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6ywy9w | what's the point of runway shows with outrageous clothing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"*Haute couture* is intended to communicate the designers ideas in an artistic extremely memorable way. Later they'll design ready-to-wear collections that will be more like what buyers are actually buying. They do this to sell the later collections to store buyers. It's a little like the ads, such as Corona's that always show the product on beaches, even though many people drinking Corona will be nowhere near a beach. An example of how couture ideas become clothes can be seen in the image at the top of [this page]( URL_0 ). An extreme version on the left shows (the outrageous clothing) that the designer is thinking asymmetric silhouette, floral patterns, and a long slit which were preserved in the ready to wear garment and the ideas were very, very much more muted in the diffusion collection (keeping only the bold floral color, but using a single color and while the skirt is still asymmetric it's much less boldly asymmetric than the other two). More people will actually wear clothes like the dress on the far right.",
"It's a form of artistic expression and creative design. It is not meant to be worn by people on the street. Runway shows for consumer products is called \"ready-to-wear\" fashion.",
"It is basically the same purpose as concept cars. The idea is to remove practical considerations and letting creativity reign, and see where the ideas take you. No one expect anyone to wear those clothes or drive those cars, but it might result in new combination of fabric and colors that could filter down into regular clothing. Also, it is for people in the industry, not the public, so there are a lot of in jokes and oneupmanship going on that might not make sense to the public.",
"It's art, dude! Those clothes aren't MEANT to be practical everyday clothes for real people to wear. It's like taking the designer's vision to the most extreme version, and provoking thought about what clothing really is and what it has the capacity to be--because when you think about it, clothing is a sort of fascinating thing. It's not just a practical, utilitarian thing--it communicates so much about a person's background, their wealth, their profession, their location, their interests, their viewpoints, their gender and sexuality, their age, even their politics ... even a \"neutral\" outfit of a white t-shirt and blue jeans communicates something about the wearer. It's all about playing with an idea, thinking about how human bodies move and interact with the world and their garments, celebrating the fibers and materials and pushing them to their limits, exploring shapes and movement, and so on. And then some of those ideas actually do get applied to clothes that actually are designed for people to wear, but often in way more subtle ways."
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6yxzkf | Why there are not any new popular religions? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Define new. Mormonism is fairly new as far as religions go and in the areas it is expanding it is completely new. Scientology is fairly new and started only a few decades ago. There are lots of popular \"gurus\" and such in India. Falun Gong has between 10-70 million followers. All sorts of New Age BS started in the 60's and a lot of it got popular. Unitarianism started in the 60's. They come and go.",
"I would disagree with the premiss. No of the largest 6 in the word are less the 1400 years old but 7 Falun Gong is 60 years old and 8 Sikhism is ~500 years old (That is if Falun Gong is considered a religion). It would be surprising if the larges on was old since they have hade time to grow. Falun Gong is likely the fastest to reach 100 million but it is not that fare to compare that way because of the increased population on earth. The world population was only ~170 when Christianity was founded and 200 milion when Islam was funded Scientology is a example of a new religion founded in 1956 and have between 40,000 to 200.0000 members. The number is contested and the 200,000 was for 2001 and it has declined to take a example know in the west Caodaism found in Vietnam in 1926 has 4-6 million followers. Falun Gong with origins in 1950s China with 80-100 million followers can be considered a religion even if the don't them self, the reason i partly that religion was not popular by the government of communist China Tenrikyo with origins in 1838 japan from 1838 has 5 million followers Bahá'í Faith if from 1844 in Persia with 5-7 million followers Cheondoism from 1812 Korea has 3-4 millions followers depending on how you trust stats from North Korea Hòa Hảo from 1939 Vietnam has 1.5–3 Those except for Scientology was from Medium-sized religions on a [Major religious groups wiki page]( URL_0 ) and was founded since 1800 Some even argue that Mormonism is different enough from Christianity to be a separate religion. A thing to notice with religions is that most of them are varians and takes ideas for other religions. There is a reason that Judaism, Christianity and Islam is known as Abrahamic religions and Christianity was considered a sect within Judaism in the beginning. There might be sect today that in the future might be considered independent religions."
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6z0ytf | Women are more likely to attempt suicide, but men are more likely to succeed. Why? | Are women more likely to attempt it because they're more likely to be sexually abused, or is there another reason? Are men more likely to succeed solely because they're more likely to use guns, or are men actually more intent on dying when they do try even if they try less often? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Women are more likely because they didn't succeed the first time. Repeat attempts are a large part of this phenomenon. Men succeed more because they choose more violent methods with higher mortality rates. I've heard it said that it's because women consider the clean up and whatnot more than men that they choose less bloody methods. Not sure how true this is though.",
"The method of suicide makes a big difference. Men tend to use firearms which have a very high likelihood of succeeding, especially if used on the head. With other methods such as overdosing on medication or cutting yourself there is more of a chance you can be saved if you are found. Women tend to use methods other than firearms. A speculation of mine is that there may be also be a difference in the likelihood of people being nearby based on gender.",
"I'd suggest it's more to do with \"A cry for help\" vs \"I've reached the end, this is it.\" Speaking in broad sweeping generalisations, women tend to be more in tune with their emotions whereas men are more prone to internalise their pain. As a result women are more likely to have a network of friends, family, colleagues or associates they can turn to in times of crisis before the issues exacerbate out of control. Men, by contrast, will allow their issues to develop as they either ignore, deny, or try to single-handed power their way through. Men; don't be scared to talk.",
"> are men actually more intent on dying when they do try even if they try less often? Short answer is yes for this. Men tend to think it through and be very intent and thorough; typically choosing suicide methods with high mortality rates and little chance of not working. > Are women more likely to attempt it because they're more likely to be sexually abused, or is there another reason? Women are generally regarded as more emotional than men, which could lead to more \"spur of the moment\" actions. This answers 2 questions at once because it also says why men are more successful - if women are trying to commit suicide it could be the heat of a moment and be tried without planning or enough intent, just running off of an emotional high. The reasons behind suicide attempts are countless, it could be 1 single event or it could be the culmination of a lifetime of bad luck.",
"I think it's because like you said, men will resort to more lethal methods. Men are more likely to use guns or a noose while women are more likely to try and OD.",
"Women use pills and have to try multiple times. Men shoot themselves or jump or hang themselves and succeed the first time.",
"Men attempt suicide less yet succeed more at doing it than women. Probably because when being made to 'suffer in silence', there's no one there to intervene when they're doing the suicidal act making it more probable that they will succeed in killing themselves."
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6z1uzh | How and why do cemeteries arrange their plots so close together? | I have this question every time I see a cemetery, all the headstones/crosses are so close together. The average length of a casket is 7 feet and I’m just baffled. Are they lying on top each other? Is it just a headstone? Buried cremated remains? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are not lying on top of each other, at least in the US. A plot here normally has 6 inches to a foot on each side of it to separate it from the other plots, but some older cemeteries which were dug by hand have a larger buffer. Land is expensive so they make the plots as small as they possibly can in order to sell as many as possible."
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6z25yx | Why is Fidel Castro seen as a villain, and Ché Guevara seen as a hero, when they worked side by side on the same campaign? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bottom line, people don't know history. **Nigel H. Jones**, British historian and journalist said: \"*It is a sad reflection of the warped moral mirror of our time that it is Guevara, the squalid killer and totalitarian tyrant, who remains, more than 40 years after his death, the iconic emblem of ignorant idealists the world over*.\" Most people only know Guevara because of his face plastered on T-shirts or from the move \"*The Motorcycle Diaries*\" which was adapted from a book written by Guevara himself. In his book he paints himself as a hero. He stands up against tyranny of the evil Catholic Church and it's nuns who refuse to feed the starving people. In actuality he was the leader of the Cuban Revolution's first firing squad, and ruled over Cuba's labor camp system where homosexuals and other undesirable members of the community were held and then executed. in these camps, modeled after the Soviet gulags, he acted as judge, jury and executioner of which he personally took pride. Guevara said: \"*To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary… These are the procedures of the bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the teaching of the Wall!*\" The sack of excrement known as Guevara had no redeeming qualities at all. He was a murder and a tyrant full of hate. The fact that many on the left see him as some type of hero, a Latin American version of the civil rights leaders of history like Dr. Martin L King, clearly shows that they have no knowledge of history. The truth is far different. **Anthony Daniels**, British psychiatrist said of the movie \"*The Motorcycle Diaries*\": \"*It is as if someone were to make a film about Adolf Hitler by portraying him as a vegetarian who loved animals and was against unemployment. This would be true, but ... rather beside the point*.\"",
"Che is also seen as a villain by most Americans. It is only a specific subculture that view him as a hero.",
"Lots of reasons. Without getting into ideology, just some differences: 1) Che was never a head of state and heads of state become figureheads, especially in the case of Cold War era tensions 2) Che is recognized as someone who gave up a life of some privileged to fight in a revolution. Castro is seen as someone who consolidated power and lived a live of privilege (again I am not making a judgement on if these judgement are fair, because I am fairly certain a level-headed conversation about Cuba is not likely to occur on reddit). 3) Che died young, became something of a martry. Castro lived forever or something. 4) Worth noting some people love both, some hate both. But the general cultural view in the US (right or wrong) is Castro is av evil, communist tryrant and Che is a false profit for young leftists. To be honest, there is a middle ground between the hero worship on the one hand, and US anti-communism ideology which is pervasive in the media"
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6z2iry | Why do certain politicians get voted into office repeatedly despite not doing a good job? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People complain about politicians as a group, but typically like \"their guy\", and hate everyone else's. For example, Ted Cruz of Texas has been under fire for asking for disaster funds for Texas while voting against the same sort of assistance for victims of Sandy in the northeast. To most people, this makes him a hypocritical asshole. But to the people who vote for him, he is helping them rebuild their houses, so he doesn't have to care what the rest of the country thinks.",
"Gerrymandering is a big culprit for the House of Representatives URL_0 Parties have figured out ways to make sure their districts are drawn up (sometimes in shapes that are really bizarre) to ensure certain types of voters are there and others are not. Ie, a conservative Republican would be in a district with less urban voters and vice versa. The redistricting takes place after the census (or during the census, someone can help clear this up) and often the power to draw these maps are derived from who control state legislative bodies (though this can vary by state). The GOP currently controls something liek 68 of 99 legislative bodies so they are likely to have a lot of influence in the shape of the districts followinng the 2020 census. This will help protect GOP incumbents which may help explain why many voted for a health care bill that polled with between 12-25 percent support.",
"People do complain about politicians all the time, but they rarely complain about their representatives. It is all the others that are not doing a good job.",
"One big reason is gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is when voting districts are drawn in ways specifically designed to consolidate power. Two popular methods are Packing and Cracking. Packing is when you draw the district in such a way as to pack the opposition into one or two districts while spreading the people who will vote for you out over many. Cracking is when you make districts to spread the opposition thin so as many as possible have more of your people than the opposition's people. Packing is far more relevant to your question, however, so we'll focus on that. Now, with packing, what we generally get is extremely safe districts for both sides, where you've got a bunch of very bright red and very bright blue with very little purple. Because of this, and because this has been done in the vast majority of america, people are generally happy with their specific political representative, even though they are unhappy with the general state of things, because hey, their representative has the right letter by their name on the ballot, and many people can't be bothered to look into things beyond that. This, a lack of term limits, and increasing voter cynicism (which is frankly not unwarranted at this point) results in an extremely stable incumbency for most legislators, particularly representatives. Because think about it. How many people really know who their legislator is and what they stand for? And it's a hard problem to fix because of just how much inertia there is now.",
"Probably the biggest reason for this is people don't follow politics and vote mostly based on party affiliations. Voters are more concerned about do they have an R or D next to their name on the ballot than on their performance in office.",
"Usually because they know how to appeal to a certain set of voters, *and* no competitor in their area has come up with an alternative set of ideas and rhetoric that makes *other* voters bother to vote. Also, because in some areas voters support a certain *party* regardless of how lame a certain candidate is.",
"Incumbents are much more likely to win because it seems safer to take the known evil over an unknown.",
"The fact that they're collectively unpopular is moot because they're not elected collectively. If a senator or representative is popular with their constituents, that's all they need to get re-elected."
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6z2ukw | Why didn't the industrial revolution take place a 1000 years ago,Why was our progress so exponential in the last 400 years? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It was a slow build based on a large number of innovations that had to happen in sequence. Perhaps most important were an *agricultural surplus* (improvements in farming productivity that meant not everyone had to raise food) and the *renaissance* (a growing cultural belief that knowledge was valuable, and that humans rather than only God could improve life on Earth).",
"It's the printing press. That's the reason. I think the printing press is more responsible than any other single cause. Gutenberg was 1440, but remember it took time for the devices to actually be used for more than religious propaganda. The printing press allowed for accurate, large scale reproduction of knowledge. Printed words don't change with people's memories, and with presses, they can be distributed to a large number of people. This is what allowed knowledge to be distributed and stored past individual people's lifetimes. In addition, now that there was a large pool of knowledge in many people's hands, it would have been obvious that the knowledge was _conflicting_. One person said one thing, another another, about the same physical process. This is where the scientific method came from - you needed a formal way to determine who was right. Once you had the scientific method plus printing press, the current age was more or less inevitable. Printing press is a method that allows for an ever growing pool of knowledge to be stored. Scientific method acts like a slow filter, winnowing out bad knowledge in favor of good. If you think about it, high density computers are a super-printing press. All the books ever written will almost fit on your tablet, you can send information around instantly, etc. And the growing age of artificial intelligence is going to let us fix the other problems - there's too much accurate, scientific information for any one human to know all or even most of it, and we can't store the personalities of our best engineers so their skills are lost when they die.",
"Although it is hard to qualify progress, it very well could have been exponential the whole time. [This]( URL_0 ) is an exponential function. You notice the beginning of the curve is pretty flat, not a lot of apparent change until you get towards the end. Exponential doesn't just mean fast growth. It means very fast growth when the values are large, and slower growth when they are small.",
"The short version of the answer is that technological, academic, and economic progress were tepid at best during the dark ages. [Edit: I use the term 'dark ages' here lightly, 400-~1400 AD represented a seismic shift in philosophy that turned toward superstition rather than empirical knowledge. This started changing around perhaps 1000 or 1100 or so; but as with all history, transitions between epochs are generally not neat and tidy. The term is not great, but it's what I've got]. It was not until after the protestant reformation firmly took hold and had a couple generations of history behind it that enough of the percentage of Europe's population felt confident enough being \"revolutionary\" to seed the mindsets that ultimately led to the industrial revolution. The Greeks and Romans made good progress in terms of art, mathematics, science, and technology and may have made the jump to an industrial society (or at least birthed a society that did this). By about 300 AD or so they had developed geometery--the same that we learn in high school today, in fact; as well as most trigonometry that we understand today. They had toy steam engines and (analog) vending machines that would do tricks (sort of like those fortune teller boxes from last century). We aren't talking about food dispensing here, more like blessings from the temple god/goddess sort of thing. They had small steam engines, though they never made the leap from \"amusing gimmick\" to \"useful machine\". The machinists and tinkerers were playing around with geared wheels. They were working on problems like surveying, architecture, canals, and what we might loosely call railroads. [This guy, Hero, is perhaps the most well known]( URL_1 ) but there were a good many others doing similar things in the region. The Dark Ages are most often marked as beginning with the abolition of Paganism by the rising Holy Roman Church, most notably with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria under Bishop Cyril. [Hypatia]( URL_2 ) is the character to watch there. For various reasons she was seen as a political enemy of Cyril. She was an academic and had a wide following in the area, and was pagan. She was a perfect target for someone with authority who claimed the church as a backer, and who adopted from (other) pagans the idea that the natural world is dirty and dangerous and to be expelled. That mysticism and withdrawal from study of the empirical was the way to salvation. These ideas were widespread in the church at the time, and with Rome's political power waning it was less and less likely to find practical support for academia, for classical arts, music, math, etc. The church very much accepted the idea that came to signify the middle ages--that the road to holiness involved rejecting empirical study, aesthetic pleasure, fine art, practical trades, and pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. [Edit: yes, the Church did ultimately come to support many academic and art personalities, though those were almost exclusively after the Rennaisance had started. At the onset of the Church's rise to power these factors were heavily discouraged]. There were several times in the ensuing 1200 or so years where it appeared the west was on the cusp of breaking out of this mold, but until the protestant reformation made it possible to foment ideological revolt we lapsed back to the veil of mysticism each time. That is not to say protestant denominations embraced academia or capitalism, indeed many such religious doctrines were just as oppressive of these things as the Catholic Church. But the seeds of freedom of thought had taken root, and the benefits the reformation built into society benefited the intellectuals and the tinkerers just as much as they did the religious. This took off in the late 1400s, and really hit its stride in the early 1600s (Columbus was a 2nd gen product of the initial stages of this process, the American colonies a product of its peaking; 1492-1670ish or roughly the time from the American Civil War to today). The rise of capitalism as a form of economy allowed ideas and innovations to flourish. If an inventor did not or could not take advantage of something, someone else was sure to see their gadget or discovery and find a way to exploit it. Unintended consequences spilled over into academia, like Galileo using a spyglass to study the heavens instead of terrestrial distances. Even though Italy and the church did not like these discoveries, they were celebrated elsewhere. The fragmentation of political vs. religious power vs. economic power had a significant role in this, though the threads are difficult to separate. With that fragmentation of political vs. religious power came the capacity for whole societies to evolve with wildly differing variables, some for better, some for worse; most up and down. New economic practices could be tested, new gadgets and philosophies could be fought over without fear of political discipline (at least in some areas). In order to for one power to keep up with another it now became necessary to fund innovation, and not simply wait for someone in their workshop to fiddle around and stumble across something curious--this is where the rise of the great artists and inventors came from. A lord or a state would finance individuals who had a propensity for art or invention (Leonardo de Vinci was one such). This was a distinct break from earlier times in the dark ages where superstition and mysticism and illiteracy combined to keep populations in a quite literal intellectual darkness. Copernicus and da Vinci and others arguably used references from the earlier Classical personalities to jump start their ideas. They picked up where the much earlier generations had left off when Cyril (well, the Church really) had interrupted. Today, in what we might call 'late stage capitalism', a lot of people are talking about changing economic structures; and that is a conversation worth having. But in its earlier stages capitalism was almost inarguably responsible for the wild success in technologies, philosophies, political, artistic, and intellectual changes that gave rise to the Renaissance (and the subsequent industrial and political revolutions). One last note--India, China, and many Arab nations did not lose the maths or academics during the Dark Ages. If anything, they gained as many of the individuals fleeing the onset of the Dark Ages in Europe and the near-East ended up in one of these areas; and the early European voyages of discovery brought back to western shores the long-descended notes and knowledge of these people. These empires did make some use of these discoveries, and indeed introduced many of their own discoveries to the world. Gunpowder, the compass, paper, movable type, and others. For whatever reason, however, they never made the jump to industry. Like the Classical Greeks and Romans, these things remained the purview of the wealthy or the powerful. Or when they were available to the masses, these were simply a garnish on daily life. Why that philosophical shift never occurred I do not know. They certainly had all the materials and knowledge and yet the shift to an industrial approach did not happen until it was instigated by Europeans. It could be argued that the Chinese, at least, had a mini-dark ages. They set a fleet off to explore the world in the early 1400s (1421, I think); but while they were gone the political powers underwent a seismic shift and upon their return the fleet was mothballed and the empire's interests were turned inward, the outside world was something to be avoided. Would China have made the shift 200 years before the West? [A very fluff piece on the topic]( URL_0 ). Who knows. What I do know is that as we construct the next evolution of economics and politics in society, we would be wise to consider the long arcs of history and learn from the efforts of those who came before us.",
"This is a huge question in many areas of social science and it seems far from being resolved. Some just look at the pure technology as driving its own growth, others look to changes in social, economic, and governance structures, others look at simple population size and how that relates to trade and the exchange of ideas. The cause likely has multiple interacting factors and we don't know what alternate possibilities exist. The best answer is that something happened and people developed a few ideas which worked very well and enabled more people to come up with more ideas. Good ideas seem obvious in retrospect and it causes us to discount how difficult they can be to develop.",
"Your mistakes are believing that there is some rate at which progress happens, and that all of humanity is \"progressing\" at the same rate. Asking why certain innovations didn't happen earlier is like asking why an asteroid hasn't wiped out humanity. Because it hasn't. Progress doesn't happen in a straight line. It's happenstance, like evolution. Biological evolution isn't a series of adaptations that occur in order to get better, they just occur. These changes aren't upwards, they're lateral. Our ego just needs to see them in some sort of meaningful pattern. Also, powerful technologies or techniques are often times hidden away from enemies, rather than shared. Then you have the case of the most powerful institutions (generally, yes some kings wanted intelligent subjects) in the western world that were steadfastly anti-intellectual for centuries. On top of that, the way we are taught about world history in the west makes it seem like every important event happened in Western Europe. After Rome fell and the west crumbled, Muslims and Chinese were doing just fine and had all sorts of scientific innovation going on. The people in the west were trying to find a pot to piss in until the 12th century. So, fundamentally this is a flawed question. The question isn't why didn't certain achievements (if that's what they are) happen sooner, it's why did they happen at all?",
"A decline in the use of slaves was also important. A Greek inventor, Hero of Alexandria, made the first steam engine about 2000 years ago but no one gave a shit cause slaves were cheaper.",
"Two things, agricultural surpluses to support a rapid increase in people. And second, the steam engine to move away from muscle powered machinery. The steam engine's application in such a way as to actually be useful was very much dependent on geography. It needed not just coal, but also a reason to use it. Thus we have England ushering in the industrial era. They had coal, but it was in mines that would often get very wet and would sometimes flood. Thus the steam engine used some of the coal being mined to power the engine would would then power a pump to keep the mines dry allowing for more coal to be dug up, creating a positive feedback loop, and setting off the industrial revolution. The reason why England was the first place as opposed to China which had significantly more coal, is because China's coal was much easier to get (the mines didn't flood), thus not necessitating additional inventions to make mining easier. And since early steam engine were so cumbersome and had to be close to their source of fuel, it really did come down to geography. The industrial revolution could only have started in areas with coal mines that needed simple mechanical assistance to make the operation more efficient.",
"One of my favorite theories, which is talked about in \"[Guns, Germs, and Steel]( URL_0 )\" is that *geography* has a lot to do with advancement in technology. In Europe, the climate is mild and great for agriculture without being overly prone to disaster. However, there is a lot of coastline and little area for population to spread out. This meant that populations were more likely to concentrate in cities and cities were larger than in other parts of the world. That concentration created a unique set of problems/sollutions that were the catalyst for the industrial revolution.",
"In my opinion the exponential progress is due to how we value human life and all that it brings. The more we value human life the less we're able to exploit them as a work force. During ancient times we probably could've had some sort of industrialisation but, simply put, there was no need for it. No one needed to invent better agricultural tools or mechanize work because slaves were naturally below their masters. During the dark ages we had serfs doing work. This also meant that there was no incentive for anyone to invest in tools or mechanization. It wasn't until the enlightenment that we actually started viewing humans as having rights. Rights meant that the serfs wanted to own stuff and maybe even have a coin or two of their own. Thus there was an incentive to invest in inventions. Humans have always invented what they need, and until the enlightenment not much was needed because the elite didn't have to pay for labour.",
"The last few chapters of \"Sapiens\" by Yuval Noah Harari deals with this question. It was a combination of law and order (trust in the state) and capitalism (trust in the future) that propelled the progress exponentially. Before the modern economy was introduced, growth was slow and so progress was also slow.",
"My theory is that the level of technology a society can produce is a factor of interconnected population size plus automation. For example, after the fall of Rome (and a reduction in the size of an interconnected economy) the level of technology produced in Europe temporarily regressed. The Industrial Revolution roughly coincides with the development of worldwide sea trade routes. (In other words, a sea trades routes connected a larger population economically.) If you wonder why the number of people exchanging trade in an interconnected global economy should matter, then look up Ricardo's theorem of Comparative Advantage.",
"About a hundred years ago modern medicine and the discovery of microscopic bacteria as a cause of illness. With modern medicine and an understanding of how to treat people came population growth. While the common assumptions with population growth is that it is bad (more mouths to feed, increased consumption), it's actually a good thing (more engineers, scientists, etc.). Having more people around means more people can specialize their skill sets and the economy as a whole can grow. The population largely stayed consistent for hundreds of years. Once modern medicine -and with it the expanded population- came so did rapid industrial progress.",
"Short answer.... the printing press. IMHO the printing press was the single greatest invention of mankind.....so far. It allowed knowledge, and ideas, to outlive their originators, and form a foundation for others to build upon. No one person made the industrial revolution happen. If the printing press would have been invented a hundred years earlier, the industrial revolution might have occurred a hundred years earlier, and the world would be a completely different place. The industrial revolution was the culmination of hundreds of years of compiled knowledge. If you ever get a chance, watch the series \"Connections\" from the BBC. It is a wonderful program that illustrates how previous discoveries are connected to the modern inventions we enjoy.",
"You're asking for an ELI5 of the history of civilization. All these people claiming to give definitive answers in 500 words are fooling themselves.",
"Let us assume, there is another revolution that is going to take place in the year 2217. If people might have thought why that revolution didn't occur in 2017, what would be your answer? Revolution is not something which can happen just like that. It takes atleast a few billion people to follow a particular trend. We know that an Electro magnetic wave can be used to transport messages. 2000 years back, they didn't. The same with 2017 compared with 2217. Also, there are many instances in history where scientists ruled out theories which doesn't have practical proofs. To prove something practically, that era of discovery might not have the proper equipment. Take Einstein for example, he assumed if we travelled at a speed of light. No one can travel at that speed now. So people were skeptical about his theory only until Sir Arthur Eddington proved it otherwise. [Read here more about skepticism against Einstein]( URL_0 ) E: spellings",
"Moore’s law applies to all technologies. Once you makes something easier it is easier to devise improvements.",
"Religion. It was a very bad idea for a very long time to suggest any idea that could possibly go against the teachings of the church.",
"Everything plays off each other. As one thing increases, then another can sometimes bump up. And that causes another thing to increase. Which can go all the way back again and cause the cycle to repeat. So to talk about a specific cause is more or less going to be wrong. Having said that, here are four things that really really helped the overall process: 1) the ability to Read * having books available to everyone especially non-rich, non-noble smart people * giving people the ability to read 2) Advances in Mathematics & Physics * the basic ability to do calculations, e.g. Napier's Bones (logarithms) * the basic ability to do calculations correctly * basic fundamental math: calculus. the coordinate system. complex numbers. Negative numbers. Zero. Reals. etc. etc. * understanding of heat and eventually of electricity and magnetism. * understanding of forces, especially in mechanical systems 3) Advances in basic technology * the ability to manufacture things more precisely which allowed tools to be made more precisely to manufacture things more precisely, and round it goes * the huge effort of fleshing out of mathematical and scientific understanding into day-to-day solutions to engineering problems 4) Population * more people means more smart people * more smart people means more really smart people * more really smart people means more very insightful people collaborating on more complicated problems * solutions to complicated problems spread through out the world, eventually reaching day to day problems",
"I think the standout is Francis Bacon's revision of scientific method in 1620. Read Novum Organum. To my mind, this critical idea (the development of method and the use of experiment to make \"observable\" phenomena) transformed all other fields of inquiry. Research, in the modern sense, became a systemic and \"objective\" endeavour.",
"Most of the progress is made by really smart people (1 or 2% of the population) working hard at discovering how our universe works. Smart people need support, access to information and one another, tolerance and interest from the ruling class. The more smart people exchanging ideas you have, with as much resources, freedom and support as possible, the faster you advance. Only in a few moments of history we had this kind of arrangement, so we didn’t do much progress. Now we have massive access to knowledge, great communications and everybody gets and education, so we are making progress exponentially and as the billons of poor people in places like India and China get an opportunity to contribute, it will get much faster.",
"Just to add to the other comments here, and take my contribution with a pinch of salt as I'm by no means an expert, but I have heard it attributed in part to the development of the ability to work glass. Specifically, before the ability to mould or grind lenses for use in telescopes and _more importantly_ microscopes, many of the discoveries that made the industrial revolution and the renaissance possible would not have been made. EDIT: I've been trying to find any support for my comment online and I'm struggling. The closest I've come is in this blog post about magic: URL_0 Almost exactly as I understood the argument about glass, the writer asserts that high quality porcelain prevented the Chinese from discovering glass, which hindered their scientific progress later than the Middle Ages.",
"Any of the answers that attempt to give definitive proof or are trying to tie progress to one event are simply wrong. This is probably one of the most vexing intellectual problems in modern times because, simply put, no one really knows. At least no one would know how to recreate the progress we've seen. I think the top answer said printing press -- if that's really the reason then why haven't all countries who have access to printing risen to the standard of living of western countries? This is probably a bad question for ELI5 since you're gunna get a lot of people who have knowledge of history but don't have respect for the true intricacies of economic, political and geographic effects on how our world got to be how it is. The term to search for your quest of knowledge is the Great Divergence. One of the newer theories is called the California School of thought.",
"First and foremost, you need to be able to produce the machinery to make the goods you want at the size, scale, and materials you need. Not an easy task. Then you need an actual supply and demand that can keep up with production. Its no mistake that the industrial revolution started with cloth making, work that had previously required contracting out to massive amounts of households comprising the winter work of most families in England. You also need a well educated middle class and upper class who you can pull skilled labor from. In the past, even in civilizations and nations famous for their intelligence and literacy, the actual rates of literacy often were hard pressed to get above 1.5 % of the population. Contrary to popular belief, it was not steam power that lead to the industrial revolution as the initial source of power for factories were water wheels with steam engines being developed because of needs in the industrial revolution.",
"This is the best answer I could find from r/askhistorians -- you should consider cross-posting there as well. Answering \"Why didn't Rome, Greece, or other ancient societies industrialize?\", u/DeSoulis writes: > Industrialization is a pretty complicated process and here are a few reasons: > 1) Absolute technological level, despite the fact that people love talking about the ancient steam engine the steam engine was not nearly as decisive in industrialization as often thought. Improvements and innovation in machinery during the late medieval era played a huge part in industrialization. The first textile weaving machines for instance were based off of the mechanical clock which was invented during the Middle Ages. People often have a mistaken view, perpetuated by the science vs religion debate, that the Medieval period was a dark age when in reality it was in many ways much more innovative than the Classical era. > 2) The Commercial revolution: industrialization was not just based on technology, but on easily obtainable capital to fund starting industries and inventors. As well as a financial and trade system which can sustain demand for products produced by industries. The commercial revolution of the 13th-18th century produced an environment conductive to that. > 3) Agricultural surplus: To industrialize, you need a critical mass of non-food producing workers in cities and cottage industries. Agricultural productivity is necessary to produce food to sustain this population. Several waves of Medieval agricultural revolution and the addition of agricultural land during colonialism fueled the production of surplus foodstuff for industrialization. > 1-3 was simply not present during the classical era in the Mediterranean because it has not developed those critical components yet. Basically people have a tendency of assuming \"well James Watt invented the steam engine, ergo industrial revolution\" while in reality you can easily argue the Industrial revolution was the culmination of 2000 years of human development.",
"Luck and numerous factors coming to critical mass, I'd think. - increased dissemination of ideas through printing press - proliferation of lending practices and future capital generation (prohibited Christian or Islamic doctrine but many made workarounds in the early modern period) - Mercantilist empires laying the ground work for powerful corporations (all which may be chalked up to a desire for \"God, gold, and glory\" but also further obstacles to trade in India/China and improvements in sailing tech made Europeans sail out) - Break down of feudalism combined with efficient land usage and newly developed agricultural practices - relevant natural resources and eventually the taking of the resources from elsewhere - displaced rural peoples moving to urbanized or urbanizing areas for work - dropping death rates as a result of greater medical knowledge and food access while birth rates remain high - evolving textile industries as examples of wholesale mechanization that spreads to other industrial areas - less stigma attached to the acquisition of wealth and therefore the merchant class as well - development of the (middle class) consumer and the collapse of traditional social hierarchies (feudalism, old money vs new money, etc.) Eventually, imperialism lays the ground work for global capitalism which helps to move things where they \"need\" to be. Mercantilist powers were among the nations that developed the strongest navies and thus ensured they would also become those with empires at the forefront of controlling the movement of resources and people. Breakdown of feudalism (which was a redistribution oriented economy) got things moving. It could be argued that other places refusal or lack of desire to adopt new practices or technology meant that the Ottoman Empire or China simply fell behind until their position of power was reversed. And of course, this brief summation of things makes a lot of assumptions and erases the nuance and detail wit respect to people's lives and the actual distribution of population and how many people were actually \"experiencing\" the so-called industrial revolution. --- Progress is always being made in many different fields and places. With respect to the last several centuries, the movement of capital and new ways of appraising or interrogating the natural world (I.e. The scientific method) rather than teleological explanations (I.e. Things are the way they are because that's their purpose) of the status quo was pumping gas in a much more efficient engine. With respect to ideology or society's structure, sometimes it's cyclical and undermines the presumptuous notion that all progress is inherently good. However, technological progress does plateau, during which time a breakthrough is needed. After a breakthrough, a lot of things happen and are invented or discovered until it becomes difficult to make huge differences to the existing body of knowledge. But then you get an Einstein or a Chomsky and their constituent fields experience a huge paradigm shift which levels everyone's assumptions and challenges them to reconstruct the world or opens the way for possibilities never conceived or entertained. In this respect, meaningful exchange of capital is the means by which I think enough spaghetti is thrown at the wall to make developments or to mobilize things or people to where they need or want to be to get stuff done. My brain hurts.",
"I'm late to the party here but I hope some people view this, I'm an economics graduate who took a lot of economics history coursework discussing exactly this. The reason is because people didnt need to exploit fossil fuels, they didnt have any purpose. Oil in Iraq was known and easily accessed, used for low quality pamps or lubrication. But why use it? It needs to be refined, and refining oil is a hugh energy process that requires lots of coal. Coal is not so easily accessed. In Wales and Pennsylvania, coal was near the surface of soil. But why use coal? People might use it to burn, but the amount you could mine given the effort of mining was economically unfeasible. Youd much more efficiently chop wood. So what happened to change this? Water mills, really. Which needed the invention of the loom to become worthwhile. So, the loom is invented and advanced which allowed one person to make much more clothing than knitting or sewing. In order to process enough linen and cotton, British people (mostly) used energy from running rivers to power machinery that helped expedite processing. Why British? Because British people lived in an area that had streams and had mountains or hills. It needs to be hilly because a water mill prefers fast moving water -- water that goes downhill. As these textile industries grow, the concept of using water to power machines becomes refined. The mechanisms for transferring an energy source into a functional machine started getting engineered over one or two hundred years. In other word, engines. The development of these engines created the purpose for coal. Without water mills, there was no engine, and without engines, theres no economic purpose for Coal. Without coal, you cant refine oil. By using coal to burn water, and using the steam to turn the engine (instead of needing a river to turn the engine), larger and more factories could be built. This was the industrial revolution. Oil arose because of kerosene. Lamps for a period were powered by whale blubber, which burned bright and whitd. However, as whale populations sharply declined, whale oil became too expensive to be a viable energy source. Kerosene, made from oil, became attractive. Oil refining requires high temperatures, and thus required large amounts of coal. The by products of kerosene refining were incredibly cheap, since they were mostly seen as waste. This allowed other industries to find them as an excellent enetgy source where the could be appropriately used. Gasoline, jet fuel, petroleum jelly, and so on all entered the market to varying degrees. With energy now made cheap, human labor could be supplemented with machinery, allowing people to make so much more with so much less. Steel was developed, which allowed the invention of the steel plow, which allowed hard soil areas to be farmed. The breadbasket of the united states opened up, where previously it had been impossible to farm. People used their steel plows to break the hard soils in nebraska, kansas, oklahoma, and the dakotas. Food prices fell. People could eat cheaply. Soon, fertilizers and tractors were developed. With such effective machinery, one man could farm so much more land, allowing labor prices to plummet. Cities grew huge with displaced farmers, factories exploded with machinery and cheap labor. And the rest is history.",
"I am not an expert on the question but I'll give you my opinion. I think our progress is exponential since the beginning of the 20th century because of several things that are intertwined : 1) we have accumulated a lot of knowledge in the same spot so we can draw multiple conclusions from them. During the Renaissance, people \"re\"-discovered ancient knowledge which was then added to the knowledge people already had. It is important for humans to be able to pass knowledge from generation to generation because one life isn't long enough to discover everything. The possibility of passing so much knowledge hasn't been possible until the invention of writing (that took a while). And then again, it's not until the Renaissance that \"scientists\" and philosopher began corresponding and sharing. (Greek philosophers also did but we lost a good deal of their work) With the invention of publishing articles, scientists were then able to share their discoveries to the entire world. Currently articles are still published and they are a great way to share knowledge. When you have access to all that's already been discovered, it is easier to discover new things, instead of rediscovering something that has already been discovered a thousand times (if you get what I mean). 2) people need to get the motivation. Humans invent what they need. If they are in a society where finding shelter and food occupies 90% of their time, they won't be able to discover a new theory on whatever. They need to be in some sort of comfortable situation to do so. So they need to be in a civilisation that is at peace (mostly), is sedentary, has means of providing food easily (organized agriculture) and can build good homes. Then when the human mind doesn't have to think about basic needs, it can take care of other things. But if you look at our history, we mostly had civilisation that didn't share much knowledge (cf point 1) and disappeared without giving their knowledge to other civilization. If you look at the Roman Empire, knowledge was practically lost because of the wars at the end of the empire. So there hasn't been any civilisation that lasted long enough without war to build enough knowledge or to pass it on. It's just at the Renaissance that ancient knowledge was rediscovered in Alexandria and added to knowledge that was discovered in between, it was favorable to find other things. 3) in the last centuries people were more supported to make discoveries. Basically people could study, they have had less and less problems with religion and mentalities changed. For example during the 18th century, kings and stuff would support scientist in their study. 4) I think to have the explosion of knowledge we currently know, you need a basic amount of knowledge that takes a loooooong time to acquire (plus you need point 1 & 2). Conclusion : I think there is a lot of hazard and lucky circumstances to the level of knowledge we currently have. I think it's not like eventually, it's \"fate\", it was sure we would have that much knowledge. I think it's pretty much random and just good circonstances. PS : I don't really buy in the \"we have a nice climate\" theory because during the 18th century, there was a \"mini\" cold age that caused a lot of famine... so it's not like the climate has always been nice to us. Plus the climate is different on all the continents so..."
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6z4m7x | Why are drill sargents so intense and what is it about they way they act that turns a civilian into a soldier | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Their job is to make you physically and mentally fit for the stresses of combat. As such they yell and berate you to increase your stress levels such that you become accustomed to dealing with high levels of stress and so will not flip out and do stupid stuff in combat.",
"To add to cdb03b's comment, have you every tried to lead a group of adolescent to young adult boys/men? It takes a no bullshit, zero tolerance for bullshit attitude and demeanor. I know this because I went through basic training in 2008. Before the days of when they let you have a cell phone and other ways they've kind of eased up a bit. It's to instill in the men a good work ethic and to make an obedient soldier and one that is less likely to be a liability or a, as we used to call them in active duty, \"shit bag\". There are a million ways a soldier can let their discipline slip once they get to their first duty station or back home if they're reservists. They try to make them fit the mold as much as possible in the short time they're in basic training. It's shitty getting yelled at and getting \"smoked\" all the time but it's good for the entirety of the mission and honestly if you signed up, you should've known what you would have in store. Back in the old days if you couldn't get it together they could take you behind a building and slap the shit out of you or punch you in the gut or whatever they had to do to get you to fall in line. Now they can only yell and make you do push-ups. Edit: I wanted to add also that a good instructor will not always be a 100% hard-ass. There are times when you can show a little humility and it goes a long way. For example: There was one drill instructor who was known to be really intense, super ripped, and pretty much scary as fuck. On the day we did the Treadwell Tower at Ft. Sill, where you learn to cross a single rope bridge way up in the air, and learn to repel off a large [obstacle course structure]( URL_0 ), this particular drill instructor was singing the sponge bob squarepants theme song. It helped add a little levity to the situation because some of us were scared shitless. It's the ones who are there to always be dicks and who are generally shitty people, and there are a few of those in any crowd and in any line of work, that make it kind of suck sometimes.",
"It hits a reset button on a person's humanity. A big part of it is to break you down and feel like less than what a normal person is accustomed to. You go from being a free citizen to having many of your constiutional rights stripped away along with almost all of your free will and dignity. Your personal items are subject to search, seizure, or destruction at the whims of your superiors. Things that aren't even banned can be ripped from your person or storage and destroyed in front of you with no recourse. You can be forced to do humiliating things in front of hundreds of your peers for nothing more than entertainment. Then you get back some of those rights like privacy, personal property, and equality. You become grateful to the military once you're given back simple things like getting more than 1 minute to eat your meal or more than 5 minutes to brush your teeth, shower, and use the bathroom. It only takes a few weeks to brainwash someone into being grateful for basic dignity. It makes the harsh culture of the US military seem like an improvement in quality of life once you get to your first duty station. Add to this the increased tolerance for stress, unwavering discipline, and reduced personal identity/self worth, and you get a teenager willing to do almost anything they're told and be thankful for it.",
"They are conditioning you to understand that you individuality is now irrelevant. You need to accept that you are a part in the machine, so that you do not innately question the things you are told to do. This may sound like I'm bagging on them but I'm not."
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6z5qkt | How do extremely small countries come to exist? | How do countries the size of Luxemburg, Armenia, Malta, etc. come to exist? How come a larger nation hasn't gobbled them up and annexed them? Also, do these countries typically have their own unique cultures or are they like US states that have pretty much the same culture but slightly different? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Just a few hundred years ago, large parts of the world did not have a big country governing them. Italy for example was a whole bunch of tiny independent *city-states.* Over time many of these merged into large countries (like Italy!) but there were some leftovers that resisted merging."
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6z5wxu | If many people couldn't read or write back during the 1500's, how do we know so much about those times? | Not specifically the 1500's, but way back in history. If that makes any sense. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In terms of written sources in the Medieval period, most of them are from higher-up government sources, such as treaties, speeches from monarchs or treasury documents, or from church sources, like parish records of births, deaths, and marriages. Those academics who could write, wrote almost exclusively about politics and diplomacy, or the church. This type of history is broadly known as 'top-down' history, as it focuses on the ruling elite. 'Bottom-up' history, about the everyday lives of the common people didn't really exist in those times, as they weren't considered important, especially compared to recording the political history of a nation. Thus, we know most about Medieval history from other sources, for example, paintings, or surviving architecture, as we can infer from those sources how people lived, and what people valued at the time, based on what is expressed in what they've created. The same problems exist for earlier history; what was written was either religious or political, and very little was written about lower classes. History as a discipline wasn't professionalised fully until Leopold Von Ranke (1795-1885) developed the source-based methodology I just described, and even then, most history remained 'top-down'. We must remember that history isn't the past. History is the small fragments of the past we can glean from what survived. What sources we have to infer information about the past is almost completely random and we can never hope to know everything about the past. Furthermore, all historians have an inherent bias in their writing that can't be avoided, which further distorts the past.",
"Because *some* people could write. You don't need *everyone* to write, even one in a thousand is plenty.",
"Because the people who did know how to write wrote things down... primarily the church and various nobles but there was plenty of writing done."
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6z7047 | How are traditional old paintings digitalized with such accuracy? | For example. The mona lisa. There seems to be no, detail or quality difference between [the original]( URL_1 ) and the [pictures on the internet]( URL_0 ) (never seen the real one on person) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Digitizing\" a painting is simply taking a good photograph of it--so what you're doing here is comparing one photograph to another. Of course there are tricks to accurate digitization. The angle needs to be exactly right. You want to make sure that the lighting and color balance is correct. For large paintings you may need to take multiple shots and accurately edit them together. But ultimately it's still photography. At the same time, digital images are never quite true to the original, because you few real paintings at different angles and under different lighting conditions. Digital images give you only one kind of perspective."
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6z766s | The differences between Waldorf and Montessori schools | My wife, our twin 3 year old boys and I are living in a beautiful city in a wonderful part of the world, that unfortunately lacks in the state schooling department. Most people who have any money at all join their local Catholic parish and send their children to Catholic schools. I'm not opposed to Catholic schooling, my wife and I were both educated by the Church, but we have some reservations about the fact that our children will be getting one spiritual message at school and another at home, since our family has gone down a different religious-spiritual path, and because of the very traditional 'rote learning' style of teaching and planning out the day in Catholic schools. Near enough to our home is a Montessori school and a Waldorf school, that either go all the way up to university, or are affiliated with an upper school. I don't know much about either, except that the teaching is more child-based and holistic in both styles of schools, and in Waldorf schools there is an emphasis on spiritual development, a total lack of technology until the higher grades and teachers stay with their students from Kindergarten to Year 6, all of which sounds quite appealing to us. All I can find are articles that are obviously biased, or descriptions from schools that are obviously biased and the reviews that I see from parents are very rarely middle ground oriented, it's either absolutely gushing love or totally negative epithets. I cannot form an opinion without more objective information. So, Reddit, **Explain Like I'm 5: [What are] the differences between Waldorf and Montessori schools?** | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Think less about the different schooling styles because; each was developed by psychologists, each show improved education, social, and personal growth results over public schools, and each style provides exceptional learning opportunities after graduation. What you need to do is compare the two schools directly, not their schooling style. One Montessori school is not equal to all Montessori schools, and one Waldorf school is not equal to all Waldorf schools. You need to look at your local school's success rates, controversies, hierarchies, etc."
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6z7j4g | How and why do accents develop, even within countries that speak the exact same language? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You've grown up in a country with a language. It has standardized spelling, it has dictionary definitions and many people want to enforce a standard pronunciation but this is not natural and you have to realize it is a 'modern' development. You are taught to speak by your parents and local community. However, every person speaks slightly differently. You might be deeper than other people, you might have a bit of a lisp, etc. Your children will base how they speak on how you speak and so on. It's a lot like evolution where random mutations get passed down the generations and geographically distinct populations generally diverge. Historically, you'd spend most of the time within your village but interact with the surrounding villages and very occasionally have interactions with communities further afield. The consequence of this is speech looking like a rainbow. One village is 'red', one village far away is 'blue', clearly speaking different things but in between them its hard to see where red becomes blue. So we've seen how all these accents develop and we've seen the start of the red and the blue dialects. Eventually, these villages are united into a kingdom by a king who wants to make administration easier and so pushes for one 'official' way of speaking throughout his lands. The invention of the printing press really helps this. Not only are people learning words from their local community but also from mass printed books. Here is where we really start to see 'a language' have real meaning. The centres of power start imposing their dialect on every one else and this dialect gets called 'a language'. In the modern world we're seeing this shift pick up again. We're not only reading the same words, we're hearing the same words.",
"Short answer is that all you need for an accent (and eventually a dialect and a new language) is space and time. Space from surrounding language influences (e.g. Small village, isolated area) and time for the 'quirks' - your dialect - to develop. The longer it stands alone, the more unique it becomes."
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6z7n5m | Why Americans use drywall instead of concrete and bricks to build houses in areas prone to natural disasters? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The only natural disaster that concrete and brick houses are better at dealing with are fires. With tornadoes most damage is done by winds so strong that they dismantle concrete, brick, or stone either directly or by throwing debris into them only slightly more slowly than they do wood. You can make a tornado bunker that is above ground with 4 foot thick walls and steel reinforcement. Homes do not do that, even in places that they make concrete homes. Hurricanes tend to do most of their damage with flooding. Concrete and Bricks flood and mold just as easily as wood. When they are washed away the ground itself is washed away so they break just as easily too. For the extremely powerful hurricanes we have the same wind issues as tornadoes. For earthquakes the concrete and brick homes are far worse than wood. They are too rigid unless very expensive tech and building practices are used and so they just crumble when an earthquake happens as they cannot flex. And finally they are 3-10 times more expensive than wooden homes. Chances of you actually losing your home in your lifetime are low, and you get insurance to protect against it. So it is far better for most to spend what money they have to build a larger nicer home. Also you seem to think drywall is a structural weight bearing material. It is not. It is the interior finishing of the wall. Wood is the structural component and wood/fiberglass is the outdoor wall slat.",
"Dry wall is an interior finish not a structural material. Therefore homes can be built to optimum hurricane code and still utilize the material. It is better than old plaster interior walls in terms of a construction material as a homeowner.",
"I think to better phrase it you would say \"why wooden frames as opposed to concrete\" In California at least- this is because the wooden frames hold up to earthquakes - also as I understand it, concrete is quite expensive in comparison.",
"I believe that what the OP is trying to ask is why we build timber frame houses in the US, rather than concrete or cinder blocks/brick. I have been asked this a lot as well by Latinos, who consider American houses to be cheaply made. Some say it is the cost of concrete, but that seems odd because the majority of homes built in Mexico/Central/South America are built of either poured concrete or cinder blocks on a concrete slab. My wife's uncle has a poured concrete house in Ecuador that looks as good as or better than most timber framed McMansions in the US. They don't even consider using timber framing down there. The same applies to tile floors and tile roofs, which are considered somewhat expensive in the US, and generally seen only in higher end houses, but you will find tile floors and roofs in the poorest houses in Latin America. It is nearly all imported Italian made tile, which is the same thing they brag about here. roofing shingles are almost unheard of, and rarely seen.",
"In the long run, it's cheaper to build a house that needs to get replaced every 25 years than it is to build something that can actually stand up to a major hurricane or tornado. A category 5 hurricane has *sustained* wind speeds over 150 miles per hour. An F5 tornado can hit 300 miles per hour - enough to lift a house off it's foundation, regardless of how strong the walls are.",
"\"Prone to disaster\" means, at best, \"on average once every 20 years\". It is cheaper to repair once a generation than it is to build with more expensive materials...especially when that disaster might take out the more expensive material anyway.",
"It is wrong to say the houses are built of drywall as most of the structure and protective elements are made of wood with iron reinforcing the joints. Wood is cheaper then concrete and brick and can be built stronger.",
"Most people have mentioned cost. There is another angle to \"cost\" that is not as big in the USA as in many other places: sustainability. In many countries, electricity, gas, oil, and other means of heating or cooling down a house are a lot more expensive than in the US. That's where house energy ratings (HER) come in. These ratings are meant to let people see how expensive the upkeep of a house will be. Brick houses with proper insulation are less expensive in upkeep, especially in colder climates: it's easier to keep them heated. In the US, electricity, gas, oil, and other means of heating are cheaper than in many other developed countries, so the energy requirements aren't as much of a point of consideration for many buyers, whereas in many places in, say, the EU, the energy requirements of a house will make or break a broker's deal. So a house that is cheap to buy because of the materials used in its construction, but has bad HER, will sell much more easily in the US than in other places.",
"Concerete and bricks are *a lot* more expensive than drywall, and aren't immune to damage from natural disasters, either.",
"Drywall is a to make the inside of the house look nice. It has absolutely no supportive or constructive function. Wood is used because it's a abundant and cheap. It also handles earthquakes better, like in CA. For the rest of the country, the middle and south of the US are generally lower cost of living. Meaning less money to build with. Housing tends to be cheaper, though not always as land is also cheaper as well. Wood houses are significantly easier to update as well. Running wires and plumbing is easy, and it's not uncommon to update a house every decade or so dependING on the area and homeowners. I live in PA. No disasters hit here beyond the occasional small scale flood. There is no reason to use concrete. Brick houses are pretty common, though.",
"Drywall isn't the main holding structure of a home, but regardless building codes vary state to state to account for natural disasters actually. California building codes account for earthquakes, Tennessee for tornadoes and Flordia for hurricanes. These include various foundation differences as well as different reinforcement requirements made with various weather aspects kept in mind. I also believe a strictly concrete and brick house would be a bad idea in a hurricane because water at that wind speed and pressure would severely weaken the structure.",
"My understanding is cost of labor to build a complete house. American labor is expensive and has to be kept to a minimum.",
"It's cheaper and faster to build and repair. It can also withstand vibrations more than concrete.",
"Hell, why not build them out of solid diamond? That's strong. Oh wait, we already can barely afford a house made of wood and drywall.",
"In Florida, the newer houses tend to be made of wood with steel reinforcements. The drywall is applied \"on top\" of the wood. That way, the building can be both sturdy and aestethically pleasing."
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6z8j3y | Why is George Soros considered controversial? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm just going to point out that accusing wealthy Jews of pulling the strings of power behind the scenes for nefarious purposes is, well, not exactly a new thing.",
"I second the guy who called him the liberal version of the Koch brothers. He uses his vast sums of money to lobby for left-wing causes and enriches himself in the process. As an example of real unsavory-but-legal practices he lobbied the Obama administration for tougher environmental rules on coal while shorting the entire coal industry. He got his rules and made billions. Aside from the crazies, and there are plenty of crazies saying crazy things about everyone, he's disliked because he can and does things that 'little people' can't and enriches himself in the process. Basically he's both a politically active elite and plays into the view the view of legalized government corruption. So right-wingers hate him because he's a rich liberal and left wingers hate him because he's corrupt and ruthless and rich.",
"He is a liberal version of the Koch Brothers. He uses his wealth to influence political outcomes. Obviously though he doesn't have special abilities to do so and isn't particularly motivated or present in politics.",
"George Soros is essentially the Koch Brothers of the left. He's a wealthy man who has spent considerable resources to promote his viewpoints and support his causes, often from behind the scenes rather than as the face of the cause.",
"It has nothing to do with is ethnicity and everything to do with the causes he funds. He finances radical progressive movements, some of which use unsavory tactics to gain influence. Also, see black Wednesday regarding the British pound and him breaking the Bank of England.",
"He is to the Conservatives what the Koch brothers are to the Liberals. Just a man who uses his enormous amount of wealth to influence politics, like the Koch's do too.",
"Because a certain segment of the American body politic has to have both sides be equally bad. So if that segment gets all it's news from a media empire run by one guy there has to be one guy on the other side who's exactly the same."
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6z8laa | How do rich and famous people contact other rich and famous people? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Famous people, like 50cent, can get in touch with Oprah, through their agents - who schedule publicity events, meet & greets, collaborations, fundraising & charity events, etc. Usually, Oprah would contact her agent to schedule an interview with 50cent by contacting 50cent's agent - her connections are more powerful, her agents probably has the direct number to 50cent's record label and production team. If it was vice-a-versa, it is most likely Oprah's agent would either decline or schedule the interview for a later date. Once 50cent and Oprah get to meet each other in person, they eventually exchange contact information. They update their contacts through holiday gifts, birthday cards, etc. Ever send your grandma a card, then write off: \"P.S. I don't live with mom & dad, I got my own place, please send cookies to this address.\" So, 50cent doesn't personally write such things - his agent does, probably. This is why you're considered a *somebody* when you attend a large charity event, full of celebrities, a red carpet entrance, etc. because you might end the night with several phone numbers from the world's most influential people. You now have a shot at having an interview with someone who's widely at the center of attention. Now, you can make a profit on this, you can pick their brain, you can sell them stuff, you can do all sorts of things now - all they have to say is *yes*, especially their agents. But if you want to contact, say.. Bill Gates. You'd do a better job at it through a personal letter addressed to his foundation. It will travel up the vine until it reaches him or his agent. It may be read - so it's sometimes important to send multiple letters. Most of the time you'll receive one of those automated *personal* reply back; but if you get lucky, you might get a genuine letter back from the man himself.",
"I work with a lot of famous people. When it comes to actors, most famous actors (even ultra famous stars) are managed by only a few agencies in LA. When I've had to talk to famous people on the phone I usually go through their agent or manager. I give them my phone number and they say something like \"Oprah will call you around 4pm today\". I imagine if Oprah wanted to talk to Brad Pitt (assuming they don't already have each other's number) she'd call her manager who would call his manager and then they either just exchange private numbers or set up a call. Now a days it's easy to block a crazy number so I find famous people are pretty quick to give out their personal numbers to people they are working with. Probably the most famous number I have in my phone is 50 Cent when I did a photo shoot with him and he asked me to text him the pics directly.",
"I was watching *Ellen* the other day when she interviewed Halle Berry and they were talking about the fact that there's an online dating tool for celebrities only. Makes sense, I guess, but how weird is that?",
"\"Have your people call my people.\" Once you reach that level of notoriety, you will have a lot of non-famous people with whom you communicate on a regular basis. Agents, CPAs, tailors, private pilots, lawyers on retainer, etc. So Bill Gates would probably ask his accountants if any of them know JayZ's accountants, and make a connection that way. Hell, it might even be the same person, or work in the same accounting firm.",
"Ive seen celebrities reach out to each other through verified Twitter or other social media accounts. Granted this could just be their agent communicating on their behalf, private messaging via social media seems to be the most efficient way these days."
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6z9i1m | Why is fear of clowns such a common phobia? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Clown's costumes distort and exaggerate their features for humorous effect. However, we naturally find feature distortions as worrying or frightening because deformities are indicative of disease. There's also the uncanny valley effect, in which we find things that are *almost* human in appearance far more disturbing than things that are obviously fake, probably for the same reason. Children are less easily able to tell that clowns are fake and are thus more likely to fear them, a fear that can carry over to adulthood.",
"Our minds are keyed to recognize patterns, especially as they relate to the human face. We see faces on everything, from toasters to door knots to buildings. And when it is obviously inhuman, like a toaster, it is seen as cute or non-threatening. But there is a point, as the object gets more and more human-looking, that we grow strongly averse to it. He hate it or fear it. Clowns, with their distorted faces (thanks to makeup), fall squarely into this uncanny valley for a lot of people. The reason the uncanny valley exists is because while we are trained to pick up on faces as children, and thus recognize them in non-human objects, when something is *trying* to look human and fails, it creeps us out. We either fear it or hate it. Factor in the fact that clowns' antics invade personal space and the fact that many young children are taken to see clowns at a formative age, and that phobia can last a lifetime.",
"Ahoy, matey! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Why do so many people fear clowns when they're supposed to bring us joy and laughter? ]( URL_3 ) 1. [[ELI5] Why are people afraid of clowns? ]( URL_2 ) 1. [ELI5: Why do people develop an irrational fear of clowns? ]( URL_0 ) 1. [ELI5: Why do some people find things like dolls and clowns scary? ]( URL_1 ) 1. [People with a fear of clowns: What is it about clowns that scares you? ]( URL_4 )",
"I suspect most people actually lie about having this phobia under the assumption it makes them 'cool'"
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6za7m5 | The Rohingya crisis | I want to know what's exactly happening there, especially since I read mixed and different narrations about the whole thing. Thanks. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So, the Rohingya have lived there for centuries, under several different jurisdictions, and were all right for the most part. After World War II, they were part of Burmese society, but when Ne Win took over in the '62 coup, he changed everything for them. Today, they are not considered citizens of Myanmar (and in fact legally cannot be citizens thanks to the wording of Myanmar's 1982 citizenship laws), cannot participate in government, have no recognized rights, and are officially barred from having more than two children. Even when they flee the country as refugees, the Rohingya are treated like vermin. Indonesian rescuers found some on a boat who claimed that the Thai government forced them onto it and drove it out to sea before abandoning them. Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia are accused of \"playing human ping-pong\" with them, pushing them back out to sea when they arrive on their shores. These people are fighting back, but only because they've been pushed too far. The Burmese government is instigating anti-Rohingya violence in order to crack down on their responses. This is clear evidence of genocide, but the rest of the world is too timid to call them out on it."
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6zcgnw | Why are we able to see where child predators live nearby? What about murderers, rapists, or robbers? | What makes child molesters so special? Why do even need to see where they live doesn't that endanger them? I personally feel like that's counterproductive for someone who just wants to move on as well as dangerous. Still I don't understand why it's even a thing. At least in the US also aren't they supposed to go door to door explaining themselves? again this seems counter productive I'd like to stay as far as away as I can from someone with a criminal record. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's because of Megan's Law. A 7 year old child named Megan Kanka was raped and killed by a paedophile. He was a repeat offender. The family fought for sex offenders to be documented and for people to be able to see who lived nearby so they can protect their children. Her mother argued that if she had known a sex offender lived on their Street her daughter would have never been attacked. However, many studies show that it actually has no impact on the number of attacks. As to why no such list is in place for murderers. Most murderers do not reoffend. There isn't the public support for such a scheme. Source: am forensic psychologist",
"Because there was a national outrage over an innocent victim and America is categorically incapable of doing anything in any other situation. So someone came up with the idea of perpetual punishment of 'child predators' and the definition has been extensively expanded to include people who got caught pissing in bushes or who got drunk and googled the wrong phrase. As with any 'police state' punishment it can never be rescinded or lightened by individual politicians seeking re-election because that would invite their opponent to find the one person impacted by the event and run a commercial \"REP X FREED HER KILLER! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!\". In a backward political system such as set up in our Constitution this is a one-way ratchet. You should expect to see murder lists and thief lists set up in the future, and you should expect to see shoplifters eventually put on them. In fact some states are working on murderer and domestic violence lists as we speak.",
"> What makes child molesters so special? The fact that people who molest children are much more likely to do it again than a murderer is to murder again. People who murder usually do so for reasons like revenge, or a heat-of-the-moment situation where they walk in on their spouse having sex with someone else. They're generally not serial killers, and aren't likely to ever kill again. By contrast, molesting children is usually done because the person is a pedophile, and that's a trait that they have that will never go away. They'll always have the urge to have sex with children, even after serving their time. From [this article]( URL_0 ): > Mullane said she was able to determine that 988 convicted murderers were released from prisons in California over a 20 year period. Out of those 988, she said 1 percent were arrested for new crimes, and 10 percent were arrested for violating parole. She found **none of the 988 were rearrested for murder, and none went back to prison over the 20 year period she examined**. And from [this other article]( URL_1 ): > The 15-year recidivism rate is 13 percent for incest perpetrators, 24 percent for rapists, and 35 percent for child molesters of boy victims. Whether or not it's *right* to have a perpetual punishment (e.g. being permanently put on a list) is a conversation for a different subreddit, but the above is why it happens."
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6zd67c | Why are some shows edited when shown on Netflix? | I'm watching the third Family Guy Star Wars episode, and notice that some little pieces are missing. The first is at the beginning when Stewie and Roger are talking. Roger says there's still a hole, but no trench on the second Death Star. In the original, Stewie reprimands and cautions him that he'd better fix it. On Netflix that line is cut. Why? It doesn't seem like it's a line that would need cut for copyright infringement, and netflix shouldn't need to cut for time. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Netflix doesn't edit the content, they just get whatever they get sent. Very rarely, the version is slightly different than the original version that aired on TV. Each one would be a unique case, and almost never would the network that owns the material say why changes were made.",
"Scrubs, for example, has different music on Netflix. I believe it's to avoid paying expensive royalties",
"Many older shows have been edited to make room for more commercials, and the edited versions are also being sent to streaming platforms.",
"Sometimes they don't buy the full rights. The TV series Rome was produced by BBC Two and HBO. Netflix bought only the HBO owned part (which was the vast majority) though it meant that a few episodes had to be combined. I imagine this and royalties would be the main reason."
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6zdutl | how did jazz go from being considered the "devil's music" to becoming very high brow, often considered nearly equally as high brow as classical? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Changing cultural perceptions of black people and their cultural music. Jazz was heavily spread through some segments of African Americans in it's formative years and it became associated with them. Many of the best Jazz musicians were AAs. And during these years most (white, christian) Americans looked down on blacks and so denigrated their music as well. In our current era highbrow liberals are now embracing black culture, and it's a sign of sophistication to love black culture, and the easiest way to do that (at least without being accused of cultural appropriation) is to love Jazz.",
"Aside from the racist and overly political subtext of u/gumption1234 's explanation he has it mostly correct. Jazz originated in African American culture and spread through those communities until WWI when it was introduced to Europe and ultimately made huge inroads into French musical culture. While it was considered a legitimate 'high brow' musical form abroad it remained mired in race politics in America due to its roots. At least in regards to black musicians. As proved by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra if white people played the same songs they were somehow magically transformed into acceptable music that was in high demand at the time. In response to your follow up on why it is treated differently than HipHop, soul, R & B, etc it's because of the technical expertise in both the use of the instrument as well as the musical composition itself. As new generations of musicians picked up instruments and sought to challenge themselves and their understanding of what their instrument could do more credence was given to the innovations of jazz and it became more and more acceptable to appreciate it."
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6zer3a | why certain cuisines are more famous than others? | For example, Italian and French cuisines are much more famous than the German or Scandinavian cuisine. Thai food is famous but it is less famous than Spanish food....etc what is the reason behind that? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Someone I worked with asked me why the French are so important to cooking. I started asking him the names of the various items in our professional kitchen. Indeed a huge amount of them are French. You used the word \"cuisine\" which ain't no German. Cooking techniques, from the Bain Marie to the Coq au Vin, Sous Vide always makes it to Reddit frontpage. The typical chef's knife is actually called a French knife. They developed these things while the English were still just roasting meat, so yes each culture has its own cuisine but as we integrate we come to realize that their techniques and tools helped make our food great too. If you can't tell I love French cooking but Italian of course had its own impact.",
"This question has a lot of answers, but [this article]( URL_1 ) goes through some key reasons brought up in \"Gastronomie Francaise\" by Jean-Robert Pitte, A professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Being Scandinavian, the cultural reasons stemming from religious pietism resonate with me. While we're probably among the most secular in the world now, we still have that thing in us about needing a bit of pain before we can treat ourself in any way. Poor year-round access to fresh produce and the need to conserve fish and meat can also be seen in our traditional foods. Germany can't really use that excuse to the same extent, but they also had a protestant pietistic movement. I also recommend reading the quite short wiki article on [haute cuisine]( URL_0 ) which includes early history and the codification of modern (i.e. 19th century) French cuisine with people like Escoffier. In short, extravagant feasting became part of the culture and an \"art\" among the wealthy in 17th century France.",
"France used to be the preeminent power on continental Europe, so much so that the nobles of other European states spoke French (the quote \"I speak French to men, Italian to women and German to my horse\" was attributed to multiple rulers). Obviously, with the spread of French language cultural practices like cooking spread along with it."
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6zhhfq | How did Earth get its name? I read online that the name is derived from English and German words, but the few articles I read didn't give much info beyond that. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[As best we know]( URL_0 ), it can be traced back to a Proto-Indo-European root, referring to the ground or dirt. It should be noted that Earth is only one of many names for the planet. It's the name in English, and English is a Germanic language, and Proto-Germanic was an Indo-European language. It's a very big language family including languages like Hindi and Latin and French, alongside languages more closely related to English (Dutch and German). Other language families have words that look nothing like \"Earth\": in Japanese it's Chikyuu, which contains none of the same sounds. Another way of looking at your question is, how do we generalize a word to refer to the whole planet? \"Earth\" basically comes from \"dirt\" and we still use it that way too. Latin \"Terra\" came from a PIE root meaning \"dry\" (probably), so there it seems to refer to the opposite of the ocean. Basically we're still talking about the ground--the thing we walk on. It's interesting that this came to refer to the planet as a whole, including the ocean and atmosphere and core. It may be an example of *metonymy*, or using a *part* of something to refer to the whole. Another example of that is saying \"wheels\" when you are talking about a whole car. Since language has been developing since long before we realized that \"land\" isn't just some portion of a flat world, but that we actually live on one discrete object, it makes sense that the words we have for this planet referred to some aspect of it initially, rather than the whole thing (which was unknown). Consider another word we have to refer to the whole thing: globe. This just means \"ball\", and was used after we realized the Earth *is* one. We'd already been interacting with many words before we realized the Earth was a thing unto itself and included the sky and ocean, so it was more natural to simply apply these in a new sense than create a new word out of nowhere. Most word formation is a natural extension of existing word usage; rarely is something entirely new coined.",
"I mean earth is literally another word for soil or ground, in germanic/norse and similarly in greek and roman mythology the word for earth was synonymous with the personified goddess of earth/mother earth, either way it makes sense that it is also synonymous with 'the world' or 'the planet we are on'; it's not like the other planets aren't named after roman gods...",
"As your question is already answered I thought I'd just leave a cool quote here I saw once and this reminded me. \"How inappropriate to call this planet earth when it is quite clearly ocean.\" Arthur C Clarke",
"URL_0 > Old English eorþe \"ground, soil, dirt, dry land; country, district,\" also used (along with middangeard) for \"the (material) world, the abode of man\" (as opposed to the heavens or the underworld), from Proto-Germanic *ertho (source also of Old Frisian erthe \"earth,\" Old Saxon ertha, Old Norse jörð, Middle Dutch eerde, Dutch aarde, Old High German erda, German Erde, Gothic airþa), from extended form of PIE root *er- (2) \"earth, ground.\" The earth considered as a planet was so called from c. 1400. Use in old chemistry is from 1728. Earth-mover \"large digging machine\" is from 1940."
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6zi0a5 | Why is there different culture based on climate? Why is it more acceptable to dress gothic in colder climates? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmvdhyu"
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"text": [
"Because it's not practical to walk around in 100+ degree heat and 80% humidity wearing all black."
],
"score": [
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6zi5oc | Why is it considered morally wrong to sleep with a coworker? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmveql7"
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"text": [
"I don't think most people consider it morally wrong, assuming you are coworkers and that one isn't in a position of authority over the other. It could easily be seen as a poor decision, because if your relationship goes sour, you're still going to have to work together and that may make it difficult for both of you and for other coworkers. But bad decisions aren't necessarily morally wrong."
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6zkg3o | Why do many countries assign the title of 'General' to non-military positions? Eg. Secretary General, Surgeon General, Attorney General etc. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The modern military title of “General” is a shortened form of “Captain-General,” who was at the head (“captain” comes from Latin *caput*, which is one word for “head”) of a large group of soldiers, and over time this evolved to simply “general.” In the other contexts you mentioned, those officers are in charge of their respective organizations, so they're the generals.",
"The root origin is French, and in the original French the \"general\" is an adjective. The French generally place adjectives after the nouns. The adjective is the same as in english: \"involving, applicable to, or affecting the whole\". So, the \"captain general\" was the head of the whole. The attorney general is the attorney overseeing the whole. Etc.",
"The current surgeon general is the head of a uniformed service and actually a [Vice Admiral]( URL_0 )."
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6zlcyy | Why is handwriting from the past so much prettier than writing now? | I was watching a documentary about Newton and his notebook was filled with dense, perfectly flowing handwriting. Meanwhile, my notebooks look like shit. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There was a great emphasis on having clear, legible handwriting. There were no typewriters and most communication and writing of notes was by hand, so it was vital that it be clear. As a side note, Catholic schools of today in my experience place a great emphasis on good handwriting, and all of the people I know who went to Catholic schools have lovely writing.",
"Ye olde pens were difficult to write with so everything had to be done precisely to avoid breaking it. Also there were less literate people so the people who could write probably took their time to make it presentable.",
"There's an element of selection bias at play here as well. Documents that survive from older times are usually more durable, because it was important that the information be preserved. This indicates a level of care and concern about permanence and legibility. Shopping lists don't get the same attention.",
"Because in the past, learning to write was a big deal. You didn't just learn to write to communicate. You were expected to write well. Penmanship was reflective of your social status.",
"People didn't have much in the way of alternatives before the typewriter was invented. You either wrote by hand or not at all. So there was a lot of emphasis on having good handwriting in your letters and documents and people just got better at though the sheer amount of practice they were getting from early on.",
"Its a symbol of wealth. You have the time and materials necessary to practice writing enough to get very good at it. Status symbols, bro. Same reason some people trick out their cars or trucks or fidgit spinners or pogs or put baseball cards in the spokes of their wheels or put a kazoo on their exhaust pipe."
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6zlgr0 | what is the premise of the 'shadow' that Carl Jung wrote about? | I've tried reading about it but it keeps going over my head, it won't stay in! | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmw6uc8"
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"text": [
"The idea is that we look at ourselves in a good light, and this casts a shadow that hides from us our true selves. He believed that we had to face that shadow in our journey to self realization. Facing that shadow means recognizing that all the worst parts of humanity are in you too. If you were born in Nazi Germany to a German family, there is a good chance you would have been a Nazi. You wouldn't have had some moral epiphany and rallied against your people, you would likely have taken part in the Holocaust. For a better look at that idea. What it takes for a normal person, you or me, to turn into that kind of a monster, read Ordinary Men."
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6zlkki | Why is watching things move in unison more satisfying than when they move normally? | For example, if you watch a bunch of metronomes ticking and they end up ticking in synchronisation it's just more pleasant. Why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmw6i0s"
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"text": [
"Our brains just love patterns, and our pleasure mechanisms reward us for discovering interesting things. It's very similar to how we program AIs, really: you have a goal to reach, which is to notice patterns in the world, in order to get information from them that can help you survive, and in order to \"motivate\" you, we give you an indication of when you get it right, which is an actual chemical reward in the case of us humans. Now, we don't really totally understand how these things work yet, but these videos are tailored basically to hack those reward mechanisms."
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6zllzw | Why do we tend to associate appearances with behaviour | Crooked noses and warts being associated evil,often used to depict witches and villains. Stuff of that sort | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's because of cultural conditioning of our normal instincts. We actually have this thing in our brain, called an amygdala ( URL_0 ), which, among other things, judges things for us. This is why it is a normal instinct to be less friendly to people who look very different to you. Of course, it's also quite logical if you think about it for people with deformities to be feared, since their physical appearance means their view of the world is different from the majority of relatively attractive people who focus on having families and who instinctively reject uglier people. So the ugly people get angry and this injustice and sometimes love nothing more than to ruin things for those who have it so easy. And while nowadays that means posting a mean comment on insta, back in the day there would surely be more serious consequences."
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6zmgna | How are undocumented immigrants in the US able to do things like enroll in schools or get a driving license? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmwc6gg"
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"text": [
"Enforcing immigration is the federal government's job. The states have no obligation to spend their own money enforcing immigration law. It's not their problem to enforce the laws. Some states take this to mean that they'll just ignore immigration status. These states don't want children running around uneducated - they'd rather make sure that all children become productive adults that are useful members of society than have a bunch of illiterate kids with no option but to turn to crime. They don't want drivers running around uninsured and unlicensed - they want to make sure everyone has passed driving tests and carries insurance. They don't care if you're legally in the country as long as you're paying your state taxes. Then you have the legal system. Cops know that if illegal immigrants are afraid of coming to the police because they might get deported, **nobody will come to the police**. This means nobody reports crimes, nobody will testify against actual violent criminals and you're creating an underclass of residents that \"bad criminals\" can freely prey on without worrying about repercussions. Even the federal government, as a whole, isn't operating as a unified front. The IRS doesn't care about reporting illegal immigrants to the Immigration authorities as long as they're paying taxes."
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6zoef5 | Why were there so many different languages between the natives of the American west coast? | And on that, why were there so many different tribes? Are they all very different or rather similar? Why not unify into one nation/language? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmwrxch"
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"text": [
"Why didn't Europe do that? Or Asia? Or Africa? Geographic separation, social differentiation, conflicts, etc all resulted in them remaining unique."
],
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6zpfmi | What are some modern forms of propaganda and how do they work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The internet allows you to act like a small group of radicals are larger than they are. \"We shouldn't listen to x because they're crazy. I can come up with 3 examples of crazies and we all know 3 examples proves the trend.\"",
"Basically everything said on FoxNews... state flat out lies enough time with enough emotion, force, and sound of certainty and people believe it. Especially when you're on TV, wearing a suit, etc. No facts to back it up, or misleading with half truths, ie. saying Climate Change isn't real because not all scientists can agree it exists, while failing to mention that something like 97% DO agree, so that's much more agreemement than on most things..."
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6zpkfr | What is a state comptroller? | Pretty much as simple as that, my state has an office called "the office of the comptroller" and I don't really understand what that person does. Thanks! | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmx28q3",
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"text": [
"They're basically a chief accountant/financial officer for the state. They oversee things like state budgets, government spending, government contracts, and paying state employees.",
"My dad is a comptroller for the Federal government. He checks out banks, makes sure they follow laws and have a good track record before they open or merge with other banks."
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6zq7ls | Why almost all boats (watercraft in general) have names but airplanes don't? | Even small boats have distinct (and very creative) names! But airplanes only are known by the flight numbers. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"I worked at sea for the last 10 years and as far as I can tell the reason is mainly tradition. Also take into account the crew on a ship live there for 4+ months at a time and a name is more personal than a designation. One of the first container ship companies (I can't remember the name) tried to put numbers on ships rather than names and were threatened with strike action by the fleet captains.",
"JetBlue had names for all their planes last time I was working on them. CP Air also named their planes. Many militaries also allow their planes to be named. Thing is, aviation is heavily regulated and even a named plane's **official** identity is the fin number allocated by the regulating authority. Many jurisdictions also allocate official numbers to even small craft, but it is seldom used because their travels are not as rigidly controlled",
"I can think of one plane, named for the pilot's mother: The Enola Gay. Reasonably famous. More generally, plenty of personal aircraft have names, as well as many commercial craft. FedEx names their planes if I'm not mistaken. American Airlines does not. So, more planes have names than you think."
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6zr0bd | How do TV reality/(cooking) competitions do those scenes where the contestants/actors go off scene and make a private comment to the audience? | Like does the director just say "EVERYBODY STOP COOKING, AUSTIN NEED TO GO DO A PRIVATE CLIP" or do they wait until later to say it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Those are shot afterward. They basically air the footage for them off screen and ask them to narrate, describe what was going on, what they were feeling, to provide the commentary.",
"I always figured they take those shots after the fact and just have the individual go over what they were thinking at the time.",
"They're filmd after the competition. The director goes \"ok Joe, we noticed you had some difficulty starting with the chopping. Tell us about that. Action!\""
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6zrbp0 | How did the continents get their names? | How did each continent become universally known by it's name? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmxhuc8"
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"text": [
"North and South America were named after [Amerigo Vespucci]( URL_0 ), who first showed that the New World was in fact a new continental mass and not far east Asia. Africa is the Roman name for Tunisia, and of unclear origin. Eventually the name was used to cover the whole landmass. Australia is from the Latin *Australis* for \"southern\" Antarctica is from Greek, and translates as anti-arctic. Europe and Asia date back to at least the ancient Greeks and their origin is a little murky. Note that these are the *English* names for the continents. They have other names in other languages that aren't partially derived from Latin and Greek."
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6zs0ux | What happens if someone from an uncontacted tribe wants to join society? Are they citizens of the country they live in? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmxm3xu"
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"text": [
"Aye. Every country I know of grants citizenship automatically to people born on their soil from ancestors also born on their soil (unless, an exception in some countries, those ancestors were explicitly guest immigrants)."
],
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6zsk5i | Why do people say that they want to have deep conversations but it turns out they don't? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmxqb5s"
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"text": [
"Nine times out of ten they're probably hoping one specific person will message them as a result of their post and aren't really interested in talking to anyone else."
],
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6zt0v8 | Why did the FBI only send NWA a letter of condemnation, instead of arresting NWA? Was it because rapping "F da police" was 100% free speech? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"What did they do that was illegal? If they didn't do anything that was illegal (not just rap about it), then they wouldn't be arrested. There would have to be some law that was broken.",
"There is absolutely nothing illegal about saying \"fuck the police\". Freedom of speech is *very* strong in the US and pretty much the only things you can get in trouble for are direct threats, inciting people to immediate violence, false advertising and slander/libel that is provably false and has a provable negative impact on somebody. Pretty much any opinion you have is protected speech. \"Fuck the police\" is just a strongly worded way of saying \"I don't particularly like or respect police officers\" - entirely within the realm of protected speech.",
"If the lyrics were like \"Kill the police\" then they would have trouble with police as it would count as inciting violence. But \"Fuck the police\" means their disagreement with police actions."
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6zvk2q | How come it seems that despite it size there seems only a few 'notable' civilizations in African History whereas Europe and Asia seem chock full of them? Is it just bias? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmyfft7"
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"text": [
"The development of 'notable' civilization stems largely from the geographical location they happen to be in that allowed good farming and specialization in cities due to 'overproduction' of food. Egypt, the Indian subcontinent, China and mainland South East Asia all have large river systems that sustained a lot of farming and that's where the earliest civilizations grew. Also, there were a lot of stock animals available in those areas (goats, horses, ...). Africa (besides Egypt and the mediterranean coast) was physically cut off from the earliest civilizations in the middle east by the Sahara desert so the technology couldn't spread very easily. If you look at the large civilizations that grew in Africa you see that most of them developed in Western Africa where there were large river systems, too, south of the desert but north of the thick rain forests of Central Africa where farming was much more difficult. Europe had the advantage that it was more easily accessible, well irrigated by rivers and the Mediterranean was a large trade route. Besides, most of Europe was still very tribal before the Romans conquered it all. After medieval times Europe then had the advantage that they fought each other so often they heavily developed weaponry and military tactics which they then used to conquer the rest of the world and enrich their nations while doing so and promote European culture everywhere."
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6zwh1h | How are people coerced into a false confession? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Forensic Psychology graduate here. From what I remember it's rather basic, essentially if you're not physically punished (which happens but very rarely I think) then the 'bad cop' can say things like 'if you plead guilty and admit it you'll only get X years, but if you plead innocent then when the jury finds you guilty you'll get X+5 years, your family will have to cope without you, its a dangerous world where money is hard to come by' etc. Its not as black and white and its not like the movies where the bent cops threaten to 'take care' of the suspect's families, but its along those lines. Also, exhaustion. After being given late night interviews and a disrupted sleeping pattern for so long many peoples brains will enter survival mode and do anything just to get rid of the environment, which includes confessing. The brain doesn't see the long term effects of imprisonment etc, but rather only sees a way out of the psychological and physical exhaustion. If I'm wrong or there's more please add and tell me, but that's the gist of it from what I can remember. Also note that from the studies I saw, what I mentioned above is the exact reason torture doesn't work, people will say anything to stop the pain.",
"The threat of being charged with a much more serious crime if they don't confess to a more minor crime. Imagine you were accused of a crime you didn't commit, say armed robbery. Someone got shot but not killed. You're facing 30 years behind bars for this. Say the prosecution offers you a deal to prevent this from going to trial and taking years - plead guilty to robbery and a weapons offense, get out in 5 years, maybe 3 with good behavior. Or, go to trial and risk being put away for 30. Give up 30 years of your life, your entire life is over. Get out in 3, it's going to be hell but you only gave up 3 years of your life, maybe you can still reconnect with friends and family afterwards. Do you roll the dice with your entire life if they've got enough evidence to take things to trial?",
"Where the hell do you people live? Don't you have rules about interviewing suspects? Doesn't anybody in your respective countries actually give a shit about convicting the real offender by, I don't know, using evidence to support a confession?",
"In addition to what others have posted, a very common scenario: Considering how backed up our court system is there are innocent people in jail for years awaiting trial. At some point a prosecutor tells them that if they plead guilty to X their sentence will be time served. If they say no they risk staying in jail for an indeterminate amount of time and still possibly losing the trial.",
"You're locked in a room full other assumed criminals, removed from contact with the outside world, thrown into a disgusting place, sometimes beat, Fed food that can range from bland to green bologna. Your dignity is taken away, your respect, and your trust in the justice system. They tell you that if you just confess then you'll get to go home. You won't have to eat eggs that include the egg shells, at home you'll have that blood pressure medicine that you bet your life on and most importantly, 5 years on probation is easy, just sign the paper and we let you go. Or to put it simple: sign for 5 years now or get life once the trial is over."
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6zxxoz | Why are many Americans so hostile towards higher taxes? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"We don't think our government use the money wisely, we think that government does things inefficiently, we don't want to pay for peoples' bad choices, and in any case, we believe that taxes at the state and local level are more responsive to citizens' needs than taxes at the national level. Sweden has 10 million people, do you think your government would do as good a job of responding to *city and local* needs if Sweden had 325 million people?",
"Americans tend to think of taxes as taken from them and given to someone else instead of being taken from everyone and used to benefit society.",
"Americans (as a group, there are plenty who think differently) don't trust government to provide better services than they can buy with the money in their pocket. They look at bad schools and bad government-run hospitals and think that government is incapable of providing high-value care for everyone. They percieve a large population who will cheat the system, living the easy life while the responsible people in society foot the bill. Money also has a larger say in politics in the USA. Monied interests hold a lot of sway over politicians and they are free to buy propaganda to spread information opposing increasing taxes, particularly on the wealthy."
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6zxzik | How do linguists/historians mark the end of Middle/Old English? I know that it was a gradual shift, but what marked the transition from one to the other? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's generally accepted that when the Norman rule of England ended, about aa hundred fifty years after the battle of hastings, the linguistic influence of French had altered Old English out of existance. Then you have middle English, he great vowel shift, standardized spelling and by the time Shakespeare was writing, modern English.",
"They don't. Like you say, it's a gradual shift that occurred at different speeds in different regions. There are some notable documents like bible translations that are useful to mark the state of the language at that date, and language historians use those to track the shift in the \"official\" language over time. Even today some English dialects are nearly unintelligible to other native English speakers so the exact definition of \"Modern English\" is itself debatable."
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6zy2yy | Why are so many Americans hostile towards higher taxes? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmyx4pj",
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"text": [
"We're pissed cause we pay and pay and our infrastructure is still failing, healthcare isn't free, nothing ever seems to get better as a result of paying more taxes.",
"Because the US government wastes the money lining the pockets of our politicians. Very little goes into our society that does the average person any good."
],
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6zyewl | Why do strangers get interested in what I'm doing and sometimes even start to repeat? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dmyzkxk"
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"text": [
"This is called a \"herd mentality.\" When people don't know what to do, they sometimes assume someone around them might now, so they look for someone who looks purposeful and copy them. Others then see the multiple copies and think \"oh this must good\" so now you have more copiers, leading to even more people thinking it, and pretty soon a huge number of directionless people are copying the same action, each thinking the others know something."
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|
701uax | Why do overly religious people not like homosexuality? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Hi, I'm from a highly religious Hindu family. I don't have any problems with homosexuality, and neither do any of my family members. Same with Buddhists. They don't care. Neither do Vedics, or Sikhs. What you're probably referring to are Christians, Muslims, Jews, and maybe some other offshoots of the Abrahamic religions. They have specific passages that decry homosexuality, that's why. Chances are that these passages were wrongly translated, or not meant to be put there in the first place, though, in fact! Religious people teach homophobia to kids like they teach anything else, and the children go with it, most of them at least until they're a bit older. Thanks.",
"I'll take a stab at this: I am seeing a lot of people in here mentioning the passage from the Bible's book, Leviticus, as evidence of why many Christian people are against homosexuality. While this may be true for some sects of Christianity that take the Bible very literally (such as Jehova's Witnesses or some Evangelicals), it is not the case for all Christians. For a lot of Christian sects, the Old Testament is viewed as divinely inspired writings, but it's not something that you should take literally. I am Catholic, and where a lot of religious views come from for Catholics is [tradition]( URL_0 ). Catholicism gives a lot of weight to Scripture, obviously, but Tradition actually makes up a very large part of the Church's views. Here's the premise of tradition, from a Catholic's POV: St. Peter (one of Jesus's 12 apostles, basically his close friend he traveled/preached with) was assigned by Jesus to be the head of the Church. Ever since then, every pope in the Catholic Church has been a member of a line of succession that goes all the way back to St. Peter. As a result, the Church is based on preserving these ideas taught to Peter by Jesus Himself, and a lot of what the Catholic Church does is try to take these teachings of Christ that are the foundation of the faith and explain/present them to the next generation, and the Church has the authority to do so. This is the [Magisterium]( URL_1 ) of the Church. What I'm getting at in this (rambling) post is that basically, the Church believes in a set of values that were established during the formation of the Church, and with each generation, it's the Church's purpose to pass these values down. In the case of homosexuality, the Church does not disagree with it because it said so in Leviticus. There is actually a pretty complicated reason why, namely that the Catholic Church believes that sexuality is a gift from God, and the purpose of sex & marriage (can't have one without the other in Catholicism) is to create life; two men (or women) cannot do this. It gets a lot more complicated than this, and if you're interested you can read about the Theology of the Body or any other teachings the Church has put out. **tl;dr:** For Catholicism, and I'd venture to say many other sects as well (as well as other religions), the views against homosexuality are not just because of one passage in the Bible, but rather a matter of dogma that is deeply rooted in the traditions of the faith",
"Homosexuality is specifically prohibited in all 3 Abrahamic religions. But so is premarital sex, adultery, consensual extramarital sex, and masturbation. But other religions such as Buddhism, Sikhism, and the like have little to no issue with it for common practitioners (though some still require religious leaders to be celibate)."
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702498 | In America we "give people shit". In England they "take the piss". Where do these phrases originate from? | Why do we use such gross terminology for joking around with someone? Are these phrases somehow related? They seem like opposite sides of the same coin. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not sure this answers your question, but Steven Pinker has pointed out that many of these obscene phrases started off as more intelligible religious curses. For example - Who (in) the hell are you → Who the fuck are you? I don’t give a damn → I don’t give a shit Holy Mary! → Holy shit! Damn you! → Fuck you! IOW, secular and scatological curses have replaced religious ones, for a host of reasons. I would imagine to \"give someone shit\" is a variant of \"to give someone hell,\" but that's just a guess."
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7024lh | Why are therapists and depression meds so common in the USA unlike anywhere else? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your premise is somewhat wrong. Depression is *more* common in Sweden and other Nordic countries. Mental health conditions usually go undiagnosed and untreated in poor countries. Feel depressed, too bad, suck it up. The USA is a very rich country, so we can afford to care about things like this.",
"Antidepressants are used everywhere. [In the UK, 23% of primary care patients were prescribed an antidepressant at some point.] ( URL_0 ) I think you're conflating advertising with prevalence, but many countries specifically ban prescription medication ads. Psychotherapy is everywhere, even more so outside out of US, actually. At one point, Argentina has the highest number of psychotherapists per capita, but I'm not sure if that's still true. Part of the problem is professional designations and education don't always transfer across borders. i.e. \"Therapist\" is *not* a professional designation in Canada. Bottom line: sorry, the US really isn't special or extraordinary in this regard.",
"There are many factors and theories, so I will give some of the highlights. Enough Americans are simply wealthy enough to afford things like this. American culture is also a bit more medication-oriented than its peers, so they tend to have more of those compared to their peers in everything medically related. Individualism is *huge* in the USA compared to others and this correlates with higher levels of depression. One likely cause is that American social networks tend to be smaller and weaker than in other places. Americans are less likely to know their neighbors, so their meaningful social interactions only occur when they travel some distance. This is a problem which is *worse* for more-wealthy people (in general) and more-wealthy people can afford therapists and drugs.",
"As a Canadian (where we get a lot of American television) I think some of it has to do with the constant bombarding of drug commercials telling people to ask their doctors if _____ is right for them. These people are looking for a quick fix and think the world revolves around them (many Americans live up to the stereotype of being arrogant - my husband is an American) and feel entitled to the pills. In other countries people are more like \"whatever\" and deal with their problems in a more natural way. American doctors make $$ prescribing drugs so will push their use.",
"In Germany, if you feel stressed or depressed, the national health insurance fully covers you to leave work and go to spas for relaxation therapy. Source: \"where to invade next\" documentary Disclosure: not a German citizen"
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702c7g | Why are WWII atrocities not as widely discussed in Japan as they are in Germany? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"because they dont want to admit it. simple as that. at the very least, they downplay the issue. URL_0 there is far more right wing nationalist revisionism in japan than germany."
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704f56 | How can Buzzfeed take pictures from Instagram without asking permission? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Buzzfeed largely operates on an \"ask for forgiveness, not permission\" standpoint. Basically, all you can do is demand they take it down. And then they do. But since Buzzfeed articles have a lifespan of about 2 minutes, they don't care if they have to take it down after 99% of the people who will ever read the article already has. It should be noted that posting your image on a public social media network already has terms and rights built into it."
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704jvr | Why is using Tinder for casual hook ups accepted as a normal part of life for singles in American society, but not strip clubs or escorts? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"you are looking at this entirely as if the girl doesn't matter. It matters enormously if a girl is paid to spend time with a guy vs she chooses to for the same reason as him. One is 2 people choosing to hook up with eachother superficially just for sex, and the other is *one* person choosing to pay another to spend sexual time with them. Women are people and their choices matter.",
"The types of people who say it's wrong for single men to go to strip clubs are not the types of people saying \"Yeah sure, go hook up with whoever on Tinder\". There's more of a stigma against it because... 1. Tinder is also used for dating 2. It's two people both in the same boat meeting instead of one person paying someone to dance/\"escort\" them"
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7072x2 | Why are names in a directory sorted by last name instead of first? Example: Lincoln, Abraham instead of Abraham Lincoln | Is it because last names are more unique, because people usually don't abbreviate/change last names such as William to Bill, or some other reason? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your second reason is a big part of it, but it's also because it keeps families together better than the alternative. It is much more frequently the case that when doing research you will want to see all of the Windsors or all the Lincolns than all the Steves or Lindseys. Additionally, and this is more speculative, I suspect that back when record keeping began last names were the more significant and easily tracked marker. Far simpler to list the 10 families in a village by their last name with annotations of first names when necessary than to organize by first name.",
"It makes more sense to have all the Lincolns grouped at the same page of your directory, because they are certainly linked together, than having all the Abrahams grouped which doesn't help you in anything."
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7074lo | Why is Lethal Injection considered more humane than a single shot to the head or a firing squad? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I actually did a paper on this a few years ago. In the US, lethal injection is used (partially) because they want it to be less mentally damaging to the spectators. There are sedatives that are less painful, but they cause the body to convulse and therefore it can be disturbing to the people who come to watch. Same idea with gunshots, it is hard to watch. Keep in mind, spectators usually include the families of the victims so they try to keep the mental trauma down as much as possible. Not saying this is the right or wrong method, but it is one of the reasons we use it in the US Also good to note is firing squad and even hanging are still options for executions in a few states. If I remember correctly one even still allows the electric chair. Edit 1:Spelling Edit 2: I wanted to further explain that the paper was an assignment specifically for lethal injection vs less painful drugs (such as overdosing on sleep aids) so there was no \"I don't believe in lethal injection\" out for the paper. Gas was not an option, but my guess would be (and this is 100% a guess so don't look too much into it) is in the US it is remeniscent of Hitler and the Nazis. Again, just a guess and not intended to offend anyone who asked about it. That's isn't a bad question. There is also a mentality in some areas of \"this death is your penalty, why should it be pleasant or easy for you.\" Also this paper simply focused on method, not whether the execution is right (I personally think it should only be used in extreme cases), whether spectators should be present (which I don't think they should be but I get why they would), or the morality of actions up to the execution(such as last meal). The only topic breeched about anything other than this method vs that method is that it is generally more expensive to execute someone via lethal injection than it is (generally) to incarcerate them for life.",
"It's probably just considered more respectful. But mostly I think it's because people simply don't want to acknowledge what they're actually doing. Also, for a shot to the head to be 99+% effective you want a larger gun than normal. Which means you'd basically decimate the skull. It would be messy. But for almost all purposes I believe it's the most painless and most tolerable. Many rounds are supersonic, so you be dead before you even knew the gun was fired. Any time Ive put an animal down, as hard as it is, that's the proper method. There is no fear or pain.",
"* people have survived shots to the head, and a firing squad does not kill instantly * executions have to be witnessed, so they don't want to use anything too messy * in general, society considers mutilation, even of the dead, to be a bad thing",
"Lethal injection is **not** more humane than firing squad. There's a lot of botched injection attempts and needing more and more doses to put people out who are naturally resistant to the injection. There's been people who have survived the initial injection for hours in excruciating pain. From what I understand there is lobbying in multiple states in the US to bring back firing squads to replace lethal injection because of it's inhumane reality. Lethal injections are prettier for the non-condemned who are watching",
"Why not with carbon monoxide in a sealed room?",
"It's not more humane. It's just because it's less messy, more reliable and less graphic for the spectators.",
"One major reason is we are taking into account the feelings of the executioner. Pointing a gun and shooting someone in the head might feel more like murder to the executioner than simply pulling a lever or pushing a button.",
"Also Idk if anyone else mentioned this but with firing squad or a single shot to the head , you are defiling or disfiguring the body. Idk the USA laws so maybe a convict who is on death row has no rights but I would assume if there is family that they would want an open casket funeral etc? And like others metioned, its the most humane way to kill someone. Plus you dont want the executioners suffering from PTSD from all that shooting",
"To solve all of the concern over what may be to disturbing or messy for the viewers or painful/inhumane to the inmate, I believe if we are going to continue to use capital punishment, it should be done via inert gas asphyxiation (replacing oxygen with an inert gas like helium or nitrogen). In 2015, Oklahoma's governor signed a bill allowing nitrogen asphyxiation as an option for execution. There is no pain, only a euphoric feeling. There is no mess. There are no drug companies refusing to sell a particular drug. There are no botched injections, electrocutions, hangings or shootings. There is nothing disturbing to watch. No person on death row would be able to claim that inert gas asphyxiation is inhumane (Mitchell Rupe's death sentence was overturned after he argued that he was too heavy to hang and he would be decapitated. Hanging was the default method at the time). I understand there are politics involved. And ignorance. Some people want the inmate to suffer. Others feel that current methods are tradition. Some people will liken it to the gas chambers of WWII. Like many other problems we have here in the USA, people need to grow up and stop making everything so difficult.",
"No idea on the reality of this but I'd like to fund a start up to start producing the drug through a series of shell companies. Many states have to postpone executions because no company wants the PR for being the supplier. If I can't do that, I second the idea for using confiscated narcotics. As a tax payer, it's asinine to pay tens of thousands for a multipart dose that reportedly causes pain when we could be disposing of drugs we'd otherwise just destroy.",
"Edit: I'm ridiculously wrong about the cost of the drugs, sorry for misinforming anybody who read this! The rest of my comment is misinformed BS I don't remember the exact figures, but I once read about some of the drugs used costing tens of thousands of dollars. I'm guessing it's profitable enough for the producers that they lobby for it under the guise that it's more humane. I think the article I was reading was about a recent execution which was testing and unused drug though, so maybe the normal stuff is cheaper. My thought was that it'd be so much cheaper to use fentanyl or something. You hear about people accidentally ODing all the time because it's so damn strong, plus I think the fact that it's an opiate(not entirely sure of this) means that it would be inherently painless. Meh, usually the answer to illogical situations like this is that somebody has figured out how to profit.",
"It's actually less humane than a shot to the head or a firing squad. Lethal Injection, technically speaking, cannot exist. This is because you need doctors to create the concoction needed to kill the person quickly. But, Doctors took the oath, so they are NOT allowed to do so. As such, Lethal Injections, more often than not, cause extreme pain to the Injectee because the mix used isn't properly made to immediately and quickly kill the person. The MOST humane way to kill a person would be via Guillotine. Immediate and painless, gruesome as it might look. Note: Firing Squad - It can take multiple shots to kill a man Shot to the head - you won't always immediately kill the person",
"Many people believe that putting down a criminal is the same as putting down a dog. They can just pump them full of pentobarbital. That isn't what happens. The maker of the drug won't allow it to be used for that purpose. Instead governments are using all manner of weird shit to kill a person. It isn't neat or clean. The state is awkwardly poisoning a person to death.",
"Lethal injection also allows for less of a possibility of human error, which can also be regarded as more \"humane\".",
"because of pain. There is a chance that shooting someone will not be instant death. But hey give you a sedative with leathal injection or some numbing agent or whatever.",
"Long time opponent of the death penalty here: I have no idea. Really. I'm old enough to remember the outrage about Gary Gilmore deciding to be executed by firing squad, and I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now.",
"> WIRED: In the book you mention that there’s one method with no documented botched executions, but you don’t say much about it. > Sarat: The firing squad. We don’t talk much about it because in 120 years there were only 34 executions. Despite other methods being botched frequently, firing squad was reliable, in the US at least. Lethal injection is not: > Since the introduction of lethal injection in 1980, just over 7 percent of lethal injections have been botched. [Sauce]( URL_0 )",
"Because it makes the execution seem more sophisticated civilized and humane than blowing someone's head off, which is a method of execution we associate with dictatorships and third world countries.",
"Murder is taboo, and we strongly associate the shooting of a defenseless human as murder, regardless of the circumstance. Killing a defenseless human with sedatives and poison is just less taboo.",
"It isn't less humane. It just looks more humane. You don't see blood. Shooting someone in the head with a shotgun would be more humane, but it looks less humane than lethal injection.",
"Took me a while to [dig this up]( URL_0 ) but I think it worth watching. It is a BBC documentary examining the various execution methods and how humane they are. Well worth the hour it takes to watch and with a somewhat surprising conclusion.",
"To sanitize the act. Less gore creates the illusion of civility. Its dishonest, much like using the term \"enhanced interrogation\" instead of torture. Now, I don't see all life as sacred and there are some people who are beyond reform (how does one change the nature of a serial killer or rapist?) Let them rot. But we've put innocent people to death and that should disgust all sides of this debate. Instead we make it cleaner, bloody executions are for the \"barbarians\". Again, its just dishonest and allows people to distance themselves from the act."
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707oyc | How do translators choose between seemingly synonymous phrases? | The example that brought up the question: I was watching a French film where a character said "Absolutement rien." Personally, my amateur high school French would lead me to translate that simply as "Absolutely nothing." However, the subtitle read "Nothing at all." What leads a translator to make these kind of small, mostly inconsequential choices? Does it just come down to personal preference of what sounds better? Edit: First of all, thank you for all the answers so far! I'd just like to specify that I'm already aware that translations aren't usually verbatim due to connotations or idioms. My question is specifically referring to the times when the change doesn't seem to make any difference in feeling, such as in my example. As a native English speaker, I don't feel any difference in connotation between "absolutely nothing" and "nothing at all" in this context. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I would say, yes. I'm not a professional translator or anything. I have a degree in Japanese though and I put effort in to not get too rusty. But in any language, [words might have the same meaning, but different connotation]( URL_0 ). And it's sort of a skill to find the right word or phrase that has the same connotation as the word or phrase in the language you're translating. But yes, it's what sounds better. \"Absolutely nothing\" is probably what the sentence literally means, but that's probably not how it sounds in French. I can't say what it sounds like as I haven't taken French since high school.",
"I translate Japanese to English so I can help here. *At Least* 90% of Japanese does not 1:1 translate to English. One of my go to examples is しなければならい \"if you do not do it it will be no good\" is as close to literal as youre going to get, but since nobody *speaks that way* in English you have to pick what the speaker would say **if they spoke English as their native language**. So I'd translate that phrase as \"You must X\" or \"you have no choice but to Y\". And so on. Mostly its done by the nebulous \" feeling\" you have about the text. Is the Speaker a Government or a large corporation? The use \"serious\" voice. Is it a highschool girl talking to her boyfriend? Work in some more personal choice, etc. Somethings just dont matter though, in basically any language there's significant overlap between \"its ok\" \"that's fine\" \"no problem\" and so one. I just pick one at random basically. Whichever one you use in your language the most will suffice.",
"It’s because you can directly translate words, but actually speaking a language is far different. I am a different person in Spanish because the words I use, even though they have direct translations, carry different meanings. Watching Narcos for example is very different in Spanish vs. reading the subtitles. In short; you can translate words directly, but you can’t translate the feelings.",
"> inconsequential You've said it yourself: the differences are inconsequential. That literally means it makes no difference which choice you make. Translators don't usually translate word-for-word -- in fact, they avoid doing that because it leads to unnatural-sounding translations. Different languages simply work differently. When faced with a phrase like \"absolument rien\" (note the spelling of \"absolument\"), translators don't think, \"Well, 'absolument' means 'absolutely' and 'rien' means 'nothing'.\" They think more like this: \"This French phrase is strongly emphasizing the message that the set of what the speaker is talking about is completely empty and has not even the smallest thing in it. How would a native English-speaker communicate that idea?\" In fact, since we're talking about movie subtitles, the question is, \"How would *this character* communicate that idea?\" There are also many other constraints on subtitles: because we can't read quite as fast as we can hear, they have to be easily readable at a glance. \"At all\" is definitely easier to process than \"absolutely\", so that might also be a factor.",
"I did a translation past-time jobs for a few years. Basically most translators try to convey what the line actually mean, not what it is actually said. For that, the translator needs to understand the context and the culture aspect. I don't speak French so I have no idea but if the phrase \"Absolutement rien\" is often used casually then I may translated it to \"nothing at all\" since \"Absolutely nothing\" sounds too tense. Word choice for translation can be very subjective and has plenty of \"okay close enough\" moments.",
"Because translators have deeper understanding of languages they translate to and from and have deeper command of common phraseology that these languages have.",
"In your specific case, Nothing at all and absolutely nothing are valid translations. The thing is that in English, absolutely nothing is harsher than nothing at all. Whereas absolument rien is pretty tame in french",
"The job of a translator is to try to convey the meaning and tone of whatever it is that they are translating- they basically use their best judgment and knowledge of both languages to pick a phrase that best preserves both. This is basically up to the translator's judgment, and can be pretty subjective at times. In the case of the movie you are watching, the translator probably worked with people from the movie to decide what is the tone of the scene, and used a subtitle that most closely fit the tone that the director was trying to convey.",
"Two things to consider here, idiom and connotation. An idiom is a sentiment that is expressed in words that make no functional sense when deconstructed, but never the less mean something in that language. Example: what's up? The other thing is connotation. Many synonyms mean essentially the same thing, but carry different emotional flavors. For example. Work and toil mean essentially the same thing, but toil connotes that the work being done was not necessarily pleasant or desirable. Similarly, labor also means work, but the word implies that the job is physical in nature and or hard on the body. So for example, one would not traditionally say that he has been laboring all day at the computer, even though labor means work. Hope this helps.",
"It depends on what is being translated. In the example you gave was in movies. It would be different if out wad dubbed vs subtitled. In dubbing you have to take into account lips. In subtitles you have to take into account reading speed. Generally speaking subtitles are more literal than dubbing. A great example is the spaghetti western with Clint Eastwood. They were filmed with an international cast each speaking dialogue in their own language so Spanish, English, Italian and German were spoken. Later the non English parts were dubbed. There was a part in The Good the Bad and the Ugly where an Italian actor says \"piu forte\" which literally means more strong but a better translation is louder. The English dubbing days \"more feeling \" to match the lips and still makes sense with the story line. With subtitles it's more literal and taking into account whay is easier to read and digest. Also taking into account a plot twist or later reference."
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70a939 | Why do mobile games have such a boom in popularity and then inevitably become abandoned in a relatively short period of time? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mobile games are new and fun for a while, but the problem is there is no depth to hold the user's attention for a long period. Take flappy bird as an example. There is a certain challenge to get a high score and then keep beating it. That's all there is to it, nothing more to do when you get a one of a kind score. Eventually, this will become stale, repetitive and boring and you want something new to hold your attention.",
"There's no money in continued development of mobile games. Lack of hardware specs mean games can't get that complicated without isolating users that don't have all but the highest-end phones. If it can't run well on last generation's iPhone/Android, you've lost 60% of your market before publishing. Continued development that adds content and various game modes means each update will require more and more of your user's limited storage space. Sure there's ways to expand it, but 90% of users will just uninstall before figuring out how. Especially when they go looking to free up space for pictures and porn and see your app topping the list of those using HDD space. Also, there's just no money in it. If users bought Flappy Bird $2, and you add a new level, they're not going to pay $2 again. But if you take the new level, launch it as Flappy Bird 2, they'll pay $2 all over again.",
"Because most are specifically designed to suck in and lock down a core segment of paying players (superusers). The basic strategy is to make it free and easy at first, but after a while suddenly make it much harder without paying for the in-app purchases. The vast majority of players get to this point, or maybe make a few purchases, before the grind gets boring and they give up. The games are never truly abandoned though, a small percentage of people get addicted and buy lots of in-game stuff to keep their progress and that is where the game makers get their money. Look up \"freemium\" for more info on how this concept works. The short of it is, the cycle you describe is by design. A mass of people are attracted with marketing and free, easy content. But the ultimate goal is to get a small core of addicted, paying users.",
"I think that trend may be different in other countries, especially Asian countries. Games like Kings of Glory (mobile MOBA) seem to be very popular and have a lot of depth, progression, and mastery. I think the difference is that mobile developers in the US (full disclosure...I work in gaming in the US) tend to make mobile games geared toward the current mobile players...casual players. I think there are some games (Vainglory?) that are breaking this trend and hopefully they’ll be successful in capturing more hardcore gamers so we can get good games on mobile that I can play for 100+ hours."
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70bgvx | Why do men get more pockets than women? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Women's clothing is often tight fitting and focuses on a slim silhouette which makes pockets harder to include. Also it is in less demand since women generally carry purses. Men, on the other hand, carry stuff in pockets much more frequently.",
"Pants with smoother behinds are marketed to women. In reality, they can buy any pants they want."
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70coja | Why is it easier to tolerate bad cultural behaviour when it's distant in time than when the culture is distant in space | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Space, as a gap, is far easier to bridge. Meaning the bad behavior can be perceived as being something experienced vicariously, whereas one knows you cannot bridge from now to the past, so your vicarious experience of it comes with the knowledge that it's from long ago, it does not exist per se. I would run into soccer hooligans being violent to me today. It is possible. I can't run into Caligula and get raped today. It's not possible."
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70cxys | What do anarchists want? A lawless society with every person fending for themselves? | I'm reading the controversy started by John Jay College professor, Mike Isaacson @vulgareconomics Do people like him really think they would be better off without police and government? Are they prepared to survive in a society without law and order? Unless he has an arsenal, his physique doesn't strike me as being capable of holding its own in a lawless society... | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Anarchists certainly don't want a society where people have to fend for themselves, no. Community is a central feature of anarchism. Anarchists don't reject structure in society so much as hierarchical structure. They want power to be decentralised and they want communities to organise by democratic means, namely consensus-building. Anarchists believe that humans are capable of resolving interpersonal conflict without the need for state intervention. Also, just because there is no codified law, doesn't mean that anarchists don't expect there'll some sort of normativity, they simply envision this to be in the shape of living customs as opposed to (what they regard as) dead law, which is slow to change in the face of constantly changing moral precepts. Obviously, whether this is at all feasible is... controversial.",
"Anarchists want a society in which people stop telling them what to do. Either they are optimists and assume no one will try to abuse them, or they are self-confident and believe they can defend themselves just fine, or they believe that voluntary membership in mutual aid groups is sufficient.",
"You are making the assumption that a society without police is a society without order. Many societies have functioned without police forces and found natural order. We see police forces disrupting order, becoming militarized, and oppressing various parts of society rather than protecting and serving the whole.",
"There has been one large anarchist controlled region in world history: [Catalonia]( URL_0 ) during the civil war. This is what George Orwell had to say about it: > It was the first time I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised; even the bootblacks had been collectivised and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal.",
"Anarchy isn't synonymous with chaos. As a society we should move past the definition we've come to hold from media and what not if we want to wrangle with the idea of anarchy in a useful way Larken Rose can explain better than I can, YouTube the guy",
"There are different kinds of anarchy but the overall theme is one of independence and a resistance to any form of control. They desire personal freedom above the desire for stability and systems of control. Other types of anarchists may desire chaos and disorder. Still others may desire to abolish governments and imagine people working problems out without laws. It's a kind of social philosophy.",
"Anarchism is a really broad philosophy with many different schools of thought, all of which have a differing opinions on how society should operate. Generally speaking they all agree that we should dissolve the state, but they disagree on the methodology for doing so. It can range from extreme individualism to complete collectivism. What you're most familiar with are probably Black Bloc types, who fall into the category of Social Anarchists or Anarcho-communism. In a broad sense, they believe that once the workers triumph over the bourgeois, everyone becomes truly equal. Workers would then spontaneously self organize to produce goods in common for all society. All property is communally owned and there are no leaders in the traditional sense. Without the oppressor/oppressed dynamic, the state becomes obsolete and ceases to exist. Rather policy is determined through a horizontal network of voluntary organizations and workers' councils based on the mantra of \"each according to his ability, each according to his needs\". Anarcho-capitalism takes a very different approach. In this type of society, everything is controlled by market forces through a total open market. All services are provided by private enterprise rather than through taxation and government, and everything is privately owned. Minarchists are a similar group who advocate for a \"nightwatchman state\". Where the state only provides military, police, and courts to protect citizens from bodily harm and enforce property rights. Individualist anarchism triumphs the individual in preference to social constructs such as morality, ideology, social customs, etc. It encompasses a number of different schools including free love, objectivism, and naturalism. They tend to shun revolution as a means of bringing about anarchism instead preferring a natural evolution. The Freemen and sovereign citizens movement would also fall under this category. There are other schools but there tend to be the three major ones."
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70dry1 | Why didi so many black activists in Civil Rights Movement the US convert to Islam? | I see the extra i in did now and I am sorry | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In their quest for civil rights and equality, many blacks in American rejected white culture, along with a largely white religion that was content to see them in slavery. Many turned to Islam, a more African religion, in a quest to reconnect with African culture.",
"I have no stats but there's this thought amongst a numbet of black Americans that Christianity is a white man's religion. White Southerners live in an area known as the Bible Belt, where there is a high rate of Christians. They claimed to be both Christian and supported the subjugation of blacks. So in short converting was an extra act of rebellion. In reality, Arab Muslims practiced slavery too. They ignored that.",
"'Islam' and the 'Nation of Islam' aren't the same religion. 'Islam' is a de-centralized theology based on Judeo-Christian teachings with the addition of the Koran. The 'Nation of Islam' is an authoritarian black supremacist religion that borrows from the three Abrahamic religions while introducing a completely new (and fundamentally incompatible) mythology of its own. Nor did you really find mainstream black activists joining it. It appealed primarily to criminals and crazies rather than mainstream activists and played no significant role in the Civil Rights movement - except perhaps as a hindrance to the adoption of Civil Rights due to its extremist nature. You did see some relatively mainstream sports stars such as Kareem abdul Jabbar and Muhammed Ali joining it, but that's really no different from the fact that Tom Cruise joined Scientology. Note: Some of the other answers seem to based on the selling points of the Nation of Islam. However, this is a highly inaccurate understanding of Africa. The reason there are so many Christians in Africa is because they voluntarily accepted Christianity. The reason there are so many Muslims is because black Africans were conquered and enslaved by Muslims. On the flip side, the black churches were the focal point of the Civil Rights movement from the dawn of the Civil Rights movement. This might explained why black Christians outnumber black Muslims in the U.S. by around 100-to-1 and virtually anyone that you'd reasonably consider a 'black leader' is Christian. Another way to grasp this is to recognize that while Malcolm X could fill a hall with supporters, MLK could fill the Washington Mall with supporters. The Nation of Islam has about the same authority amongst black Americans as the KKK has amongst white ones."
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70ek4f | Why can movies and games that's rated R and rated M be bought buy 17 years of age? What makes 17 so special, where tobacco and marriage comes at age 18? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Honestly it's really just an arbitrary number to prevent the majority of young people from being exposed to negative influences at a very young age. There's nothing 'special' about the age of 17, just it's generally accepted that at that age you're mature enough to understand the difference between games and film and reality.",
"Because this is a country founded by people who left Europe because everybody else was having sex they didn't approve of.",
"So the ages of marriage and tobacco vary by state. (Tobacco not as much, but [CA and HI are 21 and AL, AK, UT, and NJ are 19]( URL_0 )). There's not one universal standard for adulthood and it varies a lot. Also, as far as thresholds go, being able to watch adult content sounds like it should be a lower bar than being able to do adult content. Especially since parents can take their kids to Rated R movies anyway, the only change that happens at 17 is that they don't need parental supervision.",
"It should be noted that R and M ratings are not legally binding. The MPAA and ESRB were created by their respective industries as a means of self-regulation, precisely to avoid government interference.",
"Because 18 is also the age at which pornography becomes legal to buy. 17 is the point at which they can say \"this content is intended for mature audiences\", without including porn in that definition. There are 18+ ratings: AO for games and NC-17 (which replaced X) for movies, but you don't see them as often. Most retailers and console manufacturers don't allow AO games, and many movies rated NC-17 either appeal the rating or are edited to get down to an R rating."
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70f4yx | What would modern humanity/society look like if it developed on a Pangea-style supercontinent? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It all depends on what the natural barriers are within that continent. For instance, North Africa was more connected to Asia and Europe than it was to SubSaharan Africa. If you have large barriers, then it doesn't matter if its one land mass.",
"It would likely be comparable to the difference between North Africa and Subsaharan Africa, or Europe and East Asia, but repeated several times. A Pangea type continent would be divided by mountains, plains and deserts in much the same way the Old World is IRL. There would still be colonialism, multiple races and therefore racism, and massive income disparities. Civilization would cling far more to the coasts than it does on Earth, as the continental interior would have a harsh climate with massive temperature differences between summer and winter, not dissimilar to Siberia."
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70hxwo | why and when did we start using ginger to indicate red-haired people, when ginger is not associated with red or hair. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The ginger plant is actually red: URL_0 We get it from how the plant looks, not the root that we use.",
"Earliest usages of the term \"ginger\" as applied to red colored hair are; 1825 R. Forby Vocab. E. Anglia (1830) , \"Ginger, of a pale red colour, particularly applied to hair.\" 1834 T. Medwin Angler in Wales I. 35, \"I perceive a fine red or ginger game-cock in the yard.\" 1886 R. Holland Gloss. Words County of \"Chester, Ginger, sandy-haired. ‘He's a bit ginger.'\" 1897 Daily News 10 Sept. 2/6, \"Complexion and hair brown, moustache ginger.\" As for why, u/Alberius covered that.",
"Similar to when people say that a robin (the bird) has a red breast, a robin's breast is orange in colour. The word orange didn't come into use in the English language until the fruit came England so red was used to describe the colour orange up until then. I'm guessing that's why red heads are called red heads rather than orange heads. At least, that's what they said on an episode of QI one time anyway.",
"More importantly, why do people say red-head? Gingers clearly have Orange hair not red.",
"I had never heard it used in the USA until South Park did it. It was much more commonly used in the UK, however"
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70io4i | How do slang terms originate? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Language and the way we speak evolve over time. What may be considered slang now could be mainstream in the future. The origin of different slang terms vary per region and culture. Many slang terms start from younger generations creating code so that older people don't know what they're talking about (420, the rents, etc). Other slang terms originated from shortening of other words and phrases. We can see some examples as phrases that originated online such as \"lol\" and \"wtf\". Humans really like shortening different words and phrases, which is how contractions came about. Originally, contractions (you're, I'm, he's) were seen as unintelligent and \"not real words\" by some people and other linguists. Those words started off as being things the working class and other less formally educated people used but gained appeal over time. Even slang terms that are created in modern day like \"sus\" and \"legit\" are shortenings of suspicious and legitimate, respectively. Some slang also stem from corruptions of existing words spun a different way. Words like \"burn\" and \"ratchet\" existed before the slang equivalents, but the meanings were altered to be different but similar due to the connotations the original words could also have. tl;dr: people like shortening words and creating new ways to say things to their group."
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70j8dr | Why is the state of New York, with the 4th highest total population and the largest city in the country, left mostly unrepresented in Division 1 College Football? | Syracuse and Buffalo are the only programs in New York state that compete in Division 1, but they are 190 and 290 miles from New York City. Most major cities have a team in or near it, but New York City's closest team is Rutgers, 30 miles away in a different state. Why does New York have so few, especially New York City? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I am not sure what you are asking. Population of cities has no bearing on the category division a football team is in for college football. What matters for those are the size of the school, and the record of the team. Many of the Universities in NYC do not even have sports teams."
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70kkkz | How was professional cooking and baking handled hundreds of years ago in the hot seasons with no refrigeration? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A combination of fresh food and storage methods that didn't require cooling. Smoking, air drying, salt curing, pickling, fermenting, and canning can preserve foods in hot weather. Foods like cheese and some sausages are preserved by being covered in a layer of beneficial mold to prevent other bacteria that would cause spoilage. Another common method was the use of a root cellar, a (usually) unfinished room dug into the earth and lined with shelves for keeping fruit and vegetables. They'd be quite a bit cooler than above ground. The house I grew up in was built in the late 19th century and had a root cellar that was consistently around 60 degrees regardless of how hot the summer was.",
"Everything was made fresh. You didn't store chicken breasts in a freezer, you had a chicken coop. If you wanted chicken for dinner you went outside, picked a chicken, snapped it's neck, and started preparing it to eat."
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70otp7 | Why are the Germans considered the "bad guys" of WWI if they were only defending their allies who were attacked by the Serbians? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I really suggest watching The Great War series on Youtube if you want to learn more about WWI, they have a good episode about the lead up to WWI WWI wasn't nearly as clear cut on good guys and bad guys, it was a battle of the alliances. The reason you may think of the Germans as the \"bad guys\" of WWI is because the France, Britain, and the US were allied and fought against them. Germany also made significant gains into French territory early in the war making them more of an aggressor than the Allied Powers who were initially pushed back, but they weren't really \"the bad guys\" in the sense that the Nazis were in WWII, they were just the enemy. World War 1 was a war of over confidence. Everyone was looking for an excuse to fight and test out their new weapons, and everyone thought the war would be over by Christmas. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand just provided a nice excuse to start the war everyone wanted.",
"How did attacking *Belgium* contribute to the defence of Austro-Hungary? It didn't. The Germans had long been planning an invasion of France - the [Schlieffen Plan] ( URL_0 ) - and had spent years in an arms race with Britain in particular, preparing for it. The border with France became heavily-fortified from both sides, so the plan took the German Army through Belgium. We call Germany the bad guys because they didn't have to invade Belgium: they chose to, despite ultimatums from Britain. They wanted to implement the Schlieffen Plan quickly and take over France, before a potential invasion by Russia from the East. The Dan Carlin podcast already mentioned describes some of the tactics and weapons used in Belgium: there was an element of \"we've paid all this money for this stuff, let's give it a workout\"!",
"As i understand it, because they lost. They were certainly militaristic as a nation, but so were all european powers. It's certainly arguable that the escalation of a local conflict to a continent wide war was the fault of the british and french."
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70phg4 | Why did clapping become a way of expressing appreciation? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Clapping is ancient and instinctive. Babies often clap hands together as soon as they learn that is makes a noise. There are references in the Hebrew Bible dating back thousands of years to clapping. Clapping to show appreciation of a performance seems to have been solidified in culture by the romans. The Romans had many different responses to a performance including clapping, snapping fingers, waving togas around, booing, all to convey appreciation or distain. In the European courts and stages applause became the respectful and polite way to show appreciation, while yelling and whistling was considered uncouth, low class, and plain bad manners."
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70rljl | Why is it "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" instead of just "life, liberty, and happiness"? What makes "the pursuit of" so important that it needs to be included? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> What is the meaning of \"the pursuit of\" anyways? To \"pursue\" means \"To aim for, go after (a specified objective, situation etc.)\". So \"the pursuit of happiness\" means \"striving to reach a state of happiness\". > What difference does it make if it was left out, if any? To say that you are entitled of \"life, liberty, and happiness\" would imply that it's the government's job to make you happy. But entitling you to \"the pursuit of happiness\" means that the government's job is to stand aside and not interfere in your right to try to achieve happiness in your life, which makes a lot more sense.",
"Our founding fathers are brilliant. They knew that happiness is something that is found differently, uniquely by everyone. So what they're saying is that it is the pursuit of happiness to which you have a right, not to happiness itself, because some people never find what happiness is, or struggle between happiness versus contentment. So rather than adding this guarantee, the forefathers said that Americans had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness! Source: my mother is a scholar of American history with a focus on the documents that founded our nation's birth.",
"It implies that happiness is not guaranteed to anyone, and that some people, whether through misfortune or bad decisions, will not be able to achieve it. The best you get is the opportunity to try to be happy.",
"Locke said every human has a right to life, liberty, and property. Thomas Jefferson originally paraphrased that exactly, but it was Ben Franklin who thought that \"property\" was too contentious, with slavery being a point of debate even then. Happiness here has a slightly different meaning- personal success/affluence. Obviously not everyone can be successful, but everyone deserves the right to chase their dream."
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70sruj | Why are there Nazis in the USA? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Fuck me this went on really long. TL;DR - freedom of speech is super important here, even if you're an asshole, there's lots of lingering racism and religious intolerance because we're a really young country all things considered, people want someone to blame for the economic crisis, and our president's an idiot who won't disown toxic views. ************** So, a brief history lesson. The US was founded largely by religious and political dissidents who wanted to express themselves freely, but were forbidden to or prosecuted for their beliefs in their homelands, most of which had state-endorsed religions or were monarchies where speaking out was against the law or treasonous. As such, when we won our independence in the Revolutionary War (as it's called here), we took a good amount of time figuring out our government. What stuck (ultimately ratified in 1791) was our Constitution, as well as the Bill of Rights, ten articles amending the constitution that were (and are) considered fundamental guarantees of our citizenry. And the very first one was: > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; **or abridging the freedom of speech**, or of the press; **or the right of the people peaceably to assemble**, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Built into the very foundation of our government, our *first* given right is that of freedom to practice religion, speak as we want, print what we want, assemble peaceably as we want, and complain to the government as we want. It was, and is, considered a fundamental part of not just our government, but our society. The idea of free speech permeates almost everything we do, and debates about it can be pretty heated, as some think it's a completely off topic discussion, that things like censorship or \"political correctness\" violate it. While the constitution only prevents the federal government from censoring or prohibiting free speech, most people take it to the furthest extreme, that anything is considered free speech. It should also be noted there are a few exceptions. For example, yelling \"FIRE!\" in a crowded building is the classic example of non-protected speech, as it's intended to cause harm or damage. Speech to incite lawless use of force or any lawless action is also not protected. Speech that provokes or incites violence is also considered potentially non-protected. Obscenity laws can apply to censor things from public display or announcement. False advertising. The list is short, but it contains mostly sensible examples. But where we get complicated is when we get into trying to define hate speech. Just because a position or belief is reprehensible does not mean it is or should be illegal. And while hate speech or inciting violence is non-protected speech, it's not all encompassing. The Supreme Court ruled in Watts vs United States (1969) that \"threats may not be punished if a reasonable person would understand them as obvious hyperbole.\" So if someone wants to go out and yell about threats to a person or persons, but it's clear they're not speaking literally or inciting immediate lawless action, the speech could be considered protected. The infamous Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) uses this tactic often, going just to the line of inciting speech but doing very little to actually cross it. Because of how fundamental freedom of speech is considered in this country, it's often considered very taboo to protest or reject it, even if the speech is disgusting. So it allows groups like the KKK, WBC, and even admitted Neo-Nazis to express and hold their views, so long as their speech does not fall into unprotected territory. There's a fear of censorship leading to a potentially slipper slope (this is an entirely different debate) that the limit of what is or isn't censored could become blurred based on who's in power and who is considered offended or not, hence the hesitation to directly outlaw anything. There's also a fear of being seen as hypocritical, since one of the biggest draws of the United States (at least in terms of perfect ideals) has been that of freedom. And no one wants to set the precedent of censoring or trying to censor a politically reprehensible group for fear it could be used later for state-sponsored censorship or stopping opposing views, which is considered highly important to be able to express or maintain. So it causes an environment where you can hold and express nearly any view as long as you don't actively threaten direct and literal violence against a specific person or group in a specific way. It's how people can get away with making comments about how certain political figures should die or be killed, because it's very different than directly inciting or outlining a plan for violence. You can't be arrested for just *being* a Neo-Nazi, you have to be arrested for some illegal act, even if it stems from there. The belief itself is not illegal and cannot be punished due to freedom of speech. Lately, there's been a social push back against these sorts of beliefs, since the first amendment stops the *government* from censoring you, not individuals. There was a website called the Daily Stormer that has basically gone offline because no web hosting service wanted to host it. While some cried it was a first amendment issue, there's no obligation for a private business to take their business or give them a platform. And unless you're part of a [protected class]( URL_0 ), you can't cry discrimination without having to go through a long and lengthy legal battle. As for why most of this comes from the right wing... well, it's no secret that the country's economy has gone downhill in the last decade or so, since the major financial crash in 2007 thanks to the housing market crashing. Add onto this lingering fear and panic from the September 11th attacks that caused a spike in more conservative views and leadership due to their closer ties with the military. Unfortunately, as with any group, when things go wrong (gas prices spike, employment is harder to find, prices in general go up, etc), people want to look for blame. And it's very easy to cast blame on the *other*. People you don't identify or agree with. And unfortunately, there's a racial aspect to this as well, since the US is predominantly white, as well as predominantly Christian. So if you don't fit into that group, you can be considered an *other*. Lingering fear and resentment from the terror attacks only added to that fear of foreigners, especially coming from the Middle East or practicing Islam. However, because of freedom of speech, it's still legal to hold those kind of views and express them. So in the wake of a deadly attack and a subsequent rise of national pride and patriotism, followed by an economic crisis, the instinct was to \"circle the wagons.\" Focus on \"America first,\" since we needed to get our own house in order. This unfortunately gave a lot of power and voice to people that wanted to blame the *other*. Blame those who seemed to be \"new\" or \"taking\" things that had previously been just theirs'. As embarrassing as it is, Civil Rights were only truly legally implemented in the 1960s, so there are many who grew up in a world where non-whites were strictly an *other*, or were taught that way by their parents. So then a group comes along that places the blame for all these problems all in one convenient basket. Remember how things used to be? Remember how the country was safe, prosperous, and clean? All before *they* came. While this is no more true than it was for the Nazi party to blame Jews and others during World War II, this is the mindset that permeates. Lost your job? Lost your house? Property values down? Can't afford things you used to? Blame the *other*. And it's an attractive option to a resentful population that feels they have no recourse from the government, because the government has to take care of *everybody*. They feel that resources that are being spent on the *other* could be spent on them. They feel attacked on all sides because things aren't as great as they used to be, and they want someone to blame for it all. Add in a president who's done fuck-all to stop these feelings or disown them, and they feel even more emboldened to speak out and protest openly, feeling they have a man on the inside who believes as they believe. This isn't even getting into the massively increased polarization of American politics, or the politicization of nearly every issue regardless of whether politics are involved.",
"Many of the posts here are very good, but, one thing that most people don't realize is that there were plenty of German sympathizers widely present prior to the U.S's entry into World War II. There were communities near me that were devoted to ex-pat Germans who totally supported what they was going on in the 'old country'. This did not go away, it more went underground.",
"Conspiracy theories are a strange sort of mythology. You see them begin to rise during the late middle ages and into the Renaissance and Reformation, but what you also see is that as they shift and change, they keep all of the old names, but change the details. For example, the Bavarian Illuminati were once a real, historical group. During the reformation, they were a secret alliance of merchants and traders who helped to smuggle religious artifacts and priests out of cities that were going to fall. They were hated by both sides for helping to preserve heresy, and weeding them out became an important goal for the most aggressive on both sides. Today, the bulk of that story is forgotten and lost, but people still remember the Illuminati as a shadowy group of businesspeople, and grandfather them in to other conspiracy theories that really have nothing to do with religious artwork in the reformation. The Jewish People, unfortunately, are also grandfathered in to conspiracy theories. As early as the middle ages, people accuse Judaism of being witchcraft, and associate problems with their local Jewish diaspora. By the Renaissance, they became associated with banking, and the negative feelings that indebted monarchs had towards userers in general. Today, people still insert the Jewish people into conspiracy theories, anything related to cultural collusion, particularly banking and media. Because Americans are no less vulnerable to conspiracy theories than other human beings, and because conspiracy theories re-use the same names with different conspiracy pitches, there was always going to be a subset of Americans who hated Jewish people. It's not hard to leap from that to being a Nazi. You're skeptical of the media and the big banks, and someone offers you a grand conspiracy theory. Maybe it starts with George Soros, a famous Jew in Media, and they start to draw connections with other Jews. Maybe you arrived there from somewhere else. Regardless, once you believe in Nazi stuff, you start to believe that maybe Nazis weren't the bad guys, and then you start to question whether half of the Nazi stuff happened at all, or if the conspiracy is making up details to villify them, that the media about WW2 is a lie designed to protect the conspiracy. Then it gets easier to wear swastikas and speak openly of Nazi ideas. And that's how Nazis are in America. Conspiracy theories re-use old names for the villains, the Jews are an old conspiracy theory villain name, and once you buy the conspiracy theory you can interpret everything that disagrees with you as proof of the conspiracy's existence."
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70tjzg | Why was Charlie Brown, a comic strip essentially about a depressed and abused child, so successful? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, first of all, ignore newer Peanuts from the 1960s on, as that's there because of the fame and fortune. The Peanuts strips from the early and mid 1950s are what count... they had a somewhat different look and a different kind of storyboard. One reason it did well because it was simple. Take a look at the comic strips from earlier... they looked like [this]( URL_3 ) and were very busy visually. Early Peanuts looked like this: [1]( URL_0 ), [2]( URL_1 )... much cleaner and simpler design. The use of whitespace was a huge visual draw -- when browsing the newspaper in the mid-1950s, your eye went right to this strip. Here is an [example]( URL_2 ) from 1953 and you can see how Peanuts stands out from all the busy, jumbled strips with lots of text. Many times Peanuts had even more whitespace than this. Also you've got an interesting blend of grownup situations wrapped into kids mischief and a dog. Again, simple, without gimmicks, adventures, or Tom & Jerry situations. There was a boy & his dog narrative, baseball games, ice cream cones, being teased -- things everyone can relate to. It was like a slice of life.",
"Schulz didn't want to create a cutesy strip that was all rosy and fun, because that's not how life is. Children in particular are mean to each other all the time, and there's no point trying to gloss over that. Charlie Brown is an \"everyman\" character. Anyone who has ever felt disappointed or insecure at some point -- and let's face it, that's most of us -- will identify with him. And it's that identification -- the thing that makes you think, \"Yep -- story of my life\" -- which drives the success of that particular strip.",
"This is a great topic and I think others are answering it better than I. But, my own perspective as someone that grew up with the strip is that Charlie Brown is so relatable, and that this contributed to his success as character - so many of us could sigh \"Good grief!\" right along with him. The visuals, as was pointed out, also contributed - not just for their cleanliness and beauty but for the suburban life it accurately depicted for many of us, those clean lines, garages, and small wildernesses just a step away from our yard. btw why do you think Charlie Brown was abused? By his friends, you mean?",
"I think that was a big part of its original appeal. We can all identify with poor ol' Charlie Brown, with his constant setbacks, longing, and humiliation. Later on Snoopy kind of Urkelled in and changed the whole tone.",
"Later *Peanuts* strips were so schmaltzy you'd be surprised how subversive the early ones were. The essential humor of it was taking the self-seriousness and self-doubt of neurotic adults, beaten down by life, and transplanting that onto a group of school kids. It caught on because grown people saw themselves in it, and the kid metaphor allowed them to without it feeling like the sort of self-indulgent wallowing the characters themselves exhibit. Instead you laugh at it and maybe don't take yourself so seriously either. Early *Peanuts* was pure catharsis. Snoopy was ultimately kind of a misstep. He makes sense in context: he's a dog, and not subject to all the crap that besets the humans. When he's sad, it's over something really worthy of sadness. He otherwise never lets the bastards get him down and knows how to live authentically in a way none of the human characters does. It made him an icon, and was a great contrast particularly early on when Snoopy couldn't speak (even in thought-balloon form). Over time, as he took over, Snoopy's character undercut the whole original point of the strip.",
"Who says people didn't think that? We all have our sad memories from childhood, the disappointments and the things we could never get quite right, and so we identify with Charlie. It's a bittersweet humour. But calling Charlie \"abused\" would be a stretch.",
"Because so many people found the peanuts relatable. There are little pieces of everyone in each of the characters. It wasn't just Charlie Brown, if it had been, it probably would have died off.",
"Depressed, yeah I am onboard with that. Abused? How so?",
"In the 1950s, Charlie Brown would not have been considered abused (or even depressed). All the kids in the series have their own neuroses, which make them relateable and interesting. It's relatively recent that children's mental health has even been considered valid. I also question whether Charlie is either depressed or abused, if we're insisting on analyzing the comic from a 2017 lens vs. a 1950s lens. Pretty run-of-the-mill negative things happen to him (e.g., Lucy taking the ball from him), but that hardly constitutes abuse. He feels kinda sad about those negative things, but feeling sad isn't the same thing as depression. Also, a comic strip about a kid who gets everything he wants and always feels happy would be pretty boring.",
"You first have to put this character within the context of the strip. The genius of Peanuts is that everything was shown from the perspective of the child. Notice that there are no adults anywhere. The children are not looked down on from the perspective of the adult as they are in many strips, but at eye-level. He showed kids as being distinct and diverse rather than all similar. They lived in their own world with its problems. Part of the humour is that kids were never shown to be like this before. They were all just happy airheads who wanted to play and have fun and had no cares in the world.",
"Because the stories were relatable. Who didn't feel like Charlie Brown at least some of the time as a kid? And especially as an adult.",
"For an actual eli5: the characters were relatable to the majority of the population. People kept reading because they wanted to see how these characters, who they identified with, would react in different situations (with the subconscious hope of them being successful.)",
"Some historical context would help. Charlie Brown came along in the post-WWII economy. This is when America became a global superpower (we were far more isolationist prior to WWII). The post-war economy was a boom time. American consumerism was born. You could now \"buy yourself happiness\". Modern gadgets made housework a breeze. New toothpaste makes your teeth sparkle. Better keep up with the Jones', they just got a new power lawnmower! Charlie Brown was the \"everyman\" who didn't get how a new washing machine was suddenly going to make life meaningful. Instead, he sought out answers from *people*, intuitively knowing but not consciously realizing that it's *people* who matter.",
"It's a sad strip, certainly, but you kept reading it in the hopes that someday Charlie Brown would succeed. You were emotionally invested in the characters, something that (almost) never happens now.",
"I never saw him as depressed in a clinical way, but there was an underlying message of the character. Despite having the football moved away at the last second, having the line drives blow his uniform off, and the kite-eating tree, Charlie would get back up and try again. He was a trooper and believed in the goodness of humanity.",
"Because generally speaking no one wants to watch a show or a movie about a perfect flawless character that has tons of friends that all love them and they never do anything wrong or get made fun of.. It'd just get boring. Every well written character has flaws or imperfections about them that we tend to empathize with. We relate to pain, and to unpopularity, which is why so many movies try to take the whole \"underdog\" route. He feels really *human*, despite only being a kid. It's a lot of these reasons why we are even still talking about Charlie Brown nearly half a century after it came out..",
"Wow, something I can actually answer having read a biography of Schultz and being a student of graphic lit. When you're talking about American comic strip writers there are two artists who sort of rise above the rest in terms how seriously they took their creations artisticly. Schultz and Waterson. Both of these guys were totally all about the art, but they expresses that in totally different ways. Waterson focused more on the physical art and using the strips to reflect not just his own personal life but also the political and emotional realities of every stage of life (at least for Americans). For Schultz however the strip was personal in a different kind of way. Not only did Charlie Brown generally represent all of Schultz' fears and anxieties, but as the strip grew every character tended to represent some part of Schultz or his psyche. Now obviously this isn't the case for every character in every strip, (when you write the same comic for 50 years the characters tend to take on a life if their own) but as a generality it works. Schultz was quoted as saying something along the lines of \"I suppose if someone was very clever they could read all of Peanuts and understand exactly who I am.\" (That's a paraphrase as I don't have the quote next to me.) So to answer your question, the strip was successful, among other reasons, because Schultz was pretty depressed for a lot of his life and he put all of himself into an art form he had been practising since childhood. This made the characters so relatable and the strip so much deeper than anything else commercially available at the time. It was kind of a no-brainer that it would be popular. Fun fact: Schultz didn't pick the name \"Peanuts\" and in fact he hated it. This is one of my favorite subjects and if you want to know more about Schultz and the ways he compares with Watterson I'll gladly keep talking and point you toward some great resources",
"Because the \"depressed abused child\" angle is what a lot of people read into the comic. I.e. what isn't there. I'm the first to admit it's hilarious imagining that sort of scenario, but it really is nothing more than a down-on-his-luck mopey kid. Not some emo depressed / abused kid thing. It's a comic that was unique for its day.",
"What appeals to me is that Charlie Brown and snoopy live in the same property, both have their share of challenges (ex. Lucy and the football, the cat next door intimidating snoopy), but Snoopy makes the most of it and is generally happy. It shows kids the impact of a good attitude and to enjoy what does go right.",
"It's a stretch to call him depressed or abused. I'd say the strip's about those long, slow moments that make up so much of childhood. Some times they are just wistful, other times a bit mournful, sometimes happy.",
"As a kid Charlie Brown was a waste of good comic space. There were others that were terrible but were also syndicated so they made money.",
"I highly recommend the Peanuts Movie to anyone who doesn't get why Charlie Brown is a hero. I am not new to crying at films, but honestly the only times I've gotten misty-eyed over the thought \"He's such a good guy\" were The Peanuts Movie and Schindler's List Schindler's. List. Peanuts. Movie.",
"> Why was Charlie Brown, a comic strip essentially about a depressed and abused child, so successful? Before the internet, people got their daily dose of silly shit from the comic strips in the newspaper. Charlie Brown was paying for therapy and then getting insulted and bashed (by his therapist!) on the playing fields of life. There are lots of people who can relate.",
"Charlie Brown, despite his gloomy and self-pitying attitude much of the time, is a fundamentally optimistic person that speaks to audiences across multiple generations. His interactions with an assorted cast of characters who each have their own brand of the profound and the absurd about them have kept the Peanuts crew relevant long after the society it was built around had changed over, and over, and over again.",
"The one where Charlie Brown has to do the book report (Happy New Year Chalie Brown?) while everyone else parties and Linus dances with the little red haired girl while he's asleep KILLED ME as a kid. But we don't learn the lesson if our hero always succedes and everything always works out. Charlie Brown teaches us it's gonna be okay, because shit doesn't aleays work out in real life.",
"Childhood can be brutal. A lot of people romanticize childhood as this time of youthful wonder and innocence. I remember some of that. Kids can also be intensely cruel to each other, and usually for very little reason other than for its own sake, and I remember some of that too. Peanuts was popular because it didn't just reflect on how great things were in the good old days - it wasn't some sterilized view of childhood with only the good parts being recollected, it tells it like it was. Charlie Brown wasn't depressed though, and he definitely wasn't abused - childhood is just shit sometimes. Maybe you got everything you ever wanted, never were rejected, always succeeded, and always came out on top and can't relate, but I doubt that's the case. Charlie Brown was the kid that was the reverse of that. Most stories about underdogs (Rocky, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc) are about losers that eventually become winners, and maybe they were winners all along. Not Charlie Brown. He *doesn't* come out on top. This is who he is, and just like real life, there's no relenting. But it's more than just Charlie Brown, all of the characters are dealing with struggles you may come across in life. Dealing with troubles with God? So is Linus, wondering if the Great Pumpkin is ever going to show up. Like someone but don't have the guts to talk to them? See Charlie Brown. Troubles with someone you like who friendzoned you? Peppermint Patty. It dealt with a lot of heavy stuff. Maybe you remember that Charlie Brown was in love with the red-headed girl and he never had the courage to talk to her, but what do you remember about Peppermint Patty? Everyone always jokes that she was a lesbian with Marcy, but that's way off base and completely undercuts what she is about. Patty is a tomboy because her mother is dead and her father is trying to fill the roles of both parents the only way he knows how. She is also is in love with Charlie Brown. There's a really heart breaking comic where Patty sees the Red-Headed girl for the first time, and Patty sees how pretty she is and just starts to cry. Charlie Brown is in to pretty red heads, not tomboys, and Patty will never be that pretty and she finally sees it. It's not really bullying or cruel or messed up, it's the bitter pill of life. People related to that stuff. Most of the characters have something like this to them. This will probably get buried now, but there were some good articles on kotaku about Peanuts that I think you may find illuminating: URL_1 URL_0"
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70utqu | Why do all sign language interpreters make silly faces when they sign? | Are the faces apart of the language, or is it just kind of a natural human expression that people that can hear do as a compensation due to not being able to verbally communicate while they sign? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Facial expressions are not *essential* to most sign languages, but they are an important part of smooth communication in sign language. All of the nuance usually carried by tone of voice is expressed in facial expressions, instead. Because signs for different words can be similar, the proper expression also help provide a context that avoids confusion. For example, in American Sign Language, there is one sign for \"help\" and you use directions to indicate whether you are asking for help, offering help, or asking for/offering help about a third person. The right facial expression makes the difference between asking and offering help obvious.",
"In American Sign Language the expressions are part of the grammar. There are specific facial gestures that go with certain signs. In addition, placement and directionality of signs in space is important grammatically. But at all times facial expression shows the intensity of the message -- similar to tone of voice and volume which has a similar role in speech. Interesting fact -- sign languages have language groups and between the language groups they are not mutually intelligible. However, facial expression expressing emotional intensity is universally understood, as far as we can tell, by all cultures.",
"Facial expressions are an important part of the language. Some signs always go with a particular facial expression, while others can go with multiple facial expressions to indicate different meanings. For example, when asking a yes/no question, your eyebrows go up to indicate it's a yes/no question, similar to how in spoken English, your inflection goes up at the end of a question and down at the end of a statement. Also, describing facial expressions as \"silly\" could be perceived as a bit insulting. They are certainly much more exaggerated than those of most hearing people, but that doesn't make them silly.",
"Instead of being expressive through a voice getting louder or softer, they add facial cues to let the person being signed to how they should understand what's being said.",
"Try to be sarcastic in a text message (or on Reddit)... You could say that the signs are he text, and the faces the smileys you out in your text to convey the feeling"
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70yqum | why do we use ours mouth and tongue to show affection? Like in kissing or other sexual acts | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The act of kissing, at least while human society was still developing, allowed us to trade bacteria and help our mates create resistance to disease and infections, which they would pass on to their children. As for sexual acts, they likely developed as as a means to get around deflowering in strict religious societies. Instead of having regular sex, which would be seen as sinful and evil, we have fellatio and cunnilingus, which was a convenient loophole."
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70zapo | When/how did the stereotypical birthday cake (white cream, rainbow sprinkles etc.) become associated with birthdays? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A \"stereotypical birthday cake\" as you describe, I can't answer to. Rainbow sprinkles are a pretty specific thing that I've never had or put on a cake. Writing and decorations yes. Maybe even white cream on a couple. Cakes used for wedding celebrations are well documented in Roman times. Wedding cakes have been a tradition as long as cakes have been around. It seems that in 15th century Germany savvy bakers began marketing birthday cakes as a thing. Looking to expand beyond weddings-only income no doubt. Elaborate birthday cakes were featured among the nobility in western Europe in the 17th century. It wasn't until the industrial revolution in 19th century Europe that common people could afford to order up a cake for birthdays. Or even the ingredients alone (sugar was white gold) of a cake."
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7107kd | Why do some people believe so strongly that masturbation is wrong? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Two reasons, both of them tied to religion. First is that masturbation is a manifestation of lustful thoughts. You masturbate because you are thinking naughty thoughts about a person who probably isn't your wife. The other big reason is the idea that \"every sperm is sacred\", meaning every individual sperm has the potential to impregnate a woman, and by spilling your seed, instead of releasing into a woman, you are killing a potential child."
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710meo | Why do so many movies use the Wilhelm Scream? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sound Designer Ben Burtt found the recording, and used it in Star Wars. He liked the clip, and kept using it in movies as an in-joke. Eventually people noticed and started trying to get in on the joke.",
"I want to explain further but the reason is simply because it's free. There's a huge reservoir of sound effect recordings that the industry has at its disposal for free and if you listen closely you can usually tell some of the more well-used ones like willhelm or Howie Long. It's completely just a money saving thing, no matter how ridiculous they sound.",
"1) It's free (sound effects, if they're not in the pool of free effects, usually cost a certain licensing fee to use. That, or they've got to make their effects artists spend time that could be used otherwise creating those effects) 2) It's tradition, and Hollywood is all about tradition. 3) It's a meme. Just like memes get used over and over in different ways and somehow never truly die, so does the Scream. People think it's funny, and so they try and put it in. Cycle repeats. It's literally just one of the biggest Hollywood in-jokes/memes in existence, hence why so many movies continue to use the Scream to this day.",
"In the beginning, there was a limited number of sounds they had to use for sound effects. Eventually, it just became an inside joke with the people doing sounds for movies (and movie buffs) because they all knew where it came from and where it had been used before."
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714bgh | Why is it that Hollywood almost always casts adults to play the role of high-school students? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"1. They'll be more likely to be well-known stars 2. Less regulation and complexity to employ an adult vs a minor 3. Less likely to have Mommy and Daddy on set causing problems 4. Actor/Actress is more likely to be a better actor/actress on account of being older/having more experience, and having completed (most of) puberty.",
"There are rules about how many hours a younger actor can work on set and filming is often done in very long shifts. They require time to be tutored to be able to keep up with schoolwork. Additionally, adults who still look young are often more experienced actors than real 15-18 year olds. Stereotypes are often exaggerated in high school movies as well, a 22 year old man will be bigger looking and make a more convincing captain of the football team and a fully grown 23 year old woman will be a prettier head cheerleader than a 17 year old girl.",
"Because actual high school students would under 18 and have limits on number of hours worked, accommodations for education, parental consent, etc etc. 18 and 19 yr old Adult actors are easier to deal with for logistics",
"* labor laws limit the number of hours a minor can work and places other restrictions on their employed * adults are likely to be more skilled and more professional actors * adults are done growing, so they will look pretty much the same year to year",
"Actual high school students need to go to *actual high school* which makes it very tricky to schedule production. There are a multitude of laws and regulations surrounding employment of a minor - limiting hours worked, social worker on set, etc. that can make production very complex and difficult."
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715kfq | Why are Vietnamese names not pronounced the way they are spelled in English? | I've been watching the Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War, and the names of the major players are often not spelled strictly phonetically. For example, President Diem's name seems to be pronounced Ziem or Dziem. Why not write it that way? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Vietnamese is an alphabetical language and direct transliterations of the vietnamese alphabet will produce Latin logographs. The reason you see phonetically-spelled names in the larger asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) is because they're nonalphabetical, so the English phonetic names are simply sound approximations of the actual name.",
"Vietnamese does not care about the pronunciation rules of English. Nor does French, German, Italian, Spanish, etc. All those names and words will be pronounced using their language's own rules and not English."
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716ulr | Why do so many people use "Jesus Christ" and other God-based words as curse words and not names of evil people like Hitler in the same way? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Profanity comes from the assumption that something upheld is being debased. Curse words can come from a few places, but using words with deep seated cultural connotations force you to see it as vulgar when used in certain situations. This is because it crosses a boundary, it's taboo, it shows disrespect and people find disrespect insulting. Hitler wouldn't have the same effect because we are not \"bringing it down\" when using it as an exclamation.",
"Because curse words have to do with the taboo at the time. 100-200 years ago blasphemy was the greatest taboo, so to blaspheme by taking the name of the Lord in vain by exclaiming \"Jesus Christ!\" would be crossing a sacred line. For that same reason, saying \"god damn it\" at that time was the worst thing you could say, as you're implying you hate something so much you want God to condemn it. Eventually in the English speaking world, sex became a more vulgar taboo while religion slowly faded from everyday life, which is why \"fuck\" is the word that packs the most punch. Even though but the curse words that carry religious connotation haven't . In Quebecois French, swears (called sacres from 'sacrer'; to consecrate) still have to do with the Catholic Church. The reason is because, like sex in the English speaking world, a worse taboo hasn't replaced the last taboo, so there haven't been worse words to replace the currently used ones. Examples: tabarnak (tabernacle), calice/calisse/colisse (chalice, in reference to the Holy Grail), crisse (Christ), and osti (host, or communion bread) Interestingly, swears in France French have to do with sex, similarly to English. Even though sex is becoming less taboo than it was, \"fuck\" and similar swears are still considered the most vulgar because a worse taboo hasn't introduced any worse swear words to replace the words we have currently.",
"Now picturing adults accidentally stubbing their toe \"ADOLF FUCKING HITLER.\" I would guess because it's sort of a \"give me strength\" (God) and it's alluding to a higher power to ask for help in some way, and that evolved into a simple exclamation.",
"I'm not sure Jesus Christ is used as a curse word at least not where I'm from. It's used more as an exclamation."
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719sez | Why are stores and restaurants on the east and west coasts of the US so different? | Some examples being in n out only on the west coast, Walmart barely on the west coast compared to the east, and so many other establishments. Why are they so isolated to one side? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It can be difficult for a store to expand into a new market if already dominated by competitors. For example Wal-Mart is also notably weak in Minnesota, because it's the home of Target who already dominated the department store market. Some chains have a huge following in their home region but haven't expanded like In n Out because expansion can be expensive and may not pay off for a smaller company. Why risk it when you make a good profit where you are? They might gradually open up in other states but they're not going to become as big as in their homes overnight."
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71cj0b | Arabic last names | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Bin\" or \"ibn\" means \"son of\" and is usually followed by the father's name. \"Al-\" means \"the\" and is usually used before the names of cities or places where the family comes from. So a name like Mohammed bin Asim al-Baghdadi could be sort of translated as \"Mohammed, son of Asim, of Baghdad.\" It's similar to how lots of Western names originated as well - Johnson would have originally been \"son of John,\" O'Connell meant descendant/family of Connell, Martinez meant \"son of Martin,\" etc.",
"The word \"Bin\" is \"Son of\" or \"Descendant of \" it is the equivalent of the Celtic \"Mc-\", \"Mac-\", and \"O'-\" prefixes or the English/Norse \"-son\" suffix. \"Al\" is the definite article \"the\". Many names in that region are modifications of what we would call nicknames in the west. Some are given to the person, most were given to an ancestor and morphed into their family name. All of the trade names in English (Smith, Fletcher, Wright, Thatcher, etc) at one time had the article \"the\" in front of them as well but it fell out of use over time. This was because the trade names indicated a person in that specific trade. So you John Smith was a guy named John who was the Smith.",
"Bin is like \"from\" and is the fathers ( or sometimes other ancestors) name Al is like \"the\" So Muhammad bin khalifa al azani would be Muhammad son of khalifa the proud Edit: also wanted to point out that bin is masculine and can be feminized to bint"
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71daxf | How come old cartoons like Tom & Jerry are animated much more smoothly and lifelike than more modern cartoons (80s, 90s) and anime? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically, more effort was put in. These cartoons used to be a lot more expensive, so you could hire more animators and have them take more time doing things. But this wasn’t sustainable and things had to change. When these cartoons came to tv(something a lot of people are mistaken about is that the old Looney Tunes weren’t tv episodes. They were shorts shown in movie theaters), animators had to come up with a lot of tricks to bring the cost of animation down. Hannah Barbera are (in)famous for a lot of these. They will reuse animation, reuse backgrounds, have cars move off screen and play a crash sound rather than animating a crash. And yes, these cartoons weren’t as good, but animation wouldn’t have survived without these changes. Eventually the techniques were refined(computers helped a lot) but TV animation never really hit the same level as those old shorts. Animated films shown in theaters were able to maintain this level, but they had more money and time to work with.",
"A lot of those old Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes shorts were film quality, made to be shown in movie theaters before a full film. As such, they were made at higher budgets. Most of the modern cartoons you are comparing them to were made just for TV on lower budgets."
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71dfb0 | What's the difference between a social worker and a domestic worker? | I'm Dutch and I'm researching the topic of "domestic labor". While searching for that topic, I found an article for "domestic worker". Now, I was under the impression that a domestic worker is the same as a social worker and I still think it is, but apparently there are separate words for these. So, what is the difference? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A domestic worker is someone who does work around the house for their employer(s) - it might include cleaning, cooking, and childcare. This typically requires no formal education, and is often low-paying. In earlier times, they would just call this person a servant, maid, etc. Social work is a broad field that can involve helping people who may be disadvantaged by things like poverty, illness/developmental issues, drug use, etc. Social workers are generally employed by governmental agencies, charitable organizations, hospitals, etc. Social workers often have master's-level qualifications (MSW - Master's in Social Work).",
"A social worker is a person that works for a government agency such as child protective services, a domestic worker is a housekeeper or a cleaner, someone who works in a domestic (household) environment",
"A domestic worker is somebody like a nanny to watch one's children while you're at work, a housekeeper, a nurse/caregiver for somebody elderly. Basically somebody who is an employee in somebody's home. A social worker is a professional who helps counsel people in times of trouble, such as working in a school helping kids having trouble with behavior/socialization, or helping people overcome grief, or help families adjust after a tragedy."
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71eyyg | When, where and why did developers and artists adopt a more minimalist design for their user interface (iOS, Microsoft, Xbox, Skype, etc) | Over the last few years we've seen so many artists drive forward more minimalist user interface designs in notable services such as Windows, Facebook, Twitter, Xbox and in generally all upcoming technology for the foreseeable future. My question is what originally drove this huge change forward? It may look nicer, but we have that opinion based on what we're now currently used to, rather than what we used to accept (the more bevelled, chunky and colourful graphic design that dominated design work post 2010s) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When high-resolution, rich-color displays became the norm, designers had fun making ultra-lifelike controls, with shadows and reflections and woodgrain and the like. People got sick of it, so this was a reaction.",
"It's basically the same evolution every fledging artist makes when first trying photoshop. First you find all these 3d and bevelled stuff options that just pops out of the screen and gives cool effects. But the more you work with it the more you find out that it's not really targeted towards usability. The fonts get hard to read when they're on the edge of the bevelled surface, you can't fit as much buttons into a row as you'd like because the effects at the button edges take up so much pixel space, etc. The Bevelled look came around with Windows 98 IIRC, and continued until Vista. IPhone and Android also started with a much more busy interface design and both got more \"grokable\" over time as they evolved (almost naturally). If you don't know the meaning of grokable, it's basically something you can \"get\" just by looking at it for a moment. Stuff that makes it harder to get something in an instant makes it less grokable. For example, \"+ 10 Damage per Second\" on a weapon in a roleplaying game is much more grokable than \"+ 1.5 damage per attack\" which forces you to look up your weapon's attack speed to get how much damage it actually adds. Another factor is that whenever screens get a huge jump in resolution (i.e. when we went from CRTs to LCDs, or from normal cellphones to smartphones) the new user interfaces usually try to show the screen power, with lots of little details (like the bevel for example), but then again as resolution upgrades slow down and people are used to the new fidelity, usability takes over and interfaces tend to get more functional and flatter again."
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71fg3e | How can so many Russians miss the Soviet Union despite the famines, the poverty, and the mass killings? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> a brutal autocracy that would systematically slaughter everybody even remotely suspected of being critical of the regime Could describe almost any point in Russian history in the last thousand years. The Soviet Union was a huge step up in living standards for the vast majority of Russians compared to the pre-Soviet period. The collapse of the USSR at the end of the 80's and the capitalism-gone-mad gutting of the country in the 90's was a huge step down in standard of living from the Soviet era for many people. Remember that in the Soviet era (especially the post-Stalin period) the power stayed on, you could drink the water, your children could go to good schools and could get good jobs, the state provided healthcare and assistance for the elderly and the disabled. To use a cliche, the trains ran on time. in the 90's that all collapsed. A whole country of people who depended on the state were left at the mercy of the worst of capitalist excess. The mob ruled, nothing worked, the economy was in shambles. That's not a step up from an oppressive state. It's just the same oppression with less stability. Basically Soviet Russia had *rules*. They weren't good or fair, but if you played by the rules you could do alright. Post-Soviet Russia was the wild fuckin' west. It's why Russians approve so strongly of Putin. Him and United Russia have managed to reign in the worst of the corruption and crime and make the state functional again for a lot of people.",
"> systematically slaughtered The Soviet Union of the 80's was not the Soviet Union of the 30's. Its most horrific crimes against its people ended with the death of Stalin in the 50's. The later leaders even openly denounced those crimes. As for the rest, Russia today still has a crappy economy and an authoritarian regime, so that's not much different. The Soviet Union *was* however, a superpower considered (incorrectly, but still) an equal of the United States. That gave its people a lot of pride and sense of superiority that they lost when the USSR dissolved. Plus, some people miss the sense of stability. Nobody was rich, but the government took care of a lot of things. Some people are okay with a low standard of living if they don't have to do any work to maintain it.",
"The same reason a lot of Americans yearn for the 1950's, despite its racism, wife beating, and political paranoia. That's just how nostalgia works, when things are the way you like them, you get very selective memory about the past. Also, many Russians aren't doing that much better. Quality of life and life expectancy is low compared to the West, the average Russian has about half the disposable income of their Western counterpart, and crime and drug abuse are epidemic. Most people in the USSR weren't directly exposed to the state sanctioned brutality and had jobs, food, and shelter. I'm not saying it was necessarily better, but the difference might not be as great as yout think.",
"People miss what they're familiar with. It may have been shitty, but it had the benefit of being the system they grew up in, the world that they were comfortable in. The new world is strange and thus frightening, and so nostalgia helps smooth out the bad memories and paints a rosy glow around the old world. As well as that, while the soviet union was undoubtedly a terrible place for many reasons, we are only truly aware of the negative aspects because as westerners they were our longstanding enemies. While people's lives may very well have been punctuated by periods of extreme uncertainty/violence, there were also long periods of time where they just...lived their lives. The transition period in contrast was a highly chaotic and uncertain time, which for many people translates into a negative view of the transition altogether. Finally, there's the propaganda element, in which citizens were constantly reassured and told that this was the best place and system on Earth. Some of that propaganda sticks well into adulthood, and so despite evidence to the contrary they continue to repeat the propaganda message.",
"Well, first of all, the most oppressive forms of government mostly died with Stalin, and gradually ebbed out , with Gorbachev as the least oppressive point. I'm not saying thet were perfect, but as far as the cold war goes, they were OK-ish. People have a fairly short memory. Also, the trains went on time, as the saying goes. Things worked. Corruption was low. After the USSR fell, crime and corruption skyrocketed, and the economy took a sharp downward turn. People notice such things. Then, of course, we have the fact that it was a superpower. It's gratifying to be part of something big, a nation which leads, not just in military, but also science, engineering, medicine and so on. Much of that went down the drain when the USSR fell. People don't like that.",
"For many of the common folk, life sucks now about the same as it did back then. Russia has always been a poor country by per capita standards. As shitty as it was to be a Soviet citizen, there was at least a certain predictable stability to life. The rapid fall of the Soviet regime thrust the citizens of the former USSR into an economic reality that the country was not prepared for. Arguably, it would have been better off if the Soviet system had been gradually internally dismantled over a couple of decades rather then abruptly disintegrating within the span of a couple of years. What many of these nostalgic older Russians are expressing is a yearning for a time when their country was globally respected (or at least feared) and seen as a peer to the United States. Putin knows this, hence his Tough Guy Russian Bear act (Syria, Ukraine, Georgia) continuing to drive his relatively high popularity ratings. The collapse of the USSR was definitely a net benefit to the world- and for most Russians, in the long term at least- although the shift to a market economy was a turbulent one. It left modern Russia with some systemic problems like corruption that continue to plague the country (admittedly, most of these problems began before the fall of the USSR.)"
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71hv9k | What is the back ground to the current situation in Catalonia? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Will try to do justice to the name of the subreddit and keep things simple. Catalonia has its own language which is called Catalan. It is one of 4 official languages in Spain, the others being Basque (Euskera), Galician, and Castillian (Spanish). For about 10 years, Catalonia's government has been lobbying the Spanish government for greater autonomy both economically and culturally (i.e. the right to collect their own taxes, the right to use the Catalan language in any context they please). It is important to remember that most important taxes in Spain are levied by the national (federal) government. This contrasts with the United States, whose citizens pay considerable taxes to local and regional (state) governments. This is why you often hear Catalans claiming that they pay a disproportionate share of federal taxes -- because the whole country pays into a pool and it then gets divied up based on need. Catalonia, as a top earner, does indeed get back less than what it puts in. However, these statistics have been politicized by both pro- and anti- independence camps and often what you hear is an exaggeration. Spain's government, run by the \"Popular Party\", is traditionalist and conservative. They are pro-Spanish unity and many of its party members have made (intentionally or unintentionally) offensive statements through the years regarding Catalonian language and culture. This is especially sensitive due to Spain's history as a dictatorship and the linguistic and cultural oppression that took place under Francisco Franco. The national government's comments and attitudes have predictably poured fuel on the pro-independence fire, a movement currently enjoying more momentum than ever before due in large part to the national government's intransigence. In 2010, a constitutional court ruling upheld most of a previously ratified law that granted more autonomy to Catalonia. In 2012, on Catalonia's National Day, between 1 and 2 million people took to the streets to protest Popular Party's recent electoral victory. The party had opposed the aforementioned law and had tried to kill it on appeal. Shortly after these protests, then-regional Catalan government leader Artur Mas called a snap election, whose results would implicitly give or deny his government a mandate to initiate a process that would ultimately result in secession. Although Mas's own party unexpectedly lost 12 seats, overall there were more pro-independence parliamentarians post-election than there previously had been, and momentum continued to build. Later, in 2015, another regional election produced a precarious coalition of Catalan parties known collectively as Junts Pel Sí -- Together For Yes -- again with an implicit mandate to continue the march towards independence, this time with the promise of a referendum. Spain's 1978 constitution does not contain any explicit clauses on the right to self-determination and the national Spanish government has based (most of) their opposition to the referendum on that. Yesterday, the Civil Guard, a national Spanish police force whose organizational structure largely resembles that of a military, arrested 14 Catalans on suspicion of taking part in the preparation and organization of what the national government considers a rogue, illegal referendum. As you can imagine, many Catalans consider these people political prisoners, while many Spaniards consider them to be illegally in defiance of constitutional law. People then took to the streets to protest their detentions and congregated around a Civil Guard building, essentially trapping them inside and forcing local Catalan police forces to provide them safe passage. This was the first time that the Spanish government took a REAL swing at the pro-independence movement. Things are tense here right now, hope this provides a bit of background as to why. What can be done to de-escalate? It's not clear that anything could be done at this point, although a complete about-face by the national government would certainly shock people and could potentially jump-start a new, more civil dialogue. Another possibility is that the October 1 referendum clearly lacks a mandate due to lacklustre turnout and/or a clear bias of pro-independence voter participation. Poor turnout is possible not because the measure lacks support, but because the national government seems to have actually succeeded in derailing preparation for the vote by confiscating ballots and engaging in other forms of sabotage. Moreover, and to be fair, the lack of clarity regarding the referendum's constitutionality means that many, if not most voters inclined to vote \"No\" will stay home -- a half-assed boycott of sorts. Personally, I believe that after yesterday's escalation the Catalan government is now determined to go through with independence as long as the Yes vote wins, regardless of turnout or perceived illegitimacy of the results. Edit: grammar and shit yo! Edit2: It has been pointed out that Basque Country enjoys federally sanctioned financial privileges that no other \"autonomous community\" in Spain enjoys, and this is absolutely true. This is important, I suppose, insofar as it means there is a precedent for the financial \"autonomy\" many Catalans have been advocating for years, and since most Spaniards consider Basque privilege to be the result of separatism. However, the history of these two regions could hardly be more different, and Basque Country's special status was hard-won. Edit3: It has also been correctly pointed out by u/Portarossa that here in Barcelona, at least, more than a handful of people are totally lukewarm about the entire \"Catalan Question\" as the press here refers to it. While there is plenty of blame to go around about how we got to this seemingly avoidable juncture, both people in favor and against independence are often willing to acknowledge that it is the national government who too many times fumbled the ball while it was in their court. While they claim now that their door has always been open, in 2012 Catalan leader Artur Mas traveled to Madrid expressly to negotiate a \"Fiscal Pact\" for Catalonia. Behind closed doors, it is likely that Rajoy simply told Mas that his hands were tied by Angela Merkel's austere fist. Moreover, Popular Party indeed benefits electorally when perceived to be promoting Spanish unity and a strong federal state. The point here is that yes: to people on the ground, it seems as though this crisis could have potentially been averted if only Madrid had done more to assuage extremism early on, instead of creating more of it.",
"Spain used to be lots of independent regions each with their own King or Queen. Each had their own dialect or language, usually descended from Latin. In the case of Catalonia this was Catalan. In the 15th Century Catalonia became part of Spain after a royal marriage united two kingdoms. Later in the 20th Century Catalan language and culture was suppressed and forbidden by the dictatorship in Spain. Since the end of the dictatorship, Catalonia has gained more freedom, and schools in Catalonia are taught exclusively in Catalan. However due to immigration from other parts of Spain and elsewhere, 47% of the population speak Spanish as their native language while 37% speak Catalan as their native language. Some people have started asking for Catalonia to be an independent country, because they feel that Catalonia has its own separate culture and language, and also because it has a stronger economy than some poorer regions in the south of Spain. The Catalan regional government has arranged a series of referendums to ask the population if they want Catalonia to be an independent country. The first one was in 2014 and the next one is due on 1st October 2017. The Madrid government and court have declared these referendums as illegal. This is because they say that the Spanish Constitution doesn't allow any region to hold a vote on independence, and also because the Madrid government has not given permission. When the Catalan politicians continued with the referendums, the central government and police have raided offices of the regional government, and seized ballot papers from a warehouse. The vote held in 2014 was non-binding, however the Madrid government still called it illegal. However the Catalan government says it will declare independence within 48 hours of a \"yes\" vote. This may have contributed to rising tensions and a strong reaction from Madrid. Regarding your last question, about how the situation can de-escalate: it's worth noting that the turnout in 2014 was quite low, and since I said that there are more native Spanish speakers than native Catalan speakers in Catalonia, I don't think it's likely that a true majority of the population would support independence. However Catalan speakers are more likely to vote in the referendums than Spanish speakers, especially given that the referendum is not \"official\" according to the central government. If the turnout is low again I don't think that the Catalan government would declare independence, so the tension may deflate slightly in that case. However there is a possibility of tensions getting higher with the police making more raids and arrests against the organisers of the vote. * edit: I removed reference to universities as university teaching is in [both Catalan and Spanish with Catalan as the primary administrative language]( URL_0 ) * edit 2: Source for my claim about Catalan being forbidden during the dictatorship: \"The fascist regime that emerged triumphant from the civil war in 1939 did everything in its power to stamp out the official and private use of Catalan. Harsh penalties were imposed for speaking it.\" [Article in the Guardian]( URL_1 )",
"I was in Barcelona this past October and made the egregious error of wishing a bar full of Catalonians a \"feliz dia de españa\" as I walked in. Every single conversation in the bar immediately stopped and every guy in the bar turned to glare at me. Sensing the awkward shift in mood, I turned to the bartender with the international symbol for \"huh?\" - shrugged shoulders, elbows in, palms up. . Fortunately, I had been frequenting the bar for the past week and had become friendly with the owner, who understood I was just an idiot American, ignorant with regard to the local history who meant no ill will. He stepped in and filled me in on why what I said was not well received. I gradually realized just how bad my faux pas really was. This would be akin to walking into an IRA bar during The Troubles and shouting \"God save the Queen!\". I decided I wanted to have more friends than enemies in Catalonia so I bought a drink for the entire bar and apologized to everyone there individually. Fortunately for me, it was a small bar!",
"For a long time, Catalonia and Spain have lived in the same farm. The relation is not always easy. Catalonia likes to do things in her own particular way. Catalonia also has felt that Spain has not treated her fairly sometimes. Because of this, Catalonia has already has said a few times \"enough is enough, let's make a fence and separate the farm into two parts\". But things always chilled down eventually. On the other hand, Spain has reacted to Catalonia's oddities in different ways: sometimes being totally cool about it, sometimes facepalming (\"Why do you always have to be so difficult, Catalonia!?\"), but sometimes being really really awful to her (sometimes even hitting her). What is going on now with them, you ask? Well, this is my opinion... A few years ago, Catalonia did some stuff called Estatut, but Spain didn't like it, and changed what Catalonia had done. This made Catalonia quite angry, and the idea of leaving came back to Catalonia's mind once more. So far, it's the same old story, but... Things in the farm were not going well. At all. Actually, it was going pretty awfully and money was becoming a big issue. When there is no money, things become more difficult and people get angry at each other for the tiniest reasons. As you can imagine, Spain and Catalonia were both in a terrible mood by now. So for a few years, it's been \"I am leaving!\" \"No you're not\" \"YES I AM\" \"NO YOU'RE NOT\". Catalonia is maybe not making the smartest choice, after all there are advantages sharing the farm and sometimes she and Spain get along very very well. But Spain is being very nasty about it, not even listening to Catalonia most of the time, and often calling her names and being very rude to her. A few days ago, Catalonia said that she's going to decide if she's leaving or not, and she is not going to consider at all what Spain has to say. Spain got really pissed, and is now standing with a baseball bat right by Catalonia's door. Everyone, including Catalonia, Spain and the neighbors, are really confused. Everyone, including Catalonia, is wondering if she will really leave. Everyone, including Spain, is wondering if Spain will hit Catalonia. It really is very sad they can't get along, be it in the same farm or in separate ones.",
"They tried to make a referendum on November 9th, 2014, had some problems with the State not allowing it to be legal, so the result was considered unclonclusive. So the parliament went on to an [plebiscitary]( URL_1 ) election with new parties, so that they could do a legit vote, one party was big for the Yes to become independent, others didn't play the game, others said maybe, etc. After winning, but not by much, the Yes party, instead of declaring independence (They couldn't because they didn't feel legitimized enough), promised to hold a real referendum in 18 months. The 18 months are almost over, and the president and catalan government, settled on a date for the referendum: [the October 1st, 2017]( URL_0 ). The law allowing that event passed at the beggining of september (and suspended the day after), the president promised to be independent by the 2nd if the Yes wins, or call up an election if the Yes loses. The spanish government, keeps repeating that the law in Spain doesn't allow any kind of referendum nor questioning in any part of Spain, so they call it an illegal referendum that is not gonna happen. Yesterday, the September 20th 2017, spanish (not catalan) police entered 40 government buildings, bussinesses, arrested 14 government officials, which haven't been yet released with any charges. Apparently, the orders came by a spanish judge working in Barcelona (the number 13th) following an investigation (started this February?), the police force (clearly mandated by political chiefs) have their holidays temporarily revoked and sent to sleep in three cruise line ship in Barcelona and Tarragona's port. More than 2000 police riot units have been sent over to control the crowd and \"pacify\" catalunya, moreover, it appears that their mission is to stop the referendum at almost all costs, as of now, they have aprehended 10 million voting ballots and a much more material. Two helicopters have also been recently deployed in Catalunya too.",
"In Spain there are several regions with their own language, culture and history. Vasque country is one of them, and they are still part of Spain but thanks to many years of pressure and helped by a terrorist group they are granted specific cultural and more importantly economic rights (taxation) that make them really set apart from the rest of Spain Now Catalonia wanted those same rights, so few years ago they politely asked for the same cultural and economic rights. Central govermet accepted every cultural and historic claim but denied any economical advantages, and so they begun this independence call. It has escalated pertty quickly since central goverment is old fashion conservative and Catalonia claims to be to opposite",
"Some of it is a hang over from the Spanish Civil War. During the war Catalonia as a region strongly supported the legitimate left wing government against Franco's right wing rebels. Partially because of this, after the war Franco's dictatorship heavily cracked down on all things Catalan, trying to impose a more homogeneous version of Spain. The centralising actions of the current right wing government are no where near that bad, but they are a reminder of that time.",
"Some really good answers here already. I just wanted to mention one thing: It's also about political power. The separatist parties can gain a lot of votes with their emotional argument of separation from Spain. It speaks easily to everyone that takes pride in their culture and language, that maybe would not be reached with more level headed arguments. I feel it important to mention, because the separatists are very populist. I'm not a fan of the PP either. I just think that a separation would be very difficult for everyone.",
"Independentist here. I'll go ahead and advice you to take everything you read here with a grain of salt, including my comment. Also, I'm not going to give reasons for independence, I just want to offer you an explanation on what the Spanish state is and how it works. What changed, you ask? Nothing has changed. The Popular Party is the political branch of the Spanish elites that have ruled the country for pretty much the last 80 years (and one could argue that for the last three centuries). Those elites also have a presence in the economic, media, state, judiciary and military sphere. Take for example the central government's speaker, Méndez de Vigo. He is related to the Franco and [Serrano-Sunyer]( URL_0 ) (the one in the center wearing black) families; his wife is cousin to Pedro Morenés (military industry and former ministry of defense under the PP government) and Borja Prado (CEO of one of the largest energy corporations in Spain). J.M. Aznar, president of Spain between 1996-2004 is the grandson of Franco's main ideologist (when his party obtained a simple majority in the 2000 general elections he declared that it was \"time to get back all we gave up in 1978\"). In 2013, the PP opposed a proposal to outlaw apologist acts of Francoism. Unsurprising: earlier this year, the second in command at the ministry of interior took part in a homage to the \"fallen soldiers\" (on the nationalist side of course). Homages to the Blue Division (that fought alongside Nazi Germany in the East Front) are conducted routinely. Flags of Franco's regime The military ranks are corrupt, sexist and nationalistic. Those that denounce the situation are marginalized and expelled from the military career. The same goes for judges investigating crimes committed during the regime. With regards to the economic elites, this year the Constitutional Court declared that the fiscal amnesty (legalize any previously undeclared amount of money in exchange for a 3-10% cut of the pie) enacted by the PP government in 2012 was unconstitutional. Of course this will not have any repercussions other than a strongly-worded letter (maybe). The PP government bailed Spanish banks with 65.000 million euros. Earlier this month we learned that only 15.000 will come back. The PP is notoriously corrupt. Nearly 1.000 of their members in local, regional and state governments are being investigated (slowly and with judges and attorneys being pressured so that the cases prescribe). Earlier this year, we learned that a former ministry colluded with an attorney and a judge to manipulate a case against a left-wing leader. We also learned that the former minister of interior (Fernández Díaz) collaborated with a newspaper (El Mundo) and a corrupt police unit to fabricate \"proofs\" against independentist and left-wing leaders. It is also suspected that this unit fabricated a communication between CIA and a spanish intel unit, trying to put the blame of the Barcelona attacks on the catalan police (Mossos d'Esquadra). This unit has generally acted in favour of the economic elites, harassing, blackmailing, etc. anyone on their way. A physician that accused a friend of the current queen of sexual harassment (this guy is also under investigation for corruption) was stabbed by the unit's chief to have her shut up (she is OK). The newspaper that uncovered this produced a documentary. Only the Catalan and Vasque public TVs have shown it. The media dominated by the establishment (El Mundo, ABC, La Razón, El País, TVE, T5, A3, etc.) has refused to acknowledge the case or its seriousness. When the court case started, this unit contacted two executives from construction companies and another from a media corporation (A3) to slow down and manipulate the case. The Spanish elites don't give a fuck about the constitution or the laws. In Spain there is no separation and powers, and so if we try to fight them with \"the law\" we always find ourselves on the wrong side of it.",
"Some people were doing something illegal and the justice system acted. In order for a secession to occur, the constitution would have to be revoked. The constitution was democratically chosen by Catalans with over 91% of votes. What we have here are a group of political parties, with the support of 42% of the population that want to change what Catalonia voted before with less than half the support, 40 something % compared with over 91% which voted for the constitution 40 years ago. If the numbers would be the opposite, they would have a claim of legitimacy, but taking into account the reality of the numbers and that those parties decided to unilaterally revoke the constitution, there isn´t any hint of legitimacy. The secessionists in Catalonia are very vocal and the rest of the population have fear of express their opinion. It´s almost impossible to guarantee a real referendum there when you know you will be persecuted if you don´t vote in a certain way. 75% of my family is from Catalonia. The secessionist movements in Europe have always been based in economic egoism, being part of bigger countries they believe they can do better on their own, but they never acknowledge that a huge part of that wealth comes from being in the same market. Europe as a hole tries be stronger with the pass of time, greater integration, and the separatists, which say that they would still want to keep being part of the EU, are, by definition, opposed to greater integration. URL_0 URL_1"
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71hyzo | Why do so many people boycott genetic manipulated food? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm sure there are many different reasons, but in general my impression is that it's a push back against what they consider \"unnatural\" food. This is also why organic food is so much more popular lately. People are concerned about side-effects of eating something other than just a regular old unadulterated banana, so it reassures them to know their banana (or whatever food product) is \"organic\" and \"not genetically modified\". There may also be people who oppose genetically modified foods out of more concrete reasons, such as concerns over crop diversity. That is to say, concern that if we have a genetically modified banana plant that is superior to the natural strains of banana, that genetically modified banana may essentially replace the various natural variety of banana. If a new disease were to emerge which kills banana plants, however, having just one strain of banana being grown, versus many strains of natural banana being grown concurrently, may mean widespread devastation to banana crops. In short, there is a legitimate concern that GMO food can lead to less crop diversity and potentially worsen the impact of some diseases on the food supply.",
"ELI5: Uneducated people are afraid of what they don't know. Tomatoes, cucumbers, grain, corn are genetical moddified. We did it more \"hard\" way by breeding only what we wanted. Sodium chloride is salt. But telling Sodium chloride ... scares people. It's a hard very hard subject and people don't really know what to think say(the general Joe). There are studies where people don't read past the headline: URL_0 (even more just a simple google search) Web developers are even made to make the Headlines bigger and bigger. So if there is a title:\"Genetic food kills\". Even if the article says :\"Genetic food kills bacteria, safer for eat\"... most people will think that genetic food kills them. The farmers don't like that they need to buy seeds from the specific suppliers and they lose money. Tl;DR: People are uneducated, farmers don't want to pay more money for seeds.",
"There are many different reasons, and we have to differentiate between two layers of complaints. * The first layer criticizes the direct consequences of planting and using GM foods. As more and more specialized products are developed, the diversity of crops is reduced. This makes ecosystems considerable more fragile, as a single illness could wipe out the entire stock. Furthermore, lower crop diversity reduces the biodiversity of the entire ecosystem which in turn affects other species as well. * The second layer has to do with implications of using GM seeds for agricultural and economic practices. Many seeds are engineered in a way to withstand a so called round-up pesticides. This is - very simplified - a poison that kills everything except the plants that are engineered to survive the poison. Firstly, this is an incredible environmental hazard, secondly it introduces poison into ground water (see also: glyphosat) and thirdly, the poison is patented and manufactured by the same multi national company that owns the seeds. Thus, giving a handful of companies an incredible amount of power. You may have heard of Monsanto. It is the biggest manufacturer of GM seeds and round-up poisons. It is also one of the companies with the worst ethical record in history. For example, it forbids farmers to save some of their seeds of each harvest for next years sowing cycle, thereby forcing them to buy seeds from their company every year. They have also been accused of falsifying and bribing scientific studies to influence their outcome in the \"right\" direction. Furthermore, they have been accused of [multiple human rights violations]( URL_0 ). Thus using GM seeds let's multinational and very dangerous companies further consolidate their power and promotes un-ecological and unethical business practices."
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71i23y | The Hindu concept Brahman | The definition on Wikipedia is kind of wordy and I'm having a hard time following | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its one of the aspects of 'god' in hindu thought. In Catholicism we have the three aspects of god; impersonal, all-powerful, implaccible God the father, unifying, animiating, eminent Holy Spirit, and personal Jesus. Hiduism has 2 aspects of 'god'; Atman, the personal aspect of god and Brahman which is the impersonal aspect of god. So think of Brahman like the concept of a god that doesn't have a distinct personality but is in everyone and everything. A unifying soul of the universe."
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71im4r | I have heard from someone several times that teenage or premarital sex causes emotional trauma, but I haven't been able to find any scientific journals or articles on this issue. Does anyone know of something that might confirm or debunk this? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The average age of first sexual encounter in the US is 18 for men and 17 for women. Meanwhile, the average age of first marriage is 29 for men and 27 for women. So either the vast majority of Americans are suffering from 10 years of premarital sexual trauma, or your friend is full of shit.",
"You are correct, and whoever is telling you this is being grossly misleading. There's nothing inherently traumatic about it. Of course it *can* be traumatic, if there are further circumstances that make it so.",
"There is nothing to explain. American sexual \"education\" is predicated on abstinence. There are a number of falsehoods and plain lies that are taught to support this curriculum, one being that premarital sex is a damaging and deviant act. The actual truth is that at no time in recent history, or for most of human history, has premarital sex been psychologically or physically damaging, or even slightly abnormal. Ironically, the peer pressure tactics that teachers warn will be used by our friends to encourage you to have sex are the very tactics THEY use to encourage you to never have sex.",
"The premarital part is bs, for the reasons you have yourself called out. It's entirely a cultural thing where your community may lash out at you because of customs. The sex itself, as long as it was consensual, has nothing to do with it. Teenage sex is more complex. I don't have any actual sources, so what follows is just a suggested line of reasoning. Again, consensual, pleasurable sex, is harmless in and of itself. The problem is trying to understand at what point in teenage-hood someone becomes mature enough to provide informed consent. It's a difficult age range that's just on the brink of adulthood. Some teens will have sex at a time when they weren't really ready for it, and will do it for all the wrong reasons - social pressures to be cool, trying to impress their SO, straight up rape, or prostitution. So their first encounters with sex won't be very healthy, and potentially traumatizing. And they may develop unhealthy attitudes towards their own sexuality that continue into adulthood. But that has nothing to do with them being a teenager. It has to do with their individual circumstances, and such circumstances can arise at any point in one's life. Unfortunately that lends itself poorly to thinking up social rules, so generalizations are made. There are probably plenty more teens who have great first sexual experiences, in a setting of trust and respect, and they go on to have perfectly healthy sex lives as adults. But that's unremarkable so it's not talked about as much as the negative stories.",
"[This article]( URL_0 ) gives a fairly balanced explanation. It seems like it doesn't give any scientific sources, but the website it's on appears to be reasonably reputable to me. The TL;DR is that early exposure to sex increases the likelihood that a person will engage in unsafe sex (unprotected, with multiple partners), have a sexual addiction, sexual disorder or intimacy disorder, and might increase the likelihood of that person being subject to sexual assault or committing a sexual assault. But it only talks about increased likelihood - it doesn't give numbers of how much increased that likelihood is, and from what base level. I'd be interested if someone had some real numbers too.",
"I think this is people confusing the term \"traumatic event\" with \"emotional trauma\". Having sex for the first time -- regardless of age (and **certainly** marital status!) -- is a big deal. It will likely cause a flood of emotions, and that could be considered traumatic. But that does **not** mean it's negative. We all go through many, many of these events throughout our lives. First day of school, first time you ask someone out, first kiss, first time you drive a car, first time you get on a plane, moving out of your parents' house - all of these (and many others) are traumatic events. But that doesn't mean in any way, shape or form that they're bad for you."
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71kko9 | When pedestrians are walking and they will collide unless one of them alters course, who alters? How is it decided? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Here's a little trick I read somewhere back. People usually are looking where they are intending to go and people consciously and unconsciously pick up on it and avoid/go in the opposite direction. Next time you are walking in a crowd, look in the direction you are going and pay attention to where peoples eyes are pointing."
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71lg7m | How did Japan make such a quick and powerful cultural and economic comeback following the dismantlement of the imperial government and culture? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because America basically rebuilt them in its own industrialized image after WWII. We learned our lesson after leaving WWI Germany to languish and decided that we needed to put Japan on solid footing. So we turned them into an industrial superpower in the hopes that they wouldn't feel the need to try to take over Asia again.",
"The USA provided massive post-WWII reconstruction assistance, because we wanted to make sure the people of Japan were not left broke and angry which could lead to another war.",
"The US continued to occupy Japan (and Germany) for much of the decade after the war, and still has bases in both countries today. In addition, the US spent billions (hundreds of billions in today's money) to help rebuild war-ravaged countries, which included Japan and German, and exerted significant influence on both countries well after the occupation had ended. In short, the US rebuilt Japan largely in its own image.",
"So how come the US aren't doing that with Middle Eastern Countries that they went to war with or against recently ? Serious question",
"i suspect it was the same way germany did. lots of help, lots of outside investment. both were also very industrious people.",
"Unlike with colonial powers (England, France, Portugal), the United States didn't believe in soft ethnic cleansing and didn't deliberately disrupt the leadership of the nation, culture, or local governments. After Japan surrendered, the people who's job it was to work on Japan were still there, and now had a greater set of tools with the United States. The same with South Korea. The destabilization of Iraq is an example of the opposite. That's wasn't a culturally American attitude or approach. You see this when the objective is to plunder, but interestingly we didn't seize their natural resource so it seems like NATO was just trying to poison the region before it could become a planetary protection racket. But I digress. Don't disrupt the power structure, and peoples bounce back fast."
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71xg9v | how did women shaving their legs/armpits come about and why did men not do it too? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Women shaving their legs came about during World War II when nylon was rationed. Before that women would wear nylon stockings. Razor companies also had the agenda of marketing their product to women since men were off fighting, Thus women were seeking the nylon look (smooth leg) and achieving it by using the razors and shaving cream that the companies were specifically marketing to them with the men gone.",
"Some here are promoting the myth that body hair removal is a 20th century thing. It's not. Its been a thing for 1000s of years. Household manuals from the victorian era going back to the 1200s advise of sugaring or waxing techniques, as well as depilitory creams. Several military manuals recommend it to reduce body lice spread in men. They may not have done it as often, but its a part of European culture Elsewhere...well, predynastic Egyptians were shaving all their hair 5000 years ago. Its not new, and men not doing it is largely a result of a more sedentary life and lower numbers in the military.",
"Estrogen is responsible for secondary sexual characteristics in women, one of those being less/lighter body hair. Having less body hair frequently (but not always) means more estrogen, and I guess more reproductive fitness (from a sexual selection standpoint). Dunno when/why shaving started, but there's some basis in biology for why women do it and not men. Edit: I'm surprised about the down-voting, i'm honestly trying to be helpful! Maybe some elaboration: reproductive fitness in this case means the ability to ovulate, and has nothing to do with many other traits, such as whether you are beautiful, smart, or a good person, that are desirable. Estrogen spikes are what lead to ovulation and play one role in reproductive fitness. No estrogen, no ovulation, and no babies, that's it. LPT: If you want lighter body hair, try an estrogen based birth control pill (in combo with a non-androgenic progesterone), such as Safyral. It can cut down the amount you need to shave every week, but it takes a month or two to have this effect.",
"It was uncommon until sleevless dresses became fashionable, when it was possibly thought too sexual for momen to be showing their previously hidden hair."
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7212dr | Why do indian people and other asian people have different skin tones despite being so close geographically? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People in India and neighbouring countries are of a different genetic line to people in, say, China or Japan. They still look fairly distinct because of the hard barrier of the Himalayas mostly separating India from East Asia. But it's more complicated than that - as with race anywhere in the world things tend to transition gradually rather than sharply separate. In northeastern India (Nagaland), there are people who look like [this]( URL_1 ). In Uttarakhand near the Nepalese border, there are people who look like [this]( URL_0 ).",
"Because while they belong to the same country, there are far more Ethnic groups within that area that came about in relative isolation to one another and evolved different traits. India might be one country for instance, but in reality is many MANY different sub-divisions of ethnicity. Plus this happens in more than just Asia. If you take a look at Europeans, Italians and Spanish as well as those groups on the Mediterranean coast tend to be much more tanned than their more norther Europeans like in Germany, Russia, France ect. Despite being within a few hundred Kilometers. Even such a small distance geographically can produce a vastly different climate, and thus different needs for skin tone. The hotter and more sunny a place is, the darker the people will tend to be.",
"India has a huge natural barrier at it's Northeast border the himalayas which would make it difficult for central Asian groups and Indian groups to meet. There are a few ideas about how people left Africa, but generally it is thought that about 50000 years ago people left following the coast and taking a southeast route to India, Indonesian and Australia then a bit later a second group left Africa in a northern route towards the middle East, Europe and central Asia."
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722z86 | Why is older wine considered "better"? | Why do people prefer wine that has been "aged"? What does aging do to the wine to make it any different than normal wine? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's actually not better, in a general sense. Not all wines taste better with age. However, there are still wines that do. Main reason for them is what's called \"tannins\", which comes mostly from the oak barrels (that's why it's stored in those). Tannins also come from grape stems, seeds, and skins. They have anti-fungal properties, but also make the unripe grape taste really nasty until the seed is mature. Not only do they taste bitter, tannins bind to the proteins that make your saliva slimy, stripping away the sliminess, leaving your mouth feeling dry, chalky, and ashen. The winemakers determine the amount of tannins that go into the wine, primarily by controlling how long the mashed grapes stay in contact with the tannin-loaded stems, skins, and seeds. Wine that’s allowed to marinate at length in the grape detritus will start out as a bitter, dry youngster, and mature into a rich, complex, and highly desirable vintage. Wines that age well do so over a continuum, and there is an ideal period where the flavors of both youth and maturity are balanced. [^Know ^more.]( URL_0 )",
"Sorry for formatting, on mobile. I'm seeing a lot of misinformation here, especially with claims that oak aging being the main factor. Yes, being in a barrel for a year or two is important, but that's mainly a source of flavor and 'structure' that gets better as wines age (AFTER being bottled). Basically, there are 2 factors at play: cork aeration and sugar breakdown. Corks allow tiny amounts of air in, which smooths out and changes the flavors already present-- wines that are 10+ years old tend to have less of a tannin 'bite'--, while sugars breaking down into alcohol adds more. EDIT: sugar breakdown is more of an issue with white wines. Acidity also plays a role in making sure the wine stays balanced, in that one flavor doesn't dominate. As a rule of thumb, red wine tends to get softer and more complex (so more flavors, like leather, dried flowers, meat, and other things that sound odd, but tastes great in old wine). If a wine has lower alcohol and high acidity, it tends to age better than most. Lots of tannin also play a big role. Burgundy pinot noir is a good example of this: wines from the 60's are still being raved about by people who can afford them. It's worth noting that the best 'aging' wines tend to be really harsh/ not very flavorful early on. Bordeaux wines, especially Cabernet Sauvignon-heavy blends, need several years to be palatable. Californian wines, on the other hand, can be drank much earlier. There are several exceptions to these trends, but this is eli5. If you'd like anything clarified, let me know. I work in a wine shop and teach classes on different wine growing regions.",
"Older wine isn't necessarily better. It can go bad if left for too long. Also, in modern wine making it's more possible to control the elements that go into a wine. This allows the creation of wines that are good to drink in the same year it was released from the barrels and very bad to drink later.",
"I had a good friend at one point who was a bonafide oenophile. He had spent tens of thousands on his wine collection. I asked him the same question once and he said that after a certain period (say 20-30 years) it wasn't a matter of taste but experience. He showed me a bottle of port from 1912, that was some 90 years old at the time and told me that the same kind of port was served on the Titanic - same batch and year. He bought it not because of the superior taste, but because he will be one of a handful of people to have tasted something that actual passengers tasted before they went down. Until then I never really got how people became so into wine, but this seems pretty cool to me. EDIT: for bad grammar"
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84,
10,
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[
"https://www.wired.com/2014/10/whats-wines-tastes-better-age/"
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} | [
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] |
72536d | "No one was harmed during the making of this film" - what do they do when someone does get hurt? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dnfru02"
],
"text": [
"Do they actually even write this at the end of films? For animals, definitely, can't remember ever seeing it for humans though."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
725jii | When abroad, when asked where you're from, people usually answer with the country. Except Americans, they answer their state. Why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dnfyl8y",
"dnfwro2",
"dnfve6i"
],
"text": [
"There are a lot of answers here about how the US is so big and diverse. The truth is that the regional differences within the US -while further apart geographically- aren't actually culturally any more significantly different than the regional difference within other countries. But we don't have a transparency into that in other countries, and most people assume homogeneity of others and see differences within their own group (that's natural). In our defense, i think that the prevelance of American movies abroad do actually give most foreigners betting transparency into the US than the other way around, but i don't think that counts in. There are also a lot of comments about how our states are the equivalent of \"nation-states\" abroad. But while this was true 250 years ago, it really isn't now (and in fact many countries in europe were unified after the US was). The biggest things i think are: 1) due to it's geographic isolation, traveling abroad is very expensive for Americans. As such, the vast majority of US vacations are taken inside the US amd we grow up our whole life answering the vacation question \"where are you from\" with either the state or metropolitan city. 2) because of that lack of foreign travel (and becauae of the stereotype of the American traveler abroad), many of us already feel like we stick out like a sore thumb. We think it is obvious that we come from the US, so that this question must be an i quiry of where we are. 3) because of that cost of foreign travel (and the lack of popular media penetration from other countries), many American tourists haven't had the chance to have the \"homogeneity of elsewhere\" challenged. 4) at least in my travels, i have almost always had \"I'm from the US\" followed up by \"oh, where at\" because many europeans at least have cultural touchpoints to US regions through movie, media, and professional sports teams.",
"*Part* of the reason is that many Americans have very little experience traveling outside of the US. It's a force of habit to answer with the state you're from since when they are asked this question inside the US, that's the relevant answer.",
"The USA is a really big place, and each region is unique in some way to the other regions. We identify far more with our \"home state\" than we do with the country as a whole, with the exception of New Yorkers who identify more with the city they're from than with their state. We're also fairly arrogant and egotistical, leading us to believe that the world revolves around our country and is intimately aware of American cultures and the unimportant differences between someone from CA and someone from NY."
],
"score": [
17,
8,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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} | [
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|
728by9 | Why do people of Iranian descent often refer to themselves as Persian? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dngk8r8",
"dngk8ky",
"dngxl6w"
],
"text": [
"Persians are an ethnicity within Iran. Not all Iranians are Persians. It's like saying your are English when you are of British descent or saying that you are Inuit if you are of Canadian descent.",
"Because the ethnicity of Iranians is Persian, not Arabic. The part of the world where Iran sits used to be Persia in ancient times. Iran has Persians, Afghanis, Jews and Arabs (and probably lots more). They are all Iranian, but only Persians are Persian.",
"I've spoken with Iranians in the west about this before, and they give a few different answers, but if you dig a little, a lot of the older (45-50+) folks that have actually lived there, and now live in the west, are sort of ashamed at what the country has become after the revolution in the late 70s. I feel like it's a way to distance themselves from what's happened there and what's happening there now. TL;DR - Younger folks from Iran or with Iranian parents, call themselves Persian to distance themselves from the western idea of what Iran is. This answer isn't very popular, so I'm sure it'll get buried, but at least now you've got this side of the answer."
],
"score": [
30,
13,
11
],
"text_urls": [
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} | [
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|
72902j | How/Why is it routine to see multi-million dollar bails when the 8th amendment plainly prohibits excessive bail? | The 8th amendment: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Why do we so often see bail set at millions of dollars for low means individuals? Isn't this a violation of the constitution? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dngq4kd"
],
"text": [
"Excessive means in relation to the crime, not in relation to their ability to pay. Bail is insurance that you will show up to court on the dates you are supposed to. If you are required to show up for a traffic ticket, 1 million dollar bail is highly excessive, which is why your signature in the presence of the cop suffices. If you're facing the death penalty due to a charge of first degree homicide, there's likely no amount of bail that is safe to insure your attendance because you'd give up just about everything to not die."
],
"score": [
16
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
72efwx | What happens if senior US military leaders hold no confidence in orders from potus? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dnhuli9"
],
"text": [
"They would either be arrested, or in the process of overthrowing the government. Military command's pretty rigid."
],
"score": [
14
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
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|
72emb2 | How widespread was the accceptance "Soviet" nationality in the USSR in contrast to the ethnicity? | I heard that similar to how today Russia has two identity concepts, the ethnicity and the nationality (*ruskiy* "Russian ethnicity", *rossiyanin* "Russian nationality"), the USSR had something similar, but for the whole union, which would make it supra-national in a sense. However how widespread was the identification of being a "soviet" in contrast to the own ethnicity? Was it more of an general term to refer to all the people or had it also personal meaning to people? EDIT: Side question. I'd also like to know about being "Indian", since India has many ethnicities, similar to the situation Europe is in. Do they consider themselves Indian first or rather their ethnicity first? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dnhwnqy"
],
"text": [
"While the initial focus of the USSR was to create a Soviet people, those plans went by the wayside in the 1930s in favor of Russifying the Soviet Union. Without government support, there wasn't really any reason to abandon your ethnicity, and it didn't happen often. The exact number of people who saw themselves as being ethnically \"Soviet\" is hard to figure under the USSR itself, but today about 27,000 people identify as being of Soviet ethnicity."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
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]
} | [
"url"
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"url"
] |
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