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6b0x9g | Why is Turkish written using the Latin alphabet rather than in Arabic-influenced characters? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Until about 100 years ago, it was. Frankly Arabic and Turkish don't have a lot in common as languages so the fit wasn't great anyway. Although there had been earlier attempts at reform, the change was done by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of the modern Turkish state (and was really only possible because he was essentially an autocrat). The reason for the change was threefold: First, as previously stated the Arabic alphabet isn't really adequate for expressing all Turkish phonemes. The new script enabled the written language to have much more parity with the spoken language. This made it much easier to learn; literacy rates jumped after the reform. Second, technologies like typewriters and telegraphs were at this point ubiquitous. Arabic is a calligraphic script; the letters flow into one another and have different shapes depending on where they are in the word. It is very difficult to type mechanically in the Arabic script. And third, the switch to from Arabic to Latin was symbolic of Ataturk's goal of transitioning Turkey from the backwards \"Eastern\" ways of the Ottomans and becoming a modern European power."
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6b1dv5 | What does "shooketh" mean? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"-eth\" is the third-person conjugation of a present-tense verb in Early Modern English. Many languages conjugate verbs, or in other words add special spellings and pronunciations, depending on who is doing an action. Third-person in this case doesn't mean someone you're talking *to*, but rather someone or something you're talking *about* -- \"he\"/\"she\"/\"it\". \"To shake\" in Early Modern English, is: * I shake * Thou shakest * He shaketh * She shaketh * It shaketh * We shake * They shake * Ye (plural you) shake Remarkably, \"shooketh\" never occurs. \"Shook\" is a past-tense conjugation of \"to shake\". This is a common error; third-person *past* tense is identical to current Modern English, where we would say \"he shook\". The only word that conjugates differently in the past tense is the second-person, which is \"thou shookest\". Everything else is just like today: * I shook * Thou shookest * He shook * She shook * It shook * We shook * They shook * Ye shook The correct answer to your question, then, is that \"shooketh\" doesn't mean anything -- it's an incorrect conjugation. It should be \"shook\". But since that would be a terrible answer, you've got the full explanation above. ;-) [edit] Trimmed off a redundancy (which actually sounded condescending, even -- sorry about that).",
"Another way of saying shook, like when something exciting or big happens you would say , \"IM SHOOOOOOK\" or like \" I am sHooOKeth\"",
"To fully appreciate \"shooketh\", you have to read it in the original Shakespeare: > The lady wast a festinate machine > The lady did keep that lady motor crisp > The lady wast the most wondrous alas mistress yond I ever seen > & nbsp; > The lady did has't the sightless eyes > telling me nay lies > Rendering me asunder with those American thighs > & nbsp; > Taking moo than that lady share > did has't me fighting for air > The lady did tell me to cometh > but I wast already thither > & nbsp; > Cause the walls t’wer shaking > The earth wast quaking > mine mind wast aching > And we wast making 't > & nbsp; > And thou > did **shooketh** me all night long > Yeah thou > **shooketh** me all night long..."
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6b1f3r | What are "compliments"? In period films I often see people sending compliments. "My compliments, sir." "My compliments to Colonel Smith. Inform him I will be there soon." What does it mean? Why did we stop doing that? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Very old style formal letters often opened or closed with a lot of long and effusive compliments and well-wishes. To the point where it was frankly quite inconvenient. When letter writing became more widespread these long and wordy blocks of flowery salutations, well-wishes, etc got condensed down to just \"compliments\" or \"regards.\""
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6b1g9b | Why do we associate mint with being a "cooling" flavor and spicy foods with having a "hot" flavor despite them having no actual effect on temperature? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Capsaicin from chili peppers binds to “hot” sensors in the mouth, nose, and lungs, which besides fooling the brain into thinking there's *actually* fire (there's not) are a powerful irritant, causing a cough response and nasal irrigation (runny nose), as well as some degree of tearing (like “endearing”) from the eyes in an effort to flush out the chemicals. Menthol and other “cool” flavors bind to “cold” receptors in those same areas, leaving somewhat of a “fresh” taste in the mouth as well as decreasing saliva production. The nasal passages open up, allowing easier breathing.",
"Because their chemicals trigger the nerves that detect cold and hot. Your body literally cannot tell the difference between capsaicin and actually being physically hot."
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6b1ip9 | Why has the U.K. been so historically powerful yet they are incredibly small compared to other countries | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"European countries at the time were similar in size and population. The UK had an advantage of being an island so difficult to invade without a powerful navy. Most of the neighbours couldn't afford a powerful navy as they had many land borders with other countries so needed to maintain an expensive land army. The UK then built a powerful navy and was able to use it to back up a merchant fleet, alongside this they were able to invest in industry, science and education since they were not as concerned as their neighbours in being attacked. This meant the UK had a lead in the agriculture and industrial revolutions.",
"The UK developed a reputation for always paying its debts after the Bank of England was founded in the 1600s. A top notch credit rating made it easier and cheaper for the UK to borrow money than other countries, which in turn made it easier and cheaper for the industries of the UK to borrow money and grow. Business growth created wealth and a huge tax base to fund the military. And the military then helped businesses expand into colonies worldwide and protected their interests.",
"They have a fair bit of arable land, resulting in there being enough farms to sustain the cities. They have lots of ports on lots of sides, so they can receive cargo from many places. And they have historically used a fair bit of cunning to get what they wanted, rather than relying on home turf advantages."
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6b2t72 | The rise of nationalism and right wing opinionated people has been sudden. Is there an in-depth explanation to this global trend? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When one side radicalizes - so does the other. Look at changes on the left. The left went from fighting for gay rights (basic liberalism that I can totally get behind) to fighting for gender neutral pronouns (radical leftism which I despise), like the recent thing in Canada with Prof. Peterson. They are pushing the ideas of safe spaces, microaggressions and all that comes with it (mostly in the US), producing a generation that is completely incapable of having any open debate with contrasting views. They are ignoring the problem of islamism and jihadism, and attack genuine reformers like Hirsi Ali or Nawaz. And anyone who disagrees with them is an islamophobe, a racist, a bigot or a xenophobe. What it really is is a shift not only further to the left but also away from libertarianism and into authoritarianism. What's the response on the right? Radical. Harsh critique of transgenderism, crazy stance on Islam, quite often they simply take an openly xenophobic position and advocate for a ban on immigration and refugees. They also shifted further to the right and into authoritarianism. When the discussion is about Healthcare, taxes or gay rights it's all pretty civil, because changes to those policies (in either direction) are not *that* big of a deal. One guy want higher taxes and more welfare, the other wants lower taxes and less welfare. It's not going to completely transform their lives. But the things we talk about now are huge. Radical right says Islam will destroy our civilization and the left will let them do it; radical left says the right will pull us into fascism. You can see how those things are (at least potentially) a much bigger deal than a healthcare reform. And big things like that always lead to identity politics. In times of crisis you turn to authority figures. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the right has simply responded to changes on the left. It's a feedback loop. Right wing guy says no refugees, left wing guy says all the refugees and both their views erode into radicalism. Why did it start at all? Because political ideology is fluid. We like to think that moderate left and right wing is the norm but it's not, it's all moving all the time, both transforming on it's own and adapting to changes in the world (the aftermath of the Arab Spring is a major thing here). It's also a generational thing - on that topic I recommend the book \"Pendulum: How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future\". There is pattern to which these changes seem to adhere to."
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6b355w | The Church of Scientology and why it has a bad reputation. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The CSI s a power cult dedicated to some science fiction space opera nonsense created by L Ron Hubbard. I'm not going to get into their crap but it boils down to self improvement by accepting different types of cosmic rays. It is pay to play. They are some evil bastards who participate in fraud, malicious litigation, witness tampering, manslaughter, violent coercion, espionage that would make the KGB proud, kidnapping, torture, and various other forms of thuggery. Screw them. With a rusty shovel.",
"There are a few documentaries on the \"church\" but the gist of it is - They keep members through intimidation and retaliation (families are encouraged to cut off people who quit the church) - They rake in millions in fees to progress through the church, often for little to no \"gain\" in status - They pray on and isolate children to grow new life long members - The elite members live by different rules and take advantage of them - There are members in various departments of governments at all levels who influence politics to their will and so on and so forth Some of those ring true for mainstream religions too but often to varying degrees. Plenty of Jesus fan boys are in politics too but typically you don't get disowned for not staying in the religion (in most \"Christian\" households). All religions are nothing but over excited fantasy role playing clubs...",
"Its a cult for the elite who want to use the church tax loophole to stay wealthy. They kidnap people and torture them if they try to leave or expose secrets. Its their belief that mankind was once very advanced but an alien race destroyed most of us and we are on a road to redemption. They also have Tom Cruise, which makes them 10x more evil.",
"They do not have a \"bad reputation\", per se. They have bad behavior that is described objectively and thus leads to their reputation suffering.",
"The best way to answer your question is to point you in the direction of the South Park episode that accurately explains what they believe. Here is the Wikipedia article about it, I'm sure someone can post a good video link. URL_0"
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6b38fz | Why are punctuation signs like ! , . ? the same in virtually every language, and how did it spread? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"See if this paragraph from Wikipedia helps: > The exclamation mark is common to languages using the Latin alphabet, although usage varies slightly between languages. The exclamation mark was also adopted in languages written in other scripts, such as Greek, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Devanagari, but it has never been found in Hindi. URL_0"
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6b4eo7 | why do we propose using a ring? when and how did all of this start? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The debeer's corporation managed to basically monopolize diamond and launched this massive ad campaign that involved buying rings when proposing. Adam explains it better: URL_0",
"Most cultures throughout history have had rituals surround betrothal and marriage. Part of this is a visible sign the person is \"taken\", particularly the woman. This has included headwear, hairstyles, clothing, and of course, jewelry. Rings become favored because they were both visible and convenient. Expensive rings are a symbol of the man's wealth and ability to support his potential bride. They also are the concerted effort of diamond industry marketing to convince consumers that an expensive ring is a necessary foundation to a good marriage."
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6b4hrc | What makes America so in love with their military? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Americans have never really had the displeasure of seeing their own military used as an occupying force against them. Most other countries have.",
"> Even liberals can't hate the soldiers I think a lot of that is backlash against the way soldiers returning from Vietnam were treated. Now, a significant proportion of congress and the leadership of the major political parties are around the right age to have fought in Vietnam. It will probably be another generation before a major party is willing to risk demonizing soldiers.",
"Basically it is just *conditioning*. From an early age we are told to love the military and thank our soldiers for their service. It is just a myth we like to tell to ourselves to make us feel more important, to make us believe our tribe is the good tribe, our warriors are the good warriors. Of course the other side tells the same myth."
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6b5m2p | Why are the French able to inaugurate their elected president a week after the election, but the United States doesn't inaugurate their president until months later? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The US uses the electoral college, so technically there's an entire election that has to occur after the first election. The US also has 4-5 times the population size, and because it's divided into 50 different, individual races, there are more opportunities for disputes and recounts. In practice, though, a lot of it's just a matter of what the rules say. The US Consitution says when elections take place and when the inauguration takes place. If the inauguration was written to be a few weeks earlier, the president would simply take office a little bit earlier without issue.",
"The French presidential electoral system was designed in the late 20th century. The US presidential electoral system was designed in the 18th century, although updated a bit in the early 20th. Communication and transport massively improved in the interim. Changing the time frame in the USA would require a constitutional amendment, which is a huge undertaking, and ultimately there is not the political will for such an action. Edit: The 20th amendment brought the inauguration forward from March to January in 1933, still significantly before the modern French presidency."
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6b8m2c | What exactly is the Black Panther Party and what did they do? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There were two major Black Panther organizations in US history. The original [Black Panther Party]( URL_0 ) was a \"black power\" group founded during the late 60s to resist police brutality in black communities. They were known for their militant stance, frequently making open displays of firearms. Eventually, they broke up in the early 80s. Several years later, a completely unrelated group calling themselves the [New Black Panther Party]( URL_1 ). They're widely regarded as an anti-white hate group. The founders of the original Black Panther Party have said they have no meaningful claim to continuing on in the name of the Black Panthers."
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6b94ti | Difference between the idea of Communism and the partucular implementation of Communism that Soviet Union had | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The idea of communism is that you don't need things like government, money, or any of that nonsense. People just get jobs done that need doing as when they're required. Even if that could be made to work, it can't be done all at once. Instead, you first have to introduce socialism and build on that. Under socialism, ownership of the means of production (the farms and the factories, basically) is transferred from the capitalists to the workers themselves. The problem is that while this kind of collective ownership can work very well on a small scale, it turns out that on a large scale it's very impractical. Somebody somewhere has to be in overall charge. So the government basically takes ownership of everything, claiming that the government is made up of representatives of the people: so the government owns the means of production on behalf of the workers. In practice, this means that the state has a monopoly on everything, and everything is run by bureaucrats and politicians who don't always have much experience in relevant fields. So if, for example, the pane of glass you bought to replace a window is too thin, then tough: the glass factory wasn't given enough raw materials but still had a quota to fulfil, so they're making thinner glass this month and there's no other factory you can go to.",
"Karl Marx began communism when he started considering the nature of society in the industrial age. Factories require capital to construct resulting in the ownership of the factory by the rich. Factories required many workers. Each individual worker was powerless. But united together they controlled output. Factories could be owned by stock companies. Individuals could own shares of stock. Together they owned factories. So a society where the workers owned the factories could be imagined. Marx was a social philosopher. He imagined that control and ownership of the means of production would eventually move to the workers themselves from the owners of the factories. The communist party was founded by idealist willing to effect this change violently. Russia was a totalitarian monarchy. It was a feudal society and nowhere near being a developed country with a working class and many factories. The majority workers were serfs is an agrarian society. But the largest cities had factories. Russia was changing under the Tsars. Rather than ruling by decree the Tsar had to call the Russian parliament into being. This was not a democratic institution but but it did represent power outside the Tsar. The dissent about how society was to change and how fast resulted in a revolution and the deposition of the Tsar. The new revolutionary government was weak without the loyalty of an army. The marxists saw the opportunity for a counterrevolution. They took over government being willing to use violence and authoritarianism. Their leaders insisted on obedience and control. They did not want another revolt. So in a land of serfs coming from totalitarianism they blended the ideas of Marx with total control by leaders. They controlled with propaganda and force."
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6b9bw3 | Can animals recognize music as music? | When we play music with our pets around, do they have the capability to enjoy melodies like we do, or do they interpret it as just more noise? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Apparently the part of the human brain that's stimulated by melody is left untouched by just about every other animal. According to brain imaging, your dog has no sense of rhythm. Your cat certainly doesn't \"get\" that CD you're listening to, and your hamster can't even remember and recognise a simple melody played over and over. Perhaps it's because animals live more \"in the moment\", so the fact that we introduce time from our observation is what enables us to take the isolated notes and see them as a bigger picture - but that's taking us into quantum physics and not really explaining it like you're five. If you're really interested, think about an arrow in flight. If you were to freeze time, you would know where the arrow was, but you couldn't say how fast it was travelling, or where it would land. In any given moment, the arrow is frozen in its point. You can search for more on this if you're bothered. But my suggestion would be that dogs (for example) only hear the notes that are being played \"now\", rather than making sense of the whole musical bar or getting the underlying rhythm from 16 repeated sounds. I agree that some birds can mimic other sounds, but they are just as likely to mimic the sound of a car starting or aircon fans powering up as they are to mimic a tune. TLDR - No.",
"That's kind of like asking if animals recognize painting, architecture or poetry for what they are. As far as we know, animals don't have the capacity to appreciate or understand the concept of art. I mean we've all seen videos of pets watching tv and reacting to what's happening on screen, but they're not aware that what they're watching is a simulacra. A cat watching Star Wars isn't rooting for Luke. I'd imagine music is much the same"
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6bbtxe | Why hasn't Puerto Rico become part of the United States? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because, to date, Puerto Rico has not passed any legislation asking Congress for admission as a state. Maintaining the status quo has been the most popular course for a long time, but statehood is slowly edging up in popularity. That's pretty much the main barrier. Both major US political parties have publicly started their intent to support statehood for Puerto Rico should they apply.",
"It HAS It is part of the US. People who were born there ARE American born for purposes of becoming President( Yes there is nothing legally stopping Mariah Cary from becoming President) The only twist is that they issue birth certificates in Spanish, and when you become a naturalized citizen of the US while living in Puerto Rico you take the oath in Spanish and every place where you say \"The United States Of America\" in the mainland the Puerto Rico version simply adds the words \"And of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico. you send snail mail to Puerto Rico through the US Postal Service at the SAME rate as you pay for the mainland, Even to Canada Parcel rates are higher than they are within the US, NOT the case to Puerto Rico Puerto Ricans are eligible to join the Us military under the same rules as any other US citizens. You do NOT need a passport to go to Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans do not need a passport, visa or green card to come here, and once they move into your neighborhood they can register and vote under the same rules as someone who just moved there from Omaha. US Currency is used in Puerto Rico They have their own Spanish-based names for penny, nickle, dime and quarter, but the name Dollar is actually a bad translation of a Spanish coin from the colonial era. Sooooo, Puerto Rico IS part of the US, it's just not a STATE so they don't vote for president and they have no Senators. their House representative has no vote on the floor. Reason they are not a state is that Puerto Ricans can't seem to agree among themselves as to whether to become one. There are actually 3 different sets of opinions some favor Statehood, some favor independence and some admit they don't like the current situation but consider it less bad than either of those alternatives. Puerto Rico is the poorest part of the US but one of the wealthiest parts of Latin America Becoming A state would mean losing some of it's \"Latin-ness\" just as Hawaii, became less an independent culture when they became a State. Hawaii has experienced independence and in doing so figured out what Scotland realized a few years ago, that for a country SIZE MATTERS! and Puerto Rico is too small to survive as an independent country without constant foreign aid from somewhere most likely the US or it would have to go into something sleazy like drug smuggling, off shore banking or something along that line",
"The legislative assembly of Puerto Rico passed legislation on December 12, 2012 requesting statehood after a voter referendum found a very slim majority in favor. Legislation was introduced to grant statehood in the US Congress in 2014 (H.R. 2000; S. 2020) but both versions died in committee. The primary argument at the time was from Republicans who did not want to introduce a 51st state's worth of voters that would likely be majority Democrat. Since then, opinion on the island has fluctuated around the 50/50 mark. There is yet another referendum coming up in 2017, but it's unclear what it would accomplish.",
"~~Simply put, not enough people want to make Puerto Rico a state. Also remember that there are other options. It could become a free associated state or even declare full independence.~~ ~~The last referendum held on the matter in 2012, 54% of people voted to remain a commonwealth (its current state), 28% voted for statehood, 15% voted to be a free associated state, and 3% voted for full independence.~~ ~~Becoming a state is something that is initiated by the would-be state, not something Congress decides and imposes on another territory.~~ EDIT: Sorry, I misread a word when I was looking over the referendum, resulting in thinking it came to the opposite conclusion.",
"Because whenever the vote comes up, the citizens vote to keep their status as a an unincorporated territory of the USA. This has the benefit of avoiding taxation and passports for travel while being protected by the United States",
"The PR Independence movement is mostly wishful thinking. People recognize it as an impossibility. Many Puerto Ricans support statehood and find colonial existence to be tolerable but demeaning. The US government likes to give PR crap for mismanaging their affairs, which is probably deserved, but it is still grating to have a US (foreign) appointed oversight panel that has vast influence over PR's domestic economy. What hasn't been mentioned is the effect of the Jones Act on the island, which requires goods to and from PR to be shipped on American vessels that originate from America. So even if you want to ship something to nearby DR, it has to go on an American vessel and stop in Florida before it can reach its buyer. This raises trading costs by enough to seriously hamper economic development on the island, amounting to an extra tax on the island and a giveaway to American shipping firms.",
"Public opinion on the island is about 50-50. Republicans would oppose it because it would help the Democrats in Congress.",
"Speaking to the latter part of your question, it wouldn't be awkward. A couple of flags with 51 stars have already been imagined, [with this flag being the most prominent design]( URL_0 ).",
"Puerto Rico is one of many territories that fall under the jurisdiction of the United States for all purposes associated with being a State; the exception is an absence of representation in Congress.",
"Puerto Rico is the used and abused girlfriend in this relationship. We aren't going to marry her; we don't even particularly like her; but she's useful sometimes for really kinky stuff that we wouldn't do at home."
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6bcdb1 | when/how were women convinced that taking their clothes off is empowering? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The push for western women to be conservative in terms of dress and modesty really peaked during the Victorian era. It arose out of the belief that men have uncontrollable and insatiable lust and the exposure of any flesh from a woman would lead to temptation and damnation. Therefore they were duty bound to protect themselves and men from the temptation of sin. This thought structure extended even to furniture and is the origin of long lace table cloths and chair covers; the legs could easily be construed as feminine and lure men into impure thoughts. The extent of repression reached a point that everyone was so focused on avoiding the subject of sex, that eventually they were more involved in talk and sexual thought than if they'd left it alone. However, in the times following that era, the younger generation rebelled and the pendulum began to swing the other way. Instead of being a \"proper lady\" that covers themselves to protect society from impure thoughts, they began to believe in living for themselves and started uncovering as they wished. Societies tend to react to one extreme by eventually shifting towards the opposite.",
"There's a bit of a fallacy in your question. Getting told to do something or getting convinced to do something isn't necessarily empowering. But *deciding* to do something with your own body is -- even if that \"something\" is showing it in public. It's not about the clothes. It's about the decision. Men in different parts of the world and different centuries have been telling women to cover up and/or take their clothes for a very long time. The idea that it's the woman's choice to do one or the other, not a man's, and that either choice is acceptable is a very empowering idea.",
"From the perspective of a young guy hoping to see some T & A, it doesn't seem empowering. But to a girl who's been told all her life to be modest, and to be ashamed of sexuality, and to not be a whore, and to behave how a husband might want her to behave someday, taking control of your own sexuality and being proud of your body on your own terms can be a massively empowering experience.",
"A person having agency and autonomy in their own lives to make choices without the burden of judgement of those around them is empowering, especially in the face of a society that places unrealistic or sometimes hypocritical standards on someone based on culturally relative gender sterotypes.",
"Simplest answer is that it depends on context: Putting on clothing can be Empowering Taking clothes off can be Empowering Being told to put on clothing can be Dis-Empowering Being told to take clothes off can be Dis-Empowering",
"Women have always had little to no say over their bodies. They were covered for men's sake because we were \"owned\" by husband or father or brother. Taking them off is strictly a personal choice because we can. Just as if a woman wants to cover up that's for her too. It's personal choice.",
"The roaring 20's was when women started showing off their ankles and shoulders. The summer of love is when sexual freedom was really popularized- nudity, interracial relationships, homosexuality, etc. And of course feminism."
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6bcghf | why are tere black, asian and indian tribes that have not advanced technologically but there are no white tribes? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"From a historical context you can associate races with a specific geography so you would find black tribes in Africa, white tribes in Europe, etc. Some of them would have periodic contact with one another and some would have been isolated. As technology advancements happened throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East (we're talking from about 2500 years ago or so) these areas all competed with one another and fell under the control of empires such the ancient Greeks, Romans, Huns, etc. During those times technology would have spread due to interactions these people would have had with one another either conflict or trade. So for white tribes in Europe it would have been extremely difficult to maintain a traditional lifestyle. They would have fallen under the territory of many kings or emperors over the centuries and would either have been conquered and assimilated or they would have had to develop their own technology to fight back. In other parts of the world contact happened much more recently (South America, parts of Africa, some islands in South Asia, etc.) It's only the tribes that have been able to stay isolated through to modern times that have any option to maintain their traditional ways of life and avoid technology.",
"White people are *mostly* from Europe. Europe has fairly easy geography to travel and map when you compare deadly amazon rain forest and steep Asian mountains meaning when the advanced civilizations of Europe went around grabbing up all the land they could, they explored almost all of the land. When similar things happened in Asia and South America people started thinking \"why the hell would I ever want to travel through this hell hole?\" so they didn't and some tribes got spared the impeding genocide.",
"I will try to give an answer. I study history at the university at aarhus, so here we go. Many places in the world is rather remote or hard to get to (in the past that is). A great example on that is the Sahara desert. It only allowed very little interaction with place north of Sahara. This made change a lot slower. As you may figure, non of the European countries were isolated, thus change was needed to compete against other powers. Tribalrule is not suited to rule larger territories as it usually is a lot more \"lose\". I hope this is a fine answer?"
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6bcrrs | In the US, why do more politically conservative states tend to receive more federal funding than liberal states but their politicians tend to want to cut federal funding levels? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Aside from some good (and bad) answers others have given, there's a chicken and egg argument. Lots of voters in these states think that federal funding has *harmed* the private sector and as long as the government continues to, in their mind, poorly spend money in their state, it'll keep it dependent on federal funding and be self-perpetuating. They think that if the federal funding stopped, there would be a period of pain but then the private sector would be better positioned to help the state and make it stronger than before. Whether you believe that or not- or maybe do in some cases but not in others- is up to you. Side note: this is often a talking point about Brexit, too. People that are against it will point to the UK's economy doing worse right afterward as an indication that leaving the EU was/is bad for the country. People who are pro-Brexit will look at the exact same economic downturn and say \"Yeah, that the EU has that much influence over our economy in the first place is *exactly* the problem.\"",
"The household income in states like Alabama and Mississippi for example means that more people are eligible for and receive federal aid more than states with higher income levels. The lower the income the less in taxes you pay. States like Florida and Arizona have a LOT of senior citizens so they also receive a lot in federal aid. Also, and this is a huge one, Southern states (conservative) tend to have more military bases than Northern states (liberal) which draws more federal dollars, more federal contractors and more military retirees (retirees get benefits from living near a base). All of this combined is the reason. It is not political.",
"The correlation isn't perfect- look at Maine and Kansas as examples of that. Beyond that, the big reason for this is the lurking variable of urbanization. Highly urban states are more likely to be wealthy and therefore send more money to the federal government, and urban states are more likely to have Democratic voters.",
"Many consumers of federal aid (what many would call welfare) don't even realize they are consuming federal aid because much of welfare is not disbursed in the form of food stamps and unemployment checks. Of those who are aware that they receive federal aid, to most of them, they are using it because they fell on hard times and really need it to survive, while everyone else is just super lazy.",
"Cheap land. It's available in many more conservative areas, while less conservative, more urban areas tend to have relatively expensive land. When the government needs 15,000 acres to build a new nuclear test area, laboratory, or other program it's likely to build it in a state where it already owns land or can acquire the land inexpensively. Places with cheap land tend to have more families and married couples tend to be more conservative than singles. Further, an enormous amount of government spending goes to retirees a large number of whom work in high income/high cost of living areas and retire to low income/low cost of living areas (so their fixed pension buys a higher standard of living). Retirees tend to be more conservative than younger people.",
"Conservative states receive more funds because their citizens are poorer, and therefore contribute less in tax revenue to the state, requiring the federal government to kick in more to keep government functions and social services fully funded. Why those states elect politicians who campaign and vote against the very funding on which their constituents depend is a more complicated question. The most basic answer is that the Republican party has married its platform of slashing federal funding to other policies that are very appealing to most conservative voters: opposition to any form of gun regulation, support for laws restricting or eliminating legal abortion, support for Christianity-based morality as public policy (Hobby Lobby decision, Kim Davis etc.), anti-immigration enforcement. To this point, voters in conservative states have shown with their votes that they care more about supporting these kinds of social policies than they care about the potential harm that might befall them from de-funding federal programs upon which they rely. It will be interesting to see if that trend continues in 2018 or if the GOP's efforts to slash funding for healthcare through the ACHA makes a difference. At the risk of sounding patronizing, social policy is more easy to market and digest than economic policy, where cause and effect are more easily muddled. Most American voters--both conservative and progressive--are not very well educated or informed. It is possible that many conservative voters who respond positively to the GOP's social policy platform are simply unaware of how the GOP's fiscal policies may affect their lives (consider that 1/3 of American voters polled were unaware that Obamacare and the ACA were THE SAME THING.)",
"Politics isn't some rational thing where people have good ideas and put them into practice to do sensible things. I do economic analysis, and it's impossible to explain politics with any rational analysis. Politics is much better explained by irrational factors, most things in politics are done because of knee jerk assumptions by the electorate, which have nothing to do with sensibility or the quality results. People hold political beliefs mostly because of tradition, those beliefs do not have to make sense and more often than not they are inconsistent. If people actually had logical beliefs on politics it would stop being politics and be an actual science.",
"It's a mis-leading statement to begin. A lot of military bases and other large govt entities are located in conservative states, thus a lot of federal money going to those states. Doesn't really have anything to do with \"welfare\" money.",
"In my experience, people think they pay more in taxes and that they use less public services than they actually do. People with 7 kids on a 100k income and only paying 700/yr on school taxes complaining about welfare. Guys making 40k in Susanville, CA thinking that their taxes are paying for \"welfare queens\" in San Francisco. (SF county median household income is double Lassen county.)",
"Because the explicit federal funding per state metric is utterly meaningless in terms of the question you're asking. The much more pertinent numbers to research would be what types of federal funding each state receives. Military bases vs social security vs SNAP vs University funding, etc, etc. When you look at what that federal funding is going towards, you get a very very different story. Also keep in mind that conservative states are usually run by liberal capitols/major cities with massive populations which receive very different kinds of aide than the typically red voters outside those hubbs. The types of federal funding that red state republicans oppose is overwhelmingly spent in those blue hubbs, and much much less in the rest of the state. So it's not like the red state republican is \"voting against their own interest\" as one might infer if they only looked at the discrete amount of federal funding received by each state.",
"Lots of low income people are not very educated and are easily persuaded to vote against their own economic self interest.",
"Conservative states elect conservative leaders that believe in smaller government so they cut down taxes and services. State government can't cut down federal taxes so they keep receiving the same amount, but their states budget decrease, so by definition the % coming from the Federal increase, even if the total amount received from the Federal didn't changed. Let say that the Federal give your states 100 millions and you collect 400 millions from your taxpayers. The federal payment count for 20% of your budget. Now let say that you elect a conservative governement and it cut down the taxes from 400 millions to 300 millions. You are still receiving 100 millions from the federal, but your total budget is now 400 millions so the % from the federal increase to 25%.",
"Politically conservative states receive more money because their populations are poorer than those of more liberal states. Conservative politicians \"believe\" (contrary to most of the evidence) that \"government is the problem\" (Ronald Reagan). For a more informed view, please read [American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper]( URL_0 ) (what I'm currently reading). For a real world example, check out what's been going on in Kansas before and after Sam Brownback became governor.",
"Where money and wealth are considered moral goods, and so the poor are considered moral failures, the wealthy tend to stigmatize the poor. This keeps the poor quite poor indeed. So there is a vicious cycle of trying to keep the (ugly name for any racial or social out-group here) \"in their place\" offset to the tune of surprise that the economy isn't doing better. Meanwhile wealthy, middle-class, and even \"barely comfortable\" lower-middle classes don't want to move their families and businesses into some decaying hellhole. And there's nobody in that decaying hellhole to buy most products anyway so there's no impulse to move in nice stores that sell nice clothes and good food. In the blue parts of blue states - and I phrase it that way because, in fact, most states and places are actually \"purple\" - suficent money is spent year-after-year to keep the schools reasonably funded and to socially de-stigmatize the poor and give the out-groups resources they need to bootstrap their lives into better circumstance. That raises incomes, which raises taxes, which both pays back the bootstrap money but also raises the entire standard of living and standard of services. This, in turn attracts businesses and families. At the core, \"in my humble opinion\" of course, is the difference in the view of \"entitlement programs\" and \"giving\". One type of person says \"I suffered, so I don't want to see anybody suffer like that\". Another type of person says \"I suffered, so why should other people be spared from suffering like that\"? The deadlocked ideas of \"people are only poor because they are lazy\", \"nobody helped me, so why should I help\", and \"charity is for the weak so I will neither give nor _accept_ charity\" taken as a whole perpetuate economic failure. Go to the net-giving areas and you will find healthy and reasonably vibrant communities for all the out-groups. People of color? yep. \"Questionably legal\" workers and their absolutely legal families? yep. Various religious minorities? yep. Go to the failing areas and you'll find a whole lot of \"you aint from around here, are you boy?\"... It's strong correlation, but there's a heck of a lot of causation. Basically \"economically unwell\" areas are pathologically \"socially unwell\" too. Neither is the \"first cause\", but both create and sustain each other on an ongoing basis. The desire to cut \"entitlement programs\" and other \"federal funding\" is just a symptom of that \"poverty is a moral failing\" attitude mixed with the implicit message that \"if my city, state, whatever needs federal funds then it must be a moral failure.\" The the bad reasoning goes \"if we get rid of the charity then we'll obviously retake the moral high-ground\". Plus, of course, \"if my representative is encouraging such funding then he must be encouraging moral turpitude!\" just rides along. It is, at its core, a failure of basic reasoning. Note that I am \"teh olde\" and when I was a kid the whole Republican Southern Strategy was in full force and I lived in, or very near, \"the south\". I would regularly hear \"If it's good for the ni & & ers it can _not_ be good for me\" in that many words. So literally, the poor white racists _demand_ that the ni & & ers get nothing, no matter what it costs the poor white racists personally. This isn't just a liberal rant. There's a cognitive bias that makes the bottom of the economic scale become very dog-eat-dog. It's a kind of risk/loss aversion. The poor racist doesn't want the poor black-fella to \"pass them\" on the economic ladder. So anything that benefits both of them is a danger to the one who perceives themselves as only slightly ahead. This is the \"keeping up with the jones'\" mentality but down at the hunger games level. The whole thing is just pernicious and stupid.",
"It's important to remember that US policy is designed exclusively to meet the interests of the 'donor class': URL_0 This has been achieved by motivating a base to vote primarily on non-economic issues (e.g., anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-government control, anti-gun control, ....), allowing the donor class to put policies in place that help to lower their taxes, but usually hurt the same base (Trumpcare is a perfect demonstration of this in action). Thus you end up with a system in which conservative politicians support pro-donor policies that hurt their base, but these issues keep the base motivated enough to keep them getting reelected.",
"These states are represented by people who are not actually fiscally conservative. These representatives are in reality often very wasteful with public money. They are more likely to take bribes or otherwise serve private donor interests,which almost never favors the state. The illusion of red state/Republican fiscal Conservatism has several components: 1.) These people like to lie about being fiscally conservative because it is almost universally popular. This gets them votes. 2.) Cutting social programs for the poor or minorities further distracts from wasting public money in other areas (such as defense, where secrecy can protect graft). It is harder for an opponent to criticize someone for wasting 50 cents on the dollar if they constantly shout about how they saved the tax payer 2 cents on the dollar by cutting an unknown program that only positively affects a small part of the population. 3.) Few call them out for their bullshit. These states' representatives have tantrums if anyone questions their irresponsible behavior and often believe that they would be better off if they weren't part of the Union anyway. It's kind of like making your kids stay for dinner when they'd rather go out with their friends and smoke meth. Yes, they are better off eating a meal instead of fucking their lives up, but they can be dicks about it and you'll have to tolerate it to a certain degree.",
"ELI5 has had alot of loaded political questions lately. There are some fun topics but this one is really pushing close to an unsub. Edit: the below aside was not the main point of my comment yet seems to be the focus. Even when questions are fun there are no answers a 5 year old would understand.",
"From what I understood from the disclaimer the map represents the amount of state tax revenue received from the federal government, meaning if a state has a high state tax rate it would make the amount of federal funding received look small. In short the map does not list the states by the amount of money received",
"Basically, these areas are conservative because they place a higher priority on what they consider morally right (being Pro-Life, the government not seizing their gun or telling them what kind of light bulb to use and that they have to ride a bicycle instead of using a car, etc), than what nets them the biggest gain in their pocketbook. If some party was socially conservative while keeping up the funding programs that benefit them, it would be a big winner in those states. But there since there is none they have to pick one or the other. The book \"What's the Matter With Kansas\" explored this.",
"This is not a question a 5 year old would understand the answer for. The best ELI5 answer is: what you hear people say isn't the whole truth. People say things in a way that makes you think the \"other\" side are stupid or foolish or hypocritical, while their side is not, and they base choices in clear obvious fact... The OBVIOUS answer is that not all federal funding is the same. EVERYONE wants some part of federal spending cut. The federal budget is massive and complicated. It has things for everyone to dislike or like. \"They\" dont want \"their\" part of federal spending cut. Everyone wants some other part cut. As an example, Where I live and grew up (Bay Area) it has been a CONSTANT drum beat of cutting spending on certain government spending. Even when it \"hurt\" the bay area (when they closed the Navy and Army bases), they still pushed for spending cuts in those areas... even though the spending was done in their area. How can you reconcile that they wanted cuts to programs that were bringing money to the area? Just because it apparently benefited the area doesnt make it hypocritical to call for its cut. And, to state the obvious, it didnt harm people in the Bay Area to lose those bases.",
"Look at a map of the most conservative states. Overlay that with a map of the Hispanic population. Overlay that with a map of the black population. There you go.",
"Can we make el5 a safe space from politics?",
"Because they have bought into an ideology that prevents them from using facts and reason to form policy.",
"This is actually a good question with a perfectly good answer but you just know this comment thread is going to be absolute AIDS",
"It's much more simple than many here are making it out to be. The core reason is that much of the conservative base are hypocrites.",
"Because if you live in a state with high federal funding you think everyone but you is benefitting and doing nothing for the free ride. You don't see the benefits you are getting as part of the deal - just antidotal evidence that \"niggers\" are abusing the system.",
"Isn't it obvious? Places that are better funded are going to see over-funded shit and say \"why the fuck am I being taxed so much?\" whereas people in underfunded areas are going to be like \"why the fuck doesn't any of this shit work; we should tax more.\" The question seems to confuse the causal relationship between these two things entirely."
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6bct6q | What would happen if I couldn't pay off my student loan debt? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Out of all the debts you could choose not to pay, that is literally the worst. It's the only debt you can't discharge in bankruptcy as of a few years ago. If you were unable to pay, they'd take portions of whatever government assistance or insurance money you were getting. If you were destitute, obviously they couldnt collect anything from you but the moment you start earning on-the-books money again, the debt collectors will blow you up. Your credit will suffer immensely. Pay it. Under basically any circumstance, pay it. You will get effd in the eh by the long D of the law if you dont.",
"You can't dismiss student loans in bankruptcy. If you fail to pay your student loans, your paycheck and tax refunds will be garnished until the debt is repaid."
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6bdmzl | What's a class action lawsuit and what's the difference to a "regular" lawsuit? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A class action lawsuit is when a bunch of people come together to file a single claim against a company. An example would be if a bank was unfairly charging customers $35 overdraft fees on their checking accounts, so the 1,000,000 customers affected filed a lawsuit to recover the damages. The reason class actions lawsuits exist is because it is impractical for someone to sue a company over $35, and the courts do not want to process 1,000,000 lawsuits that are all identical. So instead they all get put together as one large $35,000,000 lawsuit",
"The ELI5 answer is that it's a lawsuit in which one or a few class representatives bring a lawsuit against a particular defendant on behalf of an entire class of plaintiffs. Anyone who meets the requirements to join the class can receive a proportion of the award if the Plaintiffs win, but only the class representative actually has to appear in court and deal with the whole process. There's a list of criteria you have to meet to certify as a class action and to serve as a representative. This cuts down on the judicial burden of possibly thousands of people suing the same defendant over a very similar controversy all across the country. This would clog the docket and be a huge repetitive waste of resources. In a class action you handle everyone at once. It also makes cost-prohibitive lawsuits more attractive to bring. You probably wouldn't bother suing Pepsi for $500 because there was a bug in your drink or something, because you'd probably owe more than that in legal fees. It's also not really worth the lawyer's time. But in a class action, you may have 2,000 people each suing for $500 each because a whole batch of Pepsi got bugs in it. Now if Pepsi loses there's a $1,000,000 damage award that the lawyers get a nice chunk of and the whole class gets a few hundred bucks each, most without having to do anything more than opt in."
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6be4ec | When someone wins a lifetime supply of something, how does it work and how do they recieve it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This all depends on the company offering it. In the movies you always see people with 1000 boxes of candy bars. When I was 16 I worked at a pizza place and worked with the manager to do some of these giveaways, we considered a \"lifetime supply\" as 1 pizza a week for 1 year. I don't know why that's what they considered \"Lifetime.\" I have seen a toll house lifetime contest and it was similar, it was limited to a box of cookies every month for the \"Lifetime of the contest.\" Which was like 6 months.",
"they define what a lifetime supply means and how they will distribute that. so read the fine print. in this case a lifetime supply might just mean one redemption of a 6pc chicken mcnugget good once a day.",
"When I won a year supply of potatoes on Twitter, it was fulfilled as 52 coupons for free 2-lb. bags of potatoes from the brand that sponsored the prize. My wife was fearing a truckload of potatoes showing up at our apartment... after already being traumatized by the time I received an actual potato in a box as part of a media announcement for ESPN Zone Ultimate Couch Potato contest... it arrived while we're on 2 week vacation and was rotting away by the time we arrived home and got the package."
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6be5bm | Why do young kids find toilet humor funny? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is a good question, in school we learned about Freud and the anal stages, but nothing in his research had anything to do with humor and it's much earlier anyways. The thing I find most interesting about this question is it holds true with monkeys as well, they throw feces and laugh. (e: if they didn't find it funny, I would have assumed it was a learned trait from media) Laughter alone has a convoluted evolutionary purpose so why we find a lot of things funny is pretty vague. I'd say it comes down to the sensitive nature of it, feces is meant to be left and discarded, most humans and monkeys don't like having it on them, and so in the same sense that humiliation is funny, even the expression of feces gives an awkwardness or humiliation which makes it funny.",
"Here's another important question. Why do **I** (age fifties) find toilet humor funny?",
"Most kids go through a potty talk phase after transitioning out of diapers. It's an important thing in their lives at that time. Older kids like to shock adults, test boundaries, and experiment with how to interact with people. If shouting \"poopy butt\" at the top of their lungs in a supermarket garners a reaction, they have reason to do it."
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6bi0nu | How are interviewers are allowed or trusted to interview criminals ? | How do the interviewees know that the interviewer would keep their identity secret. Is there like a contract, a law regulating this ? Especially for channels like Vice, Vox, etc... | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The criminals may or may not get a legal agreement signed by the interviewers. However, ultimately they have to trust the interviewers not to reveal secrets -- which would ruin the interviewers' reputation but might be much more harmful to the person with the secret identity."
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6bi33u | How are things like drug tests and polygraphs not violations of the 5th Amendment? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The supreme court has also ruled that compelling urine tests from employees qualified as a \"search\" and thus the 4th amendment applied. *Treasury Employees v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656 (1989)* However, The Court also ruled that positive test results could not be used in subsequent criminal prosecutions without the employee’s consent.",
"Are we talking about at work? Or as part of a criminal case?",
"In criminal cases, polygraphs cannot be used against a Defendant without consent - it's giving up your right to remain silent. You cannot be compelled to give testimony against your will, and that's essentially what a polygraph is after all. A drug test is different, much like a DNA test, it's a search and can be done if there is probable cause (note that's a 4th amendment issue, not 5th). There are some cases in which \"implied consent\" laws mean that you either consent to a breathalyzer test (or urine, blood, etc.) if there is reasonable suspicion that you are driving under the influence, or you lose your driver's license. I am unaware if there are some states where implied consent laws mean you can take a sample from a suspect, without a warrant, and use it against them (I did not practice in such jurisdictions). Usually if consent is refused (say, a suspected drunk driver kills someone in an accident, and then refuses to consent to a test), police will quickly secure a warrant based on probable cause, and take a sample without consent.",
"Drug tests are not testimonial: you're not being asked to say anything. The Fifth Amendment is about your right not to answer questions. Polygraphs are rarely used in court, and even then, they have to be voluntary."
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6biudz | Why are so many places (states, towns, etc) named after Native American tribes despite anti-native sentiments in the 18th and 19th centuries? | EDIT: A big reason people keep mentioning is that settlers wanted to maintain the names of places for simplicity, but I'm not satisfied with that because: * Those names are way too complicated for the average American settler unfamiliar with Native culture and language. * Piggy backing off the last point, the settlers were the ones that named and made official the state's and city's names, sometimes making up names from Indian words such as: Mississippi, Minnesota, and Oklahoma. * Since settlers coined words, I'm trying to figure the cultural reasons for naming something after a complicated word instead of something simpler and more Anglican like the original British settlers in the 17th century. **Was the naming convention a cultural "fad", a pushback from British roots, or a way to "apologize" for earlier atrocities?** | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The answer I was given in middle school is that there are two parts to this. First, when areas were first populated in the east, Native Civilization remained prevalent enough that their names were the easiest to use. So, the Potomac river was named after an Algonquian village on the river (though it wasn't the name that that the Native's used for the river). The name was used enough that it stuck, and this was common in many places. No matter how much you might have not wanted to compete with a local native group, if you grow up using a name it's likely to stick. Second, after works like The Last of the Mohicans---and even before in some areas---there was a major turn toward the idea of the \"noble savage\" and the concept that Native Americans were being reformed and improved by exposure to whites. This lead to a certain romanticism of native culture, without necessarily extending to a desire to be accepting of native civilization or political power. This further cemented these names in place. EDIT: It's also worth noting that there are still areas with large native populations. In three US states, native languages are the most spoken languages, [after English and Spanish]( URL_0 :)",
"Because there is no reason to give something a new name when everyone already knows it as \"Connecticut.\" You can do this anywhere -- In Europe we don't even know where the words for the rivers Dnieper, Dvina, Danube, Don, Dniester, Donets, etc. come from simply because they are so old. Yet you can tell just by looking at them, they are clearly related, and must come from an original, long dead and forgotten ancient language.",
"A very interesting point. The states of Tennessee, KY, Ohio, Indiana, Mich, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and the two Dakotas are ALL named after Indian names. Not to ignore Mass and Delaware on the E. Coast. & Ole Miss. Long after the Indians left Ohio, the names are still all there. Even the Great Lakes but for Superior, are Indian language names, mostly Iroquoian, Michigan, Erie, Huron, Ontario; plus the Finger Lakes of NY. Names persist, but people die. This is one reason people honor their big heroes by naming cities and other places after them. So the names will survive. There are scores of surviving native Am. names in the Midwest, and can't even begin to list them, either."
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6bjxal | If a kid (of legal working age of course) worked at McDonalds or a comparable place in a Western country, it's no big deal. But in an Asian country it's very much looked down upon. Why the difference in opinion? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In Asian countries, there is an enormous focus on education and test taking compared to Western countries. In Asian countries like China, Japan, and Korea, students need to take a test to determine if they qualify for certain schools (middle, high, college, etc.). If they do poorly on a test, it can impact their life forever in terms of missed opportunities and future jobs. Thus, a kid taking time out of their day to work is looked down upon because they are not spending that time studying. Not studying means they will fall behind compared to their peers and result in a worse life.",
"I can't speak for your claim that it's looked down upon in Asian countries, but in western countries, food service and retail jobs tend to be the standard entry-level jobs that require no special education or training to perform. It's the first step in learning how to be an independent contributor to society."
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6bklp4 | Why do actors get so much credit? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Wow. You have a *really* bad idea of what acting is. Acting is way more than being an empty shell for the director's vision. Good performances are a *collaboration* between the actors and their director, not just standing there and reading the lines you're told to."
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6bl3op | What prevents someone from creating their own religion that practices drug use, and then doing those drugs in accordance with the First Amendment (Freedom of Religion)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The government isn't stupid. There are certain exceptions to drug laws, but \"I invented the church of Dank Nugzzzz\" isn't one of them. Generally they require that you demonstrate a strongly and sincerely held religious belief, and demonstrate that the use of scheduled substances is essential to the practice of your religion.",
"You would need to be prepared in court to prove that your religion was sincere and viable. It would be a hard and expensive fight. You would then still be liable for any drug use, or distribution, that could not be proven to be soley for ritual purposes Still, drugs would be easier to pass than say, a religion of robbery. Some drugs are already permitted for some adherents to some religions."
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6blf65 | In Star Trek, if the universal translator translates alien languages, how can Klingons still speak Klingon in front of Humans and not have it sound English? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Dramatic effect, really. You need the universal translator for the plots to make sense without your audience having to learn Klingon, but you don't want to ditch the cool 'alien culture' aspects. Bam, you're boned, you just have to fudge it."
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6blh51 | Why do so many seemingly independent Chinese food restaurants in the US have similar peculiarities? | I have an expectation of what I will find when I walk into a Chinese restaurant. A dozen or so pictures of some of the dishes above the counter, a stack of single-sheet menus with pencils for me to mark up, boxes of supplies cut in half to hold take-out food. This is the kind of consistency I expect in a franchise business like Subway, but all the Chinese restaurants are nominally independent. I don't see that sort of similarity in pizza places or Mexican cuisine restaurants. One place might have its menu on a chalkboard, another on printed plastic, and so forth. So, is there a hidden franchise system for Chinese restaurants? Do people who want to start one send away for a kit? If so, why isn't there a single name that they all use so that customers know what they're getting? If not, why do they all adopt the same practices? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Those are called \"American Chinese Restaurants\". They are to China what outback steakhouse is to Australia. The decoration and theme is to make Americans feel like they are experiencing \"Chinese culture\" based off of general stereotypes while making it very simple to orser food. Also, even the food is specifically made to cater to a western palate.",
"Check out in search of general tso on Netflix. It can answer a lot of your questions really interesting.",
"For one thing, many may be buying furnishings (and frozen food, or other stock) from a large supplier. For another, there are expectations on the part of the customer that have built up over a *long* time (fortune cookies, duck sauce, pupu platter, etc...) so that a low-end/mid-tier Chinese restaurant is going to look and taste the same. You actually can see a *very* similar thing in what I think of as \"Pizza Shoppes\" that infest college towns. They all have the same *giant* menu filled with the same stuff, the same frozen-fried appetizers that all change at once (\"Oh this year it's jalapeno poppers... now it's cheesy broccoli bites...\" and so on) and similar boxes/menus. They fill a niche that requires little skill as a chef, and the \"best\" way to do business has long since been determined. If you go to higher end places, the decor changes wildly.",
"1) They use the same suppliers for decor and furnishings. 2) They use the same suppliers for food stocks. 3) They make the same modifications to Chinese recipes to match the American palate.",
"These peculiarities don't sound consistent with other places so it may just be your area... but in general, new immigrants get jobs in restaurant, eventually open own and keep doing things the same way. The ones in your area may use same menu printer, get supplies from same suppliers, etc. so there is a similarity even without a franchise model demanding it. Especially if there's more of a language barrier and there is somebody within that community that can provide the needed good or services, they may get lots of similar business."
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6blor6 | Why was a game like Manhunt 2 given an [AO] rating but a game like Mortal Kombat X (with a lot more realistic and graphic animations) given an [M] rating? | [Here's]( URL_1 ) an example of the executions that gave Manhunt 2 its [AO] rating. And [here]( URL_0 ) are examples of MKX's X-Rays. Has ESRB become more lax in recent years regarding ratings? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"MKX's gore is more realistic sure, but it's set in a fantasy world where people can shoot fire, lightning, and ice out of their body. Manhunt was both graphic in gore and realism in the way the character could kill. Basically, MK can't be imitated in real life the way Manhunt 2 could be."
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6bmazl | Why does racism still exist? Wouldn't racist people have already met people(of the race they "hate") that proved their stereotypes wrong? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Stereotypes aren't necessarily entirely wrong, stereotypes generally come to be because there is a kernel of truth to them. That doesn't mean you can accurately extrapolate a stereotype to everyone who fits the description. Additionally, we are hard wired from an evolutionary standpoint to be cautious of people who are different from us.",
"Sometimes they live in isolated communities where that hasn't happened. Sometimes they do meet people of that race and treat them like shit simply for being of that race, ignoring any information contrary to their beliefs. Sometimes they realize that the particular person they met did not meet their stereotypes, but that they were \"one of the good ones\" (implying that the majority of the race do meet the stereotype and that the person they met was an outlier). Sometimes the person they meet fits the stereotype or is \"bad\" in some other way, and they extrapolate from that person to the entire race (essentially the exact opposite of the \"one of the good ones\" rationalization).",
"\"But they are just one of the good ones\" \"He is just the exception that proves the rule\" \"He is just an example of what can happen if they know their place\" People are extremely talented at ignoring evidence that contradicts their beliefs. It is called confirmation bias. You ignore anything that contradicts your belief. and accept anything that confirms your belief.",
"Because racism exists primarily to justify specific institutions or worldviews. For example, the earliest forms of \"racism\" in the Western world were in late medieval Spain - the Reconquista pushed out the Muslims and unified the country, and royal policy forced any remaining Jews and Muslims to convert to Christianity; so since people couldn't discriminate based on religious grounds anymore, they discriminated based on \"blood\" and ancestry. But racism as we know it today, with the \"white race\" superior over \"non-whites\", formed as a cultural institution to justify the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the chattel slavery of Africans. When slavery became largely viewed as immoral in the Western world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, racism developed into a worldview intended to justify exploitative economic colonialism/imperialism in places like Africa, India, and China (the \"white man's burden\" and all that). In the American South, their entire antebellum society was based around the concept of white supremacy. They went to war to preserve slavery because it was the foundation of their entire culture and economy. And in the wake of the Civil War, they took legal measures to preserve white supremacy and disenfranchise blacks - black franchise was portrayed as a \"failed experiment\" and the \"rightful order\" that placed whites on top was reasserted. **Because racism is an irrational belief system intended to justify irrational social structures and institutions. Because slavery is immoral, one must concoct a narrative to justify it, to *make it moral* (blacks are naturally subservient to the superior race because of skull shape or some other nonsense). Because application of law enforcement is racially discriminatory, one must concoct a narrative to justify it (blacks commit more crime because they are naturally more violent). Because our society has always been inherently unequal based on race, one must concoct a narrative to justify it (nothing is holding back the blacks except their own nature and culture).** It's possible to break out of this belief system, but it requires a lot of questioning things you have likely taken for granted since childhood. That's a terrifying existential prospect for a huge number of people.",
"> Wouldn't racist people have already met people(of the race they \"hate\") that proved their stereotypes wrong? Perhaps, but it's not a completely logical belief. It's based quite a bit on emotion, tribalism etc. And while they might meet people who break those stereotypes, they'll also see some that reinforce those beliefs (and confirmation bias means those tend to stick out more). It's not something people tend to be very logically rigorous about thinking. That said, many places aren't as mixed as you might think. In rural america for example, it can be very rare to see minorities if you live in a tiny rural town."
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6bn3va | How did the colonizers understand the people in an unknown island that they firstly discover. | I was having about this thought, how did they do it. For example: The Philippines were discovered by the Magellan, and of course the island that they landed have some people were they spoke different language. How did they make blood compact and communicate so the people will be baptized to christianity? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sign language and saying words corresponding to those signs, mostly. Pretty much the way you learn any other language except with no literacy to help. Baptism is less do explorers and more so missionaries that came and settled afterwards."
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6bo44v | How did global warming/climate change become a political discussion rather than a scientific discussion? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think you'll find most scientific things which aren't thoroughly abstracted from the immediate facts of modern life will wind up becoming politicised. You won't get much politics in astrophysics (...I think), but you'll get a lot in discussions of *anthropogenic* climate change because the implications of saying climate change is being caused by humans are that humans need to change how we live and how we organise our societies. If there's a popular consensus that we're causing global warming by burning fossil fuels, this will cause legislation to be passed which disincentivises the burning of fossil fuels by fining or taxing polluters or providing incentives and tax breaks to green energy companies. That means people have economic motives to prefer a side of the debate. Anything which hits your wallet will become political.",
"Because our economy is heavily reliant on fossil fuels and converting over to renewables would require a massive change in our technology and the structure of our economy. The people who benefit from the current state of affairs such as oil company executives don't want that change because it would mean a loss in market share and profit for their company. So they donate to politicians who make policy and sway public opinion towards doing nothing about climate change. Other politicians who aren't under the influence of corporate money and agree with the 98% of scientists that global warming is real and man made make policy and argue against those who say \"do nothing.\" Thus it becomes a political issue."
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6bodpj | Why is mint the only acceptable scent for breath? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is popular because the mint plant contains menthol. Menthol is a substance that triggers the cold sensitive receptors on your tongue, skin, airways and the like. It gives a sensation of coolness that people associate with freshness. Manufacturers of toothpaste, chewing gum, mouthwash etc made it an industry standard, furthermore increasing the popularity of mint flavour for covering bad breath."
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6boezf | Why does no one expect the spanish inquisition? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because their weapons were surprise, fear, ruthless efficiency, fanatical dedication to the pope, and nice uniforms!",
"It's an old saying. When someone asks you a bunch of grilling questions you say 'I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition'. URL_0 The Spanish Inquisition was (among other things) the processes used by the Catholic Church in Spain from 1478 to ensure the orthodoxy of Jews and Muslims who had converted to Catholicism. It had a reputation of being particularly thorough. Monty Python brought it into even more fame (arguably) by a sketch where a man used the phrase 'I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition' in it's casual modern use, only for 3 men in period garb to burst in and say \"Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition!!!\""
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6bolg8 | Why do certain men look great with mustaches and certain men look strange with mustaches? What is it about someone's face that makes a mustache work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Thats an extremely subjective and is relative not only on a cultural level but on a personal level as well. What you are basically asking is \"Why do I think this mustache looks good on that guy\" and only you can answer that question of aesthetic preference."
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6bpg37 | Why do so many sitcoms and shows feature a fat, stupid husband and patient, long suffering wife? | Even Rick and Morty, which bucks so many traditional comedy trends, has an idiot husband who's only redeeming feature is that he loves his wife. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Another explanation I have seen, not listed here, is that often shows are built around a single comedian---usually a guy. Since, as [Chris Pratt noted]( URL_0 ), male comedians tend to be more successful when they don't look too good, that means you get a lot of shows built around a relatively shlubby guy. But, that schlubby guy doesn't necessarily want to be paired with a schlubby lady---and the network certainly wants to add in sex appeal, appeal to female audiences, indications that the main character is in at least some ways enviable, etc...---they often end up paired with a more attractive woman. I've always favored this explanation, since it accounts for why this is so common in the classic sitcom set-up, or the one's that follow it relatively closely (like the George and Jerry parts of Seinfeld), but is much, much less common in ensemble shows.",
"As Don Keefer from \"The Newsroom\" put it, \"no one ever went broke making women feel superior.\"",
"TV & Movies tend to repeat patterns that work. One sitcom came up with a fat stupid guy married to an attractive, smarter wife. It was a success, and the rest copied it as much as they could, down to the character types. There is also one argument that it's done because it would be un-PC to have the wife be the one to do stupid things. [EDIT: I don't personally advocate this argument, but I have read it in several places.]",
"I find it hilarious that people think it has to do with being PC. This formula, as someone else noted, started over 60 years ago by Jackie Gleason himself. The fat stupid husband character is created by a fat comedian who is on some wish fulfillment journey of having a hot wife that puts up with his shit. Going even further back this probably pull from the tradition of august and white-face clowns. Think David Space (white face) and Chris Farley (august). Every comedy duo has a straight-man and a goof. (Sometimes you get the edgy/depressing/weird character in there which could translate to tramp clowns.) Since the male comedians want the goofy spotlight and a hot leading lady we get this. Clown source: raised by a former historian of the International Clown Hall of Fame.",
"Humor is built on inversion of expectations. It's been this way for thousands of years; Roman comedies had the clever slave and the hapless master. Did that mean the Romans think slaves were smarter than their masters? Of course not! It was funny because it was opposite of what the audience believed was true. So the stupid husband and patient wife is an inversion of the expectation that the husband is the smart, hard-working one. Remember, even into the 80s, people still believed that women couldn't make it in the workplace. There's obviously more to comedy than just a formula, but this is where the formula came from. At this point, it's definitely a cliche, and the expectation has been bucked by society to the point where we're seeing competent husbands and dumb wives, too. Bob's Burgers is a prime example with Linda Belcher being the dumb one, and Bob being the competent one, but they both definitely have their redeeming features and flaws. It's not like Peter and Lois Griffin, where Peter's an incompetent boob.",
"I blame The Honeymooners for establishing this trope. The fact that they're still doing this after 62 years means that it's a *really* proven formula, like it or not.",
"imo, it really reinforces a horrible stereotype. I can be a fat, stupid, insensitive idiot, and i will still score a hotty wife, who will never leave me. um yeah - that's not how the real world works.",
"Slightly off topic but Judd Apatow gets asked a similar question: why his movies depict often awkward guys ending up with gorgeous women. His answer was very honest. He said \"It happened to me so why not?\" Referring to his marriage to Leslie Mann.",
"Fat men are funny, hot girls are fun to watch. The combination is perfect. It also gives male viewers a false sense of confidence watching a fat dude with a woman way out of his league. This is why I am surprised Friends was so popular.",
"it's a reversal of the formerly common trope of the man being the strong head of the family",
"This dynamic is centered on emasculating the husband by making him seem stupid and lazy, which suggests that children/wife are better off by not listening to him. By creating doubt in the the husband as a trusted decision maker, the family dynamic begins to fall apart. This creates the dysfunctional family, which contributes to the regression of society.",
"Jerry has plenty of redeemable features. Beth's domineering of him is what's crushed his confidence \\*cough\\*Erin\\*cough\\*. Look at Jerry and Beth's mythologizations of eachother. Look at the Jerry that's left in the Cronenberg dimension, where he became a bad-ass action hero immediately as Beth's domineering visage was disillusioned and he had to take responsibility. The reason we usually have a lurid blob married to an overworked goddess is because it leads to funny outcomes. It allows the husband to be childish which leads to funny plot scenarios, while the wife either fights desperately against the tide of tragedy or watches from the sidelines drinking wine and shaking their heads. It also allows the comedy of the wife trying to maintain order while the husband (and usually kids) run amok and cause chaos. Both of these tend to end with a reversal, where the husband realizes their childishness has affected the wife poorly and tries to make a mends because he realizes that he has to sacrifice whatever moronic plot item they are doing that episode in order to not lose the only thing in his world that really matters to him, and the wife gets to give her rocks back to Atlas and Sisyphus and let loose for a while, because she's learned that she couldn't see the forest from the trees and was harming the ones she loves in her attempt to keep them safe. It shows that no matter how little we understand each other's quirks, love wins out in the end, as both the on-screen couple, and maybe even a few of the viewers at home, are reminded why they fell in love in the first place. It's not 100% accurate, but as a general trend, you'll see those themes running through most of the family sitcoms (in modern family, the main household fits to the above description, and the two other households subvert that theme).",
"The majority of non-sports prime-time TV is watched by more women than men. So a message like \"women are great but men are dorks\" is going to go over well with a lot of that audience.",
"So it's either appealing to women, who get to see a smart, sexy, competent representation of themselves and feel good. Or its appealing to men, who want a visually appealing spouse despite their own flaws, and knowing they're better than TV Husband makes them feel good. I'm more confused. I think it's worked well for the above reasons for a long time, but now shows can take more risks so we can finally access other options, and people are focusing on this trope because they're sick of it."
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6bpy7r | Why do marriage vows use the line, "Til death us do part" if in Christianity there is an afterlife (heaven). Wouldn't you still be with your wife/husband in that afterlife so? Why do these vows not transcend this life? | **Edit:** Wow, I never expected this too take off like it has. Thank you to everyone that responded, there is some very interesting discussion **Edit 2:** It's a shame people can't play nice. I am Athiest myself but was merely curious as to the reasoning behind that vow. I think mature discussion can happen between believers and non believers, but it seems not today | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So far, everyone has given a religious reason from a passage of Scripture about Jesus's comments on the afterlife (an answer to a trick question he was asked by some Sadducees, members of a Jewish sect that didn't believe in an afterlife). But that's not the real reason for the wording of the marriage vows. It has to do with the fact that you are free to remarry if your spouse dies. The exact wording of the vow varies according to the denomination, but here's one version used by the United Methodist Church (in the form of a question from the pastor to the couple): > Will you have this woman/man to be your wife/husband, to live together in holy marriage? Will you love her/him, comfort her/him, honor, and keep her/him in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful to her/him as long as you both shall live? As you can see from the context, it's all about living together with your spouse and being faithful to them; but obviously, that only applies if you're both still alive. If you die, your spouse can hardly \"comfort\" you, or \"keep\" you \"in sickness and in health\" -- how would that even work?",
"Oh boy, something I actually have a response for! Someone with 6 years of Jesuit schooling here, and I actually posed this exact question in a Theology class: The short answer is no. The concept of marriage in its most basic sense is that you are wedding this person to help them live a better life as their partner. However, since the purpose of heaven is to be infinitely close to God, any bonds or attachments to people you have on Earth are basically null. Your husband/wife would be someone you view fondly and had a close relationship with, but they would no longer be your wife/husband. I don't really agree with all this, but I'm not going to insert personal opinion here. Hope this explanation helps! Edit: removed the part saying \"The reason for this is explained as 'it would be a distraction from why you're there.'\" /u/_Silly_Wizard_ offered a better explanation, saying that instead of remembering people fondly, it's more akin to everyone is married in the sense that there is perfect unity with God. Edit 2: figured it would be more credible if I actually included some sources. Here's a passage from the Catechism on the issue: 1618 Christ is the center of all Christian life. The bond with him takes precedence over all other bonds, familial or social.113 From the very beginning of the Church there have been men and women who have renounced the great good of marriage to follow the Lamb wherever he goes, to be intent on the things of the Lord, to seek to please him, and to go out to meet the Bridegroom who is coming.114 Christ himself has invited certain persons to follow him in this way of life, of which he remains the model: \"For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it.\"115 Edit 3: To all the atheists arguing in the comment string below, keep in mind that just because someone is speaking on religious doctrine, it doesn't mean they're trying to 'biblethump' or 'spew nonsense'. Regardless of God's existence, you CANNOT dismiss that faith is historically integrated into culture, and the texts still provide profound lenses through which you can view the world. Stop acting like bloody conspiracy theorists and saying that everyone involved in the church is colluding to create some massive smokescreen. Religion has been around for tens of thousands of years--basically since humans started keeping a written language. And you think that you're some intellectual crusader who's saying \"Gods not real bro.\" for the first time? Congratulations! There's no God! Now good luck wishing away the millennia of texts, scriptures, parables, and doctrines that he created. Real? That will always be debated. Impactful and crucial to understanding western civilization? Abso-fuckin'-lutely.",
"So, in the Bible there was a similar question posed to Jesus himself. Some of the religious leaders of the Jewish community at the time asked Jesus if a woman had 7 husbands that all died before she did, who would be her husband in heaven. Jesus' response (boiled down) was that we would be \"like the angels.\" Though there is debate as to what that actually means, the implication is that we would have no relationships like that in heaven and that we would only he interested in our worship of God. The passage is Luke 20: 27-40 if you're interested.",
"Practicing Mormons actually believe in eternal marriage, and that if they are sealed/married in one of their temples, they have the possibility of remaining married/together as a family in the afterlife.",
"I'm surprised (unless I missed it) no one pointed out the purely pragmatic reason for \"'til death do us part\": until recently, death at young age was common, so the vows needed to clarify that the surviving spouse can remarry, have kids with a new spouse, etc. So a more precise if inelegant vow would thus be \"'til the death of one of us parts us, at which point the survivor may remarry.\" Point being, the clause isn't a theological one about \"when you die, you're no longer married\" but rather a pragmatic one about \"when one of you dies, the other may remarry.\"",
"In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe that marriages performed in the temple do transcend this life. This is made possible by the sealing keys. For example, when Jesus gave these keys to the apostles he said \"whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.\" (Matt 18:18 KJV) In lieu of the words \"Til death us do part\" we opt for the phrase \"For time and all eternity\" in Temple marriages. That being said, many Christian religions do not believe in marriage after this life because of Matt 22:23-30. In these verses the Sadducees (who don't believe in the resurrection) are trying to bait Jesus by asking him a question about a woman who has been married 7 times, to 7 brothers . They ask which of the brothers shall be her husband in the afterlife, to which Jesus responds, \"Ye do err... for in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.\" He is not directly answering their question, but explains that they do not understand the question themselves (Matt 22:29-33). Still many people get caught up on the line about not being given in marriage during the resurrection. So it really comes down to this: did Jesus mean what he said literally and does it apply to all marriages? Or did he give an oversimplified answer to men who were not ready or willing to listen? This is still being debated by many Christian scholars. Edit1: grammar Edit2: Matt 16:19 is the verse where Jesus gives the keys specifically to the apostle John.",
"ITT: People not thinking big enough about heaven. The image that western culture has of heaven is a terrible one, really much more hellish than earth. No matter how much you say, \"everything will be awesome,\" if your picture of heaven is clouds, harps, wings, and infinite singing and whiteness you won't be able to muster up very much enthusiasm for the concept. Humans are made to wonder and explore, and I think heaven will have infinite space for that. There will be variety and complexity so various and complex that our current words don't really do the concepts justice. In the same way, there will be joys so full that comparing them to marriage is like comparing marriage to masturbation. tl;dr Heaven is not merely earth, but with no bad stuff. Heaven will be so much more good than earth that even the best things here, like a wonderful marriage, will fade as a dream before the morning sun.",
"[Jesus addressed this directly in Matthew 22:30]( URL_0 ) > At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.",
"This is actually a core belief of be Mormon (LDS) faith. Pulling from the [Temples]( URL_0 ) page of URL_1 : \"Every person who has lived on the earth is entitled to the opportunity to receive the blessings of eternal life and eternal family relations....It is also in the temple that husbands, wives, and children are sealed so that they can remain a family even after this life. It is this desire for united, enduring relationships with loved ones and with God that draws people to the temple and its eternal, binding promises.\"",
"Because the founder of their faith says they don't transcend this life: > Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Matthew 22:29-30",
"Mormon here. Our vows include the phrase \"for time and all eternity.\" We really do believe in eternal families.",
"Husband and wife become one flesh, according to scripture. Flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God. Marriage unites physical bodies, but each person's soul is still their own. In other words, you're not going to go to hell for your spouse's sins. Your soul and what you do with it is between you and God. By that logic, couples are no longer married in the afterlife. Honestly, I don't even believe the concept of gender applies to spiritual beings. Your soul doesn't have genitals, so you're not going to see men and women walking around in heaven. You're going to see beings, the essence of who they were in life, apart from gender roles, sexuality, etc. On the other hand, I don't actually know. This is just an educated guess.",
"For mormons, marriage done in the temple is for eternity, likewise marriage outside the temple is simply a government/socially recognized document with the same intent. A big funk isn't made about it because a good marriage outside the temple is very simple to make official inside the temple anyway as many converted couples often do. It also certainly can be done in the afterlife because otherwise married couples from years when the gospel wasn't on the earth would be out of luck. having said that, there is no good reason to wait for anyone on earth.",
"If you're a Mormon (not the bullshit polygamy, child raping FLDS) you're taught that marriage lasts for time and all eternity. Its actually kind of a beautiful thing until you realize that if it doesn't work out while you're alive you're gonna have to be together for literally ever.",
"In the mormon religion, certain vows actually are made so that you are wedded for eternity, including the afterlife. The vow is made with specific conditions and is only.available to those willing to covenant certain things with God.",
"Mormons use \"...for Time and for All Eternity\", for those that go through the temple for marriage.",
"Essentially, once you're in heaven such earthen needs are largely pointless. Heaven's a paradise with your oneness with God being the centerpoint.",
"The LDS Church believes in eternal marriage. When the marriage rite is performed the right way we can be married for time and all eternity. This requires God's authority to do so, otherwise it would be til death do us part. This was written by leaders of our church--it explains how we view marriage and families--and we hold it as doctrine. [The Family a Proclamation to the World]( URL_0 ) I believe this with all my heart.",
"That's why people convert to Mormonism - the emphasis on a celestial afterlife where families live together forever.",
"One of you will probably die first. Dissolution of marriage at death lets the surviving partner marry again if desired.",
"I feel like this touches on one of the big problems with the concept of Heaven. If what ends up in Heaven is a version of us \"freed from earthly bonds\" or \"delivered from temptation\", how much of us actually goes to Heaven? Would you sign up for a super-safe brain surgery that would remove all your earthly emotional bonds, as well as any mental patterns that would steer you toward evil, and give you permanent bliss (drooling-free!) while they're cutting around in there? If this very advanced lobotomization doesn't sound incredibly appealing to you right now, why exactly would any of that be better in Heaven?",
"Jesus actually answered this question himself once when it was asked. I suspect his answer is more valid than any I or someone else will come up with. ~~~ Matthew Chapter 22:23-33 23 The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, 24 saying: “Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. 25 Now there were with us seven brothers. The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother. 26 Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh. 27 Last of all the woman died also. 28 Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her.” 29 Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God[b] in heaven. 31 But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?[c] God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching. ~~~ It's interesting to me how many people answered this with some other answer, when Christ himself gave the answer already. Don't forget - the question was \"Why in Christianity ... and a Christian is one who follows the teachings of Christ. Doesn't that mean we just go with his answer?",
"So not all Christian faiths use that line. Mormons believe in eternal marriage. If interested, I can explain more. Basically, you stay with your spouse for eternity.",
"[Louie CK addresses this exact question. Check it out.]( URL_0 )",
"In the LDS church, we can be sealed together for all time and eternity. That includes children and ancestors. That is part of why we are so heavily into genealogy.",
"Late, but I might have something to contribute. Everybody here is giving theological reasoning / rationalization for the specific wording of the line. It says \"til death us do part,\" so how does that square with the various theological implications that stem from such a statement? Are the reasons for phrasing it this way religious or practical? I think it's rather simpler than that. If you look at the Marriage Service in the Book of Common Prayer, written in 1559 -- which you can do here: URL_0 -- you'll see that the wording was a little different. This was the blueprint for the standard Protestant Marriage Service still used today, and as such is very similar... but not exactly the same: > > to have and to holde, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickenes, ad in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, **till death us departe**, accordynge to godes holy ordinaunce \"till death us departe\" Which is a very different thing, theologically from \"death us do part\" but a very similar thing phonetically. I honestly think it was as boring as sound evolution. If that's true, though, then all the after-the-fact reasoning and rationalizations given in this thread are a fascinating look into the way religion works.",
"The other thing that I will say, and I will butcher the fine points; (for context of where I am coming from, I am Catholic) in my experience of theological teaching, there are two formal requirements of marriage, to be love communicating and to procreate. This is a fairly sterile definition, however. I suppose you could just leave this here, and say that this is the end of the purpose of marriage, it doesn't need to exist anymore; that said, if you are no longer married, you might not be in perfect happiness, which would, hypothetically, go against what heaven is promised to be, a place of perfect happiness. Now, this is the part I go a bit off book; the other thing that I have heard it said of marriage is that another purpose is to bring both partners closer to God by building each other closer to Him. This makes sense in a few ways, since marriage is a sacrament, it's ultimate goal is to bring a closer connection to God. When both people are, presumably in heaven, this true purpose has been accomplished; they are in perfect communion with God, something which is a great thing, the best thing. This is where the person who said that in the grand scheme of things, your marriage won't matter in heaven; if our views of heaven are to be believed, it is perfect, and the marriage has fulfilled it's purpose. To be honest, I don't know what it means for your relationship apart from this, you might interact often, you might never. Foolish would the man be who presumes to know all of God's mind, aside from that which he has shown us in the world. Hope this isn't entirely gibberish. Hope this helps.",
"Rewboss touched on it but missed another critical element: you're promising to stay loyal to them for as long as you/they live, and after that remarriage is an option. Some weddings I have been to have changed it as \"In life and in death\" with no \"til death do us part\" bit at the end, as a sign of no re-marriage for the widowed partner.",
"They do if you believe they do. Religion, insofar as it concerns human endeavors, is interpretation. No religion is a monolith, and since we can't really \"know\" which one is right (if any are), they are pretty much all equally valid up to a point, albeit some having much richer philosophical traditions by virtue of history. This comment will never be seen, but I can't stand by while people claim that their interpretation/understanding constitutes universal \"true\" belief among a religious group.",
"Marriage of a man to a woman is given to humans as an illustration of the relationship of Christ to his church. The biblical New Testament Christian church is called the bride of Christ in the scriptures and Christ is the bridegroom. Also, what the guy said about people have a wrong view of heaven is 100% true. Humans are made in Gods image in that to a lesser degree, we are creative, imaginative, enjoy variety, complexity, organization, humor, beauty, etc. All warped bc of sin but still the resemblance is there.",
"There are also some varying beliefs among believers about relationships/your past life when we get to heaven. These are some of the things I have been told before: -We will recognize those from our past life but will not be concerned with earthly relationships or care about anything beyond praising the Lord -We will not remember our pasts life, we will know everyone but no one will have particular significance -We will recognize those from our past life but our focus will be on praising the Lord, not our past life -Past relationships will no longer exists, we will be new beings, whole and pure, only desiring to bring praise to the Lord Personally I cannot see how God would so carefully design human emotion, love, and marriage only to have it done away with In heaven. I cannot imagine not recognizing, caring for, or being beyond overjoyed to be reunited with passed loved ones. I cannot fathom what the individuals who told me these things were thinking because as a married woman, I cannot honestly wrap my head around accepting the fact that I would not recognize or feel anything for my husband once we are reunited in heaven.",
"In the LDS religion, Mormonism, this 'til death' has been omitted. Frankly, we believe that the sanctity of marriage does continue forever and is part of what helps you progress to becoming like our Father in Heaven. We believe God surely has a wife who He supports and who supports Him, it's just sacred.",
"The way I was taught and the way I see it is that God gave us the practice of marriage to give us someone to help us out. If you go by the Bible, he literally creates woman so man would not be alone. Spouses are supposed to be \"helpmates\". Now, once we get to Heaven, to our afterlife, we won't need to help each other the way we are supposed to help each other now. So the idea and gift of marriage will not be continued in Heaven. It won't be needed.",
"I don't think I've seen so many Mormons in one thread before, not even in r/Christianity. =)",
"There's a way out of this. You just have to renew your vows and include a clause that says you'll be single in heaven. [Larry David tried to]( URL_0 ) but he pissed off his wife.",
"The Orthodox Christian marriage ceremony does not have vows, but there is the idea of marriage being eternal.",
"This guy should really look into the Mormon church. They give the best explanation about eternal marriage out of any other religion. The truth is, that marriage does stop at death.....it's what you VOWED to happen.",
"I asked my grandmother this when I was young, she told me it's supposed to be \"Til death do us part, until next time we meet.\" Since not everyone goes to heaven, their marriage is done if one goes to heaven and the other goes to hell. It's on 'hiatus' until they **hopefully** meet again.",
"As other comments mentioned, Christ answered this question directly. Still, I feel I should point something out. The Bible rarely talks about the afterlife, and even then seemingly in metaphor. Aside from a few tidbits such as Christ describing heaven as paradise, there is very little we can state concretely with regards to the spiritual realm. Most ideas of the afterlife are built up around mythology (Dante's Divine Comedy being a large contributor) and personal opinions.",
"From a biblical perspective (not a religious one), God instituted marriage between a man and a woman to be eternal. Death was not planned for humankind. If Adam & Eve wouldn't have disobeyed, they wouldn't have died. Once they disobeyed, and death became part of them, death became the logical end to that union, since (again, from a biblical perspective) there is no life after death. The concept of life after death is foreign to the Biblical Israelites culture, and the common time jewish culture. It was a greek philosophical idea added to christianity after the 2nd century a.c, and officially adopted by Christendom in the 1st Nicene council. But is not a biblical principle. So, since there is no life after death, there is no logical argument to be on a marital arrangement with someone's that is dead. So death is the conclusion of marriage.",
"In the Mormon religion we don't use that phrase. Marriages are eternal. Families are forever. The new and everlasting covenant. ☺",
"Unless you remarry after your spouse passes away.... Who would you go with, the first or second... At least at death you have a choice again. Wow I'm gonna pay for that one....",
"If you die, there is no guarantee your spouse will get into heaven. Also, it's highly unlikely that you die simultaneously. Spouse could live years or decades after you. Apart from you. Ergo, til death do us part.",
"I see a lot of Mormon comments here. I would say that doesn't really fall under Christianity... Most religious scholars from Catholics to Protestants agree that there is too much added and changed to truly be considered Christians. A large one being The Book of Mormon.",
"I read through the comments hoping to explain some things and get a better view on what heaven could be like and I'll be honest I'm not so sure I like the ideas. I love my wife and my heaven should have her in it. Whatever happened to the phrase soulmates?",
"Actually, Jesus says that people are not married in the afterlife. \"In the resurrection, whose wife will she be? For all seven were married to her.” Jesus said to them, “Aren’t you mistaken because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like the angels in heaven.\"",
"I haven't seen this mentioned, so I'll add my thoughts. I'm a theologian. I work for a Christian university. I have a degree in biblical studies with a focus on theology and Greek. In Protestant (I see a Jesuit posted and offered a very different answer than I'd give, so I mention that I am Protestant, since perhaps it's different for Roman Catholics) theology we believe that the catholic church (global church, all Christians) are the \"Bride of Christ\". We view the marriage between a husband and a wife as an analogy for the relationship between Christ and the believer. Paul outlines this in Ephesians 5 when he says that the husband is like Christ and the wife is like the Church. So, to be married until death and not after is because once one dies they go to be with their Husband, Christ.",
"Why the hell are there this many Mormon responses?",
"Because when you go to heaven marriage doesn't matter anymore. You're your own person. Marriage only matters in this life.",
"If I die, and you survive me, we are parted by death - and you are released from your vows.",
"Nope - in the bible it actually says that there won't be any marriage in heaven. Everyone will just be friends.",
"Galatians 3:28 - > There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So when you die, gender doesn't even exist anymore. Hence marriage being more an \"earthly\" thing.",
"Marriage is a covenant, and covenants are only breakable by death of either party. Which is why when one spouse dies, the marriage no longer exists. Only certain sacraments leave an indelible mark on the soul that remains in the afterlife: Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders.",
"In a handful of religions and beliefs, they do transcend this life. For example, the Latter-Day Saints (commonly known as Mormons) marry in their sacred temples \"for time and all eternity\". Many people write their own vows, and can talk to the officiate before the ceremony about respecting their beliefs or transcendent commitment in order to honor that promise during the ceremony.",
"I think that if you looked at marriage vows, these are fairly new. Back in the days of 40-year lifespans, you had to allow the spouses of the deceased - especially the husbands - to find another mate. It was especially important for husbands who had no son (yet). Had to keep the money in the family, and that was typically the 1st son, even into the modern era.",
"Nope. You are free in the afterlife to move on. Marriage isn't for eternity, just for a lifetime. I'm Catholic but I believe in reincarnation (so really I'm not a proper Catholic). I love my husband to death; but I'm only devoted to him until one of us carks it. I believe I'll have other goals to fulfil in my next life, or my afterlife. That's makes married life more bearable, especially when he drags his teeth across the fork and makes that scraping noise.",
"Marriage is meant to be an earthly image of a heavenly truth; God wants us to feel that intense love for someone because that gives us a glimpse of how much God loves us. You could dig into the Greek and talk about eros, phileo, and agape love, but a marriage is an earthly shadow of the true picture, which is Christ (the groom) and his Church (the bride, i.e. us). When you die and are reunited with Christ, you have no more need of a spouse - that fuzzy earthly shadow you had with your spouse called marriage is now a crystal clear high definition image with Jesus. You would experience the true depth of love Christ has for you.",
"I may have some insight as to this, as informal as it may be: The act of marriage was described as a gift from God. To accurately understand what this means, you should look at God's nature. He described Himself as 'love'. I think this can be taken literally, as the unconditional love of a living God requires all the attributes we know are good. All the fruits of the spirit are results of following Christ and forming a relationship with Him. Being filled with God will result in you becoming more like Him, just like any relationship. Because of the original sin and fall, our connection to God was cut off, but He offered reconciliation because of His nature through the offering of Christ to die for us. The reason marriage is a gift is because, when blessed by God, it can become the closest thing we can experience in this life to the original connection we shared with God. We can share the love of God with each other and form a selfless connection. The reason marriage isn't really a thing in heaven is because we will be standing in the presence of God once more, claiming redemption through Christ's sacrifice. We will be filled with God completely as we were originally meant to be and we will experience that selfless connection for all people as God originally intended. It isn't that marriage isn't a thing in heaven, its that we extend the special relationship through our love of Christ to all who love Him. Perhaps this provides some insight on the question?"
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6bqeh2 | Why are prescription drugs still heavily advertised in the US when that practice is outlawed basically everywhere else? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Money. Pfizer, GSK, and all of the other drug companies pump millions of dollars into Congress in the form of lobbying & reelection funds. Those dollars pretty much guarantee that no law will be passed saying \"No drug advertisements\".",
"The same way lobbying is legal here but illegal in a lot of countries. The USA has a culture of Money = Voice = Power. Politicians are always looking for money to fund their campaign. The pharmaceutical industry is a very rich lobbying organization. So they can pretty much do whatever they want. ( i.e. gauging prices are a very good example)",
"They do it here in New Zealand, too, which I've always found obscure. I mean, shouldn't the doctor be telling *you* what to take? Not vice versa?"
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6bqxlz | Why is it called "The Great Depression"? | that particular period of time after WWII. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A \"depression\" is an economic term that means there is a long-term downturn in the economy. The Great Depression was the worst depressions in modern history. Also, note that the Great Depression happened *before* WWII. In fact WWII was one of the things that stopped the Great Depression and got the world economy going again."
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6br2g6 | Despite being the most prolific media corporation in America, how is Fox News not considered MSM? Isn't it the most mainstream of mainsteam media? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends on your definition of \"mainstream media.\" You could define it as one of the major media players that gets access to information based on its size and reach. Or you could define it as reporting the same thing as the other major media players. It's definitely mainstream media under the first definition. It has a front seat in the White House Press Room, it has tons of viewers, and disseminates news across the world in a variety of formats. It's probably mainstream media under the other definition, but maybe not. If CBS, CNN, NBC, and ABC all have one take on an issue and Fox is all on its own with another take, then maybe Fox isn't mainstream. However, I don't think the actual news segments from Fox are far away enough from what other networks report on to be considered out of the mainstream (the opinion shows might be another topic, but those aren't news). Conservatives and Fox like to play up the not being mainstream thing, though, because it helps their narrative that they're taking a stand against other stations reporting fake news and propaganda."
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6br7r9 | How was the US Presidential line of succession determined? | Like why is secretary of the interior reasonably high, at least compared to all the other departments. Who determined which positions get put over other positions. The only ones that really make sense are VP, Speaker, and President pro tempore. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhov6es",
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"text": [
"It's determined by the Presidential Succession Act. The cabinet departments are in order of creation, so the Secretary of the Interior is relatively high on the list because the Department of the Interior was created relatively early in the country's history.",
"The order of the cabinet members was determined by the date their department came into existence. Department of State was the first (originally named the Department of Foreign Affairs), so the Secretary of State is at the top. Next came the Department of the Treasury... and it continues on down the line. The newest government department with a cabinet position is the Department of Homeland Security (created after 9/11), and so that position is last in line."
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6brgf3 | In the US, why is it not okay to simply cuss on network television but shows like Law and Order can talk about 11 year olds being beaten raped for like 15 hours a day? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhp7guu",
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"\"Network\" television, where many shows originate, is broadcast over public airwaves, which the US Government licenses for use. As part of that license, administered by the Federal Communications Commission, there come with it rules regarding decency. During prime time viewing hours (8-10 pm eastern), rules are pretty tight as to what can be shown or said. In the 10-11 pm hour (also eastern), the rules relax slightly. As shows from years ago, like NYPD Blue, illustrated, nudity and language may be permissible in the 10 pm hour on broadcast TV. Then it's a matter of whether or not it's off-putting to advertisers (who keep the show on the air). Even violence is somewhat limited on network television. As for the Law and Order:SVU and CSI-type shows, while they may discuss the horrible things that are done to people in the course of the crime, most of the time, the depictions are limited at best (cutaway as the crime is about to begin, return as the police get involved). Talking about an 11-year old being sodomized by an adult is fine. Showing it is not.",
"Piggybacking : Why cant women walk around topless in America? Thats unequal and unfair to women. Not to mention that many man-tits are larger than womens."
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6bs4z0 | Why is it piece of mind and not peace of mind as that seems most logical given its use | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhp2w5s"
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"text": [
"I think you're confusing idioms. It's \"peace of mind\" to refer to calmness or serenity, and \"a piece of (someone's/ your/ whatever) mind\", meaning a telling off."
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6btavw | Why is water almost always colored blue in illustrations or animations, regardless of whether or not it's ocean water or tap water? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhpf7i2",
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"It's colored blue because [it's actually blue.]( URL_0 ) Color comes from the light that's reflected, and water reflects blue light. You just need a *lot* of water in one place to see it.",
"It's symbolic. If it was Green or brown you'd immediately think \"what's wrong with that water? Is it water?\". If it's blue then you know what it is. Read \"Understanding Comics\" to learn about how symbolism is used in art"
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6btwbc | Why are suits practically the only form of formal wear for men? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Men's clothing in the West has historically been strongly influenced by military uniforms. Even civilian men have tended towards simplicity and uniformity as a virtue, at least in the two centuries since a bunch of French people started cutting the heads off anyone who wore fancy rich people clothing. That said, suits were far less formal in much of the 20th century, as dressier options were more common. We've also seen a loss of the division between day and evening formal-wear in the last few decades, further reducing options. So, clothing history. Let's go back to 1919: URL_2 Left and center we see the victorious leaders of France and the U.S., Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson, coming to formally sign the treaty ending WWI. It's a hell of an occasion, so Clemenceau and Wilson are wearing frock coats, the most formal of day clothing. Now, from the same conference but a lower-key moment: URL_3 Clemenceau and Wilson (the two on the right) are in morning coats, which were still quite dressy and would soon replace the frock coat for the top position. While frock coats are pretty well dead today, morning coats are still widely worn to weddings and royal events in the United Kingdom. On the left, Lloyd George from Britain is also in a morning coat, but Prime Minister Orlando from Italy is playing it casual with a suit. For the most formal night events, they'd have worn white tie, which involves a tailcoat (also a military adaptation): URL_0 and for somewhat less formal night events, black tie, AKA a tuxedo: URL_1 So, what happened? As millions of people who might previously have been stuck in farming or manual labor came into the middle and upper classes, the overall trend has been towards decreased formality in clothing. WWII helped kill off stiff collars and hats, while the social upheaval of the 1960s further wounded anything that seemed stuffy or old-fashioned. Morning coats or white-tie tailcoats are cut differently from suits and are really meant to be custom-tailored, whereas a suit can work OK off the rack. In America today, white tie and morning coats are quite rare. The tuxedo, being cut more like a suit, still lives on for certain formal occasions, though often seen in daylight instead of the night, or else modified beyond recognition. **TL;DR: Suits are what's left of a much more diverse list of men's formalwear.**"
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6buhks | Why is it easier to hate than to love? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dhpmumf",
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"text": [
"It's safer to hate than it is to love. Hate keeps you away from potential enemies, and people who will potentially hurt you. Loving someone is a huge risk, and takes a lot of energy and resources to maintain.",
"Loving someone requires trusting them, and trusting someone means making yourself vulnerable. So naturally your defence mechanisms would not make it easy to be vulnerable. On the other hand hating someone makes you less vulnerable thus it is easy."
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6buuoy | Why Do We Call A Spouse's Family by Brother In-Law, Mother In-Law, etc? | I.e. it would seem strange to call your wife's brother, your brother., almost meaning your wife is your sister. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhpp0ul",
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"text": [
"Because they are now legally (in law) your family member. So while they're not blood related, they are related \"in law\".",
"Because marriage is a legal obligation/contract, so the spouse's family are your \"in-laws\" because they are your family also, but you aren't actually related to them, you are just connected through legal status."
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6bv5ch | In the UK, teachers have to work until they're 65 to receive their state pension, yet I've never seen any older than fifty, why is this? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Along with the state pension you also can save a personal pension. In fact you now are auto enrolled in one and your company will match your contribution up to a set point % of your salary. You can retire on this at any point in your life and collect a state pension at a later date when you become eligible. This goes for anyone not just teachers.",
"Many teachers become personal tutors or supply teachers working only a few days per week to earn some money, but not have to deal with the paperwork of full time teaching.",
"There are teachers working until they are 65, I know several. But there may be fewer as some older teachers collected their pensions at aged 60. Also its a tiring job and some leave teaching to work in management."
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6bw5zw | Why isn't there a movement to abandon seafood? Would such a movement help suffering oceanic habitats? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Most of the food people in the world eat comes from the oceans. 3.5 billion people depend on the oceans for food. That you can personally give up seafood is great and a sign of your privileged state, but don't get so caught up in your unprecedented luxury that you lose sight of the need of other people to eat.",
"There are sustainable seafood farming practices and there is currently several movements involving protecting various aquatic species from overfishing. The idea that there isn't a movement is incorrect. It just doesn't't get the same press.",
"> Why isn't there a movement to abandon seafood? Would such a movement help suffering oceanic habitats? There is, it's called veganism ;)"
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6bwmjo | What's the advantage of having multiple separate investigations into the President, instead of just one comprehensive investigation? What happens if they come to different conclusions? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's no \"advantage\". The House and Senate have the power to investigate whatever the hell they want. And so does the DOJ. Each of those groups feels that it is in their interest to investigate.",
"There is real worry that the president is corrupt and is trying to bully the investigators. Lots of people don't trust that the investigation will be performed in a trustworthy manner. Having more than one team lessens that worry and is more likely to find the truth.",
"Just like with regular common criminals; You apply all the charges for all the separate crimes individually; and investigate them separately. That way if one piece of evidence or one charge gets thrown out whether legitimately or on a technicality, you have the rest of the charges still intact, instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket so to speak. For example: Al Capone was charged with Murder, extortion, racketeering; prohibition violations and tax evasion...the one that eventually stuck was tax evasion... funny enough - why do you think dipstick hasn't released his taxes?"
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6bxnc4 | How does a presidential pardon work? | Can the president pardon anyone? Are there restrictions or parameters? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The president can pardon anyone of a federal crime, whether or not the person has been charged or convicted of the crime. The president cannot pardon people charged or convicted of state crimes. The president's power of pardon and commutation is absolute. It is part of the system of checks and balances; specifically, it is a check on the judicial branch. If a president chooses to pardon someone, it's not something that can be overturned by a court, Congress, or a subsequent president.",
"On top of what has already been said, Presidential Pardons have very rarely been used before the person's sentence has been completed. In other words, Presidents almost never pardon somebody who is in prison or who is going to prison. One notable exception was Ford pre-emptively pardoning Nixon for anything he may have done connected with Watergate. The main reason Presidents will grant pardons is to reinstate the offender's civil rights. Being convicted of a Federal felony disqualifies you from voting, holding office, and a bunch of other things. But if you've completed your sentence and not re-offended, the President may pardon you so you can have your rights back. You'll often hear about how Presidents sign a whole bunch of pardons near the end of their term in office. They generally pick the timing because they're so near the end that there won't be any political fallout. The President can also grant reprieves and commutations of sentences for Federal crimes, reducing the sentence from death to life, or from a longer term to a shorter term. Those happen more often than full pardons if the person has been sentenced but hasn't served out their term. The person is still legally a convicted criminal, but in the eyes of the law they served their sentence."
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6bxoky | what actions constitute collusion? is collusion inherently illegal or does the action need to be illegal? | **I'm not asking if it happened or not, I'm asking what it could look like if it did happen.** I'm legitimately interested and hoping for an apolitical explanation without the speculation about what did/didn't happen. With that in mind, let's talk about Jill Stein colluding with Jamaica. 1. I've heard about Stein colluding with Jamaica but I don't understand what collusion actually is (what would have to be said/done). AFAIK candidates are allowed to talk to foreign leaders. Couldn't any of those conversations be considered collusion (e.g. foreign leader says "you should hold a rally in MI")? Did the candidate just collude with a foreign power by taking advice on where to campaign? 2. Is collusion inherently illegal or does it depend on the action being illegal? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Collusion just means working together in secret or behind the scenes. It's not inherently a crime. It can be used loosely to describe the crime of conspiracy, which is committed when two or more people agree to commit some unlawful act, and then take some action toward committing the unlawful act. Conspiracies are usually secret and therefore usually fit the definition of collusion. However, there must be some *other* identified crime that the parties are working toward in order to constitute criminal conspiracy."
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6by6sf | Why are Japanese songs usually CAPITALIZED LIKE THIS? | Lots of Japanese songs, where the title is in English, or a romanization, are spelled in all caps, why's that? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's a common stylization, possibly because there is no \"lowercase\" in most East Asian alphabets.",
"Do you mean normal caps, LIKE THIS, or aesthetic caps, ＬＩＫＥ ＴＨＩＳ? I usually see the \"aesthetic\"/\"vaporwave\" caps in Japanese songs. If the latter, there is no reason other than liking how it looks afaik, as it certainly isnt easier to input."
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6by8bc | Why do we fold the American flag into a triangle? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"There is no reason other than it looks nicer and displays better than a rectangular fold, due to the uneven shape of the flag. Someone saw it folded triangular, and said \"that looks nice, lets do that from now on.\" From Snopes > The American flag isn’t folded in this manner because each of the folds has a special symbolic meaning; the flag is folded this way because it provides a dignified ceremonial touch that distinguishes folding a flag from folding an ordinary object such as a bedsheet, and because it results a visually pleasing, easy-to-handle shape. All of the ceremonial meanings and traditional explanations such as each fold having meaning, or similar \"traditions\", are simply bullshit added after the fact to make things seem more than what it really is.",
"It just looks nice and fancy, which is why it's done for ceremony and presentations. If you google around now, you'll find a bunch of things saying it's for the 13 colonies and that each fold represents something different, but the American flag was folded that way before those meanings were added to the fact."
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6bzfn8 | How could the USA test Nuclear Bombs in American Soil like the in the Nevada test Site? | I grow up thinking that a Nuclear Bomb is the worst that could happen to a place. So I became very intrigued when I discovered that tests were conducted in American Soil... Weren´t they afraid of the radiation? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The tests were conducted on federally-owned land. Very large tracts of land in the west of the U.S. are owned by the federal government, because they were never transferred to the states when they joined the Union. (Most of this land is either not very valuable, or protected from development.) In selecting test sites for nuclear weapons, radioactive fallout was a concern. But based on the bomb and wind patterns, you can kind of predict the risk area, and planners tried to minimize risk. They also changed the test methods, such as detonating the weapon underground. Nevertheless there are several areas known to be exposed to elevated levels of radiation due to the testing. It's harder to quantify what the harm to the population was, because low-level exposure to radiation mostly produces *increased risk* for diseases like cancer, over decades-long periods. It's worth keeping in mind that the U.S. designed nuclear weapons to take advantage of the explosion; radioactive fallout was a side effect. The effects of fallout were prominent in Hiroshima and Nagasaki because the yields were low enough that there were many survivors--in a modern nuclear war, those most at risk from radiation would simply be dead from the initial blast because the explosive yields are many times greater.",
"> Weren´t they afraid of the radiation? The Nevada Test Site was created on land that was already part of the Nellis Air Force Gunnery and Bombing Range. The Nellis Range is about 5,000 square miles of empty desert. So there's no a whole lot out there to worry all that much about irradiating. That said, back in the \"solve every problem with an a-bomb\" days of the 1950's the US government did (mostly unintentionally) irradiate a lot of people. Mostly soldiers and range personnel, but also some folks from nearby towns. The government is still paying damages related to those claims.",
"They didn't realize how bad the nuclear effects would be--they didn't understand the risks of low level radiation. Before Americans started worrying about nuclear war (after the USSR got the bomb), people felt more positive emotions about nuclear weapons. In the documentary Atomic Cafe, they showed the blasé or whimsical attitudes people often had to the bombs. There were kitschy souvenirs sold, the bikini was literally named after the Bikini Islands, a nuclear test site that went from tropical paradise to irradiated no man's land (displacing all indigenous inhabitants for at this point at least 70 years), and it was a popular tourist thing in Las Vegas for everyone to get out of the casinos and watch the nuclear bombs going off at the Nevada Testing Grounds. Now, they have more of an idea. There are people referred to as \"down-wonders\" who are suffering from the effects of radiation due to living downwind from the testing. And a scientist did a study of kids' baby teeth to see how much ambient radiation people are exposed to year by year, and how much is absorbed into our bodies. Answer: more than we thought.",
"Not an expert by any means,but the thing you have to realise is that they didnt really fully understand radiation and its effects (fallout) at the time. Arguably we still dont. If you look at old test videos you see people watching the detonations from bunkers at what they believed to be safe distances. Basicly,they really unserestimated a lot of the negative effects"
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6c0968 | How does one recognize when conspiracies ACTUALLY exist? | Given the Fake News politics of late, I've begun to doubt even my own position. The fanaticism of the other side almost makes me wonder if I really am missing something -- it's easier for me to believe that I'm being misled, than thousands of (presumably) average people. Those groups claim that everything I've read, seen, heard, and believe is deception. If they were right, how would I recognize it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For a first filter, ask for possible leak points. For example chemtrails, the theory that the jet trails are part of a program to poison the world and either give us all mind-altering drugs or reduce the world population. For this to be true, every airline must be in on it. Every captain and technician. Because otherwise they would start asking what that tank in their airplane is supposed to be. Those drugs or the poison would be recognisable by scientists at research instituts. They found none (probably tinfoilers have one or two, who are discredited in the scientific community, but then, why does nobody else find it?). Every other government must be in on it too. It gets too complicated to bribe or threaten everybody involved. There are just too many ordinary people with different agendas. So, I consider it extremely unlikely. As a contrast, before Wikileaks and Snowden it was a conspiracy theory that US intelligence agencies were intercepting all data without law or warrants. Here we have a select group of secret agents, all handling secrets the disclosure of which would result in long jail time while also believing to keep their countrymen safe from terrorism. Much easier to enforce silence. Much more believable. And later the theory was proven. So this is a first filter for the complete Bullshit. I can write more for finer differences tomorrow after I got some sleep.",
"Occum's Razor is an important concept when dealing with conspiracy theories. What is the simplest explanation. So for example, there is a 'theory' that 9-11 was a missile with a hologram around it to look like a plane. It that's true, why have we never heard about this in any other context? What's simpler, that an actual plane flew into the World Trade Center or never before or since seen technology was used to camouflage a missile?",
"This is much more difficult than people realise. It's can actually be very difficult for the exact reason you posit; both 'sides' essentially claim the evidence of the other side is false. Unless you are an expert it can be very difficult to know what is good. You can listen to the experts, but of course both 'sides' point to different experts too! How do I know if I ought to trust what Professor Smart says and not Professor Clever? Often we rely on others, e.g., 'my mother says Prof. Clever is good, so I'll listen to them'. It becomes a case of 'who do I believe' very quickly. So most of knowing when to believe a conspiracy theory is plausible or not actually to do with the evidence itself, but evaluating the people who evaluate the evidence. It's about evaluating the source of the information more than the information itself. Depending on the specific conspiracy theory there different ways that are better. Peer reviewed journals often have summaries and are by experts, which makes them very good. Knowing the difference between opinion pieces and non-opinion pieces in mainstream news is good. Knowing how to recognising bias, both obvious and subtle forms, is good. E.g., Adjectives and word choice can be an obvious form of bias. Compare > 'Trump is the dictator of the US' > 'Trump is the saviour of the US' > 'Trump is the leader of the US'. Those all have very different emotive responses. A more subtle form of bias is what is covered and the presentation/ordering of information. E.g. 'A bank was robbed on the 29th of Feb. Nobody saw Allen on the 29th of Feb.' This may be true, but the ordering implies that Allen was guilty. It's important to highlight once more it is true. Bias does not mean something is false, it means it's slanted a particular way. The main things to take away are 1) trust mainstream news. BBC, Al Jezeera etc. have very rigid editorial guidelines 2) Learn to differentiate between opinion pieces in them. 3) Learn to recognise bias.",
"A conspiracy by itself is a group of individuals or organizations working together to do something harmful. Thats an every day thing. If you are talking about when a conspiracy theory becomes real, its when you have the evidence to substantiate the conspiracy. There are a few plots throughout history where something that seemed ridiculously unlikely turned out to be correct , but most of the Alex Jones type crap that floods the Internet is either alarmists making noise for fun and profit, people too stupid to realize they don't know what they are talking about and lack critical thinking skill set , deliberate trolls (my personal favorite) and the severely mentally ill."
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6c3371 | Why is go considered a more complex game than chess? | I love chess, but don't know anything about go. I would have guessed that the game with six different kind of pieces that all move according to different rules is more complicated than the game with only one piece and no moves, only placement. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Aside from probably more valuable assessments about the depth of strategy involved, the larger board of go makes for far more states a game can be in and different paths it can take. URL_0 this table illustrates it nicely. A game of chess can have in the ballpark of 10^120 different permutations, whereas a game of go can have 10^360 ones. Both games are impossibly hard to \"solve\", but from a purely mathematical standpoint it is much harder to tell who will win a game of go than chess because at each turn there are far more possible moves. Either game can arguably be played better by a computer than a human but we can take solace in the fact that both are too hard to ever be realistically figured out completely. Indeed especially go, the arguably more complex ones, is only manageable for a computer because it learns strategy from humans and then figures out which of these strategies work best for it, it can't really come up with them entirely on its own.",
"So when you play a game of chess, as the game progresses, the number of valid moves generally decreases, and many of the moves that are technically valid, can easily be dismissed as unhelpful. (removing a queen from the game, prevents all moves by the queen thereafter. decreasing the amount of moves massively for each piece removed) In go, placing a piece, doesn't prevent any other moves, except placing a stone at that exact spot. Also the value of each move is much more nebulous. There's no checkmate in go, no end goal except \"acquire more territory\" Then there's the fact that the board is just way bigger, 19 by 19 instead of 8 by 8, this increases the number of moves exponentially and prevents brute forcing complex problems. (something that is semi viable in chess)",
"It may seem counter intuitive, but having more pieces with more rules makes it easier for a computer to calculate, since there are only a certain, small number cases to consider. Whereas with Go, you can place anywhere, really. So you'll have to calculate every single possible move. More rules means less complexity, for the most part.",
"Take it to basics. Imagine tic tac toe, or noughts and crosses. First play you have one of nine places to put your X or O. Then next play it's 8, and after that, 7 and so on, as the positions get used up. That means at most, the game has 9 possibilities of moves, and it reduces as the game goes on. For Chess, on average, this number is about 35. That is, throughout a chess game, each player has on average about 35 different possible moves open to them, and it varies up and down as the game progresses. Obviously it's smaller at the start, it'll get bigger as the game opens up, and will reduce again towards the end as pieces get captured. Go, on the other hand, this number is about 250. So for each and every turn, each player has about 250 possible moves open to them. Go is one of those games that the basic idea of it is quite simple, but the way it plays out requires quite deep strategy in order to win, and it's not obvious to look at a Go board (between two decent players) which player is winning. Therefore it's more difficult to establish strategies on how you're going to get one-up on your opponent, and it requires more experience. Chess, generally, the person with the most high value pieces left is doing better. It's easier to judge a game from any particular position than it is with Go, far easier."
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6c4ybm | Why do news shows have a special moderator for weather but only one moderator for all other topics? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Once upon a time, the person who spoke about the weather was a meteorologist, an actual weather scientist. The people who talk about the news were journalists, a different profession. Then along came the video overlay weather map, and you saw the whole body of the weather person, so they needed a more attractive body that the scientists might have had. Today, it might be a scientist or just a performance artist, depending on the station.",
"In the US, at least, most TV Weatherpersons are certified meteorologists, as in, they are scientifically and educationally certified to discuss weather phenomena, including some reasonable degree of prediction and interpretation of weather observation data. There are specialized degrees, which combine aspects of journalism and meteorology, and this is usually a Masters degree program, referred to commonly as a Broadcast Meteorology degree. All other aspects of the news show are basic reporting of facts, happenings, circumstances. Sports is its own category, since it's typically a special subset of the news.",
"Many of the news stations also have presenters specifically for sports news as well. The reason is that weather and sports are very popular categories of news often with lots of information to cover on a daily basis. It makes sense to have presenters that only work on those topics and who are more or less experts in those subjects. The aren't really any other specific news topics that are as popular or have as much information on a daily basis. Except maybe politics. Some stations have dedicated political reporters as well."
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6c58qx | Serious: Why is it US presidents are known for playing golf? Is this some kind of job requirement? | Seriously I don't play golf. It just seems odd each office holder seems to have this fancy in recent memory. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Golf is a very common hobby for the wealthy and the powerful - lawmakers, businesspeople, lawyers, etc. And there's a few good reasons for it: 1. Almost anyone can play it. Whether you're 25 or 70, most able-bodied people can play a round of golf. This isn't as true of something like basketball or tennis, which need a bit more fitness. 2. It's a slow game, with lots of room to talk. So it's very easy to discuss a deal or debate a plan for a few hours while playing a game. It's a little more interesting than sitting in a conference room and it gives those involved a little more of a personal day to relax around each other. 3. It's exclusive. The people playing are unlikely to be disturbed, listened in on, or photographed, because golf resorts and country clubs have fences, gates, security, etc. There's a lot of great reasons to play golf for most anyone, but for people in political positions, there are definitely some nice advantages to the hobby.",
"It's low energy and there is no interaction with other people or machinery, so it's difficult to get hurt. Football - Lots of people running around. All it takes is one mis-step and someone goes to the hospital. Baseball - One bad throw and someone is in the hospital. A bad moment in front of a pitching machine can kill you. Hockey - Even if everyone is being friendly, you can still hurt yourself. You're on *ice*."
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6c5t03 | Why do we write "beautiful" and not "beautifull" as in "full of beauty"? | It seems to make more sense that way. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhs4gx3"
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"text": [
"The suffix used in \"beautiful\" is \"-ful\". For whatever reason, suffixes and prefixes in English that end in two Ls drop the second L. Examples for \"-ful\" include helpful, harmful, fulfill, and beautiful. There are also other suffixes and prefixes that follow that rule, like \"wel-\" which comes from \"well\" and \"al-\" which comes from \"all\" (welcome, welfare, altogether, alright, almighty, etc.). There is a pattern where one syllable words or words that have the stress on the first syllable end in \"LL\" while other words end in a single \"L\". For example, all, cell, drill, pill, will, and wall are all one syllable words and end in -ll. Cancel, initial, fuel, and revival, all have multiple syllables with an unstressed first syllable and end in -l. There are of course exceptions, like tail, fail, soil, and spoil, but the general rule stands. It's possible that since the suffixes and prefixes were attached to one syllable words with an unstressed first syllable, the second \"L\" dropped out. However, spelling doesn't always follow logical rules and a lot of it is based on tradition or word origin, so there may not be a simple, satisfying explanation."
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6c65jd | Why is graffiti usually done with bubbly letters? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhs93z7"
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"text": [
"Easier to write. When you're using your entire arm, making a freehand straight line across 3 feet is actually very difficult. All lines will naturally have a curve to them. They style then over the years develops to accentuate and embelish that. There are taggers out there now that are using pre-cut stencils, which has changed what is possible quickly. Take a large sheet of thick brown paper, cut out your pattern or graphic, and then hit one side with spray adhesive. You can run up, apply the stencil, spray, and pull it down in minutes."
],
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6c6xlt | What do pharmacists do besides count out pills and put them in a bottle? There's obviously way more to the job | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I am a pharmacist. There are many different types of pharmacist. You have clinical, which is pharmacists in hospitals. Community, which is Walgreens/cvs/rite Aid. Finally, you have pharmacists in manufacturing, like mylan/phizer/actitvis. Since you most liking asking about community I'll explain. Basically, we are the last line of defense for your healthcare. We make sure everything is ok before you get your script. An example of this... an African American PT came in asking for a blood pressure screening. He was like 190/140. I asked him what meds he is taking to treat his BP. He stated lisinopril and HCTZ. This is a problem because lisinopril is an ACE inhibitor and the PT is African American. African Americans do not respond well to ace inhibitors and ARBs, and they have their own treatment algorithm. Normally, ace I and arbs are first line treatment for everyone else. So, I had to call the doc and remind him of this fact. That is just one example of one of the areas pharmacist are responsible for. We have responsibilities likevaccines, drug interactions, community out reach programs like MTM and outcomes, OTC, recommendations, treatments, overdoses... I could go on forever I feel like",
"Pharmacists have to check to make sure there's no interactions with medications while simultaneously taking phone calls from patients over side effects, interactions, etc. while also taking/making phone calls to doctors offices to obtain prescriptions and clarify mistakes made by doctors. They also have to make sure the the correct pills are in the right bottle (the wrong pills end up in them much more than you would think) on top of having to counsel patients about new medications and answer questions that come up at the front registers. Also they have to meet and exceed shitty performance metrics that have absolutely nothing to do with, nor have any place in the care of patients to appease corporate bosses who have no idea what day to day pharmacy operations are like.",
"I'm not a pharmacist, but I have worked as a pharmacy technician. Pharmacists communicate with doctors and patients to resolve issues with dosage and interactions. Techs and clerks in pharmacies are the ones who count and fill the prescriptions.",
"Currently in pharmacy school and have worked as a tech for 6 years. Basically your job is to know what will go wrong, be 10 steps ahead of will go wrong, be able to catch mistakes that are already made and also be able to deal with the repercussions of a mistake making it to the patient. These mistakes include, but are not limited to, wrong dose, wrong drug, wrong patient, wrong quantity, OTC drug interaction, Rx drug interaction, food interaction, drug allergy, insurance mishaps, busy patient with no time to wait, catching fake Rx by shifty drug users, keeping the pharmacy in legal standings and procedures, and lastly providing any and all information to patients that they desire about all of the above information and more at their request AND offering that service at each new fill. Yes we also count pills, but there is so much more education that has prepared your pharmacist for their job than they actually use. Not saying there aren't bad pharmacists out there, but the standard of care that pharmacists provide is much higher than most health professionals I've met and that's why I'm still very proud to be part of this profession.",
"They don't give you a look when you pay for the you-know-what. That's a pretty big skill right there.",
"Doctors and people that can prescribe medication aren't as versed in the ins and outs of each medication as a pharmacist would be. Things like certain drugs interacting with each other and causing problems or if someone is pregnant if they should or should not take a certain medication because t could cause problems in vitro."
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6c7ink | the difference between nihilism, cynicism, and pessimism | Obviously the difference between nihilism and the other two is more obvious but I was just wondering if you could give a more nuanced version of their definition and eschew connotations/contextual assosciations. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Nihilism is the belief we have no purpose, we just die. Cynicism is only seeing the bad in people. Pessimism is just seeing the bad in life."
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6c7l0l | Why do we let lobbyists/entities to influence Congress with money? Why can't they just provide reasoned debate and evidence to support their interests? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhsmf0c",
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"text": [
"Lobbyists don't really influence Congress with money directly, as in handing a Congressperson a sack full of money. A lobbyist is someone who advocates for the allocation of resources or the enactment of legislation as a profession. Most lobbyists are attorneys, and most work for a law firm, either a firm that exists solely to lobby or a firm that does lobbying in addition to other legal work. Some companies have an in-house lobby department that does nothing but work with lawmakers while it conducts it's normal business. There's about 12,000 registered lobbyists in the United States. Lobbying efforts aren't limited to the US Congress, it happens at the State and local level as well. Most lobbyists advocate for a client, who pays for the lobbyists work. The biggest spenders on lobbying are corporations, but the number of corporations that spend money on lobbying are relatively few. Banks and Wall Street are the biggest spenders. Boeing has a huge lobbying influence. A big part of what lobbyists do is fundraising. They set up Political Action Comittees, which are organizations that pool contributions from members to spend on advertising. There are limits to PAC contributions just like there are limits that an individual can give to a campaign. Lobbyists will also meet with Congressmembers and their staff and attempt to influence decision making by selling ideas. Lobbyists also advertise to the public and attempt to sway public opinion. There are a lot of rules covering what lobbyists are and are not allowed to do, and the amount of disclosure required is significant. In 2010 the Obama Administration promised to stop for-profit colleges from making false promises in their efforts to lure students. The administration floored various proposals to cut federal aid to programs that didn't comply. The for-profit college industry immediatley began lobbying, using former administration officials, friends, family and business partners of various Democratic leaders and former Congresspeople to influence the White House. Over a year, Lobbyists spent 16 million dollars to influence the new regulations, had 2 dozen meetings in the White House and produced 90,000 documents to the Department of Education. There are significant problems with lobbyists, including the \"revolving door\" issue where former government officials become lobbyists and exploit the relationships they built in government service for very lucrative compensation.",
"The problem is not that lobbyists attempt to control powerful politicians, the problem is that politicians are so powerful in the first place."
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6c7zff | Where did the phrase "It ain't over until the fat lady sings" come from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and its last part, Götterdämmerung, is what's being referenced in the saying. The \"fat lady\" is the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, who is traditionally presented as a very buxom lady with horned helmet, spear and round shield. After her scene, the opera and the Ring cycle ends."
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6c8jt9 | Why are there so many different bread-type snacks in Japan? | For years, I've watched this Japanese youtube channel by the name of "shitemita", the guy does nothing but food unboxing videos, and I noticed that there's like a million different "bread with cream filling" snacks. I believe they're called "pan" (pronounced "ponn" like pond) in Japanese. Literally, hundreds and hundreds of different ones, many different brands, some branded with cartoon/anime franchises, tons of different flavored fillings and different flavors of bread, etc. Why are there so many of these? What has created such an incredible demand for "bread with cream filling" snacks? Do they just like them that much? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhss6d2",
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"text": [
"Well in general there is a bit culture of rapidly cycling fads in Japan, to an extent that would baffle most people in the US. We're largely familiar with their most unusually long-lived franchises, like Pokemon, but the average Japanese craze lives and dies in Japan (or some small part of it) in a matte of weeks, or months. In that time though, *huge* amounts of money can be made, and companies sometimes specialize in merchandising these fads. As for stuffed bread though... that's huge there, and not just cream-filled. In general though, a buns or breads are insanely popular in Japan... and most of Asia. In Japan though they have a particular style which eschews more traditional buns, and goes for actual bread. You find bread stuffed with yakisoba, or curry, or green tea custard. It's cheap to make, easy to ship, and relatively inexpensive. Students (and teachers) go for it a lot, but you may be getting a slightly distorted view from your source. Having said that, \"fast\" food in Japan tends to be much higher quality than in the US, and a much more viable option. Often fast food, ready-made meals in 7-11's, and bento sets in supermarkets are some of the only affordable sources of quick food for a lot of city dwellers. Finally... on average I'd say that the average Japanese person doesn't love sweets as much as the average Westerner. That's not to say that they don't like candy, but when it comes to desserts they're often more subtly sweet than cloying. An egg custard in bread, maybe with some sugary-cookie dough criss-crossed on the top is sweet, but not too sweet. So... external cultural factors: China started the whole \"bun\" thing, which includes the soft ones, but also more bready ones, some filled with egg custard. Internal cultural factors: variety-driven market, big market for fresh fast food. Palette. Having said that though, a far more universal portable fast food would be rice balls (onigiri).",
"The Japanese word \"pan\" is an import word from Portuguese in the 1700's. The single word/concept covers the entire array of baked products (except maybe cake). Other cultures subdivide bread into sweets and pizza and sandwich etc. The Japanese never developed those subdivisions so they routinely combine ingredients that more compartmentalized cultures wouldn't consider. I've seen rolls stuffed with spaghetti and sauce. They will put just about anything inside a roll and think nothing of it."
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6c8x1u | How property is dealt with in Antartica? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhsv387"
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"text": [
"Can you be a bit more specific about what you mean? The Antarctic treaties basically lay down the agreement that the landmass is for scientific purposes. Military and mining installations are strictly prohibited though military personnel themselves aren't. Most of the land is already divide up between certain nations who will work closely in scientific endeavours for which it is mainly restricted."
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6c9nlg | How do internet currencies work, are they of value outside of the internet, and is there one currency that looks to be most successful in the future? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"With \"internet currencies\" I suppose you mean cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and not services like Paypal? The main goal of cryptocurrencies is providing anonymous and/or secure money transfers. They do this by heavily encrypting (- > crypto-currencies) each transaction. It is of course used in criminal environments on the dark web, but there are also some communities like /r/dogecoin who use it for good. Depending on the popularity of the currency (Bitcoin being the most popular by far), you can buy quite a lot with it. Of course only on the internet. This encryption work requires a lot of processing power, which is why they distribute it to users in a peer-to-peer manner. Users can provide their computer resources to encrypt transactions, and in return they receive some currency themselves. This is called \"mining\", mostly bitcoin-mining. You can also just buy bitcoins from someone who sells them, if you don't want to mine them yourself. As mentioned before, Bitcoin is currently the most popular currency by far. There are specialised systems to mine coins much more efficiently than with a regular CPU or GPU, making it for the regular PC owner unprofitable to mine. Therefore some other currencies gain popularity, and if you want to learn about cryptocurrencies you're better off mining an alternative. So far they are fairly limited in stores supporting them, and exchanging them for Bitcoins is probably your best bet."
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6ca6jl | Why do movie studios often want to change stories to fit a very rigid, defined structure when many critical successes break convention, and this "conventionalization" of already established properties often makes them worse? (A:TLA, Ghost in the shell) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"You remember the stories that broke conventions and became a success. You don't remember the many many stories that tried to break conventions and became a total flop. It is a risky move. If you are going with something never done before, you have no real way of knowing if people will like it. And if they don't, that is a lot of money lost. Sticking to a tried and tested formula might not necessarily get you into a critical success status, but it can make sure you are making a profit.",
"* Movies are a different form of storytelling than novels. Novels *tell* and movies *show*. Novels are good at things like internal narratives and backstory exposition, movies are good at action, like car chases and fight scenes. * Studios are risk adverse. When you invest $100 million in a movie, you'd rather go with tried and true that is pretty sure to see a profit. You might break the author's heart, but they can cry all the way to the bank. * Movies play to a larger audience and must have broader appeal. If a book sells a million copies, it is a bestseller. A big budget movie that \"only\" sells a million tickets is a flop. * Movies are star driven. That leads to a leading man/leading lady + 2-4 supporting roles format, where novels tend to have a much wider variety of character use. * Confirmation bias. You remember the one movie that broke convention and succeeded, not the ten that failed.",
"because they care about maximising sales (and sequel potential), not the integrity of the source material the movie is based on"
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6calk9 | How does the US sign and arms deal with another country when they don't make the arms? Could gun/other arms manufacturers make these deals themselves? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dht6aay",
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"text": [
"Some military equipment are made with R & D from the government (military, or defence agency). Sometime, it's the government that paid for the developpement of the equipment/vehicle. This is usually the case with a lot of aircraft and armored vehicle. A company rarely can develop one of those by themselves, especially since they usually develop them for a specific military. So in those situation, the government like the US have to give their ok if you want for the manufacturer to seal to another country. Additionnally, some of these weapons have the top level in term of military software and technology and in those case there is a law that can prohibit the sell of those to foreign power for national security reason. That's why the F-22 was never sold to anyone outside of the US even if a lot of people would have wanted to buy it.",
"In general, \"the good stuff\" is not available for sale at retail. In order for a country to get advanced technology, the stuff regulated by the International Trade in Arms Regulations, they have to get it through government sanctioned foreign military sales arrangements. The country pays the US and the US pays the manufacturer because ITAR prohibits the manufacturer from selling to anybody but the government."
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6cb6h5 | What exactly is British humour? | I've heard all kinds of things about the topic. That it's subtle. That it's crude. Etc As a Brit myself (hence the spelling of humour) I feel like I should know this. But I don't. I am not looking for specific examples, but for a general definition, and why there is this distinction in the first place | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"As /u/stereoroid says, it's not *exactly* anything and is, like anything cultural, quite hard to define and even harder to understand: as with most culture, it's something that has to be experienced rather than described. Generally, though, it's some combination of - Self-deprecating. A Brit will tell jokes at their own expense, or their own country's expense. It's particularly rare to see Americans do this, although is by no means unique to Brits, we do it a lot. - Dry. You'll never hear a Brit telling you they're being sarcastic, for example. You have to work it out yourself: that's part of the fun. - Sarcastic and mocking. Ourselves, you, anybody else: we aren't afraid to poke fun in anybody. - Often silly: wordplay and puns are very highly rated in our comedy. Of course, this exists the world over - but it's a type of humour particularly prized by Brits. - Subtle. Not always, but especially linked with the wordplay and puns above. British humour will often be a slightly sassy remark, or insult veiled as a compliment. Not every joke will even be noticed by every participant of the conversation, nor is it always intended to be so. And probably the most \"uniquely\" (or at least, unusual) part of British humour - Dark. British humour will often, rather than finding a positive, instead ridicule a negative. This ties into the self depreciation and mocking nature. And to emphasis: **sarcastic**. But not necessarily in the outwardly mocking American type of Sarcasm. British sarcasm is almost nothing like Homer Simpson - it's far more subtle, and probably the only part I really struggle to explain. It's very much about not taking yourself too seriously, even when discussing serious things, nor allowing anyone else to take themselves too seriously. Especially when discussing serious things, in fact. The more serious the situation, the more likely a Brit is to crack a joke. You'll also often find Brits being mean to their friends. We aren't actually being mean, though, that's part of our humour and is only directed to people we're comfortable enough with to feel it's acceptable. The people we aren't being mean to are the ones who we don't feel close enough to judge their reaction and therefore won't insult out of concern we'd actually upset them.",
"American TV comedy shows people the way they like to think they are. British TV comedy shows people the way they are afraid that they actually are!"
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6cbc7r | Why does it seem like people of Jewish descent are so common in so many areas of life, when there are relatively few of them? Surprisingly many scientists/comedians/actors/businessmen are Jewish or of Jewish descent. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"That's hardly many areas of life, they're just common in some high-end jobs, typically business, media, law, medicine. You don't see Jewish plumbers or Walmart employees, because their culture places a lot of importance on education and they have the money and connections to get places, because Jews are very, very nepotistic among their faith/culture.",
"I don't even have to guess where you're from. You either live in the states or are in contact with US media a lot. And when we're talking about the US, there definitely aren't very few of them. [Quite the opposite actually.]( URL_0 ) Were we talking about Germany for example, you wouldn't feel like Jews are common in many areas of life.",
"is it surprising that a culture and people who promote intelligence and education are in rather highly educated professions?",
"It's not exactly rocket science to figure out. Remember the time that guy tried to kill all the jewish people like 70 years ago? Think of who had the money and means to leave and move to america and who didn't. It wasn't exactly the ditch diggers that were able to afford to move to the US and it wasn't the ditch diggers that the US was letting in. And it's not really a shock if your parents were successful businessmen that you now own a business. If only the well off people got to move it's not shocking a lot of them are well off. It's the same as looking at like a somali refugee community where everyone had to move to the US because they were poor and asking why everyone that lives there is poor."
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6cbrdh | How and why did the tradition of eating different foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner start? | For example, why are scrambled eggs eaten almost exclusively for breakfast while soups and most sandwiches are typically eaten for lunch or dinner? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhtfe1c"
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"text": [
"Preparation. Before Refrigeration, meats had to be prepared and cooked well before eating, while eggs and oats were easily available to eat for breakfast."
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6ccexn | How did we come to use $ as a symbol for Dollars? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a column in the [Straight Dope]( URL_0 ) that discusses several of the theories already discussed, and concludes it came from the peso abbreviation 'ps' being written over each other. Relevant quote below: > So much for the tomfoolery; now to get serious. Professor Cajori contends that the dollar sign is an abbreviation for \"pesos.\" Bear in mind that the Spanish dollar, also known as the peso de 8 reales, was the principal coin in circulation in the U.S. up until 1794, when we began minting our own dollars. In handwriting, \"pesos\" was usually abbreviated lowercase \"ps,\" with S above and to the right of the P and with the hook on the latter written with one or two deep strokes. As time went on, the P and the S tended to get mashed together and the result was $. > The dollar sign and the PS abbreviation were used interchangeably from around 1775 until the end of the century, after which the latter faded from view. Professor Cajori backs up his argument with examples from manuscript, and I'm prepared to declare the matter settled.",
"> The most accepted hypothesis holds that the sign derives from the symbollic representation of the Pillars of Hercules – this representation can either have a banner separately around each pillar, or [as in the Spanish coat of arms]( URL_0 ), a banner curling between them. It's basically from the Spanish coins."
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6ccill | Does the Baby Boomer vs. Millenial feud exist outside of the US? Why (not)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It exists everywhere. Old people think the young are impulsive and irresponsible and the young think the older generations are boring and holding society back. Before Gen X and the Millenials the Boomers were seen as lazy by their elders. It's a cycle. Eventually us Millenials will be calling whatever the young gen will be called the same thing.",
"It does in Canada. Alot of the resentment here comes from retired baby boomers refusing to downsize and driving up the cost of housing.",
"Not an issue where I live in the UK (North Wales/Chester area) but then housing isn't a problem and j9bs are quite easy to get. People I know that live in London and they moan about people having big houses but grown up kids etc.",
"The generational difference that matters to us in Lithuania is between the people who grew up in the CCCP and the ones who grew up in a free Lithuania. It becomes apparent that soon enough a third group will join the bunch, the people who don't remember a time before ubiquitous fiber internet."
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6ccwkz | Why do websites exist that take you from one sketchy set of links and data to another and another and another? Who is this benefitting? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your attention has commercial value. Every clickbait webpage you visit has some ads on it, and the publisher scores a fraction of a cent income from your visit paid by the advertiser, on the assumption that you notice these ads and there's a fractional chance you might buy the goods or services in question. To increase that income, the publisher might put 100s of ads on a page, but it turns out the advertisers don't believe that a reader would diligently read pages of just ads, so the next best strategy is to try and persuade you to go from page to page, each with a few ads on it... As Andrew Lewis said _'If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold'_ - your eyeballs are the product, the publisher of the \"You won't believe what happened next..!\" click bait pages is the seller, and the advertising agency is the customer."
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6cd5td | Why do people who go through childhood abuse often go on to live bad (for lack of a better word) lives? | I was rewatching Forrest Gump and I got to the part where Jenny breaks down and starts throwing rocks at her childhood home, and it made me realize that the sexual abuse she went through as a child was what made her go down the path of drugs and violence and such. Then I realized this is common, people being abused somehow as a child going on to live those kind of lives. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"PTSD has a physical effect on the brain, specifically the hippocampus and the frontal cortex. The hippocampus is responsible for learning and memory, and the frontal cortex regulates emotional reactions to fear and stress. People who suffer from abuse don't just remember it, they relive it. Over and over again, sometimes multiple times during a day. Nightmares, flashbacks, physical manifestations of the fight/flight response, increased heart rate, nausea, uncontrollable memory resurgences, strong feelings of hate, anger, fear, confusion... these things happen all the time to victims of sexual abuse and it makes it impossible for them to lead a \"normal\" life.",
"They have studied this. Out of 8 victims, 1 will grow up to be an abuser, 3 will be so horribly scarred they will never be fully functional adults (drug addicts, criminals, etc), 3 will be damaged but fully functional (jobs, relationships, etc) and 1 will have no damage at all. Fully functional adult with no mental issues at all. Teflon kids. Nothing sticks. Current theory involves malleability and adaptabily of neurons. Very esoteric research I don't completely get. Bottom line, half of all abuse victims are doing just fine, but you only ever hear about the ones with problems.",
"Don't know if this applies to the Forrest Gump scenario but.... Certain stress.... Physical/sexual abuse, warzones, ect. Induce what's known as toxic stress in a child. This is effectively when their body goes into fight or flight mode, adrenal and stress hormones are produced. Repeated exposure to these chemicals in the brain over a period of time can slow and or negatively impact the development of the brain in children.... One of the portions of brain development that can end up being impacted is emotional regulation and executive function (decision making). In addition enough exposure to toxic stress is believe to do damage portions of the brain responsible for the release of stress hormones causing them to consistently be secreted into the body over the child's lifespan. I only took a semester of child development so if I'm mistaken on any of those details somebody please correct me.",
"We are social animals and learn much of our behaviour by observation: if your parents don't provide a safe, caring childhood environment for you, the odds are stacked against you being equipped to do so for your own offspring, or otherwise appropriately modelling other social behaviours - although hugely to their credit, some survivors do compensate and learn from other role models. I often wonder if this model translate up the scale, and if say a nation born out of some terrible holocaust would be dysfunctional in its relations with its neighbours... Idle speculation."
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6cfecu | Why do we say our descriptive words in a particular order? For example: "Big red ball," not "Red big ball." | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There actually is a \"correct\" order, although most people don't learn it. We often pick it up without realizing it, but that's why certain orders sound \"weird\" URL_1 URL_0",
"These descriptive words are called adjectives and when multiple adjectives modify a noun, they will be in a [particular order]( URL_0 ). This is one of many unconscious rules that native English speakers have in their minds, whether they're aware of it or not. No one ever taught you these rules, you learned them when you were a baby, just by listening to your parents and other people talk. Together, these rules are called syntax and a language's syntax determines how words are put together to make phrases and sentences.",
"I have tried to sum up a simple answer based on previous threads and other sources. First thing first - it is how we are taught - the order that is. We naturally pick it up and then it becomes ingrained in our vocabulary and we get it right most of the times without even realizing it. Here is the order. Determiners, Observation, Size and Shape, Age, Color, Origin, Material, Qualifier. We naturally tend to follow this order due to repetition and never doubts why it is like that. Another great video which everyone should watch which elaborates that *why* part of this question is Tom Scott's explanation - URL_0 Another great article which further breaks down this question linguistically and with historical reference is this - URL_1"
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6cfqu4 | Why do we especially honor the top 3 finishers in every sport? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, first of all we don't. Many sports only honor the top finisher. Examples are NFL (football), MLB (baseball), and NBA (basketball). In other examples, where the top three are honored, there a couple of reasons I can think of. The nature of some tournaments mean that the not every team or competitor had a chance to go head-to-head against every other entrant. By recognizing the top three, you are honoring a team/individual who may have lost an early round but is otherwise would have been competitive with the top performer. Also, there is a tradition in horseracing of betting to win (1st place), place (2nd place) or show (3rd) place. If you only bet to win, only the favorites would garner any attention from bettors. By having three slots, it makes the race much more interesting and allows for many different betting scenarios and strategies.",
"Humans oddly like things in 3s. Jokes, awards and lists. I dunno why, but it probably explains why we might've chosen it.",
"I tried researching this and found no real definitive answers, but I think it's just traditional for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons I think is due to wanting to encourage a large pool of competitors. For example county fairs have traditionally given out grand prize, first runner up, and second runner up, for each category with each one getting a smaller slice of a prize pool or a lesser value item. One prize might encourage only high level competitors, but lesser prizes might encourage lesser talented ones. Same reason many competitions will have performance tiers so more people will compete. Another might be because many sports actually keep track of standings from competition to competition so the governing body notes competitors standings for that reason. In fact the olympics which I think you're really asking about awards the top 8 competitors. It's just that the top three (again like fairs) are honored in a medal ceremony, the other 5 get an official Olympic diploma with their standing, and all competitors get a participation medal and diploma. When you consider that the very act of reaching that high a level requires a lot of dedication again it really attracts more competitors if you try to honor and celebrate as many competitor's accomplishments as you can. While the Olympics definitely have an element of national pride to them, the main aim is to promote friendship and good sportsmanship between countries. You'll find that the three or more levels is much more common in amature compations as well. Most likely to again promote good sportsmanship and celebrate everyone's accomplishments. At the professional level it's much less common, with a winner take all approach being more the norm. Most likely due to how it fuels team rivalries and fan feuds, encouraging more paying fans to attend games, which after all is the real aim of all pro level sports.",
"We don't. Typically we do so in individual sports as recognition of achievement since there can only be one winner. In team sports, we generally only recognize the best team.",
"The simple answer is: De Coubertin (founder of the IOC) started the tradition with three 'winners'."
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6cfvac | If gregorian calendar happened to have january as first month, then why other major calendars (chinese and hindu calendar) also starts with month near that time? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because generally all these calendars will look at the winter solstice (the day with the least amount of daylight / longest night) as an end to things. Once the winter solstice has passed, nights start growing shorter again and days longer, which feels like a new beginning, thus a new year.",
"So are Southern Hemisphere calendars 6 months different?"
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6cfw80 | What's so difficult about being a NASCAR driver? | I'm european and therefore I'm not familiar with the sport, so I was wondering: whats so hard about driving a car on a round track? What makes drivers better than the others? What is so exciting about watching cars go round in circles? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You are driving what is essentially a piece of lightweight polymers at 150-200+mph (~322km/h). It requires a respectable amount of tact to maneuver around other cars (drafting for example) and if not executed properly, you can very easily perish. So there is definitely skill/variation from driver to driver. Now as to why its exciting? I don't know haha. Maybe its why MMA is exciting, because there is that fine line of possible danger one step away. People here are naturally drawn to violent sports (American football, MMA, NASCAR, boxing, etc.)",
"It sounds like the question isn't necessarily limited to NASCAR, so much as to oval racing in general (what's so hard about driving a car on a round track?). Firstly, oval tracks aren't quite round. There are maybe one or two circuits that are so round that you don't even have to lift off the throttle, but most tracks have some angle or camber change that requires lifting off the throttle, and some tracks can actually become pretty technical. Secondly, oval tracks have more than one line for every turn. There's long term race strategy involved here - going low usually gives you less track to go around, but can give you less corner exit speed, which is extremely important in oval racing. Going high usually means less grip and more fuel used, but you get more speed off the exit. Going in the middle can either give you the best of both worlds or the worst of both worlds, but it can also mean that you're stuck in a very dangerous position between two cars. And every track has different strategies - how wide is it? What kind of banking does it have across each turn? How much grip is there inherently on each part of the track? What will most other cars do (where is the grip going to be?)? How long are the straights - is corner exit speed more or less important than usual? Compare it to road racing, where tracks have a lot more corners, and some of those corners can get very technical and very fun, but most of them will have one optimal line. Overtaking is a lot less common in road racing than in oval racing. Speaking of, thirdly, oval races feature a lot more overtaking. When everyone is driving around the same track at high speeds, the slightest mistake or the slightest over-lifting off the throttle can lead to a drop in position for a driver. Leads are often measured in tenths and hundredths of a second, even though races can last for hours. In short, it's a different kind of racing that poses different problems for the drivers. Good drivers are focused, consistent, and can read the track in front of them near-instantly to adapt for changes in the race. Like all sports, the more you go into it, the more levels of strategy you realize exist for it.",
"I had the same thoughts until I went to the Richard Petty NASCAR driving experience. The car wasn't necessarily that difficult to drive at 3/4 of race speed on an empty track but add 40 more cars at full speed... I'd say that the level of complexity increases rather quickly. Also, the Richard Petty NASCAR driving experience uses a professional driver to help you keep your lap pace. This absolutely sucks after you become accustomed to the race car because you want to go faster but can't. There are other racing schools that allow you to simply drive providedyou stay within the race groove.",
"I watch F1 and watched my first NASCAR race a few weeks ago. Here are the bullet points of what I found was really interesting: - The cars are all about momentum. Because everyone is basically full throttle all the time and in traffic, an inch of movement here or there can mean huge chunks of time on your lap. - No electronic aids. Unlike and F1 car, the driver has to tell the pit crew what settings he wants on it, if it's loose, the gearing, etc. - The pit stop has only a couple of people. Unlike an F1 pit stop where the tires are changed in a second, a NASCAR pit crew has to wait until the car is nearly there and try and do everything with only a handful of people. - Tight racing and passing. I love F1, but in 5 laps there was more passing and lead changes than an entire F1 race. Granted, it's still not for me, but after watching an entire race, I totally get the appeal now.",
"Go out and find a highway with concrete barriers on the side. Drive so that you are 1\" from the wall (2.5cm). Now, imagine this at 200. To put this in perspective you probably currently do that at 50mph, 2-3 feet away and find it absorbing and difficult. Now, recognize that the car is creating so much wind at that speed that it forms a cushion that pushes the car away. So to stay 1\" away you have to actively steer towards the wall. Of course, this buffeting is variable. You know what it feels like when you car is suddenly buffeted on the side with wind at 30-40mph? That is nothing compared to what is happening at the wall. Then imagine that you are 2-3\" off from the bumper of the guy in front of you. You are using him to block some wind, and of course at 200mph this drastically affects your car. And that is a huge gap. They used to purposefully drive so that there was continuous physical contact with the car in front, but I don't think that happens any longer due to some rule change. Plus you have a car 2\" away from your driver's side door. He's bouncing and chattering around, affected by the wind of you and the guy in front of you. All you have to do is avoid all of these obstacles while simultaneously finding the best line on the track despite everyone around you trying to get that same line, and maintain that level of concentration and perfect driving for a few hundred laps. It's hard. It doesn't require much in terms of shifting, entering/exiting sharp turns, but the challenges in terms of the line, the wall, and aerodynamics are pretty extreme. Everyone is driving at the limit of human capability. That is just part of the in cockpit part. Car setup makes or breaks a race. There are obvious things like choosing the springs, but putting duck tape on the front grill means less air to the engine, but more downforce. Roughly, do you want power or traction? Depends on the track, your strategy, your skills. BTW, duck tape is just for qualifying - the cars can't run a whole race plugged up. You just get 2 laps for qualification, and you don't have limitless practice time, so you need to make the right choice quickly. Then there is tire pressure, tire compounds, camber, on and on. Yes, the crew is helping you with all of this, but you need to communicate what is happening in the car to help them help you make the right set up choices.",
"Stock cars weigh about 1497 kg to IndyCar's 709 kg. On some tracks, their top speed is about 90% of what IndyCar would run. There is a high amount of finesse required to take the right line around a corner; even though it's the same four corners every lap for about 4 hours, there are variables like aerodynamics, tire wear, track conditions, and the positions of other cars that have to be taken into account. The fact that the top-level cars are so evenly matched makes the margin for error little. All of this while temperatures often hit up to 140F/60C of trapped heat inside the car during humid summers, and the series is on the road from February (Presidents' Day weekend) until November (the week before Thanksgiving), giving only 2 months of off-season. Weeks in between races are filled with sponsor appearances, team briefings, travel, and practice and there are only a couple of weeks off on the schedule. Making it up the ranks to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series is highly competitive; although the maximum field is 40 drivers, only about half of them are in good cars that actually have a chance of winning the race. It requires a risk of large amounts of money; that's why teams require many, many sponsors over the course of a season and why most of the drivers have had sufficient financial backing or a family history in the sport that helped them on the way up. Thousands of drivers race on local short tracks across America every week and the lower ranks of NASCAR are absolutely brimming with more young, talented drivers looking to make it up than there are competitive cars available in the Cup Series. I'm a regular on /r/NASCAR and have been a fan since 2004. It's hard to explain why exactly I'm a fan; there is just so much to know and appreciate about NASCAR, and attending the races is an exciting experience from the sponsor displays to the other fans to the feel of the race with 40 earth-shattering V8s at 9000 RPM pushing close to 200 mph. TV can't really do it much justice, it's something you have to see to believe. Even using a sim like iRacing helps. There's also a lot of close-quarters racing you don't see much out of other forms of racing; Google \"closest NASCAR finishes\" and you'll see.",
"One of the biggest reasons is because the car's aren't as good as other racing sports. In F1, the car goes *exactly* how you tell it to. In NASCAR, the cars are finicky and can change greatly throughout the race. It seems boring, but pick a car and watch it. It becomes much more intense when you follow a car, what that one car is doing, etc."
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6cg4h4 | Why can't Canada just abolish The Indian Act | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Doing so would strip all the reservations for native peoples of the right to self govern, and it would revert all property within said reservations to the ownership of the Canadian Federal Government. You would be taking the property of everyone who lives on them away from them."
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6ch9iy | How did nodding ones head/shaking ones head come to signify yes/no? | I know there are exceptions, but generally speaking | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Unsure about 'nodding' .. but the shaking came from when you are a baby and your parent are trying to feed you.. if you watch closely, when a baby does not want to eat the certain food being fed... they move their head from side to side.. That is in most countries though.. but like everything else, there are some countries where 'shaking' of the head means something else.."
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6chq9m | Why you can't take pictures in museums using flash? | In some museums which allow taking pictures,they don't allow using flash? I reckon it might be about crowd,but what when there is not a crowd present? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not about the crowd, it's about the art. Light fades a number of the materials used, and hundreds or thousands of flashes can accelerate that process. That's the belief, anyway.",
"On paintings etc, they say it's because millions of flashes over the course of many years can fade the material. However, this is based on a very slight 'it could happen' and is one of those things that have stuck. Not sure there have been any recorded incidents of it actually happen. It's kind of like how you shouldn't use a mobile in a gas station or you'll explode it. However you also have to consider how annoying it would be. Just imagine staring at that beautiful vase and there's 30 people taking pictures with it, flashing everywhere. It would be awful to the eye. A lot of it is just 'That's how it should be' as it has always been so. Like not talking in a library. We speak out loud to other people if they're reading a newspaper in their home or reading an article on reddit. But if they were reading a book in a library, you would whisper... purely because 'that's the way it should be.'"
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6ci21l | what did Japan do to the Chinese people in WWII that there is still hate to this day? | Excuse my ignorance... I am Austrian so I dont know much about the Asian perspective of WW2. We have a lot of stuff on our plate already. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They engaged in a number of massacres of civilians and prisoners of war, engaged in ethnic purges against the chinese and other ethnic subgroups, engaged in human experimentation such as deliberately inducing frostbite on limbs one by one until the victim was limbless at which point they would infect them with pathogens for research, forced prisoners of war into work camps to work as slave labor, and oh so much more. Their actions were frankly incredibly atrocious. Here's a more comprehensive examination than I could ever hope to give: URL_0",
"Google Nanking Massacre. Quoting from wikipedia: \"The Nanking Massacre was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (then spelled Nanking), then the capital of the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. During this period, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants who numbered an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000, and perpetrated widespread rape and looting. Since most Japanese military records on the killings were kept secret or destroyed shortly after the surrender of Japan in 1945, historians have not been able to accurately estimate the death toll of the massacre. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo estimated in 1946 that over 200,000 Chinese were killed in the incident. China's official estimate is more than 300,000 dead based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal in 1947. The death toll has been actively contested among scholars since the 1980s.\""
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6ci6nb | What does DJ Khaled actually do when he is part of a song? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He puts the people together, makes the beat, yells \"WE DA BEST\" and collects the check. The producer can be contracted by an artist to create the beat and oversee mixing it and getting the levels right, in DJ Khaled's case he's usually putting these songs together with all-star lineups on his own.",
"He's a producer, so he's made the beat, and all the other instruments. A lot of producers come up with hooks/catchy repetitive bits of a song/chorus.",
"Like others have said, he's not only a producer but he also sings/raps sometimes. Here's an example of [it]( URL_0 ).",
"He is not a producer, his \"skill\" is getting these artists together and coming up with the idea or structure for the song."
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6ciq1w | How come a lot of films from the 1920's and older have become lost, yet a lot of films from the 1930's and forwards are still in existence (despite the continuing use of nitrate films and the lack of need for preservation at the time)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well one big reason is that for a very long time, film preservation was not really a thing. Once a movie was screened at a theatre and it was done, the movie was considered worthless and was scrapped or reused because film is expensive. Remember, there wasn’t a TV or anything to resell your content to and that meant that if you wanted to save your movie, you had to go through the effort to do that and techniques back then were not good. You mention the 20’s even though movie destruction has been a thing long after the 20’s (a famous example of lost content is old Dr. Who TV episodes) one thing that happened in the 20’s was the great depression. Lots of companies including movie companies went out of business and movies were just tossed when the doors were closing since they couldn’t afford to store them. ETA: Film preservation is a really modern concept. Lots of movies are partially or outright gone forever for various reasons.",
"In 1937 20th Century Fox's vault (which contained all of their films made prior to 1932 along with the films of other studios they had acquired) caught fire and burned to the ground. More than 50,000 reels of film were destroyed, causing the loss of a large portion of their back catalog. After this fire greater attention was paid to building storage facilities which had internal firewalls so that a single fire wouldn't destroy everything. Also, in the early part of the 20th century films were almost a novelty, whereas by 1930 65% of Americans went to the movies *weekly*. This massive increase in viewership means that many more copies of a given film were made.",
"The great depression is the big reason for things not to be historically kept from the 1920s. But there's been lots of footage post WWII that's lost forever too."
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6ck6iv | How come people used to get married around 20, hardly knew each other, and had long successful marriages whereas nowadays we marry older, know each other for longer, and the marriages fail more frequently? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One thing to keep in mind is that, until the mid-1970s, no-fault divorces were not legal in the US. The only way to get out of a bad marriage was for one spouse to do something seriously wrong, like committing infidelity or (seriously) physically abusing the other. That's why [the US divorce rate]( URL_0 ) rapidly went up through the 1970s, peaking in 1980 and has been going down steadily since.",
"Some of the factors at play are 1) it used to be more difficult legally to get divorced 2) Divorce was highly frowned upon and could alienate you from society in many ways. 3) many women did not have the option to leave marriages that they didn't like either for financial reasons or the ones listed above.",
"People rushed into marriage early on because that's how it had been done in the past, and because of the social pressures against pre-marital sex, etc. So if people wanted to engage in that, then they rushed into marriages. And marriages in the past weren't more successful, it's just that people were trapped in them -- both genders because of societal pressures, and women because they had limited means to support themselves. That's why, when divorce did become more accepted in the 70's, there were a ton of divorces... people who may have wanted out of marriages for a decade or more finally felt they could leave a bad marriage. The rate has actually fallen over time after those initial divorces happened, and also as people have waited longer to marry.",
"Who were they successful for? Look at old media. Everyone hated their wife/husband and that was always treated as some default. Like there was success stories too as well of course, but there was this huge undercurrent of people that could not fucking stand their spouse and hated being around them or talking to them just being this normal thing everywhere.",
"Changing definition of success; Now success = happiness and supportiveness. Before success = longevity and stability. People are now willing to leaving bad marriages whereas before that was socially unacceptable.",
"Everyone's going to have their own reason, that somewhat reflects their opinions of society, so that needs to be considered, but my two cents: Values and costs related to raising children. It wasn't until fairly recently that a person would study and train for 20 years before they could start working, and education beyond that would largely effect how much you would make. That means that in order for a child to begin making money, they need to be a full-grown independent adult, with substantial financial investment by their parents. This wasn't the case in the past. 100 years ago, a relatively young child, with relatively non-existent education could be economically productive, especially in less developed, more agricultural areas. That means that a child could spend something like 10 years working before they were ready to go out on their own, which was an economic benefit to their families, lessening workload, *and* providing a sort of retirement plan. They were an investment. In those situations, it wasn't just economically feasible to be a stay-at-home mom, it was good business, a woman could find herself doing much better in most situations with a horde of children doing chores in a farm or working in factories, this incentivized getting *and staying* married. Today, your eight year old son, for most situations, isn't tending to the livestock. They're going to school, costing money, and will likely leave the moment they become economically self-sufficient (in their mid-20s). That means that raising kids is something you do for fun or self-fulfillment, and marriage goes right along with it. If you don't want to spend all of your time raising six kids, you don't need a spouse to either make money or manage the household. If you don't *need* a spouse, then the only thing keeping you together is feelings and emotion, which no matter how sentimental a person is, just doesn't have the same pull as \"My plan for when I get old is to live in this same house with these kids taking care of me, and if we get divorced, I'll have nothing.\"",
"Whenever this topic comes up, my grandma says: \"Back then we got married to someone we liked, someone who knew how to work and how to take care of a family. It was more about 'functioning' than love. Eventually you would call it love when you knew that there was someone who's there for you and your family. Compared to today's relationships, it's less 'love' and more 'working as a couple', and maybe that's one reason why people didn't get divorced as much. \" She also calls today's generation(s) the \"generation of whores\" and that there are no real men anymore, so there's also that...",
"It's probably already been said here but I think the biggest reason is that only since WW2 were married women really \"allowed\" in the workplace. We also haven't always had social assistance programs. If a lady left her husband it could potentially have meant that she and the kids were SOL",
"Frankly young couples can learn to put up with each other a whole lot easier than older couples. As an older person myself I think I'd have managed marriage twenty years ago but now? Nah",
"This is typical survivor bias. Most marriages that held through the wave of divorces in the 70s-80s are the one that were successful (as they made the spouses happy). So it seems that they were the majority. But, as said by the other answer they were not.",
"> had long successful marriages There's your problem - they didn't. Marriages didn't suddenly become bad, it's just that divorce wasn't socially acceptable or even legal until like the 70s. People have had shitty marriages since marriage became a thing, they just couldn't do anything about it most of the time.",
"I don't believe marriages were as successful as you think they were. Divorces were once really difficult to get, for both husband and wife. In a lot of cultures, both spouses would need to consent to a divorce, and (women especially) would need to prove an element of infidelity, abuse, or abandonment. If children were involved, then chances on getting a judge to sign was next to nil. Divorce came with a huge social and religious stigma, and was a major sign of failure. Women would be in a very difficult spot economically, and probably would not have custody of her children because of it (which is why she wouldn't pursue divorce anyway). So what, then? That means that those \"successful\" marriages were also largely unhappy. And quiet; no one talked about their nasty marriage because everyone had one. Constantly fighting? Cheating spouse? Horrible abuse? Marital rape? That's all too bad. Get some advice from the local preacher. Learn to listen, love, and forgive your spouse, because \"Till death do I part\" was an oath taken literally. Edit: To answer your question, it's true that contemporary divorces \"fail\" more frequently because divorces are a lot easier to get. In the US, only one spouse has to want a divorce and it will be granted, with no further proof necessary (proof of abuse or infidelity helps if pursuing marital assets or custody of children). Some countries still prefer a two-spouse consent before granting a divorce, and different regions can have a time delay between the initial filling and a judge finalizing a divorce. *The point is* that failed marriages are more *visible* now since getting a divorce is relatively *easy* compared to how things used to work. I personally think it leads to happier, more mature couples with more emotionally stable children, but that's just me.",
"\"Not getting divorced\" does not necessarily mean \"successful\". They had longer marriages, sure, but there's little evidence that those marriages were any more successful. The difference is that it's now much more socially acceptable to end a failed marriage. There are, however, also aspects such as the fact that people used to finish education and start working much younger, so \"settled down\" earlier. People now tend to travel, change jobs, move cities etc much more in their late teens and early 20s. That means much more chance of \"Our lives are going in different directions, you're lovely but this just isn't going to work out\" type breakups."
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6ckktm | Why is the rating PG-13 for movies, but T.V. 14 for shows? Why the year difference? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The group who came up with the TV rating system has *never* provided a reason why they segmented the TV ratings the way they did when the guidelines were created with regards to age. We don't know, and its probably lost at this point."
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6co2mi | Martin Luther's 95 Theses | In layman's terms, what were Martin Luther's 95 Theses? I know it was basically a list of his faults with the Catholic Church, but what were his faults? Why did he feel so strongly about these faults that he felt the need to break off instead of try and fix the problem? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally speaking: * He objected to the idea that people needed to repent through official church procedures and argued that people could successfully repent through a personal connection with Jesus; * He denied the ability of the Pope to absolve people of divine punishment; * He disagreed with the church about Purgatory, specifically our knowledge of it and the Pope's power over it; * Most of his thesis involved disputing the validity and necessity of indulgences (basically you pay the church to absolve you of your sins) provided by the church and argued that they are counter-productive to true repentance and mercy;",
"The 95 Theses were principally Luther's challenge to/criticism of the then-active practice of selling \"indulgences.\" An indulgence is essentially the idea that you can give the Church money and be absolved of the consequences of your sins. But in even _more_ lay terms: it was the idea that you could buy your way into heaven. (The practice of selling indulgences understandably touches on several other practices of the church and concerns of the faith, so the Theses were a little more far-ranging than just indulgences, though.) Among other things, Luther thought that the practice encouraged believers to just buy their way out of trouble instead of pursuing true repentance. He also thought the practice discouraged giving to the poor - why help out some poor sap here on earth when you can buy a nicer place in eternity? He also laid a ton of criticisms against the concept of purgatory, which was fairly entrenched in the indulgence dynamic. We're talking about 95 separate points of argument here, so it's kind of tough to boil them all down. > Why did he feel so strongly about these faults that he felt the need to break off instead of try and fix the problem? He was tried for heresy and excommunicated from the church. The 16th century Catholic church wasn't really known for compromising with its opponents.",
"> Why did he feel so strongly about these faults that he felt the need to break off instead of try and fix the problem? He felt that the structural concept of the Catholic church, that people communicate to God and are absolved of their sins **only through their clergy** was wrong. He felt people should have a personal relationship without God, and the clergy should teach and encourage that. This position cannot be resolved with Catholicism, that's why no Christian sects that are both Catholic and Protestant have been formed in the centuries since.",
"Also known as \"Disputation on the Power of Indulgences\", in the 95 Theses Martin Luther laid out the issues surrounding the Catholic practice of selling \"indulgences\", where a sinner can reduce their temporal punishment for sins by paying money to the church. In the specific theses, he outlined the central ideas and the problematic theological basis of indulgences, the limitations to the power of the pope, the problems with the Church's practicing of indulgences, and the problems with the Church's teaching of indulgences. In no way did he intend to break with the Catholic Church, but rather outline the problem and bring it forward for discussion. In many ways, the 95 theses reflected the popular sentiment at the time against the corruption of the church and were widely distributed. The break really started when the Catholic Church denounced Martin Luther's writings and excommunicated him, and his refusal to recant at the Diet of Worms."
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6co5wn | What makes a great conductor great? and conversely what sets them apart from a random high school band teacher? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's important to keep in mind that a conductor is nearly always the leader of the orchestra, too. So for weeks and months before you see him/her waving a baton around, they were in charge of auditioning band members, selecting the music, organizing rehearsals, making artistic changes or interpretations to the piece as it goes, and directing each section and musician. So there was a hell of a lot of behind-the-scenes work that we don't always think of. As far as actual performance, a good conductor is giving a dozen instructions at once. Speed, volume, and style are all communicated by single movements. Are his beats large, waving motions, full of drama? I'll bet there'll be horns blaring long, sonorous notes. Are they short, tight, precise movements, close to his chest? You're almost definitely going to be hearing soft, short staccato notes. Is he facing the trombones, pushing one hand down while conducting with his other hand? He's asking them to play softer - maybe the acoustics in this room aren't what they're used to, and they're overpowering the rest of the band more than expected. There are a million little adjustments that will go on in any given performance, and a good conductor can make them on the fly in very clear ways. And of course, all of that body language goes to the audience too. When you see that person swinging their arms in big, wide arcs, you'll get excited, even as the music begins to swell. And when you see them sweep their arms in, you'll lean in, straining to hear the soft parts of the music. The conductor is a visual cue to you to tell you what your ears can expect.",
"A random high school band teacher may be a great conductor, and a great (world class) conductor may make a terrible high school band conductor. (Though in my experience, most conductors who rise to the top of their field are prodigiously inspiring communicators and could probably coax beautiful music out of an elementary school recorder ensemble -- but this is not to say that they would excel at the day-to-day grind of teaching young musicians). **IN PERFORMANCE** In very, very, general terms, a high school band conductor has to put more emphasis on the mechanical elements of a performance -- keeping the beat, adjusting balance, cueing entrances and cutoffs, etc. Depending on the level of the ensemble (which varies IMMENSELY at the high school level), the director may have to spend all of his/her energy just ensuring a mostly-accurate rendition of the music, OR with more proficient students he/she may have more room to focus on artistic/expressive interpretation. A conductor of a world-class orchestra rarely has to work to keep the ensemble together (though it depends on the complexity and familiarity of the music), and rarely has to worry about preventing trainwrecks in terms of intonation, accuracy of rhythm/pitch, blend/balance, etc. The conductor *does* make adjustments to these elements, but on a much more subtle level that the average person would barely notice. A professional orchestra could perform most repertoire without a conductor and it would sound fine. But a great conductor can take it to the next level and beyond -- first of all, the conductor can hear the 'bigger picture' of the whole orchestra better than any individual musician, and second, the conductor has a vision (audiation?) of the music as he/she imagines it, and can sculpt the orchestra's performance through body language and (what sometimes feels like) sheer psychic force of will. **IN REHEARSAL / PREPARATION** So far I'm only discussing what the conductor does *in performance.* In reality, the conductor's main job is what happens in rehearsal. A high school band director is, first and foremost, a teacher. Depending on the level of the students, the teacher spends a lot of time crafting lessons to teach technical skills and concepts, as well as fixing wrong notes, developing music reading skills, working on exercises and warm-ups to improve tone and intonation, giving instrument-specific technique instructions for solving problems that the students may be too inexperienced to figure out for themselves, etc. (Not to mention managing behavior, maintaining records, communicating with parents, and all of the clerical/leadership duties involved in classroom teaching and managing a performing organization). A world-class conductor doesn't have to micro-manage the fingers and lips of an orchestra full of technically-superior musicians--the conductor will express what kind of sound he/she wants and the musicians will know how to make that sound. (In some cases the conductor will give specific instructions, for example telling the violins to play with the tips of their bows, or to use a specific hand position or fingering -- but this is a matter of establishing a consistent section sound and matching the conductor's interpretation, not a matter of teaching the musician something they didn't know). To be fair, a high school conductor typically does all of the things that a world-class conductor does, but often has to focus a lot more on the educational/technical/mechanical aspects of rehearsing/performing. The artistic/expressive/interpretive aspects of music are an essential part of this, but they're not particularly effective until the kids are playing accurately and together. Further, the level of artistry a high school conductor can coax from an ensemble tends to be less nuanced due to the relative inexperience of the students and the presence of 'weak links.' (That said, a strong high school ensemble can play quite maturely). A world-class conductor can take most of the educational/technical/mechanical aspects for granted (at least on a macro level) and focus almost entirely on artistic expression and very subtle shading/sculpting of the technical aspects. **GENERAL TRAITS** Ultimately, conducting is a matter of leadership and professionalism. World-class conductors, by and large, are RIDICULOUSLY accomplished musicians with incredible ears and insanely deep and intimate understanding of the repertoire. Every day they have to stand in front of 60-80 of the world's best musicians and earn/maintain their respect and awe. They have to inspire and lead and communicate their interpretations of the music to 60-80 individual musicians who all have their own ideas and interpretations. High school conductors have to do the same but the leadership tends to be more about teaching and classroom management skills, similar to the leadership required of any academic teacher. It typically goes without saying that the band director is a much more accomplished musician than his/her students (though not necessarily a *better* musician -- there is the occasional hotshot student who could compete with the teacher in certain areas of proficiency, but probably not in terms of experience and breadth of musical understanding). But in a high school ensemble, simply being a strong musician is rarely enough to lead and inspire a group of kids, many of whom are only there for fun and don't really care much about developing into professional musicians. A world-class conductor may get good results guest-conducting a high school band due to the awe factor and his/her fresh approaches and inspiring demeanor, but wouldn't necessarily be up to the task of the daily pedagogy and management required to prepare the student musicians.",
"A great conductor does all things mentioned in the thread so far, but what sets one above all others for me is of they can bring musicians out of their own heads and make them CONNECT to the music. Technical skill is only means to an end, and in the end what really matters is if you made the audience feel something. My choir conductor will regularly have these incredibly deep speeches about the music we're performing, and he always gives us so much to think about right before we begin (these speeches are often within the hour before we go on). He understands what is really important to the audience and people in general, and is really willing to be as vulnerable as we need to be. I remember once we were performing Eriks Esenvalds' \"Rivers of Light\", and what he said to us was actually so incredibly vulnerable and heartbreaking that it made it hard for us to focus on the technical aspects of the piece; but we had one of our most incredible performances of that year, and the audience responded extremely well.",
"A good conductor synthesizes and provides an immense amount of information at any given moment. Clear cutoffs, attention to musical expression, balance...the list goes on in other posts. A GREAT conductor not only provides the mechanics that the ensemble needs to function, but provides leadership. A great conductor empowers their ensemble emotionally and musically. They need to be a total technician in regards to their conducting, but it has to serve an artisitic end. Otherwise...it's just noise!",
"Good answers below, but I've found a lot of people (not the people answering below, just in general) don't really know what a conductor does. Hint: He's not just waving a stick in time to the music. Here's the thing about playing in an orchestra: You can't actually hear all the other instruments. If you're in the middle of the brass section, chances are you can't hear the flutes. So you don't know if you're playing in time, playing too softly or loudly or if you need to slow down or speed up. That's what the conductor is for. He's front and center and can hear everyone. So his job is basically to signal each section when to come in, indicate the tempo, when to play louder or softer...and this is really *really* difficult to do well.",
"I went to hear the Cleveland Orchestra for nine straight years, 26 concerts per season. I heard dozens of conductors leading one of the best ensembles in the country. Conductors set the tempo and indicate with hand gestures parts they would like to hear louder or quite. During rehearsals they will start and stop the orchestra to refine how certain parts are presented. He has in his mind a trajectory for the program to follow. I can tell you that some of them have a more compelling interpretation of how a piece should be expressed. It is clear when you hear them perform. Average conductors rarely make recordings, so it may be hard to judge what falls flat. I heard George Solti palpably shape the silence before the orchestra played Beethoven's 3rd and then make every note of the endless final coda relevant. They are like sculptors.",
"a great conductor will keep the train on the tracks and get you to where you want in a timely manor. A random high school band teacher may lack train conducting skills and may not be able to get you to your destination at all",
"A great conductor can make their movements' intentions so painfully obvious that it's almost impossible for someone to get off time or something during a performance. Also, a good conductor can pay attention to the entire band at once and be able to point out if any single player is doing something wrong and correct it efficiently. (Not super experienced with large band/orchestra performance but this is what i understand)",
"Basically the same thing that separates a great pianist from a high school pianist: vastly greater technical skill, deep knowledge of the music, and finely tuned aesthetics. A great conductor brings their own sense of taste to interpreting the music, then uses their technical skill (including many conversations with all the musicians, and adjusting their approach as needed) to make it happen. What you see on the night is often a small part of the job - it's all the working with the orchestra beforehand that matters."
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6coihe | Why do cheap knockoffs slightly change the name of the product (e.g. "Rolex" - > "Rqlex"), when the result it still violating trademarks by using logos and such? If you're going to violate trademarks anyway, why not go all the way? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One possible answer: at least if you call it something else, you aren't committing fraud. Trademark infringement isn't a criminal issue, but fraud may be, if you are actually tricking people and claiming it is the real thing. Another possible answer: the people who create knockoffs aren't necessarily the brightest bulbs in the Christmas tree, and may think that changing a letter actually does absolve them of civil legal liability. A third possible answer: Chinese law, or whereever these knockoffs are from, may have greater protections for a product that is a variation rather than a carbon copy, and may force a plaintiff to prove more to win a lawsuit.",
"Those cheap knock-offs are made in countries where trademark protections are lax or virtually nonexistent. They're not widely sold in developed countries that have robust intellectual property laws.",
"For example, this knock-off: URL_1 They're still using the trademarked Batman logo, so it's not like not saying \"Batman\" on it removes their liability...so why not just say \"Batman\"? Or this one: URL_0 They're already violating trademarks by using deceptively similar logos and wording (and also the trademarked Darth Vader mask), so...why bother changing it at all?"
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6copc1 | How come there is a negative social stigma towards people who want to protect the environment? | Many times, people who say they want to keep the environment clean are accused of being "hippies", "liberals", or "treehuggers". Isn't protecting the environment a good thing though? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Protecting the environment isn't generally free or convenient. Generally in the name of protecting the environment, environmentalists try to tell other what to do, like using horrible LED light bulbs, not driving so much, mandating dishwater detergent or paint that doesn't work as well, effectively seizing private land without compensation by telling a landowner he can't develop it if a rare bug is discovered on it. That's where the backlash comes in, not the abstract concept of \"keeping the environment clean\".",
"This isn't a question got r/explainlikeimfive and will probably be removed by the moderators. However is there a negative social stigma towards people who want to protect the environment? Maybe 20 years ago there was but there is currently an international deal working towards protecting the environment signed by a large portion of the worlds leading powers. I would say it is well in the main stream. Sure there are some people who hold that old mentality but there are some people who think the holocaust is fake. That does not mean it is a popular thought.",
"Of course you'll get all the self serving conspiracy stuff about \"vested interests\" and such. The truth is that a lot of normal people find 'environmentalists' to be annoying as hell. URL_0",
"If there is a negative social stigma, then it's likely due to the fact that some environmental conservation techniques impead the progress of a country's economy and resource collection and also result in lost jobs to those in those sectors"
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6cova4 | Why are 7 and 13 considered lucky and unlucky respectively? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"this is a cultural thing and if you travel to various parts of the world you'll find the same does not hold true for them. for instance, Chinese and Japanese consider 4 to be unlucky and not 13. The reason for that specifically, is because some of the pronunciations of 4 are similar or the same as their word for death. 13 may be considered unlucky for many reasons but a common belief is because of the christian religions \"last supper\" where jesus and his 12 disciples ate... judas, the one that betrayed jesus, was the 13th person to sit at the table. 7 on the other hand may be a rule of 5s type thing... i.e. people looking for certain patterns will eventually see them in just about everything. I also suspect christian religion has something to do with it though... I've heard many times how 6 (specifically 666) is supposed to be the number of the devil and so 7 which is above six, would be the number of god."
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6cozs2 | Why was Teddy Roosevelt considered such a great president? | Been seeing a lot of praise for him, and I feel like I must have not been paying too much attention when I learned about him. Was it antitrust related? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He was an all-around decent guy with an incredibly interesting life that did a lot of good for the country. He was a cattle rancher, deputy sheriff, historian, naturalist, explorer, police commissioner, assistant Secretary of the Navy, governor of New York, a lawyer, author of 35 books, and many considered him a war hero. Speaking to his \"war hero\" persona, he organized the first volunteer cavalry regiment known as the Rough Riders (you've probably heard the name) that took part in a number of famous battles, including the Battle of San Juan Hill, for which he would be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. He is the only president to receive such an award. At the time, he was the youngest person to have become president. Also, he was the only president to have succeeded a president that had died before being re-elected for his second term. He spearheaded the creation of the US Forest Service and established 5 national parks. He was also responsible for the Wildlife Refuge system. He was generally known as a staunch conservationist, had a lot of respect and reverence for nature, and made it his personal mission to preserve as much as he could. He was also considered incredibly \"fair\". He opened over 40 antitrust cases against corporations, he fought for regulations in the food and drug industries, fought against false and misleading advertising, and encouraged unions. On top of all of that, he was just generally considered a very pragmatic, fair, incredibly driven individual that many could look up to for a huge multitude of reasons outside of his political career."
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6cp5nb | How to read poetry | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The same way you read prose. The first step is recognizing letters. You need to know the alphabet. Next, learn what sounds letters make. For example, \"p\" sounds like \"puh\" and \"s\" sounds like \"sss\". Then, put the sounds together. Example: to read the word \"mom\", you would make the sound for \"m\", then \"o\", then \"m\". Then puts the sounds together. Soon, you won't have to sound out words. You will know what words are, what they mean, and how they sound by sight.",
"My biggest pet peeve when listening to people read poetry is that they read stanzas as they're illustrated instead of as a regular sentence. Punctuation still applies.",
"Out loud. Seriously. Go read any John Donne poem you want in your head. It's not going to make a lot of sense, in my experience at least. Once you read it out loud (or listen to it), you get it. Poetry is as close to music as you can get without it actually being music, if that makes sense. You wouldn't just look at sheet music for your favorite song and be like, \"Damn. That's good.\" You'd *listen* to it and get it. Same with poetry. I went through a memorizing and reciting poetry phase. So many poems I didn't get suddenly made *perfect sense* after reading them out loud and figuring out the natural cadence. I respectfully but strongly disagree with /u/kinyutaka about line breaks. Often, the best time to pause is actually in the middle of a line and absolutely not at the line break. With Donne's \"Batter My Heart,\" for example, you'll often need to speed up through the line break to keep the rhythm. Think of Poe's \"The Raven,\" too. Line breaks are there to emphasize the rhyme and, as a result, they actually pull you through the poem, forcing you to read faster and faster like you're bouncing from one rhyme to the next because of the internal rhyme. Or, for example in Frank O'Hara's \"Morning Poem,\" you want to go slowly throughout but pause in the middle of lines. The line breaks come every 5-6 words. You can't pause every line break, that would sound awkward and stilted. The pauses come elsewhere––you figure it out by reading it out loud. Now when it comes to the duration of the pauses and the tone you should use, that's entirely up to you. The beauty of a poem is in the eye of the beholder. I could read Donne's \"The Flea\" with a pushy tone, almost like a used car salesman, or with a more playful tone as a lover might. Each reading will give you a different sense of the poem."
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6cpjh9 | How, why, and when did Vegas marriage chapels become a thing? Do THAT many drunk people and/or elopers really get married by some random pastor in Las Vegas? | This is assuming they are even as prevalent as TV and movies have led me to believe. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nevada was also an early state to allow no-fault divorces. So if you get married in Vegas you have no responsibility to prove any wrong-doing by your spouse. It is also a shared-asset state. This means everything gets split 50-50. So a quick marriage can be easily ended, with shared property benefits!",
"Nevada was one of the first states (perhaps the first) to allow marriages without blood tests. That cut several days off the wait time to get a license. That started the \"quickie wedding chapel\" meme. Then the idea morphed into \"Married by Elvis\", \"drive thru wedding\", and a zillion arguably tasteless marketing schemes.",
"The idea that drunk people get married in Vegas is a Hollywood myth. To be married in Vegas, you have to get a form from the county clerk's office during regular business hours before you can get married. You can't just walk into a chapel and get instantly married. Source: I got married in Vegas."
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6cqc47 | Why does the Happy Birthday song always slow down halfway through when a group sings it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dhwkjf1"
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"text": [
"Well if your singing by yourself you probly want it over as quickly as possible. People who are mortified are going to sing it much faster. (Also see restaurant birthday singers)"
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