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6vv6d1 | Why is meth commonly portrayed as a white drug, and crack is portrayed as a black drug? Is there any truth to those portrayals? | In entertainment media, meth addicts are commonly portrayed as white, shirtless hillbillies and toothless rednecks in movies/cartoons (see: South Park). Crack addicts, on the other hand, are often portrayed as black, shifty, and scurrying around in the dark in bad neighborhoods (see: Chappelle Show). The "Crack Epidemic" of the 1980's and early 90's largely concerned black, inner-city communities, but is dismissed by some social historians as overhyped and mischaracterized. Aside from that, I do not see why either drug is often assigned a particular race. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you're poor, crack is an alternative to freebase if you're interested in smoking cocaine. It can be purchased cheaply in small quantities and gives an instant and noticeable high. As a cocaine derivative, it is only practical in a drug market that is connected to overseas distribution (i.e. urban areas). So urban rich (white) people freebased while urban poor (black) people smoked crack. Meth is produced domestically. As with any manufactured product, it's easier to produce away from urban areas so you can avoid extensive regulation and bureaucracy (in this case, extensively militarized police departments with James Bond levels of espionage equipment). Since anyone with a high school education, a bit of patience and a suitably cavalier attitude about explosions can produce it, it ended up being a favorite of rural (white) biker gangs."
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6vv6tw | What is the purpose of teaching children to believe in Santa Claus? Is it for reasons other than to teach good behavior? | To introduce children to spirituality is one possible example of another reason I would assume. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its just fun watching the wonder and amazement in there little faces, then they talk about it for weeks prior and post. And it is always fun tricking your kids. It is funny you bring up spirituality, because after the Santa game is up the kids start to think about what else is not real, and it is hard keeping God on the real list when Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy drop off.",
"The way I see it... By mitigating the gift giving to a 3rd party, my kids can't 'beg' for certain gifts. If we can't get exactly what they want, we write a 'I'm sorry, but Santa couldn't get you that exact toy this year... or Santa recieved the letter too late... etc\" letter. They also don't try to look for gift we hide in the house, anytime they ask for something we refer to Santa Claus... Plus, we get them to write down what they want for an easy cheat sheet. Writing a 'Thank You' card afterwards helps them remember their manners.",
"The purpose is to scare kids into behaving - same reason for all religion. If you're bad you get coal. The elf on the shelf is watching you masturbate. Your soul is being graded at all times and you are punished for a bad grade and rewarded for a good one. Of course, there are serious flaws with this logic. Poor kids who treat everyone with respect are still not getting an Xbox. If they are taught about Santa they think they did something wrong. Shitty rich kids get rewarded even if they are brats. It associates parents with money with a kid's worth as a human being. I think it is harmful in pretty much every way.",
"\"christmas is the season of giving\" When a child gets a huge pile of presents and only has some arts and crafts for mom and dad it can create a guilty feeling in some children. Santa allows parents to spoil their kids without taking responsibility for the gifts...which alleviates some of the inequality of giving",
"I look at it as the gateway drug to believing in religion. To believe in Jesus, you have to accept that there is an invisible, all-powerful, supernatural being who knows everything you do and will reward you with intangible gifts in heaven, though you have to take it on faith and never see the evidence of it during your lifetime. With Santa Claus, you're asked to believe in a powerful supernatural being who knows everything you do and will reward you with great gifts--and you can see and meet that being and he comes to your house and then he rewards you with tangible gifts you can see and touch every day as proof that such wonders exist. Sure, then you eventually learn it's not real, but it's taught you the pathways to accept this kind of thing as true, so it becomes more natural and familiar and easy to accept that religious stories *are* true. It's like how millions or a billion or more people believe in the creation myth of Adam and Eve. It makes sense because it's something they've been told since before they could speak. But then if those same people hear the creation myth from another culture, it's sounds ridiculous and fanciful, obviously untrue. Because it's new and can be analyzed with adult feats of reason and logic.",
"I think at this point in time it has simply become a fun cultural tradition. Yes it can be a tool to make children behave around christmas time, but most people, children included, don't really care about Santa most of the year except around christmastime. It evolved from various folklore. One in particular was a Germanic story about a troll like creature that would come down the chimney at night and eat misbehaving children. Germanic folklore was filled with many stories of this sort intended to keeo children from doing things like wandering into the forest or eating too much. This is where we get the idea that Santa comes down the chimney and delivers coal to bad children. As for the gift giving. That came from other various folklore like Saint Nick, Sinter Klaus, Father Christmas, and others from various regions of Europe like the Netherlands and England. He was a benevolent man who would give gifts to children, in some cases at christmas and in some cases just whenever he was in town. All of this folklore eventually converged into what we know as Santa Clause and became associated with Christmas. It's really just a combination of various European cultures and folklore, some intended to teach children lessons, some just to bring joy. Then it became commercialized and a staple of the Christmas tradition. We don't necessarily teach children to believe in Santa anymore than we teach them to speak our language. It's just a cultural phenomenon. It doesn't do any harm and it brings joy to children and adults enjoy telling stories about him. It's simply a fun custom."
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6vvo4b | Why Do Warrants Exist? Wouldn't That Give Time For The Person To Get Rid Of Any Illegal Objects? (drugs, weapons, child porn, ect) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Warrants exist so that the authorities can't just barge into your house for no reason. It's to protect the average citizen from abuses of power. Ideally, criminals don't know they're under suspicion until the police are serving the warrant, and therefore don't know they need to get rid of evidence.",
"*IANAL* Warrants do not necessarily require you to be given advanced warning beyond announcing themselves at your door (and waiting for you to let them in). In fact, they rarely do. Most of the time, the officers show up, knock on your door, and present you with the warrant allowing them entry into your home (or wherever it is that they have a warrant to search). Most of the time, the evidence they're looking for isn't something that can be easily disposed of. If you've got a hard drive full of child pornography, you probably don't have time to delete it. Even if you tried, they can almost certainly recover the data easily, or at least enough to convict you. Likewise, if you're a drug *dealer* you likely have more drugs and drug paraphernalia lying around than you have time to get rid of. Trying to get rid of evidence often makes it easier to find. Say you stabbed your husband with a kitchen knife, dumped the body, and cleaned the knife, which is now sitting in your drawer. There still might be traces of blood left, or it might match wounds. Regardless, you hear the police knock and try to suddenly ditch the knife, but where are you going to chuck it? So you throw it in the trash, hoping they won't see it and they do, and wonder why a perfectly good knife is sitting in the trash. So a warrant doesn't always give you time to get rid of evidence. The police can also get what are called \"No-Knock\" warrants. They get those when they believe (and a judge agrees) that the general courtesies of knocking and being invited in (even though you can't legally say no) are too dangerous and *do* give someone enough time to get rid of vital evidence. They also use them when there are people in danger, such that someone who has been kidnapped might be killed while the police are politely asking to be let in. Those kinds of situations are the ones you typically see in TV shows and movies, when they show up in riot gear, scream \"OPEN UP! POLICE!\" and immediately kick in the door. Those are fairly rare, though, for a number of reasons, not least of which is that they're dangerous for the police and anyone inside. Someone might only hear screaming and their door being kicked in, and they might reasonably grab a weapon to defend themselves from what they perceive as a home invasion. That's *never* a good situation, and while you might think \"Whatever, they're criminals,\" remember that warrants are generally to find evidence to *prove* that someone is a criminal - meaning, they aren't a criminal, just a suspect, and not all suspects are guilty. And not all criminals deserve to get shot (think none do, personally, but that's neither here nor there). Police are also not required to have a warrant if there is \"clear and present danger\". For instance, if a police officer happens to be walking past a home and hears screaming and gunshots, the officer can enter the home without a warrant because it's pretty reasonable to assume that someone is in immediate danger and obviously can't wait for a warrant. They are also not required to have a warrant for anything they can reasonably see from public space. For example, if you have a large marijuana plant growing in a pot in your kitchen window, and the police can see it from the sidewalk, they don't need a warrant to use that as evidence. They *do* need a warrant to actually enter your home and seize the plant, but the officer can testify in court \"From the street, I saw marijuana growing in their window\" and you can't argue \"You need a warrant to look in my window!\" As well, as soon as your trash is put on the street, it is no longer protected. Anyone can claim your trash if they want it, including the police. That is why you may see in TV shows and movies the police giving a canned drink to someone during an interview if they do not have a warrant to collect a fingerprint from them. You pick up the can, finish your drink, and chuck the empty can in a trash. They can take that and take your prints from it. Warrants exist because we want to set firm boundaries for what the police can do. We want safety and security, but we also don't want the police walking into our homes without reason. Even if we're not doing anything illegal, we might be doing something embarrassing that the police have no business knowing about. Warrants give the police very clear instructions on what they are looking for and where they can look: if they have a warrant to seize your computer, they can't also go looking through your medicine cabinet. They require oversight, so a judge has to say, \"Yes, this is a good reason for you to violate someone's privacy,\" preventing the police from waltzing into your home because they think that maybe you might be a criminal probably they guess. It keeps us and the police safe by providing an etiquette, so that they can make you aware that they are entering your home, and that they're doing it for a good reason.",
"Because the US constitution guarantees that the government will not engage in unreasonable searches and seizures. This led to the legal notion that investigators would need to preemptively get the permission of a judge to make sure that the search was reasonable--as a check on the power of investigators. In legal theory (not so much in practice), it is more important that innocent people are not harassed by the police than it is for the police to catch criminal activity.",
"Let's say that you and I are wealthy gentlemen, and we are enemies. We both know that you're hosting an important dinner party for a critical client on Tuesday, so I phone the police anonymously and tell them that you're stockpiling heroin. They have no other reason to suspect you, so they break in and arrest you in front of your guest. No contract for you. Requiring warrants for searches was a hard-won right. Richard Nixon used to arrest political rivals that he suspected of smoking pot, using drug laws to easily eliminate leftist authors and public figures, even if police would have otherwise ignored them. The warrant prevents influence on the police being used to selectively target political rivals for search, whether they are guilty or not. It forces the police to adopt a system that prevents outside influence, reviewed by a court to ensure nothing shady is happening. I realize that it's inconvenient for politically inconsequential criminals, but the other alternative is for people in power to be able to threaten [name a political figure you like]'s granddaughter to be arrested for copyright infringement unless [cause you support] is abandoned in congress."
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6vwbr2 | U.S. reporters rarely aggressively ask follow-up questions about statements by public officials that are obvious lies or don't make sense. When a politician says something clearly false or diversionary, the reporter usually just carries on as if nothing happened. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Journalists and organizations that make a habit of asking hardball questions tend to get blacklisted from asking further questions. There are smaller media outlets that are more critical but you need to seek them out and they tend to rely less on interviews with politicians directly. If you want a more in depth analysis of the issue, \"Manufacturing Consent\" by Herman and Chomsky is pretty good place to start. If you don't feel like reading the book, [the documentary is free on YouTube]( URL_0 )",
"So I worked in politics, and the short answer is: it's corrupted by deceit and incentives from media-consumers. And in short the phenomenon is this: there is immense social pressure in politics to not say something unacceptable (gaffes, politically incorrect, etc.). It comes with extreme punishment. At the same time great social reward to say something that gets clicks (outrageous, awe-inspiring, conflictual). So what you get out of those incentives is outrageous lies. So in politics most people when they speak don't say what they actually think, they say what they think is likely to be close to what the result will be after negotiations, slightly to their side. This is not just true in the media, but also in closed political meetings, unless it is only their very closest friends present. This culture of deceit makes everyone living in a constant tiring flow of lies. This has some benefits by the way, a great thing about being criticized for something you don't believe, is that you don't have to take it personally or even seriously. It wasn't your thoughts anyway. When journalist usually follow-up on something they know to be untrue, they only expect another lie. So what they are watching for is actually not lies, but off-message somehow. They are looking for things that transgress the social reward mechanism of political speech. This is something which has begun to change. The corruption of untruth seems to have made people incredibly thirsty for ANY politician who say what they actually mean and actually listen to criticism. I actually think this is the common thread of appeal among their supporters between wildly different politicians like Corbyn, Trump and Macron. (I know, I know, they aren't telling the truth, etc. But the point is that it often seem like they are actually saying what they think - however wrong that may be. As compared to normal politicians which usually will never say what they actually think on a subject). And if I were to advice someone doing a political campaign, I would do the same: say what you think as well as you can. Same with journalists by the way. It's a corrupted culture. Any journalist could at any time stop lying, and start questioning the things they really didn't understand, or thought were false. And if you're a journalist, I would recommend doing it! You'll find yourself in a very attractive niche very quickly.",
"The documentary \"Journey with George\" touches on this topic pretty nicely if you want to give it a watch. A journalist (I forgot her name) follows George W Bush around during his election campaign, and becomes fairly good friends with him. At one point during the film she asks a question during Bush's press conference about a recent scandal of his. Bush proceeds to completely shuts her down, refuses to answer any future questions she asks, and basically stops interacting with her at all for the next several weeks. Other journalists with her, who she had become acquainted/friends with, also began avoiding her. They feared that any association with her might put them in George's bad graces as well. It put her job in jeopardy. Asking the wrong question not only isolates you from the politician, but other journalists. It becomes much harder to get a story after that, so generally they stick to the easy questions.",
"Journalist here. I've only worked at the local government level so things may be different at higher levels. When you interview someone for the most part there is a \"sensitive\" topic you want to touch on. (There are exceptions as always) The difference between a good journalist vs. a mediocre one lies within eliciting answers to those questions. You need to build up to questions about the sensitive issue and slowly gain the subjects trust. That's how they open up. People want to see that your there to objectively report the facts/their side of the story too, which I believe to be fair. Everyone deserves to have a voice. If I just brazenly and immediately ask a question that could be seen as offensive, my subject will most likely shut down and the interview is ruined. Not just for me either, I may have done damage to my entire organization or other media outlets entirely in that persons mind. For example, I had one interview with a chief of police in regards to an officer under his command caught molesting a child. The reporter originally assigned to that story told me he was a stone wall and would dance around any questions specific to the officer. I talked to him on the phone and began my interview with just a few general questions. I asked him things like \"how are you doing?\", \"Are you ok?\", etc, but just basic human questions. The man broke down, spilling his guts to me. In all the previous interviews media did with him everyone just asked him ballbuster straight to the facts questions and it was obvious he was close to the officer and it was weighing heavily on his heart. I got the answers that I needed and felt that I helped the man get some things off his chest that he seemingly had no other outlet for. One thing people tend to forget, especially in media, is other people's humanity. At the end of the day we're only human.",
"This is one of the best interviews of a politician by a journalist. URL_0 The back story is that the next guest wasn't ready so Jeremy Paxman was trying to prolong the interview. Back Back story is that there was an inquiry into a series of prison escapes was published. In advance of the publication Howard made statements to assign blame to the prison service. Television interviewer Jeremy Paxman asked him the same question 14 times in all during an edition of the Newsnight programme. Asking whether Howard had intervened when Derek Lewis sacked a prison governor, Paxman asked: \"Did you threaten to overrule him?\"",
"They are concerned about their access to people/information, viewer reactions, and consequently their bottom line and jobs. Welcome to discovering why a competent press with integrity is so important, why they are so often targeted, and why society is so sick.",
"I also have wondered about this. The hardest grilling of Scaramucci came from a BBC reporter and she was just doing a light profile piece. The harshest question Trump faced out of the gate was from a German reporter. I assume other countries where we get hardballer questions don't worry about 'blacklisted' reporters because anyone doing that would get shit on by reporters from all sides (the power of non-partisan collective bargaining, and journalistic integrity). It does seem against America's concept of 'free press' that they live in fear of being blacklisted.",
"Good journalism is respected and watched in those countries. Sensational journalism is watched in America. If an American journalist challenges an interviewee, that journalist will get no more interviews. If other journalists challenge an interviewee, they will get respect and more interviews.",
"Journalism is largely dead. The \"journalists\" you are used to seeing are basically mediums for delivering press releases, entertainment, or propaganda. We have a largely for-profit news media. Most audiences want their views reinforced, and politicians are able to to say \"fuck you, I don't like you, I will give interviews to some ball licking, tongue inserter since you seem to have too much pride to play your role.\" If you want to see what journalism looks like, look at ProPublica. Note that they tend to do the research and not focus on what bullshit officials are spouting. They get the story, not the soundbyte. Generally, if the story is \"public official said,\" it is not a piece of journalism, but either a hit piece, or a propoganda piece. Who gives a fuck what they say. Look at what they do.",
"ask a hard question....and then they won't pick you to ask a question the next time there's a press conference....or ever again forever.",
"I think the journalist/reporter conducting an interview is in a tough position.... Getting an interview with someone in the spotlight is a delicate balance of fostering relationships and having a good reputation...they cannot then go and throw it all away by grilling an important politician or making them look bad, because then they will not get more interviews. So instead of blatantly saying what they think, they may often make note of the inconsistency, let it slide in the moment...and approach the subject again later in the interview with a question that might trip up their guest. Thus the person being interviewed may make themselves look bad or may say the wrong thing, but cannot really blame the interviewer as it was done in a politically correct manner... Getting the real information that you want is all about a pressure question, a release question...and then later apply the pressure again.",
"Can someone please address the part of the question that asks *why* this isn't the case in other countries? There's so much pure opinion and \"well this is why it makes sense in the US,\" But no one even acknowledges the obvious follow up \"why doesn't it make sense in other countries?\"",
"A lot of responses to OP deal with asking 'hard' questions. That is a different subject. What is being said is that when a journalist hears an obviously untrue answer to a question, he/she seldom challenges the politician with the lie. In the UK (can't say about the US) one of the standard techniques used by politicians is to ignore the question, and simply make a statement advancing the official version. \"Why are there no construction specifications preventing the use of highly flammable building materials in tower blocks?\" \"I think it's important to remember that the materials used in the construction of this block all complied with relevant regulations and/or were passed by the fire brigade and/or building control.\" WTF? That's a totally unresponsive answer. What should happen is that the interviewer should say: 'That's not what I asked. Could you address my question please?' But he/she knows that the politician will simply rephrase the official line. (Can't remember which one, but one of the Republican candidates made himself a laughing stock during a candidates' debate when he repeated the same formulation 3 or 4 times, thus revealing himself incapable of paraphrasing the policy point 'on the hoof'.) Since the journalist can probably read the politician well enough to know that he/she will stonewall, and since there's probably on 3 minutes 30 seconds allocated for the interview, and since the journalist probably has other questions, perhaps on unrelated matters, to ask - what does he/she do? Use up the whole allotted time in proving that the politician isn't answering the question, or ask one more time and then move on? I think I would do something like this: ask the question again, move on to the other questions, and then 10 seconds before the time slot closes, say: \"Well I asked 7 questions during that interview and viewers/listeners will have noticed that you didn't answer 3 of them. Thank you - and now: this.\"",
"Went to school for journalism, so I might be of some help here. There's a lot of things that will cause this- but I'll go into the part of the journalist's mindset. When interviewing someone you have a list of points you want to get to and answers you need to get. So while you're interviewing you may ask for clarification, you might start learning something and ask a follow up question in regards to that. What you have to do though is balance the discussion- you can start to tell if someone is going to give you an answer or not. If that person isn't forthcoming, is just going to repeat their answer- you move on because there's nothing there. If you're watching a video online of a 1-on-1 then you're likely not going to see the unedited interview. Once that interview is done then they take that back and they edit out the stuff that shows the person isn't going to answer. Some 1-on-1 interviews are granted with the sole idea if not asking certain things too. American news wants to focus on getting the most for their money. And money is another factor. Unfortunately, asking hard hitting questions stops an interview and thus you just wasted time and money on a piece that won't air. Investigative journalism isn't free, and the money produced vs. money spent is usually not good enough to do a hard hitting piece. Since you don't want to lose your job, you move on. There's also a HUGE thing that they teach you: stay unbiased. Some journalists are so afraid of being biased that they don't even try to ask tough questions.",
"I think that everyone's missing the forest for the trees here. The underlying problem is that neither politicians or journalists are subject matter experts. Suppose a politician makes the statement: > According to a new study done by the University of Whatever, our policy X has resulted in a 10% decline in unemployment. Is this right? Does the study actually make those conclusions? Is the study competently done? Is its methodology sound? What are the margins of error attached to it? Etc. Well, the journalist, not being an economist, doesn't know. To find out he has to ask an expert. So he calls up some people he *presumes* are experts (after all, not being an expert himself, it's hard to assess which experts are any good), and asks them for their opinion (which, not being an expert, he may not understand). So what's he supposed to do during the next press conference? > Mr. Politician, are you aware that Dr. Expert from the University of Experts says that the methodology of that study failed to properly account for the [look-elsewhere effect]( URL_0 )? The politician is not an expert either; he relies on other experts (who, again, may or may not be any good, because the politician, not being an expert, has trouble vetting experts). How is he supposed to respond to this? Is he likely to know what the look-elsewhere effect is, and how, and if, it effects the results of the study? If, by some magic, he does address the question, how am I, the viewer, also a non-expert, supposed to assess the answer? How is the reporter supposed to intelligently follow up? It generally isn't possible to have this kind of discourse between journalists and politicians. And most topics, even ones that seem \"simple\" or \"obvious\" are actually not. Competently discussing them requires a *real* subject matter expert to be involved.",
"> If you look at journalism in some other countries (Canada, Australia, UK, Norway, etc.) journalists are not afraid at all to call out falsehoods and demand straight answers. Can you cite some examples of this? I'm just surprised that you follow politics in such disparate places. And while I'm sure that such examples *can* be dug up, how are we to know that such examples would be typical? Is it really all that hard to dig up examples in the U.S? [This exchange happened just yesterday]( URL_0 ). One issue is that, no matter how hard a reporter might push, there isn't some magic phrase or series of words that will suddenly compel the subject to answer honestly.",
"Same thing happens in board rooms and exec committees across US. If anyone asks tough questions or raises hard ball concerns, or double clicks on a deep issue, they aren't included in subsequent committees. Only those who play along are given the opportunity to continue",
"Journalists and politicians work for the same people.",
"I hope this is video is shown in every journalism course on earth. TL;Dr British journalist repeating question umpteen times until it is satisfactorly proven that the politician will not answer the question. URL_0",
"I'm glad we have the BBC here in the UK, they aren't beholden to anyone besides the licence payers and often when a politician doesn't answer a question appropriately they will continue to badger the interviewee and refuse to move on until they get their answer, it takes a determined and intelligent individual to get through an interview with this kind of approach without giving away what they really think.",
"Have you actually watched Canadian and Australian news anchors? They're an embarrassment and so biased it's nauseating.",
"Might want to take Canada off of that list. Our reporters and media are censored just as much as the USA.",
"It's not only US reporters, it's the same in some (mostly European) countries, I know. If there's a journalist that sticks to his/her plan on getting a real answer on a tough question, this is a headline sometimes, too.",
"I don't agree with your premise at all. I've watched several attempts by journalist to get a straight answer when calling out a politician. They usually ends up an intense argumentative back and forth with the politician or their spokesperson just repeating some kind of phrase that maybe eludes to what they want to say without actually answering the question and confirming the negative perspective or reality of the situation. I don't think that it's a lack of courage I think just maybe just more of an acknowledgement that the conversation is going nowhere so why keep prolonging the argument when clearly the person who is avoiding answering the direct question looks like they're hiding the answer.",
"Most of the media exists to serve existing political interests and won't call out obvious bullshit. Also, troublesome reporters tend to get exiled from press pools.",
"In press conferences, journalists only want quotes that will make headlines. Even if they have to pose a leading question, so that a mere 'yes' then gets the journalist's own words as the quote. In 'media training', we were taught to answer 'No' to most questions, and then explain the real issue. But the 'explanations' tended not to to be nearly as interesting as the denied quote would have been - so, no follow-up, and 'next question please'. TLDR: 'It's a trap'.",
"Actually I'd say that the US journalists. are doing a much better job than Greek journalists at that matter. I can't tell about Canada, Australia, the UK, Norway, or anywhere else in the world though. At Greece the problem lays with the fact that the government and the media (or rather the owners of the media) have financial ties with each other"
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6vyigy | Why is it that kids have such a fascination with vehicles and transportation? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I got into mechanical engineering because once upon a time my parents got me a few of those \"planes and trains and things that go\" books, and I loved reading the Eyewitness Books and Incredible Cross Sections in the school library. There's something fascinating, perhaps majestic that seems quite magical to a child's mind about the complex inner workings of machines that often go beyond a child's comprehension. As an adult I can see that every machine like steam locomotives, early airplanes, ships, cars, motorcycles and mobile cranes are all made keeping with as few parts as possible, but still needing a great deal of sophistication to accomplish something like \"lifting things up\" when \"things\" can weigh 150 tons. When we think of \"car\" as a mode of transportation, it could be said that a car is like a more convenient and faster horse. But \"car\" today almost always now automatically implies things like radios, automatic transmissions, adjustable seats, hydraulic steering assistance, electronic engine management and many other components which hide in plain sight of \"convenience\". When looked at from a surface level or in a cross section, all these extra bits make something like adventure trying to understand what they all do. And of course thanks to the modern developments of industrial design and marketing, its often all covered in an appealing shell, adding mystery for when you try to crack it open and take a peek at what's hidden inside. tl;dr because they're fricken cool"
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6vz4hs | profanity censorship, or, why it's more okay to say "I'll behead your child and eat its corpse" than "fuck" in the eyes of the FCC and similar institutions. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because they have to write down their standards in a format that is clear for producers to understand. That means banning use if a certain word is easy. Banning concepts or ideas that are offensive is much harder.",
"The FCC only covers broadcast networks. ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, etc. They censor \"indecency\" which is nebulous, and depends solely on opinions within the FCC. If you're on cable, indecency is allowed (obscenity can still be censored). The only reason you would see any censorship on AMC, Comedy Central, FX, is because each of those channels has a Standards and Practices department that willfully censors their own content in the name of preserving their advertisers. In this case, the content does matter, and not simply a word (or that some words are more acceptable than others, yet neither would be allowed on broadcast TV). Comedy Central censored Muhammad on South Park in one season (but allowed it in a previous season)."
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6vz8zo | why is it when there's major storm, people often stock on bread, milk, and egg? | Are they planning to make french toast during bad storms? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You are capable of keeping relatively large stocks of canned and dried goods, and can keep bottled water. But perishables like bread, milk, eggs, etc only last a week or two so you do not keep stocks of them. So when there is a time where you know you may not be able to leave your house for several days (such as a major storm) you stock up on those things that you would need to go get during that time and supplement with your permanent long term stores of canned foods.",
"You want to be stocked up on your staples if you are unable to get to the store for a few days. Families tend to go through a like of these items, and they go bad somewhat quickly, so you usually don't have more than a few days worth on hand at any given time.",
"You can survive for several days by eating those items only if necessary. That way even if the roads are closed off or stores shut down you won't die of starvation."
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6w2376 | Standardized testing & scoring in the UK. | Im from the US where one takes the SATs or ACTs and they give you numerical score out of a total possible amount. However, I hear that the UK has tests for different subjects and you recieve marks like; A and A star. Just curious what the system is and if it has any percieved or actual advantages over something like the SATs. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The UK has SATs also, at 7 and 11. A*-F is just a quick way of summarising the overall grade for GCSEs/A-levels. Generally people only want an estimate of the grade rather than exact marks for each assignment. Since these boundaries are shifted based on exam difficulty, different years can be compared equally."
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6w2p3k | Why are multi level marketing jobs often treated as a scam? | I always see people on reddit talking about MLM businesses and how they're something to avoid. Why is that? What is so dangerous about them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because they're a scam. They're not \"jobs\", they sell you on the idea of \"running your own business\" by selling whatever worthless crap it is that they're pushing. They often make you buy into the system or purchase a bunch of product up-front. When it comes time to sell this overpriced, worthless, crap, it turns out that nobody actually wants it. Even if you can sucker a few friends/relatives into buying it, it turns out that the people on the tiers above you are making most of the profits and the only way to actually make money on the shit is to *recruit more people* and let *them* do all the work & waste their money trying to sell worthless crap nobody wants.",
"I could go into a long and winded explanation, but the scared British man does it better. URL_0",
"It essentially removes the proper chain of rommunication between company and byuer which creates lots of potential for abuse. For example my parents recently got a new internet connection from a big internet provider in Germany (Telekom). The marketing dude explicitly assured them that a few mobile connections would be included in the contract free of charge like it was under the old provider. This was an outright fabrication. Telekom doesn't even offer combined landline/ mobile contracts. However asked to speak the person who sold the contract they were told that he wasn't telekom but a subcontractor whose information they could not offer due to \"privacy concerns\" and now they are essentially stuck with the contract that was sold through MLM under false pretenses."
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6w4a4t | Why are "official" places so against PO Boxes? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"These places want more than just to be able to send you mail; they need to know where you live. For example, your DMV address will be used by the police if your vehicle does illegal things. Your job needs to know so they can deduct the correct tax and the bank probably has a similar story. In many places it would be easy to have a PO Box is a different state from your residence."
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6w5mxj | How do conspiracy theorists and false prophets cope with their failed prophecies? | There are numerous categories of conspiracy theorists and prophets who predict usually cosmic and undeniably hard-to-miss events. Often they put quite specific dates that these events are supposed to happen. Excluding those who border with clinical diagnoses, most appear to be quite common people so I guess that they somehow find excuses on why they failed with their predictions/visions. What are the most common strategies they use to do that? Also, how can it be explained that their followers usually stick with them even after they repeatedly fail to predict the future? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mostly they ignore them. Harold Camping is a good example. He predicted the exact date of the second coming about 6 times and never explained or apologized for being wrong. His followers seem to be too stupid to notice. As for conspiracy theorist they often claim that because they exposed the true nature *those others* changed the game so that proves believing in the conspiracy was the right thing to do.",
"They are indifferent to the truth, or they wouldn't be conspiracy theorists in the first place. Any fact could be a government fabrication, like the continued coverup of the fact that the Moon landings were faked. Followers are not being logical, or share the delusion with their leaders. People believe lots of things that are not true, that's why we have science in addition to gut feelings.",
"It's not true for all cases but one way is to use the rain maker scam. A guy says if you pay him he can make it rain. You pay him A: it rains, it rained because you paid him, you want it to rain again, pay some more. B: it doesn't rain, you didn't pay enough, if you want it to rain, pay some more. If you have a cult leader type figure for instance they say if you pray and live right you'll be blessed. If good stuff happens to you, better keep praying, if bad stuff happens you'd better pray harder. The other thing would be if you're following a profit, you're ready ignoring logic and sense, you're swept up in believe and once you are it's very easy to simply ignore flaws by using logical fallacies. Using arguments that sound and seem correct but if fact don't make any logical sense. You can see examples of that in politics, look at climate change deniers. They say there isn't a scientific consensus because so it doesn't make sense to do anything before we know for sure. Seems to make sense but actually as 99% of scientists support climate change there is a consensus it's just not universally unanimous. A climate change denier will disregard that response and either say 99 isn't 100 or change to anther argument or some other evasive tactic. There is a quote \"you can't learn what you think you know\" as in if you're fully convinced of something, are sure that you know something about the world that no other person knows or accepts it takes a lot more than some facts or logic to change a fundamental belief."
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6w6nac | Why are chefs hats so big? | Pretty straightforward question. Why are they so big and bonus question: why the weird shape? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The simple answer is that it's a chimney. It's so tall so that hot air rises from your head and cooler air is drawn in. The reason for the shape is so that bottom bit stocks to your head, and the puffy bit on top stays on top. There's also several different sizes, and usually the higher your rank in the kitchen, the taller your hat... So it's easy to tell who's in charge",
"\"The toque is a chef's hat that dates back to the 16th century.[1] Different heights may indicate rank within a kitchen. The 100 folds of the toque are said to represent the many different ways a chef knows to cook an egg. In more traditional restaurants, especially traditional French restaurants, the white chef’s coat is standard and considered part of a traditional uniform and as a practical chef's garment. Most serious chefs wear white coats to signify the importance and high regard of their profession. Senior kitchen staff are also identified by their black trousers. These embellishments of uniform also serve as an indicator between the bounds of salaried, and casual or part-time staff.\" Source, wikipedia"
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6w78ak | Why some languages are better for logical or philosophical debate, and some others are better for romantic or emotional expression? | I'm HK-Chinese, but I think in and speak English 99% of the time, all my Chinese friends and I who have a certain level of fluency prefer to communicate in English because we find it more adequate for expressing rational thoughts and ideas. I've also heard the same from Arab and Spanish English speakers. But when it comes to emotional whinging or rage cursing, or even just writing a sentimental poem, I find myself switch back to Chinese. Does this have to do with the culture that shaped the language? Or does this have more to do with personal linguistic development? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I have studied bilingual language development so I think I can help with this one. When we learn a second (or third, or fourth) language, we tend to learn those for analytical situations, usually school. Therefore when you are thinking more analytically, your brain has an easier time switching over. Growing up speaking Chinese, you probably learned most of your emotional language in Chinese first, so your brain is more comfortable with using Chinese. I studied one of my colleagues children who grew up tri-lingual, her mom was deaf so she learned sign language, both parents spoke Spanish as their first language, but both were fluent in English and English is the predominant language where I live. The girl, who is now 5, uses English for all learning vocabulary (math, science etc) and is extremely comfortable with it, more emotional thought or family related things are in Spanish, and any bad words or \"love\" type words are in sign.",
"I'd argue they aren't. I've encountered people convinced that Romance languages, Greek, German, and English were the only valid languages of philosophy and science, and that all the rest is objectively dumb babble. But this is nonsense. Greek and Latin are held up as the best, most scientific languages evarrr. But if we break down seemingly fancy Latin and Greek words, we find that they're no more objectively scientific than Germanic equivalents. Take \"calculator.\" A very scientific, precise-sounding word indeed, and what sounds more objective than \"calculations?\" The German word for \"calculator\" translates to \"pocket reckoner,\" (Taschenrechner) and \"calculations\" are \"reckonings\" (Berechnungen)! Ha, those primitive Germans! They sound like they just crawled out of the nineteenth century and were introduced to our superior Latinate technology for the first time. \"Calculator\" is much fancier--it means, well, er...\"pebbler,\" and calculations are \"pebblings.\" Because you count with pebbles and stuff. Well, alright, maybe that's not that scientific, but what of animals and Greek? The Greeks were very sophisticated, and knew better than to call the great African beast a \"river horse,\" since it is so obviously not a horse; it is properly called a *hippopotamus.* Which, clearly, means, umm...\"horse of the river.\" Dammit. Point is, Latin, Greek, and other languages of prestige are held to be the best languages for topics of importance and thought, but that's really just snobbery. There's no reason you couldn't have perfectly good philosophical debates in, say, Basque, or Vietnamese, or Navajo. If anything, borrowed Latin, Greek, and other words are often *less* effective at clearly conveying an idea because their meaning is not always as readily apparent. George Orwell wrote a great essay called \"Politics and the English Language.\" It's full of good points, but here is one in particular that stands out: *\"Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:*\" 'I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.' *Here it is in modern English:* 'Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.' *\"This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations — race, battle, bread — dissolve into the vague phrases ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing — no one capable of using phrases like ‘objective considerations of contemporary phenomena’ — would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase (‘time and chance’) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.\"*",
"This hasn't got to do with the language itself, but your own knowledge of the language and how you've been exposed to it. You presumably got your education in English or have mainly read in it, so your logical vocabulary and thoughts are molded by that. Your home I'm guessing was a Chinese speaking one, so you're used to being emotional in it.",
"As others have already pointed out, your perception of English being more logical stems more from your later acquisition of it than anything intrinsic to the language itself. There is a [a fair amount of scientific research]( URL_0 ) backing this claim up.",
"I'm Portuguese and I speak exclusively in Portuguese, but definitely think it's a lot easier to write technical documents in English. One of the features of the English language that contributes to this is that you can use pretty much any word as a verb (e.g. Google, Netflix) since there is no verb conjugation. In Portuguese, if you wanted to use random words as a verb you would have to say something like Googleate, Netflixate, etc. which doesn't really work. Then you would have to conjugate the verb according to the subject which brings even more difficulty."
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6w7hfh | Why do americans write 0.9 and europeans 0,9? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"During the 18th century there was a bit of a fight over which decimal separator that should be used, some arguing for the decimal point and others for the decimal comma. During this time period English mathematicians used the symbol \"X\" for multiplication, but in other European countries it was more popular to use a dot \"·\" as a symbol for multiplication. Since the multiplication symbol \"·\" could easily be confused with the decimal point \".\" most European countries adopted the decimal comma \",\", simply to avoid confusion between the decimal point and multiplication symbol. England kept using the decimal point however. Most English speaking countries today use the decimal point, while most European countries use the decimal comma.",
"Followup: When non-English speakers are writing a large number in words, do y'all still use commas between thousands, millions, billions, etc.?",
"So looks like the short answer is: 18th Century, English used x for multiplication, kept the decimal point. Europe used a dot for multiplication, adjusted and created the decimal comma. That was ages ago now. In today's tolerant era, we can use the multiplication dot and the decimal point with zero confusion. Europe, I understand the reason for your transgression, but we have moved on beyond the initial problem. It is solved. I forgive you, and will welcome you back to the world of the decimal point. You can say 9,000 ⋅ 1.5 without fear, or even 9,000*1.5 if you'd rather. It's safe now.",
"If you're using a comma as a decimal point, how do you tell the difference between 4,293,178 and 4,293.178?",
"You mean 'why does *English* use a decimal point, and pretty much everywhere else use a decimal comma?' It isn't an 'American thing'; it came with the language, and existed before the creation of the US. I think the basic answer is that other European languages used the point to mean a multiplication, and a comma for a decimal separator. Now everyone uses 'x' for 'times by', but the decimal separators have stuck.",
"So from what I understand from [Wikipedia]( URL_0 ) it's all to do with the invention of the printing press. Some countries like like France already used a full stop to make reading Roman numerals easier to read, so they went with a comma for the decimal mark, some other countries went with this too. English speaking countries liked the comma for separating the numbers into groups of three, so they chose the dot for the decimal point. So basically printing was invented and people had to pick a side, some chose commas, chose dots. *(Others chose other symbols, but that's too confusing)*"
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6w8qe0 | How do tabloids get away with printing lies about celebrities? | The stories are obviously fake or I'd be on the news. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In order for a tabloid to be deterred or forced to retract a story, a celebrity has to file a lawsuit. Those can get really expensive really quickly. Also apparently in the US the burden of proof is very high for the celebrity: if they can't show significant damage was done, they will lose. Usually a celebrity is faced with the choice of sucking it up and ignoring the tabloid, or shelling out thousands of dollars to file a suit with uncertain outcome. tl;dr: it's often more trouble than it's worth to try to get tabloids to retract a story, and they know it.",
"Short answer: it's just not worth it for the celebrities to try and get them to stop. Libel laws are written such that the burden of proof is really on the one being libeled; you have to prove that it was intentional, that it caused actual damages, etc. Being difficult to prove, the cost and time of lawsuits, not to mention giving the fake news even more attention, just makes it not worth it. As in regular life for us normal folks, it's often (not always) better just to ignore gossip than give it the time of day."
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6wb4yw | Why do most of the crazy stories you hear happen in Florida? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"According to JKNEWS, they have some sort of transparency law(s?) that would have the police release information of crimes more readily than the rest of the US.",
"The arrest records in Florida are public, which means it is much easier to gain access to them. If a journalist can't find any real news, it is always easy to find a story about a guy who got high on coke and challenged an alligator to a drinking contest."
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6wby55 | Just like a lot of western languages are based around Latin, are eastern languages based on a single language? Specifically are there words in Mandarin that you could understand if you spoke Japanese? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Romance languages -- French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and so on -- all evolved from Latin (with other languages contributing -- French, for example, has a fair bit from Celtic and Frankish languages, while Spanish was influenced by Arabic and Basque). They are all part of a much larger group of languages called the Indo-European languages, which includes nearly all the languages now spoken in Europe and several in northern India: these languages are all thought to have descended from an original \"Proto-Indo-European\" language. Mandarin belongs to a completely different group. It's one of the Chinese languages, which in turn is a Sinitic language, which in turn is classified as Sino-Tibetan. It's thought to have evolved from a Proto-Sino-Tibetan language (although the evidence is quite shaky here). This Sino-Tibetan group includes languages like Cantonese, Burmese and Tibetan. All these languages are clearly related to Mandarin: Cantonese relatively closely (about the same level of difference as between, say, English and German), Burmese and Tibetan relatively distantly (like German and French). Japanese belongs to a completely different family. It's considered a Japonic language, which is divided into the Japanese languages (spoken in most of Japan) and the Ryukyuan languages (spoken in the Ryukyu Islands stretching from Kyushu to Taiwan). And... that's all we know. In fact, there's no consensus about how exactly to classify the Japonic languages, or how they're related to other languages in the area. It's generally treated as being unrelated to any other language, but the argument rages on. There are some very small similarities between Japanese and various other language groups, but they're such tenuous similarities they're probably just coincidental. Theories have been suggested linking Japanese with Korean, the near-extinct Ainu languages, and even Mongolian and Turkish. And yes, there is a theory suggesting that Japanese evolved from Proto-Sino-Tibetan. This is simply because Japanese grammar looks a bit similar to what linguists think the Proto-Sino-Tibetan grammar was like. To answer your question: Mandarin and Japanese are, as far as we know, totally unrelated. EDIT: Spelling",
"Actually, only the Romance languages are based around Latin, a relatively small percentage of Western languages. That being said... Japanese and varieties of Chinese belong to two completely different language families. They are as unrelated to each other as English is to, say, Arabic. However, because of centuries of close contact, Japanese does have a large number of Chinese loanwords."
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6wcd6s | Where does Lorem Ipsum come from, and what does it mean? | And how come we are all still using it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"URL_0 It's filler text. It isn't supposed to mean anything, it's used to display what some design might look like if it had some actual text, without containing any meaningful text that will distract you from the design. We're still using it because there's no reason not to use it. As to it's origin (taken from Wikipedia): > \"Lorem ipsum\" text is derived from sections 1.10.33 of Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum.[3] > It is not known exactly when the text obtained its current standard form; it may have been as late as the 1960s. Dr. Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar who was the publications director at Hampden–Sydney College in Virginia, discovered the source of the passage sometime before 1982 while searching for instances of the Latin word \"consectetur\", rarely used in classical literature.[4][a] The physical source of the Lorem Ipsum text may be the 1914 Loeb Classical Library Edition of the De Finibus, where the Latin text, presented on the even-numbered pages, breaks off on page 34 with \"Neque porro quisquam est qui do-\" and continues on page 36 with \"lorem ipsum ...\", suggesting that the galley type of that page 36 was mixed up to make the dummy text seen today.[6]"
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6wce3d | - Why are sporting events such as boxing matches on Pay Per View while events such as the NBA Finals and the Super Bowl widely televised? | I hear it was a great fight last night, but had no way of seeing it. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Fans of a team in a team sport can watch it play dozens of times per season, but fans of a professional boxer can only see him fight a few times a year. So boxing has to make *all* its viewership money on a few big-ticket fights per year while team sports can have seasonal TV packages. Even the big fights don't attract enough viewers to make ad-supported or long-term subscription television more profitable than PPV.",
"Ad revenue. The Superbowl is going to run for hours, including a big-name half-time show. You can sell lots of ads, and thus pay a lot for the rights to broadcast it. With boxing, a 3rd round knockout means not very many ads. Boxers don't want to stand around and cool off while there is a \"TV time-out\" (p.s., football players aren't fans either)."
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6wdcru | What prevents infants and young children from forming stronger bonds with their babysitters than their parents? | Assuming that they spend up to 8 hours of their waking day with their babysitter/nanny, and a few hours in the morning or evening with their parents. Sorry if this is wrong flair. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They often **do**, which is the issue. You see the same thing happen when one parent works and the other stays home.",
"Nothing really and I have known at least one kid who never bonded with her mom because her mom never was with the kid. In that particular case for a few years (when the daughter was 2-3) the daughter actually called any child care giver \"mom\" the mom was into partying and drugs... so wasn't really there for the kid much anyhow. I lost touch later in life but pretty sure that child is messed up now. Mostly though the title of \"MOM' is so heavy in a child's psychology that they do have a different relationship with their mom versus their nanny. The parents sort of remind them that the nanny is \"only\" a nanny - the hired help.. young kids do bond with nannies and babysitters quite a bit, especially if the nanny is the kind that really loves them back. In some cases the kids do spend more time with their nannies than their own parents! This is especially true when they have live in nannies. But remember the kids are always reminded in subtle ways who is \"mom\" and who is just the hired help."
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6weahy | Why do east Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese use latin symbols and numbers in normal writing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They don't use Latin letters or Arabic Numbers (Latin Numbers are Roman Numerals) in their normal writing. Their normal writing is the Kanji, what you see using Latin Letters is a transliteration of the Kanji into Latin Letters so that Westerners can say the Chinese or Japanese Word."
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6wfygi | Why do people in old videos talk like they're singing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, back in the day people actually had to be loud to be heard at rallies since PA systems were not really all that great. You develop a cadence if you practice speaking clearly and loudly, which winds up sounding vaguely melodic. Also, recording was barely s thing and the tremor you hear may actually be inherent in the recording method: vinyl cutters and wax cylinders are fickle devices. Lastly, look up a trans-Atlantic accent. It's kind of this odd mix of upper class Brit and American accents that was the norm amongst American elite in the early 20th century. It naturally has a bit of a melodic quality to it.",
"It's all about trend and fads. People actually have things like these affectations now we just don't notice it. Back then it was a lilt in the voice. Now it is vocal frey and constant rising scentence tone to mimic the California valley accent. In the eighties to nineties, people had very direct flat cadence and a nasily sound similar to the Connecticut accent"
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6wh7fd | How does URL_0 have so much copyrighted material, even recent material? | I was browsing URL_0 and I found very strange that it shared, distributed and hosted a lot of copyrighted material. Warner Brothers cartoons, t.v. shows, videogames, books, a lot of cultural products that are copyrighted and even very recent (from the 90s) and that ARE NOT open source. I find it very strange, not because I oppose it, but because any site like that would be closed because of copyright infrigment. How does URL_0 get away with it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's no such thing as \"getting away with it\". If someone is violating your copyright, the owner of the copyright must take action against the infringer, legal action or otherwise as appropriate. If nothing is done, then nothing is done. It's up to the copyright owner to police their own material. So, no matter the reason, for at reason, or no reason, said copyright holders have not taken action. Or if they have, they simply have not been taken down regardless of such action"
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6wke2q | Why do most video game controllers have ABXY on their buttons and not ABCD for example? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They originally started off as separate sets: A and B, then X and Y. They only got grouped together later on after they were already established as controller buttons.",
"Well I can't speak for Microsoft and Nintendo but on Sony controllers, the button symbols actually do have meaning. X is confirm, O is cancel (reversed in Japan due to cultural reasons). Triangle represents viewpoint, representing one's head or direction. Square represents a piece of paper and was originally meant for menus. Nintendo probably designed theirs with the same thing in mind. As someone else said, to separate certain groups of tasks. Since most modern controllers descend from the SNES controller, it's just stuck.",
"If you look at the controller of the Sega Genesis, also known as the Megadrive in some regions, it becomes pretty clear. The button layout includes 6 face buttons, in a 2x3 grid. The bottom row is labeled A B C, and the top row is labeled X, Y, Z. Modern controllers with a 2x2 grid of buttons label them in the same way except with the furthest right buttons removed."
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6wm1w0 | Payment after wrongful conviction | Hi all, I was hoping to understand the ideology behind wrongful conviction monetary payments, namely when a jury of ones peers levies a wrongful 'guilty' conviction that is later overturned by a new piece of evidence. I am referring to cases without bias (racial/gender) or poor defensive attorneys. If we rely on a court system with judgement from a jury of peers, there is going to be 'wrong' convictions and non-convictions. However, we all subscribe to this system and benefit from when it lands on the truth and suffer when it doesn't. Do these payments undermine the court system in that we are ascribing to as a majority? Is this rooted in our 'guilty until proven innocent' cornerstone? Is there a price on someone's freedom? How do we arrive at the value and why has this not become a process? It seems to differ in every case the payment and exoneration process. In a poor example, what if a killer gets off on a technicality and then goes out and kills again, should we then pay the family of the murdered because our court system failed? I have tried to find articles on this, however most seem to be emotionally based. This is not meant to be incendiary or hurtful, just to clarify the reasoning behind such practices. I know it may be inflammatory but I ask you to respond with measured and respectful responses. Thank you for your time. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Do these payments undermine the court system in that we are ascribing to as a majority? Is this rooted in our 'guilty until proven innocent' cornerstone? No, this basically just comes down to \"damages\". We all know that sometimes the court system is going to make mistakes; there is no method known which can ensure that the correct decision is made every time. But on the other hand when the wrong decision is made it is known that damage is caused to innocent people. If you thrown an innocent person in jail then they are going to suffer many damages including some very tangible financial losses. That the government would provide some recompense for this is quite reasonable. > Is there a price on someone's freedom? Yes. > How do we arrive at the value and why has this not become a process? It varies by state, and many states don't have such laws at all. For some states it *is* a process. Of course it will seem to differ if you ignore that different states have different laws because they are different governments. > In a poor example, what if a killer gets off on a technicality and then goes out and kills again, should we then pay the family of the murdered because our court system failed? No, because ultimate fault lies with the killer. We don't charge police officers with bank robbery because thieves managed to rob a bank without being stopped. That would be silly, the inability to stop a crime is not a crime."
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6wog3g | In Mafia type movies, why does the assassin drop the gun at the crime scene? Isn't the wise thing to take the gun with you so there's no evidence? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Before DNA science was practical in criminal cases, the only evidence left on a gun would have been fingerprints, which gangsters (both real and fictional) would prevent either by wearing gloves or covering the handle of guns with fingerprint-resistant tape. If there were no fingerprints on the gun, then the only way to tie the gun to the shooter would be if the gun were found in their possession, so they would drop it immediately to remove that possibility.",
"Oh my no. The worst thing that can happen is to be found in possession of a murder weapon. Professionals discard the weapon as quickly as possible. A gun on the ground is just that, a gun. The bullets in the body connect to the gun, not the user. Edit: 'professional' meaning the gun isn't registered to you or covered in your fingerprints, spit and hair.",
"In addition to the good answers about possession, those guns often used to commit these murders were either stolen guns or didn't have serial numbers, making it even more difficult to trace its origins back to them",
"Guns are actually bulky. It might be 5-10 pounds of metal. If you happen to bump into a cop after the shooting, he might search you because of the gunshot that he just heard. Courts used to be lax on civil liberties. Local criminals are known to the cops."
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6wso8x | Why did the the Navajo have such a complex language | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Regarding your question about passing it down: \"language complexity\" doesn't make a difference if it's your mother tongue. We learn language simply by copying what others say. This does not require any schooling or knowledge of the \"rules\" of a language",
"It wasn't complexity. It simply used sounds that people can make (phonemes) that aren't part of other languages. Your brain processes sound, so that you can understand people who are making different sounds as saying the same words with an unusual accent. To do this, it specializes on the phonemes that are used in your native language. That's why English speakers have a hard time with the trilled R of Spanish or Chinese speakers have trouble distinguishing r and w sounds in English. Once you get to a certain age, it's very difficult to train your brain to distinguish new sounds. Navajo was only a spoken language, they didn't develop a corresponding written form. Children learn to distinguish sounds that to English, German, and Japanese speakers are the same. As a result, people not raised Navajo have a very hard time following the language. This makes it a \"talking code\", more than the linguistic structure."
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6wtt0h | Why do Advil (ibuprofen) bottles require a child-resistant cap, while Tylenol (acetaminophen) does not? | Note: I am Canadian, and I'm unsure if this is the case everywhere. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"At least in the USA, Tylenol does require a child resistant cap. If it doesn't somewhere else then I don't know why, as it doesn't take much Tylenol to overdose and permanently damage your liver."
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6wuzm1 | why there's such outright hostility against trade unions | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Why does the GOP hate unions? ]( URL_4 ) 1. [ELI5: Why unions are hated in the US ]( URL_9 ) 1. [Why do stores like Walmart and Target hate Unions so much? ]( URL_3 ) 1. [ELI5: Why do people hate Unions? ]( URL_11 ) 1. [ELI5: Middle and Lower class workers who hate unions. ]( URL_8 ) 1. [ELI5: The taboo of unionization in America ]( URL_5 ) 1. [ELI5: Why do people hate unions? ]( URL_6 ) 1. [ELI5: What are unions and why are they hated by virtually all employers? ]( URL_2 ) 1. [Why are unions considered a bad thing? ]( URL_10 ) 1. [ELI5: What exactly is a labor union, and why do people so strongly love or hate them? ]( URL_0 ) 1. [ELI5: Why are labor unions viewed negatively and what are their biggest problems? ]( URL_1 ) 1. [ELI5; Unions. Why are they so negatively stigmatized? ]( URL_7 )"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41wfhn/eli5_what_exactly_is_a_labor_union_and_why_do/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dkffl/eli5_why_are_labor_unions_viewed_negatively_and/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4azymc/eli5_what_are_unions_and_why_are_they_hated_by/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/5x667q/why_do_stores_like_walmart_and_target_hate_unions/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g2kll/eli5_why_does_the_gop_hate_unions/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xukga/eli5_the_taboo_of_unionization_in_america/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2idlq0/eli5_why_do_people_hate_unions/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36gg7p/eli5_unions_why_are_they_so_negatively_stigmatized/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y09vp/eli5_middle_and_lower_class_workers_who_hate/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jssze/eli5_why_unions_are_hated_in_the_us/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/41n9h9/why_are_unions_considered_a_bad_thing/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jod9f/eli5_why_do_people_hate_unions/"
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6wveb7 | why is the asterix used to edit text messages | When did this start? Why is it so common? Do we know who first used it? Is this the right sub to ask? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I don't know where it originated, but I've seen it since the 90's, Back in chat rooms and instant messaging. I didn't see it in text message until long after. So I at least know it may have originated there and not via text messaging. Hopefully someone with more knowledge can elaborate."
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6wvvlb | is the "alpha male" role a myth? | From what I read the internet seems to be pretty split in their views on this. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In humans? Yes. In some pack animals, there does tend to be an \"alpha.\" In humans, \"I'm alpha\" means \"I recognize that if I act dominant, others will go along with it. That means I get to be a dick to whoever I want and praise myself for it.\"",
"An example I heard to clarify the myth: Take a jerk and a nerd. Put them both in a singles bar. Who is more comfortable. Who has more influence. Now take the same two and place them in a dungeons and dragons game. The roles reverse.",
"The idea was a theory by wildlife biologist David Mech in the 60s, but he was studying captive wolves rather than wild ones and has spent the rest of his career trying to convince people he was wrong.",
"Dog behaviorist here. Alpha male is technically a thing but a pack leader is female in dogs. Her main mate is the alpha male but he is dominated by her and therefore not really alpha at all.",
"Early biologist studying wolves thought that the alpha male was the head of the pack. Over the years, however, the social system of wolves have proved more or less fluid. As it turns out in the wild the Alpha Male and Female are what we call \"parents\". Thr lower rank wolves in the wild are their children. There isn't much social competition between the alpha and the other males, thr children just move on to form their own packs as time goes on."
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6wvxto | How did bullying even become natural to human interaction? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Why would it not be natural? Pecking order exists in almost all social mammalian groups. It's a competition and the weak get squashed. They don't get to breed and their genes die out making the next generation stronger."
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6wzi3t | Why is Marijuana so demonized, but not other stimulants that impair people to drive just as much, such as alcohol, antidepressants, etc? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"tl;dr Nixon's enemies were anti-Vietnam and black people so by associating weed with those communities and then making it illegal, it disrupted those communities > One of Richard Nixon's top advisers and a key figure in the Watergate scandal said the war on drugs was created as a political tool to fight blacks and hippies, according to a 22-year-old interview recently published in Harper's Magazine. > \"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,\" former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday. > \"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,\" Ehrlichman said. \"We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.\" [Source]( URL_0 )",
"Marijuana and alcohol are not stimulants. But to answer your question: this policy was aggressively pushed in the USA, especially by the Nixon administration, because African Americans at the time were greater users of marijuana than whites, and certain politicians were looking for ways to oppress them. I'm sad to say it, but there's lots of historical evidence."
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6wzotu | How did French, German and Italian speaking (and some other) people decide to become switzerland together, instead of the Germans becoming German, the French becoming French, etc. ? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Switzerland formed before the concept of a \"nation state\" was a popular thing. So people who spoke French didn't necessrily feel like they had to be part of the same country as other French speaking people. Germany and Italy weren't even unified countries by that point. By the time nationalist movements gained momentum in the 19th Century, when Germany and Italy became unified countries, Switzerland had already been around a long time as a stable and prosperous country. So most people there were happy to consider themselves Swiss and didn't have a strong desire to join with the other Germans and Italians. They probably didn't see other German/Italian/French speaking people as *their* people, just some other people who happen to speak the same (or similar) language. Kind of like how Americans don't consider themselves English just because they speak English.",
"Switzerland was formed when a group of Principalities decided to band together and form a loose confederation in 1291. The various 'states', called Cantons, were allowed to maintain their own language. Other states joined later and the Swiss army also took land (at one time they held Milan Italy). in the 1500's they were beaten back by a French and Venetian alliance. They gave up expansion and chose neutrality which allowed them to form a more uniform, while still diffused, nation. There is a lot more but the TL;DR is that a bunch of little states took advantage of different power vacuums and chose to work together while remaining individual. They have been highly successful at this so why mess with success?",
"It began life in the 13th century, when the modern concept of a nation state simply didn't exist. That idea didn't really come into existence until the signing of a treaty called the Peace of Westphalia, about 400 years later, which introduced the then revolutionary idea that sovereign states with definite borders could be created, that they shouldn't interfere in each other's affairs, and that they could be held in check by a balance of power. That was still centuries away when a couple of cantons -- essentially microstates -- within the Holy Roman Empire decided to cooperate in ensuring that in the mountains of the central Alps, trade could be allowed to take place in peace. At the time, the Holy Roman Empire was a complicated patchwork of tiny states, constantly changing as local ruling dynasties intermarried, died out, split, waged war on each other and so on. But these central Alpine communities decided instead to work together, to look out for each other, help each other in times of war and settle local disputes among themselves. More and more cantons joined this confederacy, and it's important to remember that at the time, it didn't occur to people to draw national boundaries where there happened to be linguistic boundaries. The language you spoke didn't really have any bearing on who you owed your allegience to. This confederacy grew, and partly by conquest: in this first \"heroic\" stage of Swiss history, they would often take territories by force, deposing the local rulers. That phase ended with the Battle of Marignano in 1515, which the Swiss lost; this was the point at which Switzerland pretty much stopped growing. After that, the Reformation came to Switzerland, dividing it into Protestant and Catholic parts. This caused a civil war, but the confederacy survived. When the Thirty Years War raged throughout the Holy Roman Empire, the Swiss -- still split between Protestant and Catholic but still cooperating with each other -- couldn't pick a side and so kept out of it. And that's one reason they were granted their status of sovereign state at the Peace of Westphalia, completely independent of the Holy Roman Empire. In the 18th century Switzerland was invaded by France (Napoleon wanted control of the Alpine passes), which imposed on the country a central government subservient to France, reducing the cantons to mere administrative divisions. This was very unpopular, and the Swiss refused to fight alongside the French when Austria and Russia also invaded Switzerland. Eventually, Napoleon agreed to restore some of Switzerland's autonomy and the cantons. A few years later, the Congress of Vienna, which had convened to sort out the mess left by the Napoleonic Wars, officially gave Switzerland back its independence; also, all the other European countries agreed to recognise Swiss neutrality for ever after. Since then, Switzerland has been quietly getting on with the business of making chocolate and cheese, and staying well out of international conflicts. TL;DR: Switzerland was created at a time before our concept of the nation state existed, and since then the Swiss have been proudly not taking orders from anyone else."
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6x1umd | As a non religious person I wonder, why there do not seem to be ancient sources calling bullshit on the Bible? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You might try asking in /r/Askhistorians - there might actually be literary criticism out there. For example, there's a medieval debate about the veracity of Christianity between a Jewish scholar and a Christian priest in Spain that we know of - but we know about it because the priest mentions it in his surviving writings, while the Jewish letters were burned. I suspect you're running into a few issues. First, few people were literate, so there wasn't a whole lot of point in writing criticism down. Second, very little writing survives 2000 years even when people try to preserve it, but writing that went against Christianity would have been purged by the Christians. Third, while you can get lots of people who might say that the Bible was wrong, you would get almost zero who could claim to have been there at the time. Consider that out of the 12 apostles, only 5 actually wrote anything at all - and they did so decades after the fact. It's hard to imagine that there were many surviving witnesses who were also literate and in a position to produce writing that would survive. But hey - maybe there is some in some Jewish text. That's why I'd ask in Askhistorians. Edit: I just realized my answer refers to the new testament only. The old testament is a different story - it was written down centuries after the events took place, so there would literally be nobody alive to counter or correct them. The Jews kept the stories alive in oral tradition, only writing them down after being forced out of Israel. Some religious historians believe that this could explain why there are two different versions of the creation story in genesis - they may be separate oral versions that both got written down.",
"Im thinking you're underestimating just how important religious beliefs were to ancient peoples when compared to today, and how much power religious institutions had as well. Speaking out against religious dogma could result in very bad things happening to you.",
"Christianity, like all other successful religions, was spread by the sword. Anyone objecting to the nascent religion were murdered, much less those writing down such commentary."
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6x20qf | Why are young children so susceptible to crying over the littlest things? | This may seem a little arrogant but I would legitimately would like to know. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are three big reasons why young children cry easily First, crying gets people to help them. When young children cry, people around them generally make an effort to make the problem go away, so they've learned that crying makes things better. Second, young children don't have much experience, so things often seem worse than they are. If someone drops you off and says they'll be back in a few hours, you probably believe them so you don't worry; but small children have trouble with concepts like \"they'll be back soon\" so to them they may have just lost their mother forever. Third, young children haven't learned to regulate their emotions yet. When you or I find out that Taco Tuesday has been cancelled we feel disappointed but we've learned to cope with that disappointment; young children haven't learned those skills yet so they let all those emotions right out",
"Best way I've ever heard this phrased: For young children, every unfortunate thing that happens to them is literally one of the worst things that has ever happened to them in their entire lives.",
"For small children, because they don't have language, so this is the only way they can let their voice be heard when they want something. For older children, because they haven't learned to express their opinions and frustrations properly through language, so frustrations builds and comes out as crying. Fo all children, because they haven't gotten used to standing pain so they get extra scared (that it's going to hurt) when they have even the slightest accident.",
"Children cry because it gets attention. Before you could ask for anything specifically, if you were uncomfortable or needed something, crying was your only resort. This trick works until the adults around you stop giving you what you want for it. So, children are susceptible to crying over \"little\" things because they tend to get their way when they do it. Those that don't tend to stop crying for stuff."
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6x2k14 | Why does it seem like everyone has depression? And why is it a larger issue now than before? | I'm not completely sure if this post belongs in this subreddit. It just occurred to me that people tend to compete with others on how depressed they are and regularly I see "10 signs you depression" or "you have depression and don't know about it" articles. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because humans didn't evolve to thrive in a system that requires 9 hours a day of work plus an hour commute where the most fabulous lives in the world are a web address away alongside all the horrors you can't do anything about. To top it off we are failing to adapt to \"The internet never forgets, humans never forgive\" by becoming more forgiving, so everyone lives their lives afraid to speak our or say what they mean least they get hunted down by an internet mob. On top of THAT we have a million petty laws and they can be enforced by fiat because everyone's guilty of something. All violence is monopolized by the state so no arguments ever really get settled and every personal disagreement and resentment just festers. We have also lost most of our spirituality and can no longer beg Zeus for help or blame the devil for stealing our baby's breath away in the night. Science teaches us that we are nothing more than another chunk of meat that thinks too much of itself and when it's over that's all. And at the end of it all most of us are too demented to enjoy retirement so we spend the last few years of our live being pumped full of pharmaceutical profits so they can be sure your heirs get nothing. Compare that to this: Working 4-6 hours a day collecting roots and berries, hunting once a week for a feast, having sex with anyone you please, having a very clear pecking order inside the tribe, knowing who you have to obey and what happens if you upset someone or violate religious strictures, all of which are taught directly from a very young age as being part of a grand plan that has a special place in it just for *YOU* as well as happy hunting grounds paved with gold where you'll never have to work again as a reward for being a good 4 hour a day gathererer. Your copious free time is spent dancing, having sex, doing primitive drugs, or just talking about the shapes of the clouds. When you have kids (from all the sex and no birth control) there's an entire tribe of people to help you take care of them and they don't need tutoring and don't get arrested for truancy because they went off to smoke pot instead of school, because there is no school they just get to play tag all day. In return for giving up all of the above and more you won't need to have 5 kids and watch 3 of them die, if you get your arm torn off you can be disabled and useless for a really long time instead of being dead after a few minuets, and you can talk to people in China about how much they want to nuke Japan. Oh, and you are slightly less likely to get invaded and tortured and raped (they'll just oppress the next 5 generations of your people with drones instead). Compared to what we evolved to thrive in, it's a completely different world, and that causes stress and depression. The same way when you put an Orca in a tank and teach it to jump through hoops it's going to cause stress and depression.",
"Honestly, I think it's a natural outcome of living in a society with a high standard of living. Maslow's hierarchy of needs predicts that that as our basic needs are met we turn to focus on other things like \"What does it all mean?\" I think that now that most people don't have to struggle every day for survival we naturally tend to take a closer look at ourselves, our lives, and see if we're actually happy.",
"I was going to write this really long winded comment about comparative analysis and how it affects the human psyche, but then I figured out how to make it shorter. We feel worse because we have all of the atrocities of the entire world fed to us constantly, making us feel worse, and convincing us that things will never change, when in reality they can, we are just to scared to try. Now I still have a long winded speak that I can plagiarize for the sake of looking really deep and crazy but I will spare you all.",
"Because people don't know what being depressed means. Most people associate being sad, busy or stressed with depression. It's the gluten-free approach of mood disorders. Depression is a clinical term, having a rough couple of days, being down in the dumps every once in a while and not wanting to get out of bed on Mondays isn't depression. Not wanting to get out of your house for a month because a relative died? Now that's depression. On the other hand we aren't happy with our lives, relationships, job, friends, the way we look, the money we make, the place we live... We live in a comparative society and we're never satisified with anything because we compare ourselves to other people who are doing/looking/living better than us. We are blamed for the ways our lives turned out and hold ourselves responsable. Life has become one big chore. Family and friends aren't as important as they used to be, there is constant pressure everywhere and biologically speaking our brain hates it when we're anxious, when we're overloading it with information, when we're always busy and not socially and physically active. In the US, Canda, Australia, Denmark etc people are popping anti depressants like tic tacs. In countries like Japan and South Korea young people are killing themselves because of obstacles in their careers and academic lives. What do these countries have in common? They're highly developed, so long story short: we are living in ways that our bodies and minds find unacceptable and we're just too hard on ourselves and don't enjoy our lives at all.",
"There's a lot of speculation in this thread, but here's the answer with some [sources:]( URL_1 ): > Modern populations are increasingly overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, and socially-isolated. These changes in lifestyle each contribute to poor physical health and affect the incidence and treatment of depression. And [this]( URL_0 ): > It is a fact that we all have basic emotional needs that must be met for us to thrive and enjoy life. After the primary human needs for food, water and shelter come commonly shared emotional and physical needs. Without exception we find depressed people are not getting these needs met. > Traditional communities naturally meet many 'basic needs' for emotional support. In the traditional Amish society in the US major depression is almost unknown, as it is in the equally traditional Kaluli tribe of New Guinea. In these societies individual concerns are group concerns and vise-versa. You know that if you have a problem other people will help you and you are expected to help out when others need support. We know we are meant to do these things but it's not a 'built in feature' of modern society in the same way. > These days we are much more 'self-focused'. The idea of considering the wider community to be more important than the self is almost impossible to understand for most people. Long story short, physical health is on the decline, while basic emotional needs aren't being met.",
"Mostly they don't. A lot of people have taken to claiming depression or anxiety for every day nerves or sadness. So you get people making memes and talking about how depressed they are when they don't have actual depression. Outside of that society is becoming more aware and supportive of people who have genuine issues, which makes it seem more prevalent than it used to be. It's less the idea that 20 years ago 1 in 5 people had depression and now it is 3 out of 5, and more that now 3 out of 5 are open about it.",
"At least part of it has to do with the fact that there is less of a stigma around mental health conditions than there was before. So it's possible that there was always roughly the same amount of depressed people, but more of them are now open/public about it."
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6x37m6 | Regarding cities, streets and other places, how are outlandish names such as "Slapout, OK" and "Hell, MI" chosen, and why are they accepted? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Usually, they are not outlandish to the people who named them, who were often non-English speakers. Fishkill, NY isn't about aquatic murder, kill means stream in Dutch. Other times they are just tiny, unincorporated places that got their named as a joke and no one has bothered to change it. Laws varies from state to state, but in general a place like Slapout is only slightly more official than \"the old waterin' hole\". The sort of place that might elect a mule mayor."
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6x4yi2 | What is the reasoning behind the weird names of groups of animals? | For example, a bunch of crows is called a murder, and a bunch of owls is called a parliament. Where does this come from, and who decided what name belonged to which animal? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Oscar Wilde did a bunch of them, although several of the more common ones existed long before him. He thought it was funny. Best collective noun -- easily a crash of rhinoceroses."
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6x4ztb | Why is Australia having a same sex marriage survey and not a referendum to change the law? If the survey indicates the 'yes' vote has won, what happens? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Australia doesn't need a referendum as it's just laws not the Constitution stopping gay marriage. The government could table a bill tomorrow to legalise gay marriage, much like how in 2004 the marriage act was changed to explicitly define marriage as between a man and a woman. The reason we've ended up with a survey is because the current government is trying to stall the issue. Initially their plan was to have a ~~referendum~~ plebiscite which was considered pretty shitty* but at least it'd happen, however this was changed to a non binding ~~referendum~~ plebiscite (likely because the conservatives in the liberal party decided it was going to come back with a yes answer). At which point the senate voted it out. The reason there's a survey is the government has money it can spend without going through Parliament intended for urgent matters. Which is why there's a court battle arguing this isn't an urgent matter as Parliament could just does its job and vote on it. The results back from the survey are just going to be numbers with nothing to force the government to do anything either way. *Basically while having a successful yes vote would be good it's a farce to be voting on a human rights issue, it's caused a bunch nasty advertising and name-calling all for something Parliament could solve by doing its job."
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6x57sm | when a restaurant has a sauce/broth/cooking liquid that they claim is 20-50+ years old and they keep reusing it, how is this sanitary? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not sure if this helps but what you describe is common for two things. A pan can be old, usually passed down through generations having been seasoned over the years from every meal that was cooked in it. Usually cast iron. The other thing that seems more likely to your question is when someone uses a traditional sauce like a Oaxaca mole over a long period of time. The idea behind this is that you save a little of each batch you make to incorporate into the next batch, concentrating and developing new flavors. One of the best restaurants in the world have a black mile they are continuing to feed for well over a thousand days now, and it's one of the most delicious things you'll ever taste. They keep it sanitary simply in the preparation of the sauce when it comes to a boil. Another example is sourdough starter. I have one that my greatx3 grandfather started. As long as you keep it in the fridge, and feed it regularly, it will last forever, and will always be safe to eat."
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6x5a2w | Where did the custom of football commentators, especially Spanish speaking ones, dragging out the "o" in goal come from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you are going to yell a one-syllable word for a long time because you're HAAAAPPYYYYYYYYYYYYYY, you have three choices in spanish: ¡GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGOL! which makes you sound like you have a stutter. ¡GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! which makes the word sound long and nice ¡GOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL! which sounds awful. Yelling L is hard. Of course, you can also say: ¡gol! and proceed to describe how the player kneels in front of the public in the corner, is hugged by nr. 2 and nr. 5 and now sprints. But that lacks emotion."
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6x5p1r | Origination of 'finna' | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I was fixing to answer this question very briefly, but automod didn't like my answer. So I'm finna elaborate just a bit. It's a derivative of the colloquialism 'fixing to': > fixing to > > fixin' to > > > fixin'a > > > > fix'na > > > > > finna Over time, the words combined and the colloquialism morphed into a slang. The phrase's origins in proper English likely come from the figurative *arranging one's affairs before doing something* or more simply, *getting ready* or *preparing oneself to do something*. From the [Online Etymology Dictionary entry for \"fix\"]( URL_0 ): > late 14c., \"set (one's eyes or mind) on something\" (a figurative use), probably from Old French verb *fixer"
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6x5t4h | why are the United States of America reffered to today as "land of freedom" when one gets the impression its less free than you might think. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Look at where it comes from not it's meaning today. Land of the free originates from around the 1810's in the song Star-Spangled banner after overthrown the rule of the British and forming their own country. At that point in time Belgium was under the rule of the first French Empire which was an absolute monarchy ran by Napoleon I. Conscription was forced on Belgium, Catholics were repressed and the economy was in ruin. There was an attempt to rebel against this(Peasants' War of 1798) but it was crushed and the leaders executed. Compare the state of both countries at the time and the USA was pretty damn free compared to Belgium."
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6x6205 | Many movies, especially comedies, have blooper reels at the end. Curious why more don't have these. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's about the tone of the film. Comedies are usually more fun in tone and a blooper reel fits well with the film. Fun films like superhero films and other blockbusters use blooper reels because it's fun to see. Imagine if Schindler's List had a blooper reel? Would that work for the film? Definitely not. Certain genres don't want to humanize the actors because it's not about the actor it's about the character they are portraying.",
"There is also the possibility that the bloopers for certain films just aren't interesting or funny enough to add."
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6x8czs | Why do students tend to separate by race in their teen years? | A bit of context: Years ago when I was going through high school I noticed that the racially diverse group of friends I had in middle and elementary school had become entirely White (I am White), and my once close friends who were Black or Asian, Hispanic, etc also tended to associate with people of their own race. Is there any psychological reasoning that this happens? I'm specifically talking about how this occurs in the late teens. Like I said, it wasn't like that when I was younger. I know this can be a touchy subject. I don't aim to offend anyone, I'm simply looking for an objective explanation based in psychology. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People separate by shared cultures. Jocks hang with jocks, band kids hang with band kids, computer programmers hang with programmers, etc. Race is just another cultural dividing line, and at least at my school it was much much more minor than wealth and chosen activities.",
"Most people are just more comfortable with people of similar cultures. I found people in my high school separated by wealth more so than skin color.",
"I've found that as a kid, you really just want someone to hang out with and to just have fun. As people enter their teenage years, their interests start diversifying significantly more, and people want to be around other people who like the same things and are part of the same culture. So when teens go to find these people of similar interests, the most obvious indicators are being of the same race/ethnicity/social class.",
"Because when you're a child, you still have an innocent view of the world. You might see racism, but you don't understand it. When you hit your teens, your mind is maturing to the point where you start blending into society, and accepting the way things others do as being how they should be done. You might not understand why things are done the way they are, but \"monkey see, monkey do\". You fall in line so you'll fit in. The first time I remember understanding racism, I was 12 years old. My family went to Nashville, Tennessee for both vacation, and to help my brother move home from college. We toured Nashville for a few days and saw the sights, before heading back to Virginia. On the way back, we took our time and made it a 2 day trip. I don't recall where we were, but we were in the mountains. It was nighttime, and we were walking along a row of businesses, shopping. There was a live band playing nearby. We walked to where the band was, and there was a sizeable crowd of people. There was a wooden footbridge that crossed a river or big stream. We stopped there so my parents could watch the band play. Below the bridge, the ground sloped gently toward the water, and there were kids playing in the grass. I asked my parents if I could go play, and they said yes. Everything went fine until I started playing with a boy my age who was Native American. We were getting along just fine, until his dad came down. He pulled his son to the side and told him something, before kind of glaring at me. He walked back up the hill, and the boy came back over to where we were playing. He said \"my dad says I can't play with you.\" I asked him why, thinking I had done something wrong. He said he wasn't allowed to play with white kids. I honestly can't remember ever seeing race before that point. My parents let me play with whomever I wanted. I grew up in an area that's pretty close to half white/black. I had black friends at school. I knew they were black, but I never really saw black and white as being separate races. They were just other people, who were just like me, but happened to be darker than me. From that day on, I started noticing how adults acted toward each other based on race. By the time I reached high school, like you noticed, I noticed we had seperated first by social class, then by race, then by common interests. I was born and raised in the South. My parents aren't racist people, and I wasn't raised to be either. We weren't poor, but we weren't rich either. I think money has a lot to do with racism. My dad owned his own business, so we were what I'd describe as lower middle class. I'm sure other people would describe lower-middle-upper class differently, so to put it into perspective, for Christmas I had to choose between getting a new bicycle or a Nintendo 64. We couldn't afford both. It just depended on how the family business was doing that year. I had plenty of relatives that I would describe a poor. They live in trailers and drive busted ass cars. You're more likely to see confederate flags in front of a trailer than in a middle class neighborhood. I'm not sure why racism is more prevalent in lower class areas, but I assume it's mostly because they are looking for someone to blame for their lack of success in life. It's easier to blame others than to blame yourself, I guess. I'd say most kids look to the adults in their lives for guidance. They don't need to hear racism verbally, to notice behavior patterns. The behavior patterns they learn, even subconsciously, are what guides them through the rest of their lives. Some will see the light, but most won't. Most of them will fall in line with the rest of society, and blindly march to the same beat. I always wonder about the little boy I was playing in the grass with that night. I wonder if he grew up hating white people, or if he realized his dad was wrong to think like that. Either way, that was my coming of age intro to racism, and I've spent the rest of my life trying to treat people like I'd like to be treated. This may not be the answer you're looking for, but it's the best I can give you. It's a combination of factors."
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6x8ddi | Why are men who lose their wives called "widowers"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Widow\" and \"Widower\" come from old English words that had different forms depending on gender: widewe for women and widewa for men. This gender difference seems to have been maintained as the world involved into Modern English forms.",
"It's from an Old English word. They don't mean \"widower\" as in \"someone who widows\". The \"-er\" is from an old way of showing gender, not action like \"carpenter\" or \"painter\"."
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6x8lmv | Why is the environment a political issue, as opposed to a universal concern? | I have never understood why this topic is so polarizing (no pun intended). The weather isn't a political issue, so why are climate change and the environment tied to politics? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think every single topic can be made into a political issue, this is one of those topics. There is also a lot of money to be made with practices that hurt the planet, and costs with saving the planet. As crazy as it seems, there are people okay making buckets of money knowing about the damage they are causing to the planet but its a lot more difficult to tell them they are wrong (I think they are, plenty of others do, but they don't. There is no way to know until it is too late). It is also a very complex system that is much more intertwined than it seems. Cows are a massive contributor to greenhouse gasses, and a lot of people in the US are using that as a reason to eat less meat to help reduce that - great, however China and other countries are exploding with a large middle and upper class they didn't have before. These countries will start buying american meat or raising their own. With China developing a taste for Sushi there is fear some fish will be driven to extinction just due to how high the demand will grow. All of these things play into climate change and the environment and are not easy problems to solve. The problems are now too big for individuals to have much effect over, the entire state of Texas could go vegan and it would not change our course. This now means measures will have to be taken, laws enacted, yadda yadda. Do you think Cow Conglomerate is going to be okay with the Gov telling them to raise less cows, or use an expensive seaweed to stop greenhouse gasses. They are worried about the bottom line, they will support politicians that go along with their concerns. Meh, I've never tried to answer one of these before and I'm just rambling. I just don't agree that the coal and power plants arguments are the cause, they are the symptom - the coal workers have 0 say in the industry just like the workforce of any other industry.",
"Because 'the environment' is a luxury good, so there is a debate about how much to spend on it. Let's say you want a park in your neighborhood so the kids can play in some open space. Now, this is going to cost money not only in terms of building/maintaining the park but also in terms of lost municipal tax revenue. So how much are you willing to spend on the park? Can you understand how other people might be willing to spend more or less? A good example of this are the National Parks in the West. If you live in New York, you don't get much benefit from them - maybe you visited them once or twice, but probably not. However, they also *cost* you nothing, so you see a lot of New Yorkers supporting these parks as cheap virtue signaling. However, if you live next to these parks, they cost you a great deal. So opposition to the National Parks tends to grow with proximity - the closer you live to them, the more of the cost you bear, so the less supportive you are. Or consider coal. Switching from coal to natural gas is no big deal for you - there might be some small modification to your monthly electric bill but you otherwise won't notice. But it's a huge deal for someone who just spent the last 3 decades of their life as a coal miner. You can argue about the virtues of clean power all you want, but you're arguing about a distant concern for yourself to a person who has the immediate concern of losing their job and being unable to feed their family.",
"Because deciding what to do about it (if anything) is necessarily a political process and different people will have different ideas. That is what politics is. There's no way to avoid it. There is no right answer, there is no objective truth when it comes to priorities. What is more important, freedom or slowing climate change? Your answer to that question will be at odds with the answer many other people give. So, politics happens. If you are going to presume that something needs to happen to respond to the danger of climate change.... you presume to tell people what to do. Of course you're going to get resistance.",
"They are tied to politics because we, as in humans, are causing our climate to change much much quicker than it ever would naturally, and we are also destroying our environment... Which incidentally worsens our climate dilemma. Thus it's a political issue. If you're on board with Aristotle, then everything pretty much is tied to politics",
"Anything that involves society having to make decisions about what to do or how to spend money is going to be political. I'm not sure what you really mean when you say it should be a universal concern as opposed to a political issue? Even if there's something that everyone thinks is a problem there's always differences an opinion about what is the best way to go about solving the problem. Pretty much everybody wants to reduce crime but the question is how, that's what divides people.",
"Politics is simply a matter of us all agreeing on things, and people don't agree on factors affecting the environment. Let's take a very simple, local example - in my hometown of Austin, Texas, we have a [lot of rules]( URL_1 ) about construction projects cutting down trees. If a tree is over nineteen inches in diameter and you want to cut it down, you have to pay a certain amount of money to the city. And if it's a heritage pecan tree then you may not be able to cut it down at all. These rules are still the subject of a lot of dispute - on the one hand, obviously it is a huge hassle to builders and causes a lot of extra expense both for them and for the city. On the other hand, many of Austin's citizenry considers trees to be very important (there was a guy who got nine years in prison for [poisoning a tree]( URL_0 ), so they want to make it very difficult and expensive to cut down trees. So when it comes to climate change, even if everyone agrees that anthropogenic climate change is a real thing, you still have to agree on how much we should spend on combatting it, and who should spend that money. If combatting climate change didn't cost anything, nobody would be against it. The problem is that the costs are massive, and the effects of proposed solutions are difficult to determine, and the costs of doing nothing are very difficult to determine. Let me put it this way - if I could prove that the costs of doing nothing with regards to climate change were *lower* than the costs of stopping carbon emissions, would you suddenly believe that we shouldn't do anything about it? Probably not - but other, reasonable people might disagree. This is why it is a political question. What should we do? What effects will our solutions have? Who will bear the brunt of the costs? How can we mitigate those costs? These are all very reasonable and real political questions, even if we all agree on the problems.",
"The short answer: capitalism. The long answer: Greed and the priorities of capitalism. Producing goods requires resources. It also results in waste products that must be disposed of. The more factors you have to account for in this process, the more money it costs you, and to maximize profits you need to minimize costs. Maximizing profits is the goal of any corporation in our capitalist system. Every action is measured in how much money it costs you or profits you. For example: if you're producing lumber, you need to chop down trees for wood and transport them to the processing center to be chopped up into planks. If there are regulations on which trees can and cannot be chopped down, that's extra time you need to spend determining which trees to take and which to leave; if there are regulations on the harvesting methods you can use, you might be forced to use less efficient/more costly means of harvesting; if there are areas you're restricted from, that's essentially lost inventory that you need to find elsewhere. When the wood is processed into planks, all the excess wood pulp is left behind as a waste product. Sometimes you can sell the waste products too for extra profit (sawdust, wood pulp to paper mills, and so on), but sometimes you can't and have to find a way to dispose of it. Wood's a bad example for this but pretend there's no market for sawdust so they have to get rid of it somehow - the easiest and cheapest thing to do is just dump it all somewhere and forget about it, but if the government has regulations on where you can dump it, or says that you need to dispose of it in one specific way (like incineration at a certain temperature), then - again - that's extra money you need to spend on making sure you're in compliance. Think about this just on a personal level. You unwrap a candy bar and eat it, you're left with the wrapper and need to dispose of it. The easiest thing to do is just drop it on the ground wherever you're standing; the *right* thing to do is look around for a trash can and keep carrying it with you until you can find one. Now imagine that every extra step you take with the wrapper on your person costs you money, and there you go, that's the \"regulation\" bogeyman for corporations. People who can focus on prioritizing the long term, and who care about what the world will be like for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, realize that the short-term costs of such regulations are worth it for the long-term benefits. ie, the extra money you're spending is actually an investment in the planet's future. But the planet's future isn't making you money *now* and by god those CEOs just have to have every single dollar they can get their filthy hands on because bank accounts are score cards and they need to have the top score and will sacrifice anything to get it. As far as modern capitalism is concerned, the planet's future is not equity worth investing in. Because it's not *making* them money, and they'll be dead by the time it matters, so who cares! Short-term profits uber alles!! And those are the people spending a shit-load of money on telling our politicians what to legislate, and they pay an awful lot there to make sure they don't have to pay anything to the planet. It's like bribing the cops so they won't try to bust your drug ring, and then the cops telling all the citizens that there is no drug ring and not to worry about it so they can keep their cash inflow.",
"Aren't universal concerns always political? How can you do anything universally without involving politics? Since the effects are shared globally, if the efforts were all local it wouldn't be worth doing for anyone, unless they all did it. (if you spend 100% only to gain 1% of the effect yourself and giving away 99% of the effect to everyone else, everyone else need to do some effort too or it would feel pretty useless to you)."
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6x9c2b | Why is it that some English adjectives (eg: fast) cannot be made into adverbs by adding "ly" to the end? | "Fast" cannot become "fastly", you would use "quickly". But "quick" is also an adjective. Fast is the only example I can think of at the moment, but I'm pretty sure there are others. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You use ly to change a noun into an adjective (time intervals or similar to the original word) such as monthly or friendly, or an adjective to an adverb. Fast is already an adverb and adjective. \"I ran fast.\" Or \"The fast car.\" So you don't need to modify it to make it one.",
"There are quite a few: \"hard\" (\"I hardly worked\" means something quite different from \"I worked hard\"), \"late\" (again, \"lately\" means something else) and \"straight\" are a few examples; and the adverbial form of \"good\" is \"well\". Why? Because that is how the English language has evolved. It is true that nearly all adjectives can be transformed into adverbs by adding \"-ly\", but that's not because somebody sitting in an office somewhere ordained that this should be so. In fact, it gets even more complicated, because \"-ly\" can also be added to nouns to turn them into adjectives: \"brotherly love\", \"a saintly bearing\", \"a cowardly man\". Languages aren't designed, and nobody ever said, \"We need a way to turn adjectives into adverbs.\" It just happened. In this case, the \"-ly\" suffix means \"having the form of\", and is actually related to an old word meaning \"body\" or \"corpse\". Thus a \"cowardly man\" is a man who has the form of a coward. It's also related to the word \"like\" when it means \"similar to\", so \"cowardly\" is the same as \"coward-like\", i.e. \"like a coward\". At some point, speakers of English extended the meaning, so it meant not just \"having the form of\", but also \"in this manner\" -- so, if you do something \"quietly\", you do \"in a quiet manner\". At first, it was mostly likely considered a terrible mistake, another example of how young people today just don't know how to speak proper Anglo-Saxon: \"How can you 'talk like a quiet'? What does that even mean? If we had schools, I'd ask you if they don't teach you this any more.\" But it took hold and became the norm. More and more adverbs took this ending, with only a very small number still resisting to this day."
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6x9dwm | Where did the depiction of men wearing goat heads/masks/etc. come from in horror entertainment? | I've seen it in all sorts of things from horror movies to video games and am curious where the imagery rooted from. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Christians associated goats with satan to spread their religion. Here's a comment from another thread that details everything: u/GirlGargoyle • Jan 28, 2015, 2:13 PM When Christianity was sweeping across Europe, one major tactic it used in converting pagans was to get them to convert by adopting parts of their pagan heritage, then demonising the rest to ensure they never went back to their old ways. The Greek god Pan ended up being a major scapegoat (excuse the pun) and became thecommon depiction of Satan in early medieval artwork. Then we have the Goat of Mendes. It was a greek symbol based on an ancient Egyptian god (named Ba, no puns) linked to the soul and the afterlife, and for various reasons it stuck around as a common occult symbol. Occultism is automatically considered Satanic by many Christians. In the 1800s, a man named Eliphas Levi cemented it. He drew on depictions of the Goat of Mendes to do a drawing called \"Baphomet,\" which was a fictional god some people invented to frame the Knights Templar for \"devil worship\" a few centuries earlier. His drawing of Baphomet became infamous, and Baphomet had always been linked with, or possibly a stand-in for, Satan. That was really it for goats from then on, and any depiction of a goat-headed demon really draws on Levi's depiction. In the 1960s, the Church of Satan adopted Baphomet and the goat-head imagery as part of their official emblem, just as one final nail in the coffin for goats. URL_0",
"Goats were associated with a number of pagan beliefs in Europe. As Christianity spread, they were cast in a sinister light and associated with evil and Satanism. This entered the culture and persisted long after the pagans were gone. Later, groups who wanted to link themselves to those pagan traditions (Wiccans) or just wanted to be spooky in general (Alistair Crowley, Anton LeVay) would invoke this wort of imagery to give a sense of authenticity. They kept this tradition alive enough for media to tap into it."
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6x9m7g | Why is medication in Europe sold mainly in blister packs vs bottles like in the U.S.? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I am not in Europe but it is the same 2-week/one-month thing in my country. This practice is to prevent drug abuse and to encourage people to see their doctor before using another/more drugs."
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6xa0pp | Why are some media outlets referring to US/Afghanistan war as the "longest war in US history" when the Vietnam War was fought for 19 years? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the US didn't get involved (as in, troops on the ground) in the Vietnam War until a full 10 years after it started."
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6xao3l | Why are hotel bed sheets almost exclusively white? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's cheap and easy to clean white sheets even if they get stained - throw them in with some bleach at high heat in an industrial washer and they'll look pretty good. You can't bleach stains out of sheets of another color and they can fade, so you have to take more care when washing them. White also has the advantage to the customer that it \"feels\" nice and clean, like they aren't trying to hide any dirt or stains with a darker color sheet.",
"So you don't have to worry about color fading when you throw them into gigantic high-powered industrial washing machines almost every day.",
"Because you can bleach white and get off all the nastyness that people do in a bed that's not their own.",
"Maybe because they can clean them with bleach without any color loss. Also must be cheaper to replace.",
"I was a General Manager at a Hotel. The corporation chose white sheets/towels because they were sold in bulk at a discounted rate."
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6xbo03 | How people like Joel Osteen are amass such a big fortune and build megachurches on the name of religion? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Religion is a *very* profitable business. Donations for prayers for \"healing\". Donations for prayers for \"success\". A lot of this is covered under \"prosperity gospel\". Basically send money to the church, the pastor will put in a good word with the man upstairs, and He will bless you with fame and fortune.",
"Joel Osteen somewhat inherited the Lakewood Church from his dad (and then Joel took it from 5,000 to 50,000). He gets a lot of money from book sales, he knows a thing or two about TV production, and he's got charisma and charm and people want to hear him. He's an actor in many senses, and he's good at what he does. edited to add parenthetical and TV comment"
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6xfo1t | What is the difference between Traditional Chinese and Simplified? | I recently saw that in the Steam Hardware Survey, Simplfied Chinese was almost sixty times more common than Traditional. What causes this and why do natives use Simplified? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Simplified is more common because thats what China uses. it was developed by the communist government of china in the 50s to make reading/writing easier and increase literacy. anyone who was educated in china since then has learned simplified. Traditional is...traditional. Its what chinese used to be before the PRC decided to simplify and is still used by Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is definitely harder to learn as there are more unique characters and some are much more complicated to write. [ ex. here is the character for dragon in both simplified and traditional]( URL_0 ). one is definitely easier to write than the other. most people who can read/write traditional can also read/write simplified too since its basically an easier version.",
"Simplified Chinese is used on the mainland, while traditional is used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The reason why Simplified is used so much more, is because of the obvious population differences. Simplified Chinese, as the name implies, is simplified. Many complex characters have their brush strokes reduced, often following existing shorthand conventions. Some characters end up being merged/deleted, so the two variants are not a 1-to-1 mapping to each other.",
"Generally, China uses Simplified, while Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau use Traditional. Simplified Chinese is derived from Traditional, and was implemented by the Communist government in the 1950's (around the time of the Cultural Revolution) in an attempt to increase literacy. Simplified is exactly what it sounds like. Selected Chinese characters were simplified, kind of like an abbreviation. If you know one version, you can learn the other pretty easily. Similarly, if you take the word \"colonel\", and learn the abbreviation for it is \"col\", you can easily apply that to future readings of \"col\". But if you had stumbled across \"col\" by itself without having known what it stood for, it could be a bit confusing. Does it stand for colony? Colosseum? Cholera? Same goes for if you had only known the word by its abbreviation. If you had seen the word \"colonel\" but only knew it by the abbreviation, you probably wouldn't have guessed that \"colonel\" was pronounced \"kernel\", the word you usually associate with the spelling \"col\". There's a load of controversy and debate around this topic, which is actually quite interesting if you decide to read up on it! Hope this helps. Source: am half-Taiwanese, uses Traditional.",
"Long story short simplified is taught and used in the people's republic of china so more people learn it than people who learn traditional in some other countries. It was created to be easier to learn thus to increase literacy rates, it does this by as the name implies, simplifying the characters and reducing the number of strokes used"
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6xgplf | Why are people so hostile on the internet? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Another place you see this sort of behavior is in road rage. Our cars offer us anonymity, but they also prevent us from reading body language. If I were running down the street, and jumped in front of you, constantly checking my watch, hair a mess, and I looked back at you and winced, offering some level of recognition that I was sorry for my action, most people would be forgiving: we've all been in that situation before, after all. In a car, without those visual cues, it's impossible to tell the difference between \"guy who's cutting you off because he didn't see you and is sorry\" and \"guy who's cutting you off because he's out of patience and thinks you're unimportant.\" We tend to assume the latter without the presence of additional clarification. Likewise, it is easy to read or hear something out of context on the internet (or even something written that is intended to be satire), be unable to get clarification, and assume the worst."
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6xlf6t | Why is suicide so frowned upon? We all die, so why does it matter whether someone dies at 25 by suicide or at 75 by natural causes? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are many reasons why. For one, suicide is a tragedy because it's a person making a decision but virtually never in a healthy state of mind. For example, there was a man who jumped off a bridge, and the second he jumped, he realized all his problems were solvable. That things weren't as bad as they seemed in his head. Suicide is also a tragedy because it often means that person did not receive the support they deserved, that the systems in their life failed them. Maybe their family system is toxic, maybe they go unnoticed in their school system, etc. Some people have it rougher than others, or they don't have the same level of resilience as others, so they need a little extra help. A suicide can indicate they didn't get the help they needed when they needed it. Also we are social creatures, and we like to be connected. Any death is a disconnect from someone we care about. But with young deaths there is a greater disconnect, because there is an expectation that we'll have this connection for another fifty years, etc. any young death is extra tragic because we want everyone to live a long prosperous life. Someone who dies at 75 is almost expected to die around that age. This is all to say why it's \"tragic.\" So to get why it's \"frowned on\" is because it hurts enough to lose someone, and it hurts twice as much if they took their own life because of how complex the emotional response is. For example, if someone murders your daughter, you'd be devastated about your daughter and furious at her killer. But if your daughter murders herself, you are feeling both emotions directed at her. She is both the victim and the perpetrator. Also you feel responsible, as you are her family system which failed her. But you also are the victim, because you're the one who lost a daughter. Suicide is frowned upon because it brings up so many of these extreme, mixed emotions, and because it all could have been prevented somehow.",
"It doesn't matter. Not really. It's frowned upon because most of us are hardwired for survival (evolution and all that). When we find someone for whom this isn't the driving force, we tend to think they're sick (must be, because we would never do that) and again, we're hardwired to fear and avoid illness.",
"It's preventable. I work in psych and it's always heartbreaking to hear of patients attempting or committing suicide. You can't always predict a heart attack or a serious accident, but suicide is usually premeditated and it leaves a shockwave of people asking what they could have done to keep it from happening.",
"While the arguments people are making here are important, there's also the social and cultural aspect to consider. In the west we have a very Christian view of morality and in traditional Christian views, suicide is sinful because your life belongs to God, not to you. To take your own life is to defy God's plan for your life. Obviously religious dominance on public opinion has waned over the past hundred years, but the effects of it are pretty clear when you compare British and American views on euthanasia to those of European cultures that aren't as Christianity-centric. Other examples of things that culturally come from our socio-religious past are our views on what animals are suitable for eating, fear of the number 13, celebrations of Christmas and Easter (even by nonreligious families), new years resolutions, even football (soccer for Americans out there) fans sing songs to the tune of religious hymns. It takes a long time for those kinds of views to abate and shift. Just look at how long womens rights and gay rights took, and now we're in the fight for trans rights. Culturally we have a Christian heritage and those ideals pervade our society heavily. Almost all common names in the West are religious in origin, even now, and show no strong signs of changing any time soon. I agree that from a secular point of view, the fact suicide is preventable is a major reason for many people, but I think it's a little restrictive not to consider the historical context these ideas and belief systems came from.",
"Selfishness, really. Suicide doesn't hurt the the one who dies, they're dead. It hurts the surviving loved ones. After my brother killed himself I was angry for a long time. Now I realize that was just selfishness on my part.",
"Because it often is not necessary. Imagine this: You have a toy you really like, like really. You always enjoy playing with it but one day, something seems off. No matter how hard you try to enjoy the toy you only get frustrated. With all that anger built up you throw it against the wall and it breaks into 1000 pieces. Now it's gone. After an hour you cool down and realise the toy you loved so much is gone, just because you weren't yourself for a brief moment. Point being, often, and by often I mean almost always (very few thoroughly planned, thought over suicides) the idea of taking your own life comes during a time where you have a lot of worries which can cloud your mind. As /u/Alberius said, technology is advancing at a rapid pace making medical assisted suicides less worth it, but I think the question was more aimed at \"healthy\" people deciding to end it.",
"I think we have pretty unhealthy attitudes to death. Cultural beliefs are changing though. Many people now agree with assisted suicide for people who are suffering greatly from physical illnesses with no chance of a cure. But it's a scale. Should a teenager experiencing his first heartbreak over a failed relationship be assisted in suicide when in all probability, he will feel better after a short period? I don't think so. It's true that he will eventually die anyway, but we might be able to logically assume that staying alive is in his best interests, seeing as he will probably be happy he didn't go through with it eventually. So it's kind of like looking out for the interests of his future self/selves. How about someone with a much more serious form of mental illness who hasn't responded to any treatment over a long period and is suffering greatly because of it? I would be more inclined to say they should be allowed to die peacefully if that's what they want but others would disagree.",
"Because it hurts the survivors feelings. That's it conversation over. Anything more is complicating it with your feelings which have no value",
"OP, are you alright? Do you need someone to talk to?",
"Because of the reason that most choose to commit suicide. If you are choosing to die due to a disease or constant unending pain it makes sense. For other reasons its not the best choice due to the finality of it. You can't take it back, you can't regret it, and you can't change your mind. I tried to commit suicide, and while I can't say my life has gotten better I have gotten better at looking st the good parts. I can honestly say that I am happy that It did not work and that I am still here. Sometimes all you need is a change in perspective to be happy! Edit: all these people saying its preventable are wrong, its because your life can change. You can be happy in the future. Most of the time you can be happy now, its just very hard for you to see.",
"I think it's because they are afraid of death.",
"I'm probably the only one here that will slightly agree with ELl5. It's tragic yes, but it's the takers life. Not anyone else's, not \"Gods\" it's the takers. Ultimately, their decision to make if they want to live their life or end it short. It won't matter in the grand scheme of things, as we're all going to the same place in the end... and that is death. What exactly that is, no one knows. Maybe they were just too eager to find out. To be honest, the only reason I'm still alive right now, is the slight hope of technology, hoping it will excel to the point of extended life, and possibly lead to immortality. I refuse to live a pointless life, and the only way to avoid that is to have infinite time. Without that hope, i would have killed my self years ago. And it's the only thing that stops me from doing it every night.",
"because wanting to die goes againts basic life instincts therefore it's alien to us and humans don't tend to think of things alien to them highly."
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6xoc87 | From ancient times to the present day, why is it acceptable in most parts of the world for men to be bare-chested but not women? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Women's breast and men's breast are not the same. Treating them differently is not arbitrary, it's meaningful. Women's breast are sexual, they develop during puberty and have a functioning role to feed their kin. They are affected by estrogen (female sex hormones). It is sexual, and thus elicits a sexual reaction. To minimize this we cover them. If it feels unfair by women to cover them, then it is fair to have men not be allowed to walk around without a shirt, but vice versa is silly by all accounts. We have been covering them for tens of thousands of years. On a side note, not having nude women walk around is not \"not equality\", it's understanding there is a difference between men and women and embracing them. As if it's SUCH a luxury to walk around with no shirt. Wear a bikini on the hottest of days, the difference between that and no shirt is negligible, one can even check the skin temperature and see the difference. In fact, a white top keeps the body cooler."
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6xpc8g | Why does it seem like some colors look good together and others clash? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As with most things dealing with human perception, there is probably an evolutionary basis for what colors look good together (for humans at least). Perhaps during hunter-gatherer times, certain color combinations in nature would indicate whether food was fresh or, if it was unsafe to eat. There are probably many factors, but it's important to remember that 'colors' are just the way our brain intereprets light wavelengths in our visual spectrum, and color combination preferences that look good to us might look very bad to other species based on how their perception of contrasting colors contributes to their evolutionary fitness.",
"Artist here. What one person perceives as clashing may not clash for another person. The dictionary defines it as a mismatch of colors. But in what way? There is no consistent determination of what clashing is. It just considered an eye sore. And there is a difference between placing two contrasting colors next to each other on a white or other color field vs. placing a small square of one contrasting color in the middle of a larger opposite color field. You may get a clash where the edges meet or touch but not elsewhere because the surrounding color effects the perception of the smaller inserted color. It also has to do with the volume of each color. Here is an [image search of clashing colors]( URL_0 ). For me, I don't see any of them as an eye sore with the exception of blocks of solid color that vibrate where the two colors meet. One of those examples is two variations of green. Solid blocks of red and cyan, magenta and lime green. But when texture, gradations and blending of colors are applied the clash disappears."
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6xqdgo | Generally speaking, the more utilitarian something is, the more gauche it is considered. Why is that? Examples: the minivan, cargo shorts and fanny packs. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"it's likely to do with the fact that utilitarian fashion is, at its core, the working man's fashion. The average Joe is the perfect definition of gauche, so the average Joe's fashion must be gauche as well. The upper class strives to distance themselves from the working class, and they do that by reinventing the ideas of grace, etiquette, and elegance so that the working man can't keep up. This is why fashion changes so quickly and so often, and why the working class will be gauche in perpetuity."
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6xrvhc | Why do people cover their mouths with their hands when surprised, shy etc? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I've never wondered about this, but somehow now I need to know... My guess is it has something to do with the urge to cover your mouth like with yawning and coughing, like something you do automatically when you open your mouth like that? I don't get the covering mouth when shy though. Isn't it like when you cross your arms on your body to make yourself smaller and more secure?",
"I wonder if it's an instinctive reaction to not making a sound. When our hunter gatherer ancestors were running around, suddenly shouting or making noises when startled in the face of a predator or pray probably didn't increases their chances. As for being shy it's not so much the mouth but the face to hide blushes may be?"
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6xsfil | How do historians determine to death toll of a dictator? | Do they only calculate death caused by war and genocides while the dictator was in power, or do they add more factors to the equation? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It really depends on the individual historian and the individual case. It's not like there's an official standard for determining political leaders' death tolls. These are *ad hoc* measures. For example, a historian might count the deaths in the Ukrainian famine against Stalin, but that doesn't mean he will count deaths in the Bengal famine against Churchill, because he may have different opinions about the extent to which the two men are politically responsible for the respective deaths. It's pretty easy to tie genocide and other deaths caused by government action to a particular leader. (Though it may be hard to determine the specific number of deaths related to those events.) But for many other kinds of death, it's not so clear-cut. Whenever you see a comparison of death tolls, you'd do well to follow the citations and see whether you agree with the methodology used by the source. Comparisons are especially dangerous because usually the estimates are by different historians (experts on their respective subject matter, perhaps)."
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6xtdft | What happened that made football and basketball popular sports? | I dont watch or get the thrill of watching them, so what happened in America that made these sports so popular? And why do we put so much emphasis on them in high schools? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For a historical context; sport leagues started up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Soccer never took off because the early leagues were corrupt, inept, and prone to infighting and petty politics. Rugby was actually really popular until the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, where no one bothered showing up because the French fans were so toxic that almost no one felt like playing (and as a result, rugby declined in popularity worldwide pretty quickly). Football and basketball were both invented within the US, and didn't really compete with baseball that much because their seasons didn't really overlap much at first (baseball was summer, football was fall and early winter, and basketball was late winter and spring). Combine that with a relatively immense and wealthy population following World War II that had a healthy appetite for sports, and those leagues in particular became popular. Collegiate athletics were also a huge part in this, as the national rivalries that you see in Europe were replaced with state rivalries, and these rivalries were primarily played out between the flagship universities of the states, whereas professional teams really represented cities (and their surrounding regions) rather than states. In addition, international competition (except with Canada) never really took off in the US because having teams travel to Europe was prohibitively costly, both in terms of time and money. Thus, we didn't really care that the rest of the world played soccer; we couldn't really play them until recently, so soccer wasn't any more interesting to us than other sports were."
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6xtp8r | How did formal clothes become considered formal? | It seems like the requirement is 1. Somewhat to moderately uncomfortable and 2. More expensive than casual wear. I could imagine businessmen conducting meetings and etc. Just as effectively in sweats/gym shorts and t shirts were it not for the stigma that it's not professional. Where has this come from and why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Formal clothes tend to be a previous generation's leisure wear. The current business suit was once called a lounge suit. Something you wore \"off duty\" before you put on your dinner jacket for the evening dining or your tailcoat and top hat for a day's work at the bank. The most formal dress that males now wear (at least in the UK), the grey tails and topper for a wedding or a day in the posh parts of the horse racecourse is still called a \"morning suit\" for the same reason. My grandfather used to wear a \"sports jacket\", tweed or similar, during the day at home.",
"It's just stuff that takes longer to put on, makes you look like you cared enough to take some extra time.",
"At least in mens formalwear the vast difference between a $100 suit and a $1000 suit boils down to precision tailoring as well as showing desired areas while hiding undesirable places of the body. So the basics starts with tailoring. When a company is looking for a casual design they take a stock body mannequin and the design is formed around the static model. When a reputable formalwear company does its design they may go as far as designing its own custom shape they will further design the garment to work with the mannequins movements. The best designed suits are made by someone who understands human movements and the suit is design to allow ease of movement while not allowing the garment to expose undesirable areas and form unsigntly lines. The last peice of the puzzle falls to the customization in store. Where a salesperson will be educated to see flaws in even the best designed suit. This is because despite generalizations people move differently. They will than refer the suit to be custom tailored. Further if you gain/lose or even just redistribute weight you may need to seek the store again to retailor. People who wear formalwear often will retailor as frequent as every 2-3 months. Source: Friend works at high end menswear store. Disclaimer: I know this isn't really answering the question but I feel it helps OP understand why formalwear feels uncomfortable. It is basically because OP formalwear is either cheaply made or needs to be retailored becayse your body has changed."
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6xu4pk | If Japanese Princess Mako is getting stripped of her titles for marrying a "commoner"; who else could she have married to retain them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Japan still has aristocratic families, even if they have a lot less power than they used to and lost their official titles. The families were not killed off, and they still tend to have their land holdings and businesses and do tend to hold very influential positions in the economy and political landscape. And I am not sure about Japan, but you are generally allowed to marry extended royal family members (cousins) as well as the royal families of other nations, as well as the aristocracy of other nations. Edit: With Japan specifically it seems that women leave the royal family regardless of the status of who they marry and join that family. They are only allowed to be a member of the Royal family (with the titles) if they are unmarried or are married to a male of the Royal family.",
"I would assume it is because the Emperor must be male and must be of a royal/noble line. By marrying a commoner she has chosen a husband that doesn't qualify for the position and as such she has to be removed from the line of succession. The problem is that no male heirs have been born in 41 years. There just isn't anybody available. In the past it wasn't as big an issue because they had lots of children. [Pretty good breakdown of the issue on wiki]( URL_0 )",
"In a traditional Japanese marriage the bride enters her husbands family completely and leaves her own family behind. For example should her husband die she would remain with the family of her husband and not return to her own parents. So no matter the standing of her husband, after the marriage Princess Mako is no longer part of the royal family.",
"Yea all the clans are still there the Oda(Nobunaga) clan the youngest son is a opera singer or dancer or sorts. Not to mention all the shinto priest that still run stuff.",
"In Japan, there is something called the family registry (koseki). When a woman marries, she moves from her parents' family registry to her husband's family registry. This is true for ordinary citizens as well as princesses -- except in some cases where a family might \"adopt\" a daughter's husband to carry on a family name or something along those lines -- but most people don't have hereditary titles and such to lose.",
"this happened in the uk back in the WWII era also. a king married an american socialite and had to abdicate the throne. it was particularly scandalous because she had divorced once already as well. ends up they were nazi sympathizers too. go figure."
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6xuk5k | Why is it sometimes appropriate to have an open casket funeral and when is it in bad taste? | I've been to open casket and closed casket funerals, and some without one at all, when the body was already cremated. This picture from Chuck Berry's funeral, gave me some pause. It shows a musician "duckwalking" across the stage while playing Johnny B Goode with other bandmembers over his body in open casket. Why would this be appropriate and not distasteful to him or his family? URL_0 | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are reasons for both open and closed. Is the body or face presentable? You want the deceased to be respected. Are family members willing to see the deceased? For many, seeing the person at rest permits a final look, (to remember) and the sight of the dead person brings a feeling of closure in that a dead body can be shocking or a sobering sight.",
"It's really up to the family of the deceased and tradition. It's distasteful when someone close to the deceased decides that it is or if it goes against the will of the deceased. I'd have to assume that Chuck Berry's family consented to it."
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6xz4uf | Why did USA lose the Drug War? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The drug economy is all about supply & demand. The US has spent billions of dollars attacking the \"supply\" side of this equation, perhaps believing that interrupting the supply will curb the demand. But it doesn't work that way. The demand for these drugs is still there, and it's strong. As much as we might try to disrupt the supply, we can never eliminate it completely. When the demand is strong and the profits are high, there will always be someone willing to take the risks to supply it. We should be focusing more on the \"demand\" side of the equation, and not by locking up users and buyers in prison, but by treating it as a public health problem. It would be nice if the population could think of the DEA and the US Government as trustworthy sources of information regarding the dangers of drugs and addiction. However, the sad truth is the the government has lost credibility in this regard. The DEA simply is not a trustworthy source of honest information. This is, after all, the same agency that classifies marijuana as a \"Schedule 1\" narcotic (with no legitimate medical purpose) while things like cocaine and heroin are on lower schedules. Trying to tell the population that marijuana is worse than cocaine or heroin is a dead giveaway that the DEA is not accurately informing people of the public health risks. So we have a war being fought by agencies which claim to be protecting the population, whilst simultaneously misinforming them. Zero credibility there. We have spent billions on trying to eliminate the supply, which is an impossible task in a market with demand so strong people are willing to pay enormous markups just to get what they want. This war has been doomed since day 1.",
"there is no way to win a war on inanimate objects. drugs are really really convincing . i mean, its drugs they make you feel good and then you get hooked, how is jail supposed to defeat that. lots of people would say doing drugs is very much worth the threat of jail. drugs are a public health problem, not a legal problem, which is what the \"war on drugs\" makes it.",
"The U.S. didn't lose the drug war. People don't understand what the drug war really is, it's a war on the American people by their government. If there were really a drug war as it is advertised we wouldn't have various American 3 letter agencies using drug proceeds to fund their illegal and unconstitutional subversive activities throughout the world.",
"The US relies heavily on enforcement (jail for addicts etc.) that isn't very effective without improving society, people with stable jobs, good lives are less likely to become addicts. A problem with enforcement is that the more success you have the more the price of drugs go up. The more criminals you nab, the more middle men the criminal organizations add and it becomes harder to disrupt the flow of drugs. Enforcement is also undercut by foreign policy concerns. During the Vietnam War, the largest opium producing area was in the Golden Triangle in southeast Asia. The US looked the other way as their allies got rich producing opium and heroin. The largest opium producing nation today is Afghanistan. You'd think after 16 years of US presence, opium would be eradicated, but doing that would undermine warlords allied to the US and eliminate the main income source for many Afghans so it isn't done.",
"Drugs are as essential to life as breathing is to keep us alive - human beings will always want and/or need drugs, legal or illegal, until the end of time - it was and is an absurdly arrogant idea to think that you could actually stop the flow of \"illegal\" drugs to people who want them - it's like trying to fight a war on terrorism, no matter how hard you work, how much money you spend trying to fight it, or how many laws you pass against it, you can't extinguish beliefs or ideals out of the minds of people, ideals and beliefs are personal and not subject to change easily - the same for illegal drugs, as long as there are people who want to use them, they will always be available no matter what the US does. The War on Drugs is the biggest waste of taxpayer money in the history of the country. The only thing its been effective in doing is putting thousands of people in overcrowded jails for low level drug crimes who shouldn't be there, and costing American taxpayers 100s of millions of dollars a year to incarcerate, feed, and provide healthcare for them."
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6xznvn | How do people wrongfully convicted of a crime live after released from prison compared to criminals that completed their sentence? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Whether you get compensation, basically depends on where you are living. For the US in specific, [you receive no compensation for being wrongfully convicted in 18 states] ( URL_1 ). As for the other states, how much you receive [depends on what statutes they have in place] ( URL_0 ). There are plenty of disadvantages. If the news of your wrongful conviction wasn't broadly publicised, there is a good chance people who google your name will hear about your conviction long before they head that it was wrong. For some people it doesn't even matter if they hear it was wrong, they just assume that if you went to jail you must have done something wrong and just got off on a technicality rather than because you are innocent. So you can face a lot of judging from people like this. Also, depending on how long you were in prison, you can have a huge gap in your employment history which will leave employers unwilling to hire you. Even when you are innocent, for employers it is still considered a risk in hiring you cause of the huge employment gap. They are taking a chance on you and generally they don't like that. And, of course there are the social disadvantages too. Friendships that were lost in prison, not getting to see / experience important family events. Trying to bond with new people again after something as big and life-changing like that.",
"How you're compensated and how much you may receive is based on your state. I'm from Michigan and my friends step father was wrongfully imprisoned for statutory rape charges. He had never been in a room alone with the teen that accused him but he was convicted and spent 18 months in prison before he was released. He received some monetary compensation, although I can't recall how much. After his release, he was having trouble finding a job, as others have said, even if you were released due to be wrongfully convicted, people assume you still did something wrong and we're probably released in a technicallity of some sort. The gap in employment doesn't help either. Tired of this, he started his own business, where he gives convicted felons and those wrongfully imprisoned chances to succeed and not have to live a dishonest life. He has a lot of stories about how prison is terrible, as in in the US they don't focus on rehabilitation, but rather just punishing you. You're forced in this system where you have to break rules just to get by and survive, so by the time you get out of prison, it's all you really know. So once released, they'll do what they have to survive, and end up in prison again. In 18 months, he told me how 4 different guys came back, 3 for stealing food and other shit to sell to take care of them selves and their already struggling families.",
"It's tough for ex-cons to find jobs. Many companies won't hire ex-cons. For people who are wrongfully convicted, they often face a legal battle with getting their records cleared.",
"I once saw a guy who had been wrongfully imprisoned in a super market. He had a payout (they usually get compensation but how much and when is case dependent). This guy was dressed in an Armani suit and Nike trainers and staring at the oregano. This said a lot. He had money to buy expensive things but didn't understand how they went together. As for the oregano... Imagine going to jail for a long time, coming out and seeing oregano. That whole culture of herbs and spices developed while he was inside and it was obviously a total mystery to him. I felt so sorry for him. I can't imagine how he must feel. The anger at wrongful imprisonment, the relief at getting out and getting some money but then finding a completely alien cultural landscape.",
"My brother was wrongfully convicted. He didn't receive any compensation. When he got out he was lucky enough to get a job easily because people who knew him knew he didn't commit the crime. So he managed to get hooked up with a job through people he knows. As far as his life in general, not too much changed except for the fact that he talked really ghetto for a while.",
"I can't speak about how job hunting goes for them but I've read many times those falsely imprisoned can get a fait amount of money for wrongful imprisonment. Time served and problems caused are taken into the account for what they deserve. I don't think they have to include the imprisonment into their applications and to explain the time lapse between jobs you can get a judge to sign off as to what happened."
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6y0cnr | Why is ASL (excluding the alphabet) not just universal Sign Language? | I understand that the alphabet of each language could differ from language to language but the gestures that represent words/concepts why is this not standardized across all languages? Seems to me this is a missed opportunity to create a universal language that all people could understand regardless of the language they speak natively. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically, it's because every group developed them individually and it's too late to really combine them to create a single, cohesive sign language. I don't know if they've tried making a single one, but if so, it likely followed the same path as Esperanto. Edit: typo. Bestially - > basically",
"\"Why is English not just universal Language?\" That's pretty much the same question. Different groups of people in different regions develop their own languages. Over time, those languages change, and they change in different ways in separate regions, often creating dialects. Sign language is no different in this respect to any other language. Why should someone who's used a particular sign language all the time, suddenly switch to ASL, if their language is perfectly good enough to communicate with everyone they need to communicate with? Would they want to, or even be able to, learn a whole new language, and use it as fluently as their own language?",
"ASL isn't a language developed by some central authority. Unlike, say, Braille, sign languages are generally full-fledged natural languages. They evolved naturally from communities of deaf people just like spoken languages evolved naturally. They don't just have their own vocabulary, they have their own *grammar* that evolves just like English grammar evolves. Because sign languages are natural languages, asking why there isn't a universal one is like asking why there isn't a universal spoken language."
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6y2ef2 | What causes the urge to overshare personal issues with strangers rather than talking to someone close to you? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No consequences. You can share your secrets with fear of rejection or judgment. You don't have to worry about hurting the feelings of your loved ones or even losing a friendship.",
"I think the people who overshare with strangers don't have many ones they are close to, and are lonely trying to reach out",
"Many reasons, I guess. Situational/not intentional - if a stranger or situation stirred some very strong emotions, it's hard to not express them in some way, which can lead to oversharing. Intentional - fear of rejection and exclusion by a significant figure in life."
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6y2n07 | Why is picturing everybody naked supposed to make me feel confident? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It would be extremely embarrassing to be naked in front of your peers. So therefore by picturing them naked it downplays whatever you may be doing (speaking, presenting, etc.) because the 'naked' people are the ones who should feel nervous or embarrassed.",
"I would like to put forward a different possibility to /u/ballabauske69 seeing as this is quite an old and originated from actors. Imagine you are just doing your play as normal and suddenly the manager/owner comes in and says make this the best because Lord Moneybags is in the audience. You know if you just do the play to him it won't be as good so you decide not to and just go on as normal but you realize you will be able to recognition by the amount of fir and posh cloths in a panic you go over to the old hand and he says \"just imagine the audience naked\", then everyone is still the 50 peasants how normally come and you can focus on the best performance not the crowd.",
"There are many people that suffer from the condition micropenis. If you picture everyone naked, you'll invariably imagine many of the men without generous endowment. This in turn should make you understand that genitally, you are superior to many of the people in the audience and thus give you new found confidence."
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6y39h8 | How and when did capital letters become associated with screaming and loudness? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pretty sure that's inherited from comic books. The bigger the text, the louder the character is speaking. URL_0"
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6y5ti8 | The old testament, new testemant, and the Koran all have passages denouncing and prohibiting the practice of collecting interest on loans, so when and how did this practice become accepted in society? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not quite that extreme -- notably the Old Testament only said not to charge interest to the poor, or within the Jewish community. This left Jews free to charge interest to others. It became more permissible over time, as the definition of usury moved from \"charging any interest\" to \"charging an unfair amount of interest.\" It is still not acceptable under Islamic law, though, not even today.",
"Answer with an emphasis on Christianity. It's important to note that for Christianity, and I believe for all three, usury is banned, not \"charging interest on loans.\" The definition of usury is the key question. 1. Islam still does not permit charging interest. 2. In Judaism it was permitted to charge interest to outsiders, at least. More complete answers have been given. 3. Christianity specifically says no usury. This was interpreted as \"no interest\" up until the Reformation. Not sure if this only applied to fellow Christians, but since nearly everyone was nominally Christian, the effect was a total ban in Europe. After the Reformation, Protestant theologians questioned many Catholic doctrines, to eventually include the definition of usury. Where before it was interpreted as charging any interest, it was now interpreted as charging excessive interest. This allowed Christians to loan money to each other and charge interest. This did not happen immediately, but it did happen over time. Additionally, most Protestant states eventually began to separate church and state to avoid the issues they saw with the previous system under Catholicism and to protect the many new shades of theology that were coming into being under the freedom Protestantism gave the individual believer to read and think about scripture themselves. This meant that religious law was less likely to be state law, and so the question of what amount of interest was excessive became more and more a question of personal conscience, rather than of law. As a note, a previous commenter named the secular Renaissance as the reason for the changing rules. This is incorrect, though the Reformation and the Renaissance occupy similar points in time, often resulting in effects of the Reformation being attributed to the Renaissance, which is more in vogue with society today. Also, it was under the old definition that Jews developed a reputation as moneylenders. Their rules allowed charging interest to Christians, and Christians seeking loans could only get them from Jews (because without interest, no Christian had incentive to lend to others). Jewish bankers/moneylenders became an important part of the economy, albeit a popular reviled one, as bankers often are. This system extended past the actual Reformation - see the fact that the Jewish stereotype still existed when Shakespeare was writing - but over time the new interpretation of usury did take hold across Christianity, and it did so as a result of the Reformation. edit: formatting.",
"Islam still doesn't allow interest. In an Islamic mortgage, the bank buys the house at the agreed price from the seller. The bank then immediately sells it to the person who is actually buying it for higher than the agreed price, to be paid in smaller amounts, often each month as in a normal mortgage. In that way, the bank is getting an extra payment for having put up the big amount of money to make the purchase, but is not getting interest on a loan: it is getting the price of the house as agreed between seller and buyer, but in parts rather than all at once. EDIT: not an expert on the detail. Please direct follow-ups to your local middle eastern bank.",
"The answers below stating that charging interest in Islam is still prohibited are not full answers. Specifically, Islam prohibits “ربا” (riba). It translates more or less to “usury,” but people have never agreed exactly what it constitutes. Today, Muslims generally agree that “riba” means interest, and that interest is therefore prohibited, but that’s not always been the case, and there are still scholars that disagree. More broadly, “riba” means something like unjust gains, and charging interest can be considered one form of unjust gains. As evidence to the fact that there is no definitive meaning of “riba” and there never has been, the second Rashidun Caliph, who lived from 584 to 644 C.E., is quoted as having said: \"There are three things. If God's Messenger had explained them clearly, it would have been dearer to me than the world and what it contains: kalalah, riba, and khilafah.\" The first term refers to inheritance for individuals without heirs. The last word means Caliphate, which in the simplest, broadest definition is an Islamic polity ruled by a Caliph. As one might envision, none of these are very easy to concepts define or tackle, which is why “riba” is included among them. They have always confused people and caused debate, and continue to do so. (E.g., ISIS or Da’ish claims it is a Caliphate, but most people disagree.) Lastly, as has been mentioned elsewhere in the comments, there are Islamic banks today that differ in the way they loan money to people. They don’t technically charge interest. In effect, however, they charge interest. They just give it a different name and set up repayment agreements a little bit differently than we’re used to. So in sum, it’s not totally clear that Islam prohibits interest, but people today broadly agree, as a matter of consensus, that it does.",
"The Western World's view on interest changed during the reneissance, when loans were used for production rather than consumption as had been the case in the past. There's the practical reality that it is very difficult for a modern economy to exist without lending. Without interest lending cannot exist on a wide scale. I have no incentive to loan a stranger 100 dollars, if the best case scenario is I get my money back, and the worst case scenario is I lose some or all of my money, if the debtor fails to pay me back.",
"For Christians , Muslims and Jews it was a sin to loan money in order to collect interest Except for Jews it was a sin to loan *to Jews* for interest, anyone else was fair game Some Christians would have Jews loan money on their behalf as a loophole This is likely the origin of Jewish banker stereotype",
"OP, if you are interested in this subject, I strongly advise you to read \"Debt: the first 5000 years\".",
"There's a chapter in Tim Kuran's The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (it takes a scholarly look at the legal and financial institutions of Islam, I promise it isn't some garbage Islamophobic apology for western imperialism) that deals with this question and compares how the Abrahamic religions' different responses to the injunction against usury affected Muslims, Jews and Christians and the development of civilizations. URL_0",
"Pretty sure it's not accepted in Muslim society, but they follow their scripture a bit more literally. It was so nice when I was visiting Egypt, though. No ATM fees withdrawing from my bank account no matter how many times I did it!",
"In Christian Middle Ages technically you didn't pay \"interest\", you just repaid the loan, plus an agreed upon fee for banking services. Which _just so happened_ to amount to the same thing. After centuries of basically doing that, people got used to it, and stopped bothering with the distinction. Many Muslims still use those loans with pretend-it's-not-interest interest - in practice there's really no difference, and many mainstream banks offer those, they just differ in terminology used.",
"The Knights Templar were a very devout Christian group that charged an admin fee of sort to not directly charge interest. From what I understand, they are the predecessors to our modern banks. This short article mentions Jewish bankers being allowed to charge interest, but I'm not sure of its trustworthiness as it lacks citing. URL_0",
"I'm currently reading Yuval Harari's \"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind\" and I believe that he may have an answer to your question. His answer is that when those texts were written, people generally didn't believe in progress and that next week could be better than this week because in order to improve your livelihood (slice of the pie), people believed that you would have to impact someone else's livelihood by taking a slice of their pie. Hence they believed that the \"size of the pie\" was fixed. But when people started to believe in progress, the \"pie\" could grow and anyone with enough resources and new inventions could create more pie without taking it from someone else. This was all closely linked to the Scientific Revolution. Without the idea of a better future, loans were often small, short-term, and high-interest. That's when these texts were written. Once progress became the accepted norm, individuals could more easily obtain large, long-term, and low-interest loans.",
"Muslim here.. I suppose the whole thing was directed at loan sharks and those that abuse the system through compound interest.. Or those that provide loans to those unable to repay or sustain them. As it is i find little difference between being charged a higher monthly price for something.. after it is bought on your behalf (trade) Or paying a fixed percentage increase until the term is fulfilled (interest) ...no clue what happens if you cant make payment though. Ironically here is one of the largely relating passages from the quran. Those who consume interest cannot stand [on the Day of Resurrection] except as one stands who is being beaten by Satan into insanity. That is because they say, \"Trade is [just] like interest.\" But Allah has permitted trade and has forbidden interest. So whoever has received an admonition from his Lord and desists may have what is past, and his affair rests with Allah. But whoever returns to [dealing in interest or usury] - those are the companions of the Fire; they will abide eternally therein.",
"Pretty sure the Jews made bank during the Renaissance, literally. All other religions poo-pooed interest, but the Jews were cool with it and apparently started loaning money during the Renaissance. \"Bank\" is apparently derived from 'banc', which means 'bench' (as in a park bench). This is where they conducted the transactions.",
"The Medici Bank was basically what's called accounts receivable factoring, where they bought amounts die to someone else in the future for a discounted price today. Florence got a papal sanction to compel its people to buy bonds that paid interest to fund wars. The Vatican allowed it because the people weren't choosing to lend at interest, so it wasn't a sin. Banking evolved from there. I highly recommend Niall Ferguson's *The Ascent of Money* if you've got an interest in the history of how the financial system evolved.",
"In all zero/extreme low growth societies interest must be hindered or prohibited as it will be practically impossible to ever pay it of. Religion does among other things function as an ideology to restrict certain forms of behaviour detrimental to society. Interest is in basically all cases detrimental to society in precapitalist social relations. Most religions will adapt to the change in social relations thus allowing it as it's not really a problem in the same way anymore. Beacuse it's quite reasonable to expect an increase in relative wages (or profits) over time in a growing economy interest is not that bad. In many Islamic countries it is still not allowed but as someone else commented they have a system that adapts.",
"It is interesting to know that before the rise of industrial capitalism (around 1760 in England) all economies which ever existed had no natural growth. Economies were static, in Jesus time, but also in the Middle Ages. The only way to expand your economy was to conquer new land or to exploit more slave-labourers (one small exception was trading with far away cultures). It's a weird fact, but a farmer in 16th hundred France wasn't richer than a Roman peasant around 200BC. Today a modern farmer is 40times richer than his old counterparts (300 years of capitalism! Yeah! ;)... Because economies didn't grow back then, every profit was the loss of someone else. That's why interests are forbidden by all holy books. Interests on loans could be catastrophic for the normal populace and bankrupt them pretty easily. Today interests are not a big problem, because they are covered by growth. Back then the loaner got way richer, and the farmer bankrupt.",
"Surprised nobody mentioned Calvin yet. In Christianity usury was prohibited—most the Christian mediaeval canons were strictly oppositional to all interests—until John Calvin penned his *Letter of Advice on Usury* (De Usuris Responsum) in 1545 directing the precept \"lend hoping for nothing in return\" away from being a bar on usury but toward an encouragement to help the poor: > Now we are accustomed to lending money where it will be safe. But we ought to help the poor, where our money will be at risk. For Christ’s words far more emphasize our remembering the poor than our remembering the rich. Nonetheless, we need not conclude that all usury is forbidden. The letter, given its overall conservative tone, has been interpreted and reinterpreted, but incontrovertible is the fact that it sees usury as not a vice but a practice that needs to be reviewed. (Note that in his *Commentaries on Psalm 15:5* he goes on to distinguish between lawful and unlawful usury.) Other people, of course, had penned similar letters to Calvin's, but Calvin's, given its conservative tone, was the one to be accepted by the ecclesiastic. Nonetheless, the acceptance of this letter by the ecclesiastic is one of the more radical (i.e. fundamental) changes in the Christian outlook, but is in line with what was happening at the time and what went on happening for the next few centuries (until now)—namely the reappropriation of the figure of the devil and sins in Christendom. (William Blake's *Marriage of Heaven and Hell* is a prime example of this. In the most general terms, Blake urges that one must triumph through, rather than completely abstain from, sins in order to feel God.) This, of course, is the often proselytised view of the \"whose mistake was it!\" game that academia plays. I'm not Christian, nor am I a Divinity scholar. Just thought somebody should bring this up.",
"Historically the Jews couldn't loan Jews money with interest. However non Jews were fair game. So Jewish communities since the Romans made their incomes doing just that. It is also one of the primary reasons that Jewish groups were thrown out of countries over 100 times through history, because it was easier to remove the creditors than pay them.",
"I just can't help but to feel that the bible and how we apply it to every day life is sort of a \"best fit\" type of situation. Which is why there are so many interpretations of it and how some parts are taken more seriously than others. The bible mentions homosexuality as being bad in passing. Never is it a pillar of Christianity. Yet this is hyper focused on while other, more important, teachings are ignored or looked over. \"Thou shall not commit adultery\" is a pretty big rule. I mean so big in fact that the bible lays out 10 specific commandments. Like ten rules that are more important than all others. Nowhere in those 10 does it say homosexuality is bad. It does however say that adultery is bad. There were 10 rules. Ten rules that god said \"these are the 10 most important rules\" yet nobody vilifies the guy cheating on his wife. They rather wish to do away with the gays. This is just another rule of convenience. The bible said don't take interest on loans. People were like, well this is like a metric shit ton of money we are missing out on. Let's take another gander at this one and see if there is some loophole. There are a lot of teachings of the bible that were taken very literally and turned into law for periods of time in many civilizations. It's just that like many religions, the teachings are interpretations of words and passages written thousands of years ago. In the context of a time long past. We must interpret the stories and teachings into our modern day lives. Just how our constitution is interpreted. Problem is, we are humans and tend to attach out bias to things. If one rule proves to be more of a burden on our lives it is changed or adapted to what some might interpret as following the bible.",
"Where does it say that in the New Testament?",
"[Usury]( URL_0 ), the charging of interest on personally-guaranteed loans, is and always has been forbidden by the Catholic Church. Aquinas describes it as trying to sell something and the use of the thing separately; selling wine and permission to drink the wine, because money is something that is \"consumed in its use.\" In other words, if I rent you a car, you can use the car without consuming it - when you're done you still have the car. This applies for many things - houses, tools, etc. But if I rent you *money* - that money's whole purpose is to be *used up* - so if I am charging interest (usury) I am asking for rent for something that doesn't exist - because the money has been spent. It is interesting (haha) to consider that the debt crisis of 2008 couldn't have happened if usury had still been prohibited.",
"Paying and receiving interest for a Muslim is a sin. Doesn't matter if he pays or receives from a non Muslim. Usury is one of the greater sins in Islam along with putting up equals to Allah (God), murder, fornication, practice of black magic. Usury is in there too (along with some more things) Some verses regarding usury: 2:275 الَّذِينَ يَأْكُلُونَ الرِّبَا لَا يَقُومُونَ إِلَّا كَمَا يَقُومُ الَّذِي يَتَخَبَّطُهُ الشَّيْطَانُ مِنَ الْمَسِّ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ بِأَنَّهُمْ قَالُوا إِنَّمَا الْبَيْعُ مِثْلُ الرِّبَا ۗ وَأَحَلَّ اللَّهُ الْبَيْعَ وَحَرَّمَ الرِّبَا ۚ فَمَنْ جَاءَهُ مَوْعِظَةٌ مِنْ رَبِّهِ فَانْتَهَىٰ فَلَهُ مَا سَلَفَ وَأَمْرُهُ إِلَى اللَّهِ ۖ وَمَنْ عَادَ فَأُولَٰئِكَ أَصْحَابُ النَّارِ ۖ هُمْ فِيهَا خَالِدُونَ Those who eat Riba (usury) will not stand (on the Day of Resurrection) except like the standing of a person beaten by Shaitan (Satan) leading him to insanity. That is because they say: \"Trading is only like Riba (usury),\" whereas Allah has permitted trading and forbidden Riba (usury). So whosoever receives an admonition from his Lord and stops eating Riba (usury) shall not be punished for the past; his case is for Allah (to judge); but whoever returns [to Riba (usury)], such are the dwellers of the Fire - they will abide therein. 2:278 يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَذَرُوا مَا بَقِيَ مِنَ الرِّبَا إِنْ كُنْتُمْ مُؤْمِنِينَ O you who believe! Be afraid of Allah and give up what remains (due to you) from Riba (usury) (from now onward), if you are (really) believers. ---- 2:279 فَإِنْ لَمْ تَفْعَلُوا فَأْذَنُوا بِحَرْبٍ مِنَ اللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ ۖ وَإِنْ تُبْتُمْ فَلَكُمْ رُءُوسُ أَمْوَالِكُمْ لَا تَظْلِمُونَ وَلَا تُظْلَمُونَ And if you do not do it, then take a notice of war from Allah and His Messenger but if you repent, you shall have your capital sums. Deal not unjustly (by asking more than your capital sums), and you shall not be dealt with unjustly (by receiving less than your capital sums). --- 2:280 If the debtor has a hard time paying his debt: وَإِنْ كَانَ ذُو عُسْرَةٍ فَنَظِرَةٌ إِلَىٰ مَيْسَرَةٍ ۚ وَأَنْ تَصَدَّقُوا خَيْرٌ لَكُمْ ۖ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ And if the debtor is in a hard time (has no money), then grant him time till it is easy for him to repay, but if you remit it by way of charity, that is better for you if you did but know.",
"**Old Testament on Usury** Even though you were allowed to charge a neighbor usury on the OT you were still not allowed to defraud them. **Deu 23:20** Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it. **Lev 19:13** Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning. **New Testament on Usury** You cannot serve God and money (Mammon). You are to love your neighbor as yourself. Just like the old testament it is still wrong to oppress the poor. **Mat 22:39** And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. **Matthew 5:42** Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. **Luke 6:34-35** And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. **Luke 6:38** Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. **Mat 6:24** No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. **Answer of the question** To answer your question how did this become accepted in both Jewish and Christian societies. When man chooses money over God and the love of his neighbor then he is in the wrong. It has never been acceptable to serve money this way. But through the hardness of men's hearts it has been allowed even at the times it was specifically wrong. Because humans have always been basically the same. Some people have always loved money more than their neighbors.",
"I would assume that a lot of people didn't like giving out loans as they didn't get anything in return. So people probably wanted a loan and said something like can I borrow $5, then the person would say no then they would say something like \"I will repay you $5 plus $1 if you let me borrow the money now\". Then it probably just happened a lot and when the sums got bigger so did the amounts you would have to payback on top.",
"The book \"Sapiens\" discusses this as a function of our changing views on capital and growth- before the advent of capitalism innovation and growth were viewed completely differently and therefore all lending was seen as generally equivalent to what we consider predatory lending today, and often was.",
"What I have been told is that this is the result how the three monotheist groups have understood it : Judaism : They can collect interest from non Jews because of their status. Christianity : They do not collect but have no problem paying interest since they're not receiving it. Islam : They can't be part of any step of it whether it's charging or paying interest because in both cases you'll be keeping the usury system running, so they're accountable in both cases.",
"Most people in my city are muslims, including myself, and I'm not even that educated on the matter. However, from what I've learned it is technically prohibited to take out loans/pay interest, but many people look past it here because if someone needs house for a family or even just for themselves, it's not always easy to come up with money on the spot and sometimes there's no way around avoiding a loan/interest since being homeless isn't really an option. This is just anecdotal and from my experience in the United States so I can't speak for countries in the middle east or even all muslims in general.",
"historically seen if they have passages forbidding the practice then said practice must already have been known and relatively widespread",
"It's not a practice that pays off in your favour. It's enriching an unknown \"organism\", so that that organism can continue to enrich itself. Basically you're building pyramids for your unknown Pharaohs and it doesn't magically trickle back down to you. It's hard to build a house without a mortgage but it probably shouldn't be set up this way either. No one can convince me though that giving up twice your wealth for something worth half that is somehow fair or justifiable. It's just something we've been socialized in to believe is normal, but it's not a \"normal\" aspect of society to let yourself give away all you've worked for so that some random dude you'll never meet gets to buy himself another yacht."
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6y68y7 | Why is the sale of alcohol restricted during certain hours? | So I've always known that most counties will restrict the sale of alcohol before (noon?) on Sundays. However, I just went into a store to buy alcohol on a Tuesday at 02:20 AM and was denied because it was after 2 AM. I had never known that there was any limitation on alcohol sales aside from Sundays which I had come to terms with. Why are there restrictions after 2AM? There are plenty of people who work different schedules, and it's not like this is going to prevent many people from preparing in advance... This just doesn't seem to make much sense to me. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Blue Laws. They were enacted because of religious reasons, and are very slowly being rescinded. Sometimes they make no sense at all, for instance, allowing bars to remain open while closing stores that sell alcohol, thus leading to people going out drinking and then having to drive.",
"It's a form of crowd control. Alcohol is a well-known enabler of rowdy activity. That's what it's *for*. But rowdy drunk people are often loud, corner-pissing, corner-fucking, bottle-breaking, jaw-breaking, car-crashing people. Controlling the time of sale controls the flow of those drunk people. Closing the bars and liquor stores tends to send them home to sleep it off. Drinkers who stockpile alcohol at home for just such occasions tend to drink at home, not take their bottles out on the streets to cause trouble. Yes, *some* people work odd hours and want to buy alcohol at odd hours, but most people work about 9 to 5, maybe drink in the evening after that, and then go home. Most people want all those rowdy drunk people to go home and let everyone (or almost everyone) else get some sleep. People who work in bars, liquor stores, hospitals, police stations, and morgues appreciate a little quiet time in the wee hours. It lets the night shift clean things up while the day shift gets a little rest. This also gives cities some quiet time to take care of things that are best done when the streets aren't busy. Road repairs, electrical repairs, etc."
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6y7jd6 | How did individuals become royalty and start a legacy? | How did an individual be determined as king? What was the process used to make or determine someone as royal? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The basic recipe to becoming a monarch is military power plus succession. In terms of growth, they start off convincing a bunch of their mates to go intimidate and kill enough of their neighbors that everyone around agrees to go along with whatever they wanted. Then they use that power to round up a bunch of soldiers and go threaten to kill a bunch of people from the neighboring village until they go along with the whole scheme as well. Repeat this over and over, conquering more areas, forging alliances with other leaders, and so forth, and eventually they end up commanding a significant amount of military power. All that can't usually be done in one lifetime (though sometimes it can), so you also need succession. In other words, when they die, someone needs to take over their position and have everyone agree that the new person gets to have all the power the old leader accumulated. This is frequently done through children, but sometimes an advisor or someone similar will end up in the role instead (whether by plan or by treachery). In any case, this means that the power that's been seized doesn't disappear when the leader dies. Once all that is sorted, then they just need an appropriate opportunity. Sometimes they just have a pretty big area under their control and declare themselves king. Sometimes a kingdom nearby is weak, so they march over there, defeat the king's forces, and claim the throne. Sometimes the kingdom they're nominally a part of has a monarch that dies childless or with only weak children, and so they march their forces over to the palace and tell everyone that they're king now and anyone who disagrees can talk to the big men with the swords. Sometimes they're part of a democracy or republic or something but they think that's dumb, so they march into the capital and tell everyone that they'd all be better off (ie, not dead) if they switch to a monarchy instead. No matter how you slice it, though, it pretty much always boils down to having enough people who are willing to kill anyone who disagrees that they're the monarch that nobody disagrees.",
"Most royal families date back well over 500 years. Many spring from medieval times, when they controlled a great deal of land, had many serfs living under them, and were lord to many knights and soldiers. They then had the power to expand, taking more land, and getting more money, men, and soldiers at their disposal. Once they have a firm grip on the country, they pass down the crown to their heir, usually the eldest male son. This begins a dynasty. Dynasties continue until either A. Another rival monarch conquers them. Or B. A popular revolution(e.g. the French Revolution) overthrows them.",
"Win wars. Consolidate power. Vanquish foes. Make the rules. Declare your \"kingdom\". Bonus if local religious practise recognises the action of God in victories. Claim the \"divine right\" to rule by virtue of having the power to say so. Have religious authority affirm it. Guard it jealously. Either adopt those who you want to have power after you're gone, or assign it to your eldest who will have grown up immersed in the knowledge and culture of how to maintain your dominion."
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6y827p | Why green is associated with good and red with bad? Since when is this happening? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Green is the color of nature, red is the color of blood and fire. Associating greens with peace and tranquility and reds with danger or passion has been pretty common since ancient times."
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6y8oww | What does North Korea want? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Very simple, the North Korean regime wants to stay in power. This makes them extremely suspicious of the US and South Korea, but also of China.",
"1. To be left alone 2. To force favourable trade deals / relief packages so that.. 3. Things can stay the same",
"North Korea wants two things: 1) Their ruling family and authoritarian government gets to continue, forever, without any pesky \"democracy\". 2) The Korean Peninsula should be unified, as it was before the American Sponsored war, with the NK running all of it. These two things are not both going to happen. Nuclear weapons are mostly about (1), because they see that nuclear powers are not invaded like other countries like Iraq have been. The rest of the world might be OK with (1) without nuclear weapons, but that's putting the decision authority in the hands of the rest of the world, which NK isn't keen on."
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6y8ykk | Where did the 'cursive z' design come from? | The 'cursive z' is probably the letter least like its block letter form: URL_0 I think I can understand why it is preferred in twirly handwriting - there is very little way to connect 'z' to other letters, as there are no flicks and loops. However, how did we land on that design in particular? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So you're totally cool with the [Q]( URL_0 ) ?",
"Warning: the following is based on my own research just now. First of all, cursive writing is very country specific. This way of writing z does not happen for example in German cursive (which however has other letters equally as elaborate and removed from the block type). Which then really changes the question to \"why do people write such elaborate scripts?\", and it eventually comes down to for example the \"Palmer Method\" in the US (and equivalents in other countries) that prescribed a sense of \"beauty\" to handwriting, and specifically the Palmer Method viewed fluid hand motion as a supreme guiding principle. Now, \"z\" is as far removed from fluid hand motion as you can get. But, in the effort of imposing fluidity, they rather sacrificed the letter than the principle of (their notion of) beauty.",
"I'm pretty sure it's based on the letter [Ezh]( URL_0 ) (ʒ) which is the official phonetic symbol for the \"zh\" sound. Doing a little bit of digging, apparently the modern z derived from this Latin cursive symbol ezh, meaning that z originally looked like ʒ and was later truncated into its current form. But retained in certain Latin-derived cursive scripts. Which isn't surprising at all in retrospect since many letters and symbols have evolved into simpler forms over the centuries."
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6y9337 | Is there such a thing as election do-overs in Democracies? | I was thinking mostly of Brexit - where clearly nearly everyone involved thinks it's a bad idea, including those that voted. Why is there no way in democracies to have some kind of referendum where, say, 80% of the nation agrees they re-do the election? Or am I completely misunderstanding how democracy works? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, the UK doesn't have a written constitution, so Parliament can pretty much do whatever the hell it wants. I *believe* that would include the power to cancel Brexit, but I'm definitely not a UK constitutional law scholar. The answer to your question is that it is unnecessary. Democracies all have methods to remove elected officials from office. They have regular elections to ensure government keeps up with voters' desires. And any laws that are passed can be overturned by a new law.",
"There's nothing that stops the U.K. parliament from declaring another referendum if it wants to. I think you're overestimating the extent to which \"nearly everyone\" thinks it's a bad idea--the losing side of an election commonly tries to discredit the election result, and it's easy to make claims about people changing their minds if you don't actually have a second vote. Formal democratic procedure rarely stands in the way of a truly unanimous desire. To answer your main question, there's a few different ways in which some constitutions incorporate the concept of revisiting election results. In parliamentary systems based on the U.K., the most common model, either the parliament itself or another official (often the head of state) can dissolve the parliament and call for new elections. Effectively this means that a party in power is at risk of a new election being called if it ever loses the support of a majority of parliament. In some countries it's rare for parliaments to serve out a full term. Another option is recall elections, whereby a sufficient number of citizens can petition to hold an election that will decide whether the current official will remain in office. The current official runs against competitors even though his term isn't up yet; if he loses the election he is replaced. Additionally there are mechanisms for removing misbehaving officials from office, often by the legislature or a court. But in an effective government these mechanisms are reserved for officials who violate the law and not simply because they are unpopular.",
"That would risk making every individual election and referendum trivial and unimportant. Worse, you can have a country constantly changing it's mind, which leads to uncertainties, which in turn leads to economic issues as foreign companies are less willing to remain. Democratic processes need to have a degree of finality to them, more or less. As far as the legal work around it; you can have as many referendums/elections as your system of government allows. In the case of the UK, parliament can have as many or as few as it wants. In the case of the US, the timing and triggering of elections follows a strict timetable laid out in the Constitution, such that election re-do's are completely impossible without actually amending the Constitution."
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6y9xr9 | How is it that the Japanese court system has a conviction rate of over 99%? Are their detectives just that good? Do the Japanese have less concern culturally over jailing innocent people? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Japan has a low crime rate compared to many nations of similar size, but their legal system is highly corrupt. 95% or higher of convictions involve signed confessions. The prosecution is also understaffed and only bring forth cases they are sure to win. [A 1999 Harvard essay found that Japanese judges who acquit had their careers effectively assassinated.]( URL_0 )"
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6yabbx | The relative simplicity of the English alphabet allows us to apply an almost infinite amount of stylistic transformations to the characters, eg: logos, and it still be readable. Does the Chinese and Japanese alphabet have increased styling limitations due it's characters complexity? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So almost every Kanji/Hanzi characters are made up of a bunch of what are called \"Radicals\" - pieces of these large characters that are put together to make these picture-words. Most of these are four or fewer strokes (though there are some up to 12 strokes), so the complexity isn't that much higher than what you'd see in western characters. You can see a list here: URL_0 . In theory, if you know how you will render these radicals, you can render an entire character set, so it's certainly not a restriction to the written word. However, creating a typeface is different, as these radicals can appear somewhat distorted in a particular character, so you'd have to create the characters by hand. These are entirely the characters in Chinese, but Japanese has two other writing systems used, Hiragana and Katakana. These character sets are on the level of simplicity of English characters and each represent a syllable. So I/me is \"Watashi\". Kanji: 私. Hiragana: わたし. and Katakana (not used for this word): ワタシ. These can much more easily be stylized, and there are significantly fewer characters in these sets. You can see some examples of different Japanese typefaces here: URL_1",
"Not really. It's not like you need to follow some strict rules on how the character curves or lines are written. You can slant or curve or embellish to your artistic leisure. Additionally you can use calligraphy elements. URL_0 You can see variations of the first two and last two characters. First two are \"China\" and last two are \"bank\". There's mix of calligraphy, casual handwriting, block font, mix of things.",
"I would argue that Chinese characters/Japanese kanji have more stylistic variations than the English alphabet, and perhaps most Western alphabets. If you have ever seen a collection of calligraphy either online or in a museum, you may notice that each calligrapher has their own style or way of writing characters. Chinese and Japanese calligraphy is all about the creation of aesthetically pleasing writing, and so this is essentially what the calligraphers are renowned for: the creation of a unique, beautiful style of writing characters. The most renowned calligraphers have created their own style that looks very different to anyone else's. Some characters appear to have been written very quickly, others with a lot of care and time; some characters are very straight and clear, others are more italicized, some have taken their brush off of the paper several times, whereas others have written the character in just one stroke! Here are some examples of different styles of calligraphy (the last one is an example of one-stroke calligraphy): URL_3 URL_5 URL_2 URL_0 One can now see the evolution of Chinese characters very clearly over time. For example, in this image you can see the evolution of 3 different characters (horse; fish; vehicle) from left to right: URL_1 The first characters furthest on the left are the earliest characters we have found and were written thousands of years ago on bones or turtle shells. The ones furthest on the right are the standardized characters used today in a standard font. Although this is more of an evolution of characters than different 'styles', about half-way through this evolutionary timeline we can begin to see more similarities to the way the characters are written today. As many of these characters are thus legible after a certain time, these styles have become part of a cannon of modern-day 'scripts', which are essentially different ways of writing the same character. Please see: URL_4 As you can see here, for example, the cursive script contains less strokes in it than the seal script, but it is still the same character. Within these scripts, you can develop different fonts or styles, as mentioned above, depending on the way you write them. In other news, I have also seen the little dashes or squares in certain characters replaced with cute smiley faces, stars, hearts, etc. in modern-day Chinese and Japanese logos or fonts for posters (I guess it's a bit like dotting your i's with hearts or stars)! This does not really affect the legibility of the character as all the 'parts' of the character are essentially still there.",
"A couple of points on your question. First, it's the **Roman** alphabet, not the English alphabet. Many other languages use Roman letters as I'm sure you know, often with various diacritical marks or sometimes additional characters. Secondly, neither Chinese (as far as I know) nor Japanese have \"an alphabet\". Japanese uses 3 different scripts - hiragana, katakana, and kanji (Chinese characters) or four, counting romaji (Roman characters). Hiragana and Katakana are a collection of *sounds* as much as they are a collection of characters, so they are both *syllabaries* and not an alphabet per se. Kanji I have no idea how limited it may be in terms of creating new fonts, playing with the width or heighth of characters for a certain use, etc. Hiragana and katakana from what I can tell do seem to be broadly similar in how characters are rendered from circumstance to circumstance; の - /no/ - is going to look like that no matter who is writing or maybe creating the font. But there are some variants. り - /ri/ - has one variant that's more common in signage than it is handwritten; な /na/ and ふ /hu/ will see some of the bits combined into one unbroken stroke in typography but the strokes are separate in handwritten forms. As a general guideline, Hiragana is more cursive while katakana is more like block letters. But there's lots and lots of different presentations of those characters in fonts and whatnot. Kanji though I have no idea."
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6ybngo | What exactly does it mean to respect the office of the presidency? | I've heard people say this when speaking of several presidents, but lately, it seems to just be a way of excusing criticism of personal qualities. So what exactly does respecting the office mean? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Here is how Band of Brothers puts it: URL_0 If you are in the US Army, you need to respect the chain of command, even if you personally dislike someone who fills a given role. The Army requires everyone to fill a small role to make up something larger than themselves. The Army is an institution that has give you your rights, responsibilities, powers, and privileges. It has seen fit to put you where you are. It has also seen fit to put others in their roles as well. When you salute a commanding officer, you aren't giving respect to the individual man or woman in that position. You are giving respect to the Army itself. In turn you give respect to the person who occupies that position and you give respect to yourself as well. In the same way, if you respect the US Government, you need to respect the office of the presidency. This is because the same institution that gives you your civic rights, responsibilities, powers, and privileges has also given a certain role to the president. It doesn't matter who fills the office, the office is part of an institution that you are part of and respect. This doesn't mean that you have to like or respect whoever fills the role in the slightest. You can despise the individual who is currently president, but still have respect for the office. To put it another way, if the president was impeached, would you still give respect to the next president? Or to whoever becomes president in 30 years? Do you still have respect for the concept of an American president? That is what it means to give respect to the office of the president. Note, this is assuming that the person who became president did so in a legitimate manner. If someone is elected president after following all the rules of a given election, then they are the rightful leader of the country. If they commit treason in order to seize power, they are not a legitimate president. But again, this is a problem with the individual, not the office itself. So what does this mean in practical terms? If someone you despise is the legitimate president of the United States, you can still follow certain rules/traditions to give respect. You can call them by their official title of Mr. President or Madam President. You can stand at attention when they enter a room. You can acknowledge that that individual has all the powers and trappings of the office of the presidency (ordering nuclear strikes, unilaterally commanding the military, writing executive orders, vetoing bills, etc.) Many people who support the president personally use this idea of respecting the president to stifle criticism and excusing their personal qualities. But that's a politically motivated maneuver, not a requirement of the concept. All you have to do to respect the office of the presidency is to recognize that you respect the United States and acknowledge that the president is its leader. You are still completely free to criticize their policies, their personal qualities, and pretty much everything about them. You are free to vote against them. But recognize that the same thing that gives you the right to vote also gives the president their powers as well."
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6ybthg | why did so many Slavic countries abolish their monarchies immediately following World War 2? | I recently saw this post ( URL_0 ) and noticed that most of the countries near Greece had theirs abolished around 1946. I was just wondering what caused all these countries to decide to remove them then and there. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They didn't \"decide\" a damn thing. Each of those countries was occupied by the Soviets after the war, who supported the rise of communist governments. Those governments, in accordance with communist ideology, abolished the existing monarchies. Also, \"Slavic\" does not mean \"Eastern European\". Hungary, Romania, and Albania, 3 of the countries you were referring to, are not Slavic."
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6yf5ur | Why do modern Nazis deny the Holocaust rather than embrace it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, even *historical* Nazis denied the Holocaust. Right up until the point where the Allies were liberating the camps and publicizing the results, the Nazi regime denied such events were occurring. When Allied Forces were closing in, the Nazis made efforts to cover up the Holocaust. So it's not a situation where the Holocaust was the express public policy of Nazis, flowing directly from their ideology. It was a situation where they knew they were acting atrociously and just hoped they got away with it."
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6ygov9 | what is reverse perspective? | Could anybody explain to me what reverse perspective is? I was reading up on medieval art and why it looks "bad" compared to more contemporary pieces and one of the reasons cited was the use of [reverse perspective]( URL_0 ). Even having read the wikipedia page I don't really understand it. Help! | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So first, take a look at these street scenes: URL_0 You can see that the street is \"narrower\" as you get further away from the viewer, just like a street in real life would look narrower the further away it goes from you. (That is to say, the lines converge at the horizon.) Reverse perspective gets this wrong: the street would be narrower the *closer* it is to the viewer, and wider further away. (That is to say, the lines would converge at the point of view of the *viewer*.) It would look completely absurd, of course, especially because a street scene is one of the scenes where getting perspective right matters most. (That's why it's a standard elementary perspective exercise, because it's a way for your art teacher to illustrate how good things look when you do perspective right.) The throne in that picture is a smaller thing than a street (and thus just looks weird rather than impossible), but you can see that the front of the footstool is *narrower* than the back, because the lines are converge towards the viewer rather than away from the viewer."
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6ygv5r | What is the point of the US Congress drafting resolutions that just condemn something? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically, its the \"sending prayers and good vibes\" of the politics world. They do it when they see something bad going on in the world but dont want to send people/money to help, but they dont want to be accused of doing nothing. Of course sometimes its all the government can do as trying to pass a resolution to send aid can be hard/impossible to pass. Is there an example that you were looking at?"
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6yhz4y | How can Congress bar states from blocking autonomous vehicles? | Don't states have the right to regulate within its own territory via the 10th amendment? The bill blocks states from regulating “the design, construction, or performance” of automated vehicles, clarifying that such power is in federal hands. URL_0 URL_1 | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Congress has the right to regulate Interstate trade and commerce, and guarantees the free travel of US citizens between States. Laws against autonomous vehicles prevents both of those things."
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6yir2k | Why have swear words become seemingly normal for younger kids over time? | I feel like 50 years ago kids around 10-13 would be whispering curse words and laughing, now it just seems like vocabulary to them. And obviously in the 1700-1800's swear words were taken more seriously than now. Why have they lessened in "badness"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the 50's television, you could unironically use many racial, homophobic, or misogynous slurs that would be unthinkable today, but get hassled for one \"damn\". Our sensibilities about vulgarity simply change over time. Today shit and asshole are almost mainstream, but calling something gay or retarded have become a lot less less acceptable."
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6yj809 | How much creative freedom do directors have in movies? And why do we praise them more than writers, even though writers are the "authors" of the story? | They mention directors almost as much as actors when talking about movies. But rarely do you know writers names. Why are directors always portrayed as more important than the people who actually wrote the story? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A movie script is not like a book. The level of detail is much much thinner. They give a setup for a scene, they give the dialogue, but the visualization the actual creation of the story is in the directors hands. So much so that the director returns the script to the writers a dozen times or more and has them rewrite scenes to fit the directors vision. In many cases the initial idea isnt even the writers....they are often no more than paid wordsmiths constructing a guide to the directors vision for the actors and crew to reference.",
"Movies are a visual medium. Even though the writer comes up with the story the director is the one who brings that story to life, and the success of the film is much more up to them than the writing. Directors also change the script dozens of times throughout production. The amount of creative freedom depends on who it is. Spielberg has 100% creative freedom as part of his contract, called the [\"final cut privilege\"]( URL_0 ). He has the clout to jeopardize the future of a film by walking away, so producers are willing to meet his demands. However, a newbie director would not have this authority, and the producers may attempt to alter his vision significantly. Ultimately they are the ones paying for the film, and they can do that."
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6yl6vc | Why are there so many diss tracks? Where and why did it start? | E.G; Swish Swish by Katy Perry, Look What You Made Me Do by Taylor Swift, Logang DISS TRACK by Jake Paul - to name a few (there's some earlier ones I don't remember) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"See 2pac vs. Biggie. Still making money till this day from dissing each other. Why is always about money.",
"Youtubers specifically do it mostly because their fans like drama. Most of the time it's all fake drama."
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6ylndi | why in the English language do we use different letters or combinations of them to make the same sound | EG: Box / rocks... Lei / lay | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"r/linguistics Whenever we talk about words in any language, we have to go study the etymology of the word to figure out why we pronounce, spell, or use that word in the modern fashion. As an example, the \"box/rocks\" question you've posed suggests two things. The first being different origin languages, and the second being different evolution from the origin language. \"Box\" comes from the Greek \"puxos\", whereas \"rock\" comes from the Medieval Latin \"rocca\". When words evolve over centuries, we tend to keep at least some of the original spelling, hence \"puxos\" becoming \"box\" to retain the \"x\", and \"rocca\" becoming \"rock\" to retain the hard \"c\". Adding \"s\" to pluralize \"rock\" comes from Modern English, so we're using a modern language rule to modify a Medieval language origin word."
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6ymkoh | Why do people still inhabit areas which are susceptible to high-impact tropical storms, and other weather disasters? | I'm in my 30s now, but ever since I was a kid, terms like "tornado alley" and "hurricane season" have been really confusing. Why do people live in these places? In the age of scientific understanding, where everyone is atheists, it's not like we can collectively write these off as a "random act of God!" A quick google search shows that tropical storms are increasing in frequency and intensity over the years, and will likely continue to do so for the next few decades. The following areas are, apparently, all at increasingly high risk of high intensity tropical storms: Southeast Florida (Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach) Key West and the Florida keys Southwest Florida (Fort Myers-Naples) West Florida (Tampa-St. Petersburg-Sarasota-Clearwater) Outer Banks islands, NC (Cape Hatteras) Central Texas Gulf coast (Galveston) Central Florida Atlantic coast (Melbourne-Cocoa Beach) Florida Panhandle (Pensacola-Panama City) Central Gulf coast (New Orleans, LA-Biloxi, MS-Mobile, AL) South Texas Gulf coast (Corpus Christi-Brownsville) Granted, they are beautiful places. But how and why do people live comfortably and happily knowing that any summer now, their life and everything they own might get blown away by a tropical storm. I don't get it. Someone please explain. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Every area is susceptible to some kind of disaster. We still need access to ports/ vacation areas (hurricanes/tsunamis), timber (forest fires), agriculture (tornadoes), movies and computer parts (earthquakes/forest fires/droughts/mudslides). It's just \"the cost of doing business.\"",
"Where exactly should these millions of displaced people live? In areas prone to drought? Earthquake zones? The Australian outback? The frozen permafrost plains of Siberia? Belgium? Communities grew up there in the first place because they had access to important resources, whether it's fertile land, water, trade, oil, etc. And these things are still important: for example, Mobile, Alabama grew up because it was on the coast close to areas where cotton could (and still can) be grown, so it was the perfect place to ship cotton through. During WW2, its location made it a great place to build warships. In short, you can't move shipbuilding yards a few hundred miles inland. And most places have their own dangers, so you're never risk-free.",
"Some of it is because they're infrequent. Some of it is because we're an adaptable species, and capable of building to withstand most things if we put our mind to it. Some of it is just because we're stubborn and bloody-minded, and convinced that all the bad things will happen to other people.",
"In the case of where I live on the south Carolina coast we have had 3-4 major hurricanes hit here in the last 25 years I can't think of any major repairs being needed to be done to any of the houses I have lived in since I was of the age to remember. The building codes are also different in regards to what they have to build to wind speed wise. Also it's an amazing place to live.",
"A reason is probably not enough money to move somewhere else, so you're stuck in that place and paying for mortage Another I could think of is because it's probably cheap and people can afford to rebuild their houses if the hurricane destroys their house",
"Why do people live in earthquake areas or wildfire areas or near a volcano? You think there are parts in this country that is safe from natural disasters? If there is somewhere safe from all natural disasters do you think every person could live there? I went through Katrina and it was the worst experience of my life, but I am not going to live in fear or run and hide just because of one bad event that has happened to me in 43 years..."
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6yn5ex | what is the the Treaty of Westphalia | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The treaty was signed in what is known as the \"Peace of Westphalia\" in 1648. There were several multi-front wars going on at the time. The 30 year's war was going on between the Catholic and the Protestant nations in Europe. It started when the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor (nominal leader one step above a King who had fealty from the many nation-states in the German region) stated that all the subjects must officially be Catholic, which ticked off the northern German nations who had embraced the Protestant faith. Both sides gathered allies and began duking it out. At the same time the 80 year's war had been going on which was basically the entire Netherlands / Dutch region refusing to submit to Habsburg rule. This was an area that had previously been the Kingdom of Burgundy and its Dutch/Flemish subjects, but when the King of Burgundy died heirless it was inherited by the Spanish King, who was also elected Holy Roman Empire, meaning that Spain controlled an absolutely massive empire. The Dutch basically started revolting claiming they had nothing in common with their Habsburg overlord, and he had to struggle a lot with them especially since the other rulers in Europe didn't want to see such a massive Spanish Empire. The peace ended both wars by recognizing an independent Dutch nation, reinforcing sovereignty of faith (each nation in Europe had the right to be Catholic, Protestant, Calvinist, etc. as desired), and establishing a balance of power meant to curb nations getting out of control by them having to respect other state's rights.",
"It was a peace treaty that ended the Thirty Years' War. It was the beginning of a era of international law, states were bound to respect the sovereignty of each other and not interfere in the internal affairs of other states. This concept is still with us today."
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6yn906 | Why do newspapers get basic facts wrong so often? | Mostly thinking of local papers I've seen since those are the only facts I can verify easily... I'm not talking about fake news or spin or that nonsense, but rather just misreporting what people say and what events are happening in a way that is politically neutral but seems sloppy. For example, the speakers who will be at an upcoming event, the names of organizations, and also misquoting people. Do reporters just take really vague notes? Is it a speed thing where they can't bother to check stuff because of deadlines? You would think in the age of email, internet, and audio recording that this wouldn't be so common. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm a journalist at a local paper in a town of about 50,000. I've been here since May and had to issue two corrections. The first, I misidentified two of three people in a photo. I interviewed them as a group and just wrote their names down right to left. They were not in that order for the picture. My second correction was because I did a great story and forgot to include when and where the event actually was. No one wants to make a mistake, but between deadlines and writing on issues you might not understand sometimes they just happen. If the paper has any integrity as soon as a mistake is noticed a correction is done on the web story and the next day the correction is shown in the paper.",
"Beginners work at your local paper, unless you live in Washington or a couple of other big cities. They are just out of journalism school, or freelancers trying to get their start in the business. They do their best, but it's not the big-resource newsroom you see in a movie. When they build experience and get good at things, they take new jobs and work for better-paying, more correct, sources.",
"Journalists are jounalists. Not scientists, not polititians, ... they wont be able to report scientific facts or political agendas with the accuracy you would expect from someobe that actually studied and works in those fields. This is why you ALWAYS have to take journalism with a grain of salt and if you are interested in the topic you got a rough cut from a newspaper about you should go look for more information from different sources including scientific journals for example"
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6yo0cm | How are fake languages like Klingon, Dothraki,and Na’vi created? Also why do some people like to learn these languages instead of learning a language they could actually use? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Why would people learn them? It's fun! If you're a die-hard Trekkie, why wouldn't you wanna know Klingon? How are they created? People make them up, literally. Bonus tip: that's how the real languages were made, too.",
"Fantasy writers often love world building. This often includes making up brand new cultures to explore various themes within the media. If the writer is so inclined, they'll go so far as create languages to augment the culture. Tolkien, for example, built his worlds around languages he invented, and crafting elves around a more lighter, flowing language gave them a mysterious, mystical character. On the other hand, many writers give warlike cultures languages short, gruff sounding languages, portraying the culture as unknown and hostile. As for why some fans learn the langauges? They simply enjoy it. Yes, they could learn a more useful language, but they simply might not enjoy those as much to follow through.",
"The way Klingon was created is quite illustrative, although not every conlang -- short for \"constructed language\", a more technical term than \"fake language\" -- is created in the same way. The linguist, a man called Marc Okrand, began with some random grunts that had featured in the first *Star Trek* movie. He began by drawing up a \"phonology\", a list of the different sounds that exist in the language. Obviously, he began with the sounds that had already been heard, but they weren't enough to create a whole language. The phonology needed to sound alien, so he aimed for a list of sounds that would not be typical for a human language. In linguistics, there are certain rules about languages in general -- any language that has *this* sound also has *that* sound, for example. So Okrand broke as many of those rules as he could, and made sure that Klingon has *this* sound, but not *that* sound. For example, the Klingon \"t\" is pronounced like the English \"t\", but the Klingon \"D\" is pronounced with the tongue pulled further back; there is a sound similar to English \"sh\", but no \"z\" sound; and so on. Paramount also wanted the language to sound harsh and aggressive, so he had lots of consonants but only a few vowels. With that inventory of sounds, he started to build up a vocabulary and a grammar. First, he needed to establish the usual word order. The basic word order is which order you put the subject, the object and the verb in. Almost 90% of human languages are either SOV (e.g. Japanese, Hindi, etc) or SVO (English, Mandarin Chinese, etc); only 1% of human languages are OVS, so Okrand went for OVS. He built up a grammar by basically cherry-picking features of various different languages -- especially Asian languages, which is his area of expertise. He decided that Klingon would have no verb \"to be\", which wasn't a problem until he was asked to translate the famous \"to be or not to be\" soliloquy from *Hamlet*. Whatever exotic features he could find (or invent) and combine in ways not typical for human languages would do. During filming, he was on set to coach the actors and tell the director whether the delivery was good enough. He also modified the language on-the-fly: in one instance, Christopher Lloyd fluffed his line and missed a couple of syllables, but Okrand felt that the line sounded great as it was, and just added a new grammar rule to the language to make what Lloyd had said correct. Officially, of course, Klingon isn't much use as a real day-to-day language because its vocabulary is so small: it's easier to say something like, \"Target their warp core!\" than, for example, \"They didn't have skimmed, so I got semi-skimmed instead.\" For a very long time, Klingon had a word for the bridge of a ship, but not one for a road bridge. Fans have invented their own words to fill in the gaps, but they're not \"official\"; however, it is an excellent intellectual pursuit, if you're into that sort of thing and enjoy a challenge, which is probably one reason it's so popular.",
"Klingon is a crazy tale... in the first movie back in 79 an James Doohan the actor made it up and passed it to Mark Lenarnd who wrote it down as he herd it. in the Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett wanted it to be structured language instead of bullshit and gibberish so got in touch with a Guy called Marc Okrand who was a linguist. Marc was a master of how these thing work and went to town enlarged the lexicon and developed a grammar based on Doohan's original dozen or so words to a full dictionary. While based on human natural languages, is intended to sound alien to human ears Okrand selected sounds that combined in ways not generally found in real languages. but worked. Why learn it I know a lot of the Klingon fans love the culture the honor and all that kind of thing great and due to the love of it want it more than dull \"real\" things. only word I know is Qapla' mean's goodbye (literally to victory/to success) It's a full and real thing that took time and effort Dothraki is newer but of the same vain there is a guy called David J. Peterson who has made up a ton of them Inc Dothraki and he has a Youtube chanel URL_0 Navi in the film was a fucking mess with free word order and a tiny mount of words. a number of them are loan words from English mispronounced.",
"How are they made? Very much like any other language, but much faster and typically with a central authority (the creator). Most languages actually have a lot in common. You have a syntax, a grammar, and many words that describe different concepts (with different levels of granularity). It's actually been shown that babies have an innate ability for human speech. Which is why pretty much all natural languages have similar rules and babies can learn the language they're raised in at similar paces. The core of a language is its syntax. That's what we call the rules of the language. It determines how sentences can be laid out. For example, we typically have subjects and objects in sentences (sometimes they're implied, and thus not explicitly spoken/written). Then we have types of words like verbs (which describe actions that affect some subject) and adjectives (which describe something). There's actually quite a few different theories on how we came up with the syntax of the languages that just naturally evolved, but with artificial languages, the author can easily set their own rules. Many created languages can end up being a lot stricter than some of ours today, as a result. Languages like English simply have some very lax syntax (which is a reason it can be such a difficult language to learn for non-native speakers). Anyway, then you just come up with words. You can come up with them as needed, but there's obviously a few things you typically want, like modifiers. You want an obvious and consistent way to be able to convert a word to plural (eg, in english, we usually add \"s\" to the end of the word, but there's a LOT of exceptions to this rule). You'd want to have modifiers to negate something (eg, the \"im\" in \"impossible\" is a modifier to negate \"possible\"). Languages like English have so many exceptions because it comes from many sources and doesn't have a central authority, but created languages can keep things consistent (which makes it easier to learn). Obviously you can't make words for everything, but that's the case for every language. People make new words for things all the time. Often they start out as slang or proper nouns, but over time get accepted (eg, \"kleenex\" was initially a proper noun, but now really is just a regular ol' noun that is synonymous with facial tissues). And sometimes we steal words from other languages. Artificial languages could do this, but often are too new to have had a great deal of evolution, and the speakers of the languages often prefer to keep the languages consistent with the theme of them. The creator might gradually add new words over time as they get accepted or thought up. And of course, words need not be officially accepted by some central authority; all that's needed is for them to be widely used. And why would people learn the languages? Usually just for fun. The vast majority of artificial languages, however, are probably never truly learned by anyone (even their creator). They'll be made specifically for some world the creator built and the creator will do their best to always use the language in that world in a consistent way. It's just for fun and realism (it's very practical to just have everyone speak English in works of fiction, but certainly not realistic)."
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6yo65m | How do adult fast food workers in Manhattan live on what they make? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> So I guess they must commute from a LONG way away to work at a McDonald's in Time Square Not that long, New York has an excellent subway and train system. You can commute from the north Bronx, south Brooklyn, or East Queens in about an hour. > why would they commute that far when there must be dozens or 100's of fast food places nearer to where they live? Because the ones in Manhattan pay better, for that precise reason."
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6yo74s | Why is there some much violence against women in (mainstream) porn? | Don't most people just want to watch two people have sex which they are both enjoying? This is particularly true in blowjobs - it seems that most scenes have the woman deepthroating to the point of gagging. I have never met a person that enjoys gagging. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmovwuj"
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"text": [
"Don't mistake violence for doing something you don't like to please your partner, that happens all the time, both in and out of the bedroom. Also, its raincoat and dirty book store roots are still deeply embedded in the porn industry. Porn used to be hard to find, so it often adopted a \"something for everyone\" mentally, where each movie has to go down a check list of positions and kinks to appeal to the broadest audience possible."
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6ys1wf | Why did the US red states blue states flip in the 60's? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's complicated. There are many factors and this would be a better question for r/askhistorians but I'll try to summarize it here. From the time of the civil war, Republicans dominated the northern states and anti-war democrats dominated the southern states. This came to be known as the \"solid south\"; a reliable voting bloc for democrats for decades. As civil rights become a prominent issue in the 50's and 60's, the southern Democrats started to split with their northern counterparts. There were essential 2 factions of Democrats. The northern liberal Democrats (Think Kennedy) and the southern \"Dixie-crats\" who were conservative and pro-segregation (Think Strom Thurmond). In the early 60's, Republicans developed the so called \"southern strategy\" to court white southern voters who were conservative and against racial integration. This led to a large realignment of white voters in the south who switched from Democrats to Republicans. Likewise, northern moderate republicans gradually began to shift to the Democratic party."
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6ytlk1 | How can so many employers in Florida make employees come in despite a hurricane? | I've seen a lot of people posting that they have to choose to evacuate or keep their job. What kind of labor laws does Florida have that lets employers force people to come in during a natural disaster? Are there no federal regulations about working during disasters? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Florida has at-will employment, like most everywhere in the US, so an employer can fire you for pretty much any reason that's not specifically prohibited (e.g. your race or a physical disability). There are no special protections for hurricanes. If your boss says come in and you don't, they can fire you. OSHA requires employers to keep a safe workplace, so if you have to work during a hurricane and feel that that's unsafe, you can report your employer for that. Also, if you're in a mandatory evacuation area it may be illegal to stay and it's usually illegal to fire someone for refusing to do an illegal activity, so you might be able to fight it on those grounds. If you're not in a mandatory evacuation zone, though, you're pretty much out of luck."
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6yvy5w | Egypt is a country on the African Continent, yet a lot of common folk (not historians or anthropologists) seem to see it and its ancient achievements as "separate" from the rest of the African continent. Why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's based on two major geographical features: The Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert. Look at [this map.]( URL_1 ) Imagine you live in Cairo. You want to interact with another culture. Are you going to walk across the entire Sahara desert to reach Sub-Saharan Africa? Or are you going to get on a comfortable ship and trade with all the ports in Southern Europe? This is why Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya are also interact more with Europe than with Africa. Humans have always been influenced more by water and other geographic features than by arbitrary borders. If you look at the [population distribution of Egypt,]( URL_0 ) you'll see that almost every human lives along the Nile River or in the Nile River delta. The parts in the Sahara without water are almost completely empty.",
"Because the people who inhabited North Africa back then (and now, actually) were pretty distinct from the rest of Africa owing to having a desert the size of China in the way, and shared more in common with the people of the Middle East.",
"We assocate alot of places by region not continent. Egypt is part of the middle eastern region and so its associated with it and it's achievement since they traded and devolved with that part of the world. The rest of civilized Africa evolved in a much different way than the middle east because of everything with their region"
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