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9kwbkn | Was muhammed actually a pedophile? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"According to islam, he consumated his marriage to Aisha when she was 9 years old. I dont know about the historical Muhammed, but it was not unheard of in dark age Arabia. Edit: years, not yeard."
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9kzd96 | during the age of analog how did they get that stats on viewership of programs to award which ones are most watched ratings-wise? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Viewing diaries. Nielsen used them right up until this year. They'd select families who would record their viewing habits and calculate ratings from that sample."
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9l0941 | Why are followers of a religion more devoted in a place where they are in minority as compared to places where they are in majority? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Places where a religious group is in the minority tends to be because that group is persecuted (not always). In cases such as that, the followers of that religion in that area are the most devout, as a casual observer would be afraid of persecution.",
"I'd argue it's not true, in all populations you have the devoted individuals and the not so devoted individuals. When you're in the country like those in the middle east, it's literally criminal to claim you're anything other than religious. The large chunk of people who say \"I don't really care\", formally claim they are religious because they don't want to be put to death, but they are not going out of their way to be super devoted. When those same people move to a country where they is only moderate pressure to be religious (like the US), the non-devoted either become non-religious or just don't really mention it. It's only really the minority, the devoted people that are obviously religious. So when you look at the obviously religious minorities, you really do not see all the people that feel like they are part of that religion (you're comparing the people that go to the a Mosque in the south with regular death threats from the locals to the people that claim to be Christian to their mother and haven't gone to church in 20 years).",
"Is your statement true? I would argue Christians in Sweden are far less devoted overall than Christians in the united states even though they are heavily outnumbered in Sweden."
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9lt1hd | How does the Swiss nationality law work at three levels simultaneously? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Switzerland is officially called the Swiss Confederation. It's made up of smaller governments, like the states in the United States. Some citizenship records are kept at canton level (= state) and other records are kept at the town level. Triple level citizenship is recognized/documented at all three levels. The Swiss love their documentation."
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9lx1zl | Why does it cost money to get elected to office in the US? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Where do you live that it doesn't cost money? I'm honestly curious.",
"It is largely used for advertising. Lots of money spent on TV commercials, print adds, wrapping buses, etc. Other than advertising there are travel costs, paid campaign employee costs, lawyer fees, accountant fees, etc.",
"Organization, paying people on your staff that do the organizing. Renting venues to hold events. It's a whole operation and every aspect of it take money.",
"Paying staffers, buying ads, paying for travel to make public appearances, cost of paying for a space and security for a rally or other event, paying to print out yard signs, posters and flyers, etc",
"The offices that cost a lot of money represent a lot of people. You can run for a local judgeship pretty cheaply. In order to represent a lot of people, you need a lot of votes. Somehow, you need to get a lot of the voters in an area to know who you are and why you would be good at the job you want. Most voters don't spend a lot of time and money researching politicians, so the burden is on the politician to get their information to a place where the voters can find it. That means TV ads, radio ads, direct mail flyers, signs by the road, and even volunteers to go door-to-door talking to voters. Buying those ads and coordinating all this media takes a lot of money. Even more money because your opponent is doing the same thing, louder to drown your message out. It's an arms race to do more than your opponent so that people are swayed to your side. Recently, as facts have become less relevant, it's all about shouting the loudest and the most often. That's driving up the costs in competitive races."
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9ly1na | Why is there generally an anti-unionisation work mentality in the US? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Unions tend to push toward job uniformity. Clearly defined, difficult to change, work definitions and rules tend to be at odds with ideas like individual initiative and continuous productivity improvement which are highly prized in the US. Americans idealize the maverick that has the breakthrough discovery, and tend to see themselves as this kind of a person. Union rules, often defined to assure work across the workforce, are seen as inefficient and artificial restrictions. The reality might well be that most workers aren't that innovative, and management uses the lack of union protections against them, but the ideal drives \"work mentality\" as you described it.",
"Because [large corporations run propaganda campaigns to turn their workers against unions]( URL_0 )",
"There actually isn't among workers; In most cases workers, especially in anything skilled with large workforces would much rather be unionized. It's corporations that don't want Unions, mainly because of really simple things like unions equal higher wages, better protections for workers, collective bargaining power, oversight etc.",
"If you think there is an anti-union mentality in the US then the propaganda machine of the corporations is working. Workers who make up the majority of the work force mostly support unionization.",
"At its core, the US have always been, and wanted to be the land of opportunity. Anyone can \"make it\" big. And no rules or laws should impeed that. Working in a factory is not an opportunity for greatness, it is what you do while waiting for your chance to make it. So everyone protects the factory owner, because he is living the American dream. Nobody cares about the worker, because he is not trying to make something great. People who are happy with their place in society, will support policies to improve their lives. People who are unhappy with their situation, often support policies to improve the lives they wish they had."
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9ly7qh | How could the supreme court get to abolish abortions in the USA | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some state would pass a law outlawing all abortions, perhaps excluding to preserve the health of the mother. Some woman in that state would sue, claiming that the law was unconstitutional. She would win in court, based on the Roe vs Wade decision. She would win in appeals court, in observance of the same precedent. All that could have happened any day, but one would expect the Supreme Court not to hear the case, based on the stare decisis principle. Folks are concerned that if this happened, there might be 5 votes on the court to hear the case. The court might decide that Roe vs Wade was wrongly decided, as they have in the past [in many cases]( URL_0 ). Then it would be up to the states to regulate abortion, or the Congress to set a national regulation. The latter is likely because the former would simply lead to \"help women get to another state for an abortion\" charities. This is how the system is supposed to work. The SCOTUS made a horrible decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford and the Congress passed the 14^th amendment to fix it. The judicial branch isn't supposed to be the part of government that assures social justice. That's supposed to be the job of the legislative branch, the laws are supposed to be just as written."
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9lzml5 | Why do people in the USA tend to be more religious than people in other developed nations? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think its because we were founded by religious refugees so religious ideals have been engrained in society. If you take a look though, we've only existed for 300+ years whereas european nations have had millenia to become less religious.",
"While others will argue that the extreme levels of religiosity in the is due to the US being founded by religious people, fleeing persecution, it paints a romanticised but inaccurate picture as such groups existed within Europe at the time and there was significant similarity in the religiosity of people of the era regardless of the which continent they were on. There are two key factors that shaped the current religious landscape of the US and in particular Christianity. To explain the plurality of religious groups developed within the US it is important to examine how the country of United States grew. The US, for much of its history, has been a place that encouraged settlement of its central and western regions. This meant that religious groups were able to develop their own religious communities in relative isolation (e.g. Amish, Mormon, Restorians etc) from a far away government. This in turn meant that the ideals and practises of one group was less likely to override those of another until a significant following had been amassed i.e. one mad is mad, two men are a cult, three men are a religion. As to why Christian Protestantism is more pronounced and fanatical than in Europe the answer lies with a series of extreme religious revivals over the course of US history. These became known as [The Great Awakening]( URL_0 ) and continue to deeply influence the modern form of Christianity in the US."
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9lznyh | Why is The Office (US) Still Popular, Today? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Every once in a while, a show comes around that people really connect with. In the '90s, it was Friends and Seinfeld. It probably also helps the episodes don't seem dated. Their jokes didn't rely on current events for the most part, so you can still watch them today and they have the same effect."
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9m0nwr | Why are politicians so old? Were the politicians in the 20s/30s etc commonly close to retirement age or is this a newish trend? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Politicians in their 20s and 30s tend to be at lower levels of government running for offices and taking positions working their way up the ladder. They are mayors, city councils, county seats, State legislators, and the like. It takes years to build up a record and enough public support and awareness to progress to the higher ranks such as Governors and Federal offices.",
"National-level politics requires a lifetime of making connections with the rich and powerful, who are mostly old themselves. And once you're in, there's really no reason to ever get out. The political power structures in America encourage incumbents to stay for as long as possible, and make unseating them extremely difficult. So you end up with Congress looking like the Alzheimers ward.",
"The politicians from the 20s and 30s are still running the place from what I can tell. Welcome to no-term-limits",
"It's not new at all. Society usually wants the most experienced people in charge of making the biggest and most crucial decisions, because they're less likely to make foolish mistakes (or just not know what to do) from inexperience, and also because they have loads of friends and connections developed from a lifetime of activity."
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9m1blh | How do Hindus Know What Caste Another Hindu is From? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"* Surnames are often related to caste. This is the easiest way for me to guess in an urban environment. * Communities in rural area are often grouped according to caste. In my village, the brahmins have a separate neighborhood. So does the milkmen, the fishermen, etc. however the occupation has blurred a lot in the sense that not everybody in the milkmen neighborhood does that job. * Features. Lower castes work outside longer, have historically had worse nutrition. Thats shows up in color and height.",
"This isn't definitive, but you can definitely tell the difference between some of them. The lowest castes have had a thousand years of poor nutrition and hard lives, so they tend to be smaller and darker. The highest castes have had a thousand years of better nutrition and tend to be much taller and, with European influence, somewhat lighter in appearance. Like any subcultures anywhere, be they ethnic or religious, they tend to dress and speak similarly. Due to a lack of miscegenation, for lack of a better word, they tend to have different facial features as well. To Westerners, they may look similar, but as I've been told repeatedly in Asia, all Westerners look the same to someone of those cultures while Asians appear very different.",
"Certain surnames (e.g. someone with the surname Sharma is likely a Brahmin), where you live, your skin colour, the rituals you observe (e.g. only Brahmin males do a coming of age ceremony involving sacred thread) etc.",
"Is it possible to pass as a higher caste or are the physical distinctions so profound as to make it difficult to pull off? Can you move to a distant city and say you're a 8 instead of a 4 and get away with it? Is this done? And if it is done, can the reverse occur? that is, you're born as an 8 but look like a 4, but you move to another city and society just assumes you're a 4 and that's what you become?",
"Same way you can look at someone on Tinder and have a very good idea of what kind of job/education that person has. Clothes, grooming, everything.",
"Just a side note, many Sikhs, Christians and Muslims follow the caste system in India. They’ll deny it, but you won’t see a regular Christian marry a Dalit Christian. Some Sikh temples have two entrances, one for higher caste and the other one for lower castes. We can blame the British as much as we want but caste system existed even before that.",
"Indian here. Caste system is deeply embedded in indian society. People can know the caste of person by the surname or last name eg sharma, tripathi etc surname are from brahmin community and goel, Mittal etc are from Baniya category. All people face difficulty in life due to their castes. It's all bullshit made up 1000s of years back and still running in our system. To avoid discrimination, in Southern India people don't write their surname but just initials of surname whilst in North India many people just write Kumar at the end as a vague surname to avoid any discrimination.",
"Thanks for the responses, everyone. I had a sneaky suspicion that this was the case, but it definitely makes sense.",
"Caste discrimination finds its ugliest forms in villages, where everyone knows the family and their origins. You won't be able to do certain jobs (especially traditional jobs associated with places of worship,cooking food for a school etc.) if you are from lowest caste. When it comes to professional occupations, the caste system blurs, though discrimination will still exist in everyday life. & #x200B; Each caste has their own traditions. Indians will be able to know the caste if they talk about their dietary habits or surname or other traditions like marriage ceremony, ceremony on death etc etc. Lower caste people tend to be darker. The lowest caste people are in many parts the original inhabitants (native) of that area in India. Some states have shown remarkable progress in eliminating caste discrimination.",
"So caste is largely understood mainly due to a perversion of the terms by the British as an effort to further divide the Indian population. This is why the West always sees the caste system as some sort of crude hierarchy in which a select few abuse the masses. The caste system was just meant to categorize your role in society, whether you dedicated your life to religious work, common defense, business, agriculture, or none of the above. Because social mobility has always been limited, very few people change castes between generations. Each caste form communities that have certain names, depending on the region you were from. Before the idea of using a first name/surname as an individual's name, a person identified themselves by their given name, their father's name, or their ancestral village name. When people chose surnames, some opted to stick to a profession (you may see someone with the last name of \"wala\") or a caste name (such as Patel in Gujurat). The reason why you see so many people with the last name Patel isn't because they're all related, it's because they all hail from the same caste of merchants and businessmen in the state of Gujurat. So to put it simply, the most common way Indians recognize someone's caste is through their surname, which tends to be associated with a certain caste or occupational background. Since the color of one's skin varies based on your occupation (how much time you spend in the sun working, etc. India is still very agrarian), or your ancestry (ancestral North Indians vs South Indians), it's not *as* definitive. Some people have changed their surnames in recent time to avoid discrimination. Certain Brahmans have opted for more generic surnames to avoid restrictions in employment etc.",
"I thought the caste system was going away?",
"Someone asked a similar question but not the way I wanted it answered. What are some examples of lower caste surnames and higher caste surnames.",
"Just like to clear up a misconception, it’s a technicality but nevertheless, the caste system that you’re referring to is truly called the “Varna Ashram” in Hinduism. The Varna Ashram was dubbed the “Caste System” by the British and was used to divide societies as to create disunity, whereas the former organized society into different roles.",
"It is like all other social systems in place. In Rwanda there was the conflict between two groups of people known as the Hutus and Tutsis. They may have stereotypical features or customs but have little differences ethnically speaking. In other words, it is nurture vs. nature. People in society will just treat people based off associations."
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9m4di1 | Why do people say "human race" when it is clearly a species? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the term \"race\" has existed for hundreds of years and had various meanings, long before the modern science of taxonomy came about and properly defined species and races.",
"the \"Race\" in \"Human race\" is derived from the italian word \"Razza\", meaning \"Species\" or \"kind\", and was commonly used as such over all sorts of species from the 15th century onwards. Over time this definition fell out of favor and now \" < species > race\" usually only refers to humans."
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9m9ycu | why do humans laugh at inappropriate things or during uncomfortable scenarios? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"humour in uncomfortable situations is a common defence mechanism and is usually how people cope with the situation. Sometimes it’s an unusual feeling and to avoid acting awkward or indecisive of their reaction, they result in making light of a situation or joking about it.",
"Humor is subverting expectations. When you have a tense scenario, you expect a blow out - so when anything that is **not** a blow out happens, your expectations have been subverted. Hence the tendency to laugh. Watch the Coupling Episode 'giggle loop' for a better explanation."
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9mb29q | Why have women started wearing high waisted jeans again?! | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because pants should be worn on your waist, not your hips. Having them on your hips makes things like muffin tops, and showing your crack/underwear more likely. They also make pockets harder to use and the your pants more likely to fall off.",
"Because low-rise jeans are fucking uncomfortable. Like a wratchet strap across your lower intestines. Also, 80s fashion is back.",
"Less chance of butt cracking and muffin top?",
"Because they’re way more comfortable and they look better. No muffin tops, no constantly pulling your jeans up, easier to tuck in tops, accentuates your curves better, etc. I’m never going back to low rise ever again",
"Touting the benefits of high rise or pointing out the annoyances of low rise doesn't answer the question. The answer is that trends are cyclical. When they come back they are often modified in some way. In the nineties bell bottoms of the 60s were in again, but they were low rise instead of the high rise of the 60s. Youngsters don't want to dress like their parents did when they were kids but they want to dress like their parents did when *they* were kids. Think of Dad's Led Zeppelin shirt from the 70s that came back for us in the 90s. I still wear the Marty McFly vest my dad wore when he met my mom. Give it ten years and women will dress like Gwen Stafani again while men dress like Seth Green in Can't Hardly Wait.",
"Dudes be diggin' \"dat ass\" as it may pertain to the way those high-waisted jeans accentuate the best parts of the masses as opposed to the best parts of the few...",
"TL;DR- High waisted jeans are back due to how cyclical style is, but also because they’re more comfortable, give you more coverage, and are more versatile for more body types. ______________ First and foremost style is cyclical. High waisted jeans were cool 20/30 years ago so it was inevitable that they would came back. But, IMO, comfort is what has made them a closet staple again. It’s more comfortable to have the waist band sit at the small of your waist. It feels more natural, is less constricting, and makes your pants stay up easier. Low waisted jeans are very uncomfortable and constricting, especially on female hips (some one else in this thread said that it’s like having a ratchet strap around your hips which is exactly what it’s like). They’re also always falling down and showing your butt crack. If your butt is a little larger than average, some low rise jeans won’t even cover it up all the way. High waisted jeans always have your butt covered, and then some, allowing you to bend over and squat without worry. Low rise jeans can also give you a muffin top. High waisted jeans smooth out your figure and conceal/compress your stomach. On another note, as a tall girl I appreciate the breathing room high waisted jeans give me. By that I mean: even if a pair of high waisted jeans are a little too short for me, I can still make them work by pulling down the waist band a bit to compensate for the lack of length in the legs. Low rise jeans have no extra length, so I HAVE to get them in an extra long style (which is not very common, or is very expensive). Otherwise they will look absolutely ridiculous on me."
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9mcqj9 | What is midterm election in the US and why is it so important? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically, halfway through the term of a President, all the seats of the US House of Representatives (The lower of the two parts of the legislative branch) are up for re-election, as they only serve two-year terms. Basically, if people aren't liking the president, they can vote for Representatives that will oppose the president's policies, or if they like the president, vote for Representatives that will support the president's policies.",
"The US Senate term is 6 years, and the individual seats are staggered so that there's an election for Senate every 2 years. The midterm elections take place between Presidential elections (which are every 4 years), and are typically seen as a gague of the American public's reception to the President's progress/agenda.",
"Depending on if the Senate is republican or democrat majority, the Senate can either weaken or strengthen the president. For example, Obama wanted to do free healthcare, but he got a Republican senate that would resist anything he wanted. So free healthcare more or less fell flat.",
"Imagine the government is a body. Every 4 years, you get the opportunity to vote for a head, which is then able to make policy decisions. Now, the problem is that the choices you have for the head are often not all that popular and many people can get sick of them after a short time. So the midterm election comes after 2 years, and provides the people with an opportunity to change some of the limbs, in case they are not happy with the direction the body is going. Now you may still be left with the unpopular head, but the head will have difficulties getting anything done because its new arm keeps slapping it in the face, while the other arm is just kind of spinning around in circles, and the legs keep tripping over each other."
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9md7qv | Why is violence and gore more acceptable than sex and nudity? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you are in the US. The answer is that we have historically been a highly conservative Puritan society and we are still feeling the affects of that to this day. Puritans had a dim view on sexuality as sin making one less.... Well pure.",
"Yeah, I always get annoyed at how puritan (mostly) US shows are. In Breaking Bad for example. Drugs everywhere, killing and maiming, all ok. Then the cartel gets \"the girls\" for a party, and I'l supposed to believe that they don't expect them to get naked or at least topless? Every show where they go to a strip club, no nudity. Lucifer was a prime example. Here's the devil, depraved and sex-crazy. But apperently a prude because nobody got naked in his vicinity And also, US censor and movie, tv-makers. Seeing a dick won't make you gay. Watching a Spanish movie now, \"the author\", and twenty minutes in the main character, an aspiring writer, remembers advice that he needs to write with his balls on the table. So the guy stands up, whips it out in full view and stands there. Balls on the table.",
"Some Germanic and northern European countries are the exact opposite of what OP is suggesting. For example, Germany has a weird thing where they will edit kid programs to remove weapon violence (with hilarious results on some of Naruto episodes) while full non sexual nudity is present on national TV. Nordic countries also are super open on nudity (and you better be when you grow up going to the sauna naked with you whole family). It all depends on History and Culture really.",
"God prefers violence to sex. That, at least, is the unstated but prevailing view among the busybodies who trouble themselves to become censors in the US.",
"People react to it more. With nudity you will have outraged people, parents etc complaining, while they don't bat an eyelid to violence, probably because they have been desensitised to it. I think it is because violence has historically been part of mass entertainment and still is, while sex has been more private entertainment. Even today people have no problem watching horror and war movies in cinemas or with parents, siblings, friends, but watching a sex scene becomes more uncomfortable. As others have said, this is not universal. In my country there are boobs on TV during the daytime and nobody cares."
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9mhvfs | what actual, day to day powers does England have over Canada as part of the constitutional monarchy? Is it purely symbolic? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"*England* doesn't have any power over Canada, nor does the *United Kingdom* (the country you were probably thinking of). While Queen Elizabeth II is the queen of the UK *and* Canada, those are completely separate governments & the nations are completely independent.",
"As of the 1980s none. The UK parliament cannot tell Canada to do anything at all once full sovereignty was granted. That said Canada does share the same Sovereign as the UK with Queen Elizabeth II. She and her representatives in Canada (The Governor General) who operates on her behalf do have some powers such as the equivalent of a veto by denying assent to a new law, and the ability to force Parliaments to hold new elections should they be deemed corrupt or ineffectual but those are rarely used without request of the PM in any of the countries She is the Monarch of. She also technically has full direct control of their Military as the Commander-In-Chief, just like she does all of the nations she is the Monarch of, as well as direct control of every agency that has \"Royal\" in the name such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Mounties). But she has never utilized this authority giving discretion to the various Generals and Parliaments instead.",
"Nominally none. England as a nation has no power over Canada. The Queen is recognized as the Head of State of Canada and as such must give Royal assent to the Prime Minister upon election (The Prime Minister must ceremonially request permission of the Queen to form a government) as well as to sign all of Canada's Bill's into law. Although technically she has the right to refuse do to so, this has not been exercised in centuries and doing so would be a significant scandal and could very well result in abolishing of the Monarchy. As the Queens representative in Canada the Governer general takes on this role. The Governor General is an appointed position, usually by the Prime Minister, and is purely a ceremonial role at this point. Traditionally this role was given to British nobles, or a member of the Royal Family (Prince William for instance expressed interest in being Governor General of Canada) but for decades now famous Canadians have been appointed to the role instead. The Queen is also the functional head of the Canadian military, hence the term The **Royal** Canadian Air Force and Navy. This is why all the members of the royal family have served in the forces. The Queen herself was a mechanic during WW2. Although again this is ceremonial at this point and the Queen or Governor General has no impact on the day to day affairs of the Forces other than frequently requesting the use of Military aircraft for travel, the presence of military bands for ceremonies, etc. Much to the annoyance of the tax payer..."
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9mi698 | Why is it in some cultures usual to sit on the floor and in others to sit above the ground eg on a chair? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some places that sit on the floor don't have large supplies of wood to make chairs. Some places used to be nomadic, so a carpet and cushions were much easier to move than rigid chairs. When they stopped being nomadic, that was the custom, so why change. Some places only the wealthy had wooden furniture, so sitting on the ground was the only option. Some places, chairs were seen to elevate the food above the floor, which was considered dirty. Some places, custom dictates removing your shoes before entering a home, so the floors are not nearly as dirty. There are many reasons; the ones I've given are just some of them.",
"It can vary - in England, people used to sit (and sleep) on the floor since most abodes had an open fire so being close to the floor meant being far from the smoke. Once fireplaces with chimneys became a thing, people then began sitting in chairs more since having chimneys also resulted in having drafts at floor level, which made sitting and sleeping there uncomfortable.",
"It used to be very difficult for the cultures who sat on the floor to vacuum. They'd need someone to move over and that person would end up dragging some dirt into the already cleaned spot. Chairs were invented so you'd only have to lift your feet for the vacuum. It was another 30 years before the dinner table was invented. People would sit in the chair and get down to eat a bite then climb back up. Up down up down, all dinner long.",
"- Climate. - Material culture (available materials and sociality around them). - Built environment (public vs private space). - Customs. Look at 1. (historically) nomadic cultures: Mongols / Eurasia / Central Asia / Bedouins / Native Americans 2. Maritime / seafaring cultures: Japan / Malayo-Polynesia 3. Cultures that combine both sitting on the ground and chairs: Japan / Malayo-Polynesia / Mongols / Eurasia / Central Asia / Turkic It’s gotta be bloody warm for sitting on the floor to be comfortable. Otherwise, you have to sit on thick rugs or chairs. If you use thick rugs to sit on, that means you belong to a culture where it’s cold but you need to scoot in a hurry on your horse’s back. Hope that explains."
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9ml5kl | What Is Poststructuralism? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Post-structuralism is a branch of theory and you need to understand \"theory\" and \"structuralism\" to begin to understand \"post-structuralism.\" **Theory** (via Jonathan Culler in *Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction*) \"The genre of 'theory' includes works of anthropology, art history, film studies, gender studies, linguistics, philosophy, political theory, psychoanalysis, science studies, social and intellectual history, and sociology. The works in question are tied to arguments in these fields, but they become 'theory' because their visions or arguments have been suggestive or productive for people who are not studying those disciplines. Works that become 'theory' offer accounts others can use about meaning, nature and culture, the functioning of the psyche, the relations of public to private experience and of larger historical forces to individual experience...**Theory is often a pugnacious critique of common-sense notions**, and further, an attempt to show that what we take for granted as 'common sense' is in fact a historical construction, a particular theory that has come to seem so natural to us that we don't even see it as a theory.\" **Structuralism and Semiotics** Structuralism is a branch of theory that seeks to understand cultural phenomena by looking at the underlying structure, which is examined by applying theories of structural linguistics. This is related to \"semiotics,\" or the studies of signs. The idea of a \"sign\" comes from the structuralist linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and describes what we understand as a word to be a bringing together of a sound and a concept. It breaks down like this: Sign = signified (concept of a cat) / signfier (the sound you make when you say \"cat\") \\[signified is positioned over the signifier\\] The important thing here is that the relationship between the signifier and the signified is *arbitrary*: the sound you make by saying the letters c-a-t together in english have a similar relationship to the signified as the letters c-h-a-t have to someone who speaks french. The relationship between *sound* and *concept—*which produces the *sign*—is culturally determined. Structuralist thinkers take this relationship, extend it, and apply it to cultural artifacts and behaviors which seem \"natural.\" An example of this is Roland Barthe's book *Mythologies*, which takes everyday objects like \"soap,\" \"professional wrestling,\" and \"wine\" and looks at the way they function in culture. He extends a sign in this way: \\[First-order signification\\] = > Soap powder = concept of soap powder / sound of \"soap powder\" \\[Second-order signification, or \"Myth\"\\] = > Soap powder's cultural meaning = Soap powder / Associations of cleanliness/whiteness/hygine The cultural meaning of the sign can then be used to reinforce certain values: \"The relations between the evil and the cure, between dirt and a given product, are very different in each case...Powders, on the contrary, are selective, they push, they drive dirt through the texture of the object, their function is keeping public order not making war. This distinction has ethnographic correlatives: the chemical fluid is an extension of the washerwoman's movements when she beats the clothes while powders rather replace those of the housewife pressing and rolling the washing against a sloping board.\" (from *Mythologies*) **Post-structuralism** Post-structuralism takes those tools and ideas of structuralism (\"natural\" things as cultural constructs) and turns it back toward itself. Here, things like the whole idea of systems of knowledge or the idea of a stable, singular self are under scrutiny as being historical constructs. \"Post-structuralism\" is sort of the umbrella under which several different discourses (Jacques Derrida's \"deconstruction,\" contemporary feminism, etc.) fall. Examples: **Michel Foucault** showing how the modern self is the product of a combination of different discourses, which limit our ideas of ourselves in different ways and to different ends. Knowledge is not neutral but is instead always tied to power. **Judith Butler** showing how the body is a historical idea and gender is imposed on a person while also being something that you *do* and participate in—a performance in relation to a historical moment. **Roland Barthes** destabilizing the idea of a singular meaning of a text in \"The Death of the Author\" in favor of a multi-dimensional space in which meanings are teased out. The author's intent is only one voice among many."
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9mo18n | How Atheists can go through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I have a friend who is a sober alcoholist, and have asked him the same question. It's not just AA, it's most (all?) big organizations against alcoholims, such as IOGT as well. He solved it by dropping the \"higher power\" bit, and just wen't with \"stuff outside his control\". Call it god, call it addiction, call it biology, call it psychology, whatever. The core is that it's out of his control. I wish these organizations could distance themselves from their religious roots. It does keep a lot of people who need help away. I'd suggest your friend \"shops around\" until he finds a group that works for him.",
"I'm sorry for your friend but glad they are admitting and opening up to you. Some people use 12-steps as a way to \"get in on the ground floor\" of recovery, just to get started as that's the hardest part. But to be brutally honest there are other and better support groups and methods to becoming sober than AA, depending on where you live. AA has an insanely low success rate, instead of encouraging your friend through that I would suggest researching local options together; be willing and patient enough to analyse groups or centers with them. That right there is a support group.",
"Usually in these programs they use the higher power as an incentive for them to want to stay on track to recovery. If your friend prefers to put himself in that spot (ie he'd be getting better for himself VS the approval of a diety), he should do so. A lot of the people struggling with addiction of any kind have lost a sense of self and need something bigger than themselves to hold onto. I want to add, I'm proud of your friend for admitting he had a problem and getting help. Sending positive vibes 😊 (side note, I typed this out running on no sleep, so I really hope this isn't just incoherent rambling 😅)"
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9moh05 | What are the alignment charts with “Chaotic Good” (etc.) actually mean, and what’s its backstory? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They’re charts of characters according to the alignment system in d & d. The good/evil axis represents moral good or evil. The lawful/chaotic axis represents how much they value the rule of law.",
"Dungeons and Dragons characterizes the alignment of characters within the game based on two dimensions: Good (altruism, respect for life, etc.) vs. Evil (egoism, desire to harm and kill others, malice, etc.) and Law (obeying laws, honor, keeping some sort of code) vs. Chaos (freedom, anarchy, etc.), with both axes having a \"neutral\" point in the middle.",
"The origin (as far as I know) lies in the ttrpg Dungeons and Dragons. It is a model for describing the moral compass of a character. There are two axes: Lawfull vs Chaotic, and Good vs Evil. Lawfull means using a law, system or code as the basis of your moral choices, chaotic is a more fluid, emotional and intuitive way of making moral choices. Good and evil are rather self explanatory, altough theologians, philosophers and other wise men have debated it of course. Mainly, the question is, will this help or hurt individuals. Neutral is just that, in between the extremes. Example, a neutral good player doesn't use a moral code, nor his emotions to decide what is the best course of action. Since the concept is filled with semantics, many people try to give examples of each alignment combination.",
"A 'chaotic good' person is more than willing to assist his fellow man, and has no problems with breaking the law to do it. The guy that ignores ordinances against feeding the homeless to make sure no one starves is a good example of chaotic good."
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9mrwqw | Seems like whenever a state governor goes on TV to warn residents about an incoming hurricane or other disaster, there is a sign language interpreter there. Wouldn't it be easier to simply transcribe the words on the bottom of the screen? Do they all just do this because the others guys do it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's for the people at the event, not everyone is seeing it on TV. So you need an interpreter for people at the event."
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9mvx1f | In reference to the US government what exactly happens during "midterms"? What changes may occur? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So in the US we have elections every two years, with presidential elections every four. Midterm elections are years when we are not voting for the president. What we do vote for is about 1/3 of the Senate (2 senators per state, 6 year terms) and every representative in the house of Representatives (# depends on population per state, 2 year terms)",
"President is elected every 4 years. Senators have a term of 6 years, and their terms are staggered so that every 2 years, 1/3 of them finish their term and need to be reelected. US Representatives have a term of 2 years. So, every 2 years, we need to vote for every US representative position and 1/3 of the Senate (and for the President sometimes). The midterm elections refer to the elections that occur in the middle of the president's term.",
"Midterms occur in the middle of a presidents term. What happens is many of the seats in the U.S congress go up for election. This means that a party could lose or gain the majority in the Senate and/or House of Reps, which in turn could hinder or strengthen the power of the current president. In the upcoming midterms, all 435 of the seats of the house of reps goes up for election, and 35 of the 100 seats in the senate go up for election."
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9n0zbv | Why are english translations of words from logosyllabic languages such as Chinese not phonetic? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are phonetic, but when European lettering was being introduced to China it was done by a German speaker, not an English speaker so the Chinese were matching their phonemes. You also have the fact that many phonemes in Asian languages exist between two or more phonemes in European ones. For \"xie\" the phoneme is between \"ze\" and \"shey\" which in English could be pronounce: Shie, shae, shey, ze, zei, zey, xie, xe, xei, etc.",
"You're talking about transliteration - writing Chinese (or other non-alphabetic) language in a form that can be read by (in this case) English speakers. There have been several different methods of doing this. The one that now prevails, as it is backed by the Chinese government, is called pinyin. That's where thank you is xie4xie4. Another one used in the past is \"Wade Giles\", named after its inventor. You can see that different methods of transliteration have been used when you look at the English way of writing Chinese names from Hong Kong - they often feature letter combinations not seen in pinyin. Why all the different methods? Quite simply: Chinese has sounds that English does not. So writing \"sh\" and pronouncing it the way you do in English would be wrong, because the sound is subtly different. They use x and other letters not typically used much in English to make it more obvious that special rules apply.",
"Because English phonetics can't capture all of the pronunciation nuances of the Chinese language. For example, Chinese has words that are pronounced with the same sound, but are differentiated by the tone they're said with (e.g. like how the English interjections \"Huh.\" and \"Huh?\" are pronounced the same, but have different meanings). Also, Chinese has vowel and consonant sounds that aren't exactly representable or don't exist at all in English. All of this is aside from the fact pinyin, the system for romanizing Chinese, isn't meant to be an \"English translation\" of the words. It's a representation of the sounds using characters from the Latin alphabet, some of which may correspond to what an English speaker would expect, but many of which don't.",
"What you’re talking about is not translation, its transliteration or romanization (writing the language with the Roman alphabet). There are a variety of reasons a romanization system may seem strange to you. First off, remember that English is not the only language that uses the Roman alphabet, and the English way of pronouncing those letters is not the only way. At the end of the day, they’re just symbols. Second, a language with different phonetics won’t conveniently “fit” the Roman alphabet. The Roman alphabet wasn’t designed to represent the sounds of all languages all over the world, so any romanization system must make compromises. The alphabet might straight up not have enough letters to represent all the sounds in the other language, and often the language will have sounds that aren’t usually associated with Roman characters. In the case of Mandarin Chinese, you can’t use “sh” in your example because “sh” is already used to represent a different phoneme. Pinyin is very organized to match with the phoneme patterns of Chinese, even if it’s not always obvious how to pronounce it for speakers of other languages. Each Chinese consonant has an associated letter or sequence of letters, and each vowel or diphthong the same. It’s quite mathematical, really."
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9n1lak | What separates good art that looks crap from crap art that is crap? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The artist; their drive and annoyingly their background, network and most annoying of all, their income/popularity",
"You're asking some wildly different questions here; \"what makes an artist skilled, in popular opinion?\" and \"What makes paintings sell for a lot of money?\" are two extremely different questions. Paintings sell for a lot of money for a variety of reasons; the quality of the painting is only one of them. Many people buy art not because they enjoy it, but because they expect it to increase in value. Some people buy art purely for the famous name attached to it. The monetary value of a painting is only tangentially related to whether or not the artist is \"good.\" Obviously, \"what makes an artist good?\" is one of the most subjective questions possible, but there are a lot of things generally considered there: * Craftsmanship - How well has the artists mastered technique * Innovation in craft - Has the artist introduced or invented their own techniques * Idiom - How well does the artist convey a subject, feeling, or message * Innovation in idiom - Has the artist broken new ground in ways to convey a subject, feeling or message * Originality of message - Does the artist have something new to say? * Tradition - How does the artist use/critique/combine existing artistic traditions, both in terms of craft and idiom? * Pure aesthetics - How enjoyable/fun/pleasing/distressing is the piece? Often these qualities are hidden to the casual observer - one may not be aware of the craftsmanship that went into a piece unless they know something about artistic process, or they may be unaware of the traditions that a piece exists in. A good example is the IKB series by artist Yves Klein. The IKB paintings exist solely of a solid blue color painted on a canvas. *Anyone* could do that, right? Not good art! But it's remarkable craftsmanship - the color is original to Klein. The craft lies in the production of that unique hue, never before seen. The idiom was innovative, but lay within the emerging traditional of minimalist art; Klein was producing art which could be reduced to just a couple of dimensions, and which was highly pleasing to the observer. There may not have been much of a \"message\" behind the work, but it was furthering an existing art movement in an original way. Without that background and knowledge of art, it's easy to dismiss as a trivial work."
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9n1oet | Why do little kids tend to copy each other? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Kids tend to copy their sorroundings in general. Its part of our biology. Kids come to the world without knowledge over anything, but humans are, like wolfs and other animals, creatures who work in group. A child depends sollely of what it observes this group doing and on what vital informations the group holds, on growing and achieving sucess. And since this becomes crucial at earlier stages and since we know no better at that time, we tend to grab as much as we can in order to do what other do(what the group does) in order to stay within it, essencially becoming copycats. This also explains why kids of ages 4-10 tend to ask a ton of questions, the curiosity peaks after the first stages of life where we move from basic necessities to facts and understanding of why things happen. TL:DR: we live in a group so we copy others to be a part of the group, this spikes at young ages"
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9n2o5k | Although statistically uncommon(around 2-8% of all cases), are false sexual assault allegations still an issue when it comes to people coming forward against sexual assault? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm taking you at face value that you're not being political or have an agenda, I'm just legit confused about what you're asking. Are false sexual assault allegations an issue? Of course. Nobody would argue that they don't exist or that they're okay. And of course they can be weaponized. All of the debate is about how common they are and how we should treat accusers and suspects. Am I missing something here?"
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9n56br | . Why are old paintings painstakingly restored, but other antiques lose their value when the patina is removed? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As an antiques restorer, most paintings need cleaning and often removal of the 'varnish' which was the last coat applied by the artist. Because old varnishes had linseed oil as part of the formula, and linseed oil darkens when exposed to sunlight. The point of the exercise is to return the painting to its original hues and appearance without removing the artist's brush work, and then to conserve or stabilize the painting in that condition. When it comes to furniture and other objects, some of the 'patina' has been described as validating the item's passage through time and use. So a restoration would include repairing damage, cleaning to a reasonable degree without disturbing the long term accumulation of wax, darkening oils, dirt and wear spots. A restoration to the original as manufactured condition would remove the accumulation of all that evidence of the passage through time and present essentially what would be a new appearing thing much like a modern copy visually, which lowers the value of it as an antique. And then there is the fake antiques biz, a whole level of artistry above mere copying an old design. And fun too. Depending on the ethics of sale."
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9n9d29 | Why are continents named the way they are? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are all pretty random. The americas are named after Amerigo Vespuci, who claimed to have discovered them first (columbus was not the only person to makeit around that time) Europe is named after Europa, it used to just mean mainland greece then it sorta spread to include all of europe. There is a theory it is derived from the greek word for “west” basically saying west of istanbul Africa they have conflicting theories but mainly they believe the romans met a tribe called the Afri, and its just Afri’s land. Asia is believed to be derived from the greek work for east, and like europe used to only refer to a bit of turkey (which is east of greece, hence the split) and went from there. Antarctic basically means “opposite of north” Terra australis incognita means unknown land to the south in latin. Settlers later just called it australia"
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9nay6m | Why there are international soccer/football teams for England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, but the Olympic team is for Great Britain | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Basically we always compete individually as we have separate Football Associations that are very keen to stay separate. We are unable to do this in the olympics as we are registered as Great Britain so in order to allow us to compete at all a Great Britain team was created. This didn’t please the FAs much and a few refused to allow players to join in. Without checking I believed it was just England and Wales that made up team GB in the men’s football. EDIT: If you want to explore this beyond the comprehension of a 5 year old then wikipedia cover the various agreements we've had with FIFA to allow us to continue to compete individually [here]( URL_0 )."
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9nbw6q | How do you tell a historical figures IQ post mortem? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"You don't. These are all bullshit estimates with little to no scientific backing. Just like people who try to psychoanalyse historical or fictional characters."
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9nfs14 | The Holy Grail | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"What about it? According to various combined myths, legends, religious beliefs, and apocryphal stories, the \"holy grail\" is the cup Jesus used during his Last Supper before being crucified, when he passed whine to the disciples and told them, \"This is my blood, shed for your sins.\" Like most things in most religions, because it is associated with a holy figure the assumption among some is that the artifact itself must have some holy power or significance. Whether or not you think it does actually have any power or significance, or even if it exists at all depends entirely on your religion and your willingness to believe in powerful artifacts with unspecified magical abilities. And also Steven Spielberg and George Lucas made a movie about it, staring Harrison Ford."
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9njncy | With the push for equality across the board, wouldn't it make sense to do away with asking race on forms and allow for the best suited to be selected for positions and other such things, or is there a reason to keep it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If a company keeps a record of the gender and race of their current and past employees, then it becomes much easier to see if there is any sort of bias (explicit or not) in their hiring practices. If you don't track this information, then demonstrating that a company has discriminatory hiring practices becomes all the more harder.",
"Equality isn't achieved by pretending that it exists. There are structural problems for people of non-white races that need to be dismantled first. Just trying to erase a label without erasing the difference the label made in the first place doesn't solve the issue.",
"I have never seen this question in Australia. .. pretty sure it is illegal. We do ok. Even in statistics of staff and clients we'll capture at the most, \"cultural background (optional)\" and/or ATSI/ non ATSI. \"Race\" feels weird."
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9nkblf | Why are glasses associated with intelligence? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you can't read and aren't a craftsman doing fine detailing, you don't need glasses in a pre-industrial world. You can't really crash a horse, so your typical farmers and workers had little use for early corrective lenses. If you saw someone with glasses in the 1600s, they were almost certainly some sort of literate and educated academic, clergyman, or merchant. The common folk didn't start using glasses in large numbers until the industrial revolution lowered the cost at increased literacy."
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9nmnw2 | How are the characters below a definition supposed to tell you how to pronounce a word? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I presume (prɪˈzum) that you're referring to these characters. They're in the International Phonetic Alphabet ([IPA]( URL_0 )). IPA is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet devised by the [International Phonetic Association]( URL_1 ) as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language.",
"Usually dictionaries will have a pronunciation key with example words that show what those symbols mean."
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9nthoy | China and Russia disappear people and it makes news but nothing happens. Why is it when this happens in Saudi Arabia there’s a huge international backlash? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Journalist For US newspaper At an embassy Of an \"ally\" of the US In a third party country & nbsp; Those factors all combine to make it a particularly egregious event.",
"Because it happened in a foreign country at an embassy, which should be safe territory for anyone, to a journalist who works for one of the most influential newspapers in the world. It's not that cynical. There was a huge dust-up when Russia did this too, And China is always in the news about disappearing people. Follow NPR, NYT, WaPo, WSJ, The Atlantic, ProPrublica... They have stories about this kind of stuff often.",
"You are factually wrong. When Russia poisoned that ex spy in UK, there was a huge backlash. It was the same with other attacks attributed to Putin.",
"Dude it's even worse than that, China gets caught with a million people in concentration camps, and then proceeds to legalize it's own camps and the world barely does shit. Considering the heavy anti Nazi vibe on Reddit you would think the existence of actual modern day concentration camps for people of a certain ethnic group and people are more angry about the one man disappearing and how that's democracy failing to stand up for others rights.",
"If you consider the expelling of Russian diplomats from numerous western countries as well as the recent arrest of a Chinese spy by FBI agents as nothing, then yeah. Nothing happens.",
"It's not that China and Russia never have backlash for their actions, but the US government generally only issues a polite condemnation and maybe an ineffectual sanction or two. This time the US government is being pressured to make a stance as Saudi Arabia is an \"ally\" of the United States, and a major trading partner."
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9nw54o | what is to deus ex a movie, i have seen that saying pop up in many places and i really dont know what it means | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It was common for Ancient Greek plays to end with the gods/goddesses involved showing up and sorting out the issues/meteing out punishments/providing closure. The term deus ex machina, which means \"god from the machine\" refers to the way the actors who portrayed these characters were brought onto the stage: usually lowered by ropes or brought on by chariots or the like. Nowadays, it refers to a plot in which the solution/closure is brought about in similar ways: where it seems to come out of nowhere or a more powerful force steps in and fixes it **with little to no impact or assistance or effort on the part of the characters** (this last part is the key). *The War of the Worlds* is a very famous example of it as the Martians are winning their invasion and it would appear that all hope was lost only for them to die to bacteria.",
"Deus ex machina (God from the machine) is a trope or cliché where something in a movie or TV series shows up out of nowhere, in order to conveniently solve a problem that seemed unfixable. It could be a person or a prop or even the protagonist waking up and realizing \"it was all just a dream\". Sometimes people will replace \"machina\" with other words.",
"Deus Ex is a shortened version of 'Deus Ex Machina' which means 'God from the Machine'. In terms of movies and stories it's basically when something happens purely because the plot demands it, something that is overly-convenient or without a plausible reason for it to actually happen in terms of the story. It's called a Deus Ex Machina because you can basically see the writer's 'hand' in the story. A classic (and terrible) example of this is Harry Osborn's Butler in Spider-Man 3. Despite being just a Butler who was never mentioned before in the entire series, it suddenly turns out that he somehow had access to Norman Osborn's body on the night he died, had the necessary forensic skills to work out the mortal wound was from Norman's own glider, then made the leap of reasoning that this must mean those wounds were self inflicted...and then he decided to stay completely quiet and not mention this to anyone for five years, before randomly deciding to tell this to Harry at the precise moment he needed to hear it. In other words, we can see the writer's hand in the story because they needed a way for Harry to discover the truth about his father's death, so a random character pops up out of nowhere with exactly the right information at exactly the right time, without any real reasonable or plausible way for him to have it. & #x200B;",
"Deus Ex Machina means god from the machine. Greek plays would deliver an actor playing a god to the stage (to solve all of the characters problems in one quick action) by a mechanism. Today it means bad writing to solve a plot problem.",
"It’s when something that wasn’t established before suddenly appears and resolves a problem. Think when Leia Mary Poppins her way to safety in Star Wars 8.",
"Deus Ex refers to the phrase \"Deus Ex Machina\" (God from the Machine). Historically many greek plays have a moment where a god will intervene and save the day, the actor playing this god was often lowered in by a mechanical crane(literally a god from a machine) In more modern usage it refers to some unexpected development that just happens to save the day. Its generally something that prevented the certain death of a character or group and its sudden/unexpected appearance greatly changed the course of events.",
"When the writer/director pulls a plot device out of nowhere to wrap up the story, generally in a positive way. Particularly if there isn’t even any foreshadowing - it just looks like a lazy way to wrap up a story. **I shouldn’t need to post a spoiler alert for a 120 year old book, but anyway...** The Wikipedia page gives a good example - War of The Worlds. The aliens have very clearly curb stomped humanity when suddenly they all die of disease. Until that moment there’s isn’t even any mention of disease - it’s not even like the main character is an epidemiologist or something. It’s almost as though the original ending was more along the lines of the twilight zone but the editor/publisher told him he needed to rewrite it or they wouldn’t publish."
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9nwhq1 | Why did we "suck" at drawing realistically until the Rennaissance? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's complex and also involves a lot of what has survived over the years as well as ideas about the purpose and function of artwork. Take a look at the Fayum Mummy Portraits if you want good examples of realism way before the Renaissance.",
"A lot of it comes down to perspective. For a long time people boiled perspective down to “small = far away and big = close to you” and it would just be a weird crowd of variously sized people in the same area. The Renaissance is when geometry was added into the mix and artists were able to get much more realistic perspective in their art which in turn makes the whole painting more realistic. At least that is my vague understanding of it.",
"Most early art was created to illustrate religious ideas, so portraying a human as realistic wasn't absolutely necessary as long as the figure was identifiable and relatable. The Hellenic Greeks mastered the structure of the human body because they believed it was beautiful and deserving of accurate portrayal, as did later Greek and Roman societies. The early Christian era (the dark ages) did not place emphasis on the earthly body but reverted back to religious symbolism in imagery. There was also a backlash to the hedonism of the late Roman era. It was difficult to understand the structure of the human body as artists did not have knowledge of the skeletal structure or musculature until the Renaissance, since the church discouraged access to human remains for study. Societies in the rest of the world were pretty similar, with imagery being purely symbolic and not representative of real life. When religion and royalty were no longer the only financial driver of art (think of the Medici family) was right around the time of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment (in Europe anyway), when realistic imagery took hold.",
"Its not that they were bad, its that people back then liked art in a different form than we do. They liked a different style than Realism, which is actually fairly new. So its not really that they lacked the skill to make things realistic. Its just that no one wanted things that looked realistic, for the most part. And artists would make things in whatever style it took to get paid enough to keep living.",
"I once saw a realistic miniature sculpture of a man's head that was used as the top of a walking stick. It was from 1400 BC, right around the same time as Otzi the ice man, I think. The weird art in ancient periods was the style, IMO. Look at the comic books from the 60s, then the 90s. They are very different from modern illustration styles.",
"I leave the ELI5 to the fellow redditors below and I recommend you to check for Pompeii frescoes portraits. They are like photographs.",
"It was just an artistic decision. If I am right there is a VSauce video on that. Basically artists just chose to paint that way. Perspective was known before the Rennaissance and there were some \"good\" paintings made before it. It's just that during the Rennaissance artists chose to draw accurate perspective more."
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9o091s | How people who communicate in sign language raise babies that can communicate verbally | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"By trying very hard, and by using an outside coach (usually through school). Children born to deaf parents are actually known to struggle when learning verbal communication, mostly because sign is their first language and English (or whatever) is their second language. It's difficult to raise a bilingual child when one of the languages isn't spoken at home, but most kids will pick it up if they go to a verbal school.",
"Television, preschool, daycare, play dates. Just being around a language is enough for most children to pick it up.",
"My 3 cousins are in this exact scenario. They are in their 40's and 50's now and can all hear normally. My deaf aunt and uncle used to keep the tv on constantly. They would also would play speech therapy records and just regular music in their individual rooms. They went to kindergarten knowing how to talk and sign. Talking with baby sitters and other family members also helped.",
"Quite simply, by allowing additional people to teach the child. Most children don't learn language just from their parents.",
"Learning Sign Language as a first language allows the child to develop their 'linguistic brain' perfectly well. From there, the child can learn aural/verbal languages fine, as said by others here, from exposure via media, hearing family members and friends, teachers and peers.",
"Bit late to this but i'm a hearing child born to two deaf parent as are my siblings. English is very much out primary language, rather than sign language. I know a lot of deaf families who have hearing kids and they all speak fine. You learn English the same way everyone else does, just absorbing it from the environment like others have said e.g the t.v, other family members that can speak English etc. In my case my mum is actually pretty good at speaking English even though she doesn't use a hearing aid, if you met her a few times you'd generally be able to understand what she says. Fun fact: Different countries have their own sign language, even UK and USA sign languages are very different."
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9o22ny | Why are most of the movies based on video games so terrible? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The same reason why most video games based on movies are terrible. Some things just need to stay in the medium they were created in",
"Because they lack artistic liberty. They are mostly trying to be as faithful to the game as possible; most of the time they are failing altogether. The same happens in reverse. See games from movies that took some liberty, such as KotOR, Goldeneye, they turned out good.",
"Usually it's the director, plus a lot of games don't translate over well to the big screen. Actors don't look exactly alike, plot details are changed. Producers have a big impact too. The assassin's Creed movie was alright, but nothing what the games were like."
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9obvtq | Is Islam really as violent and mysogynic as people say? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is an inescapable problem with Islam, and that is that the Prophet was a very violent man. He had to be, as the warlord of a community that was fighting for its survival, but that still makes him a very poor moral figure by modern Western standards. His sexual behaviour is also extremely worrying, again by modern standards. According to the Hadith, he consummated his marriage to Aisha when she was nine, having married her when she was six. The obvious conclusion to draw from this was that Muhammad was waiting for her to begin menstruation, which in a medieval worldview was the moment a girl became a woman. Any way you look at it, it's still a fifty-year-old man putting his penis in a nine-year-old girl, and this is the man a billion people hail as the perfect human being.",
"Yes, it is. It does not mean that the Muslim people are, but the ideology is clearly barbaric. The same can be said about Christianity, too. The difference is, Christianity has had 400 years of reformation. Islam has none because Quran is considered the literal word of God, cannot be challenged on the sin of apostasy and Muhammad declared himself the last prophet.",
"Islam is not really as violent as portrayed, as 99% of muslims want to live their lives in peace and wealth, generally minding their own business. There are a few dozen muslim countries in the world, but all violence we hear of occurs in a handful of those countries. However, I dare claim that most Islamic countries are generally less stable than their western counterparts and might have higher murder/violence rates etc, but it's not that every arab dude is heading out with his sword on the daily, for others to behead. The conflict zones in the Jemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan are definitely among the most violent locations on the face of Earth, but then again, I'd say Istanbul is about as safe as Los Angeles. & #x200B; Let me also add that in most Islamic countries, there is a lot of socioeconomic tension, with a large margin of the population being extremely poor and thus desperate, so that a clueless tourist stepping into the wrong district of Cairo at the worst time may lead to awkward situations, especially if he has a wallet full of dollars. But that applies to Rio de Janeiro as well, so it's not related to Islam. & #x200B; Also, there are anti-american and anti-european sentiments throughout the Islamic world, especially in the levant as we fucked them over politically for decades, one example being the Israel/Palestine conflict that partly stems from British/French imperialism. & #x200B; & #x200B; Islam is quite mysogynistic, as women have fewer/no rights by law, but that differs from country to country. That applies to the arab world, but not to Turkey, which is pretty progressive in comparison and countries in Central Asia might be a bit more progressive than arab countries, but I don't know much about those. & #x200B; & #x200B;",
"Just read the Quran. Yes on both. Women are definitely not equal to men and violence is acceptable in the Quran under certain circumstances.",
"No, but some Muslims are. Like some Catholics, Protestants, etc. are too. Some leaders use Islam to justify their violent and mysogynic agenda, and their followers get a lot of visibility, but the majority of Muslims are good people, as the majority of followers of other major religions are.",
"Islam is not like Catholicism, where there is one Pope in charge and everybody is told to act the same way. It's more like Protestantism, where there is a broad spectrum of different beliefs, from main-stream groups like the Baptists and Methodists to fringe groups with very unusual beliefs. It just turns out that in Islam, some of the fringe groups, and we're talking about you Wahhabism, lean toward violence. In the 1500s, Europe was divided between Catholic monarchies and Protestant monarchies. Many wars and endless intrigue came from this religious confrontation. Then, European citizens fixed things. Where monarchs remain, they are decorative devices supporting tourism and charities. Once monarchy was replaced with democracy, there was a big downturn in religious violence. Sure, it took a couple centuries, the UK had a long lingering Catholic vs Protestant insurgency called the IRA. Today, not so much. In contrast, the middle eastern Islamic governments are all dictatorships. Dictatorships tend to use violence to oppress their populations. Islam does trend mysogynistic, women have fewer rights overall. Some countries see that as a historical artifact, and try to reduce it. Others, not so much.",
"Let me preface that you shouldn't say a whole religion is one way or another. It's all about the person who practices. Don't be an ass and label and entire religion. A ton of people are making this a good/bad argument, so I'm going to try to give you a different take. Islam is interesting because unlike Christianity it hasn't been reformed and changed several times over, and one of it's books isn't just a book of rules and teachings. The Hadith is the writings of Muhammad as he was a trader and prophet, and some other things. That makes it a historical document that can be taken with a grain of salt. Remember the whole virgins waiting for you in heaven idea? It isn't a writing from God himself, just some guy who wrote that down. Most don't believe in that kind of thing, unless they have an ulterior motive. The Qur'an on the other hand, is the word of God. One of the five pillars of faith is that there is only one god, and it's the one you follow. From there it's a matter of interpretation, same as Christianity. There are some that believe to go as close to the teaching as possible, and some who believe it's up to interpretation. Muslims in the US, and Turkey are far more liberal than those in Saudi Arabia. Infact, in the post-classical age, a VERY prominent Muslim trader by the name of Ibn Battuta wrote about how those practicing in North Africa and South Asia we're super liberal about what women did. He said that they didn't cover their heads and could go around on their own. That was in the Middle-Ages! You need to narrow it down to which Muslim, otherwise it's a poor question. Thoughts?"
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9ohoa0 | Why is it so easy to identify Christian Rock music (even when you haven't heard any lyrics)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's probably a few things, but one that I think gets left out is that a lot of rock and metal focuses on various minor keys, scales, and chords, as that gives a more punchy and aggressive tone to the music, in addition to the other tonal characteristics (distorted guitar, etc;). A lot of Christian music is focused on celebrating faith and Jesus, and so is written in a major key. You've been around music in minor/major for most of your life if you're a human from Earth, and so you probably pick up on these differences even if you're not consciously aware of what you're hearing. See also: [Major songs in minor]( URL_0 ) and [horror movie themes in major keys]( URL_1 ) to get an idea of how the entire feel of songs can change based on switching between major/minor keys.",
"Many of these answers note simplicity or a sort of blandness, but miss the reasons why it sounds that way. Most popular Christian music is written with the intention of being sung along with (worship music), not exclusively listened to or performed. This means songs rely on simpler melodies and more predictable chord progressions. They must be very easy for non-musically inclines people to catch on with and sing along to in a worship setting (church). It is also written to put people’s focus on God, not on the music or the performer, again leading to simpler, more repetitious, similar sounding musician devices. Lastly, and probably the most subjective, IMHO on the list, Christian music attempts to appeal to multiple generations, leaving me, and perhaps you, with a neither here-nor-there feeling. It’s not classic, but it’s not progressive. It’s not conservative, but it’s not edgy. Even the volume of worship music played in churches follows this not-too-quiet, not-too-loud formula.",
"Simple answer is that they all use similar tunings and cord progression which causes a lot of songs to sound the same. Most generals are like this. Better answer: This isn’t exclusive to Christian Rock. Almost all country songs use the same 4 chord progression therefore sound the same unless you’re a person immersed in it. Hip-hop music also almost runs exclusively at 115 bpm (beats per minute), so they all can sound very similar. But remember what you hear on the radio is the most generic of music types. Which is why “underground rap” tends to be better than “radio rap” and metal music you never hear on the radio is so much better than what they play on the rock station. If you’re up for it you can check out bands like Wolves At The Gate, Silent Planet, Destroy The Runner, and For Today. Those are some “Christian” rock/metal bands that are really tlaented and don’t follow the lame structure of most the genre. URL_0 URL_2 URL_1"
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9ox7n0 | Why in English in W pronounced double u but in French its pronounced doo-bluh-vey (double V)? Did the letter V not exist? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Don't mind me, I'm not actually here top explanation anything. V, believe it or not, was at one time, U. Or rather, the other way around. You'd see it quite often right the Roman Empire, and other Latin speaking countries, that is, until Latin all but died out. [You can learn more about it in its wiki article.]( URL_0 )",
"Old English and Old Germanic had a sound like the sound we now associate with w but they wanted a letter for it so scribes often used uu. That was eventually rendered as the letter w. The letter was then taken into French & Spanish etc for use in foreign loanwords. It was a new letter for those alphabets that looked more like two v's than two u's. Sources: [Wiki]( URL_1 ) [Why is ‘w’ pronounced ‘double u’ rather than ‘double v’?]( URL_2 ) [If ‘w’ is not a Spanish letter, why is it part of the Spanish alphabet?]( URL_0 ) [How is W pronounced in French?]( URL_3 ) Edit: typo"
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9p4c4p | How did colorism begin? Why is it still a thing? | India, America, Africa, it's everywhere. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's also classist. In ye olden times the nobility were lighter skinned because they didn't have to toil out in the sun and get tan. The peasants did and were therefore less."
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9p5yyj | Why do countries have different names in different languages? Shouldn't names be universal like they are with people? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Names aren't universal with people at all. Different languages pronounce names differently, or have different \"versions\" of common names.",
"Two big reasons. One is basically what u/Polywha said. For example Germany (Deutschland) has a ton of names in different countries. Its known as Alemannen in france and Saska in Finland. This is because for a long tine Germany wasn't a unified country but made up of a bunch of tribes. So the french name Alemannen is named after a southern Germanic tribe. And Saksa named after a northern Germanic tribe. It's kind of like if America was called \"Texas\" in Mexico,\"Minnesota\" in Canada, \"New York\" in Ireland, and \"California\" in Japan. Once those cultural habits are formed they dont really die. Second, people in different counties have troubke pronoucing different sounds. So maybe they try to keep the name similar but it's just hard. This is also combined with the fact that different languages pronouce words spelled the same differently in the first place.",
"Sometimes it depends on the simple fact that names originate from before written language was widespread enough to demand that people spelled everything in the exact same way. Take my home country as an example, Sweden. We call it *Sverige*, which is a short hand form - if you pronounce it real fast - of *Svearnas Rike*, that sort of translates to \"Realm of Svea\", a very powerful clan/family back in the days when people started to get into their head that ruling others was awesome and worthy to pursue. By badassery, treason and diplomacy, they gained rule of not only their own realm, but also that of the clan Göta further to the west, and started using their name for their own land as a name for the entire area they sort of had rule over. If you are curious, you can have a look at Wikipedia and see that parts of the country are still referred to as Götaland and Svealand (land of Göta and Land of Svea, respectively), even though the southern parts of Götaland belonged to Denmark at the time when the above took place. We also have a well known land mass in the north that is still officially called Norrland (land of the north) that covers the upper half of the country, as a way of ignorantly saying that \"this bit wasn't really important much when the nation was founded.\" History is weird. Anyway. Svea. Svea Rike. Sverige. This sort of caught on in other languages too, but from their own linguistic rules. In Germany (that we, btw, call *Tyskland*) we are called *Schweden*. In English, we are called *Sweden*. and in french, *Suede*. In Latin, it's *Suecia*, that explains both Italian and Spanish. They all differ on some finer points, but if you know the actual linguistic origin and assume that those who started using it were all illiterate and carried on an oral tradition until someone bothered to start writing it down, it's easy to see how it's just a mispronunciation that caught on enough to become official. In fact, it can just as well have been domestic dialects in Sweden that caused the difference until the nearest priest got wind of it and typed it down. It's also worth nothing that in Finnish and some other slavic languages, we are *Routsi*, that sort of translate to the linguistic origin \"those who row the boats\". Which says a lot about what we were doing in those parts of the world when that stuck.",
"I would assume it's because cultures name things before they know what other cultures call them."
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9p6iak | Why doesn’t the US have tax included in the advertised prices? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most of the advertised prices are given out by a central corporate office and sent to places with differing local sales taxes and could be a logistical nightmare to keep track of all the different prices. For poster and magazine advertisements, It could just be cheaper to print out a single price design than to make one for every state/city.",
"It is actually **sales** tax, not **purchasing** tax. It's the seller who pays it. If the rate is 10%, and they make $10,000 in sales, they need to pay $1,000. But it's a cost that they don't control, so they naturally pass it on to the customers. How they pass it on is up to them. They could include it in the price or even amortize it across all of their sales. As long as they pay that 10%, it doesn't matter^*. However, retailers quickly found that leaving it out makes them more money. People shopping see lower prices and put more stuff in their cart. Then when they get to the checkout, and the extra fees are added on at the very end, then the customer has already picked the item in anticipation of having it, the cashier has already rang them up, the bagger has already bagged their purchases, and a line of impatient people are waiting behind them. There's a lot of social/psychological pressure to just pay up if possible and not take things out unless absolutely necessary. So stores sell slightly more, and with retail margins that's significant. Same goes to a lesser degree for shipping and handling and things like that on mail order purchases. The company could amortize them, but by the time you've filled out the form and gotten to that part you're committed to the purchase. There's no social pressure, but you'll likely consider it reasonable and go ahead with it anyway. It works differently online (except at ticketmaster and other monopolies) because other stores are just a click away and no one is waiting in line behind you or standing there waiting for you to pay. Add-on fees at checkout are a major reason for abandoned purchases in e-commerce. Free shipping (not really free, it's payed for by the seller, and included in the prices) makes a significant difference. TLDR: It's mostly just a psychology trick to get people to spend more. Similar to pricing things $19.99 instead of $20.00. ^* Caveat: Some localities require you to list the taxes on the receipt. Even in that case, you could potentially list \"$20.00, including $2.00 tax\" instead of \"$18.00 + $2.00 tax = $20.00\", but the latter is customary.",
"Because taxes are dependent on what city you live in, and most products are available in numerous cities simultaneously.",
"Same reason stores will sell you something for 4.99 instead of 5. They want you to think you're getting a better deal than you are. If taxes were included, they'd have to reduce price.",
"I would love for a lot to be in place that requires this to be advertised. It’s too easy to forget about the food tax. Especially with “dollar menus” that are not actually dollar menus, they’re a dollar plus some odd cents, so you can fuck yourself if you only have one dollar on you and wanted a bite to eat. There’s really no excuse for not doing this besides stubbornness and laziness."
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9pceyu | The difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The absolute core original difference: Upon Muhammad's death, he had left no explicit instructions as to who would succeed him. The ones we now call Sunnis argued that the new caliph (leader) should be chosen from among Muhammad's closest officers. The ones we now call Shia argued that the position should be inherited, and since Muhammad had no son it should be his son-in-law, Ali. In the end the Sunnis won and the first three caliphs were Muhammad's trusted men, but for the fourth they gave Ali a shot, but then he was assassinated. The Shia then fought with the Sunnis, and Ali's sons Hassan and Hussein were killed in the ensuing battles. The Shia continue to count their imams (inheritors of Muhammad) from Ali, Hassan, and Hussein, but various Shia denominations differ on the full list. Iranian \"Twelver\" Shia say there were 12 imams and then it stopped because the 12th is in \"occultation\" (like hibernation) until the end of the world and in the meantime the Grand Ayatollah represents him. The Ismaili Shia instead have an unbroken chain of imams to the modern day, like an inherited pope."
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9pek6a | Why is there a delay on the news when they hear from an off-site reporter, especially today when it is possible to video conference phone to phone with minimal delay? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because you are using broadband/wired connection/4g they are using satellite receivers to send the signal so there is a delay between it being sent and being received.",
"It is required by network standards rules. Those \"live\" feeds operate with a delay. In a room somewhere there is a person who watches the undelayed footage, with a kill button. If something bad happens, they push the button and the feed goes to something safe, like the station logo. Reporters have been shot on live feeds, and nobody wants that broadcast to all their viewers. Many other things, from wardrobe malfunctions to streakers to protesters, are cut out this way, which discourages such behavior. This protects reporters in the field."
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9pk1sf | The phrase/analogy "You can't have your cake, and eat it" | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Common sayings and proverbs don't have to make semantic sense. Ex: \"It's raining cats and dogs\". In this case though, it does make sense. Think of the 'have' as meaning 'keep' You can't keep your cake, and eat it too. Historically speaking, the proverb existed both with 'have/eat' order, and 'eat/have' order. But the first one become more popular in the last hundred years."
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9pk9vv | How can warfare have rules when the whole point of war is to kill each other? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The point of war isn't necessarily to kill all the other side, but to get them to give up. Usually this is done by destroying the means of the other side to defend themselves, which does not include civilians. In a gentleman's war, it also means not killing civilians or causing undue suffering. Now, but every warring party will necessarily abide by the rules, but it gives the international community a reason to punish this who do not.",
"If you don't want your medics to get shot at and your water supply poisoned, don't do these kinds of things either to your enemy. Wars have strategic goals, and total extermination is rarely one. If you use cruel methods, so will the enemy.",
"As something I once read once put it - **all wars end.** And when they inevitably do, ones conduct during it will mean the difference between returning to a normal life or hanging from the gallows. **Edit** - Or to go further and get a bit geopolitical about it, *imagine two people playing a game of chess in a local park*. The objective is to defeat your opponent, correct? So why doesn't one of the two players just pickup the clock next to the chess board and smash the other in the face with it? The rules don't specify that you can't do that. And they can't defeat you if they're unconscious, right? You'd win by default. Because it's reasonable to assume you're not the only two people playing chess. There will be other players engaging in their own games around you. Spectators watching your game or others. People mingling. Maybe just bystanders grabbing coffee, etc. How would they react? Some of them would just stare in shock, some of them would exclaim horror at what you've done. If you continue to beat your opponent, many of them are going to intervene! The diffused responsibility and combined outrage stealing their nerves and overriding previous social boundaries. They'll grab your arms, pull you off the guy you're beating, yell at you to control yourself, restrain you, maybe assist in changes pressed against you, etc. At which point you immediately pay a price. A price in the form of distrust, disgust and maybe even hatred from your peers. These other nations that surround you on the world stage. Nobody is going to want to deal with you again. They're going to ostracize you, curse behind your back or even to your face. You're going to have a really hard time negotiating with any of them anymore. And if you need to do that to say, buy goods and services, you're fucked. You've operated in bad faith and have shown that you cannot be trusted. And ultimately that *does* matter. Especially if you want a strong and stable country. The ever boastful North Korea may claim to have a large military. But they're not buying near-state of the art surplus US made military hardware. South Korea absolutely are! They're not building up a huge amount of foreign investment/capital. Again, South Korea are! And they're not able to evacuate their people or receive massive amounts of international aid in the event of an emergency. Which again, South Korea would be able to do. There is a massive gulf in the true military power of these two nations. Solely due to close working relationships that have nothing to do with just *winning* at chess.",
"Because the immense suffering chemical weapons cause and indiscriminancy of napalm and cluster bombs. Germany wanted to ban shotguns because they were devastating to them in trench warfare.",
"With the proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as rockets, machine guns and artillery, war went from a relatively controllable affair, to almost complete Armageddon if unchecked. Conventions at the Hague were convened were standard rules were agreed to by all nations to submit to their arms manufacturers. Without these rules, what could've started as a simple accident between troops at a border could turn into an entire country of civilians being gassed. Obviously...that would suck. Currently, almost all national powers agree to conduct themselves within the terms of the Geneva convention, which both state basic rules of weaponry and engagement, and make guidelines for the treatment of civilians and captured enemy. URL_0 No one is there to enforce these rules...its a warzone. It's pretty much on the honor system. But, if you get caught breaking them, or the international community finds out you broke them after the war, you get executed, like in the Nuremberg trials."
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9plavg | They auctioned off a painting by Banksy for $1m+, but nobody knows who Banksy is, so who got the money and how did they get the painting in the first place? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Anonymous\" sellers usually work through an agent. That agent will know how Banksy is, but likely has a legal agreement to not reveal that information The legal system for pretty much all first world countries would prevent 100% anonymous transfers of that kind of money (taxes, fraud preventtion, etc), but still have ways to allow sellers to maintain a certain amount of anonymity",
"It's not true that \"nobody knows who Banksy is\". A lot of people who have dealt with him personally know, and it's easy to find well-founded speculations. But he does not publically confirm his identity, goes to some length to hide it, and everyone involved with him profits from maintaining the mystique.",
"I assume that Sotheby’s is using an intermediary. However in this particular case, the painting was given to someone by Banksy and that person sold the painting with Sotheby’s so nooney would go to the artist.",
"Coke sells soda to Walmart, who then distributes and sells it to you at a markup. Like Coke, Banksy likely sold his paintings to a broker who marketed and distributed his work. In this case, that broker thought the best price would be found on the Sotheby's auction block - against Banksy's wishes. They own the painting outright, and have every right to sell it, but they also know Banksy said not to. That broker may or may not have known about the self destructive properties, but I wager they won't be working with Banksy anymore."
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9plnls | Why is Amy Schumer hated by everyone? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not everyone thinks she is funny. Perhaps that's her choice of comic topics, or her coarse language, or maybe she's not funny.",
"She's clearly not hated by everyone, as she has a reasonable career in popular entertainment. That being said, I suspect that she's disliked by some because her prominence in media accounts tends to supersede her talent. She's a halfway decent standup comedian, but hasn't managed to translate that into any truly exceptional performances.",
"She isn't funny. There's really no ELI5 for this. Many people think of her as the female Carlos Mencia.",
"Both Amy Schumer and I have something in common. Neither of us are funny. I don't have a senator in my family to help propel me to stardom, however.",
"I don't hate Amy Schumer. I don't feel anything for her anymore. When her show Inside Amy Schumer came out, I could have fallen in love with her. She was self deprecating, the bits were hilarious, and she seemed like an awesome person in the street interview bits. One she blew up in popularity, I started realizing her show writers had more to do with the funny than she did. Her self deprecating jokes turned out to be more a persona than a point of view. I've tried watching her specials and they do nothing for me. I thought Trainwreck was boring (outside of Cena and Co) and I've just lost interest in her. She's not my cup of tea. I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys her though."
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9pqf7l | How do we have information about ancient events? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They wrote about their important news. Scrolls, books, chiseled in stone... It's not hard to preserve books for thousands of years, actually. Keep them dry is about all that's required. Ancient Rome, have some scribes make copies of the important stuff Caesar did, take them to Egypt where the desert is dryer than you can possibly hope, put them in a sealed chamber in the pyramids or even a smaller building like the Library of Alexandria, and voila. They knew about preserving things in antiquity. Keeping wine from spoiling, preserving foods, preserving bodies, preserving books and other objects of value."
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9prlfz | Why are there so many words in different languages that sound the same? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Perhaps the best explanation for most of the examples that you are thinking of, is the hypothetical but likely very real historical extinct language called: Proto-Indo-European. The migration of large groups of people from Europe and through Asia meant that their languages evolved and flowed from place to place, leaving us with a trail of words that allow us to map many of the words and how they change. For example, the suffix -stan at the end of countries like Turkistan or Pakistan, are directly connected to the English word Stand. Kutluk Ozgoven gave an excellent breakdown of this example here: URL_0 When we understand how PIE has had such a massive influence in most of the languages of the world being what they are, it starts to make sense why so many words are so similar. Here is another great example on how we got the word: \"TWO\": URL_2 Finally, a huge tree showing how Proto-Indo-European evolved into most of the languages of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and large parts of Asia: URL_1 As a subset of this larger phenomenon, we get similarities among the subgroups, such as the Romance languages, the Slavik, and so on. Yet we see even these are tied together beautifully.",
"Some language have the same origins, naturally they will have similar sounding words. Languages also \"borrow\" words from other languages.",
"It depends on what languages you're talking about, but many languages and dialects are based on the same earlier languages. They evolve over just like organisms, and you can draw family trees in a similar way. For example, you have language A. Over the years, due to cultural movements it changes into something different we can call language B. Then because of war or politics or whatever, there's a migration of half of the population who are cut off from the original region. Language B will evolve just like language A did, but because of cultural differences from the separation, each populations language B will evolve differently. This will leave us with language C and D. C and D both share a lot in common because they both came from B and A before it. You have species of birds that are totally different from each other, but have more in common with each other than they do with frogs. Similar principles. This is a gross simplification but I hope it gets the point across."
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9prof5 | Why are Pumpkies an American Halloween decor staple? Jack'o'lanterns but also just virgin uncut pumpkin gourds? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Jack'o'lantern was a religious protection to ward off evil spirits, fairy folk, and other supernatural things during the Celtic holiday of Samhain which was a holiday celebrating one of the days that they considered the boundaries between worlds to be thin. They were commonly carved from gourds, as well as hard root vegetables such as turnips. They would be placed outside the entrances of homes to act as \"guardians\", and small ones would even be carried around the necks of people. These traditions carried on after Christianity was introduced to the region as Christianity had a habit of co-opting traditions and slightly altering their meanings and the names of things rather than stamping out the old pagan culture when they converted people. When the Settlers got to the US they brought these traditions with them. With the pumpkin (not pumpkies, I have no clue what that word is) being a native North American Gourd it was natural for that to take the role different gourds did in the old world. The uncut pumpkin being used as a decoration is not really a Halloween thing. That is more of a general fall/harvest season decoration thing. Other common fall decorations are cornucopias filled with fruits, various other gourd species, collages of changing leaves, etc."
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9pruyr | What is an echo chamber? | I keep hearing people refer to some subreddits as echo chambers. I google searched it and all the words are just simply to complex for me to understand. Can someone simplify it for me? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a community in which the communally believed ideas are perpetuated and opposing ideas are not. This leads to the members of the echo chamber reinforcing their own ideas (even if they are wrong). Case in point of this is the old sub r/Incels. They would ban anything that was even slightly supportive of women and the result is that the members of the sub kept getting exposed to ideas of women-hating and weren't exposed to anything that wasn't woman-hating So, the sub became extremely women-hating, because there was nothing to offset it.",
"An echo is where you say something, and then you hear it again. So to say a subreddit is an echo chamber, is to say that whatever you say, you'll only hear it repeated back to you. You'll never hear something different, like a different opinion.",
"It's somewhere that people go to say things to people with similar ideas and be told that their ideas are right. So it is just somewhere where everyone says the same thing, like an echo.",
"Literally, the name comes from recording, as an early form of special effects. In order to introduce echo (aka reverb), a speaker would be placed in a room with a microphone at the other. Playing a sound through the speaker and recording what the microphone picked up would add the \"sound of the room\" to the original signal; in other words, the reflected sound waves from the original signal bouncing around the room and taking longer to get from the speaker to the mic than just the dry (uneffected) signal. The room characteristics determine the character of the resulting echoes. Larger room = longer decay time. Adding carpet or changing the wall material would also have an effect on the sound. Nowadays this can be done very effectively and with much more flexibility with dedicated FX units (analog or digitial), so dedicated echo chambers (rooms) are largely obsolete. The way the term gets used in politics or philosophy is to refer to a bunch of people who share an ideology or point of view mutually reinforcing the same opinion, regardless of whether it's true or false. Conflicting information or counterarguments don't get amplified, only the prevailing viewpoint.",
"You can look too many communities on Reddit to find the true definition of echo chamber. Late-stage capitalism is a good example the Donald is another good example, basically it's just a place where ideologies are bounce off of each other and opposing views are rarely tolerated. Contrary to popular belief anytime you go into any kind of political discussion both sides will find themselves in a pseudo Echo chamber pretty quickly. The perfect example is the two completely opposing ends of the spectrum of the to subreddits I mentioned. Late-stage capitalism if you even try to defend capitalism in there or say anything bad about communism, they will instantly ban you. Where is with the Donald if you say anything good about one of his opponents or anything a bad about one of his ideas you will also face and instant manhammer. As a side note if you post in the Donald even once there are no less than 27 subreddits which will instantly ban you without warning even though you have never visited those subreddits once there are about 12 subreddits which will instantly ban you for posting in Kotaku in action. Echo Chambers generally tend to reinforce each other."
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9ptevw | Why are UK newspapers the parallel of USA TV news channels? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"By law, TV news in the UK has to be neutral. In reality it's not completely neutral, but broadcasting laws prevent them being blatantly biased. Newspapers have no such rule. So they can be as opinionated as they like. I don't know why US newspapers tend not to be like that. Maybe just because people who want that sort of content has it on TV instead.",
"UK TV/radio have enforced standards. Current rules [here]( URL_0 ) Section 5, \"Due impartiality and due accuracy\" and section 6, \"Elections and Referendums\" are the most relevant to your question."
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9q3241 | On threads about very immoral crimes that certain people have committed, people always comment on how life in prison won't be easy for them and that inmates don't look kindly on rape and pedophilia and the like. Is this just wishful thinking propagated online, or is it true to any extent? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"My stepfather was convicted of murder (EDIT: he was actually convicted of manslaughter due to temporary insanity and loss of reasoning due to previous incidents-long story) after killing the man who raped his first wife, in a landmark UK case way back (landmark as in it set a precedence for motive/extenuating circumstances in the definition of murder). He was a goddamned hero to 90% of the other prisoners, and the other 10% were terrified of him. I've heard a lot of tales about his time inside, and I can confirm that it's very, very true.",
"It's mostly wishful thinking and bullshit tv drama. Source: I spent 8 years in prison, 5 in a maximum security with mostly murderers and rapists etc. You know what gets you beat up? Owing people money and running your mouth.",
"It depends heavily on the prison. From what I've seen, most prisons don't give a shit what your crime was. Everyone's just trying to pass the time. Most jails do, because everyone in a jail is inexperienced, afraid of the stories, and don't have the role models of people who've been inside for years and mellowed out. Of course, every one is going to have its own culture. Some prisons have decided the best way to pass the time is lots of consensual gay sex. Some prisons are really homophobic. Some are really dangerous places. Some are really safe. You gotta get there to find out.",
"I spent a year in a state jail in the US. The above is true. People with those charges were forced out of housing units by the inmates. If they refused they were beaten until COs removed them for their own safety."
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9qb1nl | Why is soccer so popular everywhere in the world except the U.S? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I will repost an answer I have given before to similar questions: So, this is starting to change slowly, but at its most basic level, it is because soccer is not as established in English-speaking North America. Because North America is very isolated from the rest of the world, it developed differently. When football was being established on this continent, it was the Rugby Union game that dominated. Though the game has changed over the past century and a half, the basic structure of the game - scoring points by carrying an egg-shaped ball over a goal line and/or kicking it through a pair of uprights, defense being achieved via bringing the ball carrier to the ground - is shared. But by the time it was able to spread out of the US and Canada, other games had already established dominance (similarly, Australian football, while very popular in Australia, is virtually unknown in the Northern Hemisphere). The same is true in the other direction. By the time that large numbers of soccer playing immigrants crossed the Atlantic, we already had our own football, and soccer wasn't going to displace it. The immigrant communities did play soccer, but it was as much a cultural thing as it was athletic. When I was in high school, I found a copy of the 1959 yearbook, which was the year that the school first fielded a soccer team. It was noted in the blurb about the team that nearly all of the players had started the season having never played the game before. This scenario has an effect on future generations. A parent who doesn't know anything about soccer is less likely to put their child in soccer, and even if they do, they will have to learn if they want to be able to follow their kid's game or talk to them about the sport. As my generation, who grew up playing soccer, are now at the age where we are having children of our own, we are far more likely to choose soccer as an activity for them. As for the age drop off, in the US, it is a big thing to keep kids in lots of activities. There's swimming lessons, karate, dance, music, and sports to fill your kid's time with. Sports tend to have defined seasons, and they don't necessarily overlap, so you can put your children in tee-ball in the spring, soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter. That way, they are always busy. Soccer is especially popular for younger children because it is easy to scale the field down based on age, and it is relatively low on contact, so children are less likely to get hurt. Up to a certain point, it is even reasonable to have co-ed programs. Once kids get older, the player base starts to diverge. It's especially noticeable with boys, as the biggest competitor for players is (American) football, which is by and large the province of males. Let's say that most boys who are involved in organized sports play soccer from age 5-9. Once they turn 10, they are old enough for football, so a bunch of those kids will go off to the gridiron. As they get older, kids will start to specialize too. Maybe they play soccer, swim competitively, and take piano lessons. That eats up a huge amount of time, so at some point, a choice has to be made. The money aspect is a big deal too. Colleges can and do offer full scholarships for soccer, but there isn't the kind of money in MLS that there is in the NFL or NBA. A good soccer player could try to go to Europe to play professionally, but they end up competing with players who have been playing in an organized club environment that is based around developing future professionals (rather than being just an extracurricular activity) from a very young age and likely started their professional career before age 20, compared to a 21 or 22 year old who is graduating from college, where they practiced and played during the season, but were restricted as to what they could do in the off-season, and also had to balance a full-time course load."
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9qbc97 | why is whistleblowing illegal | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I believe this has to do with the principle that the country must protect its sovereignty and its citizens. Imagine if a whistleblower came out with something so dire that other countries decided to just nuke the offending country / make a joint effort to break it up. It wouldn't help anyone in the long run. Obviously there are serious moral issues on both sides as the whistleblower has moral high ground when it comes to reporting but he's endangering other people by doing so. Similarly, the country is in the wrong for doing the bad thing in the first place but prioritises safety of its citizens over being honest and transparent. This is the rationale that is typically used. It's not right, it's not moral one way or another. It just is what it is.",
"In general it isn't illegal. However there are some circumstances where it might be illegal to \"whistle-blow\" in certain ways. For example if you have access to classified information there are ways to bring misbehavior to the attention of people cleared to access such information, but releasing it to the general public would be illegal regardless of your motivation in exposing wrongdoing. Also just because whistle-blowing isn't illegal doesn't mean there are legal protections in place for people who do it. For example an employer might retaliate against an employee who exposes something and that may also be legal. It depends on the laws in a given area what legal protections are available."
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9qc3z4 | What makes fraternities and sororities different from other university clubs that exist on campus? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The primary difference between fraternities/sororities (when done properly) and social clubs is the concept of a shared experience through the new member process, the Ritual, and the mentalities of the members who were attracted to the organization. Most fraternities will, at minimum, have a mission statement or similar explaining their philosophy, their philanthropy, and their ideal members (if any of the above). While there are fraternities who have bad reputation on their campuses, ideally they're for growing their members and their organization in some way. Sororities operate the same way for women. Most who get a bad reputation usually are a result of either (1) not having clear ideals or goals aside from social interaction. (2) think that \"testing\" new members (i.e. hazing) is a valid way to test the new members' commitment to the organization. (3) use the organization to assert a sense of superiority over non-members. A well-run fraternal organization will avoid these pitfalls, and create members who have stronger bonds with one another and who will want to give back to the organization or at minimum stay in contact with the members, even as new classes come in. & #x200B; In short, clubs can absolutely fill that social niche you are thinking of, but originally fraternities had more going on behind the scenes than clubs to in order to bring the members closer together through shared experience, not just shared interest."
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9qeyve | Why are spelling contests so popular in the US and possibly other English speaking countries too? | ...and what is it good for? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, the English language is not a phonetic language (i. e. the way it's written tends to be different from how it sounds) and therefore, most of the time what you hear is spelled in a completely different way. That is what makes spelling competitions possible. As for the use, I haven't a clue.",
"Spelling contests exist in the US and British sphere because English is full of difficult word origins and spellings, so testing people on these makes perfect sense. Lots if other countries have similar competitions. Quebec and France both hold a combined international French spelling and grammar contest. The Netherlands has a Dutch version, and both Germany and Russia have their versions as well. China has the equivalent, a very competitive test involving matching pictograms with words. Japan probably has everyone beat in the competitiveness category with the Kanji test. They are popular because they are a way to compete, people like to have reason to compete, and people like a way to show their peers that they are special. Think of it like a sport for people who love to correct your grammar."
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9qgrmr | How does the south american caravan work?? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e893338"
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"text": [
"> where are they sleeping Outside. > getting water Outside, the stuff is just laying around. They can even carry it with them in containers! > or going to the bathroom?? Outside. Little known fact, not just the Pope can shit in the woods."
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9qky5b | Why is that when a child's parent(s) die, society tends to scoop them up or empathize with their loss, but when a child has an abusive or neglectful parent(s) society tends to be more apathetic? Are they not both the loss of a parent(s)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"We cannot see the scars of the psyche, the emotional wounds of the heart very easily, but we believe we can understand how we would feel if one or both of our parents died when we were Young. It is easy and natural to feel compassion for the helpless and innocent. It is harder to feel compassion for the abuse survivor unless we suffered the same abuse. Sometimes there are no words that can come close to conveying the scars of abuse and neglect."
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9qn48z | Why did Brazil belong to the Portuguese and the Philippines belong to the Spanish? | It's been years since I took any classes on the heyday of the Spanish and/or Portuguese empires, but I still do remember some things. Notably, I seem to remember that at one point, the two fledgling empires signed an agreement that essentially said that everything west of the Atlantic was Spain's to colonize, and everything east of that was Portugal's. (The name of said agreement escapes me now). However, Brazil (which was on the western side) was allowed to stay Portuguese, while Philippines (on the east) was allowed to stay Spanish. How did this happen? Even just giving me the name of that agreement would be good enough (I swear it exists.) P.S. I understand that Africa's a different story altogether. The agreement I'm thinking of was signed in the 1600s or 1700s, whereas the scramble for Africa only really got going around the 1800s. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The dividing line wasn't the Atlantic, but [a line roughly halfway between Cape Verde and Cuba]( URL_0 ). That puts the eastern part of Brazil on Portugal's side. However, Brazil did then expand over the line, and the Philippines are on the Portuguese side. In both cases, the answer seems to be simply that neither country cared enough about strict adherence to the agreement to start a war over it. Portugal wasn't that interested in the Philippines, and Spain wasn't that interested in exactly where the Brazilian border should be."
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9qo86c | What is iambic pentameter and how can I tell if it is being used? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"If there are 5 iambs in each meter, then it's iambic pentameter. da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM Straightforward examples of this rhythm can be heard in the opening line of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 12: When I do count the clock that tells the time and in John Keats' Ode To Autumn:[1] To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells [(I literally just searched this on Google and found the answer. It really isn't that hard)]( URL_0 )",
"It’s ten syllables a line and it will sound like this: De dum de dum de dum de dum de dum If the actors are brilliant and reading their lines naturally, you probably wouldn’t really hear it as English naturally leans towards this rhythm. “But SOFT! What LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKS.” X"
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9qrapv | Why were ancient buildings not constantly renovated/maintained throughout a civilization’ s history? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The cut-off is when the civilization fails, usually. Just as it is today, fixing architecture and infrastructure (bridges, roads) requires money, and if the civilization is in decline, such projects will be canceled. Then, after the fall of a civilization, decay is accelerated by the local population disassembling the various buildings in order to use the building blocks for their own architecture.",
"The new ruler didn't like the old ruler. New ruler lets the old ruler's monuments and construction projects fade away while they build for their own glory on top of the ruins. Or, conquering army destroys culture to show dominance.",
"Many of them were. There is evidence that neolithic barrows, henges, and homes in northwestern Europe were used for thousands of years, even after the cultures who originally made them were long gone. In the Mediterranean, many Roman structures and monuments were converted into churches or mosques and remain in use today. For the rest, buildings are expensive and monumental examples of conspicuous consumption. A building requires constant upkeep; that's why we don't call them \"builts.\" Keeping up a town or even a large structure requires huge expenditures of resources, organization, material, and social capital. Generation to generation, the willpower and resources often simply can't sustain it.",
"There are various reasons but mainly the building stopped being used so nobody would take the time, effort and resources to repair them. There are far more modern landmarks which have stopped being maintained and is currently withering away. Some landmarks have been preserved though as people have taken the time to fix them whenever needed. The sphinx is an example of a structure which were renovated, that happened even before the pyramids were constructed as the structure had been abandoned with little repair for thousands of years prior. The pyramids generally do not need much maintenance as they are massive stone structures. The Parthenon was actually remarkably well preserved, likely due to some maintenance from the Athenians over the years. However when archeologists from France and Great Britain came they took pickaxes to the structure and sent it to various museums to be studied which is the source of most of the damage seen today. A lot of Egyptian structures also suffered similar fates."
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9r1sod | Why is the term "people of color" considered politically correct but "colored people" isn't? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is part of something called \"person first\" language. It's a way of denoting that we're a human being first, and also something more descriptive. Another example is \"person with disabilities\" instead of \"disabled person\". In this way, we focus on the person first, and their descriptors second.",
"The term “coloured people” is associated with a period where racism was rampant and people were regularly judged to be inferior or superior based on skin tone. Later on, “non-white people” was used to discuss people who didn’t fit in the nebulous category of “white”, but after a while it seemed strange to define people by what they aren’t (we don’t talk about “non-short people”) and it was also weird to make it sound as though “white” is the normal or default colour (when it clearly isn’t). So, the term “person of colour” replaced “non-white person”. I’m sure that this term will be replaced eventually, too, as white people also have skin colour, but it would be nice to get our culture to a place where skin tone isn’t actually important enough for us to identify whole groups of people with it.",
"While they mean the same thing from a literal reading of the phrases, there has been a big push in recent years among historically marginalized groups to \"put the person first\". So while \"colored person\" makes their skin color their defining characteristic, \"person of color\" puts their humanity before anything else.",
"In part, this is probably due to history. When “colored people” was the main way to refer to non white people, it was an era of high and open racism. Which means a lot of when those words were spoken were in very derogatory ways. And so those derogatory thoughts tend to stick to those words and get associated with them, in ways that other words don’t have those derogatory associations.",
"It just is, based off of historical usage. Back during segregation \"colored\" was a catch-all term for non-whites, and particularly for those of African descent. It ended up being used as a pejorative at the time (i.e. it was used as a way to call someone a nigger in otherwise \"polite\" circumstances), hence why it's not acceptable out of certain hyper-specific contexts (e.g. the NAACP). Meanwhile, \"people of color\" is a similar catch-all term, but because its usage has always been dominated by minority groups, it never got the same connotation as \"colored.\" An important aspect of spoken/written languages is that they're not objective. There is more meaning beyond just the literal meaning of the words, and you can't just rely on the literal meanings outside of the sciences. Hence, even if rearranging the words doesn't seem like it fundamentally changes the meaning of the words, it actually can."
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9r6riz | T-Posing. I've heard there are racist implications and i know the 3D character stance but both seem really dumb. What am i missing? What makes this click with people? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8entc5"
],
"text": [
"Whoever told you there are racist implications is overthinking things. The T-pose is a default \"reference pose\" for 3-d animations. It's default because it's simple and lets the designer see at a glance that something has gone wrong, because whatever animation the character was likely supposed to have, standing like that isn't it."
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9ra26r | Why do people blur out number plates in photos? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8f8i8o"
],
"text": [
"Even if it's a random car, someone could use that number plate to identify where that person is geographically, which refines a search"
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9raaos | Why are DaVinci’s paintings considered great? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8fe2eg"
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"text": [
"In general he had very good technique in terms of realism and detail, and was also considered above average at using \"sfumato\" (a kind of smokey, soft technique with blended rather than hard edges). He came from an era with a ton of very good painters where painting itself was undergoing a radical change so I certainly wouldn't say he was the greatest painter of his day or anything."
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9re085 | How did we end up with a silent K, of all sounds, in words like knight and knife? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8g51pt",
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"text": [
"Silent letters are the ghosts of pronunciations past. The word 'knight', with its silent 'k', and silent 'gh', is cognate with the German word for servant, 'knecht', where every letter is pronounced. ... The 'e' isn't pronounced, but it changes the pronunciation of the vowel by lengthening it.",
"Silent K before N shows a word that English used to share with German. We have dropped the K sound, but they still say it. The best example is knee, which the Germans pronounce k-nee (they spell it Knie)."
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9rjv52 | emotionally abusive | I hear this term so often these days, mainly on reddit. Now I'm not native english and that might explain a lot, but how do you characterize an emotionally abusive person (mother/father/etc)? & #x200B; I'm confused, because if a parent treats his child badly, or X treats Y badly that's simply "abusive". What is the thin line between simply being abusive and being Emotionally abusive? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally the term \"emotionally abusive\" is used to distinguish behaviors from \"physically abusive.\" That is to say that the behaviors are injurious/hurtful/traumatic but do not entail physical violence.",
"Physical abuse is obviously physical, punching, slapping, kicking, etc. Emotional abuse is more verbal. If a dad tells his kid he's too stupid to go to school, or a guy tells his girlfriend she's fat, or ugly. You're telling someone something specifically to hurt them. You're controlling the other person by lowering their self esteem. If a kid grows up hearing they're stupid, or too dumb to do stuff, they'll eventually start to believe it.",
"People have given you good examples of the difference between emotional and physical abuse, but I'd like to add to that. Emotional abuse doesn't have to be saying obviously hurtful things to someone, like you're fat or you're stupid. You can emotionally abuse someone in more subtle ways that aren't at all obvious. Anytime you say or do something that is meant to deny another person their sense of self or control over their own lives, that's emotionally abusive. Example: I'll help you with your rent but you have to live where I say you have to live. This statement might seem reasonable on it's face and not at all abusive, but it's meant to take away a person's autonomy and allow the person \"helping\" to control the person who needs help. Another form of emotional abuse is called \"infantilizing\". This is when you do everything for someone so they don't have to do anything for themselves and it often prevents the subject from learning how to do anything for themselves or from taking responsibility for their own lives. If I'm a parent and I control my child's finances, transportation, food, etc. and I never let that child learn how to do these things for themselves well beyond the age when a child should be able to do these things for themselves, then I'm being emotionally abusive. The more subtle forms of emotional abuse may look helpful, but their not.",
"Abusive is when I hit you for burning the eggs. Emotionally abusive is when I tell you that you’re a piece of shit and that you deserved it. If you’re treating someone badly, and you touch them to do so, it’s abusive. If you don’t touch them, but rather treat them badly with words, it’s emotionally abusive. Abuse is used as shorthand for physical or emotional abuse. Physical attacks your body, emotional attacks your mind and emotions. Physical abuse can injure your emotions, but emotional abuse **only** attacks your emotions."
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9rv3h0 | Why were people taken to the woodshed for spankings/whippings back in the day? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8jvu6j"
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"text": [
"Thats where the switch was hung. Plus, it was seen as bad taste to punish in front of wife or daughters. Also have an theory of mine... It may have also been to reduce the shame of the kid if they cried. gives them a moment to compose themselves and walk back in."
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9s35e7 | How are westerner's "Chinese" name decided ans given? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8loghz"
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"text": [
"Yep mostly phonetic. Generic names such as Mark is normally translated to 马克 (Mah-Ker) while Paul is translated to 保罗 (Bao-Luo). Same thing applies for names that aren't common as well...but im not sure who decides for the famous ppl oops"
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9s8k5h | How can Japanese and Chinese keyboards work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Chinese has a system called \"pinyin\", which is a way to render Chinese words phonetically using western characters. A Chinese person would type the pinyin using the keyboard, and is then presented with a series of sound-alike options for the correct word (sort of like the predictive text on a mobile phone). e.g. it would be like typing in the phonetic \"row d\", and being presented with \"Road\", \"Rowed\", \"Rhode\"...you then choose the correct word.",
"The japanese alphabets don't consist of letters, rather it's syllables. So the keyboards look like english keyboards, you can even install japanese language on your computer now and type in japanese (and chinese too) just like they do. For example ke becomes け, which can then be combined with other syllables to form kanji. じかん becomes 時間 etc.",
"They have the same appearance as English keyboards, but when the user types in a word, it becomes the character form. If there is more than 1 character form, a list of potential options is shown and the user has to select the one they want."
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9sg2vz | If the intention of US enemies is to further our partisanship and escalate conflicts amongst us then why on earth isn't our number one concern around unifying our country and finding common ground? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8ogtsn"
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"text": [
"1. The enemies of the united states are not unified nor do they only have one goal 2. Everyone wishes we were unified and found common ground. However, nobody wants to be the one that has to change or give something up. Simply suggesting that we do something doesn't make it happen."
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9skgdw | What exactly makes nestlé such a "bad" company? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8ph4ec"
],
"text": [
"They run bottling plants in areas stricken by drought. So farms and residential areas are force to deal with drought while factories pump water out of local aquifers to sell for profit. Child labour & slavery for the source of their cocoa, which they promised to fix 14 years ago and haven't gotten around to it yet"
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9sp7ce | Why isn't election day a national holiday in the US? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"National holidays do not determine whether or not you have off work unless you are a non-critical government employee. Private employers are not required to give you national holidays off of work, so making election day a national holiday would not make any difference for the vast majority of americans. A much more effective method would be passing federal legislation mandating that employees be allowed a reasonable amount of time to vote and for that time to be paid. It would be extremely difficult to get that passed, however."
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9sqbaw | Why are some gestures so universal (nodding, shaking your head, kissing) despite cultures being so different? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It's funny you list nodding as universal. Because it's not. In bulgaria, greece, Iran, parts of India, and several other countries that means no. For shaking your head I once had a professor that said he worked with these Indian genetlemen that kept doing it. He thought they had a condition. Apparently it meant they had a question. So the answer to your question is \"it's not.\" Edit: also kissing. In a lot of places, eastern europe specifically, its totslly acceptable for two grown men to key each other on the cheek. Whereas in the US that would likely make someone super uncomfortable.",
"All of those gestures are not universal at all. There are many cultures around the world that treat them very differently and/or the meaning of these gestures is very different to western culture.",
"Your listed examples aren't really universal, in the way you're describing. Better examples of universal behavior would be laughter, and facial expressions like smiling and frowning, brow furrowing, etc. These are universal because the behaviors are deeply rooted in Human evolution; as part of our pro-sociality, we've evolved complex and nuanced mechanisms (facial expressions) for non-verbal communication. Laughter is also deeply rooted, but its evolutionary and neurological mechanisms are not as well understood.",
"There are very few universal gestures, and none of the ones you have listed are universal. Saying 'huh' or 'eh' or 'ugh' when you don't understand something is a universal. And pupils dilating when aroused is a universal. But that's about the only universals I can think of."
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9su8sf | Antisemitism in U.S. Today | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Then nature of antisemitism really hasn't changed in centuries. It's merely evolved over time to incorporate new ideas, and antisemites couch their hatred in different language. The core of antisemitism going back hundreds of years is that Jewish people control or have outsized influence on the banks and the economy, and there's some sort of international Jewish conspiracy to control the world. As the world became more connected in the latter half of the 20th century, the idea that Jewish people also control the global media has become prominent in circles that believe such things. But really, if you compare the talking points of a modern antisemite to one from the 18th century, you'd be hard pressed to find any differences.",
"To understand antisemitism you need to go all the way back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, especially after the first formation of Israel as a physical country. After that, there has bees hatred of Jews by a diverse set of populations. One of the reasons that Jewish people are known for jewelry and banking is because it was not uncommon for people to redirect civil unrest in the Middle Ages toward local Jewish populations; the people who fled with precious stones would be able to travel light and have money to set up well wherever they end up. Antisemitism did not begin from WW1, but was far before that"
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9svc8g | Is there a reason that asian countries use chop sticks instead of fork and spoon? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Before I answer and before you read the rest of the answers, I think you'll probably gain a lot of insight if you try to answer the following question: \"Is there a reason that you are using forks and knives, instead of chopsticks?\" The basic reason is because at some point in history, someone invented using chopsticks, and people thought, \"Hey, that's a great idea! I don't have to use my hands to put food to my mouth now!\" And then once it spreads, there's really no reason to switch. It just becomes a way of life. Why do you sit on chairs instead of bean bags? Why do you sleep on a mattress instead of a sleeping bag? There's lots around our world that's driven by culture, even though equally effective or superior methods of doing things exist. I'll also add a bit about Asian food culture here, and it's interesting that you say \"fork and spoon\" instead of \"fork and knife.\" Fork and knife is the usual phrase and usual pairing, because the fact is that Asians *do* use spoons. All Asians use spoons to eat things like soup. Koreans use chopsticks and spoons even when eating regular meals, though most other Asian cultures only use chopsticks when eating regular food. Because chopsticks are mostly suited to picking up small items, most Asian meals will have things chopped up into small pieces. For example, serving a steak isn't a thing in traditional Asian cooking. If there was going to be a steak-like meal, the steak would be cooked by the chef then cut into cubes and served. The food culture adapts to the utensil, so there's never a need to cut things in an Asian dish.",
"Not all asian countries do, but for those that do its sheer cultural inertia. People have been doing it that way for a long time so they are used to it and inclined to continue. It happens everywhere for different things.",
"I think there are some good answers, but there's a culinary and cultural reason for why chopsticks in China are a thing over a fork and knife type solution. In China, the chef/cook would chop up the large meat and food items before serving into smaller pieces, which means people eating food in china would not need something like a knife to cut food, versus a western piece of meat that may be served whole and the patron would need to cut it themselves. On top of that, chopsticks then also make sense to eat those small pieces, as they are pretty exacting, acting as an extension of \"fingers\" to pick up and navigate small pieces rather than having to spear it with a fork (especially when that piece of meat may be not be spearable with a fork as it has bone and such in it, a chopstick ignores that problem by grabbing it!) Even today, in China, a Chinese \"chef's knife\" (not sure of the name if someone can help me) more resembles a western butcher knife, because a major aspect of it was chopping things into smaller parts so your patrons can eat (and to easily slice throw things like bone and sinew in meat). Though of course many chinese cooks are absolutely amazing with their knives to do far more stuff than chopping, but the tradition is still there"
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9sx7j8 | What exactly is an "influencer", and what do they do? | Inspired by this disturbing little [New York Times article]( URL_0 ) about a loft specifically designed for the audiences of Instagram influencers :) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Someone who has a social media account with a large number of followers, and uses it to influence these followers more or less subtly to buy things, and who is paid money from companies that make those things. Most commonly they are young women who on Instagram show off a cool, fashionable (and eventually completely fake) lifestyle involving lots of expensive brand clothes, accessories, and cosmetics.",
"Here’s what I’m learning from a social media marketing class I’m currently taking... A social media influencer is someone who simply has a ton of followers on the platforms that they operate on. Whatever the post, or tweet, or whatever, thousands or millions of eyes will see it. Now, if you consider advertising, having a lot of eyes on a particular influencer’s feed makes it particularly valuable. Companies will pay good money to have an influencer mention their products. Here’s a real example: say there’s a movie coming out. A social media marketer who has been hired by one of the lead actors will go to a website where the marketer can hook up with folks with tons of twitter followers. The marketer will offer something in the range of say $150 or $300 to tweet something positive about the upcoming movie or the actor exactly two times, each time at a specific day and hour (when you post is critically important to how many impressions, or eyes on the tweet, you get). It’s not bad money for literally seconds of work. As the marketer hires many influencers to do just that, you end up with a purchased “trending on Twitter” moment for the actor or movie. A real life example you can explore is the disastrous Fyre Festival. It was revealed that certain Instagram influencers (that Emily woman who was in Robin Thicke’s video comes to mind) were hired to post about being excited to attend Fyre without having plans to actually go. I believe that started conversation about better indicating that posts are promoted. My teacher tells me that influencer marketing is really big on Instagram and became fashionable again on Twitter thanks to Trump. She knows nothing of Reddit, but I can see some of this kind of marketing happening on r/All. Remember when some movie with Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers hit the front page? I saw four related posts with big karma totals in the space of 48 hours. That, my friend, had to have been a campaign of some sort. The downside of knowing this is realizing that a huge part of the popular internet is quite fake. Good luck with this new knowledge.",
"\"Influencers\" are usually women who travel and expect free shit because they show off the product online to their followers, who may or may not buy the product. I manage a hip, boutique hotel and I get requests all the time from \"Influencers\" who want a comp room in return for photos, reviews, etc. I delete those emails immediately because I'm running a business, not a shelter. This will also be auto-deleted.",
"Step 1: Become knowledgeable about a topic. Step 2: Help a lot of people by making recommendations, build a good reputation as a reliable source. Step 3: Take money (or free product if you are low rent) from people selling stuff to pretend you actually just happened to like it, trading in the trust you built up in step 2 for cold hard cash. Deny deny deny claiming that money has no influence on your recommendations to milk it as long as possible. Put \"sponsored\" in the fine print to make it all legal. Sadly, the VAST majority of \"expert\" product and service reviews of ALL kinds are a result of this model, which is why amateur reviews (Amazon, Yelp, Google) are so useful.",
"An influencer is essentially just a famous person, doesn't matter how, that can communicate with his or her following, and by doing so, influence them. So if someone with 200000 followers on instragram messages to her follower that product X is really cool, then the followers will now be aware that the product exists, and some might take the recommendation seriously enough to purchase. Essentially acting as a commercial. Technically anyone famous can influence, the Potus influences all the time. but generally with a influencer, people mean someone that tries to make a career out of it.",
"This is an interesting read. An influencer is anyone with a social media account that can “influence” their audience to buy something. I have a blog with social media accounts. I wouldn’t call myself an influence but I have been approached by companies for a shout outs/reviews in exchange for a free products. This marketing tactic is very popular on Instagram. I personally have turned down most of the companies who approach me because it doesn’t align with my brand but I know of many people who will take whatever deal. Once you are aware of the marketing strategies that happen online you really start to realize how fake everything is. It’s a little depressing..."
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9sxtsm | Why are Tupac and Biggie *really* considered the most influential people in Hip Hop culture? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They made good music and were killed before they could make shitty music that would ruin their reputations"
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9t82io | If people of the middle ages always drank wine/beer/cider instead of water all the time, how did they manage not to be drunk 24/7? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The alcohol content was very low. I believe a 4 percent alcohol beer is still NET hydrating. But we may be talking 1 percent beverages back then.",
"Also alot if the work they did, didn’t require sobriety. “Move all that heavy shit from over here to over there” is pretty accomplishable even with a few drinks in you. Frankly it might be easier.",
"On top of everything else already said, there is the fact that one can consume alcoholic beverages at a rate that does not make you drunk, especially when you consider developed tolerance due to extended use. That's why bars and drinks with meals are still legal. A person can consume alcohol and remain sober, or sober enough as to not be considered impaired",
"Looking at certain groups of modern workers, you certainly can do heavy physical labor and get stuff done while drinking beer all day and being \"technically always the influence\". There's a world of difference between being slightly drunk and wasted; just as there's an order of magnitude difference in quantity between a pregnant women abusing alcohol and severely drinking and them being slightly drunk. Furthermore, back then most children didn't \"develop normally\" according to modern criteria - for example, the medieval adults were much shorter than nowadays, in large part due to childhood malnutrition, childhood diseases and parasites hampering development. In a similar manner, if a large portion of kids were slightly less intelligent than their genetic potential because of alcohol influence during their development, then that's how the \"normally developed\" average kids would be in that society.",
"They used to drink watered down alcoholic beverages. Most of what they drank would be considered non-alcoholic by todays standards. You do not need to make the beverage strong in order to make sure it is safe to drink. In addition most of the water you get throughout the day comes from the food you eat. When you hear the advice telling you that you need to drink 8 glasses of water a day that only holds true if you are not eating. The fat, sugar and protein in the food you eat will form carbon dioxide and water when consumed by your muscles. For every kg of food you eat your body will produce about a liter of water. So you do not need more then a glass or two of water each day if you are eating regularly. So it is perfectly fine to work all day without drinking and then have a few glasses of wine or beer when the workday is over. And when those glasses might be 1-2% alcohol you are unlikely to even feel the effects of the alcohol.",
"They didn't drink it as a replacement they drank it because they wanted to. Most people had access to clean water since water access was needed to farm. This water is safe to drink until the population gets too high and people contaminate it. People have been doing this well before the middle ages. Populated places built structures to move clean water and was generally safe to drink. Many historical writings talked about drinking water but just avoiding unclear or smelly water. People boiled questionable water for safety. Herbs, roots, and flowers were added to enhance flavor. The beer given to kids was more like the mash that is made before the fermenting process. Boil water, add grains to flavor the water, if you don't drink it in a few days natural yeast will start making alcohol. This was the same stuff put on ships so sailors could have drinkable non salty water.",
"Brewing beer and ale from grains and fruits was a way of preserving the nutrition they contained rather than losing much of it to spoilage. Beer was very much a food rather than an intoxicant."
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9t9yz9 | Is there any special significance behind Katy Perry's music video 'Chained To The Rhythm'? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s really about her spiritual journey from a teen pop icon to a full grown adult woman artist."
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9tbb6a | What is "intersectionality"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine a factory in the 1960's. They say they don't discriminate against women, because they have front office staff who are women. They say they don't discriminate against black people, because they hire some black people in the factory floor. The problem is that they only hire men for the factory floor, and they only hire whites in the office. If your identity is both black and a woman (the intersection of the two), then the company will never hire you. & #x200B; The discrimination you, as a unique individual, face is the result of the intersection of all the aspects of your identity. This was was not widely thought about in historical social justice movements, because feminism was concerned about women and racial justice organizations were concerned about racial minorities, etc.",
"There are ways that society could change, to be more fair to **black people.** There are ways that society could change, to be more fair to **women.** There are ways that society could change, to be more fair to **gay people.** *However.* Many of these ways would not make society fair to **black gay women**. The problems that you can have on account of being *both P and Q* are not just the sum of the problems that people have by being *P* plus the problems that people have by being *Q*. There can be separate *P and Q* problems. And even if we solved all the *P* problems and, separately, solved all the *Q* problems, that doesn't actually mean that we solved all the *P and Q* problems.",
"Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term, though the concept had been thrown around a lot before her by people like Audre Lorde or by the combahee river collective. The idea is that bigotry and oppression manifest in different ways depending on our identity. Things like racism and sexism exist, but popular narratives frame them usually in only certain ways. Crenshaw noted that while women weren’t allowed suffrage until 1920, there were other laws preventing citizenship for women of other races from voting. Not only that, the suffrage movement discounted the voices of black women and their inclusion for the sake of the success of their movement. In that sense, sexism manifested differently between white women and other women. Another example Crenshaw uses is domestic abuse. We like to think shelters from abuse are easily accessible, but factors like immigration status can curtail that access. Immigrant women might not leave abusers due to fear of being deported. And language barriers might not even prevent immigrants from getting information on where they can find a shelter, but shelters sometimes turn women away due to not having bilingual resources. Ultimately, intersectionality is simply recognizing that oppression and bigotry doesn’t always manifest in a singular manner, and we need to account for that. Black women don’t experience sexism in the same way that white women do, and they don’t experience racism in the same way that black men do. Acting intersectionally involves taking into account a spectrum identities on an issue and listening to people we hear from less to move beyond the simpler, more popular narratives.",
"It's the concept that we have to look at and consider the intersections of different demographics. For instance, women have a hard time in Western Society. Black people have a hard time in Western Society. But specifically thinking about how Black Women have problems that other women, and other black people don't. Intersectionality is the idea that we have to consider that people often belong to multiple groups, and that their experiences are different than those who aren't such.",
"Miriam Dobson created a [comic]( URL_0 ) that shows visually what intersectionality is about (original not available). Let's say that you have people who are shapes with a pattern (like stripes or polka dots) on them. Some shapes are treated badly, and some patterns are also treated badly, but in different ways. For example, let's say that triangles are seen as being worse than squares and circles - they have to go to the end of the line, they sometimes get beat up by squares and circles, and it's seen as okay. So some triangles get together to try to change society to be less bad for them. At the same time, there are shapes with stripes and polka dots who are told they are ugly, and solid colors are rude to them all the time. They're not allowed to go to some places because they are seen as making the place ugly with their weird stripey- and dottiness. So the striped and polka dotted shapes form a movement to change the laws so they can go where they want. Now you have a triangle who is also striped. The triangle tries to join the \"Triangle Support League,\" but many triangles there give them the stinkeye because the ugly stripes don't belong there. So the stripey triangle tries to go join the \"Patterns are Beautiful Too!\" group, but is told that they have to go to the end of the line, and is threatened with getting beaten up by the squares and circles there. The stripey triangle shares something with each group, but because of the other type of oppression aren't able to fully participate or be treated with respect. Without intersectionality, this triangle would be told to cover up their ugly stripes so they could fit in better at the Triangle gathering, or that they just need to accept the rules for triangles at the Patterned gathering and be treated poorly. Intersectionality is the idea that because of the intersection of several features, we can't just focus on one type of feature, like shape or pattern, and ignore the other. We have to recognize that sometimes those features interact with each other to make special challenges that need to be talked about. Having multiple features can make it hard for someone to be accepted by any one group if that group still treats another feature badly, thinking that it doesn't matter to them.",
"I’ll try this - People don’t fit in only one category at a time. They fit in several. We’re not just white. We’re also women. And Asian. And rural. And low-earners. And, and, and. Depending on how those categories interact, you can look a lot like the other Asian people or not at all like them. You could look like other rural people one way, and completely unlike them in another. This is relevant when we talk about equality for this-or-that group, marketing to this-or-that group, programs or laws to right a wrong directed at this or that group. Black people might have a certain shared experience with prejudice but black people who are gay women and high earners might have a very different experience. So when we talk about justice, equality, oppression, reform, and reconciliation, and all the laws, systems, cultural norms that enact those things, we have to see the whole system and the whole person.",
"The belief that some groups are more \"oppressed\" than others, and that the groups that are the most \"oppressed\" are to be placed higher in the hierarchy and to benefit more socially/economically. Basically what people fail to understand is that in America you are an individual, where you can't be thrown into a \"group\" because of say the color of your skin or where you were born. And since our society is freer than most, people often confuse \"systemic oppression\" with the burdens of living in a free society. Like say the gender wage gap, there is a gender wage gap, but not because of systemic male oppression, but because of choices and how the free market operates, women are more likely to enter fields that are more people oriented while males are more thing oriented, the STEM fields are in high market demand currently and is mostly occupied by men, while nurses are mostly occupied by women. Just because there is a disparity doesn't mean it's systemic oppression, see people have choices in this country. And the jump by some to make that claim are just ignorant. Example: in Scandinavia they tried to make their nations more egalitarian and in their efforts the results showed that differences between men and women didn't shrink but got bigger, this is directly contrast to what the social constructionists thought and they are wrong. Intersectionality is directly contrast to individualism and seeks to establish group identity above all else. This is a recipe for disaster as we've seen countless times in the past. If you are a sane minded person you should think that if we want to solve the issue of people's oppression (whether it be internal or external) the answer is to classify people as individuals and give them the EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY not equality of outcome (which is what intersectionality espouses) to be rid of said oppression again whether internal or external",
"If you’d like a very short explanation, it’s the idea that multiple supposed oppressed people’s characteristics “stack”. In order to understand the concepts you have to make a few assumptions so I’ll explain those as simply as possible. 1. Everyone of a minority status and women are actively and institutionally oppressed on multiple levels in the modern day United States and European countries (this also theoretically applies to every country but never is talked about by anyone usually espousing these beliefs). This typically excludes minorities that do well, socioeconomically, like Asians and Jews, however. 2. People’s oppression “stacks”. So a black man is oppressed but not a lot, a white woman is better off but still oppressed, a gay black woman is oppressed significantly, but isn’t the worst off. There are multiple other connecting beliefs and assumptions but these are the ones important. Intersectionality is the concept that people are oppressed on multiple characteristics, and therefore all the oppressed groups should come together to fight against general “oppression” by the oppressors. No one group points to an oppressive policy or person, they join together to fight the supposed oppressive majority, which according to intersectionality are whites, males, straights, and sometimes religious. This is how you end up with strange characters like strong anti-semites like Linda Sarsour leading a woman’s march, because she is Muslim and a woman, or that woman’s march speaker who violently sodomized a gay man speaking in a position of influence. In short, small groups get together as one big group to fight other big groups, like “the Police”, or “White privilege”, or “Patriarchy”.",
"Intersectionality is the examination of how race, class, and gender all interact with one another as they relate to the term \"privilege\". As an example, if you are a man, you may be viewed as an individual with a certain status. However, if you are also a person of color and gay, some of that status is removed due to the way we view the categories of color and sexuality. That's probably really oversimplifying it, but that's the general gist.",
"A lot of groups are marginalized for different reasons and at different levels. The more groups in which you belong, the more marginalized you can be. The \"intersection\" is where sexism, homophobia, racism, etc. meet and the aggression intensifies. It's important for those of us who only belong to one group have perspective about the negative experiences we have comparatively. The microaggressions I experience as a white woman are small compared to the outright aggression that affects minority women. It doesn't invalidate my experience, but I can't claim to understand what they experience. And, while I'm fighting against the issues I experience, I need to fight with them as well. I may be oversimplifying the concept, but this is how I understand.",
"Intersectionality refers to the ways that separate types of oppression intersect to create oppressions that can be understood through that combination. Like, if you add oil and water, you get a bunch of oil, and a bunch of water. They don't mix. They sit, inert, in their container. But if you add, say, Mentos and soda, you get a big foaming explosion. Feel free to use any chemical reaction here in this example that you like. The key here is that to fully understand what's going on, it's not enough to treat the components separately. You could also think of it as a Venn diagram, with one circle being one kind of group, say men, and another circle being another group, say black people. The intersection is black men. To talk about the types of oppression they experience, it's not enough to talk about what black people experience, or what men experience. There are elements that are unique to black men and that should be taken into account.",
"Simplest way to explain the is.... My identity intersects my gender, race, ethnicity, and age. It intersects based on our cultural expectations and practices, meaning obviously I identify as gender and that intersects with my race which is mexican american and then I belong to the older generation of millennials. When discussing my gender its almost impossible to disassociate my race due to our cultural ideologies, you can intersect these concepts and the theory is called intersectionality."
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9tdemy | Why do religions so often seem to say that not being heterosexual is wrong? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Successful religions promoted procreation as important. You'd have more followers, and be stronger that way, especially in eras when not all children survived to adulthood. Prohibitions against homosexuality would encourage more babies being born.",
"Many religions were created in contexts where reproduction rate was highly important to the social structure due to mortality rates from war, disease, hunger, and other hazards. Lineage was also extremely important for the purpose of political continuity and inheritance. A king or other noble that failed to generate an heir could create a conflict of inheritance where cousins are arguing over who gets what, which can, and did, escalate to violence.",
"The Catholic Church bases it's stance against non-heterosexuality off of the philosophical teachings of Thomas Aquinas. He derrived his own version of Natural Law theory that states that one should behave as reflected in nature. To deviate from \"nature's purpose\" was to break natural law. Not procreating through heterosexual activity both deviated from nature (Aquinas's observation that homosexuality did not occur in nature; he wrote this in the late 13th century), and that not procreating at all interferes with god's plan. (This is why birth control is also frowned upon by the Catholic Church). I can't speak for other religions. Tl;Dr - Not being heterosexual is bad because it means you won't produce offspring of your own with your partner, and choosing not to produce children or preventing pregnancy is also against god's plan according to Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic Church.",
"According to what I learned in a series of college courses on Abrahamic religions: Issues with homosexuality were a matter of differentiation for early Israelites. The word abomination in the original language didn't carry the connotations of today (vile, especially evil, horrific), rather it meant something closer to \"something we don't do\"; something taboo. An awful lot of the old testament is the story of one group trying to make a name for themselves and differentiate themselves from the other people groups around them. Many of the religious laws were in this vein of \"things we, Israelites, don't do\". So it may have started as a way of making early Israelites different than other people group's and their religions. However, the many 100s of years that went by saw the Abrahamic religions twisted to fit many different rulers' needs. A lot of the dogma and theology were cemented because of tradition, \"how things have always been done\", or out of blind certitude. These dogma were then frequently wielded as weapons of power, authority, and control. & #x200B; Religious dogma is a house of cards; each bit of influence, power, manipulation, and control lean onto each other in a feedback loop. Essentially, threatening a single tenant/element/facet/contention could threaten the rest. If their god and their dogma is infallible, they can't afford to be wrong about a single thing. & #x200B; Imagine: \"wait, so you're telling me that it actually isn't a terrible, unforgivable sin to eat pork? But didn't we like stone that guy to death over eating pork several years back? Oh, so we just interpreted that verse a bit too literally? Alright...I guess I'll get used to this, but maybe we shouldn't move forward with stoning Gary because he ate those shrimp. Also, should we maybe wait on stoning Jane for looking at Susan's husband? What if we interpreted those verses too literally too?\" & #x200B; This is why religions often hold onto outdated beliefs far past a time they can reasonably justify them. & #x200B; & #x200B;"
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9tdxcf | Why does most of the world drive and walk on the right side? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Initially, almost everyone would travel on the left side of the road, as it was the wiser choice in more violent societies since most people are right-handed, swordsmen preferred to keep to the left in order to have their right arm nearer to an opponent and their scabbard further from him. However in the 1700's, teamsters in France and the United States began using very large wagons to transport farm produce. These wagons were usually pulled by multiple horses and the driver sat on the rear left horse leaving his right hand free to control the rest of the horses. As a result these wagons preferred people passing on the left to ensure they could see how much space there was to move ensuring they don't hit any other passing wagons and eventually became a standard. & #x200B; **REFERENCES** [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )",
"In the days of horses you would hold your sword in your right hand and shield in your left. So you would pass them on the left to take a swipe at them. This is why British people drive on the left. Pre French Revolution, peasants would pass on the right and aristocratic persons on the left. Then after the revolution they passed on the right to keep a low profile and not get killed. When Napoleon came along and conquered most of Europe. He spread this to those countries he conquered. When America was part of the British Empire, they rode on the left as the Brits do today. After independence, they decided to ride on the right as a final act of rebellion. Additionally, as many people these days seem to forget, America is formed of immigrants from various European nations and as most European countries rode on the right, the custom became adopted across the US. Eventually most countries, such as Canada, became left hand drive in order to make driving between the two countries more harmonious. Former British colonies and some island nations. Australia, Ireland, Hong Kong, Japan and the UK to name a few have resisted changing over the years as they had no land neighbours to compromise with. [Source]( URL_0 )"
],
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"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.worldstandards.eu/cars/driving-on-the-left/"
],
[
"https://www.worldstandards.eu/cars/driving-on-the-left/"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
9tjm1e | What is ableism? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8wq7ai",
"e8wpq4p",
"e8xblur"
],
"text": [
"It's when someone is disabled, and people who aren't disabled treat them as less of a human being because of it. This can be something as simple as neglect: say Bob is like \"wtf why do we need to put an elevator in the building, why can't people just use stairs\". People who don't have any legs can't use stairs, Bob. Bob isn't actually hating on disabled people. But his building plan ignores the different needs that disabled people have. If he went ahead with it, some guy in a wheelchair would be trying to get like a real estate deal or whatever from Bob's business, and fail because he can't roll a wheelchair up 5 flights of stairs. Sometimes, ableism is more action than inaction. Dale has a problem with his brain - certain environmental stimuli make his brain flip the fuck out, and when his brain is done flipping out, Dale is absolutely exhausted. He's got epilepsy. Some teenagers hold contempt for Dale, and try and trick him into watching things that will set off an epileptic episode. They get a thrill from triggering his condition like this, and then saying \"hashtag triggered\" like Dale's brain condition was a white girl at starbucks. Those teenagers are being ableist. When people assert things are \"ableist\", they're saying that said thing makes disabled people feel like less than people. The examples I've given are hopefully pretty clear cut. Real life examples may be more complex and less well defined. Lastly; if someone is getting worked up 'on behalf' of a disabled person, they are saying \"I think this would make a disabled person feel like less of a person\". Some people that do this never bother asking any disabled person if this is the case, and those people are assholes.",
"> **ELI5: What is ableism?** Ableism is discrimination against people with disabilities.",
"Other people have provided the definition, so I'll add some examples. The most egregious examples are outright discrimination against disabled people, such as not hiring a disabled person on the basis of their disability, even when it would not impact their job performance. Sometimes there are more subtle cases of people just not giving any consideration to the specific needs of disabled people, such as: * Someone is planning the construction of a new building. They add lots of stairs and escalators, but no elevators or ramps, making it inaccessible to people in wheelchairs. * A new movie is released that doesn't include closed captions so deaf people can't watch it. * Signs that lack braille, so blind people can't \"read\" them."
],
"score": [
23,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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} | [
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] | [
"url"
] |
|
9tpskk | Kansas and Arkansas | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8y7zm6"
],
"text": [
"Arkansas is the French name for a Native American tribe. In French words, you generally don't pronounce the S at the end of a word. Kansas is the English name for a Native American tribe. It's pronounced using typical English rules."
],
"score": [
13
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
9tq3uh | who are the Shriners, and where did they originate? | I'm so confused as to why middle aged white men wear tasseled hats and ride on magic carpets at parades. Please pardon my ignorance. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8y9wrt"
],
"text": [
"I may be off about this part, but I believe it is a fraternity within Freemasonry or at least shared among Masons, stressing fellowship and fun. The whole fezzes and magic carpets thing... Well when Shriners was getting off the ground, one of the founding members attended a party given by an Arabian diplomat, which included entertainment. He took notes and made drawings and showed them to another founding member, and from there they adopted a Middle Eastern theme. From the fezzes to the logo and so on, even their original name Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
9tsttb | What is 'Enlightenment'? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e8yvgmq",
"e902n1p"
],
"text": [
"It is a state of being aware of your own underlying consciousness, which happens when all the stories and judgements that usually constitute the self fall away. It can happen suddenly to anyone and fade away, or it can be cultivated and developed and be somewhat more permanent.",
"Historically, it means the period when science and reason superseded the dogma of religion. Nowadays it's being used for lots of esoteric and dubious self-help stuff, which is somewhat ironic."
],
"score": [
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
9tyjdf | (USA) When and What Caused Separate States to Lose Power to the Federal Government on the Scale that America Just Feels Like One Big State Instead of 50? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e902a3m"
],
"text": [
"The two biggest events that took away power from the States and gave it to the Federal Government was the US civil war, and the expansion of the use of the Commerce Clause of the constitution to do things like ending segregation in the South."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
9tyku8 | how are elections results verified? Like what prevents a government (including the USA) from just saying "hey this guy won and here are some numbers that we made up to prove it" | Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist or anything, but as a citizen of the U.S. that has seen a few close elections, what confidence should I have that these numbers are legitimate? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e9029dw",
"e908snc"
],
"text": [
"Elections are conducted on a state- and local level, so the US government wouldn't really have a way to announce the results, or rig them generally without getting hundreds of precincts in on it, even for a low-level race. There are usually audits and various other ways to confirm the official vote count, and typically, hand recounts in very close elections.",
"In the US each major party, campaign, or issue can send representatives to polling places. The media as well as third-party organizations related to voting rights and legal oversight can also send observers. The observers do a couple different things: * Watch/observe how the polling place is operated. Make sure laws are followed, people aren't struck from the rolls without reason, ballots aren't discarded without reason, etc., and * To observe and/or participate in the counting and tally process to make sure the tallies are accurate. * They can request to participate at any and/or all polling places relevant to their campaigns. If an observer feels either part of this process is not meeting their expectations they can file complaints in court to see to it things are run properly and/or that more transparency is mandated. As a little bts info, polling places are usually based on precinct, township, city, and/or county. Precincts are non-political districts drawn within a county based simply on population. Where I live each county is expected to draw precincts that do not exceed 2500 persons, and the lines are revisited every couple years. Some precincts are split if they have too many people, especially in urban areas. Other precincts in my area have only 100 or 200 people because those areas are rural and spread out. Either way, precincts are each assigned a polling place and usually include a public meeting area like a school or church. County, city, township probably don't require an explanation. Each state is a little different in how voter rolls are broken down to the local level. More info here: URL_0"
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/policies-for-election-observers.aspx"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
9u0gd5 | Why are some cultures obsessed with skin whitening? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e90im0d",
"e90ikpd",
"e90mmfq",
"e90owxy"
],
"text": [
"In many cultures, whiter skin is/was seen as a sign of wealth, as anyone with darker skin was assumed to be poor as they must have had darker skin from labouring outdoors all day, and therefore tanned, whilst the richer people how did not need to be outdoors all day.",
"In many Asian countries in the past only rich people would have pale skin as they didn’t have to do hard labor that would burn their skin like poor rice farmers etc. So having pale skin is seen as being higher class and more desirable.",
"It’s kinda the opposite in western, mostly white girls spend tons of money buying tanning sprays and stuff to look nice and tanned. It’s just a human instinct we always want what we don’t have. Like the saying my grandpa once said “When it’s hot we want it cold when it’s cold we want it hot”",
"Yes, one reason is because traditionally only lower classes would labour under the sun, in recent times a big part is due to the huge influence of European / Western cultures and how white people are held as the peak of beauty, so darker skinned cultures from SA, to Nigeria to Thailand to Philippines to Hong Kong etc, try to lighten their skin to emulate this perceived ideal of white skin ."
],
"score": [
29,
22,
11,
11
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
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[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
9u16rc | how is the U.S election protected? | How do we know the outcome we receive is the actual outcome and not fake? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e90pq81",
"e90qw7g"
],
"text": [
"We don't. All there is is reasonable propability. The only way to be sure the outcome is correct is a voting system without computers and with a good organization of counting and checking the votes",
"I would refer you to this thread from earlier today: URL_0"
],
"score": [
10,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9tyku8/eli5_how_are_elections_results_verified_like_what/"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
9u3930 | Why do so many American (other countries too, possibly?) professional sports athletes speak with an inflection-less monotone during interviews? Aren't the majority of them college educated and/or graduates? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e9139dq",
"e913m8x",
"e9139ui",
"e9136st"
],
"text": [
"Graduating college doesn't mean that you will magically change the way you talk. But what does change that is money. They get paid a bunch of money in endorsement deals and contracts to keep an image, and their PR team probably coaches them to measure their words and reactions to prevent bad press. Because that is unnatural, it comes off as wooden to the audience.",
"They are tired in post game interviews and the questions and the questions are predictable and often require recounting their memories of a certain moment of the game. In other words... Energy tank low, energy requested from brain to process exceeds energy reserves.",
"Yes, most sports athletes attended college, certainly 12 years of mandatory public school. That probably has little to do with their interview speech patterns. They have been coached, by their team management, to act that way during interviews. Left to their own devices, as was more common in the past, they might otherwise give insulting responses to insulting questions or do other things that might not present the media image that their club wants to put out.",
"I don't think your premise is necessarily true. I have never heard of this phenomenon or witnessed it myself"
],
"score": [
8,
6,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
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"url"
] |
|
9uhk4r | How slurs are reclaimed (like the word queer) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e94b8bo"
],
"text": [
"Words in and of themselves have no inherent meaning. They're just random noises. As humans, we have assigned meaning to these noises. Because societies change, the meaning they assign to noises changes too. This is how language develop and evolve. Think of \"retarded\" for example. Not so long ago this was a perfectly okay word to use to neutrally describe someone with less than normal mental capacities. Over time, language changed and, because of how the word was used, society assigned it a highly insulting meaning. In order to describe someone with less than normal capabilities, you now have to use different words (and because I'm not an English native speaker I won't pretend I'm up to date with what's the correct one right now). These words, over time, may also become insulting and new ones will have to be found. It's a constant cycle. You can however, reverse this process. \"Queer\" is (or has been) used as an insult to homosexuals. If homosexuals call themselves \"queer\", the word loses its power as an insult. \"Well yeah, I'm queer. What's your point?\""
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
9ujq9v | Why do you need to register to vote in some countries? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e94rn8t",
"e94rrsm"
],
"text": [
"In the US, there largely is no centralized national/state database of elgible voters, thus the need to create one by registration. A lot of states make this easier by offering automatic registration every time a drivers license or state ID is issued/replaced.",
"In the US, you don't necessarily need ID to vote (it differs state to state, so registration is necessary). In fact, voter ID laws here are incredibly biased. You'll always notice that poor people and racial minorities tend to vote for one party, these people generally do not have easy access to ID because it costs money to get one. By making ID a requirement to vote, you are disproportionately affecting voters for one party, so the other party tends to be the one putting out the call for Voter ID laws (especially when voter fraud is nearly nonexistent). They get an advantage by making certain people unable to vote. & #x200B; If ID's were free, and easy to get (some people would need to drive 100km to get an ID in rural areas), Voter ID wouldn't be seen as racist/classist here."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
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