***肏你妈 (Cào Nǐ Mā)***",
"There's that show, 中國漢字聽寫大會, which is a bit like a spelling bee. Chinese students are told phrases or words and have to write them. But it's like way way harder, like most of the adult audience often don't know the answer either, and they have scholars to explain why this is write or wrong. And sometimes the judges don't agree on whether the studwnt wrote correctly or not.",
"Great detailed answers already posted. But I feel like I should add to the grammatical aspect by mentioning how obscure counter words can get. In English we say \"a pair of pants\", a \"school of fish\" etc, but we don't have a counter word for maybe, \"an apple\" or \"a fish\". Well, in Chinese they have a counter word for everything, even when singular. And sometimes they can be used wrong by both learners and native speakers. For example, counter for chopsticks: 一根筷子 (right) vs 一条筷子/一个筷子 (wrong). More obscure ones exist too, like how in English it's \"correct form\" to say a \"murder of crows.\" Like, not many people know the counter for 布料(cloth) is 一匹(same counter word for horses for some reason). And more, there are ambiguous ones too... like for example \"a murder case\" would be 一起谋杀案，but 一宗谋杀案 is also correct.",
"Well, there are a few different cups of tea here: 1.Misspellings happen two ways, depending on whether you're using a keyboard or handwriting: Typos (when you type the wrong key on the keyboard) will lead to completely different words coming out, which often makes the entire sentence illegible. You learn the be extra careful, since it's really hard to notice when you make one, but it changes the meaning so much for the reader; there is no such thing as a light misspelling in Chinese. You can also make typos by using the wrong hanzi because it has the same pronounciation, but that is easier for the reader to guess. Handwriting: This one is easy to do, you either get the wrong stroke in the right ideogram, or you get the wrong ideogram. 99% of the time it is so close that the reader can guess what you initially wanted to say, with few exceptions. If it's the wrong stroke, it's close enough to the hanzi to guess where it went wrong, if it's the wrong ideogram then you might notice it because it is pronounced the same (that's usually where people make mistakes). 2.Grammar: Unless it's your L2, basically the only way to get grammar wrong is to use the wrong particle, or wrong word order, or to do that thing where you start a sentence, trail off and go into the other without finishing the first. Similar to grammar mistakes in English, the comprehensibility is dependent on how big the mistake is."
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5q9syr | Why has handwriting gotten generally worse as time has gone on? Clearly the introduction of the computer is a modern change, why has it changed from the 1400's (for example) to now? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Penmanship used to be a subject in schools. You were graded on the quality and precision of your handwriting. Your handwriting was seen as an indicator of your intelligence and schooling, so everyone wanted to put forth a good impression. Plus it was seen as your legacy, for instance, when Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to someone, I'm sure he was aware that not just the recipient would read it.",
"Well, the printing press was invented in 1440, giving way to books that could be printed without people meticulously rewriting every word. The typewriter followed in 1860."
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5qa63d | If the US is a constitutional Republic why does everyone call it a democracy? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It IS a democracy. The definition of a democracy is basically \"the people vote for their leaders and laws, directly or indirectly.\" North Korea calls itself a democracy, and clearly isn't. America is a democracy, no matter what they call themselves, but being a republic is actually pretty much just one kind of democracy.",
"Democracy means people vote. A Direct Democracy: The voters vote for laws themselves. A Republic: The voters vote in officials, whose job it is to represent them by voting in the smaller, yet more powerful bracket . This is a type of democracy. Sometimes, even in the US, voters vote for laws directly. This is called a referendum. Generally, we have our elected officials make choices us for because there's *so* many things to know and do - it would be too time consuming for millions of people to go out everyday and on budgets and tax policy. Next time someone says \"the US isnt a democracy anyways! It's a republic!\" - you'll know they're an idiot. However, there's a lot to say about a democracy being fair and ethical. At what point does voter suppression and disenfranchisement mean a democracy is no longer that? That's an entirely different conversation.",
"The word 'democracy' for the purposes of this discussion pretty much means that the people choose who their leaders are. The United States is actually a Federal Constitutional Republic. Federal: There is a central government that dictates certain things the states are compelled to abide by. The federal government has direct control over immigration policy, foreign policy, and the military, among other things. However, the states have a lot of freedom to draft their own laws, so long as they do not conflict with federal law, and as long as they do not violate the constitution. Constitution: In the United States, the constitution is the founding document that lays out how our system of government is supposed to work. It is effectively the blueprint and instruction manual for how the government is supposed to operate. Each state has their own constitutions as well, which lay out the foundation for how their local governments work, and so on. Republic: People vote for their leaders, who then govern on behalf of the citizens within their jurisdiction. Note: the citizens of the United States don't vote on every single thing the legislature puts forth. That would not be a republic, that would be what many people refer to as a direct democracy. The democratic process is utilized for many things, but again, we don't vote on *everything* that happens. That's why we elect leaders who do that on our behalf."
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5qa6i9 | What is gas lighting? | Some friends have and may be going through it. I've heard of it but don't know what it actually means? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Maybe you're looking for a practical example? A good way to begin is by moving everyday objects into new places and pretending they have always been there. Move a lamp from one corner of a room to another. When they notice or comment say, \"What? No, that lamp has always been there.\" Act casual.",
"A lot of these answers have talked about doing things to drive people insane or to doubt their sanity, but I think that's a bit of an overstatement. The way gaslighting is used usually has a narrower meaning, which is more like: > Deliberately misstating or twisting the truth in order to make another person doubt that their own memory or understanding of something. What makes it different from regular lying is that the goal isn't just for the person to believe the lie, it's that the point of the lie is to make the person not even sure what the truth is. When an abuser tells the police that they have never hit their spouse, that's lying. When the abuser tells the abused spouse that they've never hit them except in self-defense, as part of a way to make the spouse confused and full of self doubt, that's gaslighting.",
"Gaslighting is using misdirection or trickery to make a person or group doubt their sanity. For example, the people who made movie posters for the Sinbad movie, Shazam!, are gaslighting people under a Mandela Effect. The term comes from a play called \"Gas Light\" where Jack makes his wife Bella think she is insane by, among other things, making her think she is imagining the gas lights going dim."
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5qa72q | Sanctuary Cities | Serious question, I hear a lot of talk about sanctuary cities and I am hoping someone could educate me on what they're all about and who they protect | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Immigration is a matter of Federal Law. As such State and City officers do not have jurisdiction to actually enforce immigration. What they have the jurisdiction to do instead is to write laws that help them assist the Federal agencies by detaining suspected illegals, and by helping when directly requested to help an agency. Sanctuary Cities are cities that actively refuse to check on if people have legal status to live in the US, and often refuse to assist Federal agencies in going after illegal immigrants. Some even attempt to hinder such agencies. They basically create a safe haven where people who are illegal immigrants can go, seek employment and the like, without worrying about being caught.",
"Imagine this: you are at the playground (your home country). You're playing on the monkey bars (your city), but you want go to play on the jungle gym (America, in a sanctuary city). The monkey bars are alright, but the jungle gym is where all the cool kids hang out. A teacher (federal laws) explicitly told you cannot go play on the jungle gym, but it looks so much more fun over there. So, you use your little sneaky skills to get to the jungle gym anyway. Another teacher (a mayor of a sanctuary city) catches you hanging out there, but that teacher says you can stay as long as you mostly behave.",
"Immigration is a Federal issue. A Sanctuary City is one that does *not* actively check (at the local or state level) whether or not a person is undocumented or not. Why do this? Many Sanctuary Cities have entire economies that depend on cheap labor - much of it is undocumented (often cash paid). This could be your Chinatown cooks, your Taqueria dishwasher, your landscapers, your housecleaners, etc. NYC Chinatown alone has over 100,000 Chinese Americans, and it *thrives* because of sanctuary status. Also consider that the overwhelming majority of these people are non-violent. Many have children (many born here) that are enrolled in school. Many are escaping gang violence - a deportation could mean death. These cities *tend* to have voters that are sympathetic to such people. This doesn't mean local law enforcement doesn't do their job. If a guy breaks a law, the cops will swing in and arrest them. Usually the undocumented worker is locally tried and jailed (like any other person). But if the crime is aggravated or particularly bad - law enforcement will work with Federal agencies to have them deported."
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5qac65 | How do people who buy/sell things illegally find the person or place to buy/sell those things? | Just something I always wondered | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's all about who you know. Those people are in a different social circle than you where they talk about and are interested in different things. When a comment comes up in passing about something illegal, someone else in the group is usually able to go \"oh, yeah, ____ does that all the time\".",
"its about the circle of people you associate with.I can give a couple of examples 1.drugs- if you smoke drugs, you probably know others that smoke drugs and you smoke it together and you bring friends, they bring friends and everyone gets high together, eventually the supply runs out and someone knows someone who can get more and the dealer who's supplying ends up supplying the whole group and the group keeps introducing the dealer to others and the dealer keeps getting more customers, if 1 in the group can find a better dealer and buy in bulk they can buy in bulk and supply the whole group and friends of the groups. 2.videogame modding/hacking if you play a popular game you will see people modding, you become friends with them and eventually they give you access to tools that can mod and hack, you meet others they see you showing off your skills and they want them skills and you share your knowledge and tools with them they do the same with others.......... other solutions are darkweb/internet buying and selling, youtube guides or approaching randoms.Guns are really hard to illegally obtain where i live (approach the right people , ask the right questions you could probably get 1) but marijuana/ice you approach a random stranger that looks intoxicated they will know someone who can sell to you."
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5qblyz | How can a judge request a jury not take into account certain pieces of evidence in a trial, and have their ever been unashamedly where a jury refuses to do so? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A judge does this by making jury instructions to not consider it. Of course, the jury can't \"unhear\" something, and it's not always possible for someone to completely disregard something that is disturbing, but legally inadmissible. If the jury hears or sees something that is ruled inadmissible, it could be ground for a mistrial if the judge feels that it's so prejudicial that the jury won't be able to ignore it.",
"They say \"that's not relevant, please disregard it\", and hope they do the right thing. In practice, the negative impression of admonishing a lawyer can outweigh any advantage sharing that information might give. If the breach is too serious, a mistrial and be declare and the lawyer sanctioned. Juries are not required to give reasons for their verdicts, and cannot be held accountable for them. It is entirely possible juries take into account things their were told told to disregard, and we would never know."
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5qbyo6 | What exactly is the Doomsday clock and how Accurate is it and what does the time Mean on it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It was just a gimmick to illustrate cold war tensions. It went up or down depending on how mad the US and the USSR were at each other that week.",
"The doomsday clock is a marketing piece done by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an anti-nuclear weapons group. It is not \"accurate\", it's a prediction that things today are as bad as they were in the 1960s. Since no nuclear weapons were exchanged in the 1960s, this assessment is unverifiable. It is a fine message, sent by reasonable and thoughtful folks. It's not an actual measurement device that measures any thing real (like a regular clock is).",
"The doomsday clock was sent back in time by scientists from the future. It accurately predicts the end of known civilization. Everyone else is lying or wrong",
"The furthest it's been from midnight was in 1991 when the Soviet union dissolved. It was set at 17min to midnight. Check Wikipedia. It's always been \"close midnight\". There's only so much \"boy who cries wolf\" before everyone stops caring.",
"It's a metaphorical clock that is set by scientists on how likely a nuclear MAD scenario is. The closer it is to 12, the greater the chance of a nuclear scenario occurring based on current geopolitical events. It doesn't mean anything exactly, but you should not ignore its significance as others on this thread have suggested.",
"I would take it with a grain of salt, as it seems to have a bias towards liberal states against socialist and communist states. For example, more actions of the USSR set the clock forward during the Cold War than the United States despite the United States testing as many if not more Nukes than the US, and the clock was set forward upon the dissolution of the USSR even though the Nukes didn't go away; the just went to the Russian Federation which was even worse. I feel it also understates (though less so in more recent years) the risks posed by the United States, but also understates the positive resolves of the EU, India and China toward global climate remediation and Arms non proliferation and reduction."
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5qc2by | What does it mean for the US now that the senior management of The State Department has resigned? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No change. The new Secretary of State was going to want to hire all new upper management folks anyway. The people that do the actual work, making passports or running a foreign embassy, are career government workers who keep their jobs when the Presidency changes.",
"Look at [this org chart PDF from the State Department]( URL_0 ) The people who are leaving are: * Under Secretary for Management and three underlings: * Assistant Secretary for Administration * Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs * Director of the Office of Foreign Missions When looking at the org chart, you see that while those four might have been important, that is no where near \"The senior management\" of the state department. The vast majority of the State Department remains."
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5qcf4r | How time signatures work and why songs in unusual time signatures are notable. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Consider the time signature to be like a language. Most pop music is written in the language of 4/4. This is when the emphasis is on the fourth beat, and everything is written nicely to fit into grouping of four. In this language there are many chords, scales, and note progressions that we've used to hearing. These are the words and sentences that make up the 4/4 language. Since birth, most of the music you listen to is written in 4/4, so everything seems natural and normal. Think of 1 2 3 **4**, 1 2 3 **4**, 1 2 3 **4**, 1 2 3 **4**. There are other time signatures used in music such as 7/4 (used in a lot of Prog Rock or IDM). This time signature would sound \"weird\" to the average person because it features many patterns, chords, scales etc that make up the 7/4 language. It takes a little bit of practice to get into it's rhythm. Check out the song Money by Pink Floyd for an example of this: 1 2 3 4 5 6 **7**, 1 2 3 4 5 6 **7**, 1 2 3 4 5 6 **7**, 1 2 3 4 5 6 **7**. This can seem off to us because we're expecting the typical 4/4 beat and instead we get a little bit of tension hearing something different. Finally classical music tends to be in a huge assortment of time signatures. Another language we could recognize is 3/4. This is normally reserved for waltz. This would be **1** 2 3, **1** 2 3, **1** 2 3, **1** 2 3. Avante-garde jazz music can often change time signature requiring knowledge of multiple time signature \"languages\": to be able to play on the fly."
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5qcn8a | What's the process for removing a US President that is mentally incapacitated. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Woodrow Wilson suffered a severe stroke in 1919 and spent the remainder of his presidency as an invalid. A few decades later, Congress ratified the 25th amendment to avoid a repeating that. Section 4 says: > Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. -- URL_0 EDIT: Also, the President can declare himself unfit. The first time it happened was George W Bush, who did it for a few hours when he had to undergo surgery which required anesthesia.",
"**TL;DR: If the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet decide he's unfit to rule, the Vice President becomes Acting President. If the President disputes the claim, the matter goes before congress; a 2/3rds majority (in both the house and senate) is required to declare the president unfit to lead.** Section 4 of the 25th Amendment of the Consitution: \"Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.\" It goes on to state provisions for how to handle a dispute: \"Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.\"",
"3 ways. 1. The president himself can resign. 2. His cabinet and VP can declare him unfit. 3. He can be impeached by congress.",
"As a practical matter it's exceedingly unlikely unless he becomes mute. He can contest and raise the standard required to the same level required to impeach.",
"Related question: What would have happened if the president elect was in a similar situation making him/her unfit for presidency before the inaugeration? Would it still go the vice president ...elect? Or would it go to the runner up for presidency?",
"A bigger question is how mental illness would be determined and if said illness was then warrant enough (among Congress, I presume?) to remove a President from office. A great many mental illnesses aren't really self-diagnosing, and I'd bet whoever was suspected of being mentally ill would fight said diagnosis tooth-and-nail.",
"The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution deals with succession to the Presidency and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, as well as responding to Presidential disabilities. It supersedes the ambiguous wording of Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution, which does not expressly state whether the Vice President becomes the President or Acting President if the President dies, resigns, is removed from office or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers of the presidency. Section IV says whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President."
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5qcuco | Do all Muslims follow sharia law or is it more comparable to all Christians following the 10 commandments. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First, Sharia law is more like a set of rules and guidelines derived from multiple sources. It is less like the ten commandments and more like the Talmud or the collected decisions of the Catholic Church. Second, individual Muslims interpret and abide by the rules to different measures and degrees, just as is the case for Christians, Jews, and members of other faiths. So there isn't really a general answer for how \"muslims\" treat these rules, and within Islamic communities people will differ. Third, to illustrate that, not all of your list of bullets reflect clear aspects of sharia. The discussion on the [wiki page for FGM]( URL_0 ) for instance, points out that even though many schools of Islamic thought view FGM as permissible or even required, not all do and that the specific Hadith cited is viewed by scholars as weakly supported. Likewise Taqiyya isn't really a part of Islamic law, but a component of Islamic ethics/theology about when it is acceptable to lie to defend one's faith. There are parallel discussions in Christianity and Judaism, as well as secular systems of ethics. (Even the most orthodox jew, for instance, is permitted to break an ethical rule to save someone's life, even very important ones like keeping Kosher or eating on a fast day. It's not required, but it's allowed.)",
"A lot of the things you posted are not actually sharia law at all. Washing myself for prayer is sharia law. Helping my neighbour who just had a heart attack is covered by sharia law. Prayer, fasting, charity, inheritance, the list goes on. In this sense, all practicing Muslims practice at least some sharia law, every day. Not all sharia law is enforceable in a non Muslim state. So there is no wrongdoing on my part if I am robbed and the thief is punished according to western rules. Additionally, you might find it interesting to know that the taking of a hand is not the immediate punishment for all forms of theft. If the thief is trying to raise money to feed their family, they are not punished, but rather the mayor or leader of that community is punished for not taking better care of their constituents. Even stealing for the sake of stealing isn't immediately punishable by the taking of hand; there is a gradual buildup of punishments, and a hand is only removed once it becomes clear the thief refuses to live any other way. You or I or anyone is free to ask about the Quran. Is it valid, why do we think so, has it been changed, what does it mean, I disagree with that idea, etc etc. Lying about it is something different, but questioning the text or an interpretation of the text as a means of learning is correct, although it may make some people uncomfortable who were not raised as doubters :) I frequently ask for clarification, background, is there discussion on this by the scholars, etc. Asking to start an argument is not encouraged, as we are discouraged from having arguments for no real reason. But there is no penalty for asking questions about the Quran. Women are banned from driving in Saudi Arabia only and there has been some noise about overturning that law of late. Plenty of Muslim women drive, all over the world. Additionally many of the things you wrote are just plain wrong. I didn't need permission to divorce my husband from anyone, for example.",
"Shaira Law isn't comparable to the Ten Commandments. There are actually several entries in Shaira Law which *contradict* the literal reading of the Quran, as I have read it. The closest parallel in Catholic Christianity would be Papal Law. It claims Religious Authority while not being derived from the word of the Religion's Prophet. Instead, it was created by the Religious Authorities of the day. Both exist for the same reason: The Bible and Quran do not cover every situation that can exist. When circumstances that are not covered by the text, or existing tradition, pop up... someone has to make a call. Those calls pile up, and you get some nice *Word of Dante* to sit *just below* your *Word of God*.",
"Not a Muslim, but I do have a lot of Muslim friends from childhood. Muslim law is divided into \"Shariah\" and \"Kanoon\". Shariah refers to religious law and Kanoon refers to secular law or law of the land. These are general terms and not specific references to anything. Now what constitutes \"Shariah\" entirely varies from community to community, from scholarly debates about nuances in elite circles, to generic family values passed as Shariah to Bible-Belt like Televangelists interpreting Shariah in strictest sense of the word. \"Shariah\" also comes from multiple sources including Quran, Sunnah and Hadiths, and there are various interpretations of that. Islam (currently) does not have a Caliphate, and hence there is no central authority to formally make a list (like Catholic Church). This means things vary widely from \"Fire and Brimstone\" version to \"Family values and Modesty\" to \"Eh, peaceful\" to \"Spiritual\". However, the caveat is that, unlike Bible, which is considered divinely inspired, Quran is considered the LITERAL word of God, which puts more restrictions on interpretative differences. On top of that, since Muslim countries are (currently) are the most religious and conservative societies, \"Muslim\" has become synonymous with good, and \"Shariah\" has become synonymous with righteousness or fairness, (in the same way as \"That's a very Christian thing to do\"). Hence, it is near-impossible to oppose Shariah without coming across as \"evil\" or \"against goodness\". But differences still exist, For example, there is a line that says something like, \"Female believers, don't be bare-bodied, put on a Hijab over your breasts and have shame\", which could mean anything from [This Hijab]( URL_0 ) to [This Hijab]( URL_1 ). This is where Kanoon comes in. Kanoon can put additional rules over and above Shariah, as long as it doesn't force Muslims to do anything against Shariah. ---------- Hence :- Shariah : A man CAN marry upto 4 wives, ie, a man can have 1, 2, 3 or 4 wives, not more. Kanoon : A man can marry upto 1 wife in this country. Shariah : A man CAN beat his wife for insubordination. Ie, he may or may not, both permitted. Kanoon : A man cannot beat his wife in this country. ------- But the catch is, this can go the other way too :- Shariah : A woman must cover her chest with Hijab. Kanoon : A woman must cover her chest, but in addition also hands, legs and head in this country.",
"While I can't help you with your Muslim questions, I'd like to clarify that Christians don't follow the 10 commandments... The commandments were created for the Jews. Christianity specifically binds to a new covenant rather than subscribing to Old Testament (Jewish) laws. Where the old laws were basically living guidelines to prevent the Jews from sin, the whole point of Jesus (the Christ) sacrifice was atonement for sins. If you're interested, here are some relevant Biblical scripture on why Christians no longer are bound to the Old Testament (law): * Old Law faded away - 2ndCorinthians 3:7-8 * Old Law passed away - Romans 7:1-6 [law comparison to marital adultery where if a wife left her husband (law) for a new husband (law) she could not serve them both] * Vanished away - Hebrews 8:7-13 Further confirmation that Christians no longer live under the old covenant, but the old covenant (testament/law) is helpful: * Hope for faith - Romans 15:4 * Defense of sin - 1st Corinthians 10:1-? * Leads Christians to salvation - 2nd Timothy 3:14-15",
"The thing is that there's no \"real\" Sharia law. Every \"Muslim\" country will extract a command or an advice in the Quran differently. There's no real paragraph to exactly look up to. Punishment in Islam is as far as I'm concerned only something that god or in other words Allah can do in the hereafter. He Quran often gives examples such as leave these people(corrupt) alone as those are the ones bringing mischief amongst you.... and then it will end will \"indeed it is Allah that hears and sees everything, he is the one who judges over them....\". Nowadays we'll have countries mixing up their cultural values with religion. Before Islam female newborns were buried alive as they were seen as something bad (not having a boy). After Islam this tradition stopped and women were the rulers of the house but not too long as people started to bring up partially old traditions such as stoning etc.... Nowadays you'll see the Saudis using these kind of tortures. There are plenty of countries obeying Sharia where women and men have both the same rights. Unfortunately we don't really see much from them as they appear \"normal\" to us with our western values. There are people quoting and citing from the Quran verse by verse without a the context and history of the chapter or will mistranslate it. E.g. Quran said that it is recommended to cover ones hair. Often you'll see punishment in strict countries for not wearing one. (Men also cover their hair when praying or in every day life) I'll give you an advice which is also the advice I followed. Get as many translations of the Muslim book and read them, if sth seems fishy in translation, look up the Arabic for it and try to find the correct translation in context. Don't listen to people and their opinion. Read on your own. And remember the translation of the Quran id just the opinion of the translator of it. So it might be also helpful to learn some arabic and rhetoric for this case. This is what I did for the past 10 years regarding every monotheistic religion. It's by far the best advice. Hope I could help in some way. Forgive any misspellings or mistakes, English isn't my first language. edit: I don't know who your source for those copy paste article is but they are very very inaccurate. Taqqiya for instance mean the act of denial. Denying your religion in case of a dangerous moment such as somebody wants to harm you for following your religion, this was also practiced by the jews and muslims durig the Christian reinquisition of Spain. Just an example of how much things can be mistranslated and even turned against their initial motivation.",
"For those reading this thread: What OP posted is not \"Sharia Law\", but a bunch of random rules from the Quran designed to display on the most extreme and negative aspects of Islam.",
"I don't think Christians follow the Ten Commandments: they make images of the divine (Jesus, Sistine Chapel), and they don't keep the sabbath holy (instead they celebrate \"the Lords Day\" on Sunday after sabbath is over).",
"I need to tell that most of the Muslim doesn't follow sharia and most reject it. My wife is muslim and the religion is very close in values as christian.love,peace,sharing and URL_0 least its suppose to.the extremist branch of the religion,culture,and low education/village mentality play a big role in this too.",
"No, they do not. Sharia law is not \"law\" in the civil sense. It's a set of guides for living an Islamic life. You are more in the ballpark when comparing it to the Ten Commandments, although it's probably broader than that (maybe more akin to *all* the Old Testament laws that the Jews were to follow, not just the Commandments). As with the Ten Commandments in predominantly Christian countries, the sharia does have an influence on civil law in Muslim-majority countries, though, and Muslim extremists do try to get parts of sharia law codified in the civil law of many Muslim-majority countries. It's not solely extremists, though; Saudi Arabia probably implements more of sharia in their civil law than any other country, but Americans are less up in arms about the Saudi government, because, you know, _oil_. Last summer, the Washington Post did a good look at the [myths about sharia law]( URL_0 ) as well [a history of how sharia became a topic of the American political debate]( URL_1 ). TL;DR: it's mostly Newt Gingrich's fault."
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5qd0vx | What is the reason behind the "Income Gap" in the USA? | Background: I am a master's student in the field of Public Health. In my Social Determinants of Health class, we were discussing the continuously growing income gap between the top 1% and the bottom 90%. There were many explanations (both logical and politically fueled) offered up in class, but I would like to hear from the diverse mind of Reddit. Please do not turn this into a political debate. I want evidence and reason. Below is a link to the World Wealth & Income Database where you can explore the graphs depicting the change in the income gap which began to shift in the late 70s. URL_0 | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imho, education is the main factor. Unskilled labor is not valued as it was 50 years ago, and if you look at the top earners you will see that a very high percentage of them got in their position helped by a strong educational foundation. Somewhere around 30% of the top 1% earn their income in form of wages in the medical, law and financial fields. Then there's Lil' Wayne, that oppressive onepercenter! Here's a study on tax return data that tackels this issue URL_0",
"A number of reasons: - Small businesses have been replaced by large scale chains. We used to have, say, a local shoe store that served a community. It provided a few middle class jobs and an upper middle class lifestyle for the owner. The store also returned money to the community by donating to raffles, sponsoring little league teams, etc. And the profits were spent in the community by the employees and owners. Now, a big chain owns the shoe stores, pays minimum wage and maybe a lower middle class salary for the manager. Profits go up to corporate and then to shareholders in the form of dividends. This has happened in most businesses, many restaurants, etc. - 2 income households magnify the issue. People tend to marry people of similar education, social stature, and thus similar income. Most of the time, a high earning woman will marry a high earning man. You don't see a female lawyer marrying a truck driver very often. A female doctor marries another doctor, or a lawyer marries an investment banker (it's more common for high earning men to marry women with lower incomes). So now you have these \"power couples,\" each making six figures, and combined making upwards of half a million dollars. Meanwhile, the truck driver is marrying somebody of similar income and they combined are bringing home $60k. So when you had one income households, there was certainly disparity between high status jobs and working class jobs, but now you've doubled the gap."
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5qdzu8 | What exactly is the "Doomsday Clock" and how does it work? | Apparently it's the closest to midnight since back in the cold war, but I'm not sure what that means. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Doomsday Clock is a program run by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that uses a clock to symbolize how close we are to a catastrophe that would severely threaten the existence of the human race or organized human society. The closer we are to midnight, the closer we are to such a catastrophe. The main threats are climate change and nuclear war but existential threats due to novel technoloy (such as genetically engineered biological weapons) are also considered. You can read about it here: URL_0 Every year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists meets to discuss whether the clock should be moved forwards, backwards, or stay where it is. This morning, they decided to move the clock thirty seconds closer to midnight based on: 1.) Continued failure on the part of major governments to address climate change and nuclear proliferation 2.) Remarks by Donald Trump that the United States would restart the nuclear weapons development program 3.) Failure on the part of governments and democratic institutions to put a stop to nationalist and authoritarian movements The full statement can be read here URL_1",
"It's a way to illustrate an opinion. There is a group of scientists who discuss how close they think the world is to some sort of global catastrophe, and set the clock based on their opinion. That's pretty much all there is to it. If you wanted to, you could start a Doomsday Hourglass or Doomsday Thermometer to illustrate how much trouble the world was in, and while you might be less informed than there are, your meter would be no less \"official\" than theirs."
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5qe84j | Why does Flint still not have clean drinking water? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"To have clean drinking water to the taps in the homes the pipes with lead solder, perhaps even lead pipes, must be replaced, in every home, every common pipe with lead. This is a massive undertaking. The plumbers are unionized. The cost is enormous. The water has always been clear of bacteria. When Flint was buying water from Detroit, Detroit was treating its water to keep lead from leaching into the water system from lead solder joints."
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5qeruh | How are there so many descriptive, yet distinctive flavors for "wine"? | I recently discovered that there are wine experts known as "sommeliers" and that they go thru rigorous training in order to obtain this title. How come wine taste so differently that people came up with 50+ different flavor characteristics? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They make up most of it. Sure some things like \"Dry, Sweet, etc\" are fine, but whenever they start spouting off stuff like \"Flowers, Cedar, blah blah\", they're B.S.ing you. There's been multiple studies and experiments, both formal and informal where they've shown they can take these wine experts, serve them the EXACT same wine from two differently labeled bottles, and get two completely different responses and flavor profiles.",
"Different grapes have different flavors. Go buy some sweet seedless grapes and some Cabernet grapes. They're both grapes, but they will taste very different. Each wine grape has its own distinct flavor - Syrah tastes kinda like chewing on an old leather jacket, while Riesling is very mineral. Climate and soil also have an effect - ever met someone who's picky about Florida oranges or Georgia peaches? Aging and fermenting methods also have an effect - wine that's spent two years in a steel tank won't taste the same as one that's been in an oak barrel for the same length of time. Blending grapes, or using multiple/blended fermenting or aging methods, can come up with something totally different. Do people say pretentious shit because of labels? Yep. Absolutely, because they think they're supposed to. But different grapes, different aging methods, and variations in production do make a major difference."
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5qfrqp | Why do they use the name "Roger" for an alternative to affirmative? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ah, a question for an old person to explain. Radio transmission quality used to be very poor. There was a great deal of static, and the static sounded very similar to \"essssssss\". There was also wow and flutter effects, which means that the radio had a tendency to spontaneously make a sound that sounded a lot like \"yes\". The same situation happened with \"acknowledge\", which sounds just like a microphone cutting on before the word \"knowledge\". \"Roger\" has the benefit of not sounding like any spontaneous AM radio static, and is discernible as \"Roger\", \"Oger\", and \"Ger\".",
"\"Roger\" was \"phonetic\" for \"R\" (received and understood). Various words were used in place of letters since letters in English all sound very similar to other letters. Having various responses coded as letters was for consistency. Of course, nowadays, \"R\" is \"Romeo\", but \"Roger\" was the old way so it's kind of stuck as \"yes\"."
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5qhfwy | How are votes organised within borders of gerrymandered congressional districts? | [Reading this article]( URL_0 ) about the most gerrymandered districts in the USA and some of the shapes are bizarre. [I mean look at North Carolina's 12th.]( URL_1 ) So I was wondering about the borders of these districts and how they keep everything organised so that every vote inside a district like this is counted as within that district? Because the borders seem insanely complicated and hard to know if someone is living just in or just out of that district.. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You are only allowed to vote at your assigned voting location. That is assigned based on where you live and what district that is in. You go to your location, cast your vote, and then they add up all the votes from the various locations within the district. As to the borders being complicated, yes they are. But their entire purpose is to designate which district you are in so it is very clear where you are assigned. They look up your address and tell you where to go."
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5qhkz9 | Why is it that playing the guitar and singing is more common than singing and playing another instrument in rock music? | I just watched [this]( URL_0 ) and I realised that while it is common for guitarists to also sing in bands it is a lot rarer for bass players and drummers to sing, even though there are cases for both (Lemmy and Dave Grohl, but a few more as well). A lot of singers also sing and play the piano, but specifically in rock bands, it's nearly always the (rhythm) guitarist that is also the lead or backup singer. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As explained by my freshman psychology instructor in the sixties: Lot of other instruments, say keyboards, drums, violin are like a barrier or pin you down or hide your face. The guitar is like striding around the stage waving your big dick at everybody.",
"Common instruments in Rock are Guitar and drums. Drumming is very physical and at times violent. That leads to it being very difficult to breath properly for singing. Most choose to play rhythm guitar because that is the simplest playing instrument of the group and therefore it allows them to focus on the lyrics and singing. Lead guitar, and bass guitar are both more complicated musically so while it can be done while singing that requires more effort and talent, so it is rarer.",
"This is a *bit* subjective, but a guitar is portable, easy to hold and easy to handle while singing. Try lugging a piano around with you. Or a drum kit. A guitar is also *fairly* easy to get a decent tune out of. Rhythmically playing chords will sounds pretty good with not a lot of training. Hell, if you can play *three chords* (A, G and D) you can play 90% of all pop/rock songs to a certain extent!"
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5qhyza | What are these facebook pages with weird characters and double spacing in the name? They appear to post memes | I'm getting old I guess but I don't understand what this is about. I can't think of any examples offhand so ill make one up, but it will be an adjective or something like "d e s t r u c t i o n" (noun) and maybe some japanese characters after it. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This seems to be originally associated with Vaporwave The \"weird characters with double spacing\" you are probably looking for might be: Ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ This page might have additional info: URL_0",
"The full-width character names with japanese characters are from the vaporwave \"aesthetic\". I know lots of pages use this naming style if they post photography and other random pictures that fit their style. Meme pages that use the naming style are probably doing it because vaporwave caught on as a meme and they use it ironically."
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5qju0b | Why is the flag of Switzerland square? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The soldiers from all differnt cantons decided on unifing the crosses with a red background. In 1815, swiss batallions created flags with the white cross and the red background. As the sign on the clothings was square they took the square form to the flag. Honoring this, the swiss flag kept being square."
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5qkzaq | Why is it considered inappropriate to ask someone how much their home is worth? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People generally don't talk about money. Plus if you want to know what its worth, its typically listed at the county auditors website. If they bought it a long time ago, the auditors website may not be very accurate, but they likely don't know exactly what its worth as well.",
"There's always Zillow for a rough estimate. I got Christmas cards from my boss and the CEO of my company last year, both from their home address, and the first thing I did was check Zillow on each. 2 and 15 times the estimated value of my home"
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5ql4gj | The difference between "Decriminalization" and "Legalization" | What is the difference between these? If the government decriminalized something, wouldn't that make it legal? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Decriminalization means it's only a civil offense to be caught with weed which means only a fine instead of jail time and a record. Legalization means it's legal for any adult to purchase marijuana",
"Decriminalization mean that it's still illegal, but you gonna pay a fine for it instead of going to prison. It would be like a speeding ticket and you won't have a criminal record that could stop you from getting some jobs."
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5qladt | why do different historians say different people invented algebra. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sometimes a good idea gets independently invented by multiple people across the world. For example it's not exactly clear if noodles were invented in China, Italy or the Middle East. Different historians will have different evidence of what they consider the start of algebra. I suggest r/math or r/askhistorians",
"(1) Algebra wasn't invented like Edison invented the light-bulb, but rather is a method of logical thought/branch of Mathematics that has been developing for (arguably) thousands of years. (2) Since humanity cannot seem to agree on what happened last week, I think its fair to say that no one really knows who did what exactly 1300 years ago."
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5qlqwm | what is the Canadian Healthcare program and why won't it work for the U.S? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Canadian healthcare system is administered through the government. Each province (kinda like a state, but bigger) funds their own program, while the nation sets some guidelines. What this means is that they don't pay for healthcare like we do here. Instead, they pay taxes, and then when they go to say, the hospital, the government pays all/most of it. The government also takes care of negotiating drug costs etc with companies. What that means is you don't need private insurance, like you would here (unless you're exceptionally rich). However, the public system doesn't cover everything. For example, dental/eye care works more like it does in the U.S. They do have private insurance, but it's more supplemental. The national healthcare is more basic, while private lets you get some perks that would cost extra. This also means you don't need to worry about being turned down if you can't afford treatment. No one is turned away, and the taxes you pay are proportional to income > why won't it work for the U.S? That isn't really an easy question to answer. There's no real proof that it won't- however, people are scared to try, because they think that government being in healthcare will make it very inefficient, or give people bad care. It's never been tried, so a lot of it is speculation tied to political beliefs on the role of the government. People who think the government should be small and leave stuff like this to the free market, are going to oppose national health care. (and vice versa). It's worth mentioning that Canada (as well as many european countries), tend to pay less for the same level of care that we do in the U.S. That doesn't mean it would for sure work- but it's very suggestive that it might, besides just actually trying it to see. While it is much cheaper, there are potential downsides. Canada is known for having relatively long waiting periods to get procedures done, and they tend not to have as many high end options as the US- in the US, there tends to be better specialized options, if you can afford it. A lot of people also argue that we essentially end up subsidizing R & D costs for the world, and that if we switched, less drugs would be made, but it's hard to prove if that is true or not. edit: You might find this helpful, for more detail (but easy to read!): URL_0 Or previous ELI5s: URL_1 edit2: I should also mention, that the reason it's cheaper, is that the government is a *very* big customer. That means they have a lot of bargaining power. The bigger you are, the cheaper you can get stuff (this works for insurance companies as well, they like being as big as possible for the same reason). So they can negotiate much lower prices with medical suppliers, which make much less money than they do in the U.S. The government also doesn't have to make a profit like a private insurance company, which saves as well. (Although insurance profits are relatively low in the US- it's a very competitive field. Most of the money \"wasted\" goes to providers, the people who make medical equipment or service, like doctors)",
"The issue with U.S. health care is that it's significantly more expensive than health care anywhere else in the world. There are a lot of factors that go into making it more expensive. However, the biggest of those factors - and the one you rarely hear talked about by the partisans trying to sell their vision of healthcare - is that the U.S. is where the financing for health technology and advancement comes from for the entire world. Let's say you own a pharmaceutical company and you're trying to invent a drug. You spends billions of dollars on research before you get a viable product. So now you have to make all that money back. Producing the drug costs almost nothing - arguably the plastic bottle is the most expensive component of the medication you buy. But you have to divide up that billions of dollars worth of research costs somehow. Unfortunately, most of the world is going to lowball you on your new drug. If you try to sell it in Canada, Great Britain or Germany, they'll quote you a take-it-or-leave-it price that is way too low to defray the cost of developing the drug at the volumes you expect. However, you still have to 'take it' because at least it's *some* money you're recouping and the alternative is to get no money out of those places at all. Once the entire world has paid their lowball prices, you now sell it in the U.S. - and you use those U.S. sales to cover the massive shortfall. The result is that you're charging American customers significantly more than anyone else. The same occurs with medical devices and equipment. Effectively, the U.S. is subsidizing the entire world's health care because it's a huge economy that doesn't have the sort of price caps that other nations impose. Now, this may strike you as unfair. But there really isn't much of an alternative. If the U.S. just imposes price caps like everyone else, the result isn't cheaper medication/devices - it's companies not bothering with innovation because it stops being economically feasible. Nor is it likely that all the other nations will change their health care systems - short of embarking on an all-out trade war, the leadership in those nations can't dramatically increase the costs of their health care systems without sparking riots. In a sense, it's a bit like the U.S. military. The U.S. pays the bills to ensure all of Western Civilization is protected and orderly while the other members of Western Civilization largely just freeload. But the alternative is that *no one* pays those bills and a vital service disappears.",
"Americans hate taxes. For one, there's no federal sales tax (5% here), then some states don't have sales tax, income tax, or both! That's a lot of \"missed\" income. We pay a lot more taxes here north of the border, e.g. 13% sales tax in my province while no sales tax in US that reached double digits. Using those money, provincial government provides \"health insurance\" for everyone in the province, and our \"premium\" is tax we paid. We have high trust on our government though, we believe in crown corporation and government run services than privatizing everything. Americans hate taxes and don't trust their government. They believe in privatization and that government services are inferior. Thus it's harder for US government to provide universal health care."
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5qm1by | Why was there such a strong Russian parliament vote (380 - 3) to decriminalise domestic violence? | Is it a cultural thing? Overblown by Western media? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Definitely overblown by Western media. More or less, the first instance of domestic violence someone is convicted of is a misdemeanor rather than a felony, unless they do cause a certain amount of harm (broken bones, leave scars, etc,) in which case it's still a felony, nothing changed. It's basically a two strikes your out program for lesser offenses of domestic violence."
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5qm9bi | Why was the oval office built as an oval? Was it to mimic the shape of the diplomatic reception room or was it designed completely independently? | I only just noticed how strangely placed it is within the complex of the west wing. I'm a Canadian so I've never really learned much about the history of the American capitol. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dd0e371"
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"text": [
"Yep, [it's oval to mimic the reception room]( URL_0 ). It used to be centered on the south wall of the west wing, but Franklin D. Roosevelt had it moved as part of his remodeling project for the west wing. Apparently the [southeast corner was easier for him to access and more private]( URL_1 ). FDR had polio, and was unable to walk; and the fact that he couldn't walk was kept on the down-low."
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"https://www.whitehousehistory.org/questions/why-is-the-oval-office-oval",
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5qo7my | Why do women wear make-up and men not? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"In the 18th century, there was thing that's come to be called The Great Male Renunciation. Up until that point, men's clothing and appearance was more varied, brilliantly colored, and luxurious. Wealthy men often wore high heels, makeup, wigs, and silks/satins. After the GMR, the neutral colored suit became the only acceptable way for men to dress, and heels and makeup were out. Why? At the time, it was a part of a conversation about how men were the tough, no-nonsense sex, while women were fragile and flighty. Fashion and appearance were suddenly seen as topics inappropriate for men to be interested in. It was also a time when the industrial revolution was moving power from titled elites to a newly-emerging professional class of commoners - the neutral suit was a way to look like you \"meant business\" and separate yourself from useless aristocracy.",
"It's not that way in all cultures. The [Wodaabe of Western/Central Africa]( URL_0 ), for example, wear makeup in the [Gerewol festival]( URL_1 ). As /u/localgyro pointed out, it's a relatively recent trend in the West. Before that, wealthy men in European countries often wore white makeup, rouge, and kohl for beauty spots."
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5qogpz | How did team sports become such a massive influence on the education system? Specifically colleges. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Money. Colleges & universities earn a lot of money from ticket sales, merchandise, and television/radio contracts. Also, an excellent performance in a sport -- even just once -- can mean an enormous positive financial impact for the institution. George Mason University has made a single Final Four appearance (in 2006). According to an internal analysis that appearance in the Final Four basketball tournament resulted in [well over _half a billion dollars_ in benefit to the institution]( URL_0 ). That includes the free publicity, but that free publicity from that appearance resulted in a bump in applications and enrollments, and thus increased tuition revenue as well, and greater alumni involvement, which results in more effective alumni fund-raising. That's from *one* appearance in the Final Four from a relatively unknown mid-tier university. Think about the impact that a top program like Duke or UConn receives.",
"It's important to remember here that college sports being huge attractions is a very US specific phenomenon. College sports on most other countries are basically a blip on the public awareness radar if anything. It all comes down to the \"how\" and \"where\" around the organization of sports when many of the sports we have today began getting codified for the first time (late 1800s). In the UK for example, this effort was driven by two forces - working mens clubs which focused on soccer, and by gentlemen's clubs which focused on rugby and cricket. This is where the club structure that this sports are based on began. In the US however the codification of sports was driven out of universities. I'm not an expert in the field, but I imagine some cultural differences between the US and the UK led to less focus on sport playing after university. Once universities became established as the centres of sport, the rest kinda flows from the growing importance and media focus and therefore money that popular sports get.",
"Brings attention to the school. Brings more applicants to the school. Brings more money to the school. Brings new facilities to the school. Brings attention to the school. Something like that."
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5qplai | How do "sanctuary cities" benefit from hosting illegal immigrants? | Today Chicago recently said they'd remain a sanctuary city and recently Miami decided to stop that status. I'm trying to get a grasp on what exactly is the advantage of it and why a city would want to support it. Thanks! | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In a lot of cases, \"not being a sanctuary city\" means any interaction between police and potential immigrants has to involve a citizenship check. This is to happen whether the interaction is with a perpetrator or a victim. As-is, even in sanctuary cities, if a person is arrested or a crime their citizenship is checked. If it turns out they're not a citizen, what happens to them depends on whatever the law says, I'm not an expert on that. No one's working to keep felons on the streets. The problems arise in the interactions with victims. If someone is raped, they should be able to call the police. If someone is murdered, their family should be able to ask for justice. If calling the police *always* involves a citizenship check, they won't call the police. That creates a very large population vulnerable to crime. Some people say \"Good, then they won't move here.\" Now imagine how that applies to human trafficking. Further: ICE is asking that cities and counties spend their tax funding on these checks because the federal agency doesn't have a large enough budget to manage the entire country. This is, in effect, funding ICE with local dollars. Many, MANY parts of the country are vehemently opposed to the federal government controlling what state and local agencies do. This is a big factor in why many cities choose to be sanctuary cities: they don't believe their city taxes, city jails, and city officials should be doing the work that ICE is supposedly using federal funds to do. It turns out it's expensive and complicated to deport someone. They have to sit in jail while lots of paperwork and negotiation happens. That means feeding them, housing them, paying guards for them, etc. Many jails are already crowded, and many local police forces are already overtaxed. And ICE sure isn't offering funds to build bigger ones. People who support sanctuary cities believe: * The Constitution protects all individuals in the country no matter what, and no fundamental rights can be revoked. * There is no strong evidence showing immigrants commit more violent crimes than any other citizen group. * Proposed regulations create opportunities for organized crime to flourish by creating victims who can't be protected. * It is not good for the federal government to dictate the activities of state or local law enforcement to this degree. * Maybe we should ask why we're paying for ICE at all if it needs city governments to do the job for it.",
"One reason is that some police departments believe that they can't enforce public safety as well if major segments of the population want nothing to do with police. This has been demonstrated in non-immigrant communities as well. But the bigger reason is that lots of people see deportations of non-criminal people as generally cruel, and don't want their local tax dollars being spent assisting in that.",
"The politicians that represent those cities have a lot of legal constituents who vote and have relatives or friends or community members who are illegal."
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5qpwer | Why is circumcision still a common practice in America? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Inertia mainly. There's plenty of men who because they had it done to them, just do it to their sons because they've never really thought about it. They've been told that it makes it easier to clean, so they just smile and nod and let their sons get circumcised.",
"Keyword being why it is **still** an issue? - Cultural inertia. - Rampant corruption in the medical system. Mainly to do with profit. Not only profit from the procedure and all of its expensive side-effects, but fear of what will happen if the general public becomes aware of this. - Religious superstition from Puritan Christians and Orthodox Jews. IMO the greatest of these is the medical corruption followed cultural inertia.",
"In the US, even doctors are not generally aware the foreskin is a functional rewarding-feeling part of the penis. There have been activists promoting circumcision since the 19th century. They popularized it in the UK and elsewhere too, but everywhere else it has fallen out of favor over time. In the US the high prevalence of private insurance made it more profitable for doctors than it was in other countries, which seems to have played a major role in its persistence here. Here are some histories of it. - Gollaher D. [From Ritual to Science: The medical transformation of circumcision in America]( URL_0 ). Journal of Social History 1994;28(1):5-36. - Gollaher D. [Circumcision: A History of the World's Most Controversial Surgery]( URL_2 ). 2001. - Glick L. [Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America]( URL_3 ). 2005. - Darby R. [A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain]( URL_1 ). 2005."
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5qrg3d | Why are hormonal birth-control methods sometimes considered abortive? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Certain birth control pills contain a hormone which can prevent the implantation of a fertilized embryo. For an individual that thinks life begins at conception, a birth control pill which prevented a fertilized embryo from implanting and moving in a pregnancy stage would be considered causing an abortion.",
"They're not, by most people. Certain groups, such as some Catholics, believe that any interference with the reproductive process is abortive - that all *potential* life is life and preventing an egg from its chance at fertilization is abortive. In this case, it all depends on when you think life begins. And some people are just uneducated and think that hormonal birth control works by killing fetuses."
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5qs760 | Checks and Balances | There are many answers on this subreddit but none that break it down simply enough. Given the events of today as an example can someone explain Checks and Balances? Recent immigrant to the US from Canada so quite curious. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The US Federal government is split into 3 different parts, the executive branch (lead by the President), the judicial branch (Supreme Court) & the legislative branch (Congress). \"Checks and Balances\" is the idea that if any one branch of the government steps out of line, they can be stopped by the other two. Let's look at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court can decide that a law passed by congress or a presidential action is unconstitutional. To balance that out, the president is the one who nominates new justices & Congress must approve them before they take action. Congress can also initiate Constitutional amendments to change the constitution and even impeach judges who are extremely out of line. Most of the rest of the actions involve a legislative/executive interaction. The legislature makes laws but the president has a veto power. The executive is responsible for carrying out laws but the legislature has control of the budget and can reject the presidents picks to head major government agencies. The president controls the military but only Congress can declare war. The executive negotiates treaties and conducts foreign relations but the legislature must approve the treaties."
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5qsk1l | Why exactly is it considered racist for white people to be proud of their heritage, but not any other race? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"The basic idea is that 'white pride' has a history of including violent aggression toward POC, like the KKK lynchings, and it's part of a Western system of institutionalized racism against POC. When a Black person is participating in a 'black pride' thing like Black Lives Matter, they are trying to fight back against the system that produced slavery and race inequality, and the movement that they are part of does not endorse violence against white people. A bunch of people disagree with all of that, but that's what a BLM activist would tell you. Now, there is a way for a white person to be proud of their heritage without it being considered racist – focus on culture, not race. If you're Scottish, go to a Scottish festival; if you're French, learn French cooking, and so on and so forth. That's totally fine, because it's about celebrating who you are without putting down anyone else. Another way to think about it: if the average person of another race or culture would be able to participate in an event or movement, it's probably okay. I'm not Chinese, but I'm going to go to a Chinese New Year event in my town because it's open to everyone and it's about celebrating culture. My Filipina friend's not Scottish, but she went to the Scottish festival with a friend of ours who is, because it sounded fun to both of them. I've marched in anti-racism protests organized by Black activist groups even though I'm white, because I care about getting rid of institutional racism. But would POC feel comfortable at a white pride event, with all the racist history that carries? Not many would.",
"There are plenty of non-racist white pride celebrations, they're just more defined. My Irish and German heritage is celebrated by plenty of Americans with St. Patty's Day and Oktoberfest."
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5qt1n6 | What does it mean when people say the police aren't able to deal the mentally ill? What exactly do they need to know that they don't? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It goes without saying that mental illness can lead to erratic behavior, so can mental disabilities. Most polices officers, however, can't recognize those signs. For instance, a disturbed person might be ranting angrily while making wild hand gestures, but does not intend to physically hurt anyone. A police officer will most likely interpret their actions as a threat and use excessive force.",
"Ex UK cop. We couldn't deal effectively with the mentally ill for various reasons. Firstly training. We were never trained in recognising the signs of mental illness (as opposed to intoxication) and how to deal with it. Secondly, time. If we're called to a ranting mad man in the street, it takes a lot longer to sit, chat and diagnose a mental illness than it does to simply move them on or arrest them. If I'm the only officer on duty, I've got other people who need me. Thirdly, massive budget cuts means that effectively our only option for dealing with the mentally ill was to arrest them for the safety of themselves and those around them. I'd have loved to have been able to call for some specially trained social workers to come and take the mentally ill somewhere nice and safe. But they or those places don't exist. It boils down to 2 options. Either arrest the person or leave them ranting and raving. Whatever we decide we look bad."
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5qt6ag | What are incredibly niche stock images actually produced for? Are they commissioned, if so by who? | Okay, we've all seen the listicles and buzzfeed articles about gems like [cyber girl with corn]( URL_2 ), [double Popsicle grandma]( URL_0 ), [nipple santa]( URL_1 ), etc. But in laughing at the absurdity of these, I also came to realize. These were professionally done photographs. People modeled for this in a studio, and it was put on the internet, presumably, to be bought and sold. But by who? Who pays for these pictures? Do they exist because of the demand for them or are they produced hoping that there will eventually be a demand for them? It just doesn't make sense and I've been trying to figure it out for a solid couple years. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dd1x21t"
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"text": [
"Stock photos are taken by random photographers that then give the stock company the rights to the photos in exchange for payment when purchased. Having photos on a stock website does not guarantee it being purchased. I've been a model for almost a decade and worked with hundreds of photographers. Some of them create photos with a purpose in mind, an example would be a novel cover or news article. Photography is an art and a means to express ones creativity. As you can imagine, that would create some real weird stuff like an old lady licking two popsicles. Or the time I was dressed as a 50s housewife for a pin up shoot and the photographer decided to get \"creative\" and have me get on my hands and knees, make animal noises and angry faces while he took photos. This is what happens when you are paid for stock photo work sometimes.... I prefer to shoot fashion and lifestyle lol But anyway, just because a stock photo exists doesn't mean it was ever bought and doesn't mean the creator made it for a specific purpose other than his own crazy ideas."
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5qtf9d | Why does america not want social policies like Europe? | As an Irish person, it seems crazy to me as Ireland has a lot in common with America, policy wise but this is something I've seen over the years and still don't get. I know there is the tax element but you have that in European countries too. Irish people hate paying tax and seeing the money wasted but it doesn't make us not want social policies that stop people dying. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Because politicians use scare tactics: your taxes will go up, you'll get sub par care, you'll wait hours in the emergency room, you won't be able to choose your doctor, etc., etc. Those are the things you hear when people fight against universal healthcare. If you need to apply and benefit from a social program, like food stamps, you're called lazy, assumed to be an addict, given looks in supermarkets and people try to tell you what you can and can't feed you or your family. When in reality, studies show most are not on drugs, most states REQUIRE you to have a job or be disabled to get food stamps (so the workers are technically being taxed twice for food) and the money that citizens pay towards food stamps per year averages to about $40/yr. I think it's great that we have a capitalist society, but when someone cannot work due to injury, disability or illness, there needs to be something in place to help them. People shouldn't have to live in poverty and be judged because they had the misfortune of getting sick or are working their ass off at a job that won't pay a living wage. Political propaganda spreads lies about the social programs we have now and also about foreign social programs. Lies that make what we have seen a ton better when in reality, our neighbors across the pond feel pity for us because we DONT have universal healthcare, paternity leave for new dads, and free education. This is why.",
"The fact is that a significant portion of Americans either do not want the same political or cultural policies or norms of Europe, or at very least, do not see the government as the proper institution to bring about these changes. We want different things than you.We value different things, enjoy different things, have different expectations from our governments."
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5qu1au | Why is global warming a matter of believe in the US? I am from Europe and here it is common knowledge. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I literally just answered this question yesterday. As someone who spent time studying climate change in college, was an ardent believer for years, who then became a skeptic who then became a skeptic who believes in Climate Change, I think I can provide some more valuable insight than simple claims of money, politics, conspiracies and corruption. There are a number of reasons for it, which involve an interplay between a long history of failed environmental predictions, the shortcomings of current climate science, the media and climate activists overplaying their hand, a lack of open debate, a lack of education, entrenched interests and a lack of will to take reasonable action. Whew! Because of this, many Americans view proponents of Climate Change not as objective scientists but as activists seeking to promote a political agenda. **1) A History of Environmental Alarmism.** I have taken these from various websites stemming around Earth Day in 1970: 1970 Earth Day, Harvard Biologist, George Wald claimed, \"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” This was in response to overpopulation, which was a very in fashion concern back then. \"By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.\" — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter \"In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution… by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.\" — Life magazine \"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.\" — Kenneth Watt Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990. Obviously, none of these things happened. It also does not help that back in the day, some environmentalists were publicly lamenting eradicating small pox, which they felt had helped control the human population. Others thought that human beings should go extinct. Others thought we should abandon fossil fuels and live in nice little agrarian communities. They thought these things *before* there was any science behind climate change. There is a long history not only of environmental alarmism but environmental extremism. **2) Overplaying their hand.** In 2008, ABC aired [this]( URL_0 ) video which claimed that by 2015, NYC would be underwater, temperatures would be over 100F, wildfires would be raging and milk would cost $13 a gallon! Al Gore won an Oscar for his film, \"An Inconvenient Truth,\" which claimed that sea levels would rise as much as 20 feet(!) in the near future. Meanwhile, IPCC estimates range from a few inches to 2 feet over the next 100 years (under the most extreme circumstances). Over the past few years, environmental disasters have frequently been attributed to Climate Change and we are told to expect their frequencies to continue. Obama, for example, suggested Hurricane Katrina was caused by it. Yet it's apparent that hurricane frequency [hasn't changed]( URL_1 ). Other papers suggest that Climate Change will reduce their overall frequency but increase the intensity of these events. This has been done for everything from tornadoes, monsoons, earthquakes, drought, etc without substantial evidence. In 1989, the UN said we'd face irreversible global warming if we didn't take immediate action by 1999. This Doomsday date keeps changing. 1999 became 2006, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016 have all been declared dates that the earth will face inevitable heat death if we don't take immediate action by and that it will be too late to do anything afterwards. (There is certainly a valid point that there is some date of no return, but it sounds a lot like crying wolf over and over and over..) I could go on , but let's move onto something else, which is particularly relevant. **3)Climate Science is Very Imperfect.** All these failed predictions do not mean that Climate Change isn't happening. Climate Science is very young and studies an enormously complex system. The earth is ridiculously hard to model and has an insane array of variables. Studying whether our models are correct also takes long periods of time. The fact is, our models are not correct. In fact, *they are terrible* at making successful predictions about climate to date, which plainly means we do not fully understand the system. These failures help us go back and rework our models and the science is improving all the time...but we haven't gotten there yet. **4) Education, Open Debate and Trust in Climate Scientists.** What is not helpful is when media pundits and activists cling to these predictions as if they were gospel. They claim Climate Change is \"settled science\" and label anyone who is appropriately skeptical a \"denier.\" The fact is, we plainly don't fully understand the system, because if we did, our predictions would be much more accurate. *This does not mean the underlying mechanism is wrong--the overall idea is probably right* but we should stop insisting we know what's going to happen with certainty when we clearly don't. When we start ridiculing people or calling them names, that does not help open debate. As a result, there is very little reasonable conversation on the issue. Climate skeptics have all sorts of reasonable points on why they believe climate science is flawed, from alterations to temperature data, discrepancies between satellite and surface temperature measurements, a long history of failed predictions, gaps in warming, etc. **These discrepancies are explainable, but we are name calling instead of explaining them.** (Largely because the media and most people are less educated about these than the skeptics). It also does not help when scientists advocate to withdraw funding from scientists who publish contrary predictions, when government agencies want to prosecute Exxon, or when the NOAA refuses to explain how and why they made alterations to temperature data, not only to Congress but to other scientists in order \"to protect the integrity of the data\"--that's not science. As a result, to many Americans, the Climate Change debate has become much more of a political one than a scientific one. **5) Entrenched Interests and Pragmatic Solutions** You could certainly draw a parallel between cigarette companies and fossil fuel industry, but they are far from the same. There was a great deal more evidence that cigarette smoking was harmful. Money and lobbying certainly do play a role in policy but more importantly, politicians are more concerned about Climate Change policy's effect on the economy--jobs, fuel prices, development, etc than they are on money from the fossil fuel industry. Moreover, current proposals to reduce climate change are a drop in the bucket and would significantly hurt the economy, especially lower income Americans, more than they would reduce the threat of climate change. In addition, environmentalists fight against climate change on one hand while simultaneously fighting against our current viable solutions. Renewable energy--wind, solar, etc aren't at the point where they can replace fossil fuels. Fracking has created a natural gas boom. Natural gas produces far fewer emissions than coal does, yet the US grid is heavily based on coal. Nuclear power, while not suitable everywhere, produces exactly zero emissions. People don't want it in their back yard, but the fact is air pollution is everywhere and causes a great deal of disease all on its own. Then we have ridiculous ideas like \"biofuels\" which not only harm the environment in other ways but actually result in greater emissions than fossil fuels. If they don't want to do something serious about it, it's hard to take them seriously.",
"Entrenched corporate interests politicizing it for their personal gain plus apocalyptically-minded churches who see it as a competing eschatological scenario.",
"In the US there tends to be two factions that get most of the media attention... the crazy extremist alarmists who push fake science to promote a political agenda and the \"deniers\" who downplay the topic to insignificance. The truth is somewhere in the middle, but the general rule in the US is if you do not believe in the doomsday prophecies you are a \"denier.\" The Holocaust referencing is intentional to slander their political opponents. Nearly every person in US believes that the climate change exists and that humans have some role. The big debate is what to do about it and whether or not we should negatively impact our economy to \"fight it.\" Some believe that the change we could incur would not be worth the effort or the cost to our economy. Others believe it is a matter of life and death to do everything in our power to minimize the effects of global warming. Both sides have engaged in unethical behavior. One side pushes fake science funded by corporations looking to make a profit. And one side pushes false/misleading information to bring about economic policies they desire. Some examples of the pro-climate change misleading/unethical behavior/information from what would be considered credible sources are Michael Mann, James Hansen, CRU, etc. These people believe that misleading the public on the science is the best course of action for the greater good. Likewise, science funded by the corporations (which is often less than people think) is designed to give ammunition to politicians to prevent climate change regulations from being pushed through government and harm their businesses. This has become a major issue because Donald Trump has essentially issued gag orders on federal scientific organizations on the topic of climate change. Many Republicans believe these organizations have become more political than scientific and have become an extension of the Democratic party rather than being devoted to fact-based science. This is a dangerous precedent to set. The public should be aware of where their tax dollars are going and what the research is showing that they are paying for. We saw similar behavior from the Obama administration. Scientists who were too \"honest\" with what their data was showing to Congress and the public were fired. They wanted to maintain a narrative and keep the political edge regardless of what the truth was, they wanted it filtered and sanitized for their narrative before it went public. People who didn't get on board were retaliated against. The fear the administration had is the same as what we saw at the CRU scandal. Whenever the data doesn't show doom and gloom they need to sanitize it or hide it from the public for fear the the \"skeptics\" will use it as ammunition to fight against their policy proposals. And thus, the entire thing has largely stopped being about science and peer review and has now become more about politics and maintaining the notion of a consensus. The goal from the government has migrated to policy, the science is a tool meant to be supporting of said policy. Now that we have an administration change the policy is changing and the way in which they are using the scientific departments is also changing. Also, if you look at the IPCC reports going back over a decade you'll find that nearly every prediction was overstated and highly inaccurate. In fact, nearly all modeling and predictions in the modern climate change movement have been highly overstated and wrong in the direction of predicting far more warming and consequence than we have actually seen. This gives skeptics/deniers the ability to question the credibility of the institutions doing the research. Part of the problem we have now is that people expect the doom and gloom and if you attempt to publish a paper or report that does not support what would be considered the \"consensus\" it is assumed you are a quack and will no longer receive funding for your research which means you are out of the job. Yet, the \"consensus\" has been consistently wrong and overstated the problem. So it's a catch-22. Do you continue to publish what people want to read? Do you keep your mouth shut and hide the truth from the public to keep your job? Do you want to get the message out that the climate change debate is largely political knowing if you do so you'll have to turn to corporations to fund your future research and you'll be discredited immediately? Etc..",
"Only a portion of the *problem*, but American principles are often set in ways that distrust authority, and a negative side effect of that is the dismissal of rational thought from authority, including the dismissal of science. Another problem is the \"scientific media\". Turn on the news and you'll find some \"study\" that never even made it to peer review being blasted on the news. \"coffee is good for you\", while another channel/paper says it's bad, and then those views continue to flip flop. This causes a distrust in *science*. Another problem we are facing is not belief, but lack of caring. You live out in rural america and some *city person* comes and says your truck is polluting the earth and killing us and all that stuff. Yet these people see the \"heart\" of america, pumping out pollutants every day to support the many. When environmental problems happen the govt. doesn't do much(to the casual eye). So if companies can get away with a slap on the wrist for something like spilling thousands of gallons of oil into nature, why the fuck should I care about the little damage my gasoline engine does?(not saying it's right)"
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