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66j51g | What do men really mean when they say they can't understand women? What is it to be understood that's not understood and are men understandable? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Men and women are traditionally trained to have different communication methods. Women were raised to be submissive and less assertive in their communication, letting the man take the leadership position. Assertiveness which would be normal for a man is considered rude by a woman: Saying \"I want to eat at A\" would be borderline confrontational and instead something like \"A was nice when we were there before, what do you think?\" would be more common. This allows the man to make a different decision without directly slapping down the woman's overt desires, leaving the man in control while still letting him know the woman's preference. The problem is that men aren't traditionally taught this dance women are expected to perform and are instead taught to be tough, assertive, and authoritative as women respect those qualities. Being around other men doesn't help prepare for communication with women; men would say \"I want to eat at A\" and another man would either agree or disagree directly. It is simple because neither is giving up the authority of their own self-direction. If they can't agree on a place to eat then they will go off and eat on their own, while traditionally that wasn't even considered an option for women. Examples about restaurant selection aside this principle extends to many other interactions. As men are expected to initiate everything from dating, food selection, romantic involvement, marriage proposals, etc. women needed to make their desires known without putting the man into the position of directly acknowledging what they are as that would costrain him to either fulfill them (weakening his social position of authority) or deny them (insulting the woman and generally making everyone unhappy). But men aren't trained to look for those signs and women can have varying levels of proficiency in providing them. Women might cry to their friends \"I twirled my hair around my finger and smiled as I talked to him like Cosmo said and I don't have his dick in me yet, that must mean he thinks I'm ugly!\" while the guy is thinking \"That girl who likes fiddling with her hair is pretty cute but she didn't mention anything she would like to do with me. Her mind is impenetrable!\" I believe this is also where much of the stereotype of women being manipulative comes from; they have been specifically trained to be manipulative. They have desires they want to be fulfilled but have been taught that making them known is uncouth, so manipulating men into doing what they would like is the only socially acceptable behavior.",
"It's usually more of a joke, but it is based upon some real misunderstandings. Women are much better at nonverbal communication, and so they expect others to also understand it. Unfortunately, most guys don't, so we get very confused. Especially when women refuse to use words to explain because the guy should just \"know\" what's wrong. Not saying all men never understand anything, or that all women refuse to explain. But it is common enough to become a stereotype"
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66k66u | Why didn't any of the men or women who shot scenes with Traci Lords in the 80s get arrested for Statutory Rape? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In some jurisdictions, mistake of age is an affirmative defense to statutory rape. Affirmative defense means the burden of proof lies with the defendant to prove a mistake occurred, and in the absence of that proof, the jury presumes it did not. The standard of proof in these cases is very, very high, merely saying \"I swear thought she was 18!\" is not sufficient. The degree to which Lords misrepresented herself, and the degree to which the producers represented her age to other performers might be sufficient proof. Also, regardless of what the letter of the law says, the other performers are more victims than criminals. They were not personally trying to exploit her, that came from higher up."
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66lbjb | Why is the most common time signature in western music 4/4? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Humans have two legs. The two most common time signatures are 4/4 and 2/4 because it's easy for humans to relate to. We can relate to it so well because it's natural for us to move to the music is these signatures. After these, 3/4 is the next most common. Even in 3/4 though, the bars are normally counted in pairs, making a 6 count rhythm. I've had multiple conductors do a very slow 2 pattern for 3/4. 5/4 and 7/8 are only really seen in jazz and progressive rock and metal. Think about these genres. They aren't popular in comparison to typical genres that use 4/4, and people don't dance to them as much as they listen for the sake of listening."
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66lu19 | Why do students in America have to say the Pledge of Allegiance every day? | I'm about to graduate from high school and it recently occurred to me that for over 12 years now I've stood up at the the start of every weekday morning and recited the Pledge but I've never questioned why we do it. Why do we say it? Do we even *have* to say it? If not, why aren't we told that we don't have to say it? Sorry about the extra questions, I just think it's strange that I'm an adult and I don't understand something that I've been doing for most of my life. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Like any other school practice, it's because the people running the school think it's a good idea. When the Pledge of Allegiance was invented, school children were encouraged to recite it because it was thought this instilled a sense of patriotism and a better understanding of what America stands for. At times, it's been thought to defend against ideologies that most people are opposed to. For instance, the pledge was changed to say \"one nation *under God*\" as a symbolic rejection of Communism. Although not a lot of attention is paid to the content of the pledge in depth, many people argue that the use of symbols and habits actually is *intended* to have largely unconscious effects. They are not intellectual, the way you might read essays of the Founding Fathers, but work on a more subtle level. > Do we even have to say it? The First Amendment protects those with a religious or conscientious objection to saying the pledge from being forced to say it in a public school setting, per several Supreme Court cases. > If not, why aren't we told that we don't have to say it? The whole point is that it's a mass activity, in which people dedicate themselves to the same purpose together.",
"As a student in the U.S. I have never had to say the pledge every day outside of elementary school, which, now that I think about it is still a bit strange. Forcing kids not much older than toddlers to recite something they don't fully understand/fully comprehend.",
"We do it for \"patriotic\" reasons - indoctrination is probably a more accurate term, though. You do not have to say it. You're not told you don't because it probably never dawned on your teachers or parents to give you the choice. When I was in high school (it's been a while), I went through a very similar realization that you're having. I listened to the words of the pledge one day and realized that no one had ever explained them to me. I had just been saying them since I was five years old, when I was too young to actually comprehend the words pledge and allegiance - it was all just rote memorization. And from kindergarten until high school, it just became a habit - a ritual I was expected to participate in. When I was maybe a junior, I just decided I wasn't going to say it anymore. I still stood and put my hand over my heart to show respect, but I didn't say the words anymore. I felt brainwashed and manipulated. I still do not say it. I have also asked my kids (elementary school) what it means - then explained what it meant to them so that they would be able to make an educated choice of whether or not they really wanted to make that pledge. Needless to say I do not get behind memorization and repetition for the sake of memorization and repetition.",
"Indoctrination to a (USA) nationalistic identity. Much like the Lord's Prayer is indoctrination it to a Christian identity. You don't have to say it, because freedom of speech includes freedom not to speak. But when you're conditioned from childhood - before you can realize or choose your activities - you just fall in line. You are not told you don't need to say it because the people who want you to say it want your devotion and support for their agendas. It's ever to late to question Authority.",
"Saying the pledge of allegiance only became a thing for me and my classmates after September 11. The reason? Imagine pta meetings with parents demanding that their kids feel safe in a time of terrorism. Many of us watched the news the day after it happened, scared that we could go on a plane ride and never come back. My mom told me that the soldiers going to the middle east were fighting to prevent that from ever happening to us again. Saying the pledge was the logical way to honor them."
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66m0ee | As of recent I've noticed headlines read 'suspected terror attack' and similar lines, what makes it suspected and not straight up terror attack? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Proof. Most news networks are very careful these days about naming anything. Several news networks have got quite a bit wrong so they start using words like 'suspected' and 'alleged' or 'allegedly' to cover their backs.",
"What makes something a terrorist attack is the intent of the attacker. If i blow up a waffle house because I'm an asshole that isn't a terrorist attack. If i blow up a waffle house because I'm tired of old people, i want old people to know their days are numbered, and i want to drive old people out of my town... then that is a terrorist attack. Just because something kills a lot of people that may be a possibke terrorist attack because terrorist attacks also kill lots of people often. But until more is known about the attacker and their intent it is inaccurate to call it one."
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66m7cb | Why are witches of the occult often portrayed as green-skinned? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Wizard of Oz movie. It was of course in GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR and they wanted the witch to look weird and otherworldly, so they chose green. It was also a colour that looked really vivid. The look was so iconic and terrifying to children of the day that it became the de facto image for witches."
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66m902 | Why are other ideologies and differing ways of life viewed as threats by some governments? | Surely if there are no human rights violations going on and the people are generally happy with how things are, why is there a fear of the way others live and a desire to enforce change, especially if it's what those people want? See: communism and democracy; Christianity and islam. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"they fear being replaced. it's as easy as that. if the other way of life gains power it will mean their way loses control. Obviously there usually are legitimate reasons to oppose something but at its root its the fear of a loss of power.",
"I'm not sure your examples follow from your question: The US (a democracy) sees communism and thinks of the millions killed under Stalin and Mao (communists). Modern Day China (still communist) sees what the US is going in Syria, Iraq, Libya and sees slaughter. Christians and Muslims have been killing each other since the Crusades. Both see each other as capable of genocide. Even now, several Muslim majority countries are expelling and/or killing their remaining Christian populations - at the same time, Muslims are killed in the thousands by US drone strikes. When you see two ideologies clash, and clash this violently, look into the past, often not that far, and you will often see war, genocide, and death."
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66mdzx | Why does America use the date format MM/DD/YY instead of the more logical DD/MM/YY used elsewhere? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the US we say \"April 20th\" instead of \"the 20th of April\". The date format represents the way it's said.",
"Seems like the USA remains the only country in the world to do so.",
"It isn't any less logical to use that format. We just structure our dates how we speak them. April 20th for 04/20. It isn't really common to speak it as the 20th of April here. We just use a different system. Much like using a comma to show a thousand, I.e. 1,000 instead of 1.000."
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66mkxu | German royalty | There are still German royal families in existence, what is their role in the modern era? Do they hold positions in parliament? Are they figureheads only? What does the future hold for these families? Does the nobility struggle to maintain family holdings like other noble families throughout Europe? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I never heard of any German royalty, but apparently they are still around: URL_1 The current leader of the royal house has no political ambitions, and instead runs a business and a charity foundation: URL_0 I suspect the reason for such low profile is that Germany was a unified kingdom only for 50 years (1871-1918). Before, it was a bunch of equal provinces within Austrian Empire. Afterwards, it was a republic, kinda like France.",
"there is even a term in german \"verarmter Adel\" which translates to \"poor royals\". That describes descendants of royal families that are still holding a royal title but are average people with average jobs. there is a (very) small society of royals that engage in formal event but it is just for keeping an tradition. some royal members have positions in companies or benefit foundations. but they don't have any special rights or powers for being a member of a royal family. it's just a title that has the same value as saying \"I'm Redditor Zasma\"."
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66n61f | Why swords are "she"? | I managed to google why ships referred as she, i couldnt find why swords are also feminine. does it apply to only swords or some other weapons? Is there words in english that are "he"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most warriors throughout history have been male, and they put female attributes to their weaponry and vehicles because those things are their constant companion. So much so they are as close as a spouse. It applies to all kinds of weaponry as well. Fighter planes were often given female names, and during the American Civil War it was common for soldier to name their muskets (and rifles if they had them) the woman's name \"Bess\"."
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66oi87 | What is a DaddyoFive and why should I hate it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Daddyofive is a youtuber that (mostly) makes videos of very cruel pranks he and his family do to his adopted son (Cody, about 10ish years old). They feature lots of yelling and screaming at the kid, accusing him of doing things he obviously didn't do, the kid crying etc, and they usually end with the dad going \"it's just a prank, brah\". I would not recommend anyone watch the videos. The videos are so disturbing that many people are calling it child abuse and child protective services have been notified. This is probably why all his videos were taken down, to hide the evidence.",
"DaddyOFive is a channel that is a mix of a family channel and a \"pranks\" channel. The family comprises of: a man ~~with~~ *seems to me to have* borderline personality disorder with two biological children from a previous relationship, and an overweight woman ~~with~~ *seems to me to have* severe anti-social personality disorder (plus narcissistic and sadistic traits) with three biological children from a previous relationship. Most of the videos involve \"pranks\" which involve abusing the youngest child Cody (DaddyOFive's son). The father does this for fun, views and money. The step-mother does this for the same reasons in addition to her hatred of her step-son. The videos include: - The invisible ink \"prank\". The grown-ups put invisible ink on the carpet, and then scream and swear at Cody and one of the other kids, blaming them for spilling ink on the carpet. Those kids are scared and crying. Cody tries to reason with them, but fails due to the futility of reasoning with stupid. At the end, Cody is forced to say the outro (like, subscribe etc.) while looking miserable. - Smashing stuff \"pranks\". The dad screams and swears at Cody over something, and then smashes something of his (e.g. XBox). Cody looks very stressed and cries (not surprising since there is a raging grown-up armed with a hammer). Cody still looks miserable after receiving a replacement. - Bullying by older step-brothers. The father and step mother encourage or at least permit, the bullying of Cody (including violence) from his step-siblings. - Slapping. There was some kind of \"challenge\". Losing it meant a hard slap in the face from a sibling/step-sibling. DaddyOFive's daughter was hurt during this. - Cody not going to Disneyland. The whole family go to Disneyland except for Cody, who stays with his step-grandparents for being 'badly behaved'. His father is having doubts about not letting him go (the only ounce of compassion he shows), but due to his low intelligence and borderline personality disorder, he is manipulated by his projection expressing narcissistic-psychopath wife (saying stuff like 'he chose to be bad', and 'he will ruin the trip' etc.). Cody begs for the bullying to end, and begs them to stop filming, but his father and step-mother are merciless. In one video, he tried running away but his father threw him into a bookshelf. He then appeared to have a bleeding nose. The DaddyOFive channel has been around since 2015, and has over 700,000 subscribers, but it has only been in recent weeks that it has gained a lot of attention. People who think this is wrong, aren't the kind of people who would seek out, subscribe to, and watch such a channel. Fortunately some decent people came across the channel and publicised what was going on. DaddyOFive released some 'sorry-not-sorry \"haters\" back-off' type videos. The final video has him and his wife complaining about \"that DeFranco guy\" and the false \"aquisations\" (sp) of abuse. The borderline father seemed sad but the psychopath step-mum seemed unfazed and yawned during the video. All videos except the final one were made private, but there are many archived copies and reaction videos elsewhere. Given that this 'sorry-not-sorry' video only had the two grown-ups in it (the other had the kids saying stuff to defend the parents like \"at least we don't get beaten\"), it is possible that the children have now been taken from them. Edit: ~~with~~ *seems to me to have* .",
"Don't forget they also have mommyofive or momofice I forget but it is the wife doing the same evil shit to this poor kid. There is nothing funny about making a child cry and this poor boy is constantly being pushed to the point of tears and tantrums. It is disgusting and thanks to reddit hopefully will be stopped. You have to love it when the reddit community bans together to prevent or stop something horrible hat is happening",
"Phillip DeFranco did a great video exposing the whole situation, URL_0 he his two following videos are also updates on the same topic.",
"If you dont want to watch the videos giving those vile parents ad revenue. [Heres a good video from Philip DeFranco]( URL_0 ) explains whats going on and breaks down the videos.",
"I need an ELI5 of how they had 700k+ subscribers. There are much more quality/educational/humorous channels that don't have that many subscribers. So how is it that 766,000 people saw these videos and thought it tickled their bones enough to subscribe and ultimately led the channel to believe THOSE are the types of videos his \"audience\" wanted to see. On his twitter page, there's these 30-sec teasers of him taking a hammer and slowly walking and putting it on top of an XBOX, obviously hinting at his latest 'fun parent prank.' I'm just confused as to what caused him to think that wasting resources/giving his kids a violent scare is the kind of videos that will give him more views and ultimately expand his viewership (earning$$)",
"If you want the full, in-depth version (you kind of don't, it's soul crushing...) [Nerd City]( URL_0 ) just put out an incredibly detailed video. Really shows the extent of the problem by being able to fill 30 minutes with very minimal use of repeated clips. It's a shit show on the Do5 channel..."
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66paff | Why is 'Russian Roullete' Russian? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"From Wikipedia: > In Mikhail Lermontov's \"The Fatalist\" (1840), one of five novellas comprising his A Hero of Our Time, a minor character places a gun with an unknown number of bullets to his head, pulls the trigger and survives. However, the term \"Russian roulette\" does not appear in the story. > The term \"Russian roulette\" was possibly first used in an eponymous 1937 short story by Georges Surdez. However, the story describes using a gun with one empty chamber out of six, instead of five empty chambers out of six: > 'Did you ever hear of Russian Roulette?' ... with the Russian army in Romania, around 1917... some officer would suddenly pull out his revolver, anywhere, at the table, remove a cartridge from the cylinder, spin the cylinder, snap it back in place, put it to his head and pull the trigger. There were five chances to one that the hammer would set off a live cartridge and blow his brains all over the place. As with all things it started in a book long ago.",
"There is a specific Russian made revolver, forgot the actual name of it. But when one cartridge is left in the cylinder it would always land on the bottom when spun. The owner of said gun would then put it to their own head and pull the trigger, knowing that the third person to participate would die. Edit: Nagant M1895 revolver used",
"This is the most commonly given explanation in Russia (by Russians): During the bolshevik revolution a lot of the soldiers and officers in what was at the time known as the white army (which was opposed to what would become known as the red army) were depressed at the bleak prospects and the general state of the post-tsar Russia, and they were, eventually destroyed. But this fatalistic/suicidal attitude toward the end was prevalent and gave rise to the game of playing with one's life in a social setting as it made no difference in the end, the end was already evident and inevitable. Around the same time a lot of the white army officers managed to flee Russia to the west, hence bringing with them some of these tales. Edit: To answer some of the questions asked in the comments below - my grandfather was an officer in the Russian army, he spent his life time in the Russian military and was also an avid student of history. This was one of many stories I've heard from him and his side of the family, but I should point out, I've heard the same story from other unrelated sources in Russia, so I've kind of always taken it for granted that this was the established origin of the term Russian roulette. A cursory search of google can show more in-depths discussions of this.",
"Russian's were known for doing reckless things, so whether they invented the term or not it seemed like something Russians would do. There was a game called \"Cuckoo\" where an officer would stand on a table in the middle of a room with a pistol. They'd turn off the lights and other officers would hide behind furniture and yell \"Cuckoo\" and the officer on the table would fire at the sound.",
"I think the term \"Russian Roulette\" is 100% fictional. A novelist mentioned that term in one of his stories about war (including russian soldiers). There is no proof that russian soldiers every did something like this. it just got popular as a term since the idea of a fatal gambling game is quite ... interesting.",
"What I've heard from a friend in the military is that it was a test used to see if soldiers had cleaned and oiled their pistols. A clean pistol would always mean that the chamber with the bullet in it would end at the bottom since it was heaviest, so if the gun was cleaned they could safely pull the trigger knowing it would not be lined up with a loaded chamber",
"Because here in the US every chamber has a round in it - so nobody was ever left to pass the name of the game on to the next players....just a pile of bodies... But In Russia, ammo was scarce - they were using it for food around the time the Tsars were deposed, but wanted to play the new game that was sweeping the west...since they played with only one round, most players lived to pass on the name of the game and its rules to the next generation.....",
"A good part of this has to simply be the alliteration, as is often the case in phrase origins."
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66pygg | what happens to things like bank accounts, online profiles, subscriptions, etc. after someone dies? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are clear probate laws that handle most cases, explaining how one's possessions (called their estate) should be distributed. A person, called the executor of the estate, is approved by the courts to settle the person's affairs. They distribute the money in bank accounts, sell their house, whatever is needed. Online, some companies have good policies and others have less good policies. Since the laws aren't very specific about online \"possessions\", because they were written long ago, sometimes companies don't feel the need to help the executor. Most respond to a court order, and the others get sued.",
"Generally bank accounts are closed. Someone, say someone who is set to inherit the money, will gain control of the assets in your account. Online profiles stay there unless you go through an extreme amount of trouble to get them removed. You basically have to prove your identity and present the entity with a death certificate to have the account removed. Several of my dead friends are still on Facebook. Subscriptions will cancel once the bank accounts have been closes.",
"Bank accounts usually have what is called a Payable on Death (POD). It is kind of like a joint account that only kicks in after you die. It isn't inheritence, that person simply now controls the account and everything in it. Social media accounts usually have some provision when loved ones can report that had died, and the account gets frozen or removed. It varies from service to service. Subscriptions keep coming until they are cancelled. You may or may not get some sort of a refund.",
"With bank accounts you can put a POD (payable on death) on it, so when you die the bank account is transferred to whoever is listed, or if it's a joint bank account it will still belong to your husband/wife/etc. Otherwise if you haven't stated anywhere who you want it to go to, the bank account will go to your estate and your family will have to go through probate and figure out who gets what. Generally speaking to cancel services, utilities, etc of a deceased person you will have to provide the companies with a copy of the death certificate."
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66qbsc | What is the best case DENYING (human-caused, human-correctible) climate change? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Someone sent me a PM asking the same thing a while back, so I'll tell you what I told them. First, the general attitude, stance, and language of the Climate Change(CC) crowd. Science is first and foremost never settled. A scientist who thinks something is settled isn't much of a scientist at all. It's an ongoing process of discovery, reviewing past assumptions, testing, retesting, analyzing new data, retesting some more and then coming to a new conclusion. And as soon as that conclusion is found, you immediately start the process over again and see if you were wrong on anything, retest some more. Find new data. Constantly reviewing any past conclusions. The language of the CC crowd is the antithesis of this. It's become a lot more akin to an article of faith, and those who disagree for any reason are likened to heretics. Even the hip term \"climate change denier\" was created to like them to Holocaust deniers, as if someone disagreeing with the amount of effect humans have on the climate is on the same moral level as not caring if millions of people were systematically executed. The whole attitude around it is decidedly unscientific, and is frankly a lot closer to religious dogma right up there with the attack of anyone who goes against that dogma. Second, the deception. There have been several verified and documented cases where those on the CC side have been found to have been lying, talking to each other about lying, deliberately leaving out data from reports, and outright falsifying data. This is also not only very scientific, but casts extreme doubt on the whole deal. If a side of an argument needs to blatantly lie and fudge the numbers to get their point across, it's a hell of a lot harder to take their points seriously. And it also begs the question, what other instances of deception have we not yet found out about. Third, the people who are the biggest proponents and their \"solutions\". If I were gravely concerned about some particular issue that stood to affect a huge portion of the population, I would make it one of my most important goals to make it as apolitical as possible. I would do whatever I could to get the most amount of people on board with it as possible, win as many to my side, make it as non-divisive, non-partisan, and as cut off from the typical two-group divide as possible Basically all of the things the political left has gone out of their way not to do with CC. The left has done everything they can to tie CC to the rest of the left's platform, and in the process, automatically set a huge portion of the country against them. They made it a part of the Democrat Party platform and used it as a bludgeon to attack the right. Furthermore, it is very suspicious to those of us who have been paying attention for a pretty long while that their \"solutions\" to CC are strikingly similar to the same \"solutions\" they have for every other problem they see, namely massive increases in the control the government has over the lives and lifestyle choice of individuals, and massive confiscations and redistribution of wealth. Tell people what to eat, what to drive, where they can drive and how often, where to live, what light-bulbs and laundry detergent they can use, and on and on and on. The same stuff they hold up as the solutions for everything from gun control to poverty to women's rights and everything in between. Take control of more money and decide who gets what, and take more control over the life choices of the citizens. And they're the exact same \"solutions\" they had back in the day for the impending ice age alarmism, acid rain, and the hole in the ozone layer. So it comes off as a little more than suspicious that the same crowd trots out the same methods of taking away liberty and property from people for every new crisis they say comes along. And as for those \"solutions\"? So far no one has been able to demonstrate that any of them can or will have any measurable effect on the problem in the end anyways. All of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on all sorts of government programs, carbon credits, cutting down on manufacturing, etc and the best estimates the CC people can come up with is that it all might stave off CC by a couple days, a couple weeks, maybe a year. Totally destroying and remaking the entire face of human society, economies, the jobs and lives of billions of people who are struggling to live and work right here right now, to give us an extra month or two. And that extra month or two? We won't know for sure in a hundred or more years. You see, they started out making predictions about \"By the year 2000...\", or \"in 10 years it will be too late\", \"In 15 years, we'll be past the point of no return\". But a funny thing happened....all of those predictions were wrong. Flat out wrong. !00% of them failed to come to pass. The CC has yet to establish any kind of reliable and verifiable track record that they can make even one prediction that can be shown to be anywhere close to accurate. Whenever they tried, it didn't come true. So they've switched tactics. Push the prediction off to a point where no one who hears it today will be alive when it comes time to check and see if they were even right. But in the mean time, give us you money, let us tell you how to live, and don't mind the fact we've been caught lying about it all before...Just give us control and we promise this doomsday scenario we say will certainly happen in 100 years won't happen. And lastly, the sun has a hell of a lot more to do with earth's climate than we even know at this point. Other bodies in our solar system have mysteriously also been experiencing temperature fluctuations, and yet there are no humans there to cause it. There is just so much we don't know about the sun, solar cycles, and the rest to be able to conclusively say that it's not a cause. We do however know for a fact that in recorded human history, the sun did have a drastic effect on our climate, long before we were pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. The Little Ice Age was caused not by humans, but by changes in solar output. We know that changes in the sun can make the earth cool enough over the span of a few decades to dramatically alter the lives of every person on earth. It happened. It stands to reason that it can go the other way as well. Is it doing that now? We don't know. There is a lot about the sun we don't know and at our current technology level, can't know yet. So all of that put together, and I'm sorry but when the same hucksters, liars, and authoritarians who have been trying to take my money and my say in my own life choices for 50-60 years now come along and try to do it again, after being found to be lying about it before, to solve a problem they can't even show they can actually solve even if I go along with it, I'm going to remain skeptical. And frankly, until I see Leonardo DiCaprio and the rest selling their beachfront homes that they're so certain are going to be under water in no time, I'm going to continue to eat meat, drive what car I want where I want, use whatever light-bulbs I want, keep my heard earned money, and vote against and oppose anyone and everyone who seeks to take those things away from me.",
"I like the website [ URL_1 ]( URL_2 ), which gives dispassionate and largely apolitical ELI5's both for and against important issues, with citations to authority where appropriate. You can find their discussion of climate change [here]( URL_0 ). They have 14 pro's and 13 con's for global warming. I encourage everyone to read the full list, but just by way of example, here is the first pro and the first con: **Pro 1** Overwhelming scientific consensus says human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. The 2010 Anderegg study found that 97-98% of climate researchers publishing most actively in their field agree that human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. The study also found that the expertise of researchers unconvinced of human-caused climate change is \"substantially below\" that of researchers who agree that human activity is primarily responsible for climate change. [7] The 2013 Cook review of 11,944 peer-reviewed studies on climate change found that only 78 studies (0.7%) explicitly rejected the position that humans are responsible for global warming. [1] A separate review of 13,950 peer-reviewed studies on climate change found only 24 that rejected human-caused global warming. [5] A survey by German Scientists Bray and Von Storch found that 83.5% of climate scientists believe human activity is causing \"most of recent\" global climate change. [172] A separate survey in 2011 also found that 84% of earth, space, atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrological scientists surveyed said that human-induced global warming is occurring. [6] **Con 1** More than one thousand scientists disagree that human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. In 2010 Climate Depot released a report featuring more than 1,000 scientists, several of them former UN IPCC scientists, who disagreed that humans are primarily responsible for global climate change. [55] The Cook review [1] of 11,944 peer-reviewed studies found 66.4% of the studies had no stated position on anthropogenic global warming, and while 32.6% of the studies implied or stated that humans are contributing to climate change, only 65 papers (0.5%) explicitly stated \"that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming.\" [54] A 2012 Purdue University survey found that 47% of climatologists challenge the idea that humans are primarily responsible for climate change and instead believe that climate change is caused by an equal combination of humans and the environment (37%), mostly by the environment (5%), or that there’s not enough information to say (5%). [173] In 2014 a group of 15 scientists dismissed the US National Climate Assessment as a \"masterpiece of marketing,\" that was \"grossly flawed,\" and called the NCA’s assertion of human-caused climate change \"NOT true.\" [56]"
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66qp5x | Why do people say America has a terrible education system? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For the average amount of money spent per student, the results are not that stellar when compared to other nations. Sources: [performance]( URL_0 ) [spending]( URL_1 ) School districts are funded using property taxes, so poorer areas have crappier schools, which contributes to a vicious cycle of poverty. There are areas with really great schools, and areas with really bad schools, so really the education system is only good if you can afford to send your child to the better schools. A lot of things are also determined on the state level, adding another variable to quality of education and what gets prioritized.",
"K-12 education in the United States is a tiered system. At the top are the elite private schools that cost 5 to 6 figures per year. These schools only take from the 1% or even the .1%. Next are the private schools that take students from the top 5% or 10% and cost at least 4-5 figures per semester. After that you have the religious schools, also private, who will take more students, say off of the top 20%, but a student can be expelled easily if academics or behavior is a problem, and they don't usually take students with special needs. Then you have the newer phenomenon - charter schools. Many charters have lotteries for enrollment, and also have strict expelling policies for academic or behavioral failure. What's left are the public schools, which, as has been pointed out in other comments, are underfunded. And have to take all students who enroll. And have to then deal with every kid's issues. And what's left of student populations in public schools, especially in inner cities, are the students no one else wants. These kids have problems at home, in their communities. They come to school hungry, no food at home. They have special needs and there aren't resources available to deal with these needs. Teachers spend thousands every year out of their own pockets to bring just extra pencils and paper for kids to use because students cannot afford to buy their own. Add in all the policies and laws that constrict how teachers teach and what they teach, plus being scared as a teacher that you won't be given a 'good' when you get your yearly review from the school's administration for student test scores being bad or not rising, you have the recipe for disaster. Rural areas also have issues - their schools are mostly public schools, underfunded because of rural poverty. When people talk about the terrible education system, they usually mean the public school system. They don't see how it got to be so bad. When you look at the tiered system, you can begin to see how the United States is funneling its worst students into a place where the bad can all be seen.",
"Teacher salaries are terrible, classrooms are often underbudgeted as someone pointed out (so teachers have to pay for necessary supplies like pencils out of pocket), big focus on producing an athletic, STEM-oriented student rather than budgeting for a more well-rounded curriculum, foreign language options are a joke unless you study for 3 or 4+ years (which many students do not) and in some schools foreign languages have been completely cut... Also with the prevalence of standardized testing culture there's a big focus on \"teaching to the test\" (basically memorizing facts that you only need for a year or so) rather than actual critical thinking, long-term skills, etc because the teacher can face rewards/consequences based on the outcome of those tests. I graduated high school in 2013 and I did some observations in elementary, middle, & high schools during my sophomore year of college, so this is all from fairly recent firsthand experience. EDIT: Just remembered that many public schools have a terrible student-to-teacher ratio, too. Not uncommon to find classrooms with 30+ students learning under one underpaid, overworked teacher. A smaller ratio is better so students with different learning styles or speeds can get more individualized help.",
"Most of the education system is horribly underfunded, school supplies generally come from the teachers' salaries (which are already slim enough) In addition to this, schools are awarded grants based on standardized testing scores, so the priority is for the students to be able to get good test scores so the school can get money. In this circumstance, the kids are treated as a means to an end rather than as a resource to be cultivated",
"The US has a wonderful education system, people send their children to the US from all around the world to attend private schools and universities. Alas, that's not the system that everybody gets educated it. If you are smart, hard working, and your parents have money there is an excellent chance you will get a good education. If you are smart and hard working, it's also possible. If you're poor and struggling to survive the drugs and gangs in your neighborhood, then your educational opportunities (which might otherwise enable your escape) are not so rosy. To be all things to all people, the educational system would have to provide housing, food, clothing, education, love and attention. It's unable to do that due to scale and cost issues. Dividing the work between the family and the school system produces the uneven results observed, but it is much more affordable."
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66r00d | What truth is there behind the stereotype that southerners are dumb, and how did it happen? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I grew up in a very small southern town. In this town, education wasn't something that people prioritized. College wasn't a must, hell, most of the people from my parent's and their parent's generation didn't finish high school. I think there's miscommunication in some southerners being dumb, and some southerners being uneducated. So what it boils down to is previous generations valued a hard days work (manual labor) over reading a book. I know people that can't add 2 and 3 together but they can take a broken lawn mower engine apart and put it back together using a fishing pole, 3 jelly beans and a roll of duct tape and it'll run the Indy 500. I'm obviously exaggerating but you get my point. Basically being dumb isn't the same as being uneducated.",
"Long ago, the Southeast USA was not highly industrialized, and did not have a high density of good universities or colleges. Most people made their living in low-education industries such as farming. So sophisticated, educated Northern people looked down on them.",
"So yes and no. There is some truth in it, but the issue is education rather than intelligence. Many of the southern states are poor and more spread out in rural communities, which leads to underperforming education systems. On top of that, the larger religious presence and old jim crow laws encouraged a rejections of good education as it conflicted with religious or social norms that have long been disproven. You can see that in southern states where the education boards are constantly trying to teach creationism instead of evolution. So southerners aren't dumber, they are just from areas that have a lot of factors creating an inept, underfunded, underperforming education system that teaches incorrect information.",
"Looking at people on the level of states is a blunt and crude way to analyze most data, and regions are even worse. The South stretches a greater distance than Paris to Kiev, and is the most populous region of the United States. It contains enormous diversity in every sense of the word. Are eastern Kentucky and Charleston, SC all that similar? How about the Mississippi Delta vs. the Research Triangle? A century ago, educational attainment really was pretty weak in the South. Economic development remained poor, urbanization wasn't proceeding all that fast, and the climate didn't help. (It wasn't just a matter of comfort in summer--malaria and yellow fever had much of the effect then they still do on the third world now.) This has changed fairly dramatically over time. What we do see, looking at maps of educational attainment, is that much of the rural South has seen substantial brain drain to larger cities. Young people from small towns tend to go where the education is, and many don't come back. Inevitably, those who don't move have less education. Similar patterns crop up in much of the Rust Belt. We probably shouldn't ignore the ugly part of the stereotype: The South has by far the highest percentage of African-Americans of any U.S. region, most of all in the oft-mocked Mississippi and Alabama. People may backtrack and say they don't mean black people, or the booming Hispanic population in the South, and not the large or medium-sized cities, or the small college towns, but at a certain amount of cherry-picking it's not much of a geographic stereotype.",
"I mean just looking at statistics the South isn't always looking too good. With the exception of cities and occasional wealthy areas the rural South is pretty destitute and rife in poverty, obesity, and drug use. Also city livers have often had a distance for people living out in the middle of no where for as long as people have lived in urban areas. Cities just have more opportunities and resources than remote areas do, especially when a region relies on an outdated resource like coal or old cash crops.",
"Because there was more farming land in the south and you needed to know how to farm not much else. In the North industry was more prominent so you needed an education to promote and increase industry. That should answer it."
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66rgey | Why do curse words/expletives change so much compared to other words? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Curse words are generally related closely to a time's taboos. For instance, words like \"fuck\" and \"shit\" were not taboo in the Middle Ages because among the common folk there was little to do to hide your sex and pooping (thus making it difficult to be taboo). In that time, God and Jesus' physical bodies (and later, bodies in general) were taboo, so swears would be things like \"Christ's blood\" or \"God's wounds\". Now that we all have our own places to sleep and can do our sex and poops in private, those are taboo things, increasing their vulgarity."
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66rs0v | Why was it that the Rwandan genocide couldn't be stopped or prevented and why was it such a large massacre? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"The US arguably chose to ignore the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Rwanda was not an oil, gold or diamond rich country and from an economic perspective, the US did not have a lot to gain by intervening. Journalist Rory Carroll wrote an article for the Guardian, explaining why the US chose to ignore Rwandan genocide. The other issue was the prior events in Somalia. In 1993, a year prior to the Rwandan genocide, US soldiers were killed by Somalians and their tortured bodies dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. This horrific media footage was shown to the world, and as a result, America was apprehensive about sending more troops to Africa. Battle of Mogadishu (1993) The US did not call what was occurring a ‘genocide’ at the time, because this would imply that they had to intervene. The first time the term was used by the US government was on 25th May (too late) and even then, it was diluted into the term ‘acts of genocide’. Surely it’s either a genocide, or it is not?\" TLDR; The countries that could have intervened did not do so because they either lacked the resources or the political incentive. Involving themselves would have been for the point of ending a genocide, with little to no reward or incentive for doing so. You could look at recent foreign affairs to see the types of incentive would drive the US, for example, to invest resources into a war torn country.",
"A: The Rwandan genocide happened very very fast. It lasted only around a hundred days in fact (and it started very suddenly). Around 800.000 people were killed in those 100 days. It sounds incredible, but it really went that fast. B: because of the huge chaos that existed in Rwanda during the genocide, and through the efforts of the perpetrators of the genocide, information about the genocide spread relatively slowly to other countries, delaying their response. C: the perpetrators of the genocide took over government control and then deliberately and gruesomely massacred a squad of Belgian UN peacekeepers right at the start of the genocide. This made outside governments like the USA much more hesitant about intervening. C2: governments like the USA were also simply unwilling to risk the deaths of their own soldiers or the possibility of involvement in questionable actions (like accidentally bombing civilians) that was likely to occur if they were to intervene in the chaotic situation (did I mention how chaotic the Rwandan genocide was? Let me just make sure you understand: it was absolute chaos down there). Outside governments risked political fallout if they intervened, so they decided to play it safe and delay their response. If this sounds uncaring, unethical, amoral etc., then you would probably be right. But politics at this level always is. That is just the way the world works, unfortunately. D: as to how the perpetrators managed to kill such an appaling number of people in such an incredibly short amount of time....that would require several history lessons to fully explain. I cannot fully remember enough about the genocide to give you these lessons, but I CAN tell you that the genocide was meticulously prepared before-hand. There was absolutely nothing spontaneous about it. Enormous amounts of weapons (mainly machetes) had been imported beforehand, and these were handed out to militias that had been trained beforehand to get ready to kill civilians. Kill-lists had been prepared, lots of strategical planning had been done to maximize the effectiveness of militias, including setting up very effective roadblocks everywhere that prevented the victims from going anywhere. The population had been thoroughly indoctrinated by popular radio stations that completely dehumanized the victims. And there was ofc the coup. The president was assassinated, every moderate member of the government was assassinated, all important people were immediately arrested, control over every important sector of the government was immediately established by the organizers of the coup. It all went very smoothly and much, much much quicker than anyone could ever have imagined."
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66stc5 | Roman architecture is so revered for being one of the strongest and best engineered. Yet, so few of their important buildings remain. What happened? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A couple factors: **Age**, **Location**, **history** * **Age**: Rome was founded almost 3000 years ago. The colosseum was built almost 2000 years ago. In that time materials physically fail (wood rots, concrete erodes). People also broke roman structures down for materials from time to time * **Location**: Rome is still a city, and most of the Roman cities are now major metropolitan areas. In that time demands for land forced people to destroy the old to make room for the new. This is why we see miles of Hadrian's Wall, a 1900 year old structure, still standing today. * **history**: We have the human factor too. These cities were sacked in wars, and sometimes razed to demoralize the citizens. There were also accidents: fires that destroyed sectors of towns, earthquakes, and mudslides. TL;DR So much can go wrong with time that it's amazing anything they made is standing",
"The ones that remain ARE the amazing thing. Our skyscrapers and our modern engineering is going to be decomissioned and demolished in 100-200 years because it will begin to crumble, all of the bridges in the US are falling apart and must be rebuilt, etc. Roman buildings have been around for 2000.",
"Not an expert but I do know of that locals sometimes would demo parts of buildings/works for building material.",
"A great deal of damage was done by locals over the centuries. Consider how much easier it is to get a pre-cut stone from the old ruined city over there than to quarry it yourself, and perhaps from a distant location. As an example, my tour guide in Pergamon said much of the damage was from locals who pillaged the limestone/marble to make into whitewash for their trees. We've been taught to appreciate and treasure our cultural heritage. Many of our ancestors weren't, or were even taught to hate and destroy things made by past civilizations. Also some people today are being taught that... see the recent destruction of Palmyra.",
"You realize that they build over 2000 years ago?",
"We recently learned Roman concrete was so good because they incorporated volcanic ash, which worked as a *really* good binder. \"Lets just use that ourselves!\". Our demand for concrete is many orders of magnitude larger than the amount of volcanic ash we could collect. But since we know it works, we now know how to design better artificial binders in the future. As for you exact question; Not all wear and tear is weathering; A lot of destroyed buildings would be due to human causes.",
"A lot of the important structures of Rome remained, such as the colloseum, Vatican, pantheon, forum (partially destroyed in ww2) baths of caracalla, catacombs etc..",
"Apart from pyramids (and a pile of stone blocks doesn't really have a way it could collapse), Greek and Roman buildings are among the oldest buildings still around. Modern buildings won't last 2000 years. Many won't even last 200."
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66stpe | Why do Americans use 'mom' and not mum also change other words? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For the same reason you don't use Ye Old English like you read in Shakespeare's plays, or even the most obscure English from way before that. Language change, and that's fleek, it's lit, it's groovy, and it's far out, man.",
"Mom is the older shortening of \"Mother\". As with many things it is the British not the Americans that changed things.",
"A lot of so-called \"Americanisms\" were actually the original British word that died out or changed in the mother country, but were preserved in America. Or, as in the case of \"fall/autumn\" for example, there were kind of two words for the same thing, and a different one ended up getting preserved in each country.",
"To expand on the other answer, one of the big sources of difference between US & other instances of English is that when the printing press was first getting really popular, spelling and the possible uses of particular letters wasn't yet standardized. Different writers, editors, and publishers would adhere to different standards or make up their own, particularly due to the influence of our large multilingual immigrant population. However! That all changed in the US mainly thanks to Noah Webster, who spent most of his life creating and revising a dictionary specifically intended to standardize English as it was used in America. He chose to break with the prevailing trends in UK English to better solidify the American identity as distinct from our progenitors, and in addition to his efforts with the Webster dictionary, he also made readers and other texts for early American schools. I know that English in the UK actually went through a lot of changes as well since that time, but you'd need to get more info on that subject from somebody else.",
"Mum? Filthy Cockney. I only refer to her as Mater."
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66sy9r | Why do car commercials contain license plates painted to match the vehicle's body color? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Companies do it because they want people looking at their car not the license plates, plus they can't show a real license plates in a commercial and have to put something there. Companies pay millions for their ads and if people are reading the license plate instead of looking at their car their losing money.",
"Most car commercials are 100% CGI using a sled car. URL_0",
"because it looks nicer that way, and the point of the ad is to look nice so you'll buy what it's selling",
"We are so accustomed to cars having a license plate that to see one without it would look weird. If you ever take off a license plate from the back of a car, even a new one, there really isn't much there, just a couple of holes and a blank area."
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66uioy | What is Virtue Signaling? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's loudly performing the outward signs of your group's ideology, beyond your actual feelings on the matter, as a means of gaining status within the group. It can be name-dropping Jesus all over the place for religious people, getting snotty (but ineffective) over a popular social issue on the internet, making a performance out of repeating your political party's latest dogwhistles and soundbites... Showing off about what a righteous person you must be, as a way as identifying yourself as 'one of us'."
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66uve3 | Why do governments hide information from public? | What is the reasoning for many governments holding information classified until it is no longer significant or prevalent? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Security. Directly and indirectly, the government is responsible for the wellbeing of a lot of people, and some of that information, if released, could threaten that. Note that I am not saying all the information the government keeps hidden is 100% needed for national security and some may be hidden more for convenience or to cover up certain things, but that doesn't mean there aren't some real security concerns with 100% free and available information. Take stuff like troop movements, informants in foreign areas, army capabilities and research and federal crime related information. Releasing all of that could threaten the security and ability to investigate things. The government undoubtedly has informants in ISIS held areas, and that information needs to be hidden to make sure they remain safe. Same goes with army movements, capabilities and research. Posting info on the exact movements of your troops, where they are stationed, how they are stationed, how the base looks like exactly and so on would just make those troops incredibly vulnerable to a well-prepared attack. If we look at things being kept hidden that are related to FBI investigations, when you are investigation something, even if you are sharing some information with the public, you can never be 100% open with your information. That compromises your investigation. In any investigation you are going to keep certain information hidden to weed out false confessions."
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66v6ie | Under what authority and to what limit can the US go into foreign countries and seize non-US citizens for crimes against the US | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Strictly speaking, they can't. Such things are only possible with special treaties between 2 countries. Usually those include that the US can ask government XYZ to extradite a person. If they agree, they either bring the person to the US, or allow to US to go there and get him. If not, nothing happens, such is the case with Assange *(Ecuador)* and Snowden *(Russia)*.",
"Under the authority of \"who's going to stop us?\" There is no authority in international relations other than the idea that you're only as good as your word, and the idea that might makes right. The UN has about as many teeth as a newborn puppy, and what few it *does* have require a UN security council vote, which the US (and Russia, and China) can just veto as need be."
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66vbpg | How can credit card fraud cause bankruptcy | I was reading an article on /r/worldnews about a Russian hacker who stole a ton of credit cards. URL_0 The article states "Many of the businesses he targeted were small businesses, including Broadway Grill in Seattle, which was forced into bankruptcy following the cyber-attack." I don't see how this is possible. Every time I have had credit card fraud I simply called my issuer and they said "Sorry, we reversed the charges. Thank you for being a customer". I thought you are only liable for $50 or something trivial in the US. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, it kind of works like this: (I might miss an important step somewhere, but this is the essence of it:) The store sells you something. You pay using a credit card. The card is an authorization to charge you, as long as some important requirements are met. The store has to ensure that the authorized user of the card is actually in the store when the card is used. This is done by verifying the cards PIN, by asking for ID and/or by comparing the signature with the one on the back of the card. This is why stores are so keen on keeping their receipt with your signature on it, write down your passport number or make you stand still in front of a camera for five seconds and...you know...any measure that makes it possible for them to prove afterwards that you were actually there when the purchase was made. Which leads me to a card fraud. Technically it's as simple as using the card of someone else. The store will happily sell you something, because you pay by card. But if you want to make the sale go down, you will have to make them step around their own fraud-preventing-procedure. If you succeed, they are responsible for the losses of the fraudulent purchase. And that is how a business go bankrupt. Not for a box of cereals, or even for a pretty expensive tv. But how about a really fast Italian sports car? Those cost nearly a million. You can't have very many of those purchases revoked before it's starting to be difficult for you. Or, actually. For a small one-man-business, a pretty expensive tv can be what does it."
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66w8bo | How do poor countries benefit from globalization? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"opening of markets basically. So you're a poor farmer who grows rice. Now people are trying to buy your rice, while also selling you other goods. Also, if you're a poor country by a rich country, the rich country might be taking advantage of you, but now with 2 or more rich countries in the market, they can't be as bad to you since they both now want to work with you. Often times though globalization is not that great for poor countries-its better to be a farmer being able to provide for your family and sell at the local market then work 16 hour days at the local sweatshop. Globalization can be a good, or a bad thing, depending on the circumstances",
"Having more access to other markets brings in outside/more advanced technology and more money. This allows the countries to develop more, which makes them more competitive."
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66wrfp | Why are daughters never named after their mothers? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I does happen occasionally. The former first Lady [Eleanor Roosevelt]( URL_0 ) for example had a daughter that shared her first middle and last name, but that was a coincidence as she was named after two grandmothers who name just combined to come out that way. For the most part most of these naming traditions are part of a culture where families were continued patrilineally. A daughter once she reached adulthood was mostly expected to get married taken a new last name and be part of a different family, so the confusion between mother and daughter was not really a big issue. You only have the same name as your mother until you get married so why bother with suffixes? Nowadays of course things are different, but far fewer people name their children after themselves nowadays too.",
"Traditionally, property, reputations, and titles are passed down along the male line, and keeping the same name reinforces this. Women were considered to have left their family and joined their husband's family after they married, so maintaining continuity was less important.",
"My mother was named after her mother, my sister was named after my mom. My sister only had boys, but my daughter (coming this August) will be named the same to continue it on. So, it happens.",
"Interesting thought. I agree you hear of cases of daughters being named after their mothers less often than the male equivalent. That being said, I am named after my mother, so it does happen!",
"My wife is named after her mother. The Straight Dope has a great answer to the question of why \"Jr\" and \"II\" are rarely used for women: a formal title to distinguish between parent and child is typically used when both hold positions of power. This didn't happen often for women, but when it did, \"Jr\" and \"II\" were used. For common people of either gender, nicknames rather than titles are usually used to distinguish between parent and child. For instance, my wife's parents call her by her middle name. URL_0"
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66xacu | What is the purpose of silent letters in language? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Languages don't have letters, **writing systems** do. Language, properly speaking, is independent of how people choose to write it. One well-known fact about linguistics is that writing systems tend to lag behind their language's historical development. The language changes over time like languages naturally do, but the writing system often has to be deliberately revised and there's often a lot of people who resist that. So if you look at how a language was written at a point in history, often what you're seeing is how the language was spoken *before* that point in history. Applying this to silent letters, typically they exist because they reflect the way the language *used to* be pronounced in the past. For example: * Spanish *h*—which is silent in modern dialects—used to correspond to an aspirated fricative (like the *h* in English *house*). * All those silent letters at the ends of masculine nouns and adjectives in French writing also used to be pronounced—and are in fact today often still pronounced in the *feminine* inflected forms. So even though silent they are *psychologically real* to French speakers—young French children language learn to say [vɛʁ]/[vɛʁt] \"green (masculine/feminine)\" before they learn that they're spelled *vert*/*verte*, so even though *vert* is pronounced [vɛʁ] a native speaker can predict, based on their knowledge of the language, that it's spelled with a final *t*. (The funny symbols are from the [International Phonetic Alphabet]( URL_0 ).)"
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66xwg4 | Why do we associate quality chocolate with European nations like Germany and Switzerland when the crop is from the new world and colonized by the Spanish? | Shouldn't we be drinking Spanish Miss Hot Chocolate instead of Swiss Miss? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the Spanish didn't bring back chocolate (as we know it today). They brought back what we would call cocoa or cacao, the beans, nibs, or powder. It was the Dutch who figured out ways to the reduce the bitterness and remove the cocoa butter, to make Dutch cocoa. An Englishman figured out how to make moldable chocolate by adding back some of the cocoa butter. A Swiss chocolate maker figured out how to make milk chocolate, relying on another Swiss invention, powdered milk (invented by a guy named Nestlé). Another Swiss inventor, named Lindt, invented [conching]( URL_0 ), a mechanism for mixing cocoa butter with cocoa powder that gives a superior result. By the time all these inventions occurred, nations other than Spain were already harvesting cocoa from their own colonies or importing it."
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66ym8n | Even though Roman culture was sort of a sequel to Greek culture, why do we still fixate on certain aspects of ancient Greece over Rome, such as using the names of the Greek gods but not Roman gods (Zeus over Jupiter)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Roman Empire was really composed of two halves. The western half was culturally Latin (ie they predominantly spoke Latin and followed Latin customs) and contained Rome's territories in Italy, France, Spain, England, and Germany. The eastern half was culturally Greek (ie they predominantly spoke Greek and followed Greek customs) and contained Rome's territories in Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, and Egypt. When the western half of Rome fell it triggered the dark ages when most of Rome's Latin books and written records were either destroyed or squirreled away in obscure libraries. As a result, over the next thousand years knowledge of Latin culture became very rare. However, while the Western Roman Empire collapsed the Eastern half flourished as the Byzantine Empire, which preserved a great deal of the knowledge of ancient Rome. The Byzantine Empire ultimately collapsed itself in the mid 1400's, but by that time Western Europe had fully recovered and was prospering. So when the Byzantine Empire began collapsing many of its Greek cultured scholars fled to Western Europe - specifically to Italy - and they brought their Greek language libraries with them. That exodus of scholars from Byzantium caused the Renaissance in Italy, which caused Western Europe to sort of \"rediscover\" Roman culture and science. Because the scholars initially leading the Renaissance spoke Greek and were teaching from Greek books, Greek culture became more important than Latin culture in Western Europe's understanding of the ancient world."
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6704sd | how do non-violent protests work? How to they achieve their goals? Any examples of mass protest causing actual change within the last 30 years? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They show that the people who hold an opinion care enough to protest about it, and will probably vote for politicians based on that issue. They also draw attention to the cause for people who weren't aware of the issue before. Gay pride parades certainly had an impact in changing people's minds on the issue of gay rights in the past 30 years. The modern ones are peaceful, even if the first one (Stonewall riot) wasn't.",
"It works on the assumption that people are generally not complete ass holes and they will re-evaluate the situation and maybe change their minds. But after viewing the protest they notice the message that was missed in the past. Change enough people's minds through this tactic and the people in charge have to change too or else it will be impossible for them to govern. The most iconic examples of successful non-violent protests are the ones where the non-violent protesters where met with violence. Like tank man in tiananmen square or US civil rights movement where images of dogs ordered to attack protestors and fire hoses used to knock down schoolchildren. Images like these cause most people to feel sympathy for the protesters and paint their opposition as ass holes. Wikipedia has a pretty nice overview of non violent protests through out history. URL_0",
"Just like there are different approaches to war, there are different kinds and types of nonviolent protest. The general idea is that the protests delegitimize the state or policy in question, raise enforcement costs to unacceptable levels, and rally supporters to act in a unified fashion (raising funds, intimidating the state, blocking enforcement, etc...) For an example of non-violent protest changing things in the last 30 years, you could look at the fall of the government in Tunisia and the fall of the Mubarak regime.",
"The protests in Romania against the corrupt government is an example of the last 30 years. Because of the protests they withdrew their law to make corruption to a certain amount not applicable for jail time."
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6706fy | The theological and practical differences between different Protestant denominations. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Former Pentecostal here. I was raised in the church, but left when I was old enough. Pentecostals basically believe that they become possessed with the Holy Spirit. This, they believe, gives them certain powers, like speaking in tongues. They also believe in faith healing. They stand in a circle, and touch the person they want God to heal. Compared to other denominations, their worship services are a bit on the wild side. They like their music loud, they dance, jump, and it looks and feels similar to a rock concert. Pentecostal people tend to be poorer than other denominations. They are also less educated. I guess since they were dealt a bad hand at life, the feeling of power offered at Pentecostal churches, gives them a sense of control or something. Idk. I'm pretty sure most of them are mentally ill in one way or another. If you want to get a better idea of the crazy shit they do, check out televangelist Benny Hinn on YouTube. It's all a crock of shit."
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6711w6 | The French election | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"r/Europe has a really good explanation of it [here] ( URL_0 ) it is worth reading that."
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6717qv | How can America be considered a free democracy when it's the college vote and not the people's vote that determines the president? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The United States is not a democracy, nor was it ever intended to be. Many of the Founders loathed the idea, in fact. The United States is a representative republic.",
"Democracy doesn't necessarily mean *direct* democracy. Of course, it could be argued that USA isn't a democracy precisely because of the electoral college. One definition of democracy is that everyone's vote counts equally - under the electoral college system votes in low-population states count for more.",
"The United States was designed to be a union of semi autonomous nations that band together for certain and specific issues of common benefit. The President is the President of that union. Therefore it is the states themselves that are voting for the President. The US was never meant to be one giant one size fits all nation with the entire population doing anything as a whole. We were *meant* to act as states, not as one mass of people. The popular vote is for the people of each state to determine how *their state* should vote, and the EC is the states doing the actual voting.",
"Indirect election is common in democracies. The UK Prime Minister is elected by the House of Commons which is elected by the population. It doesn't make countries not democracies.",
"> How can America be considered a free democracy when it's the college vote and not the people's vote that determines the president? By the very definition of democracy, the way the president is elected in the US isn't democracy, period. For some reason we've gotten away with calling it that, but it definitely isn't. To be a democracy, our president would have to be elected by the people (universal suffrage), and not by the electoral college: one voter, one vote, majority wins. I definitely hope this happens in my lifetime, but the way things are going, I'm not holding my breath.",
"America is a republic, we elect people who in the end, elects the president. I personally hated all candidates, but it's pretty stupid how people were so butthurt about the electoral college. The electoral college is not a new thing."
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671e7n | Why are the big torrenting websites such as PirateBay not being shut down? | Is the evidence not sufficient to shut them down? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are. Constantly. TPB has been shut down numerous times. The issue is that they can argue in court that because they only provide the torrent file, and not the copyrighted content itself, that they are not breaking any laws.",
"Torrents use Peer to Peer sharing. Sites with links to torrents don't host any content. It's like going to a bar and some dude at the bar tells you he knows 27 people that can each give you a copy of a single chapter of a book. The dude only gives out the names of the 27 people and the book never makes it into the bar itself. The bar did nothing wrong. Pirate Bay is the bar. It would also set a legal precedent if torrent sites were allowed to be held accountable for the sole concept of \"telling you where you can get it.\" (sites like the pirate bay are shut down for other loophole reasons) If this precedent was set then ISPs could be held accountable for what people do on the service. Bars could be held accountable for Jimmy telling Frank where to score some Heroin."
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671yh1 | What are the science protesters protesting? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"mostly the fact that people are more and more willing to value personal anekdotes over scientific facts. this is a trend that's showing in many different fields and topics. Examples that come to mind would be anti-vaccination movements, the disbelief of climate change and similar anti-science groups.",
"They are protesting the rejection of science by governments, people in power (eg. Trump), and or just by anyone in general. Just because it's hard to understand because your feeble mind can't comprehend all those numbers and data doesn't mean you can just brush it aside. Global warming won't go away if you shut your eyes tight and pretend it doesn't exist, or if you think it's some kind of global conspiracy or some shit. Less-educated people think that science is like a religion where you can just choose to not believe. However, the thing about science is that it doesn't give the slightest fuck whether or not you believe in it. It has neither sympathy nor mercy regardless of your belief and will continue to hit you like a truck even if you close your eyes and cover your ears. Because science is not something man-made. Science is the study of the universe and how it works, quantified and measured to precision, and tested over and over again until either everyone agrees that your hypothesis was right, or someone manages to find a loophole or mistake in your study and brutally tears your work apart in front of everybody. You can't just write something and claim it to be true, because for every study written there's a legion of scientists hungrily waiting to tear your theory apart by finding every last tiny loophole. But of course, that won't stop charlatans with a lot of charisma from manipulating the uninformed masses into believing garbage.",
"I was one of the 'science protesters' marching yesterday. I'm not going to discuss the pros/cons of science etc. in this comment because it's not answering OP's question; I'm just going to objectively explain why there was a protest. Our message was that we firmly believe that scientific input is critical and necessary for informing government policy-making at any level, and that scientific endeavour needs to continue to be sufficiently funded - for the better of policymakers, lawyers, farmers, you, me, and the rest of humankind. So what specifically led to this protest? Mainly the Trump administration's treatment of climate change concerns, shutting down the EPA and officially removing any acknowledgement of climate change from the White House website, and the slashing of funding to various major scientific organisations in the US. However, similar things have been starting to take place in other countries (the UK recently closed its Department for Energy and Climate Change for instance), which is why this protest took place in many countries around the world."
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673288 | What role did the feudal and manorial systems play in the dark age of Europe? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First: there was no \"Dark Age\" in the middle ages, usually people mean 10th to 12th or so century, but that \"Dark Age\" we imagine never existed. If there was a \"Dark Age\" it is the time after the fall of the Roman Empire and goes from 4 or 5 AD to some 7 or somesuch AD. We know relatively little about that time. --- Now to the question: the \"feudal system\" in what we usually consider the Middle Age was what stuctured the society and power. Imagine your father punched a bunch of local leaders into submission and is now the boss of a relatively large area. You inherited it, but you simply cannot administer and organise it all yourself. So you take a nice, rich spot for yourself that is going to feed your castle and give you men, and cut the rest in say half a dozen areas that you give to people you trust: Here comes the feudal system into play. YOU are the feudal lord (or whatever your title is) and those six (or whatever) people follow you. You give them land and the promise to protect them, while they swear they give you a part of the goods and men if you require them (i.e. to protect them or one of your other followers). Now, those six areas you gave out are fairly large. So each of your followers takes a piece for themselves and hands out the others to *their* followers. Again, he promises to protect them and they pledge they will give goods and help out if the need arises. This goes on and on until you are at the very local level, where a few farms or a village or two are given to the lowest tier of noble, who directly rules over them and again, he protects them, and they give goods and men if the need arises. And maybe you own your own liege lord fealty, and if someone bigger than you invades you, he will protect you, but you'll also have to pledge men to his causes (it can get a bit murky if followers of the same liege get into squarrels). The high tier always pledges to protect, while the lower tier swears fealty and gives men for military actions. That, in a nutshell, is the feudal system. --- The \"manorial system\" is basically the system where the \"lord of the manor\" rules over an area. --- It can get very bad for the farmer at the bottom. If he cannot pay his taxes (for example he had a bad harvest, borrowed seeds, but the next harvest also isn't good enough to pay it back; note: I have no idea how that was in England), it might be he is \"owned\" by his lord (or whatever the title) and has to work off that debt, which is basically slavery (which got forbidden at one point). What is curious is that YOU might be a mighty lord, but your follower's followers are NOT your followers. So the entire chain depends on each other. The entire thing with \"I protect, you serve me\" is rooted in the idea of the medival society, where the \"nobles\" are those who protect and fight, the \"clericals\" are praying for the soul, and the \"normal people\" are those who work. Everyone is doing their fair share as god has forseen it and wants it. We also immediatly understand why the feudal system breaks down with the rise of cities and normal \"citizens\" (rich craftsmen, traders, powerful guild poeple): They do not have a place in that \"three groups society\" and as such start to form their own once they get powerful enough (they have the coin, the fortified cities and trading centres, and with that... mercenaries). The rise of those cities with its \"city dwellers\" - > \"citizens\" is basically the end of the Medival Age.",
"WARNING: This is not an ELI5 answer, but more like an AskHistorians answer, since I actually will be using a book as my source. This will be very long and thorough, possibly taking up multiple long posts, so if you don't want to spend a considerable amount of time reading it all in one or more sittings, move on to a different answer. **Rome didn't so much as \"fall\" as it just changed.** This is the general gist of *The World of Late Antiquity*, by Peter Brown, a book that revolutionized the historiographical discussion regarding Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages when it was first published in 1971. First of all, the Roman Empire *never* fell entirely until 1453. What we refer to as the \"Byzantine\" Empire is just a label given by more recent historians to differentiate between the Rome of antiquity and the more heavily Greek-influenced Byzantine Empire of the Middle Ages. The Byzantines still thought of themselves as Romans and of their history as an entity being one stretching unbroken back to the founding of Rome. The \"fall\" that is (somewhat arbitrarily) marked at 476 AD indicates the collapse of central political authority in only the Western Roman Empire, and even that is something of an arbitrary label because the central political authority of the Western Roman Empire had been eroding gradually for centuries. Secondly, the Roman Empire(s) by the 5th century AD were markedly different from the Roman Empire of the popular imagining. Its peoples had changed, its political and cultural institutions had changed for better or for worse, its majority religion had changed entirely, and its economic framework had changed. Furthermore, the Western and Eastern Empires were so different between themselves that they were by practically completely different political and cultural entities by the the point the Western Empire dissolved. And understanding those differences are *vital* to understanding why the Western Empire dissolved while the Eastern Empire did not. Let's start with feudalism. Feudalism didn't develop out of a vacuum (and it is hotly debated whether \"feudalism\" is a coherent system at all, because it certainly isn't monolithic). It wasn't introduced purely by the \"barbarian\" invaders. The transition from a centralized Roman administration to a decentralized feudal environment was already well underway, especially in the Western Empire, by the 5th century AD. This was due to the culture and shifting economic realities of the Western Empire. To be somewhat brief, the Eastern Empire gravitated more toward the autocratic rule of the Emperor, and thus kept its tax-collecting administration much more centralized; in the Western Empire, land and wealth was much more concentrated in the hands of a class of senatorial elites, who in order to keep their land and wealth more intact helped maintain the weakness of the Emperor's authority and even dismantled elements of centralized administration. How did this happen in the Western Empire, you ask. Well for one, thing the Eastern Empire was always *considerably* more wealthy and better-developed than the Western Empire, for the eastern Mediterranean had a much longer history of organized polities. Additionally, this stark social division in the West ties heavily into other shifting cultural elements of Rome - heavily related to religion, meritocracy, and education. And to understand *that*, we have to go back to the Crisis of the Third Century. **The Crisis of the Third Century** The 2nd Century AD was a golden age for the Empire. The Empire reached its territorial height under Trajan, and remained at high highs under the strong and wise rule of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. At the end of the 2nd century, a large civil war occurred, with the Severan Dynasty ultimately achieving stable power over the Empire; but this was not the Crisis. The Crisis was triggered by assassination of Alexander Severus, the last of the Severan dynasty, by his own troops. In the aftermath, multiple generals were proclaimed as Emperors by their troops, wracking Rome with the worst civil wars since the end of the Republic. And when the Emperor Valerian was captured and executed in 260 AD by Sassanid Persia in the East, the divisions exploded once again. The Empire was divided into three competing states - the Gallic Empire of Gaul and Britannia controlled by Postumus, the Palmyrene Empire of Egypt and the Levant controlled by Zenobia, and the \"legitimate\" Roman Empire controlled by Valerian's son Gallienus. This was all exacerbated by the growth of power by enemies beyond Rome's borders - Germanic tribes along the Rhine, and Sassanid Persia in the Middle East. Even as rival claimants fought amongst themselves, the borders of the Empire were being assailed by invaders and left unguarded. The Crisis did not end until political reunification was achieved by Aurelian and later reforms were pushed through by Diocletian in 284 AD, dividing the Empire in Eastern and Western administrations under co-emperors to make the entire unwieldy beast much easier to manage. The Crisis was a complete breakdown of central authority in a world where technological and agricultural limitations made central authority a necessity to keep the Empire intact. The central authority of the Roman Emperor and his bureaucracy kept the trade routes open that allowed food to flow from the Mediterranean coast to the inland communities of the outer provinces - remember that in this period overland transportation of goods was significantly slower and exponentially more expensive than maritime transportation. And Rome was a victim of its own overextension - one Emperor could not possibly hope to efficiently administer the entire Empire alone. If the Emperor was defending the Rhine borders against Germanic incursions, how could he possibly hope to organize a defense against a Sassanid invasion in the Middle East? Communication and travel took an extremely long time to reach one frontier of the Empire from the other, and even after a message of invasion is received the Emperor still had to muster forces and organize a defensive campaign on the other side of the world! This was Diocletian's logic and brilliance in dividing the Empire - an emperor in Rome can more effectively and efficiently repond to an invasion across the Rhine, while an emperor in Constantinople was better suited to defended the frontiers of the Danube and the Middle East. But simultaneously, dividing the Empire hastened the fall of the Western half. With the Eastern provinces being richer and more developed, the disparity in wealth between the separate political entities allowed the Eastern Empire to eventually far outstrip the Western Empire in institutional control and development. This disparity was so significant that despite the Western Empire's *considerably* better-suited natural frontiers, the Eastern Empire still lasted far longer simply because its wealth and continued centralization better equipped the Eastern Empire to respond to and defend against outside threats. **Cultural Fallout of the Crisis** Back to the aftermath of the Crisis. The Crisis allowed opportunities for the rise of \"new men\" within the Empire - military officers and soldiers from different regions and lower social classes within the Empire managed to penetrate the ranks of the upper classes that had been more distinctly \"Roman\" in their culture and ethnicity. These new men commandeered the bureaucracy and administration of the Empire, and were of disparate ethnic groups from well outside the Italian peninsula who differed from the classic Roman ethnic type yet still identified as Romans. Diocletian himself, for example, was the son of a freedman from Dalmatia, and he was the great reformer who ended the Crisis. These new men introduced a more military and meritocratic culture to the conservative upper classes of the Empire - they rose to the top, diversified the upper classes, and stayed there. With the new men also came other cultural changes. New men meant a need for education, and they received the classical education normally reserved for the wealthy landowners. New men meant Christians began worming their way into positions of authority. And these new men assimilated into the upper classes, receiving their education, furthering their own careers and wealth, and ultimately adopting similar conservative, traditionalist views moving forward. The new men might have looked different, spoken different vernacular tongues, come from poorer backgrounds, and worshiped a different god, but they eventually became otherwise indistinguishable from those they had joined at the top. For both halves of the Empire, the 4th century AD was a period of renewed stability and rising hopes, a feeling that the golden age of the 2nd century could be renewed. But with the continued rise of Christianity, tensions returned to the Empire, and this was not to last. I'm approaching the character limit, so I'll end it here, and continue in a reply."
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6737v8 | Why can't students with unaffordable student loans discharge them? Millions in already in default with no chance of ever paying it off | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can't just \"get rid\" of debt. You can default, which will decrease your credit score and have other consequences, but that's about all you can do. Defaulting is not a good idea for most people, because it means it'll be harder for them to get loans for cars and houses later, so they just let the debt accrue until convenient to default, or until they can actually pay it off.",
"Student loans are specifically made to not be dischargeable via bankruptcy because of the fact that, unlike many other loans, there is no collateral behind the loan to be repossessed if you stop paying. For instance, if you default on a car loan, the bank will repossess the car and re-sell it to get some of their money back. If you default on your mortgage, the bank will take your house. But the bank can't take back your education, or re-sell your diploma."
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6747t8 | How did ramen noodles become synonymous with the college experience? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're cheap as *hell,* and even the least-capable chef with what barely counts as a kitchen can cook them. They also don't need to be kept cold. An ideal fit for a dorm room lifestyle. I can't come up with another food that's so insanely cheap (amazon will sell you a package of 36 for what's basically 50 cents each) and can be sucessfully prepared while blackout drunk. edit: yes im aware there's much cheaper than on amazon, but that's kinda beside the point",
"As most people have said already, ramen is inexpensive and easy to store. From my own college experience: -There are multiple brands with a plethora of seasonings that you can try a different ramen every single day and still not get tired of it. -You can practically cook it anywhere with little to no cooking experience. Only needs water and heat source. -you can complement ramen with almost anything in the savory department or vegetables. -some ramen can be eaten raw for a quick snack. -takes about 3-5 minutes to cook. -Doubles as soup -Non perishable unless wet. -are Independently packed so there is almost no waste. -It fills you up -Can be made into something fancy if you have proper equipment. -If you buy the cup noodles you don't even need a bowl. -Most cup noodles come with dehydrated veggies and meats. -Tired of ramen, get the vermicelli noodles for a few cents more.",
"Incredibly cheap and you don't need a kitchen to make them. Dorms don't have kitchen and college kids are poor.",
"Seriously? This is a real question? Most college students are, at least occasionally, broke as fuuuck. There's not many other meals you can make with thirty five cents and a microwave.",
"They're cheap, they're easy to \"cook\", and while not any sort of highly nutritious cuisine, they are probably healthier as far as dirt cheap fast food goes compared to endless hamburgers or pizza.",
"Store-bought ramen is extremely inexpensive, and college students often have less money for things like food than they'd need to maintain or develop good food habits.",
"They are not so synonymous with the college experience as they are with the broke as fuck experience. Everyone I know has been there at some point.",
"They are ten cents a package and one or two makes a meal. Not a good meal but a meal. That is one of the cheapest meals you can get and that is what makes it synonymous with the college experience. College students rarely have money."
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674iwy | Why do police officers like donuts? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most likely? Patrol Shifts. While things have changed, until the 80s/90s when the stereotype REALLY exploded, pretty much the only things open past like, 7pm other than ultra-fancy-restaurants were donut shops and little diners. So if you're patrolling evening or overnight, chances are your only options if you didn't have a packed lunch were donut shops for cheap fresh snacks, and maybe a breakfast platter for lunch at 3AM. The sugar and coffee also helps for the more stakeout-types, although it's not very good for you in the long run. There was also no AC in cars before that meme started, so chances are if it was a scorcher you wanted to eat someplace cool as well."
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67598m | The difference between 'science-fiction' and 'science-fantasy'. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Science fiction often functions as a sort of thought experiment. The premise of a science fiction story can often be summarized as \"What if...?\" What if we could predict the future? What if humans colonized other planets? What if we could upload our minds to computers? *What would the world be like then?* This sort of thinking is what science fiction is all about. (It's also why traditional writers and critics focused on characters and plot often find science fiction disappointing.) Science fantasy is more focused on telling a good story, and a technologically-advanced future is the the setting the author chose to tell the story in. Of course there's not always a clear distinction, but you can often tell whether the author is more interested in the premise and its consequences (science fiction) or the characters and what happens to them (science fantasy).",
"Science fiction, in general, tries to at least remain internally consistent and sensible - and sometimes also strives to at least not do anything that physics as we know it says is fundamentally impossible. It also often strives to explain the speculative science in it - for example, just how the good ship Manatee's torch drive allows her to maintain point three gravities of acceleration for months on end. Science fantasy, on the other hand, is more focused on telling the story, and uses science as a backdrop - and/or as a standin for magic. Though, one has to note that the distinction is somewhat fluid - for example, some of Heinlein's novels might seem fantastical compared to, say, The Martian, but they are rock-hard compared to Star Trek. This is known as the [Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness]( URL_0 ) (Warning, TVTropes link. Your life will be ruined.)."
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675tkr | How comes the brain doesn't get annoyed and disillusioned by seeing the same actors/actresses in very different characters? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Why would it? We have suspension of belief that allows us to bypass this problem. Anyhow humans are very good at seeing movies as fiction that has modern people playing fictitious roles. Its not jarring to us as we generally know this information going in. The exception is if we are surprised to see a familiar actor in a role that we did not anticipate them to be in. Again, out brains know the difference between movies and real life and we know that its a necessary thing to make movies work."
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67684w | Why was tenure created, and what is the controversy around it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Tenure was created to protect professors from being fired for political reasons. College campuses are often the centers of culture and political movements, and professors are often deeply involved in those things. Even when they're not, it's a professor's job to research often controversial topics, write on them, and teach students about them. Professors are granted tenure after working for the university for a period of time, usually like four to six years - sometimes *much* longer - and after publishing books for the university. They're reviewed by the dean of their college and granted tenure. Tenure is an official way of recognizing the value of the professor, and as a result, granting the professor some immunity to prosecution for political actions. For example, say you're a biology teacher at a religious university. It is *your job* to teach evolution. Even if you don't teach it as factually true, it's still your job to teach the students that it is a theory that exists. It's also your job to teach about sexual reproduction, since that's an important part of biology. But a very conservative religious university may not appreciate you teaching things that go against their beliefs. A professor would want to have tenure, so they can say, \"This is what needs to be taught, this is what I *will* teach, and you can't stop me because it's my job to do it.\" Or consider a professor writing a book about sexual reproduction and evolution. They're not writing it for that university, they're not doing their research on the university's dime, but they're doing it because researching and writing is what professors do. The professor publishes this book and the university doesn't appreciate it because, again, it goes counter to their beliefs. But the professor has tenure because, again, they need the freedom to pursue knowledge and not lose their job over it. Once a professor has tenure, it's much more difficult to fire them, for *any* reason. The idea is that you could *say* you're firing them for some legitimate-sounding reason, but secretly you're firing them because of their political beliefs. So tenure is a broad protection. You absolutely can be fired if you have tenure, and you can have tenure taken away. But it's much more difficult. It also pretty much guarantees that professor will have a position at that university for life, giving them a lot of job security. TL;DR: Professors *earn* tenure when they prove they're worth it, and it grants them more freedom by guaranteeing that the university can't fire them except for a very good reason. Public education tenure is a little different. The core idea is the same, but the execution is a little more extreme. Because of the bargaining power that teachers' unions have, public teachers are granted tenure pretty much universally after two years of teaching, and that's it. Have a pulse for two years, be a teacher, have tenure. It's also *much* more difficult to revoke tenure for public educators, and much more difficult to fire them through tenure. This is almost entirely because of the strength of teachers' unions that fight to \"protect\" teachers but [personal opinion] end up protecting miscreants and existing solely to perpetuate their own existence.",
"Tenure in academia is the means by which university professors and researches are protected from being fired from their main teaching / research position at the university if they that they need to teach and / or conduct research on controversial or unorthodox subjects. Fox example, a professor working at a right-leaning university economics department feels that the data from his research and economic models obliges him to teach far-left economic theories and approaches; tenure means that the head of the economics department cannot use what the professor is teaching / researching as grounds to fire or demote the professor. Tenure is also used to protect primary and secondary teachers from sudden firing when they try a new teaching method for a semester that turned out not to be effective, or a student-specific problem / issues results in a teacher needing to explain something to his class that normally would be considered not appropriate for the students' age. Tenure is one of the main tools used to ensure \"academic freedom\", which is vital to ensure that both the best ideas come to the fore and students get exposed to some non-mainstream ideas. Academic staff and teachers' unions have through collective bargaining have expanded on the meaning of tenure so that it now serves as a more general protection for professors and teachers from being fired. Tenure becomes controversial when applied to teaching positions that have more standardized teaching curriculum (eg: elementary teachers). It is also controversial when tenure is used to protect teachers / professors whose students are consistently (ie: over several years) underperforming other students in the same grade level at the same school or within the same school board."
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676e9a | what does it mean to wear your heart on your sleeve? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is a metaphor. It means that you allow your emotions to show- people can tell easily if you are happy, sad, angry, etc- ether by what you say, or how you act/compose yourself."
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676viz | Where does the alternate term for money, "buck" originate from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"[source]( URL_0 ) > Meaning \"dollar\" is 1856, American English, perhaps an abbreviation of buckskin, a unit of trade among Indians and Europeans in frontier days, attested in this sense from 1748."
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6778le | What are the major differences between socialism and communism? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ask five different people that question and you'll get six different answers. Part of the problem is that \"Communism\" and \"Socialism\" are broad terms. It's like \"Democracy\" means \"rule by the people\" but it includes parliamentary democracy, direct democracy, representative democracy, etc etc. (It should be pointed out, for example, that many people define \"capitalism\" to mean \"free markets\", which isn't really true. Capitalism is the idea that certain people -- capitalists -- provide money and resources to others, who do most of the labor, and then the capitalists keep most of the produced goods.) In the broadest terms, the original definition of Communism is actually very close to anarchy. It was envisioned that the workers would own the means of production (factories, farms, etc) and not be beholden to upper \"exploitative\" classes (royalty, capitalists, etc). In this idea, there would be no need for a government because there would be no need for property to be protected, because everyone would have what they needed. Classes would be abolished, everyone would be equal, property would be owned collectively by the workers who produced it, etc etc. It was in some ways descriptive of how humans lived for the first 150,000 years of our existence, minus the class part. Humans owned what they produced themselves, tribes held most or all property in common.... Socialism, again only in the broadest terms, was viewed as a transitional stage to pure Communism. In Socialism, there's still a government, and it owns the means of production on behalf of the people. There's still money and property and classes and such, but they're more subject to social control for what's best for society (and in classic Marxism, what's best for society is whatever gets it to pure Communism faster). Now, just like every other word ever, those meanings have changed somewhat. Just like how \"third world\" used to mean \"countries not aligned with either the USA or the USSR,\" both \"communism\" and \"socialism\" mean something different now...And moreover they mean something different to different people. Most developed nations today are at least somewhat socialist, even countries where a large portion of the population would deny that, like here in the US. Even in the US we have social security, government-owned corporations, rules on private property for the good of the society, etc."
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678l3g | France's 5th Republic | What were the 1st-4th Republic's? What actually changed when Charles DeGaulle started the 5th Republic? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"1792-1804 First Republic: after the French revolution; very turbulent structure 1804-1815 First (Napoleonic) Empire: Napoleon becomes emperor 1815-1848 restoration of French monarchy 1848-1851 Second Republic: uprising against the king led to the establishment of another constitutional republic until the coup by elected president Luis-Napoleon Bonaparte 1851-1870 Second Empire under the rule of Luis-Napoleon until a major defeat against Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War 1870-1940 Third Republic created during the war by Parisian officials as interim government, with a constitution created in 1875, but highly polarized politics and problems with governmental stability, until the invasion by Nazi Germany 1944-1946 interim government led be Charles de Gaulle 1946-1958 Fourth Republic, basically a revival of the Third with slight changes that didn't cure the same problems with polarized politics, and additional problems with de-colonization (Vietnam and then Algeria especially). It ended with the French army basically threatening a coup if de Gaulle wasn't reinstated as prime minister who then with a parliamentary vote terminated the republic and created a new constitution (with a much more powerful president) that was then approved by public referendum which is the start of the 5th Republic"
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678xsb | Why does the Chinese military name stuff Type | From tanks to rifles, Type this Type that. examples: URL_3 URL_2 URL_0 URL_1 There are many more examples but I think those get the point across. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not bad to have a numerical standardization, especially when the alternative is the bewildering plethora of Pentagon acronyms. I'm expecting a weapon to be acronymed TOEJAM sometime in the near future. In the nuclear submarine program, the naming conventions work as follows: *All* nuclear submarine types are called Type 09- < Roman numeral indicating generation > < variant(optional) > . For SSN's (attack submarines) we have: - Type 09-I. First generation nuclear attack sub. Built during the Cultural Revolution, where engineers and physicists were sent to the farms to have \"socialist values\" inculcated into them. It shows. - Type 09-III. Second generation SSN. Entered service in the early 2000's. Quite a bit better than the first, but still too noisy. - Type 09-IIIG. Significantly improved variant of the Type 09-III. Entered service recently (after 2010). - Type 09-V. Third generation SSN. Under construction. Very little is known about this, but given China's technological advancements, I expect the submarine to be comparable to the *Seawolf*/*Virginia*/*Yasen*, i.e., very capable. For SSBN's (boomers) we have: - Type 09-II. First generation SSBN. Since only one was built, China built it just to keep up with the Joneses on the U.N. Security Council. Strategically and militarily irrelevant. - Type 09-IV. Second generation SSBN. Far too noisy to venture out into the open ocean alone. - Type 09-IVA. Improved variant with some better quieting and a bigger hump for carrying larger missiles. Still doubtful that this can do deep ocean patrols successfully, but, given the larger missiles, can probably strike the western United States from China's near seas. - Type 09-VI. Third generation SSBN, also under construction. Again, not much is known, but given where China is today I expect this submarine to be competitive with the *Ohio*. Meaning it can evade enemy hunters and venture out alone on patrols with confidence. Given the even larger missiles it is expected to carry, it can strike anywhere in the U.S., even from waters close to China. Sleep well.",
"Because they need to call them something clearly identifiable that leaves room for future itterations. The US does something similar with its equipment designations. * M-1 Tank * M-16 assault rifle * M-4 carbine * M-92 handgun * M-203 grenade launcher * M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon",
"I'm not sure about the Chinese, but the Royal Navy (UK) ships have types which denote ship class, type 22 is a frigate which were replaced by the type 23 frigates, the type 42 destroyers have all been replaced by the latest type 45 destroyers, so I'd hazard a guess that the Chinese use it in a similar way",
"Type XXX is **XXX式** in Chinese/Kanji. Yes, Japanese use the similar naming rule. Example 1: Zero fighter > The Mitsubishi A6M \"Zero\" is a long-range fighter aircraft, manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1940 to 1945. The A6M was designated as the Mitsubishi Navy __Type 0__ Carrier Fighter (__零式__艦上戦闘機 rei-shiki-kanjō-sentōki?), or the Mitsubishi A6M Rei-sen. The A6M was usually referred to by its pilots as the \"Reisen\" (zero fighter), \"0\" being the last digit of the Imperial year 2600 (1940) when it entered service with the Imperial Navy. The official Allied reporting name was \"Zeke\", although the use of the name \"Zero\" was later commonly adopted by the Allies as well. Example 2: Type 38 rifle > The **Type 38** rifle Arisaka (**三八式**歩兵銃 san-hachi-shiki hoheijū?) was a bolt-action rifle that supplemented the Type 99 Japanese standard infantry rifle during the Second World War.[2] The design was adopted by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1905 (the 38th year of the Meiji period, hence \"Type 38\") and served from then until the end of 1945. It's similar to Mark/Model XXX."
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679ce6 | Why does it take so long to learn how to be a sushi chef? | Why is it so prestigious? It seems like it's mostly putting fish on rice but clearly I'm missing a lot here. What are the steps one goes through during the apprenticeship? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not that hard to cook sushi. But have you tried good sushi and regular sushi? It's still a big difference in flavor. The way the rice is cooked requires a lot of experience to \"hit the perfect spot\". The same applies to some fried parts, sauce / wasabi. etc. It's required a lot of practice. Also it's still has some purist traces that sushi chefs want to pass on, raising the standards up.",
"It takes a little bit to know how to make. How to pick fish, how to cut, how to size. But nothing that can't be learned in a month. Learning to do it well that takes a little more. However the masters aren't concerned with just good enough, they want 99.9 perfection. Difference between diner chef and Michelin star chef. Both can make you an omelette"
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679i7t | Why do we have to have different currencies? | Wouldn't it just be easier to operate as one single worldwide economy using the same currency? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Countries have a degree of control over their currencies, like how much money they print and where their central banks set interest rates. They use that control to match their fiscal policies with current economic conditions. Countries that share a currency have to have the same fiscal policies, and if one is having different economic conditions than the other, being stuck with the wrong policy will hurt their economy. This contributed to the recent problems in Greece. Their economy was in trouble while the German and French economies were relatively strong. Since Greece did not have control over the euro, they were unable to make the adjustments that could have lessened their problems, and they became worse than they might have been.",
"No, it wouldn't be easier. It would be much more difficult. The central bank of a country chooses how much currency to issue, which in turn affects the interest rate. With a global currency, who chooses how much currency to issue? Central banks uses [monetary policy]( URL_0 ) to manage their economies. The ability to issue their own currency is essential for it to work. A global currency would take away a powerful economic tool from governments."
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679vy6 | What is a government shutdown, and how does it happen/work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's important that we make the distinction between the civil service and elected officials. The civil service is government employees, there are hundreds of thousands of them and they are the nuts and bolts of making the government actually function. They are the worker bees, the doors, they are the people who push paper and the bureaucrats. The president, as the head of the executive, is the leader of the civil service. While he's elected most civil servants are not. Then there are the elected officials, the legislative branch. There are only a few hundred of them and they have quite a bit of power. They pass laws, they decide how much you will be taxed, they decide how that tax money is to be spent. By law, the civil servants cannot spend government money without the legislative branch passing a bill each year saying how much money goes to what activities. So if the legislative branch fails to pass this bill, the civil servants are not permitted to spend any public money, not one cent. The managers can't pay the underlings, the department heads can't pay the managers and even the department heads don't get paid. Since it's not legal to require someone to come to work when you can't pay them (that would be slavery) the civil servants are told to all stay home. Without those hundreds of thousands of civil servants, the government grinds to a halt. If the government can't pay park rangers, they can't open the national parks, and so on and so on. People on food stamps don't get their benefits because there's no one there to process the payments. Social security cheques stop because there's no postman to deliver them and even if there was there's no employee stuffing the envelopes or signing the cheques. So a government shutdown happens because congress (the legislative branch) can't or won't pass a bill allowing the civil servants to spend money and be paid. Therefore they don't come to work, therefore nothing gets done. There are some special exceptions for critical services. But most services the government provides are critical to the people that get them. So it's only the REALLY critical stuff that gets an exemption.",
"The US government has two kinds of workers, essential and non-essential. This doesn't mean that non-essential people aren't useful, only that the work they do isn't a defined part of government service. Essential people, like air traffic controllers, continue to work even when the government is closed. Non-essential people do not work, though in the past they have always been paid, eventually. This means there is no park ranger to guide you around a national park, but there is park security to keep you out of the park.",
"When I was in the military and we had shut downs it just meant I didn't get paid but I was still expected to go to work."
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679xbu | what happens if you pay off 90% of your house but fail to pay off the remaining 10% and it gets repossessed? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Bank sells your house, probably taking the first low-ball offer they get. They are paid, and you get the rest of the money. If you're in this situation, selling it yourself is probably (almost always) a better idea.",
"The bank sells your house, takes the 10% that it is still owed, and you get the rest. Since the bank only really cares about the 10% they are owed, it is not going to try very hard to make a good deal, so there is an excellent chance it won't sell for full market value, and you won't get your full 90%. Practically speaking, it is unlikely to come to that. Unless the homeowner was completely delusional, they would sell their house and pay off the 10% before it came to that.",
"If you owned 90% of your home and stopped paying your mortgage tomorrow, it would be a minimum of 6 months and more realistically more like 18 months before it would come to repossession. Unlike a car, which the lender will happily repo after ~60 days, repossessing a house, especially an owner-occupied one, is truly a last resort. There are tons of other options to explore if you just can't make your mortgage payment, ranging from loan modification to refinancing to a short sale or forbearance. Once you're about 60 days late your lender will start trying to work with you to figure out what's going on, long before they move to foreclosure, forced eviction, and then repossession. It's insanely complicated and expensive for them to do that, and there are tons of regulatory hurdles, so they really aren't in any hurry to do that unless they have to."
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67acfe | what is Millennials ? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We tend to refer to a whole generation of people by a name, because their fashion and internet memes / fads change from generation to generation. Millennials are people born in the 1980's and 90's; unlike previous generations, they grew up with computers and internet and phones, and are quite active with social media. They were also just about out of college when the recession of 2001 hit the computer industry and caused a lot of them to be unable to get jobs.",
"It's a reference to people who are becoming adults since the beginning of the 21st millennium."
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67aldp | When did Blue Raspberry become a flavor? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically there are already a lot of flavors we associate with red, like strawberry, cherry, and tomato. Many raspberries are purplish (which is taken by grape), so it isn't too much of a stretch to call it blue to differentiate from the crowded red field."
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67aqid | - Why do some shows, such as The Bold and the Beautiful and Days of Our Lives look so "cheesy" and smoother | I don't know many other shows that have this type of camera. It just looks off and it's in modern day, and I was just wondering why they're like this? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's the lighting. They are optimizing for small studios, cheap production, and fast recording. So they don't use backlighting in the same way that higher budget productions do. More here: URL_0"
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67b8d6 | why is Britain so stuck on holding onto Northern Ireland and not relinquishing control? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lots of people in Britain would love to ditch Northern Ireland. The problem is most people who live in Northern Ireland want to stay part of the UK. So handing Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland without the consent of its people would be seen as a huge betrayal, and would likely cause widespread violence. The UK and Ireland have signed a treaty stating that Northern Ireland can only change hands if the majority agree to it. This agreement was vital to bringing relative peace to NI, so I doubt either country would want to risk it by going back on that agreement.",
"There are quite a lot of people in Northern Ireland who want to stay part of the United Kingdom, so it's not quite as simple as Great Britain just keeping hold of a territory because it benefits GB. I'm sure you are aware that there is a long-standing Catholic/Protestant conflict in NI, but it isn't just a religious conflict, it's also a split between those who want NI to be part of the Republic of Ireland and those who want to remain part of the UK. From a GB government perspective, there's no real incentive to just give away a part of the country - If you reduce the size of your country you reduce your population, your income, you lose the benefits of having land that can be built on or used for civil defence.",
"Because people living in Northern Ireland don't want to be governed by the Irish government, they prefer the United Kingdom. Basically, the region is a mix of Catholics and Protestant, each with their values. The Catholics would like to be part of Ireland and the Protestant would prefer to be part of the UK (in general, it's not always true). There isn't a clean border between the Catholics and protestants in Northern Ireland so you can't just divide them in two. There was a lot of fighting in Northern Ireland between these two groups, and in the end they reached a consensus of staying within the United Kingdom but with some autonomy. It's the best solution they came up with to stop the fighting and live in peace. In 2007 36% of the population was Unionist (staying with the UK) and 24% were nationalist (merging the Ireland), the remaining of the population are neutral on the subject (they basically just want to live in peace). So unless the amount of nationalist increase drastically, the statu quo will remain."
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67bivj | bloods and crips | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Historically, both gangs kind of came about in the wake of the FBI taking down the black panthers. Their stated purpose was protecting their own neighborhoods and protecting the residents from police abuse and exploitation. As the years went by, gangs started seeking funding. It started out as charging businesses and residents \"protection\" money, and would evolve to petty crimes like selling \"lottery\" tickets or selling contraband and counterfeit items. As they ran afoul of the law, the gang leaders were being thrown and jail and disconnected from the gangs they started. The average age of a gang member became getting younger and younger. As this happened, crimes for funding became getting more violent. Burglaries, jackings, muggings, maybe even prostitution. Eventually in the *cocaine 80s*, gangs started getting involved in the drug trade. This is when rivalries started to develop among gangs. They were competing to take over lucrative blocks and areas to sell more drugs. So it strayed from its stated purpose of a gang of young men sticking to their own neighborhoods and \"protecting\" their neighbors and devolved into turf wars for more lucrative areas to sell. Contrary to popular belief, there really isn't a red hot rivalry between bloods and crips. In some areas of California, bloods and crips may coexist and even form alliances against shared rivals. Sometimes different affiliated Crip gangs may have more intense conflict with other crips compared to a nearby blood gang. Also, around this time several mexican oriented gangs became more prevalent too. And these gangs may rival both or one of the black gangs nearby. As drug sales spread across the country and prisoners started living in federal prisons all over the US. The Crips and Bloods brands spread with it. So now they are basically present in every major metropolitan area. But they originate and stick closer to their original orientation in California. Nowadays, gangs exist because, young kids seek it out almost as a fraternity, also for out of a sense that they have to protect themselves, there's also indoctrination where relatives will press you into the gang, or you may be endlessly bullied by the gangs in your area unless you become affiliated. Also if you become involved in drug sales. You may find yourself in and out of jail or prison. To protect yourself while confined, it's sometimes best to join a local gang. Once you're out, you just continue to exist with the free members of the gang.",
"They are rival gangs. Gangs make money through illegal activities and get aggro when their rivals encroach on their territory. It cuts unto the profit margin."
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67btuv | I know the Rothschild family is a banking dynasty, but why are they so sketchy and feared to run the world? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Rothschild family is Jewish. They were court Jews, meaning that they were the bankers for royalty back in the day. Through this they gained a lot of money, power, and influence. At the turn of the 20th century (1900) some Russian wrote The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which was a made up book that pretended to be real which outlined a plot by the Jews to take over the world. Through banking among other things. A lot of people bought into it. Hitler referenced it in Mein Kampf. It caused so much hatred towards the Jewish people that some of it persist 100 years later."
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67dehz | Why is reading considered active and intellectually engaging, but watching television or film considered passive and lazy? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It should be noted that the usual divide here is not between any reading and any TV watching. Walking into the weekly meeting of the pretentious smart ass club and saying you spent the weekend watching The Wire or The Shining is likely to win you a great deal more points than saying that you read, say, The Bourne Supremacy or [This]( URL_0 ). The real difference is that TV and film have been around for a much shorter period of time, and for a long time TV in particular was seen as something that was designed as mere \"entertainment,\" as opposed to challenging or classic works of art that helped improve one's understanding of the human experience. There were thousands of years of books to read, but only a few decades worth of movies, most of which (like most books) are basically just chewing gum for the brain. And, on top of that, until maybe, what, 15 years or so ago, watching great movies or TV shows was actually pretty hard to do. Watching TV meant watching whatever was on, and watching movies meant seeing whatever was in the theaters or---at best---what the local rental place or library happened to have in stock. These days, the divide is less stark, but the bias lives on. (the other answers about the imagination are part of it too---reading is more of an imaginative activity---but my understanding is that the general perception has more to do with the existence of \"great literature\" as a concept with no parallel in film until recently.)",
"Mostly because when you read, there are no visuals available. You imagination will breathe life into the characters, the scenery, different interactions, etc... This use of your imagination is an active use of your brain. Watching tv leaves nothing for the brain to work on. There are certainly films that can stimulate you mind, but not in the same way using your imagination can."
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67dq4i | Why are the southern states that took part in the Confederacy proud instead of deeply ashamed of it and their defeat? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In addition to what others have said, it's their history. Good or bad, a lot of the people living in those areas now have ancestors that were in the war. No one wants to go through life feeling ashamed all the time (even if some tell them that they should, in fact especially if someone is telling them they should). So there's three choices; ignore that entire part of your family history, town history, state history, feel like shit because of the bad stuff, or remember and be proud of the good stuff. And yes, there was good stuff. The vast majority of southerners fighting for the Confederacy had never, not once, owned a slave. In fact quite a few of them probably viewed slavery as a lot of people view automation now: something that is taking jobs we could and should be working. Why should I scrape by on a meager plot of land with my sons working the fields and my daughters tending the livestock while the big plantation owner in the next county can make a fortune with labor he doesn't have to pay. So why did tens of thousands of non-slave owning lower class citizens sign up to fight for the Confederacy? Because they believed in states rights, that a state should govern itself within its own borders, and that being a part of the Union ought to be voluntary. When the Union told them that no, they couldn't leave and we're sending Federal troops to make sure you don't, that pissed a lot of people off, slavery or no. Many soldiers in the Confederacy weren't there fighting for \"The Confederacy\", and they sure as hell weren't fighting for some rich guys with cheap labor. They fought to protect their state, which at the time they saw as their country. Back then, people still thought of states as what the name implies: its own nation. Don't forget that that's why they were called states and not some other term like province. State is a synonym for nation. That's why there's a State Department. That's why Presidents and Prime Ministers are called \"Chiefs of State\". The State of Virginia was to them a nation called Virginia. A nation that had a voluntary membership in a Union of other nations, and should be free to leave if they choose. Many southerners (and non southerners) still look up at that motivation as something good. Casting off the yoke of an oppressive government, fighting for the right of your community to see to their own affairs, fighting what they see as foreign invaders.",
"Because 3 in 10 southern men fought for the Confederacy so a huge chunk of the South has an ancestor that fought for the CSA. Compare that with something like a percent of all Americans now are in the military. Also consider that the South has an independent culture from the rest of the US. From Texas to Virginia it's The South. There really are no comparable regional cultures anymore. Everybody not from the south picks on the South. I know I do. They still despise all these damn Yankees moving down south and being rude and shitting on them. So of course they have pride in the time they told all those Yankees to fuck off back where they came.",
"The Southern States bore the brunt of the Covil War. All but two battles were fought in their territory, and while the North had a larger death toll in nominal terms, the South proportionally had a higher fatality rate. They gave up tons, and had nothing to show for it. This led to the lost cause movements 20-30 years after the war which somewhat successfully rebranded the confederates message, and romanticized the Rebel fight. Combine this with the Union being very lenient on the Confederacy during Reconstruction, because they didn't want to deal with a never ending insurgency, and you have a recipe for how the Confederacy is viewed by many today.",
"It's amazing to see all the people not from a southern state comment on the state of the south. I think the majority of you are deeply misinformed about the present day south and need to spend some legitimate time here.",
"This was asked pretty recently, and this is the second time I've reposted this in two days. The answer is the active effort by ex-Confederates to revise history throughout the late 19th century: > The answer has been given as to what the Confederate flag represents. > However, there is more to the story - **why the Confederate flag is still in widespread use across the South.** > In the wake of the American Civil War, there was a very considerable effort by ex-Confederates to rehabilitate the image of the South. This historiographical narrative is called \"the Lost Cause of the South\", and refers to the revisionist effort to portray the reasons for the South and its soldiers seceding and fighting the war as a somehow noble struggle - the [Doomed Moral Victor]( URL_0 ), to use troperspeak. > The primary problem that this narrative needed to overcome was the problem of slavery being morally bankrupt. So the Lost Cause narrative went around this by suggesting that the South seceded in order to fight for \"states' rights\" and to \"protect the Southern way of life\" which was romanticized. Two Lost Cause films that promote these ideas are *Gone With The Wind* and *Gods And Generals*. > Next, the Lost Cause had to smear the names of the Union heroes and promote the Confederate heroes as somehow superior. Lee's gentlemanly mannerisms and brilliant stratagems are held in contrast to Grant's \"simple-minded butchery\" and vulgar habits. The defamation of Grant extended even into his term as President, which is frequently derided as an extremely corrupt administration. Stonewall Jackson's piety and tactical brilliance is venerated while his extreme eccentrism and laziness to the point of detriment is glossed over. Sherman's March to the Sea is portrayed as an episode of history's worst war crimes. > Next, Confederates who repented had to be ruined. James Longstreet was one of Lee's most reliable and competent subordinates, but after the war was over Longstreet criticized the South's motives for war and, even worse, dared to collaborate with the Republican politicians. His reputations was destroyed by Lost Cause revisionists, most egregiously in that blame for the defeat at Gettysburg was pinned upon him rather than Lee for decades. > Next, the Doomed Moral Victor narrative had to be justified ex post facto - the South had to have started an unwinnable war for noble reasons and died a martyr. The Civil War was winnable by the South - the North, despite its many advantages, still had to impose its will over a huge area and population. All the South had to do was resist and hold its key areas long enough for the North to decide the war was unwinnable, and thus come to the negotiating table. But the South's gross incompetence in the Western theatres and inability to win offensive victories meant they lost the initiative and ceded key territories (such as New Orleans and the Mississippi River) that ultimately doomed their war effort. > Finally, Reconstruction had to be demonized. Narratives of exploitative carpet-baggers and corrupt radical Republican administration dominated. Black suffrage was portrayed as a terrible, misguided mistake. Egalitarianism was a failed experiment that only caused disorder and disunity. When the election of 1876, the closest election in American history, rolled around, the Republicans compromised with the Dixiecrats and lifted military administration from the former rebellious states, and the Jim Crow era began as black residents of these states were totally deprived of their franchise and civil liberties. > But why and how did this happen? Because the North wanted it to happen. Years of war and division had taken their toll, and both sides wanted reconciliation. The North was tired of expending its resources keeping down a strife-ridden South, and the Southerners wanted their sacrifices acknowledged as well as assurances that they weren't evil people. That the rights and freedom of African-Americans in the South had to be sacrificed on the altar of reconciliation was inconsequential - the Northern population might have opposed slavery, but they were just as racist as their Southern cousins. > And so the narrative became set in stone as truth - the Dunning School interpretation of the war was extremely popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Even today, the influence and damage of the Lost Cause narrative is still readily evident. **And because the Lost Cause narrative rehabilitated the image of the Confederacy over a century ago, it later became acceptable for the Confederate flag to be displayed as a symbol of \"Southern pride and heritage\"** > Source: The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (ed. Gallagher and Nolan)",
"One of those odd facets of human nature: when you don't have a lot, you get proud of it. They don't have much. Most of the poorest states in the country, hereditary poverty, no real opportunity to ever be anything else. But you can be proud of that one time when your people were the rebels, and in your head, that fight was the fight against all that has turned your life into shit *today*. South's getting a bit better. Some big cities cropping up, cheap housing, open spaces. Even in my lifetime I've seen places reverse their long slide. It's still going to be a while though, before the *now* is cool enough that they don't feel the need to cling to history.",
"Because instead of seeing as \"We fought to keep slaves\" people in the south see it as \"My great great grandfather fought for what he believed in.\" The Confederate flag is often seen in the south as a symbol of their heritage. Their ancestors had that flag flying above their house and so do they. I don't typically agree with my fellow southerners on this issue, but as far as I know this seems to be the case.",
"This is a pretty loaded question but I'll give it a shot... Firstly, most southerners do not have pride related to the CSA, the civil war, or the Rebel Flag. Asking why southern states support the civil war is similar to asking why the rainbow is yellow. There are two questions your question brings up in my mind. Why would anyone support a war fought over slavery? And why does it APPEAR like southern states all support this idea or at least in some way reflect values held during this time. 1. I believe people who align themselves with the idea of \"Rebel Pride\" split into 2 camps. The first camp is people who feel it is their duty to show respect, tradition, or honor to ancestors known to have serveed in the Civil War. They may not even support slavery, racism, or bigotry but rather want to preserve the idea of a simpler time. I would imagine like a history buff who says, \"Why should I have to forget or even be ashamed of a time in history when my ancestors fought what they felt was oppression.\" IMO this is the minority of confederate supporters but they are important because many politicians seem to hold this point of view in order to hold their constituents. The second camp is those who honestly get something out of \"Rebel Pride\". I have met people who seem to have pride in their racism, and beliefs that most would seem unsavory (homophobia, anarchism, xenophobia). These people might feel downtrodden, forgotten, left behind, or honestly just \"justified\" in their thinking. I also notice people who admire the idea of \"the south rising again\" come from a background filled with others who hold the same beliefs. It isn't a mystery, if your family and community value football chances are you will end up valuing football. 2. Why does it seem like the southern states all unanimously agree that the Civil War was good? We don't but politically we have a difficult time electing officials who represent moderate political stances. Elected officials may feel they cannot abandon old symbols such as the Rebel Flag because doing so may be a bad move for their next election campaign. Imagine a Governor decides to remove the Rebel Flag from the capitol in a state (many of which already have). They run the high risk of losing voters who voted them while not gaining voters who will be voting for liberal politicians anyways. Think of it like this, people who hold conservative values are not usually \"Rebel Pride\" people, but people who are \"Rebel Pride\" people are almost always conservatives. Politicians stand to gain from not offending some their constituents while possibly infuriating non-constituents therefore progress is sometimes in the back seat to when it comes to issues such as removing a rebel flag. Another thing to consider is the facts that the media heavily covers any kind of racial tension. If two guys march around with a rebel flag the media knows they can keep people watching by covering that story over another story. I however am just an observer so I'm curious what an expert or possibly rural southerner would say. TL:DR It stems from tradition, ignorance, and is passed down from one generation to the next. Most southerners don't like the Civil War.",
"> It's not all of the southern states, just mainly ones that are still way behind in education. Even in those states, it's only a certain percentage that thinks this way.",
"In central Texas there's a monument to Texans who joined the union. I'm proud of that. In north Texas there's a monument for confederate soldiers with zero information condemning slavery. The Texas declaration of war distinctly mentions that slaves should be slaves. That's pretty awful. I feel that if these monuments were treated like history lessons on why racism is bad then I would be okay with them.",
"My experience: If you talk to someone who is holding a confederate flag, who knows what they are talking about, they are not going to say slavery is a good thing. They won't say that the war was about slavery. They would say that the north was using the south's tax money for purposes not in the south. As to the declaration that all slaves are to be free, well that came as a gimmick after the south decided to succeed. As was their right so the south thought. Tl:Dr: the war in their opinion wasn't about slaves.",
"It's almost totally Southern Whites that take pride in it. It's not just white folks in the South. My ancestors (on both sides, mom's and dad's) were freed (and runaway) slaves from the south and fought for the Union.",
"Because they weren't reconstructed hard enough. Had the officers and government officials of the Confederacy all been tried for treason and executed and occupation forces drafted new state constitutions outlawing the confederate flag and enshrining equal rights and dictated school curriculums that explained the southern states treason people wouldn't have this strange reverence for the traitors that nearly tore this country apart."
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67e2dy | Why are politicians always talking about the US having a crumbling infrastructure when everyone has access to water, electricity, and sewer? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Those are utilities, not infrastructure. Infrastructure is roads and bridges, and in a lot of the country roads and bridges are in pretty bad shape.",
"because the infrastructure is old. A lot of the roads, bridges, pipelines, telephone lines, etc. have outlived their lifespan. Sure that bridge you drive over on your way to work every day may look fine and the ride is decent, but that doesn't mean the core structural components haven't been significantly compromised by the elements over the past 70 years. Also, if you live in a population center ( > 50,000 people) you are far less aware of the issue compared to smaller towns across middle America and those who travel the vast difference between them.",
"A lot of our infrastructure is quite old and reaching the end of their life span. The problem the US faces that European countries don't is the sheer size of our country. When you have 10 times the land mass, you generally have 10 times more infrastructure, which takes 10 times the money and time to rebuild."
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67eid8 | Why are American flags backwards on military uniforms? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The flags are depicted as if they were being carried on a flag pole. Imagine each soldier is carrying a flag pole and walking forward at a fast speed. The flag will naturally unfurl behind them. Now if you walk alongside the soldier and look at the flag, it will match the patch on their shoulder. From one side you'll see the \"front\" of the flag with the blue section towards the left side of the flag. But if you were walking on the other side of the soldier you'd be seeing the \"back\" of the flag and the blue section would appear on the right side. Out of context, one shoulder patch looks correct and one looks backwards but in reality they are both correct when put in the context of a flag being carried into battle.",
"The convention is that the stars should be at the front when you're moving forward. This means that a patch on the right shoulder must be seen as \"reversed\" as if you're looking at the back side of the flag. Similarly, you'd see the same thing on vehicles.",
"The flag patches are depicted as though they are being carried on a pole and the soldier is running into battle. In such a situation the flag would fly behind the person.",
"It dates back to the years or battlefield warfare where flags were flown at the front lines charging forward where the view would put the stars st the forward position with the bars streaming behind it. This is reflected in the \"reverse\" flag flown on uniforms to symbolize bravery and the courage it takes to charge forward into battle",
"Are there other states with asymmetrical flags that do that or is it a uniquely American thing?",
"It's called an assaulters flag. It's only worn on the right shoulder and is designed to appear as the way a flag unfurls when charging forward. (Stars leading, stripes in trail)"
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67f4la | Why English distinguish between fingers and toes unlike other languages and what about thumbs? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"English has been a language that loves to get unique and specific names for everything, especially Old English. Finger, toe and thumb are all very old words. The main reason they have their own names is really because the language has placed an emphasis on finding a new word for something rather than mixing or combining words. You could call a thumb the big finger, but that is slower than the word 'thumb'"
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67gyzl | Was suicide, depression or anxiety anywhere near as common before the construct of society, or is it a repercussion of society? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This would be along the same lines of 'did cancer exist before modern medicine?' Or maybe 'did sugar cravings exist before processed sugar?' Just because we weren't able to give it a name doesn't mean the condition didn't exist. It just means it wasn't understood or diagnosed. It might have been observed much less than it is today as it was an undesirable trait, and so there is a good chance people would have hidden such traits in order to increase their chances of being accepted in society and finding a partner, but it would certainly have existed. Just as ADHD, schizophrenia, autism, heart disease, STI's, any other disorder / disease we know of today would have existed.",
"Perhaps with the lack of documentation before civilization I can address this question using political theory and anthropology. Rousseau, author of one of the first modern historic theory of the rise of civilization, would argue that illnesses are a malady of property, that once we started living together and staking claims to land we opened ourselves up to diseases otherwise unknown to animals. After all, he argues, you rarely see an injured or sick animal in the wild (although humans have changed that too since him!) and he points to the way we live as a cause. This is, to some extent, backed up by primate studies. Chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest relatives and provide some insight as to how me might have gotten along before civilization. Chimps have a hierarchy and can be very violent against each other, while bonobos are much more peaceful. Within these groups, there is a higher mortality rate than in humans, meaning that those prone to debilitating stress may die, resulting in less of these conditions within the alive within the population. We have seen depressed monkeys in a variety of lab situations during the many pharmaceutical and scientific studies conducted on chimps, and their symptoms are similar to our own: lack of motivation to eat/ do things, hair loss, self-harm, anger, anxiety and depression. These are not attributes normally seen in wild populations. Perhaps this is because even if a chimp is worried by the fact he cannot enter the desired social group, he is still likely to be able to feed himself and find a community with other monkeys in a similar position. So to TL;DR, there is little evidence of depression or anxiety in wild populations of our closest relatives (chimpanzees), so it is likely that before civilization we didn't either. Otherwise, anthropological and historical evidence is inconclusive.",
"Depression has a heavy influence of genetic factors, so likely it has been around long before modern society. Same with schizophrenia. Anxiety probably is significantly higher today because it is a function of our fight or flight system, which used to be beneficial when we were dealing with primarily physical threats. However, nowadays most of what activates our fight or flight system nowadays is psychological, yet it still has the same effect on us.",
"I'm totally just pulling this out of my ass, but it could be due to the lack of natural selection we experience as a species, now? As Chimpanzees, if you don't eat or socialize, you likely won't get a mate. Whereas, now there are plenty of people with these genetic disorders that do procreate, leaving the trait to be more apparent. Like I said, totally pulling this out of my ass, but it seems logical to me?"
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67h3qt | Why do buses stop ON the railroad tracks? | It would make sense to me if they stopped BEFORE the tracks. Sometimes gates and lights at the railroad crossings fail, and buses are long vehicles that might get hit by trains which shorter cars would be able to get past. But many times I have seen them stop right atop the tracks, front tires on one side, rear on the other. The driver is literally in the path of the train, and they stop and open the door, I'm assuming for "safety". Most buses have pretty poor acceleration; if there was a train coming, they probably wouldn't be able to do anything about it quick enough. Furthermore, I'd think you're increasing your risk by stopping, because a mechanical failure when you're idling means you're not going anywhere. Am I wrong? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Buses are required by law to stop before railroad tracks and look for oncoming trains before crossing, just as extra precaution since buses carry so many passengers (or maybe because there can be a lot of noise so the driver may not hear a train whistle). If the bus is stopping on the tracks, then the bus driver is doing it wrong.",
"I've never seen a bus stop on the railroad tracks. Do you mean they stop to let people out there? Like a bus stop on the tracks? What country do you live in?"
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67is6t | What does the new Oklahoma bill "allowing universities to sue sports agents" actually do? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Background: NCAA athletes are amateurs and this amateur status is strictly policed. When they receive benefits inconsistent with amateurism, even from 3rd party actors, the school can face sanctions from the NCAA in order to leverage schools to maintain institutional control in this regard. New law: The school can sue the 3rd party actor for damages. Sanctions like lost scholarships and post-season bans can seriously hinder an athletic program's income generating capacity. This law authorizes suits against 3rd parties who cause these sanctions. For example, if a booster is paying a football player under the table and the NCAA bans the school from bowl games because of it, they can sue the booster for the money they would have gotten for a bowl game."
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67jdlj | Why is remaining abstinent until marriage a common rule in religions? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The motivations are different in different religions, due to varying views on the purpose of sexes. I can't speak on behalf of religions like Islam or Sihkism. But within Christianity, the view is that men and women were made as different but complimentary, and that through sexual intimacy relational development can be reached which is impossible for other kinds of relationships. Sex is reserved for marriage because when it is used for anything other than the marriage relationship, it causes harm either to the partakers, or to the society around them. It's a view many people disagree with, but that's normal for the discussion: there's no such thing as a non-biased view of what marriage is for and how to treat sex.",
"It's an easy way to verify that you're the father absent any other technology or medical knowledge.",
"1.) Bastard children are a nuisance to society. A society has a vested interest in establishing paternity so someone will devote resources towards the child's upbringing. Premarital sex muddies the waters as to who the father is. 2.) Up until 50 years ago, birth control didn't exist, and your ability to prevent pregnancy while still having sex was pretty limited.",
"Everything related to culture has a function within that culture. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that it's a way to ensure that the child will be taken care of and to try and decrease the number of labor related deaths. If it's completely taboo to have sex outside of the marriage and doing so gets you stoned to death or removed from the community as sinful, disgusting people, you can rule through fear and it'll kinda sorta save lives. Part of it is also oppression of women. It's kind of like the theory that the development of Muslims and Jews not eating pork arose because the environment that the religions developed in weren't great for raising swine. Pigs have a really similar diet to humans and that depletes resources that the people need to survive, whereas you can let goats and sheep just graze on grasses."
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67kfn9 | What's with the stigma against Jury Nullification in courtrooms? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Law should apply to all equally. Jury Nullification is in an awkward area where, technically, they would be capable of doling out verdicts based on any criteria. Popular people getting away with crimes because they are popular has unsavory implications."
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67l24e | Why are shoe sizes separated into men and women's categories instead of one neutral scale? | I was at the mall today and went to a Footlocker just browsing shoes and then left without getting anything. However, in another section of the mall there was a Women's Footlocker selling the exact same shoes as the other Footlocker. I've bought women's shoes of the same design for myself in colors not available in men's shoes before (I'm a guy) and they fit the same exact way that the mens shoes do (gotta buy 2 sizes up in women's shoes though because I'm in the US and not sure if it's the same in other countries). So why hasn't the US shifted to one scale if both men's and women's sizes overlap with eachother? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Men's shoes are not only longer than women's (higher size number) but also wider than the length would strictly indicate. In the sizes you'd ordinarily buy women's shoes, you probably wouldn't notice - but a man with size 12 feet would probably feel very pinched if he tried to wear a size 14 woman's shoe.",
"They use the same scale M/F in the EU. So, shoes over here (Ireland) mostly display sizes in three forms. US, UK & Europe",
"Marketing. In many places around the world there are no differences, but in the US someone made different scales because they thought it would increase profits.",
"Width had much to do with it. Although, I don't know why they wouldn't incorporate that in similar to how the size men's cowboy boots. They have different letters added to the shoe size to notify wide, narrow, etc. The reason is probably similar to the reason we haven't converted to the metric system.",
"Female with wide feet - they are not the same. Granted, I usually have to find wide shoes in men's sizes, but wide width women's shoes are always too narrow in comparison.",
"I don't think the sole is the same. Women and men typically have very different gaits when walking (men walk in a more straight pattern with feet pointed forward, women roll their hips with feet angled outward). I bought men's sandals once because the women's were all too narrow or small, but they were awkward to walk in because the shaped sole didn't seem to support my foot properly. This would be especially important in sports shoes. Also, there's typically a cultural difference, too. Where the sole doesn't need to be shaped - dress shoes, slippers - the typical style differs heavily between the two. There's little sense stocking strapped stilettos with men's enclosed dress shoes."
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67m96q | How did Victorian novels and literature deal with teenage issues when it was a conservative society? | the famous Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery from 1908 is an example, where she accidently gets her friend Diana drunk at age 13 when inviting her over for tea...the novel charts her growth from age 13 to 16 and the later books in the series goes into her adulthood. It depicted Anne's coming of age from child to young adult in rural Prince Edward Island, even though it is very tame by modern standards Did any Victorian novels depict modern teenage issues like rebellion, drugs, or sex? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well drugs weren't really an issue back then. Alcohol and marijuana and tobacco were more or less accepted. It is only in the 20th century when those things became taboo. As for sex and rebellion, have you read Shakespeare? He and other playwrights covered those themes extensively especially in tales such as Romeo and Juliet."
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67mncg | The significance/obsession of USA citizens with prom and high school graduation. | Is there something that I'm missing here? I thought it's normal to finish high school and prepare to go to pre U than Uni. But after seeing limousine being rented, hundred plus USD dress, another hundred plus USD for shoes, and top that with another couple of hundred USD for other necessary stuff, I'm questioning my own logic. It doesn't stop there, it seems, graduating high school is widely celebrated even to a point that parents give out paid vacation trips or a car as gift. As for the students theme self, OMG they spent months preparing for prom and the fight for Queen and King is actually real. I thought it was just TV shit. Back to the question, why? what is it I'm missing here? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"TL;DR: We've lost most of our developmental milestones and coming-of-age rituals. So high school prom and graduation are a major milestone for most people, often the *only* milestone. They're an important cultural event and ritual that signals a transition from childhood to adulthood. People want to mark the occasion and remember it later in life. The US, like many Western societies, is gradually secularizing. It is also highly urbanized. And finally the cultural importance of marriage and the nuclear family has been declining for decades. As such, we've found that many of our developmental rituals have faded away. In many religions, there's some type of coming-of-age ceremony. Jews have bar mitzvah at age 13. Many Christians have Confirmation around the same age, where children are taught important theological points and are allowed to take communion at church for the first time. Lots of cultures have various rituals and ceremonies for the time when a child is perceived to have become mature and able to take on adult responsibilities and privileges. These ceremonies aren't always religious, but in America, historically, they have been. Most people in America, even if not personally religious, have a Christian background. But religion has faded greatly from public life. Most people rarely go to church, if at all, and a sixth of the US population has no religion. So religious coming-of-age ceremonies are gone for many people. Second, we have urbanization. Rural areas tend to be \"old-fashioned.\" Traditions are stronger. There's a variety of reasons for this. Part of is it the closeness of communities. In urban settings, you can be alone, you can get lost. If you have no interest in keeping up traditions, there's no local authorities: familial, religious, or economic, to force you to keep up with tradition. If you stop going to church, stop wearing traditional clothes, stop going to holiday gatherings and other ceremonies, no one's going to notice. But in rural settings, people rely heavily on one another, and you'll be gossiped about heavily if you're an oddball who doesn't keep up with tradition like everyone else. So you do. Rural areas often have all kinds of gatherings and rituals, especially for children. Barn-raisings, harvest festivals, Christenings for babies, and especially early marriage. In old times, in rural places, people often moved straight from their parents' house straight into a new home with their spouse. They married at 19 or 20 and started having kids immediately. Weddings then became a huge deal. You kindof weren't an adult until you got married, but there were always the occasional \"bachelors\" and \"spinsters\" who delayed marriage or never married. This has gone away. The average age when a woman first gives birth now is 27, compared to 22 a century ago. And marriage is delayed as well. We now give weird looks to people who marry before 21. That used to be about the average age people got married. Now it's not abnormal to wait until you're in your 30s to marry and have kids.",
"Well no, that stuff is greatly exaggerated. Renting a limo isn't that common because they are expensive, and it is easier to just drive yourself. Prom dresses and shows are expensive, but all formalwear is expensive. The fight for Prom King and Queen can be real, but it is a popularity contest. It is only serious if you make it serious. Parents who are giving out paid vacations are generally the very rich. Those that are buying cars for their kids are normally doing so because the kid needs a car for college. All in all, prom and graduation is just a an event that everyone goes through so it becomes a staple to celebrate like a 21 birthday. Most people take it in stride, other people make It a defining moment in their life. There is no major mass cultural obsession with it.",
"There is no pre-U in the US. You go straight to University after high school. Graduation of High School is considered the beginning of your adult life. From that point forward you are expected to either to to college (university) or to go into full time employment. It is the end of your childhood and therefore it is a major point of celebration. The High School diploma is also the bare minimum for most jobs so it is an important achievement to get. As for prom, that is one of the primary social events of teenage life.",
"Celebrating high school graduation is a tradition carried forward from the early 20th century when graduating from high school was not as prevalent as it is today. Back when my grandparents were young, maybe 50% of students actually completed high school, as many opted to drop out and take up working on the family farm or the family business. Of those who did graduate, maybe 20% actually went on to college as there were no student loans at the time and you really didn't need a college degree to get a decent job. So, in those days it was a pretty big milestone to actually graduate high school, as most people would then move on to full time work and essentially be considered adults. This carried forward for many years, even into my parents generation, where the majority of kids did make it through high school, but only about 50% went on to college. Again, the other 50% started full time work. This traditions has been carried forward through each generation. Also, of note is the fact that upon turning 18 and graduating high school, you become eligible to be drafted to the military. At times of war, this was a big deal, like during WWII for my grandfather or Vietnam for my father. As far as prom goes, this is essentially a coming of age ceremony in the USA. Seniors have their first truly formal dance as adults. As far as expenses go for prom, it is really a function of the economic status of the students that attend any given school. As you can imagine, students in wealthy areas spend a lot of money and student from poorer areas spend less. My high school was mostly upper-middle class and some upper class, so some people went crazy, but most people were spent around $300 or $400 total. We had rented a limo, but it was split between 4 couples, so it only cost me around $40 for my share. My suit was rented for about $100 and a group of about 40 of us rented a giant beach house for the after party, which I think was about $100 per person. Most people form groups that pool resources to have an awesome party, but at reasonable prices. Of course, the movies aren't going to depict an average prom, so those only show super extravagant and somewhat unrealistic depictions of prom. So, really prom and graduation are time honored traditions here in the USA. Does it make as much sense these days? Probably not, but I'm not going to turn down a reason to have a giant party.",
"In the USA there isn't mandation to finish high school or go to college at all. Some really successful entrepreneurs are drop outs in fact. Generally speaking, Prom is usually the last time you'll spend with the majority of your high school friends. It's a last hurrah with them unless your school does a senior trip, in which case THAT is your last hurrah with them. Finishing high school is often seen as the gateway to the rest of your life. As such, it is usually celebrated pretty much because, you're not getting any more celebrations. It's a send off party really. Plus Prom is insanely lucrative for local businesses that host it or support it. Your parents are usually fairly happy you've managed to not be a complete failure as well. Wealthy parents will do stupid things like give kids a new car. Middle wealth might pass their car down. Most of the time, this is to facilitate actually getting to college or moving out. Cars are expensive. High school grads likely won't be able to afford one, and US environments have much less public transportation support. In addition, things aren't as centralized as say Europe. We don't go to the \"Shops\" as it were. You might have a trip of 50 to 100 miles to hit 3 different stores for supplies, depending on who you shop with. It's pretty much the singular reason why WalMart does so well. Personally, I think it's (graduation) a huge light show for the equivalency of showing your parents you're capable of memorizing crap like a parrot. Not much to be celebrated really. Back in the day, it was something much fewer people could do. Like now with masters degrees and doctorates. BUT, it's so dumbed down anymore, they've sucked the value from it. College is getting there for 2 and 4 year programs. So, no, you're not missing it. It's a hollow celebration for the most part, mostly driven by tradition."
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67nunz | why do people kiss mouth to mouth to express their love to each other, and has this method always been the way (if we don't count sex)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"URL_0 This video captures a lot of the reasons why we kiss, though kissing is hypothesized to be a learned behavior rather than an instinctual one. Mainly due to not all human tribes being documented as kissers, wherein it's thought that kissing may have originated from mothers kiss-feeding their babies. Another hypothesize is that kissing may in fact be instinctual considering animals such as the Bonobo and the Chimpanzee monkey kiss as means of social interaction. Kissing, by humans at least, is believed to be traced from India all the way back as far as 326 BC. The main reason why we kiss is because our lips house a lot of sensitive nerve endings, resulting in a wave of information being sent to the brain during a kiss; aka, it's a pleasurable feeling. The secondary reason for kissing is to swap pheromones and bacteria with potential mates.",
"It's a cultural phenomenon that people use to express love and developed in western society in mid-Medieval times. Most cultures have adopted it because of the spread of western culture, but if you look at groups that choose to stay apart (e.g. The Inuit) they express affection in different ways like rubbing noses. In general, the different forms of affection often include touching faces in some way, even if you look at primates like gorillas."
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67nxwk | The Different Levels of Partner at a law Firm | Been watching the good wife and iv herd named and equity partner thrown around alot. Is there a regular partner status? How does this differ from an associate level position. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is gonna be an overly detailed answer because I'm a lawyer at a big NYC law firm and currently want any excuse not to do my work. First, it's important to note that in the United States law firms are a special type of business known as a partnership. This is in contrast to the business type known as a corporation. There are lots of technical and legal distinctions between the two involving how they are owned the liabilities that people who own them accrue but that's not particularly important to the answer. Corporations are owned by shareholders and run by an executive. Technically speaking, none of those people are liable for the corporations debts only the corporation itself is. Partnerships are owned and usually run by, the same people. Furthermore, the partners are on the hook for the obligations of any of the other partners. There are lots of arguments for and against why people think this is the better way to organize lawyers but I'll save that rant for another post. In short, an equity partner just means a regular partner. They are the people who own a portion of the firm. Technically an equity partner is an equal partner to any other equity partner in a firm and all decisions about the firm (i.e. the partnership) has to go through the partners. In practice, the exact power of any individual partner can vary because of a contract but that's generally what an equity partner is. So in sum, they are the owners of the business and they get the profits. There can be junior equity partners who have significantly reduced rights or profits from a partnership. Sometimes these people may have such intensely reduced rights they may be partners in a very limited sense. These are usually what's called junior partners. Usually they will share in the profit structure but to a much reduced degree. Some law firms call \"junior partners\" people who are just higher than associates but not actually partners. This has become more common in big law firms as a way to give people more power/money/position over associates but without bringing them truly into the partnership structure. My firm has this status but calls them something else. This is also what is known as a non-equity partner. They don't share in the profit and are instead just paid a set salary. Associates are lawyers who don't have an equity stake (ownership) in a firm but are supposedly on the track to becoming a partner at the firm. I say supposedly because at big law firms like on the good wife, 95% of associates will not make partner. In a big law firm associate-ship follows a class model where you start as a first year and move up every year (assuming there aren't outside circumstances). Each increase in year usually corresponds with a raise and a greater amount of responsibility. Some firms have people who have forever associates. Lastly, there are staff attorneys. Staff attorneys usually have similar responsibility levels to low and mid-level associates but there is no pretensions about ever making them a partner. This is of course somewhat limited to the big firm structure. Smaller firms may do things slightly differently (they have much less regimented rules for what it means to be an associate for example). Hope that helps! I'm happy to answer any more questions if it keeps me from my work! :)"
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67otmb | Why do we call a pair of jeans or pants a "pair" when there is only one set of the item? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is a little more complicated than it might seem. \"Pants\" is short for \"pantaloons,\" named after the tights worn by Pantalone, a stock character in 1500s Italy; English got it from the French word pantalon. Already, things start getting weird. The French word is singular, but the Italian word for pants is pantaloni (plural.) Given that the French word for \"scissors\" is plural, they're familiar with the concept, but they went the opposite way on pants. It's true that at one time, the upper part (\"breeches\") was separate from the lower part (\"hose\" or \"stocking\"), meaning that the full garment really was a paired set. At other times, the two legs might have been separate. A number of sites say this is why \"pants\" is plural and why one unit is a \"pair,\" but I think they're missing the big picture. You'll notice that the older word \"breeches\" is also plural, and it's been in English way longer than \"pantaloons,\" originally being brec (plural.) There was a time where people called the whole thing a \"breech,\" but the plural has been standard for a long time. The same goes for \"knickers\" and \"shorts.\" Oddly enough, Dutch got its word broek from the same source as we got \"breeches\", yet uses the singular to describe the whole thing. The simple fact is, two-legged articles of clothing in English often get a plural form simply because they have two legs, and that's the way it is. Even some forms of underwear that don't have two legs anymore are roped in. An always-plural word like that is called a plurale tantum, and includes lots of things that come in unified pairs or sets like \"scissors\", \"genitals\", or \"clothes.\" In some languages, they just sort of happen even without an obvious pair or set. In Swedish, \"scissors\" is singular but \"money\" is only plural. URL_0"
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67ov3q | how did climate change become a political issue instead of a public health bipartisan issue? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Everyone is saying \"the money,\" and while that's definitely correct, it's not the whole story. From the 1830s on, *average* Americans have had a healthy skepticism of authority (religious, scientific, political, etc) and *felt empowered to their own opinions.* P.T. Barnum capitalized on this in his 1840s and 1850s exhibitions––he'd stoke up a controversy and get public naturalists (what we'd now call amateur scientists) to argue over it in newspapers. Then Barnum would come out with an ad saying something like, \"When doctors disagree, the public must decide!\" This tactic almost got one of his agents beaten in South Carolina, where the disagreement between doctors got particularly heated. By the early 1900s, science was becoming a more professionalized field, and we see scientists start to argue that the public doesn't really have a right to decide on things outside of their own expertise. \"Leave it to the experts,\" scientists basically said. But the American people didn't really start buying it until the post WWII era, when a combination of things happened: * The Nuclear Age and the rivalry with the USSR made STEM politically crucial * Science popularizers like Feynman and Sagan bridged the gap between \"elite,\" professional science and non-experts * Personal computing made the power of STEM and technology comprehensible on the individual level. There's a bit difference between some scientists in a room with ENIAC and a guy in his garage tinkering with an Commodore 64. From there, some segments of society (generally the people more open to technological and social change) embraced the authority of STEM professionals and made them much more likely to accept something like climate change at face value. Other segments of society (generally the people more socially conservative, who opposed rapid change and wanted to keep the status quo) kept their skepticism of scientific authority, preferring to defer to their own person judgement and investigation. So that's just another piece of the puzzle, along with money. But there's more to it than those two things, even. We now through around the term \"science\" as though it has a set meaning. But in fact, science as a term is culturally constructed. Note: I'm not saying that science as the empirical observation of phenomenon is culturally constructed, but that the **term** science is culturally constructed. And what that means is that all the stuff that gets added on to the act of observation and experimentation is determined by people. So the very definition of what is \"right\" science and what is \"wrong\" science is at stake. Climate change skeptics demonstrate the flexibility in the term \"science,\" because to them they're being just as \"scientific\" as their counterparts. Skeptics just reject what they call \"consensus science\" and embrace a more generalized Baconian approach, in which any evidence against a theory blows the whole thing to hell. (Actual historians of science, I apologize for butchering that––it's not really my area, please do correct me). In addition to money and skepticism of authority, then, there's also the complicating factor of the term science's ambiguity. So I guess the upshot is that this climate change issue won't be solved JUST by fixing the money problem. There are also culturally conditioned ways that people think about the world around them that make it difficult for them to accept climate change. That's why it's so hard to change their minds––but I hate the term \"cognitive dissonance,\" which Bill Nye is so fond of saying. Medicalizing their worldviews is dismissive and, frankly, disrespectful. It's not that these people are too dumb to accept the truth and therefore just launch themselves into denial land. It's that, to them, your point literally doesn't make sense. (My point with this is to respect people whose views differ, even when those views seem crazy. If we just dismiss everyone we don't agree with as having some kind of psychosis, we're only going to perpetuate the dehumanization of our countrymen and women...and look where that's gotten us.) *EDIT: Thank you kindly for the gold, ma'am or sir. I'm in bed sick today, and your kindness made me feel a bit better :-)",
"It comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. In order to have an impact on the climate we need to implement costly changes to our economy which harm businesses, jobs, employment and global trade. So the question then becomes what should we do and is the cost worth the benefit. Often times the benefits are not measurable, yet very expensive. Some say we should make those changes anyway, others say no thanks. I'll give an example using one of the biggest global policies to fix climate change was the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty that was an expansion on a previous agreement from 1992 that put binding agreements in place for nations to curb greenhouse gas emissions by pre-determined amounts. Essentially it put target reductions out at specified points. So in 1 year reduce by X, in 5 years reduce by Y, in 10 years reduce by Z, etc. Bill Clinton signed the protocol, but the President doesn't have the authority to force the nation to do such things, it required a vote in Congress. After Clinton left office there was a movement in the Senate to refuse the Kyto Protocol from taking place. A resolution passed in the Senate *unanimously* to prevent it citing major economic harm if the United States actually went through with it. The problem with the Kyoto Protocol is that it targeted large westernized economic power-houses like the United States and exempted 80% of the world, including major players in the global economy like China and India. It would have seriously harmed our economy more than any other while giving major advantage to other nations impacting our economy and global trade. Eventually even Canada, who signed, backed out because it was harming their economy and they had enough. Pros: If (a big if) all the countries signed the Kyoto Protocol actually followed through with its targets, climate modeling suggests it would have reduced global temperatures by 0.11-0.21 degrees Celsius (0.28-0.38 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2100. In other words, the impact would have been within the margin of error and the change likely would have been immeasurable. I guess this is a pro.. it wouldn't have actually helped the environment in any realistic way, but it wouldn't have hurt it either. Cons: Would have crushed our economy while favoring exempt nations like China and India further advancing their economic status. Edit: Thanks for Gold!",
"In Texas, many people rely on the oil industry for their livelihood. If oil fields were to be closed in favor of green energy, many Texans fear that they will lose their jobs and be out of work completely. This also has an indirect effect. Texas is filled with oil towns where the majority of people with money work in an oil field. By extension, many businesses also set up shop there as the employees need to ship somewhere. Because of this, if the oil fields were to close, many other un-related businesses may close. The oil industry has a major influence in red states and they spend a lot of money influencing research which favors their point of view. Climate change will regulate the oil industry and became more of a partisan issue as many people believe that there is some agenda from the left which will punish red states in favor of blue states who may benefit from green energy.",
"A lot of climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels and pollution put out by manufacturing plants. In order to fight climate change, we need to change our energy consumption to resources that don't cause climate change, such as renewables like solar and wind. We also need to change how we consume energy and output pollutants, such as more energy efficient cars and regulating manufacturing. These changes are brought about by regulations and incentives put forth by the government. Such as incentives for developing and building solar and wind farms, and taxes against oil and coal. Big companies, such as oil and coal producers, and manufacturers don't want these changes to go into effect, because those changes will hurt those companies' profits. Therefor they lobby to congress *not* to implement changes that are good for the environment, but bad for big business. In order for those people in congress to justify *not implementing* measures that will help the environment and reduce climate change, (and thus try to *appear* as if they are acting in the peoples' interest and not in the pocket of big energy companies) these congressmen attempt to debunk climate change in general. Therefor saying \"Climate change is not an issue, therefor we do not need to support renewable energy / do not need to curtail oil & coal industry.\" That is how you end up with some people in congress (those in the pocket of energy companies) claiming that climate change isn't real - arguing with others in congress who are trying to curtail climate change (and \"save the planet.\") Edit: Curious why this comment would get downvoted? Especially without any replies. Was anything I said incorrect or not ELi5 enough?",
"It's origins have pretty much always been hand-in-hand with the political environmental movement, which has a radical fringe. In the 1970's and early 80's, the dominant scientific idea was that pollution was going to cause a new ice age, and our use of fossil fuels was to blame. Other propaganda along with this was that we only had a few decades of oil left. Given the nature of the oil industry, and basic economics, this becomes pretty much irrelevant. So, despite the 'consensus' of the scientific community, those who are over 40-50 years old see credibility issues, having heard these types of complaints before. The way it really becomes a political issue is that governments enact policies to restrict oil use, raise taxes, or introduce other laws and regulations that make it more expensive or difficult to use coal, oil, gasoline, and other carbon-based fuels. This makes things complicated, as carbon based fuels are, without a doubt, the cheapest and most flexible energy supply we have. And the consequences of restricting carbon emissions are huge, but generally under-reported. Setting aside the importance to our own economy, if you want to fight third world poverty, you want them to have a much access to cheap energy as possible, not to delay their growth 10-15 years until the price of solar and wind power drops. And in the meantime, the truck that brings food from the farm country out to the villages isn't a hybrid. By our standards, it is a poorly maintained, super-dirty diesel. So third world countries are probably not keen on supporting major restrictions on carbon. Neither is the Middle East, where Oil Exports are the main economic production. So since it is a huge issue that impact different industries, different companies, and different types of people differently, it has become a huge political issue.",
"Let me do an ELI5 of /u/supersheesh It is widely agreed people should brush their teeth regularly. But how often and how long? Does the type of toothpaste matter? Should you also floss every time? What about mouthwash? Should you also regularly chew gum through the day? What type of gum if so? Are you wasting time and effort with some or most of that? And are there alternate fixes that are overall better options? With climate change the bottom line becomes: Is it worth trillions of dollars to prevent a fraction of a degree of warming?",
"- Politics are more than just beliefs, they are a key part of people's identities. - A key part of the conservative identity is that \"Government is Always Bad\", and that problems should instead be solved by the free market. - Global warming very obviously cannot be solved by the free market. It requires government intervention to solve. - Since admitting that government intervention is sometimes necessary and good would threaten their identity, conservatives protect their identity by simply refusing to believe that global warming exists to begin with. tl;dr: In order to protect their personal identity as conservatives, conservatives have to deny that global warming exists, else they would be forced to admit that government intervention in the free market may be sometimes justified.",
"because of money. People that have a lot of money always end up making a lot of friends in high places. Then they are able to bribe people in order to allow them to continue to do their work. If you want to know more about climate change and how it is being handled do research about lead. The way that people are handling climate change is extremely similar to the way people thought about lead. If you are wondering why, at the end of the day the answer is money but it is much more complicated then \"just money\", if that makes any sense.",
"Because of the massive power at stake. Democrats hate nuclear and have spent decades fighting it at every turn. They are simply unwilling to back down and do what's best for the climate if it means losing the regulatory power they have accumulated to allow them to hobble the nuclear industry. Republicans in contrast realize that the power to regulate the negative externalities of power generation is essentially the power to regulate every aspect of modern life and are not eager to allow often democratically controlled government agencies these powers. On top of all that there is the cost benefit problem of even if the US went all throwback to 1776 on life, how much of a difference would this actually make and at what cost? At some point it's just cheaper to stick your head in the sand and deal with any negative consequences (i.e. Flooding drought, etc) as it arises. No pun intended.",
"So far everyone who replied is wrong. It was simply a matter of partisan politics. Way back in the 80's and 90's when global warming was first being talked about it was an idea that was supported by conservationists and other \"green\" types. Conservation and green energy are left wing causes, so of course the right wing reacted by opposing the idea. Opposition to the idea of global warming made sense to some people at the time, because we knew very little about it. However, time went by and more and more evidence came to light that proved that global warming was real. The right wing had already spent a couple decades claiming global warming was false and demonizing anyone who claimed otherwise. Because of this demonization it became impossible for any republican to support global warming without being attacked by their own party. Therefore, it became a purely partisan issue because it's now impossible for republicans to back down without being labeled as a RINO and ran out of office. Essentially, the republicans are in a trap of their own making and they can't pull out of it due to the political repercussions."
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67pgrv | Can a sufficiently rich person park in "no parking" spaces and just keep paying the fines? | Provided it's not a tow away zone, can someone with a lot of money just keep parking illegally and pay the fines forever? Will he eventually lose his license or face jail time? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I actually knew a guy who did this. A business owner in NYC. Whenever we'd go out (he was my client) he'd just park his BWM anywhere. Street corners, handicap spaces, fire hydrants, whatever. He came out to a ticket every time. He just tossed it in the back and handed it to his assistant when he got to the office. He figures he spent 4 to 5 thousand a year on fines. But he made 2 million. So his parking costs were just 0.25% of his income. One quarter of one percent. Which is basically what you probably pay as a percentage of your yearly income parking legitimately at meters or in garages.",
"Most states can't take your license away unless it's a moving violation (or if you don't pay your fines). So yes they could. Ever wonder why people with super expensive cars often quadruple-park, besides to show off their obviously massive manhood?",
"Actually yes, and it happens. Steve Jobs was notorious for constantly parking in handicapped spaces even before his cancer made that justifiable, and he ducked California's mandatory license plates law by *trading in his car for the exact same model every six months.*",
"Short answer: yes, in most places However, usually, parking enforcement can order the car towed at their discretion, so if they find you constantly violaating the ordinance, they might decide to do that.",
"Depends on where you live. In BC, Canada, where I live, parking violations are civil bylaw infractions. They have nothing to do with your driver's license. If you pay, they go away. If you don't pay, you get sent to collections. You can never go to prison for parking tickets in BC.",
"It depends on the type of no parking. If it is a no parking zone that is for emergency services no. After a few violations you will be arrested for public endangerment. But the level that the city sees as the point that it becomes public endangerment is different for every city and it is possible they have other connections that keep them from getting into trouble. Other kinds of illegal parking just about anyone can get away with so long as you pay your fines.",
"In the UK there is the criminal offence *Leaving a Vehicle in a Dangerous Position* , for example on a blind corner. This can be punished by 3 'penalty points' as well as a fine. That wouldn't apply to things like parking in disabled spaces though. Accumulate 12 penalty points in 3 years and you normally get banned from driving. Drive while banned and you can be put in prison. For some context, other common offences that earn 3 points are mild speeding and running red lights.",
"In Ohio, only moving violations can cost you your license. If you want to keep paying the fine, and getting your car out of the pound, sure, have at it.",
"It depends on the legislation. It is possible that the vehicle may be towed. And then without paying the impound fee and the parking tickets to get the car it may be auctioned off. But it would take months for this to happen. There are instances where rich people park wherever they like if they are in a hurry and just pay the parking tickets. Even the impound fee is not scaring them away. Some places it is a bit of a problem and they have to weekly tow cars left by rich people in a hurry.",
"This is one of the reasons why people want tickets and fines to be based on your income and not a flat rate. Rich people can afford the fine and thus it isn't a punishment. If a person's income is $25k and a ticket is $250 that's 1% of their income. If a person's income is $1m and a ticket is $250 who cares? That's .025%. They make more than that in interest rates.",
"Yes, and it happens frequently. I live in Chicago and people double park, park in no parking, park on the sidewalks, or in a permit parking area (sans permit) all the time. It's a thing that just happens. Sometimes you will get a ticket, most times you will not. If you do get a ticket you just pay it and move on. You do need to pay it because if you get too many unpaid tickets they will tow your car. Also if you are parking in certain areas that require absolute no parking (no parking for game days) they will tow your car. They will not tow if you just happen to get a lot of tickets (and pay them). They don't care because each ticket is more revenue for the city.",
"I know handicap parking tickets are a non-moving violation with no points. So I believe you could park there and just keep paying the fine. they could not revoke your license.",
"I'm not rich but I essentially do this everyday (well similar). I'm a college student and we have a bunch of different lots but also pay per hour parking. I normally just park and ignore it and get a ticket. It's normally about 8 dollars a ticket. However, I've found that the price of getting a ticket (almost) everyday still isn't enough to justify buying an overpriced parking pass. Also most towns have a limit on the number of unpaid parking tickets you can have. So you can get towed after a while. I've gotten towed from this before. I'm not sure whether it goes on your record but yeah.",
"There's a guy in Scotland that does it. It was in a newspaper a few years ago. I think he was a boxing promoter. He drove some kind of sports car that was really low to the ground so couldn't be towed and he'd just take a ticket as the money meant nothing to him and it meant he didn't waste time finding a proper space. Sounds like a proper tool, but then if he's got ten money, I guess why not? As long as it's not endangering g anyone by clicking somewhere important, there's nothing that could be done and the council makes a decent amount off him every year."
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67r6m3 | In tonal languages, where meanings of words can change based on pitch and inflection, how do people express mood or feeling without changing the meaning of the word? | Is it significantly different than in non tonal languages? I might end the word "Bob" with a pitch up if I'm surprised to find Bob at a social function. I might say "Bob" in a monotone low pitch when I realize who ate the last donut in the office kitchen. I might start the word "Bob" with a high pitch and end lower as I call out his name while searching for him while he hides under a desk in a cubicle. I just want to talk. All of these variations still mean "Bob" | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Chinese speaker here. There are many ways to alter spoken inflection without altering tone, such as rhythm, volume, consonant vs vowel emphasis, etc. Also, in Chinese, tones are relative to the beginning and end of a syllable, not absolute. For example, \"second tone\" is where the syllable starts low and ends high. If I raise the entire syllable higher, it is still \"second tone\" because the relative position of the beginning and end of the syllable are maintained. In this manner, I can make a particular word higher in pitch relative to other words, but that word itself still carries the same relative tone when comparing the beginning and end of the syllable."
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67rbku | What is globalization in terms of what we're hearing about today and the reasons there is support for it today? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Globalisation is the growth of free trade (and co-operation) between the nations of the world. It gains support in the developed world becasue it makes products cheaper and becasue it lets companies from developed nations grow rich with foreign labour and resources, whilst providing executive and R & D jobs, as well as dividends, to the west. It has support developing countries because it provides capital, technology and expertise to build infrastructure and businesses boosting growth and prosperity, and because it provides a large export market for their growing industrial sectors. Naturally there are downsides too, but considering you asked why there is support, I will assume you already know them. Edit: It also provides greater product variety, think of how many foreign foods are in supermarkets now"
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67rgqm | What makes a CD an EP and not an LP or album? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"EP and LP are terms that originated with the technology of vinyl records. An LP is a 12\" vinyl record which when played at 33-1/3 rpm gave you ~22 minutes per side -- they were able to stretch that a little bit but not too much. A 'single' was a 7\" vinyl record with a bigger hole in the middle (it was developed by a different company who originally wanted to sell a different player) which when played at 45 rpm gave you a single song on each side of 3-5 minutes (later stretched when singles got longer). An 'EP' was in the middle. The format varied but often it was a 7\" record but played at 33-1/3 RPM instead of 45 RPM so you could fit perhaps 10 minutes on each side. In the industry, the format ceased to matter after a while, an EP became synonymous with a 3-6 song release. Whenever a group is inspired enough to write more than a single and its B-side but not inspired enough to write a full album they could release something in the middle and call it an EP."
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67ru8s | Why did drive-in restaurants die out in America? | I was born in the early 80s and they were few and far apart then. Yes I know about Sonic. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Drive-ins were replaced predominately by drive throughs. The Restaurant can sell the same volume (or more) of food with a fraction of the staff and people get in and out faster.",
"The other guy's answer is dead on but also, culture around burgers and other fast food started to change... the fast food got faster and less exciting. If you look back near it's introduction, going to McDonald's was like an exciting event. Drive ins excelled in this model because people *wanted* to stay at the restaurant. Nowadays it's very different, people aren't usually really jazzed for Mickey D's it's \"hey lets run in real quick and then get back on the road towards our destination.\" Thus the \"thru\" model fit better.",
"Drive-ins have one big problem: limited parking and no easy way to make people leave. Classically, this meant that teenagers could tie up the entire place for all of Friday and Saturday nights hanging out with friends, while spending very little on actual food and drink. Coffee shops have largely avoided this problem with limited wifi (one hour per purchase, e.g.) and by having counter and/or drive-through service so that people who just want a coffee can buy and leave.",
"Watch the movie \"The Founder\" Covers this topic pretty succinctly. It's boring as a movie, but as a documentary about McDonalds. It's interesting as fuck.",
"There is a chain of them called Stewart's Rootbeer, not all their properties offer drive-in but a good number that I've seen do.",
"The more important question is: why were they popular to begin with? Do you have something against tables that you want to eat in your car? Do you like the idea of spilling shit all over the inside of your car but don't like saving time by eating as you drive someplace? I mean they've always seemed like the stupidest idea to me."
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67tgcx | How do old countries outside of the U.S. study their own history? | A normal U.S. history class is able to cover a good amount of history in 1 year since the country is less than 300 years old. However what about the older countries in Europe and Asia? Do they just skip time periods and talk about the important events? How does it work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Does Germany count...? It usually starts with Romans and Germanic tribes, goes on to Charlemagne, if there's time (there never is) so medieval history like crusades and inquisition, what is always dealt with in detail are the French Revolution, (the Napoleonic Wars in less), the German Unification, and of course the Fall of the Weimar Republic. Then rather extensively the Nazi regime and its crimes. In general, German education, and to a large part history education, follows the \"Never again\" principle. Never again dictatorship, never again wars of aggression, never again genocide. So the focus on the Nazi regime and the Fall of the Republic is understandable.",
"In Czechia they usually are quite thorough with both world and national history with 2-3 lessons a week whole 4 years of highschool covering everything from ancient egypt, china, medieval europe, founding of america to world wars and the cold war. But the focus is mstly on Europe and middle east, we only learned some really important (or for some reason relevant to us) events from america and far east. We had to learn all Czech dukes and kings at one point. You can imagine there are quite a few more than american presidents lol.",
"In Ireland we spend about 12 years learning how the British screwed us over and a couple of weeks on The Emergency.",
"Generally most of it is skipped in the UK, we learn about the biggest events, World wars, Henri VIII, 1066. We generally spend 1-2 School terms (10 weeks) studying each subject before we move on. It really is a shame, there's so many other events that I'd like to have studied more in depth like the Roman Empire, Boudicca and the British Empire. Half of my History GCSE was based on the American west though, which while cool, I'd have rather learned something relevant to me.",
"I'm sure that in the US even a student that doesn't pick up an elective study gets more than a single year of American history study in their education. However with regards to your question, the general trend in the study of history is that the further back you go, the less recorded detail we have about events. In terms of raw historical data we have probably a comparable amount concerning events between the start of the 18th century to the end of the 20th century as we do about the entire rest of recorded history. For instance I have a book called the Cambridge History of Warfare, which covers in chronological order the development of tactics, strategies, the history of battles and how war overall affected human history. The chapter on the age of sail (beginning about 1550) begins close to the middle of the book.",
"In Australia, being a very young country, we study some of the highlights of Australian history in younger grades, then move onto World history in high school.",
"In England schools pick a selection of topics and teach those instead of trying to give everyone a broad overview. So the exact topics each person learns is different depending on the school, although there will definitely be something about the two world wars. We quite often get Americans asking what British children are taught about the American revolution, and the answer is they usually aren't taught about it at all. Out of all the things that could be taught, it usually doesn't make the cut. There are other things that are more significant to British history, and we can't teach it all. I didn't even learn about how the UK was formed, let alone the USA."
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67v1ye | Why, in the 21st century, do passports still need to be books with stamps? Are the stamps even a credible source of information? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because \"Paper\" and \"Ink\" are standards that are used, accepted *and available* everywhere in the world. If you went digital, you'd have to get every single country on Earth to agree to a standard. Sorry, make that every single *government* on Earth to agree to a standard. We can't even do that between states in the US for drivers licenses.",
"Certainly. The stamp will show the entry date to the country to anyone who doesn't have an electronic reader. When I visited Egypt I got a sticker to show I had paid for a visa to allow me to travel outside the tourist areas and the stamp on top showed my entry date. If a police officer or anyone else was to stop me in the street and look at it they could tell instantly if I was legally in the country and if I was where I was supposed to be.",
"Lots of places in the world still don't have (consistent) electricity or computers available for digital readers. I've been to some border crossings in Africa that were literally a shack in the middle of nowhere. Paper is better.",
"Japan uses printed stickers instead of stamps but like it was said earlier, it would be impossible for every country in the world to use digital documentation. Some are too poor for that. I've been to Nicaragua and, sadly, I can't see that country using that kind of technology anytime soon.",
"It works everywhere, 24/7/356, without batteries, internet connections, glass screens,... You can always have it with you and it's always on and working.",
"I've been to border crossings where they didn't have electricity, much less a computer. Not all the world is as far into the 21st Century as someone who has the luxury to even ask this question on the internet might thing. Also, the purpose of the stamps in not be credible or secure. It is to make it more trouble to fake than to just go through the right process, and to make you commit a serious crime if you do fake it.",
"A lot of people don't like the idea of their own government having a database with files about them, people would hate that being a global database where the leader of north korea could look up where you've traveled or whatever."
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67v5l2 | why is there a big hubub about lack of women in STEM fields such as programming but not in trade fields such as plumbing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because trades aren't highly regarded in public perception. Despite the cat they can also be highly paying jobs they're not \"desirable\" and largely get ignored when discussing equality in the work force.",
"Forget women being encouraged to go into the trades, men aren't even encouraged to. Everything is college college college! If you don't go to college you're a failure!",
"I'm a millwright. I still get asked why I took such a dirty trade. I love being a professional MacGyver. I took nothing but stem and tech in school and I was constantly told the trades are dirty, hard work. It's all stigma. Not only do I have to prove myself to everyone I meet, I have to also prove I'm not here to preach from my soapbox. Personally I see as much of a push for women in trades as I do stem, but obviously I'm closer connected to those conversations.",
"The simplest answer is that STEM is a sexier field; it's more highly regarded among the public, it's a growing field, it pays better, and the work is seen as more interesting and valuable. Blue collar work also tends to keep women out, but because people (at least in the US) don't really care about blue collar jobs, there isn't as much fuss raised. The gender disparity is just as real, it's just less talked about.",
"Because STEM = cushy white collar jobs Trade = hard work Why would women care about equality in something that isn't comfortable and easy? You don't see them whining about the lack of women coal miners or sanitation workers do you?",
"When I did my engineering degree there were more women than men in the faculty and they were still pushing hard to get more women in there. I found it really odd. Anyway I have seen 2 effects. 1: more women are encouraged to enter the field and find they are perfectly capable to do the job. This is great for everyone. 2: there are some women who are taking advantage of affirmative action hiring but they are not up to the task. They barely do anything . Fortunately they are outnumbered by those who want to be there. Ultimately I believe the push for women in stem fields is a double edged sword. We get more great workers, but also more sub par workers. The reasons they are not encouraged to go into trades are varied. They either view trades as beneath them or think that a trade is hard physical labour that they can't handle. Personally I think more women should consider trades. My wife is considering a career change and is thinking about becoming an electrician.",
"During World War 2 women took over in those fields with no difficulty, so I think public consensus is probably that they could do it but just don't want to.",
"Originally I wanted to be an auto mechanic then an electrician. Got told I wouldn't want to be around a bunch of greasy guys with pictures of naked women all over the shop. Ultimately I chose engineering because there were more fields to specialize in and at the time I wanted to know as much as I could. The broad scope of the discipline was very appealing. I also liked the fact that the math was incredibly similar (lots of second order differential equations) between each of the engineering fields as long you paid attention to the units.",
"Because many feminists think an equal distribution of m-f in a certain profession=equality. They're wrong of course, since they discount individual choice. Bottom line is, as a general rule, men and women gravitate towards different fields. Women tend to value flexibility and less physically exhausting jobs, and men tend to value money and status. Because of this, a lot of trade jobs are filled by men. There's generally not a lot of status in trade jobs, but there's a decent amount of money. This is a gross generalization, but accurate overall.",
"I'm a unionized electrician in Canada and I can tell you that they absolutely want women to join up. There just aren't many takers. Every year there tons of people applying to become apprentices and many won't make it. I can pretty much guarantee that if a women applies she'll be accepted.",
"i think because stem jobs hold a general sense of prestige where as plumbing is still looked down on even though trades people make excellent money (45-60$/h or more). i think the same would go for mining jobs, oil rigs, lumber and milling jobs, garbage collection, snow removal, theres no push for women in these decent but generally male performed jobs that im aware of. it could also just be a one-barrier-at-a-time type of push, focus on one field and gaining opportunity before moving on to the next.",
"I know I'm just a mouse cum and all but I think it has something to do with the culture we are a part of and a bit of basic anatomy . Women are seen as not being able to perform physically demanding jobs because on average men are naturally stronger, therefore the perception goes something like: \" I'm not going to hire a woman who is probably weaker than a man for the same amount of money\". I've seen it firsthand as a landscaper. My old boss hired two girls ,and while the one looked jacked neither could really keep up with the rest of us. They were hard ass workers and would work until exhaustion but were not as strong and got tired quicker. We would have to take extra breaks so they didn't pass out. Who do you think my boss had a preference for and who do you think he called more often for jobs, the men or the women?. Now I know there are a lot of women out there who could out work me and the other fellas but it's hard to find them because women aren't generally groomed to be strong and masculine. Little girls are given dolls and have Disney princesses as role models which are petite and dainty where as little boys have violent shit like g.i joes and super heroes which are tough muscular fighters ( but that's another topic all together). Also a lot of people in this thread hit on the fact that trades aren't held in high esteem anymore due to the surge of computer work, even though in my opinion it would be much harder to replace a painter or electician with a robot than say a receptionist.",
"Because physical and dangerous work are only for men. Duh?",
"Hey! I'm a graduate in the STEM field from an all-women's college! A lot of it is stigma. A high school robotics team is 75% dudes. My degree is in math, but I was told by my college guidance counselor that I shouldn't take higher level math \"because there are a lot of boys in that class, and that can get a little intimidating.\" I could go on. When I was growing up in the 90s, you never heard of many women scientists or engineers, because it seemed to be beyond my grasp. Only men are doctors, women nurses, etc. Now why is there no focus on trade fields? The \"women not staying at home\" fad was popular for a long time. When equal rights really came into being, women realized they could be anything. So why not super smart fields? TL;DR- a lot of new jobs opened up to women, they want to strive for the \"best\" I really want to hear more responses on this :) Edit: I just want to thank everyone who gave me a constructed response. It's been a bad week with my anxiety but I know I'm getting better because I can read the replies without uninstalling the app (little victories matter) I suggest to all to visit URL_0 , they're right that many, many teams are being super inclusive and inviting everyone in all skill levels. I apologize for the lack of clarity in my original post, and I plan to study the social aspect of women in STEM, and see where the future holds from there. Thank you.",
"Women can't handle the physical or emotional stress ors found in a typical trade profession",
"I would guess because careers in STEM are sort of perceived as 'dream' jobs and traditionally seen as dream jobs for boys, which is of course something that needs to change. As an aside there's an all female plumbing team where I live and they're by all accounts excellent! edit: grammar"
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67v69k | The difference between "person of color" and "colored person" | Why is one hurtful/racist/inappropriate and the other isn't? Is there a linguistic difference or is it solely cultural? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Both. Culturally - \"Colored\" was historically used in a negative way by racists so it carries negative connotations. \"People of Color\" is a comparatively new term which is exclusively used in a neutral or positive way so doesn't carry any of these connotations. Linguistically - \"Colored person\" puts their color first, and them being a person second. \"Person of Color\" states that they are a person first and their color is secondary.",
"\"Colored\" is a verbal adjective that implies something has had color added to it. This sets up a dichotomy that implies [light skin is the normal state, and anything else is a deviation]( URL_0 ). It has historically been used as a term of exclusion, so there is a cultural component to it as well."
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67vcr8 | Why do companies condescend their employees during training? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The training isn't for the 99.9% of employees who already know how to behave themselves. It is for the handful of people who will inevitably misbehave and when fired might sue at which point the company can say \"Look, we trained you like you are a dummy. There is no excuse for not getting this.\"",
"It's a one size fits all training program usually developed by outside companies. I've gone through those as well and it's cringeworthy. It's basically lawsuit protection and if the establishment gives employment to minors and mentally handicapped individuals the training needs to catered to the lowest common denominator for it to be effective and hold up if they want legal protection. If you have 100% of your employees in compliance with the ethics training, but only 80-90% of them actually understood the material properly you're still largely open to liability since it's the morons who are often more likely to be in violation. A lot of those cringeworthy scenarios you talk about are probably cases were some lawyer got a settlement for a client who claimed they were literally that ignorant and didn't know better. So now if someone sues them they can say they had mandatory training developed by outside experts where they literally went over all these stupid scenarios so they shouldn't be held responsible. In actuality, it's likely they still will be, but the payout could be a lot less."
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67vg0o | Why were the 1950s all about fitting in with society? | What exactly led to it? Thanks! | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The 1950s in the US were a rather turbulant and uneasy time. The economy had to transition from wartime to peacetime production, nobody knew if the economic boom would hold or if the Great Depression 2.0 was around the corner. Additionally, the threat of the nuclear arms race and war with the Soviet Union was looming. Due to the witch hunts of the Second Red Scare, especially well-off middle class people were wary to speak about unconventional topics. Furthermore, American citizens moved more than anytime before. Rural Americans moved to the cities. Urban Americans moved to the suburbs. Most of those movements involved leaving your familiar (often familial) background and finding yourself among complete strangers. So in total, an uncertain future, many people in new situation who don't know how to act around their new neighbours, all the while fearing that they might be accused of being communists. This situation just begs for conformity.",
"In a nutshell, the aftermath of WW2. The roles of men and women had shifted out of necessity during wartime with many men overseas. More women worked out of the home to support the war effort and to support their families, but after the war, men wanted their jobs back and there was a strong desire for a return to what they considered normal."
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67vitu | Why are carpet floors so ubiquitous in some countries? Are they worth all the extra hassle? | For an equivalent price, carpet brings more headaches than tile: stains are harder to clean, carpet wears down, fungus or other stuff can more easily grow in it, vacuum cleaning is mandatory—cannot just sweep a broom over it, cannot wash it with a mop. Coming from a country where tile/hardwood is the absolute norm, I'm still struggling to understand. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'd say the main two reasons are warmth and comfort. It's much more pleasant to walk on without shoes/slippers because it's soft, and warm. It also keeps your room warmer since it helps further insulate the air from the cold ground (unless you have underfloor heating, of course). Lots if people also find it a makes for a more pleasant environment since it helps to absorb sound so rooms feel cosier since there's less echoing of noise. I'd also say that vacuuming is easier and more convenient than sweeping/mopping to be honest...",
"It's excellent if you live somewhere like U.K. It's always cold so carpet keeps alot of heat in, plus you can walk round barefoot aswell and not get cold feet.",
"Carpets are warmer as they help insulate the floor and they also aren't as cold on your feet if you walk bare footed on them. You are also unlikely to slip like you can on a wooden floor with socks on. On top of this they also act to dampen the reverberation of noise in a room which makes it more quiet. If you live in an apartment with a wooden floor above vs a carpet floor you would very quickly notice the difference.",
"Warmth and insulation are the pros. After we bought our house though, we ripped out all of the carpet and did wood and tile. The carpet was 13 years old.... the stains under it were disgusting. We even had carpet in the bathroom. Wtf? Why would you do that?",
"Carpet is really not that expensive and, froma lavor perspective, is way easier to replace. Tile and wood floors are wayyyyyy more time consuming to install.",
"Carpet was absolutely awesome, until I got kids and pets. Until then it was comfortable to walk anywhere in the house. Afterwards, the carpet was so gross I didn't want to walk barefoot anywhere even after vacuuming and shampooing. I've replaced it throughout and only have 2 rooms left with carpet. They'll be replaced in the next few months.",
"Liquid stains are harder to clean, but dust and dirt is easier to clean. Running a vacuum is faster and more convenient than sweeping and mopping. Your carpet should never have fungus or mildew. If it does you're doing something wrong. Rooms that are exposed to the elements, such as basements, attics, bathrooms, and garages are never carpeted (unless the room is \"finished\" - i.e., insulated and climate controlled). Tile and hardwood is the norm in countries that are warmer. Carpets are the norm in countries that are colder. As you approach temperate environments, the distribution is pretty even - between rooms as well as houses. Most of my house is carpeted, and the most striking thing about my relatives' homes in Puerto Rico was how much your voice echoes indoors, due to the tile floors."
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67wc1f | What are some cultural reasons why so many programmers from India produce poor quality code? | I have heard tons of stories of people having bad experiences with outsourcing software projects to India, and getting back bad code that has to be rewritten. In addition, there are also complaints that communication is problematic, and that a lot of times the Indian programmers don't think show creative or critical thinking. All of these seem to be the norm rather than the exception. On the other hand, I have heard of mostly positive experiences of outsourcing to countries such as Poland and Russia, and not as many negative experiences from countries such as China. So this gives an impression of being a problem unique to India. So are all of these simply a case of bad education, or are there deeper cultural factors behind this? If so, what are they? Also, what do Poland, Russia, and other countries do right to have good programmers that India does not do to the same level? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you go for cheap coders, you will get cheap code. Doesn't matter if you go to China or Poland or India. However, due to the extremely large population India has, there are far more shitty coders and less of a drive to learn proper code since you can get a job churning out code relatively easily. There is also the horrible education that India has been using since the British Raj. It rewards kids for rote memorization and punishes those who take time to develop intuition, mostly by corporal punishments. Couple that with inexperienced (and often unpassionate) teachers, and you get the perfect recipe for coders who can churn out code based on patters they have memorized, but without any actual thought invested in the code. Note, this isn't about the many brilliant programmers that come out of India, but rather about the code factories where your average 10th/12th pass with a shitty degree from a small college works. It's not their fault either, but they literally have no exposure to better methods, and no drive to find this exposure either. It's a rather vicious cycle that results in frustration and stress, while killing motivation and talent."
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67x976 | why are humans the only species to put the lives of other species above their own? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're not. Dolphins have saved humans. Gray Whales have saved seals from Great White attacks. Large apes have saved smaller animals. You're just experiencing Observation Bias. Lots of animals help other animals. And **most** animal interactions with other animals aren't recorded. Every day it happens, even between animals in the depths (or on land) we haven't even discovered yet.",
"What other species do you think humans but above humans? We might be less callous to other species, but if it gets down to snail-darters or humans, those fish are goners.",
"Humans only care about other species until it really comes down to survival. A firefighter will run into a burning building to rescue a cat, but only if he knows he has a decent chance of surviving. But I think I get what you're saying. And I think it's because most people perceive animals to be innocent and in need of the protection of humans, while humans can take care of themselves. Like how in general people get more upset about a child dying than an adult dying."
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67xayz | Why does Great Britain compete as one nation for the Olympics but not for the World Cup? | Why does Great Britain compete as one nation for the Olympics but, for the world cup you have, England, Whales, Scotland and so on? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In football each of the nation's has their own FA hence they have their own international team. There isn't a similar system for Olympic sorts etc. The first ever international match at football was actually Scotland vs England (0-0 draw).",
"Lots of sports (in their organised forms) originated in the UK, so the first \"international\" completions were between the nations within the UK, rather than teams belonging to different sovereign states. But the modern Olympics were an international thing from the start, so the UK wasn't treated as a special case and only had a single team (excepting overseas territories). \"Team GB\" is actually named kind of wrong. It's really the UK's team, so people from Northern Ireland can join it if they want, even though Northern Ireland is not in Great Britain."
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67xwy4 | why do so many people around the world fear the idea of globalization? | It makes no sense to me personally that some people make it seem like it will be the ideology that destroys the earth. Someone please break it down and maybe include a pro/con link or overview. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well there is several criticisms of globalisation. I don't necessarily agree with all, or even most of them, but most of them are reasonable and debatable at their core. Now of course, like everything human touch, it can be distorted and changed, by people with limited knowledge (which I could be guilty of for some topic), crazy idea, or oppose to these criticism. 1) Economics. Globalisation usually mean standardise practices for several countries, eventually to all countries. But not all practices might work for all country. We all have different culture and ways to do stuff. Imposing the same model across the world might not create economic growth at the same rate everywhere and some county could be in a worst economic situation because of it. Additionally, globalisation increase the codependency of country toward each other economically. This is probably one of the reason why we have so much less war, but it also mean that economic problem spread a lot more to other country. 2) Corporation. Globalisation allowed corporation to make good business around the world. Those transnational can now have enough economic power to surpass some of the smaller countries and provide them with massive influence over the smaller or less developed country. 3) Sovereignty. For the good or the bad, globalisation mean giving up a portion of your sovereignty as a nation toward a supra national entity (EU, UN, etc). But how much sovereignty we should give up? Should we give up all of it? It there a moment when the benefit isn't worth the cost? Where is the line we shouldn't cross? Should it be the same with every country? 4) The further away a decision is made, the more disconnected it will be from the reality. It is true for all form of decision making. The further you are the more work you need to do to understand the impact on the life that will be affected. And the bigger the scope of your decision, the harder it will be to understand all of the impacts. And you can't get further than a Global world entity. 5) Inequality. Some say that Globalisation is a major cause of inequality in the world. I'm not knowledgeable enough of the topic to argue either side. 6) Language. That's a hard one to argue against. We see it happen all around us. Globalisation is leading to a lost of language. But that one would be probably more because of the globalisation of communication, than anything political. 7) Cultural. Globalisation is usually view as the spread of Western culture. Which is fine if you are of western culture, but not always enjoyable for other culture.",
"I will not post a link, find the link on your own. The problem with globalization is that it is fortune 500 companies that are causing globalization. You don't have your mom and pop shops open half way around the world. Companies that can afford to \"globalize\" are so large that smaller stores that people could make a great living off of no longer are able too. Think about how many stores that Wal-Mart forced to close because they couldn't compete. If you can't understand how Wal-Marts forcing family businesses to close all over the world is a bad thing, then you need to do more research."
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67ylg0 | () Why does there seem to be so many people who are depressed? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because clinical depression is extremely common (6.7% of the american population). Add people with other disorders that feature depression, and people who conflate \"I'm sad right now\" with depressed, and all of a sudden wham, a lot of people are depressed."
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67zl26 | Why is smoking(cigarettes) still widely promoted as "cool" in movies and TV Series even though the social image of smoking has become drastically more negative? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a few reasons: * Coolness often rests in detachment - a character isn't affected by their surroundings or showing much emotion. Smoking allows a character an opportunity to exhibit this detachment in a way many activities can't. Eating is noisy, both in visuals and sound. Walking generally puts the focus on the surroundings, rather than the character, and involves a lot of movement. Smoking is much more reserved. * Smoking is very \"analog\". You have fire, smoke, caustic smells, so it suggests the character in question is sort of unpretentious, down to earth. It also has a long history with society, so regardless of its actual nature, it does have a pedigree of sorts. * Smoking is hazardous to your health, but a character who smokes clearly doesn't care for such sensibilities. This is related to coolness-as-detachment - it's a mild, relatively clean way of showing that the character does not feel obligated to respect a common societal norm. * Smoking lets the audience connect with the character during otherwise uncrowded scenes. If a character is smoking, the viewer doesn't need to constantly wonder where the scene is going or what they are supposed to be paying attention to. In such scenes, the cigarette means the character is relaxing, clearing their mind in solitude. Without the cigarette, the mental state of the character is less clear. As an aside, I am sometimes jealous of smokers from time to time, because if a smoker goes outside and just feels the night air for a bit, takes a few minutes to themselves, then no one questions them. If I do the same, then people are looking out the window, asking you what you're doing out there, why are you outside, etc.",
"Some of it is to highlight a character's rebelliousness and all that this represents. However, I believe that it is the cinematography of smoking which is what keeps it alive in movies. It's because burning things and smoke do cool visual things, more than \"this character is inhaling tobacco\". Which is why you never see vaping. It also allows for nonverbal dialogue enhancers. Smoking can affect the lighting in different ways. A lighter close to the face lights up a face in the dark. So can a slow drag on a cigarette. The smoke can obscure things and dance around in the light. The actor has a prop that can say things that dialogue can't. Especially in close ups. Blowing smoke in someone's face shows contempt. Fidgeting with a cig can show stress or anxiety. A slow pull with a raised eyebrow shows contemplation. No character *needs* to smoke, disrupting dialogue to have a character take a smoke break won't happen for realism. Smoking just allows visual shorthand to a lot of cliches that smokers and nonsmokers understand without dialogue easier than other nonverbal cues.",
"It provides a foil for dramatic acting. Taking drags and handling cigarettes gives actors another avenue of nonverbal expression in their scenes, and the pauses allow for a slower delivery with more gravitas without seeming unrealistic.",
"It doesn't make the smoker look \"cool\". It makes them look rebellious or unconcerned with themselves or what others think. That characteristic can have a certain type of attractiveness to some people.",
"It's become more socially unattractive as time has gone on, which only makes the smoker stand out from the crowd more. That's helpful if you're trying to create a character that has a rebellious personality.",
"Possibly similar to why shooting people looks cool in movies but not in real life...?",
"Because it is cool, duh. Like, why is fighting in so much media? Fighting is the dumbest thing two people can engage in, but I'll be fucked sideways if The Raid, The Protector, and them not the coolest movies ever.",
"It's not like smoking isn't a common thing in our culture, why should it be an issue in the movies? It's just normal life.",
"I'd suggest it's a lot for having the character be doing something. Staring off over the city from the roof is a lot less informative to the audience than staring over the city, while the character takes a drag and holds for a bit, before blowing a small cloud of smoke in front of him/her. It makes the scene feel more complete, with a definite ending and communicates some body language as well",
"I don't understand why people are so critical of people who smoke. As a smoker, I don't smoke to look cool, trust me. I smoke because it literally does make me feel relaxed. It also gives me a second to myself in my extremely busy and stressful life. Have you ever stopped and wondered what it might feel for that person to want a smoke a cigarette, how shitty of a day they might be having? Smoking has equally if not more harmful effects than alcohol on a human body, but people don't criticize that because it's more socially acceptable. Hypocritical if you ask me.",
"I don't think most (adult) people smoke because \"it looks cool/rebellious/nihilistic\" to begin with, that's pretty ridiculous. It might have been edgy decades ago, but to argue that smoking is primarily about social image just completely misses the point. When you're under high levels of stress, that stuff can get literally poisonous to your body if it goes on for a long time. Having a cigarette to take the edge off and focus is a lot better than many alternatives. Characters smoking when they're law enforcement, military, government, or with a dark history aren't smoking to look edgy, they're smoking because it's in-character for them to do so in high stress situations because trauma-related stress fucking sucks.",
"Couple reasons in my mind as someone who is starting now to work on feature films. Firstly, cigarettes are relatable and have been around forever. So even if we may know they are bad we can still see them as something that the \"bad guy\" has been doing in movies forever! And a lot of times the good guy too. Cigarettes are more widely known and relatable than vaping, though some movies are now using that too. Relatabilitty to a character is key whether they are good or bad. And this plays into the next part... Smoking allows insight into a character and can often be a flaw despite it looking \"cool\". For example of a bad guy, let's imagine Grimsrud from \"Fargo\". He is a bad dude and his demeanor, his silence and his smoking clues is in on this almost immediately. As a matter of fact I believe Steve buscemis character even mentions the smoking and asks to roll up a window. So smoking is a negative, silence is a negative, and being a silent smoker who is a behmouth of a person is a negative. Right away we know he is out villain. Now imagine a good guy who smokes like McClane in \"Die Hard\". This guy is our hero and a total badass. Now, the smoking does lend itself to the feeling of a badass but also resonates with the audience as a character flaw. Here's this dude going through a rough patch and he's a smoker who becomes a hero. The smoking deepens our understanding of who he is without us being told. Another reason it may be this way is to show antime period. \"Mad Men\" is the easy example here. People smoked everywhere back then! The show even deals with the early fallout for advertisers as research on cigarettes and health developed. And the characters think it's bullshit. This really helps sell us this time period and provides some irony. Here are advertisers working for lucky strike who think the cigarette health risks are bullshit. But we are in 2017 and we know better than them which gives us a bit more emotional investment. Lastly, smoking just looks good on camera. Whispy smoke=cinema good. Flammable things=gold. Hazy rooms that create nice pillars of light=wet dreams for directors and cinematographers. It just lends itself to looking great on camera and because it looks great on camera we think it looks cool. The last reality is that today smoking is bad and we know this. And things that are taboo or are wrong always look cool! Do any of us want to go blow up a hospital? No, but god did the joker look badass doing it! Do any of us want to rob a bank? No, but every time we watch a movie about it it sure looks fun! Taboo activities are fun and exciting to see because it allows us as normal folks to get a tiny little taste of what it might be like to be the \"bad guy\". I predict in another few decades (if vaping isn't halted by the FDA) that we will see a lot of movies start to use vaping in films. But the cigarettes won't vanish. Both will be in play. I myself have written a feature script (unproduced as of yet) that takes place 70+ years in the future where the American legal system had been revamped into a type of very strict law enforcement that dishes out eye for an eye punishment. My main character in the film vapes. Why? Because it is a flaw since he is not all good but also because in this world cigarettes have been outlawed and only vaping remains allowed as a safer alternative. So all at once it serves to demonstrate a character flaw, the world my characters live in, and provides us the same type of cinematography and aesthetic appearance that cigarettes would have. And likewise, one side character still sneaks real cigarettes from a stash he's amassed.",
"Being 'cool' really means being 'apathetic'. Not caring about other's opinions, not caring about your own life. DGAF etc. The social image may have changed, but smoking still portrays apathy.",
"It used to be paid product placement. (As depicted in the dark comedy \"Thank You For Smoking\" about a tobacco lobbyist. Full movie here: URL_0 ) Bette and Joan chainsmoked in \"Feud\" recently. It was historically accurate but it was so constant it made me want to smoke along with them. Where's my nicotine gum!",
"It may just be that they goin for a different type of cool. Smoking cigs is certainly not as mainstream cool in a \"cmon everybody's doing it\" type of way anymore. But maybe that's not what they are goin for with cigs anymore. Maybe now movies and stuff are using cigs for the characters that are hipster and rebellious type of cool. The \"everybody is gonna hate me for doing this and that's why I'm doing it\" type of cool. I dont know. Just a thought",
"I'm an American traveling Peru in hostels and I've never smoked and have meet few other Americans who smoke along my way. But nearly every European I meet smokes frequently. Thus I feel like the United States has more \"smoking will kill you one day\" programs.",
"The more people say smoking is bad and uncool, the cooler it becomes. We're taught throughout childhood that smoking is not a cool thing and how bad it is, I think that is why tons of young adults go right to smoking once thwy turn 18. They view it as adultlike and as other people here have mentioned, as a form of rebellion. Which is cool.",
"It's vintage sexy. Seeing a hot woman light up sparks the nostalgia of past hollywood eras. Some try to capture that.",
"Smoking is great for the screen. Nice little plot device and great filler for those interstitial scenes.",
"cause people who smoke have problems. and having problems, at least as a movie character, is cool. Let me remind you that cool doesn't mean good",
"Many times it is used as a way to convey that the character is a mess. You don't see successful, powerful, and rich people smoking anymore. It's the guy who is divorced on a bar stool slamming drinks alone, or the drug addict, or the person struggling with life and eventually they quit once everything gets worked out",
"i can't believe no one has said this, but cigarette's look cool in movies because cigarette companies *own* the movie bushiness. the 'phillip morris agency' is named that because it's owned by the cigarette company phillip morris. the cigarette companies have vast amounts of money, and they use it wisely. also, it's super messed up that within 80 comments, no one has mentioned this.",
"The tobacco industry shows up on set with a suitcase that has $1,000,000,000 in it to make cigarettes be used throughout the movie. They are called lobbyists, they go to members of government as well. This is working great for Big Pharma to keep cannabis out of the picture too. Our government at work."
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680lbx | Why is there an heroin epidemic in North America? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Manufacturers of prescription pain medication pushed doctors to treat pain more aggressively, resulting in tons and tons of opiate prescriptions. Prescription opiates are expensive, but you can get hooked on them just as easily as any other opiate. But guess what can get you as high as prescription opiates, and is a lot cheaper? Heroin! So once you can't pay for the prescription pills any more, and you're suffering from withdrawal, you go buy some heroin. Of course, that just kicks the can down the road.",
"For a good while American doctors were heavily pressured and outright bribed at times into playing fast and loose with their opioid prescriptions. The company that created Oxycontin even went so far to claim that it was a a low risk way to deal with pain due to practically no chance of addiction. This was obviously incorrect. These days it's harder to get opioid prescriptions, which is also going to drive up the prices when buying the pills illegallly. Heroin is cheap by comparison. And that's the gist of why.",
"The current epidemic is due to the governmental response to opiate addiction. The government has increased the prices of pain meds and in most States are cracking down on how much they are prescribed after decades of over-prescribing them. People are addicted to these pain killers and they are not being given help to reduce their addictions and are instead having the supply cut off. As such they are turning to the next best opiate that they can get which is heroin, and it turns out that in most places the heroin is cheaper than the prescription pain pills."
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681dks | How did landscape become the default orientation for film? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because human vision is wider than it is tall. [This]( URL_0 ) is basically the human visual field. (Although it doesn't really do it justice - you can actually see *way* out to the side!) It makes more sense to have something landscape rather than portrait, as a result.",
"The human field of vision is wider than it is tall. Landscape is designed to match the picture to your ability to see."
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681lj3 | Why is it taboo and deemed as very rude to just ASK someone their salary? | I completely understand if people don't want to disclose the information after being asked, no one has to answer any question they don't want to answer of course, but I don't really understand why it is deemed so rude to ask the question in the first place. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can think of money as representing power, so you are asking someone how powerful they are, you're asking them \"what is your status?\" The answer is going to mean \"I am more/less powerful than you / I have higher/lower status than you. Either way it will be embarrassing for them to say this to someone else, so the question is rude because it places them in an embarrassing position.",
"**TL;DR**: *It's a personal question that may make the person you're asking very uncomfortable, and there are sometimes business reasons to not answer it.* First, the heart of the rudeness element is you're invading the person's privacy with what some people feel is a very nosy question. Salary specifics are generally not publicly known and it can be embarrassing for some person to reveal how little they are actually making if they think they're not making very much, and uncomfortable to others who might be doing well. Answering runs the risk of being judged. \"You only make THAT much? Gee, you're letting them take advantage of you\" or \"Wow, how do you even look after your family with so little income\" in the first case. \"Brag much? Who'd you blow to get that salary?\" or \"Well, la-de-daa lookit Mister One Percent over here!\" in the other. And in some corporate cultures, it can be a bad thing if other people learn how much you make, particularly if what you make is more than your co-workers. A number of years ago, a financial-team coworker found an IT team's paystub and absolutely freaked out that the difference in salaries was so high, and it caused a real shit-storm. So there's a bit of an unspoken rule that you don't talk about salaries, and people that negotiate or earn good salaries have no interest in sharing the fact that they get a bigger piece of the pie, and managers that know salaries don't share because they usually are not empowered to just give a good but underpaid worker a bump whenever they want. Since it's uncomfortable or unwise to ANSWER the question, it's rude to ASK it, and generally people don't.",
"Co-workers are told not to disclose their salary to each other by their bosses because \"you don't want them to become jealous that you make more than them.\" or \"we gave you a pay wage higher than I'm allowed to and I need you to keep it secret!\". The real reason is to keep employees in the dark about how much their job is actually worth and gain negotiating power. If Suzy hears John is making 15/H and she makes 12/H she knows that she should be paid more. No business owner wants this obviously so it's been discouraged in almost any job since before your great grand-parents time and is now considered taboo.",
"I thought I'd add a humorous (but true) anecdote to the convo. When I was only a child I was a Cub Scout. The Den went on a trip to City Hall to learn about local gov't and, since I was unaware it was against social mores I asked the Mayor how much he earned! I was quickly chided by many, but it turns out that knowledge is supposed to be public and I was the only person to ask it lol.",
"This predates our current society and originates in a time when there were no \"fair\" or \"minimum\" wages. If everyone is clueless to how much everyone else is making, then the poor won't realize just how much they're being screwed compared to the elites. It has come to also be a bit of a faux pas in general, but started as a way to control the poor masses with the rich few. Modern workplaces will tell you not to discuss wages, but at least a few states have provisions making it legal for you to discuss them and being fired for it is wrongful termination.",
"Companies don't want you to know what your coworkers make, so as to prevent knowledgeable wage negotiations.",
"It's funny seeing the top comment on here being about \"feelings\". It's not feelings, its that when the U.S. industrialized, employers could fire an employee for discussing salary without repercussions. It was legally upheld. They knew it was the best way to collectively keep salaries low. It's a relic from a time when companies could do whatever they want from an employee. I'm on mobile but i'm sure someone else can link the /r/askhistorians thread on this from a few years ago.",
"Its a cultural thing perpetrated by employers to convince employees not to share information. The asymmetry of information (when employers know more than the employees) gives employers the upper hand to pay employees less.",
"It's a social norm designed to hide exploitation and minimise Labour costs (wages). If remuneration was universally transparent people would have a LOT of questions, and wages would need to be much fairer to avoid dissent.",
"Because it's in the businesses best interests to keep you in the dark about what they pay everyone else. If you and Bob have the same job but he makes more than, you might ask for more",
"I'm personally opposed to being asked because I'd prefer not to receive criticisms for how I spend or invest my money. Things like \"You earn $$$$ and you have *that* car/home?\" I may have different priorities than them in those areas.",
"It's just another way for the man to pit us against each other. If we all knew what we all made the power to negotiate salary would be more in the employees hands than the bosses. And they certainly don't want that.",
"One aspect is that it can easily be a point of pride. Maybe your neighbor is happy with his job, and likes his boss and coworkers, but the pay is nothing special. Your paycheck is the easiest way to quantify success. If you make 90k a year, most people would agree you are pretty successful. Maybe you love your job, and like your coworkers, but only earn about 20k a year. In that case, you might not want to jump in what is essentially a casual dick measuring contest, even though you are happy with your career. Particularly if you know or suspect that your neighbor makes considerably more than you. Ultimately, there really is nothing to gain from sharing that info, and it might bruise egos along the way. I could understand wanting to know as a potential employee, but there are ways to find out what the industry standards are without asking someone directly.",
"It's not, just that american employers convinced their employees that it is, so they can pay them like shit and not have them get suspicious by talking it over.",
"It's only offensive to someone who has anxiety over their wage. I'm very open with what I make, because I know that the more exposure we all have, the more money we'll make.",
"Money and class are obviously very important in American culture. But, there is also an American belief that we should live in a classless society. When you ask someone how much they make you are basically asking them what social class they belong to. This upsets the notion that we are all the same. If we are truly living in a classless society then there is no need to ask how much someone makes.",
"It isn't. Maybe it is where you are (the UK, presumably?), but that's certainly not the case everywhere.",
"it's like you're trying to place them socially or comparing yourself to them. it's like if you ask someone what they got on a test.",
"Just quickly typing out what I know in a rush so apologies to anyone that's already mentioned this, but it was a practice started to essentially give the power to employers in terms of what they have to pay you and is a massive factor in the wage gap. If we don't know what our colleague makes, how do we know to ask for the same salary for the same job? By making it a social taboo it's essentially allowed companies to stifle to natural growth of salaries to compensate for inflation and changes in the economy whilst letting a select few increase their earning potential astronomically. There's a great Adam ruins everything on this somewhere, when I've got a little time later on today I'll find it and link it!",
"One reason I can think of that happened to me recently: I left my last company a few months ago and moved on to a better company with better pay. I told a previous coworker and friend what they offered me, because he and I had always discussed not being particularly happy with our compensation when we worked together. Well, a position opened up at my new company and I referred him. They ended up making him an offer, and he seemed pretty disappointed that it was quite a bit lower than what they offered me. I don't know the exact amount, but he said it was \"significantly less\" for the same position I am in. He still took the job because it was a better opportunity overall, but it did make the situation a little awkward.",
"Because it's often viewed as personal worth. Your salary could be viewed as your ability to provide for your family or yourself, it can be viewed as an indicator of your skill or experience, and ultimately what you are *worth* to your employer. So you are asking a very personal question that is based on their personal accomplishments, and decisions. So people get the thought \"that is none of your business\". But if you want to know, you could ask the question without being so personal about it. For instance, \"I am interested in becoming an electrical engineer. If you don't mind my asking, what kind of salary could I expect as an engineer right out of school? And what do accomplished engineers typically top out at later in their career?\". It can still be considered a little touchy for people, but it's much less intrusive than asking \"What do *you* personally make?\".",
"How big are your breasts? How big's your junk? It's considered fairly taboo (though it does depend on the context sometimes, it's a strange question to ask without a good reason) because it immediately makes the other person defensive. It's a pretty personal, private topic, and a lot of people would ask it because they want to compare theirs to yours in an effort to effectively assign you a rank. There's also not really a good answer to the question; if you earn less than the other person, it will probably make you feel inadequate. If you earn more than them, it will do the same for them, whilst also making you feel uncomfortable. If you earn the same, then it should fairly irrelevant. One of the only few reasons I can think of asking the question is to make sure that two people who are doing the same job are earning the same amount."
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681nsw | Why has East Asia always been more populous than the rest of the world? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"1) Through east/south-east Asia are a large number of major river valleys and deltas. These are good for supporting a large population by providing reliable water supply, very fertile soil for agriculture, and an easy means of transportation for communication and trade. 2) The climate is conducive to growing rice, which (apparently) can support more people per head of population than any other crop. Rice in turn is labour-intensive, so it's kind of a feedback system where a large number of people are needed to farm a crop than in turn can support them."
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682tsu | Why can the US demand that a country not have nuclear weapons, when we have more nuclear weapons than anyone else? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a treaty called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT. Countries that sign it agree not to pursue nuclear weapons development in exchange for access to peaceful nuclear power generation technology. As part of the treaty, the established nuclear powers agree to actively prevent the non-nuclear signatory nations from gaining access to materials used for nuclear weapons. Why would a country agree not to develop nukes? Well, it's very expensive. And the main reason a country wants to develop nukes is so that they won't be threatened by their neighbors. But with the NPT, they don't have to worry about that because their neighbors have signed it too. So when the US or Russia or the UK pressures one of those countries not to develop nukes, it's not just being a bully. It's because that country *asked them to do it*.",
"1. We can. Anybody can demand anything. 2. Treaties against the development of NEW nuclear weapons, including those that North Korea specifically was party to and agreed to: URL_0"
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682vtz | Why is prostitution illegal? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It isn't, in some countries. In others, it might be illegal for a variety of reasons. First, it is often against cultural or religious norms. As such, people are often opposed to it and so they will vote for legislation prohibiting it. Secondly, and possibly more importantly, it is often associated with other crimes. For example, human trafficking, drug use, or various things such as coercion (possibly via physical force, possibly to perform sex which would make the act basically rape). However, many places that have legal prostitution still enforce laws against these other undesirable things, thus separating prostitution from those things, making it not really an issue.",
"Laws are not required to have \"good reasons\". Nor are cultural beliefs. Laws and beliefs are agreements among the people involved, and there is no need to have a good reason or show your work. If you're in a place where prostitution is illegal, then there was an agreement among the legislators that sex for money should be prohibited. Given the cultural impact of sexual behavior, this is hardly unexpected.",
"The social benefit of making prostitution illegal is that it's really hard to crack down on pimping, but relatively easy to crack down on prostitution. First, why is pimping (procuring, acting as an agent that connects sex customers to sex workers) bad? There's a notion that rape is horrendous, and that sexually violating someone is especially bad, even in comparison to other types of violation. Sex is fine if consensual, but if it's forced or coerced, it's rape. *If you feel like you have no real alternative to sex, it's rape*. If you were a drug addict, and someone withheld your drug of choice unless you had sex with them, that's rape. Now replace drugs with money, and the picture starts become clear. Nobody wants to work. In a sense, most people are coerced into working. We all need money, and everybody has to work for it. Being coerced into working at Mcdonalds isn't great (in a perfect world nobody would have to work, but we don't live in a perfect world), but being coerced into having sex is uniquely bad. Now, you may very well say, it's a free market with multiple job opportunities. Surely, if there's other live options, there's nothing wrong with someone choosing prostitution. You're right, there's nothing wrong with that. But people who choose to engage in sex work act as camouflage as those who are forced. Not to get religious-political, but the same argument is made against certain religious dress styles. Sure, probably most people are free to choose whether they comply to that dress style, but it's hard to separate them from the people to whom the dress style is a form of oppression. You're free to disagree with this camouflage argument, a lot of people do. A lot of people are opposed to prostitution for religious or moral reasons.",
"It's not illegal if you record it, then it's considered paying her for a porno and is perfectly legal. Yes that is a loop hole. Pay for a prostitute that is ok being recorded, set camera up. If cops come busting in, well they can't do shit now cause technically your making a porno. If you don't record, it's illegal. Yep laws are weird. I'm talking about in the United States btw"
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6831ab | Why is the War on Drugs considered to be a failure? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If the objectives of the \"War on Drugs\" were: * to put a lot of potential democrat voters in jail * to increase the powers of the police to surveil. stop, search and trespass * to make immense amounts of money our of a corrupt private prison system * to share the drug dealers profits with the corrupt local police forces * to give the electorate the false impression that you were doing something to help people or reduce crime ...then the War on Drugs has been immensely successful.",
"You should watch Sicario. At some point in the movie, Emily Blunt appear as kind of a rookie police officer : She wants to arrest every drug dealer and believe it will make for a better world. Then one of the elder officer tell her something like \"We've been stopping druglords in mexico for 50 years ... do you think it's a better place now ?\" Which is kind of a rhetoric question, no it's not better, it's just as shitty, his point is to not waste her life trying to stop every drug crime going on, because whatever happens there are always people to rise up again",
"We've been fighting it for decades, and there are still plenty of drugs, widely available. You can't fight supply and demand. If there is a demand, there will be an *extraordinary* amount of effort put into creating a supply. All making the supply illegal does is create criminal groups that specialize in supplying. It was true during Prohibition, and it's true now.",
"Because I can still get ANY DRUG I want with a phonecall or text, and have it in my hand less than 30 minutes later. Not just weed either, there's a crackspot and a heroin spot 3 blocks from the local PD lol.",
"What is the harm caused by drugs? 1) People get addicted 2) People do bad things while high, because their judgment is impaired; and 3) People commit other crimes to finance getting high. How is the criminalization of drugs contributing to the harm caused by drugs? 1) By making it illegal we make it more difficult for people to access care services to get off drugs. By making it illegal we punish people and make their lives actively worse (i.e. job loss, jail, social stigma) when they are most in need of help to quit and in the best position financially and socially to quit. We thus keep people on drugs and make it harder to quit. 2) By making it illegal we limit the options people have to enjoy drugs in a safe environment. Imagine if you could only get drunk in a public park as opposed to at a bar or your home (and once again because of the punishments we apply to drug addiction many addicts cannot own a home due to job loss). 3) By making it illegal we drive up the price. This means that an addiction is extremely expensive when it could be extremely cheap. There is no reason why, on a month's salary from McDonalds, you couldn't buy the equivalent of a million dollars in heroin at today's prices. If we produced this shit at scale and more efficiently we could make the price basically zero and eliminate the need for people to commit crimes to be able to afford it. What harm is caused by making drugs illegal? 1) Huge financial expense to enforce drug laws. 2) Criminal gang wars for control (see the mob wars and prohibition) 3) Huge numbers of drug users in jail (also at a huge expense). 4) Huge amounts of money going into the hands of hardened criminals who finance corruption of politicians, murders, etc. In short... it causes more harm to make it illegal and making it illegal increases the harm it causes, than simply letting it be legal. Frankly I would have the government give out free drugs at government owned facilities. Get your heroin, get a room for the night, and enjoy. But before you get your fix, a nurse kindly looks at you and says \"Bubz, you sure you don't want to get clean? I'll stay with you, set you up with a job, your own place... Life can be a lot better than it is... if you want it.\" Edit: I stupidly forgot another catagory here... What GOOD is done by drugs being illegal: 1. We hope that we reduce the number of people who become addicts.",
"Because by all popular metrics it did. Despite incarcerating an unprecendented number of people (the US today have more prisoners than any other country - per capita) and spending billions of dollars, the prices of illegal drugs fell and the purity of those drugs being sold rose You might want to read this article (they link several reports and overall give a great overview): URL_0",
"Because after 33 years they have accomplished nothing. People still do just as much drugs as they did in 1984. They locked up a lot of people but as far as actually stopping the drug trade. Nada",
"For the same reasons prohibition was a failure - the War on Drugs makes an already dangerous situation much worse. By making drugs illegal you: * Create a black market with enormous financial incentives - this is why the war on drugs can never be won. There is an ENORMOUS demand, and by restricting the supply, all you do is drive up the price/profit margin - this means that there is a ton of easy money to be made, as long as you're willing to take the risk. Someone, somewhere, will always be willing to take that risk. * Cause most of the violence related to drugs - enormous profits mean people will go to extraordinary lengths to protect those profits - this is why people are willing to use violence to protect/increase their market share. Think of alcohol as one of these dangerous drugs (it's one of the very few addictions whose withdrawals alone can kill you) - when's the last time you saw violence between beer vendors? * Make it harder for people to get off drugs - you direct the money you could spend on treatment to police/prisons instead, which leads to the next point... * You lose an extraordinary amount of human capital - locking people up means they're not working. It also means that their family has lost a father/mother/brother and leads to children growing up without parents. * You actually cause a lot of the deaths with the more dangerous drugs - when it's illegal, there's no quality control. Consider heroin - heroin addicts very rarely die from an acute heroin overdose. They know exactly how much heroin they need to get their fix. What kills them is when a drug dealer spikes their batch with fentanyl (or other drugs more powerful than heroin) to make their batches last longer, or to get a reputation for a powerful product. It'd be like accidentally drinking 24oz of Everclear (95% alcohol by volume) when you thought you were just drinking a couple of beers. Just think of it in the exact same terms as prohibition. It's a war that can't be won because of the enormous demand, and driving the market underground means that instead of reputable companies providing a consistent product, you've got gangbangers doing whatever they can to make a quick buck - including purposefully killing people to get a reputation of \"having the strongest stuff\".",
"Wars are fought with soldiers and in the US war on drugs the soldiers are over armed and under trained police vs poor drug addicted US citizens. So you have a militarized police locking up and abusing poor people regularly. While arrests have gone up drug use has stayed the same and poverty has gotten worse. It simply doesn't work.",
"Now that there are more choices to use than ever we can see how a top down system of punishment fails our social needs. It sounds obvious to say it, but drugs are often used to address problems, social, physical, personal. Punishing people who have a poor solution to problems they don't always start hasn't proved effectiveness compared to the magnitude of resources created, and committed in this cause. We can turn the tide by regarding drug use more as a symptom.",
"Cause it's not really the war on drugs, it's the war on your money. They want to lock people up for a long time for just having drugs. Why? Cause the prison gets paid a lot of money per day per inmate that's in it. Especially private jails. Most jails make more a year for having an inmate than any lower class working American. They will never end the war on drugs cause it's they money maker. Cops sells drugs, I've seen cops sell drugs on the street (off duty) that they took form somebody and let off with a warning probably. I've been inside before to, you know how most drugs get in jail? The police sells it, for money or information. I don't do drugs anymore, but when I did, I can tell you it's 100x easier to get any drug you want in prison than on the street.",
"Some economists like to use the model of *supply* and *demand* to explain why it was a failure. The war on drugs as we know it was an attempt to tackle the *supply* of drugs. Makes sense on the surface; bad people selling drugs should be stopped. We invested millions of dollars doing this. But that approach doesn't deal with the *demand* for drugs. As long as there is demand then the supply will always find a way where it's wanted. Dealing with demand is much more subtle, in that it means treating addiction like a disease (not as a choice you make everyday) and improving the economic prospects of people who are vulnerable to drug use (the impoverished). For whatever political reasons, that is harder to do than busting a drug cartel.",
"They're not. They're widely considered to be the best neo psychedelia band since the Flaming Lips.",
"They have accomplished giving drug cartels MORE money and MORE power. Drugs have gotten more potent, stronger, better. Drugs are READILY available. The biggest drug problem is PHARMACEUTICAL. So, they're basically running round busting big looking, but relatively small busts and thinking they're helping the country while people are moving from pain pills to meth. And here's a nice video to help URL_0",
"The CIA ships drugs into the country on purpose to both fund black operations and line the pockets of the agents carrying out the trafficking. Drugs being illegal increases the street value. It gives a reasonable justification to imprison anyone who happens to be of the wrong skin color or just unlucky enough to run across a corrupt cop who had a bad day. After they started the war in Afghanistan, opium production increased substantially. 90% of the worlds opium supply originates in Afghanistan. The military is there to ensure production continues. Google Air America.",
"As a addict of 20 years (opioids) I feel the war will always be lost because the focus of the war is completely off. All the emphasis is placed on eradicating the drugs themselves, dealers, traffickers, and so on, while the smallest part focused on rehabilitation, prevention, and so on. As an opiate addict I will say that as long as pharmaceutical companies are billion dollar enterprises the war will continue. From my own personal experience doctors, even those operating within the laws however ridiculous they are, continue to distribute more drugs into our communities than any illegal source PERIOD.",
"Not my thoughts, but I copied this from a comment by *Frater Plotter* on an article by Prof. Johnathan Adler about federal drug policy that he posted on the [Volokh Conspiracy blog]( URL_0 ) (before it became part of WaPo) in 2009. I repost this comment from a stranger because I could not say it better myself: The biggest problem with prohibition is that it is a straightforward infringement of liberty. What substances my neighbor chooses to put into his body is not my business. To borrow a phrase from Jefferson on religious freedom, \"it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.\" However, as with many infringements of liberty, prohibition also creates social ills, which may be observed even by those who do not consider liberty an adequate inherent good. First among these ills is the cost of enforcement. This includes the cost to taxpayers of policing drug production and use; the cost of trials; the cost of imprisonment or parole enforcement. These costs are substantial and are easily reckoned: consider that one-quarter of persons imprisoned in the United States were convicted solely of drug offenses (production, possession, or dealing). A second social ill is the lost productivity of the imprisoned. This is an indirect consequence of enforcement. My present salary is in six figures; if I were to use illegal drugs and were convicted and imprisoned, I would lose that job, and the economy would lose my contribution. This ill does not end with the end of a prison term, as ex-cons are typically unable to find jobs that allow them to make as large a contribution as the un-convicted. A third ill is the creation of a black market. The black market is outside of the legitimate economy and thus represents economic activity that is not taxed -- or, in many cases, recorded at all. If a man chooses to spend $50 on a quantity of marijuana or cocaine rather than of wine or tobacco, he creates a \"leak\" in the flow of money from the legitimate market to the black market. Money laundering and other forms of economic corruption are created to lift the leaked money back into the legitimate economy. Thus the black market corrupts the legitimate market. A fourth ill is the creation of high-risk, high-reward economic opportunities in the black market. The more effective enforcement is at restricting the supply of illegal drugs, the higher the prices will go -- and thus, the higher the reward for successful drug production, smuggling, and dealing. Larger risks can only be absorbed by truly desperate individuals (who turn to drug crime in the perceived absence of alternatives) or by increasingly large and well-defended operations: drug gangs. Thus, prohibition ends up financing the creation of large-scale criminal operations: organized crime. The consequences of organized crime are many, including violence; but one of them deserves special notice as a fifth social ill of prohibition: once there is organized crime with a revenue stream, the corruption of enforcement authorities becomes a necessity. Broadly, organized crime cannot exist for a substantial length of time without the consent of the cops: either by abandoning their duties (letting the gangs \"own\" a neighborhood because it's too dangerous to patrol) or by explicit corruption (being bought off). In some cases -- even in one small, quaint Massachusetts town where I used to live -- the police become an active part of the black market, moving and dealing illegal drugs. (It's worth noting that many people lay the blame for some of these ills upon drugs rather than drug prohibition. However, recreational and addictive drugs which are not illegal do not create these ills: the owners of liquor stores and bars do not engage in shootouts, nor do they generally need to buy off the cops -- except, of course, in places where a scarcity of liquor licenses is used as a means of extortion.) A sixth ill is the degradation of other rights to make enforcement easier. This includes the weakening of the rights to be secure from search and seizure, the increase of police violence, as well as the degradation of the right to freedom of speech and of the press. (For the latter, see the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act, which forbids the publication of information relating to the manufacture of a controlled substance.) A common rebuttal is that some of these social ills would follow from the prohibition of anything, even of acts that are themselves violations of rights. (For instance, organized crime can exist amongst thieves as well as amongst drug-smugglers.) This is, to an extent, true. However, the cost of many of these ills depends on the prevalence and profitability of the crime in question: and illegal drugs are vastly more profitable than theft. It is reasonable to say that the social cost of theft would vastly exceed the cost of \"theft prohibition\" -- so prohibition is a good bargain. The cost of drug prohibition, however, vastly exceeds the cost of drug use.",
"Because you can not go to war with a Word. \"Drugs\" were never a clear enough enemy. This should have turned more into a health crisis than anything.",
"It's not about drugs or law. It's about order. Read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander",
"Part of it is because of the fact that people who were arrested for drug possession have had their lives ruined more by the hit on their criminal record than the drugs themselves. Many former convicts have a hard time finding jobs because employers don't want to hire them. Another factor is marijuana being classified as a schedule 1 drug, with steep punishment. A few years after the war on drugs began, public perception changed, now many people believe the punishment for marijuana in particular are too severe. This conflicts with the idea of justice and punishment being proportional to the crime. And finally, there's the fact that programs such as D.A.R.E have been shown not to reduce drug use in teens.",
"The United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the war on drugs. Drugs are cheaper than they have ever been. Drugs are more potent than they have ever been. Drugs are as easily accessible as ever. The United States will continue to spend billions of dollars to feed and shelter the thousands of people who were given long sentences for non-violent offenses. The cheap cost of production in Central and South American countries, coupled with the comparably *HUGE* markup once the drugs hit the USA has created a lot of pressure at the border, from the south north. There is a finite amount of drugs that can be reliably trafficked into the United States, but an incredible amount drugs that can be manufactured in Central / South America. Since very little can be done to affect the bandwidth of drugs coming into the country, the only opportunity for growth is to dominate the manufacturing / distribution marketplace. The large amount of money flowing into the hands of these manufacturing / distribution cartels, combined with their struggle for ever-bigger pieces of the same pie has resulted in extremely well-equipped cartel security forces who are fighting a foreverwar to dominate the market. In many cases, these cartels have much better weapons and electronic equipment than the government that is supposed to be containing them. In one case, a cartel had even created its own cellular network, and was thus able to avoid government electronic surveillance. TL;DR - The United States has spent a literal fortune to stop drugs, and the result is cheaper, more powerful, more prevalent drugs, and an group of cartels that are more wealthy and powerful than the governments that are supposed to contain them."
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