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a7ht03 | In the UK, what does the title of sir actually mean and what benefits does it come with? | In the sense of Paul Mccartney being a Sir | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It means you’re a knight if the realm; there are various degrees of this, most involving gifts of land deeded by the monarchy. It also means the person is sworn to defend the monarchy with their life, and their ancestors have a shot at becoming part of the peerage. But that’s really simplified explanation, and most knighthoods given out these days don’t actually involve transfer of land title (they’re the most basic form). [edit] For example, when novelist Sir Terry Pratchett got his knighthood, he figured he should follow things to the letter, so he bought a forge and made his own sword on which he engraved his new coat of arms. That way he was actually ready to defend the Queen with his sword, as required, because he actually had a sword that was his. Oh yes; Knights of the realm also have license to travel in public with swords. [edit2] aargh! How did I miss autocorrect somehow thinking Pritchett was a more noble name than Pratchett? I mean, I don’t even know of any Sir Pritchetts...."
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a7itiy | the Sexual Revolution | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Why more sex? Birth control was more widely available. The Vietnam war in the 60's/70's brought back boys that were now men who had horrible PTSD and drug exposures. Ways of escaping could have been sex, \"Make love, not war\". They felt their lives were at their end, their number is called, might be up. Why divorce rates? Abusive spouses could be left as women in the workplace was more mainstream. Birth control did not trap women in a marriage with 10 kids... Church laws eased and remarrying after a divorce was possible, in church, about that time. A few points. Not comprehensive by any stretch!",
"Two words: the pill. To elaborate (and avoid the auto delete bot), it was the first time that women had easy reliable birth control, and for that matter the first time we all had access to good antibiotics. For the first time ever. Nobody had ever hear of HIV and other incurable STD’s."
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a7n31g | How would humans have inner monologues before language was invented? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Whenever I think of something, I am using a language. No you aren't. For example there are times when people have difficulty putting their feelings or thoughts into words so obviously they are having thoughts without an internal monologue. The vast majority of our thoughts if not all of them are not internal monologue, such as waking up with the urge to go to the bathroom. Do you wake up and think \"I need to urinate,\" or do you wake up and just feel the need and understand what needs to happen? The latter of course; if you didn't then whence would your monologue originate? In summary, thinking doesn't require a monologue or a language in which to express it.",
"You don't always use words when you think. In fact, you usually don't. Think about what a car looks like. What words did you use to describe the shape of a car in precise detail? You probably din't use any at all - you just imagined the car. When you think about the future - say you're about to start a new job, or go to your first day of class - you don't inner-monologue \"First I'm going to get up at 8:30 then I'm going to shower and make sure I have enough time to eat, probably an english muffin, then I'll drive along Route 82, I'm very nervous about meeting people, I imagine I might meet a person who looks like...\" No, you just run through the scenario wordlessly. Most of your thinking does not involve words.",
"That’s a great question. You should look into Helen Keller who was deaf and and blind and didn’t learn language until later in life. There is a famous play and book called ‘the miracle worker’ that tells her story by the woman who taught her. Anyway, I remember reading once that she felt that she was little more than an animal until she learned language , going from primal thought to primal thought, and only with language was she able to be human and have complex ideas. She has a really interesting story. Hope that helps",
"There is evidence (though given the rarity of cases it's kind of spotty) that people without language (usually deaf and not taught to sign, or \"feral children\") don't have an inner monologue in the same way that most of us do. We use language when thinking to organize thoughts using symbols, and that seems to be harder to do without language. That said, many forms of thinking don't involve language at all. If you are trying to solve a spatial problem, for example, that's a different kind of thinking. Memory doesn't need to involve language, and you don't _need_ language to plan ahead...although it can help you organize your thoughts. And of course there's all the \"under the hood\" thinking that gives you instincts and lets you interpret what you are seeing and balance and all that stuff."
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a7o4ir | What do letter S on some video game ranking means? | Why do some games have ranking system like C > B > A > and then S? Does it make sense when thinking of alphabet order? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That started in Japan. The \"S\" stands for \"Shuu\" which is Japanese for \"Excellent\" Some give it the retroactive meaning of \"Super A\", which is also fine, but it's not historical. Basically it's a natural consequence of rank inflation. If your fighting game has 16 fighters ranked D-A, and you want to add DLC fighters that are better, how do you designate that with a letter, given that you already used the first letter? The answer? Use an S. If the fighters get stronger still? Use another S. It's a natural consequence of power creep, when you have a ranking system with a natural cutoff."
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a7s5g5 | how do bands an singers prevent boredom of playing their songs over and over again? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It'll depend on the band. If it's not a new or pop band they'll have a better catalog of songs to play. Better bands will vary their set lists and not play the same set list night after night. It'll depend on what kind of band you're seeing. A jam band like Dave Matthews Band or Widespread Panic will turn a 4 minute song into a 10-20 minute song. That variety and audience energy prevents the boredom. If a band is getting bored they need to play better music or expand their catalog. & #x200B; For an example of a wider catalog look at DMB. There are 180+ original songs plus they'll play 0-3 cover songs per show. DMB has played 1900+ shows in 26 years and one of their most popular songs, *Ants Marching*, has been played just 1299 times ever. [ URL_2 ]( URL_1 ) . *What Would You Say*, just 691 times in 26 years. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) ."
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a7vbwo | How do people translate/understand obscure lost languages? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sometimes linguists find predictable patterns between an ancient language and a descendent language to interpret the ancient language. Has to be rather similar descendent language though, but I believe we’ve done this with some old Germanic languages with modern ones. Sometimes they’ll find a written translation between a well known ancient language and a not-so-well known one and that can serve as a guide. This is why some people can understand the meaning of hieroglyphics even though we really don’t really know what ancient Egyptian would have sounded like. Linguists used the Greek part of the Rosetta Stone to help figure out ancient Egyptian."
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a7wsh5 | My family, the descents of Italian-American immigrants speak fluent Italian however Ive noticed certain words specifically nouns are spoken much differently then what google translate says they are supposed to be. Whats the reason for this? Does the meaning of words get lost/change over time? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Different dialects exist, for instance if your family is Sicilian they say words very differently. They often will drop the ending vowel and turn hard consonants soft. Capicola becomes gabigol, ricotta becomes rigott and so on",
"They likely speak a dialect. All American Italians who come back to my village do not speak Italian but our local dialect because their parents were never taught it. Italian became popular only in the last few decades, especially in the South and smaller places."
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a83n7s | Why are there so many Michellin-star restaurants in Japan compared to other countries? | According to this wikipedia article, there's more Michellin star restaurants in Japan than even in a much larger country like the United States. Why is this the case? URL_0 | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A lot has to do with the craft that to Japanese restaurants put into their craft, sometimes spending decades perfecting a single dish/preparation. Watch the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi to get a feel for the extreme level of care they put into selecting ingredients, the care with with they work with them, etc.",
"Michelin is a French tire company that wrote reviews to encourage people to drive more (thereby buying more tires) and its focus is primarily on Europe. You can only get a Michelin star in places that Michelin bothers reviewing in the first place, and Michelin reviews restaurants in almost none of the United States. I think there's approximately ten cities in the whole country that have been reviewed at all.",
"Watch Chef's Table and you'll understand why other countries are more deserving of Michelin stars over American restaurants."
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a84s8g | How is choreography/dance transcribed? | I saw The Nutcracker last night and got to thinking: All of the musicians have written musical notation telling them which notes to play, but what about the dancers? How does someone write down which foot goes where while which arm does what, when to jump, spin, where on the stage to move when, and so on? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most of the choreography you see is a combination of named steps and moves. When you are in basic dance classes you learn these basic steps by watching and imitating a teacher. You learn the names of specific turns, leaps and steps, and then ad you become an advanced and professional dancer you can read instructions like \"plié on beat four, chasse L then R, then jeté landing on beat 1 of the next count\" A lot of dance is still taught in person through imitative learning as well",
"Honestly, as a dancer we simply don’t need to ‘write’ down much of our movement. The dancers you see on film and onstage have been training most of their lives to master the correct technique and knowledge of individual steps. Choreography is simply those steps put together in different orders with some added creativity. We are usually taught live in person and sometimes if your memory is not great you can record yourself and then rewatch it later to remember the order of the choreography. We rarely, if ever, truly write it down. There are some people who still notate dance (there are MANY different versions of how to do this, most are personal preference and not actually used in a professional setting) but since dance is a visual art, all you need is a camera to ‘write it down’. Also, since choreography is subjective, it’s not like there only one way to do Nutcracker choreography, for example: If a composer writes a song, when you learn it on an instrument you must play the exact notes that they wrote. A choreographer can create any movement to any song. That means you may see 5 different ‘Nutcrackers’ with 5 completely different sets of choreography. I hope that helped. Source: Professional Dancer/Choreographer Edit: Also saying this with so much love, OP...we don’t call them ‘spins’...that word makes us cringe. We call them what they are (pirouettes, chaines, tours, etc) or we generally call them ‘turns’. Spins implies lack of technique. Hope you enjoy more dancing:) Edit: typos"
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a8av2x | How did Christmas become X-mas? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"IIRC the x is actually a Greek chi, which is the first letter in the Greek word for Christ .",
"It was likely around the same time that Christmas became a Christian holiday in the first place. The X is actually the Greek letter Chi, which was used in the very early days of the Christian church in order to represent Christ. They would use the Chi (X) letter instead of the word Christ as a way of keeping their faith a secret during a time in which they were persecuted. Although there aren't any formal records of the first use of X-mas (Christ + Mass), it stands to reason it would have happened very early on in the life of the church, before it became it an accepted religion and religious practice. We do have a record from around 1100 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles that uses the term, though, and a whole bunch of records from the time the printing press was invented all the way up to today."
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a8b4ac | Why do monks have shaved heads? Is there something in the bible? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Do Christian monks shave their heads? I thought that was more of a Buddhist monk thing."
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a8bqit | How did so many civilizations discover such similar things such as the bow and arrow even though they didn't have connections? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bows and arrows are really useful things. Given enough time, most civilizations that like in places where bows and arrows would be useful will eventually develop them. There is some evidence that the concept of writing was developed thousands of years apart in different parts of the world that had no connect to each other.",
"It's common for different people to have the same ideas on how to solve a problem. You want to shoot something far away and have X materials around you. Out of 1000 people each trying to solve this do you really think each of them,separately without influence, will come up with a truly unique idea when everyone is working with mostly the same building materials? People may be \"unique individuals\" but our brains are generally all pretty similar in problem solving. If you have a good idea, someone probably already thought of it.",
"It's actually not clear how many times the bow was discovered. Probably at least twice (once in North America, once in the Old World) but it's pretty hard to track. On the other hand, a wheel usable for transport seems to have been invented only once. Writing was invented independently at least twice (mesopotamia, mesoamerica), probably three times (china) and possibly a couple more times. It's not impossible for people living in similar situations to invent similar solutions...but it's also not impossible for ideas and technologies to spread a long way to cultures that don't immediately seem connected: eg, how wheels in ancient China and Britain are both dating back to the same invention.",
"And why did some civilizations never discover/invent one of the most basic of tools -- the wheel?",
"The same reason that lots of ancient civilizations built pyramid like structures even though they weren't connected. If something is useful and relatively easy to make it's not unlikely for many civilizations to discover it independently."
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a8fvju | How did the act of clapping become a sign of enjoyment and applause? | How did the action of putting your palms of your hands together repeatedly mean that you enjoyed a performance? And might as well, another question I have about clapping. Why is slow clapping a sign of sarcasm? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In Germany they often hit their knuckles on the table instead of clapping. I find this weird, but I guess it's just whatever you are used to. I guess it's anything that can make a noise. You rarely go anywhere without your hands, so they are a reliable choice.",
"Here’s a weird one. In my elementary school there was a crabby old lady teacher who hated the sound of clapping and somehow was able to influence the entire staff of teachers to insist the children not to clap their hands at the end of a movie or a performance. Instead, we were instructed to raise our hands over our heads and shake our hands in the air ( wrists bent at 90degrees ) rotating around the wrist like we were shaking water from our hands. To see a group of 50 or more kids doing that silently was incredibly bizarre.",
"And a tidbit; at one time, the sound of approval at a say 'theater' was thumping the end of a mans' walking stick to the floor.",
"We started long, long ago by clapping along to a chant or musical performance. At some point, a few of us developed a mutation that resulted in pale skin and a lack of rhythm. We still wanted to show support, so just clapped randomly. When enough people do it, it results in a pleasant sound we call \"white noise\".",
"I guess we don't know when it started, but the [wiki article]( URL_0 ) seems to indicate that there are records from the Roman Empire of applause being officially the form of approval for arena performances. So the custom is at least 2000 years old. As far as slow clapping being sarcastic, it's actually more a sign of disapproval. With applause, the amount of noise is indicative of how much the performance was liked, from standing ovation, down to applause, down to \"polite applause\", down to one clap here and there (slow clap)."
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a8u8bh | Why is Christmas Eve celebrated in Europe and not as much in the US? And why is Christmas Day celebrated in the US and not as much in the European countries? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"According to ancient Germanic (northern European) tradition, the day ends when the sun sets - so it's the 25th as soon as the sun has set on the 24th, and the festivities begin. According to Roman (southern European) tradition, the day starts when the sun rises - so it's not the 25th yet until sunrise. These ancient traditions are all but forgotten now, but different places still celebrate cristmas slightly differently based on how they originally came to celebrate christmas.",
"Cubans in Miami celebrate Christmas Eve with family and friends loudly, while Christmas Day is in the house quietly.",
"In the UK Christmas Day is celebrated more than Christmas Eve. Charles Dickens is the one to thank for that.",
"Catholics tradionally do this . Its certainly different to what most are used to but very normal",
"Spain celebrates Christmas Eve with family - typically dinner (which is \"late\" compared to US/UK/AUS) then midnight mass. Gifts are traditionally **not** given at Christmas, but at Epiphany (Reyes Magos a.k.a \"Wise Men\")."
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a8wh65 | Why is the movie Robocop considered satire? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It uses irony and exaggeration to help make some points. OCP pretty much owns the police and when they produce Robocop bake in protection for their own executives to give them immunity. It's actually a pretty clever expression through film on the theme of how business and politics is so often in bed with each other, and the danger of allowing businesses so much power. It also touches on stuff like our seeming obsession and \"game-ifying\" of war with things like that fake commercial for the nuclear game, perhaps it could be taken as a statement of how employers want employees to practically be robots and always be \"on duty,\" a statement against workplace automation showcased by how ED-209 has problems and how \"evil\" it is portrayed while Robocop, still retaining some of his humanity, performs much more admirably... There's a lot in there that seems to satirize the America of the 1980s and quite a bit of it still holds up today. Media influence, corruption, gentrification, capitalism, etc. And it exaggerates the problems to an extreme to prove a point, and was a brilliant piece of political satire for its time."
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a8whaf | why did Vermont voters, who overwhelmingly supported democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, also elect a Republican governor? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The northeast is ok with Republican governors for two reasons 1) Both state senate and house are controlled by Democrats at supermajority levels so the governor cant veto stuff they want and cant \"do a lot of damage\" except through executive orders 2) The type of Republican that got governorship in Vermont and new Hampshire is very different to the rest of the Republicans in the us. They are socially liberal (pro LGBT rights climate change believers etc...) and fiscally conservative (less taxes). People of the northeast like that because they have very high taxes and even though a Republican governor cant stop the legislature from passing tax bills they still like what they say."
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a8xf72 | Why is the Ouija board game produced by Hasbro and sold at major toy stores if it doesn't really do anything? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's much like the pet rock... Only the fad has lasted longer. Plus some people think it works."
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a8zb1s | how did Jesus “become” white? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you want proselytize to Northern European pagans and convert them, may as well make the image palatable. Not many native blonde blue eyed Jewish Middle Easterners then or now.",
"Jesus is generally depicted as whatever ethnic or racial identity of the majority population in an area. That is why there are depictions of Jesus as being black, Asian, European, Middle eastern, etc. Jesus \"became\" white whenever his teachings were brought to Europe. It was easier to relate to someone that looks like you than it was to identify with someone that looks foreign. Especially in times before globalization was a thing and the majority people could read."
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a90p78 | If Holiday Fruitcakes are so universally disliked, why are they so popular to give as gifts year after year? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are not universally disliked. At most it is 50/50, and I actually suspect most people like them. It is just a running joke that bad fruitcake is hated."
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a91qka | Why is the alphabet "J" particularly has wildly different pronunciations in different language systems? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It used to be used to represent a \"y\" sound in Latin, so all the languages that used the Latin alphabet used < j > to represent their \"y\" sound. For some languages, that's the end of the story, and it's still pronounced that way today: German, Polish, Swedish, Finnish, and so on. In Romance languages, however, that \"y\" sound then changed into other sounds. In French, it probably turned into a dj sound, and then the modern French j (like the s in pleasure). English probably borrowed its j during the former period. In Spanish, it went through a different path to modern-day /x/. Italian also underwent this change, by the way, but then also changed the spelling as well, e.g. Latin \"jam\" became Italian \"già\", where \"gi-\" is pronounced like English j."
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a92rjt | Why do certain combinations of words sound better one way than another? (Like “mom and dad” over “dad and mom”) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s partially due to phonotactics. When you say “Mom and Dad”, notice how the “m” at the end of “Mom” flows straight into the “and”, similarly with the “d” at the end of “and” and the start of “Dad”. With “Dad and Mom”, there’s an awkward “dm” cluster between “and” and “Mom”. With “nd”, your tongue is in a similar position for both “n” and “d” while “nd” sounds occur in English frequently anyway, while “m” and “d” require mouth movements which differ more. Tl;dr: “Mom and Dad” uses a simpler and more familiar set of mouth movements to articulate, partially due to your anatomy and partially due to English being your first language.",
"Not sure this answers your question exactly, but it's a fascinating article: URL_0",
"Your mouth does less work to say one compared to the other. The difference is slight but it is there.",
"Great minds think alike. I've searched tha seven seas fer an answer. Yer not alone in askin' about these *irreversible binomials,* and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Why do we say words in certain orders, and then find it so weird to say it reverse? ]( URL_0 ) ^(_3 comments_) 1. [Is there a reason we always say our relatives in a certain order (aunts and uncles not uncles and aunts, mom and dad not dad and mom, brothers and sisters not sisters and brothers)? ]( URL_1 ) ^(_3 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why is it that \"mom and dad\" is much smoother and natural to say rather than \"dad and mom\"? ]( URL_3 ) ^(_27 comments_) 1. [Why does it sound normal when saying \"mom and dad\" or \"brothers and sisters,\" but weird when saying \"dad and mom\" or \"sisters and brothers?\" ]( URL_4 ) ^(_3 comments_) 5. [wikipedia page]( URL_2 )"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/6273nn/is_there_a_reason_we_always_say_our_relatives_in/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siamese_twins_(linguistics\\)",
"https://np.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x9x91/eli5_why_is_it_that_mom_and_dad_is_much_smoother/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/9s88b7/why_does_it_sound_normal_when_saying_mom_and_dad/"
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a947cx | Why do Arabs write numbers like ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ instead of using Arabic numerals like 0123456789? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The numbers we use were orignally developed in india. Before the invention of the positional system (units, tens, hundreds etc requiring a concept of zero as a number) the Brahmi numerals were used in India. When the positional system was created the numerals (known as Gwalior numerals after the location of some of the earliest examples) were based on the earlier symbols (although I struggle to see it myself). You can start to see the modern system in these. The Gwalior script and the idea of positional numbers disseminated through Arabia and as time passed three variants of the symbols came in to being - the Sanskrit variant in India and the western and Eastern Arabic numerals. The western Arabic numerals are the ones that travelled on in to europe and then went through two or three more changes over the centuries until what we would recognise as modern numbers came in to being in the fifteenth century.",
"Because they are written in Arabic .. the style of notation is positional which was a radical departure from the clunky Roman numerals of MM years ago. What you ask is why don’t they write them in Romanized alphabet. It’s a different writing system.",
"Arabs and hindus invented numbers in their own language what you learned as arabic nunerals are your languages interpretation of that"
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a98wzc | What is the grammatical difference between “he is [verb]” vs “he [verb]”? | For example: he is reading vs he reads, she is fishing vs she fishes. I’ve noticed we use both in English, but I’m not sure what tense or usage differentiates between the two. Edit: To be more specific, in some languages, tenses are categorized into the indicative, subjunctive, etc. What category would these tenses fall under? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think we tend to use \"he is ____ing\" when the person is doing that thing right now, and we use \"he ___es\" when the person does it generally or habitually. \"He is fishing\" implies he's out somewhere fishing right this moment, while \"he fishes\" means he goes fishing often. Interestingly, in French, this distinction doesn't exist in the present tense but it does in the past tense. \"Il va\" means \"he is going\" or \"he goes\", while \"il est allé\" means \"he went\" and \"il allait\" means \"he used to go\".",
"In English, \"he is reading\" is the present continuous tense, it describes an action that's not constant, but is currently happening. \"He reads\" is the simple present tense, it describes an action that always occurs, or happens regularly. URL_0",
"The -ing form expresses that the person is doing something right now but when you say she reads it means she often does that but not necessarily right now",
"“He reads.” Simple Present Tense. “He is reading.” present continuous tense. (Present Participle) There is an important difference between the simple present and present continuous tenses. The simple present tense is used to talk about things that we do all the time. For example, we use this tense to talk about our jobs, hobbies, habits etc. The present continuous tense is used to talk about things that are happening at the moment of speaking. English grammar is way too complicated ImO. Hehe"
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a9bh03 | how do brand new TV show's make their opening credits? | So, when a brand new show comes out, the starting credits usually contains scenes from much later, that happens seasons ahead that haven't even been made. How/why do they do this? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"By the time you see the first episode, multiple episodes have been shot. Or they shoot specific scenes for the opening."
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a9c7tz | What does "Roll Tide" mean? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The University Alabama's sports name is The Crimson Tide, and roll tide is a slogan that they should indeed roll on",
"It’s the university of Alabama school “cheer” but usually you see it in threads making jokes about incest because they are making references to Alabama’s reputation for incest."
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a9fmcn | What did Jimi Hendrix do for guitar playing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well it's christmas day and i'm on my phone so this is more of a tldr but basically: popularised distortion and feedback as a tonal choice, popularised wahwah pedal, popularised psychedelia within rock music",
"He was a musical sponge, and happened to be in the center of several important musical movements in the 1960s. Notably, he cut his teeth on the streets of Nashville playing blues before becoming the backing guitarist of the R & B group, the Eisley Brothers. After that he moved to Greenwich Village, New York, where he played in the same scene as Bob Dylan and the early \"hippy\" and folk music artists, before taking his talents to London and playing at the same clubs (sometimes alongside) as Cream, the Yardbirds, and other British groups during the British Invasion. Finally he came to the States and was the headliner at the two biggest musical festivals, Monterey Pop and Woodstock before returning to Britain to record his final works and dying of a heroine overdose at age 27. As a result of his unique experience and natural aptitude to pick up what others around him played, he became an expert at playing blues, funk, R & B, Rock & Roll, and Psychedelic music. He had a tendency to take techniques and tricks he picked up and turned them on their head, or taking them to a new level. A classic example would be his use of the \"whammy\" bar which was used to add vibrato. He took that and invented the \"dive bomb\" which became a staple of his solos and later a classic effect in metal soloing. Furthermore, he would merge techniques from different styles, creating his own and exposing his listeners to those ideas. That is a large reason he was so influential. Hendrix was as gifted a rhythm player as he was a soloist. His playing today is encapsulated in something called the CAGED system (which Hendrix did not invent or describe, it's just how he played). It boils down to using a set of chord positions and shapes and moving through them to play the harmony, (the C, A, G, E, and D chord shapes). Each one of those shapes overlays a different position of the pentatonic scale, and Hendrix was a master of manipulating harmonies and improvising around them on those shapes and scale positions. It was hugely influential in Rock, Blues, and Funk guitar. And finally, the dude could simply shred like no one else. He did things no one else did, and he did anything you could do better and more creatively. He played fast, he played hard, he had a deep library of licks and tricks and would bust them out on the fly, reverse them, modify them, and play them in new ways constantly. Listen to his cover of _Killin' Floor_, first the original (by Howling Wolf) and then a variety of his covers. It was his opener for several years. He never played it the same way twice, and every time he did it he managed to come up with something that made other guitarists go \"I need to learn _that_.\" The same goes for the rest of his albums."
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a9gkt6 | Why does Japanese use 3 different alphabets/sillabaries? | So I'm learning Japanese (on Duolingo) and I've been learning hiragana, but then got katakana thrown at me, and then kanji is/may be sliding in there? I don't even know what's kata and what's kanji because they don't tell me. Why does Japan use 3 different systems at the same time? I've heard and seen this as the case and it doesn't make any sense. If a word can be pronounced fully with hiragana, why not just use it as the full alphabet like Roman characters are for western languages? Also, spaces? Where? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the beginning, what would later become \"Japan\" adopted Chinese characters for their writing. Note that they only adopted the script, the spoken language is still Japanese, they just hammered that into Chinese characters Later, during the middle Heian period (~1000 AD), a combination of a movement to detach from the mainland and develop a \"native\" culture, along with much of literature being written by women in courtly cultural salons lead to \"women's hand\" being developed and the de facto language. Women were traditionally not allowed to learn Chinese script, which is why what would later become Hiragana developed. A number of important works, like the kokinshu, were written in hiragana. Later, the Heian period collapsed, and the era of warrior rule started. With the end of cultural salons as the center of literature, works once again were written by men, for a predominantly male audience. The language became a mixed script of Chinese characters and onnade. Katakana was parallel to all of this. It was used primarily for foreign loan-words. At first, Chinese of course. --- tl;dr let's copy china, let's try to stop copying china (women make their own script), rip women, now we do both",
"Kanji is like the full word. Hiragana is the pronunciation (plus some grammar usage) Katakana is for word form foreign countries. The reason why Kanji exist is because it contains more meaning than a hiragana and there are shit ton of homophones. For example. 死、詩 and 四 can all be read as し but all have different meaning and nuance (Death, Poem, and Four) I would try to compare it to English homophones like cell and sell. If written as they're read, the two words are /sɛl/ (comparable to hiragana) while the actual words it self (cell and sell) would be comparable to Kanji. You can imagine how hard it is to communicate using only the pronunciation without knowing the actual words (I scream VS Ice cream). This arguably makes things stupidly difficult because you have to memorize shit tons of kanji for each words. However, it also can arguably be said that this allow much more information to be packed in a single character, for each character can be thought of as a symbol representative of a concept. This also allows a character to be read differently depending on the situation (for literary value or coolness or whatever). For example, 拳 (Fist) alone is read as こぶし (Kobushi) but when used in conjugation with other words, like 北斗神拳 (Hokuto Shin Ken - God Fist of the North Star), 拳 is simply read as けん (Ken). This is the Onyomi or Kunyomi which should be mentioned in any japanese lesson. I personally recommended against remembering which is Onyomi or Kunyomi because, in the end, the reading are practically fucking arbitrary and can be read whatever the hell a person want because there is actually no rule. Names are guilty of this in particular (You can never really be sure how a name is read if they don't specifically specify it). Just remember word by word is more efficient and you will get a sense of how to read a kanji in different situation. This is also why japanese generals in the past can have a kanji like 義 as their banners, while having words like Justice on a western flag would looks weird. It also kind of enable kanji to be written both vertically or horizontally. At least, that is what I understand from having studied japanese for 8 years and have passed N1 several years ago. I understand that it may be one of the hardest language to learn (but damn being able to watch anime and play every japanese game I want is fucking sweet). You can ask me if you have any other question.",
"> what's kanji because they don't tell me. Kanji are symbols for full words. Obviously this requires a massive number of unique symbols and isn't practical for keyboards. Hiragana then was made for phonetic spelling of Japanese words, but many words are incorporated from other languages so katakana is used for those foreign words. > Also, spaces? Where? Only if the writing is exclusively in hiragana and katakana. Otherwise they aren't used (and why should they when each symbol is independent already?).",
"Chine characters were introduced along with Buddhism. Texts came in Chinese, and scholar learnt Chinese for religious texts. In Chinese, 1 character=1 syllable=1 word (roughly). Japanese scholar could write in Chinese, but the need to write down the language everybody (=the court) arose. So they decided to use Chinese characters to write down japanese, where single words have multiple syllables and some words have changing forms (endings) like verbs or adjectives. But they didn’t follow one method. Some words were written by only using the sounds of the Chinese characters, some were written using only the meaning with a Japanese word attached to it, some even written with characters like rebus. And it was not consistent. The Man.yōshū, one of the first poem collection, is not consistent with its use of kanji, was written with what got called the man.yōgana (the 10000 letters), that is a total mess that is a whole university subject of its own. (In the same time religious and « serious » text were still written in Chinese. So there was a dual system:Chinese characters were used « purely » to write Chinese, and used in various ways to write Japanese. To write Japanese, easier or more common kanji got preferred over others, and as the people writing them wanted to write faster, they evolved in a more and more cursive ways and became hiragana. As women were not taught Chinese, they used those to write down purely Japanese texts with those phonetic letters. some kanji with easy meaning were also used here and there only for their meaning, as shortcuts. In the mean time, monks still worked with Chinese texts. But as not all of them could really learn Chinese, they had to find a way to read Chinese text with a pronunciation guide. They created katakana as simple signs, usually a part of a common kanji, to write how Chinese texts were to be changed. As years passed, more Japanese language had to be written down, with more and more texts relying on Chinese words that had entered the common language (but with part of the administration still using Chinese only). Slowly, hiragana or katakana (it became standardised much later as to which one should be used) got used along Chinese characters in order to write those Chinese words in grammatically Japanese sentence. (I should mention the kambun texts, which were Chinese texts with Japanese kana added along them to specify the correct Japanese grammar, correct word order etc which had already mixed the 2 writing system but I don’t remember precisely how it developed) So many words of Chinese origins, with a lot of nuances, had entered the vocabulary. Not writing them with kanji would have made them lose some weight, some nuance, and Japanese has so few different sounds, that it was convenient in a way to keep them around. That’s (very roughly) how you end up with a dual phonetic/ideographic system. I write these relying on my university memories. There are inaccuracies but I hope you get the idea!",
"What I have learned is that katakana is used for words that did not exist in Japanese. For instance, ドイツ would be mimicking the German word \"deutsch\". Hiragana is for words that already exist in Japanese (words such as ふとんorふろ). Kanji is for helping make a sentence clearer. Since there are some Japanese words that sound the same like 神 and 髪 Ex. ふろにはいりたい becomes 風呂に入りたい。",
"A native speaker might be able to answer better, but my understanding has been that katakana is used for many non-native words and it was used like print writing is used in the west as opposed to cursive. So, in my understanding and to sum up: Hiragana- used like cursive, more formal, covers all Japanese syllables. Katakana- used like print, more in formal, covers all syllables and foreign words. Kanji- traditional symbols that translate into entire words, rather than syllables.",
"The picture-based Kanji was taken from Chinese. Japanese is a language that conjugates many of their words but Chinese does not use Japanese conjugations. The Hiragana phonetic alphabet is combined with Kanji to add in the conjugations that did not exist in Chinese. The Katakana is... wait, yeah Japan, why 2 phonetic alphabets? Katakana is typically used for foreign words and is not attached to any Kanji. I think this was really just Japan having a bit of fun with us. Edit: who downvotes people for trying answer questions? Good lord, people.",
"It's simple. Originally, Japan had no writing system. Then they took the Chinese symbols but developed their own way of pronouncing them because the languages are nothing like each other. One Kanji usually has two or more possible pronunciations - one Japanese and one \"Chinese\", which obviously doesn't sound like Chinese but comes from there. It depends on context and is a pain in the ass to learn. Kanji carry the meaning and make up the roots of words. Hiragana developed out of Kanji and was initially used by women only. Gradually, it got adapted by everyone because it fits the flexibility of the language a lot better than using Kanji alone. In verbs for example, the root of the word is a Kanji and then you have a string of hiragana after it which changes depending on the tense and different conjugations. Hiragana characters are phonetic and always pronounced the same Katakana is basically the same as hiragana but used for foreign loan words and names. In case you're wondering why they don't just abandon the Kanji to make it easier (you have to know about 2000 of them), there are lots of reasons not to. Japanese has a lot of homophones so seeing the Kanji (=meaning) in a sentence immediately makes it obvious which one of the meanings was intended. We read by recognizing the overall shape of words and not by reading letter by letter, which is perfect for the latin alphabet. Japanese however, doesn't have that many sounds and a text that's entirely in hiragana is simply confusing because it doesn't have that many distinct shapes. Sometimes you don't know how to pronounce a Kanji but can still understand a sentence because at least you recognize its meaning. It's a crazy writing system but really fits the language perfectly."
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a9iyt6 | Why do American schools favor a 9 month school system that inhibits age-appropriate sleep over a more conducive full year schedule? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The duration of the school year has no bearing on the duration of the school day and therefore no bearing on sleep. The school day is chosen based on the work day. It is structured such that parents can drop their kids off before work and then pick them up after their after school extra curricular.",
"historically its for harvest, same reason as most of the world. the kids get off school at the time historically when they would have been needed to help with the harvest. It adds the benefit of segmenting it into distinct years and giving a long break for the kids to partake in social and formative activities. In what way do you feel it impacts or inhibits sleep?",
"Judging from OP's tone and responses, sounds like you have a serious chip on your shoulder and aren't just asking out of genuine interest. The original reason had to do with farming families, which needed help in the summer. But actually the reasons go far deeper than just the help. Basically in America, the responsibility for a child's education rests primarily on the parents. A year-round school is just a step further than a very large majority of American parents are willing to take. The 3 months represents a time for parents to take their kids on vacations, send them to church functions, etc. So whatever reasons that it started, it's an ingrained part of most Americans' culture now, and is unlikely to change.",
"How does a 9-month school year inhibit age-appropriate sleep exactly?",
"It’s an outdated system. Originally people needed their kids to help with farming in the summer months. And schools weren’t climate controlled. Obviously neither of those things is true any longer. It makes much more sense to go year-round, but have breaks more often.",
"US teacher here. The school day start times are an atrocious slap in the face to developmental science. Unfortunately, schedules are ruled by two things; athletics/activities and transportation. Sports are king in many parts of the US, and if the school day ends around 3pm, that leaves roughly 2-4 hours for practice before it starts getting dark out and families have dinner. If we moved the school day back so that the day ended at 5pm, kids would regularly get home after 8 or 9 and parents would flip out. Unfortunately it serves the needs of the few over the needs of the many. Transportation for mid-large districts requires that buses be available for 2-3 separate “rounds” of bus routes before and after school every. single. day. This means that start times are stretched out to facilitate those trips and get the most bang for your taxpayer buck with as few buses and drivers as possible. Public transit just isn’t common in the vast majority of the US, and most cities aren’t built condensed enough for all kids to walk/bike to school (or at least not reliably). We have legislation requiring buses be provided to kids living X distance from school, even if it means that someone’s entire part-time job is to drive one kid to and from school every day (which, yea, does happen). The year-round thing is a whole different monster. I recommend watching the Adam Ruins Everything episode on it."
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a9pq3u | As Spain is one of the only countries that has a functioning aircraft carrier, it is rarely spoken of in the same military breath as the likes of France, Germany, U.K or Italy, why is this? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The trick being that the Juan Carlos I isn't *precisely* an aircraft carrier. It's an amphibious assault ship, which makes it less of a base for aircraft and more of a mobile landing platform for air and sea assets in preparation for an invasion. The US has 30-something such vessels, and we don't count them as aircraft carriers. The only exception to this are Japan's 3 *Osumi* class ships, which are all called amphibious assault ships and operate like them, but which are somewhat larger, and which were built with the expectation that they could be very very quickly retrofitted into actual aircraft carriers in a pinch should Japan ever amend it's Constitution to allow for such vessels.",
"The Spanish military doesn’t even come in the top 30 of the most powerful world militaries and often stays out of international intervention. One small semi modern aircraft carrier doesn’t make Spain compare with the top NATO powers.",
"Their carrier is decommissioned and was extremely old and outdated before it was withdrawn from service 5 years ago.",
"It still has a smaller military, an small economy to fund that military, and no nuclear weapons like France, and the UK. So even though it has an aircraft carrier it is still a league below most of the countries you name.",
"The Spanish aircraft carrier Juan Carlos I isn't in the same tier as the [Nimitz, Charles De Gaulle, or Kuznetsov classes]( URL_0 ). The Juan Carlos I is incapable of launching standard aircraft, it can only launch VSTOL(Vertical or Short takeoff and landing) aircraft like the Harrier, F-35, and Helicopters. The Juan Carlos I fills a similar role to the [USS America]( URL_1 ) Amphibious Assault Ship which transports Marines, helicopters, and landing craft to various places but isn't meant to chill in the Pacific for a couple years just in case"
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a9rc9b | What exactly is the Holy Trinity in Christianity? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Holy Trinity is: * God: God is an all powerful, benevolent, all knowing entity that created the entire galaxy and universe as we know it * Jesus: The human incarnation of God, sent down to fulfill several old Testament prophecies and create a human link between God and humanity. * The Holy Spirit: an unseeable force that guides people on behalf of God/Jesus. It's kind of hard to explain the link between the three but basically they're all the same entity in different forms. And what's even more complicated is that different flavors of Christianity have different opinions on the concept of the Holy Trinity. I haven't personally been in a church that didn't believe in it, but there are apparently some out there that view it as essentially Biblical \"fake news\" because it conflicts with the idea that God is one being. There have been several theological debates over the years about different aspects of it. Other religions probably don't care about it since it's a uniquely Christian thing. If any other religion has something similar, it might be Mormonism but I don't know enough about their theology to say for sure. There are lots of other religions that believe in God. Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet (but not God). But as for the concept of the Holy Trinity, it's a Christian thing that separates the different parts of God's being. (I could be slightly off-base about this because I'm not a pastor or theologian, just a church layperson, but I think this should cover the basics)",
"Other religions are even more confused than Christians about the Holy Trinity. The Prophet Mohammad interpreted it as polytheism and caused him to reject Christianity while accepting Jesus as a Prophet of God.",
"It is a mystery. Don’t try too hard to put it into words. Get a copy of the Rublev icon of the Holy Trinity and just contemplate it. If you want, read the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers: St Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gregory Nazianzus, and St. Basil the Great, who finally articulated the accepted formulations of the Holy Trinity."
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a9vwla | Was wine as strong in the medieval times as it is now? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Wine was drank a lot more frequently back in the day in a significantly watered down state because the alcohol was a way to kill off bacteria in the water. Nobody likes disentary.",
"I don't have a direct answer for you, but when General Washington was given a farewell party (attendance of 54), their bar tab was for the following items. * 54 bottles of Madeira * 60 bottles of claret * 22 bottles of porter * 12 bottles of beer * 8 bottles of hard cider * 8 bottles of Old Stock (a.k.a. [colonial whiskey]( URL_0 )) * 7 large bowls of spiked punch That's ~~136~~ 114 bottles of wine (top ~~3~~ 2 items), between 54 people. We're not talking fru-fru bottles like Zima or something, these were full sized bottles from the back of the bar. & #x200B; Edit: Fixed my error, porter is a beer, port is a wine.",
"Conjures images of Tyrion Lannister vomiting straight wine and then groggily pouring another cup and slurping it down.",
"Apparently it depends if they had corks or not, if you have the patience for a long nerdy pop culture video here's some interesting data: URL_0",
"The wine itself isn’t any stronger. The yeast still ferments at the same rate. It’s just that alcohol kills harmful microorganisms, while the sources of water at that time were quite often literally full of poo. So they would mix water into the wine to kill any bacteria and drink that instead. It wasn’t straight wine, or like you suggest, they’d all end up constantly hammered and/or hung over. (Not to mention super dehydrated.) They often did the same with beer.",
"I don't know about wine, but the beer was much weaker than today due to the yeast available.",
"Did wine grapes of 1000 years ago have as much sugar as today's? I would think they would have developed improved varieties of grapes and more sugar for stronger wine would be one of the things they looked for. I suspect today's wine tastes better and is a little stronger. There is such a thing as progress."
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a9wa5m | Why did WWI happen? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The assassination is what put the gears in motion that led to the war, but there were a multitude of reasons that the war broke out. This was an era when nationalism was at its height in Europe and when everyone thinks their country is the best they won't shy away from a war. In its simplist form that was WW1. Franz Ferdinand was heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary who ruled land that Serbians thought should go to Serbia. The man that shot him was a Serbian Nationalist.",
"Franz Ferdinand was killed by Slavic nationalists. It was meant as a political statement, but ironically he was relatively moderate and more the sort of figure they should have been trying to make an ally rather than kill. & #x200B; The assassination set off a chain of dominoes. First, Austro-Hungary was pissed. There were many voices distrustful of Serbia in the first place who wanted to check them, and they called for war. A-H issued an ultimatum to Serbia that Serbia felt it had no choice but to reject, as to accept it would infringe on Serbia's sovereignty and basically make them subservient to A-H. Their rejection meant that an A-H invasion was almost certain. & #x200B; A-H was allies with Germany. There was a bit of a miscommunication here. Basically, A-H asked if Germany had their back if they went to war with Serbia. Germany said yes, but figured it would be a small, local war, and they would work at assuring the other powers that was all it was. A-H interpreted this as Germany having their back no matter what. This was exacerbated by the German leadership going traveling and being out of contact for a while. & #x200B; The Russians had promised to protect Slavic countries like Serbia, and they said they'd protect them. This freaked Germany the FUCK out, firstly because of their earlier belief that this would be a local war, and secondly because of the details of their war plan. It's important so let's go into it. & #x200B; The Germans had a problem: France and Russia were allied against them. They didn't want to fight a two front war. So they came up with the Schlieffen plan. Basically, they figured that Russia was big, but slow to move. If a war seemed certain, Germany would mobilize their troops as fast as possible and launch a lighting fast invasion into France, with the aim of knocking them out of the war immediately, before Russia could finish mobilizing their troops. They could then turn those forces around to face Russia, the invasion of which they figured would take a long time due to the vast distances involved. & #x200B; But this all hinged on their being able to mobilize and beat France before Russia could get their troops mobilized. If Russia showed ANY sign of doing so, they had to immediately invade France. & #x200B; So the problem here is that Russia, aiming to support Serbia, announces a partial mobilization. Not a declaration of war (yet), but they wanted to be ready just in case. But that doesn't really matter to Germany. If they don't move now, the plan is worthless. They decide they have to go for it. & #x200B; The German-French border was heavily defended. The Germans needed to take Paris fast. It was much quicker to just go around the heavily defended border. Through Belgium. Who was neutral. & #x200B; Germany figured it wouldn't be a big deal, they had no beef with Belgium, they just wanted to pass through on their way to France. Belgium didn't see it that way, and resisted. And Belgium's neutrality was guaranteed by Britain, who took it very seriously, since Belgium was right across the channel in easy reach of their shores. So that drags Britain into the war. & #x200B; All of these steps were made worse by significant factions in all countries that wanted war, or at least that felt that it was better to have the war now than later. People were afraid of Germany, which was a young country that was growing quickly in population and could potentially dominate Europe. Better to cut them down now before it's too late. A-H wanted to nip problems with the Slavs in their south in the bud, before they could start looking at splitting parts of their empire away. Everyone was worried about Russia, who while they were giant had always been kind of backward. But they were beginning to industrialize, and it'd be better to strike before that happened. To add to all that, this was still an era where war was often seen as a noble endeavor, something that would turn boys into men, something where there was glory and honor to be won. WWI was the war that would break that mindset.",
"The late 1890s and early 1900s were a different time than today. It was a time where every empire was trying to add to its territory. The UK was the big daddy at the time. The Industrial Revolution had happened about 50-100 years prior and Britain was the most powerful empire in the world. It had territories throughout the world. Other countries were trying to emulate Britain. You had Germany trying to expand in Europe. You had the Turks (Ottoman Empire) trying to expand towards the West. It was the perfect stew for a global war. The world at the time was on the brink of war, and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was just the spark that the world needed to start declaring war on each other. & #x200B;",
"MAIN. Militarization of all the nations. Alliances between nations. Imperialism and empires. Nationalism and identity. Honestly, Nationalism probably explains the most, but the cascade was basically a web of alliances that were supposed to deter war that ultimately collapsed. Black Hand killed the Austrian prince, so Germany and Austria declared war on Serbia. Then Russia was required to declare war on Austria because they pledged to protect Serbia. Then France and Britain followed their Alliance with Russia and declared war on Germany. I don't remember the rest, but that's the big stuff until the colonies jump in and before America and the Lusitania."
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aa05m0 | How did Kwanzaa develop and become so widely known as a new holiday nationwide in such a relatively short period of time? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Kwanzaa was created as a holiday in 1966. At that time civil rights and black activism were at their height. Many schools and news media covered the creation of this beneficial positive holiday celebration. As a result, many blacks feeling disenfranchised by other holidays took up adding this one. I think it's a perfectly fine holiday."
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aa0zd8 | People described as 'butchering' something denotes that they have done a poor job/made a mess of it. But butchers are masters of their craft, what's the connection? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When an animal has been butchered it becomes unrecognizable. It’s not just dead, it’s in pieces. It carries the connotation that what’s been done can’t be fixed. Edit: spelling",
"I don't care how good a butcher you are; primal cuts don't come out looking anything like a cow.",
"While it takes plenty of work, skill, and knowledge to properly carve up and piece out an animal, to a layperson who's looking in from the outside, the craft looks messy and brutal. There's not a lot of elegance or subtlety to it to most people, because it can just look like a person with a very large knife breaking down a carcass. I'm sure that there's plenty of subtlety to getting everything just right to the best butchers themselves, but we're talking outside appearance here. So that's where the term originates in that sense. Where a surgeon might give the appearance of sterility, care, and fine skill, a butcher can definitely give the opposite appearance. So if something is done in a messy or heavy-handed way, we might call it butchery, though it's disrespectful to the butchers out there.",
"A butcher cuts something up into a series of joints of meats which once a carcass has been disassembled it is impossible to put it back together again, so the carcass has been \"completely butchered\".",
"Wow a lot of people have different ideas about where this expression came from. Maybe they are right, I always figured it was just because butchering a full animal is messy even when you have expertise in it.",
"A butcher is a master in their craft yes, but from a cows perspective the butcher isn't exactly making him \"better\". I think the idea is: they made something SO bad, you have to have done it on purpose. It has to be your job to make things bad, because this is so bad it cannot be done if you are not a master of the craft of making things worse."
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aaawq2 | Why Asia has such a high demand for endangered species body parts for traditional medicine, when some of these animals are not traditionally found in Asia eg the African Elephant, Giraffe or Rhino. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the 1950s, the Communist Party in China was faced with a huge population and not enough doctors trained in Western medicine. The solution was a big propaganda push emphasizing the superiority of “ancient” Chinese medicine, which was at that time an eclectic collection of folk remedies. Most of the animals used in traditional Chinese medicine were found in China, but the principles behind it could be extended to other animals - if the recipe calls for parts from a big, strong creature, surely a rhino would be very good medicine. So Now there was a large market with a large demand, and savvy suppliers stepped in to fuel that demand and make profits.",
"They actually were in Asia, [brought in as gifts to the emperor.]( URL_0 ) Southeast Asia and Vietnam, which was historically part of China had the Asian Elephant and Rhino. So these animals used to be the symbol of the rich and powerful. As ancient medicine has all sorts of bad side effects (see bloodletting, trepanning, and mercury for immortality), the methods that do the least harm are the ones that survive, since sometimes the improving health of the patient can be falsely attributed to the medicine, rather than to them naturally healing over time without any effect. This is also why homeopathy still survives to this day. As the rich and powerful have access to these exotic creatures, they are also seen as status symbols. And as medicines produced from these animals would have little to no effect, and also show a certain amount of divine power (the giraffe is said to resemble the qilin or chinese unicorn), they are written down by the scholars of the time as miracle cures. As Asia's economy improved and industrialised in modern times, the people had a higher standard of living, and the things that were once only restricted to emperors, nobles and the extremely rich could now be bought by middle class people. This drives up demand, and therefore increases the hunting pressure on these animals.",
"The demand really is only in the super rich Asian and they do it for vanity. Period. It's really no different from those hunting trophies in those very rich country folks or picture of African hunting safari. It's just to show ppl around them that they are rich enough to spend money on this type of stuff.",
"It's important to distinguish \"traditional\" medicine in Asia from \"folk\" medicine. Traditional medicine has roots tracing back thousands of years and is largely unchanged. It is generally based on crude pharmacology and various types of anatomy and physiology. The science may not be 100%, but there is a scientific process of sorts and certified practitioners. Folk medicine is an uneducated, cobbled together kind of medicine that is customized to area, problems, etc. Traditional medicine in rural Asia is largely unchanged over the past 100 years. Globalization has not done much more than change the way it's expressed to a more coherent and organized means. Their beliefs and science behind it may be questionable, but we have similar issues in our medical practices, just expressed in different ways. Folk medicine has changed radically with globalization. The introduction of alien species has opened up a lot of exotic flavors to tired tropes for snake oil salesmen. Imagine if you wanted to convince an impotent man that you were selling a cure for his ED. You've been selling ground up oxen horns for hundreds of years. But now you can sell someone elephant horns. New! Bigger! Stronger! Exotic! Striking! It's everything a salesman would want.",
"Those animals have an Asian equivalent or used to at one time: I.E. the Asiatic Lion, Asian Elephant, Asian Rhino's. The ones that don't often have an equivalent in chinese mythology, I.E. the Komodo Dragon being taken as a literal dragon so they can grind up bits for potions that were probably never intended to exist. The problem is that to the degree traditional Chinese medicine works it only works under very specific circumstances with specific animals: I.E. we use snake oil as a shorthand for fraudulent products because it doesn't work, but it does ...provided you use a specific type of snake more or less found only in Asia that has higher concentrations of the specific chemical that works, compared to american equivalent. Meaning the imported versions may not be as effective or even work at all. Which sums up the problem for even the traditional medicine that doesn't involve these ingredients: There's effectively no quality control or verification, and the demand for it far outstrips the supply. There's a *version* of Chinese medicine that's effective and safe, but that's not what most people get.",
"It’s a status symbol... People are actually leading to the extinction of whole ecosystems just to show off...",
"There are a lot of utter bullshit answers here, including the top answer. Giraffe is not used in any Chinese traditional medicine, nor is any part of the elepahnt. Ivory is used in China how it is used anywhere in the world, as a precious material for trinkets and art. Tiger bone is not an ingredient in any medicine either; some people just think it has health benefits. The only real ingredient is rhino horn, and in modern production of that particular medicine recipe by approved pharmaceutical has been replaced by water buffalo horns. Both elephants and rhinos *are* traditionally found in China. Like, how hard is it to look up \"Asian elephant\" and \"Asian rhino\" and read a little about their habitat and range before the modern era? As for why do people demand endangered animal parts? Why do people want ivory and gemstone and diamond, ever? Because a small but not insignificant portion of the population is both powerful/rich and uneducated/dumb.",
"There was no historical demand for rhino horn as an aphrodisiac. Westerners, teasing the Chinese and Vietnamese, created this myth. After a few decades, they believe it and now there is a huge demand. In recent years a new myth has arose that it cures hangovers. It sounds like the biggest driver is one-ups-man-ship, as it's seen as an expensive status symbol and often gifted and re-gifted as a way for the newly-wealthy to show off and seldom actually consumed. & #x200B; Elephant ivory (from Asian and African elephants) is often used for chopsticks - easier to wash than wood and far classier than plastic.",
"People believe in quack medicine the world over. Theres more asians than anywhere else so theres more demand there for endangered animal parts."
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aad687 | Depiction of Speed of Oversized Characters in Media? | In movies and television, larger than life characters, characters that are larger than the media's normal scale, i.e. Ant-Man when he enlarges, the wildling giant in Game of Thrones, etc. are always shown to seem to move slower than the normal scale characters. Is this a realistic depiction of movement speed compared to size of a creature? Animals that are larger than humans don't seem to move that much slower than us like whales and elephants. Is this trope just a misinterpretation of how the larger creature would look to us, or due to the limitations of special effects/ mo-cap ability or something similar? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is due to the [square–cube law]( URL_0 ). This means that as an animal gets bigger in size, its weight increases faster than its strength, so it becomes harder for them to move their limbs relative to their bodies. Note that they don't actually move slower than smaller animals; they just move slower *relative to their own bodies*."
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aafudc | What is the origin of the “love heart” and how did the heart come to hold such significant emotional value? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No one really knows. We've found the shape depicted in artwork from around 5,000 years ago, but its meaning is unknown. As for when it gained that modern meaning? No one knows. It first was used in that context hundreds of years ago, but the way it was used suggests its current meaning was already familiar to people at the time. All we really have is speculations and ideas, but none of them have any solid evidence backing them up."
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aanq1o | What spurred the usage of 'Xmas' in place of 'Christmas'? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"X\" is the Greek Letter Chi, which is the first letter of \"Christ\" when written in Greek. The X is just an abbreviation, and was used for many years by Christians as a secret code that only others would know to show they are Christian in times when it wasn't best to be open about it.",
"**Please read this entire message** --- Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): * ELI5 requires that you search before posting. There are absolutely no exceptions to this rule. Please see this [wiki entry]( URL_0 ) for more details (Rule 7). --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules]( URL_1 ) first. If you still feel the removal should be reviewed, please [message the moderators.]( URL_2 ?)"
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aap8yv | Why is Tupac still so popular, 22 years after he died? What does he represent to his fans that get tattoos of him and try to be like him? Was his music great? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ok I’ll attempt it. So Pac was to rap music what Elvis was to Pop Music At the height of his fame he was involved with a rivalry with The Notorious BIG who was his equal. Think Lionel Messi and Ronaldo. He was a symbol of rebellion and anti establishment. He wore his heart on his sleeve and put it down on record. His infamy was heightened when he was shot in a New York recording studio, in the same building Biggie smalls and Junior mafia were, speculation increased that it was biggies crew who did this. 2 Pac went to prison to serve a sentence for alleged sexual assault. Whilst inside Biggie released the song ‘who shot ya’ as well as his debut album Ready to die. Once 2 Pac got out he released arguably his most influential album All Eyez on me, as well as the song Hit em up, a diss song to Biggie, Junior Mafia & Mobb Deep. This ramped up the east coast vs west coast beef. After his death following a shooting in Las Vegas in 96. His legacy shone for the rest of the hip hop world to follow. He was an icon in a relatively new genre of music. He influenced so many in years to come, he carried an entire coast on his back and is regarded as the Greatest rapper of all time. Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Cobain, are all in the same bracket as Pac for the legacy he left Not only did Pac create some of the best west coast albums he created some of the best hip hop and albums period. Start with All Eyez on Me, Then 7 day theory, Then me against the world. THUGGGG LIFFFFEEEEE",
"> I cry at times I once contemplated suicide, > and woulda' tried but when I held that 9, all I could see was my momma's eyes > No one knows my struggle, they only see the trouble > Not knowin' it's hard to carry on when no one loves you his music was great, he had so many sides to show us, he was the voice of the streets, but also the voice that pretty much any marginalized or misfit could relate to",
"In addition to what others have said a lot of his music is surprisingly positive despite the thug life lifestyle most people associate with him. I would recommend checking out changes, hold ya head up, baby don't cry, and Brenda's got a baby for some good examples of that. The last 3 of those listed are very empathetic towards women which goes against common rap stereotypes. A lot of his music is still relevant today too, changes is a good example of that. And his music is good as shit.",
"Tupac and his “fuck you” and “fuck it” attitude were perfect for me and how I felt at the time. I started shaving my head because Pac did. I smoked weed because Pac did. His lyrics were deep spiritually and emotionally. He was a poet. And near his death he was preaching more about unity and diversity which stuck with me after his death. He was a great artist and has over 4000 recorded songs we haven’t heard yet. “Changes” is a great song, meant to be on All Eyez On Me, but PAC hated it. He was a perfectionist and we haven’t heard the best from him yet.",
"Just read the lyrics to Keep Ya Head Up and realize he wrote that over 25 years ago. He was on the path to being a revolutionary in the black community and society in general. Died too soon.",
"Shouldn't be explaining gangster rap to a 5 year old, but his lyrics are amazing, his vocals are great and his beats were dope. If you even have to ask it's best to just listen to an album or two and find out for yourself. \"Dear Mama - 2pac\" is a good song to start with. It tells a deeply personal story of his mom growing up. Our English teacher even read it in class in the late 90's.",
"Basically because 22 years later the issues and problems of society Pac pointed at and criticised are as present today as they were when he wrote about them. “Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger kill a nigga he's a hero” “Can't a brother get a little peace? It's war on the streets and the war in the Middle East. Instead of war on poverty they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me” The lyrics are as biting and as relevant to the listener in 2018 as they were when written in 92. Songs about hanging out by the pay phones or taking your date out for a chocolate soda and a drive through movie are unrelatable now but many listeners especially young male minorities will feel much of the same frustrations and anger at being treated like a second class citizen in their own countries much the same as Tupac protestsed and fought against. Edit: Stoies like Pac shooting two law breaking police officers in the ass AND WALKING FREE never hurt to make you a permanent hood legend",
"Like James Dean, Elvis, Jimi, or Janis, or Michael, dying young is a brilliant career move.",
"Mostly because he died young. I liken him very, very much to Kurt Cobain. He was the one who came into a genre and shook things up the hardest. His music was more honest and emotionally transparent than people were used to, and for that he will always be seen as a wonderful musician. But most of all - it's because people love to identify with someone who died too early. People love to proclaim their love for Cobain, Morrison, Joplin and Tupac because it makes that person's death about them. It makes them feel unique because they get to say \"look, I'm a fan and he/she was taken from me.\" I'm not saying all people are this selfish, but lots and lots of people are. Cobain and Tupac were not the best at what they did. Period. It's the mystery and untimely demise that makes them attractive as icons."
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aaqi6r | WTF is big chungus and what caused the recent surge in popularity? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So its one of those memes that wrote themselves through their generally obtuse nature. There have been other ones (beep beep lettuce comes to mind) that exist solely because its such an inside joke it almost doesnt exist on the same realm as us. It started as just a picture of bugs bunny and it said chungus. I feel like i saw it a while ago too, before its recent surge in popularity. Maybe a week and a half ago someone uploaded it onto reddit and it was upvoted by chance. As memes typicall do, it just spread like wildfire and people started putting it into other already used formats (a format is sort of like a meme, imagine an equation that you can plug numbers into. The format acts like the equation and as new memes pop up the parts of the equation can be substituted for new content and invariably may create a new meme). That leads us to where we are today, chungus has (in my opinion) reached max meme state as it is recently being used in new memes (like the january 5th meme) and will keep going on its track until it eventually gets replaced by the next new absurd meme (not accounting for the future formats that plug it in as a dead meme) so basically it makes sense because it doesnt. The first post on reddit was literally just a pic of bugs bunny saying big chungus. It doesnt need to make sense i guess"
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aaxkmq | Why is noon 12 “PM” instead of “AM” when it followed 9, 10 & 11 AM? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Noon is considered midday, and anything following would be considered after midday, or post meridiam (PM).",
"The Romans invented the 12 hour clock dial and their number system doesn't have a concept of zero; that's why it's 1-12",
"A.m. stands for “ante meridiem”, which is Latin for “Before Midday”; p.m. stands for “Post Meridiem”, which is Latin for “After Midday”.",
"Think of 12 as more of a “0” than 12. Midnight is a new day, not the end of the previous day, and in military time 12:01 is 0001."
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aayjxd | Why are people in Mexico not trying to speak more of their indigenous languages that was prevalent before the colonial language Spanish? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Why aren’t Americans trying to speak the Native American language?",
"Put simply, it makes far more logistical sense to speak Spanish, as it is a more universally known and understood language. This makes all aspects of life (jobs, education etc) easier."
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ab0xq2 | Why is it illegal to walk around in public with an alcoholic drink in the US? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most places have regulations concerning public intoxication. It’s not a national law. Local governments make the decision. There are several places, such as Las Vegas and New Orleans, where it is perfectly legal to drink openly in the streets.",
"Public intoxication and people not being able to act appropriately while drunk. Basically they can’t behave so they need to be somewhere safe.",
"I live in Berlin where you are allowed to have open bottles of alcohol and I notice way more broken bottles on the street than I ever saw in America. I attribute this to drunken people walking around with open bottles and letting them fall because they're too drunk to hold onto them. For the sake of my dog's paws, I wish they didn't allow open bottles.",
"You can't park your car on the sidewalk here either. Every time I watch English/European TV shows I'm like, do you see this? Where are the police? They parked on the SIDEWALK I require justice!",
"It varies from state and city based on public drunkenness laws. It also can vary depending on the type of container used. In my college town you are able to walk around downtown with alcohol as long as it is not in a glass container.",
"It has to do primarily with American Puritanism. The country was originally founded by those escaping religious prosecution, so they were the most influential on American values. They were very conservative in many ways against gambling, sexuality, and drug and alcohol use. I'm fairly sure that American prohibition in the 1920s was probably one of the biggest bans in a Western country in the 20th century. America still has weird laws, for example the restaurant where I worked wasn't allowed to serve alcohol because it was within 500 feet of a church. It's still a part of the culture today",
"Open container laws purpose is to restrict public intoxication URL_0 It's only public spaces though, like sidewalks. You can get smashed in your front lawn if you want, in front of all your neighbors. There's also many places as well where is legal. Like, you can usually (and I don't know where the can't) get drunk on a river in an innertube.",
"It is to give grounds for the police to quickly and easily deal with someone who is making a public disturbance while drunk without having to wait for them to hurt someone or destroy property. Most of the time you will not even be given a warning walking around with an alcoholic drink, but if you start being obnoxious they will arrest you prior to you doing something harmful.",
"This is unfortunately a question without a real good \"why\" answer. Basically it was made illegal by most states in most places (there are locations where you still can drink openly), but its quite old and isn't really a good reason in modern context of \"why\" other than it was standard practice that this law came into effect in most areas, except some areas that were either specifically omitted, or specifically allowed to have open containers of alcohol. In the past in the US, most laws and rulings didn't have a lot of context around them that we would now expect in the modern world, they were passed, done and done, and that was that, without more info. More or less, the laws in most areas said you can't drink, unless we say you can or you can drink, unless we say you can't, and both effects occurred which minimized the amount of places that fill in the \"can drink\" areas. In a modern context, most areas are actually getting more stringent on drinking in public-- not because of any alcohol issues (generally) but because many local business/bar/restaurant owners tend to push and lobby the government to limit drinking in public in many areas as that they can instead get those drinkers into their establishments to drink.",
"New Orleans, Vegas, Savannah, and Boca? I think are the 4 places where it's legal."
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ab52du | Splitting infinitives??? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"An infinitive is just the phrase \"to *verb*\". A split infinitive is when you put an adverb in between the parts of an infinitive. So in your example, the word \"never\" is in the middle of the infinitive \"to grow up\", so it's a split infinitive. Having a split infinitive doesn't mean the sentence doesn't change meaning if you take out the adverb, it's just a description of the order of words in the sentence.",
"The sentence with the infinitive un-split would be \"I was wise enough to grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.\" - the *never* was removed. This looks different from the previous example because the split infinitive is part of a sub-structure of the sentence - \"to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had\" - which has other verbs (\"was\") before it."
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abb87y | Do radio commercials really have to have that rapid "conditions apply!" at the end? Would something bad happen if they left it out? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"ecyxbi2"
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"text": [
"Yes, and yes The conditions blurb at the end of commercials give legal cover to prevent being sued for false advertising. That's why companies have ad campaigns get signed off by their legal department"
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abchpu | Why does the United States have average primary and secondary education, but some of the best colleges in the world? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"eczbkwj",
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"text": [
"Usually a case of financing, and the income inequality in the US. Schools are often financed by property taxes, and the areas with high tax revenues often have high schools better than most worldwide. However, in middle class and lower areas there often aren't the revenues to hire the best administrations and best teachers, so the schools are pretty poor. There are a lot of very bad school systems int he US dragging down the averages. Also, there have also been racial and religious factors making sure that not all schools are financed very well. Which is why, in the US, the quality of the local school system is a major factor in where wealthier parents move.",
"Well, first of all, the US doesn't have \"average\" primary and secondary education, its actually on par with the top nations of the world, however the metrics everyone use and how they evaluate these rankings are pretty weird and nonsense and its not comparing like items, as each country as a different system, reports different things, and so on. There is no real \"standard\" criteria, and if/when they do use one, the US generally ranks among the top nations."
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7ug5so | Why do non-English speaking countries have so much English on their packaging and marketing? | It seems like English is everywhere. Even in music, the language will switch from Korean (KPOP as an example) to English for the chorus. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"English-speaking countries are so economically powerful, mainly through influence of the United States, that most countries include English on their products so that tourists or international customers can read them. Interestingly the dominance of English in international business is so great that if someone is going to learn a second language in order to do business overseas it will almost certainly be English. The result is that English is an expected common skill which only reinforces its dominance. For example someone from Germany doing business with someone from France will likely result in them speaking to each other in English, as the German probably doesn't know French and the Frenchman probably doesn't know German, but both likely understand English to some extent. So when a company is considering what to put on their package to make it accessible to non-native speakers it will almost always be English.",
"English is the language of international business. Well-educated people tend to learn English. English speakers can get better jobs because they speak English. Speaking English is a status symbol of sorts. So brands use English in packaging and marketing to associate their products with the positive cultural status of English.",
"In the case of Asia (I would say Japan and Korea because I'm only familiar with these 2 countries), adding English can be a marketing strategy not so much as to make the product practical (because foreigners can understand it) but rather to make it cool and trendy and add a strong image of internationalization for the brand. It's very common to have ridiculous commercials with a Japanese man or woman purposely screaming in English or in Japanese with a strong English accent to make it seem more \"trendy\" or \"global\". Being able to speak English with a good accent is a sign of high education (mostly because it means you have been overseas and you have lived there, you/your parents were successful enough in business to live/be sent overseas, you probably nailed the English tests to get into a good uni and, of course, you know about the \"global world\") and is used as nauseam to promote universities or English schools. Same for fashion, makeup and the like, but way less often for food. But it's not only for English. Like they would add some grammatically impossible French on products like chocolates or fashion items for people to associate it with Paris/romance when they target 30-40 year old females.",
"It’s easier. Seriously, it’s the same reason the US puts a Spanish translation on to most products. If you expect a large amount of customers to speak a certain language, then it’s simpler to have that language on the package."
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7ugagu | So in the original Planet of the Apes film, were audiences legitimately lead to believe that the whole movie was taking place on another planet, only to have the ending reveal it was in fact Earth? Or was it that they knew it was Earth, but the characters in the film didn't? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It was suppose to be that the audiences didn't know it was earth until that statue of liberty scene. Everything else was suppose to draw you away from thinking it was earth. For alot of people it worked like me when I was a kid, but some people I know kinda figured it was earth all along",
"Planet if the Apes was the Sixth Sense of its time. Thats the best comparison. It was a massive reveal, one that audience didn't expect. It was all about that mystery.",
"It helps to remember that Planet of the Apes was a 60s sci-fi film. Generally speaking, if the people from another world weren’t meant to be “alien” then they wouldn’t look all that different from humans because there weren’t a ton of special effects. For example, there are a ton of Trek and Doctor Who episodes from this period have aliens characters without the slightest bit of makeup prosthetics. So, for that time period it wouldn’t have set off any red flags story-wise for there to be humans and apes on an alien planet. Edit: Also Superman, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Flash Gordon, and Star Wars are good examples of aliens indistinguishable from humans."
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7uj75j | Paris scam I don't understand | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dtkpn2d"
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"text": [
"What you're discussing is a variation of a grift called a [pigeon drop]( URL_0 ). I have an item I have convinced you is worth more than what I am asking for it, so you pay me. In this case it relies on the mark's (you) dishonesty that this is your ring, you'll try to find whose ring it is, or that you're willing to accept unconfirmed items which may be stolen."
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7uobr1 | What is the difference between dubstep and brostep? | I am very confused about the differences. I heard that brostep is usually “harder,” is that true? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dtlxvs3"
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"text": [
"You pretty much have it right. Brostep is a sub-genre of Dubstep, and Dubstep is much less specific. Really, the only requirements for something to be dubstep are to be ~140-150 BPM, have a 2-step drum pattern (except for Carnival, which is 4 on the floor) and have prominent bass. \"Dubstep\" has many subgenres, and when most people hear Dubstep they think of Brostep, which is dubstep but \"hard\" and \"aggressive\". I know that sounds vague but I don't have any other way to describe it."
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7uqui1 | The Supreme clothing company and why its so popular right now. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Well, the original prices of Supreme products are not that outrageous. The reason it seems that way is because most people see the resell prices that Supreme is sold for. Supreme has limited releases - “drops” - every once and a while with new items, but releases a very small supply compared to the demand for their products which in essence means they are artificially manufacturing a high value for their products. And since they have a strong fan base, people will make sure to be outside the Supreme store or on the website for the exact drop time to try and buy the items for retail, but since they sell out in minutes most people are stuck with the resell prices which go into the thousands for a simple hoodie.",
"Sometimes, the whole point of a very expensive thing is showing off that you can afford it. It's a status symbol for people who care about that kind of thing."
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7urn8x | How does someone that was born and raised in another country choose a "Western" name when they immigrate to Western Country? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Some Western names are English translations of names in other languages, and some Western names just sound like names in other languages. Also, there are Christians all over the world so there might actually be Vietnamese people named Anthony or Vincent.",
"Sometimes by suggestion. The gas station around the corner had a young Indian lady whose name tag read : Mandeep. Everyone greeted her with a smile. A few weeks later her name tag read: Mandy.",
"Speaking for Indians, a lot of names have a western twist to them. India does have a sizable Christian and Catholic population so western names are pretty common in those communities. As for punjabis, I'm not one myself but it's pretty common for them to have western sounding names like Jimmy or happy, bubbly etc."
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7uuhdm | How does a bill that passed overwhelmingly in the House and Senate (98%+) not get enforced by the executive branch? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"In response to the title, since the Executive branch has sole authority in enforcing the law, as a consequence it can choose not to enforce the law at all. In response to the post, since I do not know what specific bill you are talking about I can describe the two vetoes. First, the President can outright veto a bill on his/her desk and send it back to Congress within 10 days (or it defaults into a law) to vote on it again. If they get a two-thirds majority it becomes a law without having to go back to the President, if they do not get a two-thirds majority, it does not become a law. Second, a pocket veto is when a President does not sign a bill into law at the end of the 10 day time limit **and** Congress is not in session at the end of the 10 day time limit to override it with a two-thirds vote."
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7uw2zy | Why aren't foreign words originating from non-latin alphabets (e.g. yarmulke) spelled more phonetically? | It just seems odd that when transcribing it to the Roman alphabet, words like that would be spelled how they sound. Like "yammuka" for example. Thanks! | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The major reason for this is that many languages contain sounds that don't exist in English, and cannot be represented with the English alphabet. So the typical solution is to decide \"these characters mean this sound, and these other characters mean this other sound\", even when doing so isn't strictly phonetic to how English is normally pronounced. However, your example is kind of a poor one for this, because \"yarmulke\" **is** spelled phonetically. In Hebrew, you pronounce the 'r' and 'l' sounds. We just tend to pronounce it wrong in English."
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7uw9u4 | Why was Michael Jackson such an important figure in music? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dtnns00"
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"text": [
"He revolutionized what a music video could be. He was the first to make them into literally short movies. Before that, it was basically just a video of the band lip synching to their song."
],
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7uxfmc | Why does America exclusive write dates as mm/dd/yyyy? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dtnxgkq"
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"text": [
"Because, as you correctly pointed out, it matches the written out format. 11/08/2016 is in the same order as November 8, 2016 – we write it how we say it. That said, for filing purposes, I always write yyyymmdd, as in 20161108, and that way you can sort by date and file name."
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7v0idv | Why did the sun appear on the North side (on their right as they traveled West) of sailors doing around Africa in Herodotus' Histories? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dtonh9k",
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"text": [
"I'm not familiar with the story you're talking about. But in the Northern Hemisphere the sun sweeps across the southern part of the sky, and in the Southern Hemisphere it sweeps across the northern part of the sky. Half of Africa is in the Southern Hemisphere, so as you sail around it you're going to see the sun in the north (it still rises in the east and sets in the west, but while it's up it will be north). This would have been of interest to the Greeks since they didn't get that far south very often.",
"Because the Earth spins on a tilted axis and orbits the Sun, that tilt alternates between the north pole tilted nearer the Sun and the south pole pointed nearer, so the north hemisphere's winter is the south's summer and vice-versa. Thinking of the tilt from the point of view of someone standing on the surface at the equator, it looks like we are straight and everything else is tilted, hence the sun appears to be comming from the north or south, depending on the time of year, even though it's us who are pointing askew due to the tilt. Does that make sense?",
"North of the tropics, the sun will curse towards the south over the course of the day, to your left if you are looking west. South of the tropics, it will course to the north. In the tropics, it is mostly overhead, can be either depending on the time of year. In all cases, the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, the difference is the path it takes during the day. Herodotus recounts a story from ~600 BC, where an Egyptian king sent Phoenician sailors out on the Red Sea, and see them return two years later via the Mediterranean. Give the data when this was supposed to have occurred, on the surface the story is implausible, and could have been just one of many wild nautical tales. The part about the sun being in the north part of the sky, however, lends credibility to the tale, as it is a rather odd detail to have invented. It indicates at the very least a voyage that went south beyond the tropics."
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7v2r4v | Why was England immune to the development of different languages within in, as it occurred in other European countries? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dtp1fd8"
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"text": [
"There are actually many languages spoken in the UK to varying degrees of popularity, such as Scots, Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, etc,., and quite a few accents/dialects of the English language itself even within one city in the UK."
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7v7boq | - "Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.“ | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dtq0i60",
"dtq25bk",
"dtq0xz8"
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"text": [
"Beware of becoming the thing you hate. Its all about not sinking to their level. Rise above, fight the monsters but remain a cool guy.",
"If you think it is okay to punch Nazis, and you think that it's okay to silence and oppress Nazis, and you can't tell the difference between a Nazi and an ordinary person who also hates Nazis, then you end up punching and silencing and oppressing ordinary people, just like the Nazis did back when they still existed.",
"> \"Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. The Punisher is a great example for this. He murdered the people who killed his family and got revenge and in the end, he didn't stop but killed more criminals instead of putting them in prison. he became the very thing he was fighting. A murderer. > And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.“ i think this means that the abyss is a disowned parts of yourself that you wish to deny exist inside you. Nobody wishes to find out they can pull a switch and kill millions but it is there for us if we are pushed to our limits. the evil that we hide in us is what stares back at us from the abyss."
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7v8u3s | Why did Kim Jong Il make so many trips to China and seemed to get along with its leaders when they have different ideologies? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dtqd105",
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"text": [
"They may have different idealogies, but from the perspective of global politics, they are on the same side. North Korea and China, and to an extent, Russia, all are not supporters of a world where the USA is a military leader/policing nation. Put simply, North Korea provides a buffer between China's border and US military bases in South Korea. If North Korea were to fall or be integrated into a USA leaning South Korea, the USA could set up bases, observatories etc much closer to China's border, and that is a big no no for China, as it gives the USA way too much potential information gathering that China doesn't approve of Furthermore, China wants to be the leader in Asia. Without supporting NK and having it fall, China's position as the dominant power in Asia would be threatened by US friendly nations such as SK and Japan",
"Overlapping interests. China wanted a buffer between it and the West (SK and the US military) and a potential economic partner. NK wanted a powerful ally and economic partner. Unfortunately for China the Kim’s are not great partners in any way other than simple necessity."
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7v9kw9 | why and when did we start celebrating birthdays | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Hard to tell... the Bible has some of the earliest references we can find of people celebrating a (edit: real person's) birthday (in this case the Pharaoh's), but surely tracking and somehow marking how old one is goes back further. It's only relatively recently that the average person would know that this day is exactly a year since [some date a year ago], because calendars weren't continuous, and didn't necessarily follow the solar cycles, or even try to. That said, one would assume that people have been keeping track of how many years they've been alive since we had a concept of years, and that it was later that a person could pin their age down to the day. Before it could be marked on a specific day every year, people probably just celebrated parts of the year (seasons), and thought \"Hey, I've seen 30 of these now, cool beans\".",
"Having a birthday and celebrating it are two different things. The celebrations of birthdays can be traced to at least 400 BC with feasts being the way they were marked (not gift exchanges). Celebrating birthdays was seen as a pagan tradition, and Jews were against it except for a boys bar mitzvah at 13 or a girls bat mitzvah at age 12. Other than that celebrating birthdays was not done. In early Christianity as well.. it was taboo to celebrate a birthday. In fact celebrating anything other than the Sabbath was taboo and considered a pagan practice (selfish and celebrating the self rather than celebrating God). Even now some Christians refuse to celebrate their birthdays, but in order to get Christianity accepted over the years this rule (no celebrating other days) was sort of not enforced and you will note now that many Christians make big deals out of their birthdays,.",
"Some person was tired of being cynical and shit and to change things up decided that every year people should celebrate the fact that they’re a year closer to death. Life was short so why not party until death."
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7vdkhh | How do you make new friends without going to bars? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dtrgxjb",
"dtrgze7"
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"text": [
"Find things you like. Find groups of people doing the same things you like. Join those groups and go to meet ups.",
"join a class or a club. Martial arts, art classes, etc whatever your hobbies are find a group who do it together."
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7vgmru | The current "Cold War" that's going on between USA and Russia | I keep reading about it on reddit but everything is so vague, it seems like both sides hate each other with passion but I really don't understand why | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dts3dy3"
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"text": [
"Both sides want to have more influence in international affairs than the other is OK with. So, they to make each other look bad."
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7vmwo0 | if you can’t lie under oath, what’s stopping someone from asking you if you committed the crime? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"in civil cases like you owe me money, you can not remain silent. but in murder case or anything like that you have the right to not incriminate yourself. Because of this you have the right to plead the 5th which is not to say anything.",
"Normally, criminal defendants don't take the stand for this reason. However, if you're on the stand (not as a criminal defendant - the rules are somewhat different) and someone asks you a direct question like this you can simply refuse to answer under the 5th Amendment.",
"> Eli5: if you can’t lie under oath, what’s stopping someone from asking you if you committed the crime? (Assuming US) Nothing stops them from asking it. The Fifth Amendment allows you to refuse to answer. You cannot be compelled to take an oath in order to testify against yourself.",
"Nothing. But people do still lie under oath. And you still have to prove they lied under oath, which in your hypothetical, means proving they committed the crime. If someone is at risk of going to prison for murder, I don't think lying under oath is going to bother them too much."
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7vr1je | What does the bar at the bottom of the Super Bowl mean? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"You usually find the following data on the screen during a football game: - Score: How many points each team has - Time: Each quarter has 15 minutes, the timer shows how many minutes are left in that quarter: - Quarter: The game's quarter is shown. The game has a total four quarters - Down and yards to go: The team on offense has 4 attempts to travel 10 yards down the field. If they make it at least ten yards, they get another 4 attempts for another 10 yards. They show which attempt the team is currently on, and how many yards they need to reach the ten yards. The info will usually show like \"2nd and 6\", which means the team is on their 2nd attempt and have 6 yards to go. - Location of field: Every part of the field is numbered based on the yardage. They will show what yard line the offensive is currently on. - Play clock: Starting from the end of the previous play, the offensive team has 40 seconds to start the next play. The TV will often show the play clock when the timer gets close to zero seconds. - Penalty flag: Sometimes, you will see a yellow box with the work \"Flag\" appear. That means that one of the officials has thrown their yellow penalty flag on the field. The penalty is applied once the play is over. - Statistics: The TV will sometimes show the statistics from the previous play, especially if it is a big play. For example, it might say \"32 yard rush\". They will sometimes show up to date totals, for example \"205 total passing yards\"."
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7vwuta | When illegal immigrants are deported, are they given some form of passport for the trip? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No, they are given a law enforcement officer in lieu of identification. When they get back to their home country, they are turned over to that government's law enforcement agency. Then they are set free by their home government, or not.",
"In Europe at least, illegal immigrants can't get deported unless they have documentation proving their nationality, such as a passport. It explains why the number of illegal immigrants who live in Europe is so high in comparison to the number of them that get deported to their respective countries of origin."
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7vx5xj | What makes a painting worth so much? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"because people agree its worth that much... though they dont really have to back that up with cold hard cash very often. art is about providence and history. it feeds on itself, just need one small thing to get the ball rolling and the hivemind will hype it up until its hype is its own justification.",
"Art has no inherent value. Its value comes from private individuals who want it as an investment, status symbol, or decoration, or from museums who want it for their collections. Out of those four reasons, all except decoration are based in large part on the fame of the artist. Perfectly beautiful paintings from no-name artists aren’t valued as status symbols or considered important for museums to collect, and so the art market doesn’t value them to nearly the same degree. Since there are only a small and limited number of Vermeer or Van Gogh paintings and obviously there can never be more of them, the existing ones become extremely expensive to acquire. Artists like Picasso that made far more paintings in their lifetime aren’t always that expensive - only their most important works go for many millions."
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7vxrgt | Has anything truly changed as a result of Edward Snowden exposing the NSA? | I rewatched the Snowden movie last night, and with the current Net Neutrality controversy, I started thinking. Other than raising awareness to the general public, what (if anything) has truly changed or improved since then? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The main thing the Snowden leaks did was take something that was assumed in a fuzzy way \"the NSA likely does something like X\" and crystalized it into \"the NSA does this, this, and this, and these are the laws that let them do it.\" This means that people now know what rules dictate what they do and how they do it, providing more accountability. It also served to make people pay closer attention to the bills being put forward by Congress, and erase the misconception some people had that the US wasn't a surveillance state.",
"How much has changed really depends on what you do day-to-day. In the hacking community, there was a decent level of playful respect between federal agents/military hackers and the hobbyists, even those who were a bit more shady, if you catch my drift. In 2013, DEFCON was a *very* tense con, which is unusual. There was a decent amount of flippantry, but it was the first time that the con organizers politely requested that federal agents not show up to the con (whereas in previous years there was always the playful game of \"spot the Fed\") (and of course there were feds there anyway, but the point is that they felt the urge to say that). I think the biggest change was that it gave a lot of people their first real reason to distrust the government, and while you can debate whether or not this is a good thing, it certainly is a palatable change when comparing \"before\" to \"after\"",
"Several tech companies began encrypting more data to increase privacy/security. For example, Google began encrypting data at rest (on its own servers), which previously it had thought safe from prying eyes, but the leak revealed deeper access. URL_0"
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7vz0tc | Why do some Asians only want crisp/new money bills? | I work at a bank. I constantly get requests for crisp, clean, new money bills from Asian people during withdraws or exchanges. No other ethnicity asks for perfect bills nearly as much. Why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> I constantly get requests for crisp, clean, new money bills from Asian people during withdraws or exchanges. No other ethnicity asks for perfect bills nearly as much. Why? Almost certainly this has to do with Asian traditions about gifting money. You probably ask this question because you are getting a flurry of requests, which only makes sense considering Chinese New Years is on February 16th where children will be given the traditional red envelope (hóng bāo) containing money as a New Years gift. Money is also given at weddings and birthdays. In all occasions the money should be crisp and new, as old or dirty money is in bad taste. Would you send someone a dirty Christmas card? Same idea.",
"Am Asian, Lunar New Year is coming up in a week or two, so the bills are going to be gifted in red envelopes (I bet you've been asked for those, too). Most of the reason why it has to be crisp and new is related to that, you'd want your gift to be nice and presentable. People from outside the culture might think, \"Whats the point? Its money so you're going to spend it anyway.\" Traditionally, the money is supposed to be good luck, so you aren't supposed to spend it (You're giving your luck away). In practice though, the money is probably going to be regifted, saved, or spent.",
"There is a tradition in Chinese culture (which has spread to other cultures in the region) of giving cash gifts inside red envelopes on certain holidays and special occasions. The practice is typically from elders to younger family members and there are many traditions and guidelines regarding the amount given and how the gifts are given and received. For example, there are varying traditions on whether the amount should be even or odd. Or if the amount can or cannot end in a certain number. One of the traditions is to only use new bills for these gifts. I was once in a post office in Taipei, Taiwan (post offices have banking functions in Taiwan) prior to Chinese New Year and witnessed reams of new bills being delivered in anticipation of the demand for new bills for New Year's gifts.",
"It's common in a number of Asian cultures to give money as gifts. When this is done, it's polite to give crisp, new bills, not ratty, torn, wrinkled bills. So probably most of the people who are coming to see you to get bills are doing it for the express purpose of getting new bills to give in gifts. Then they get regular bills out of ATMs, most likely. As someone who lived in Japan for a long time, though, I'll add that it's just normal practice to keep bills nicer there. I'd crumple up bills and put them in my pocket and then pull them out and they'd be all wrinkled in a ball and I'd have to straighten them out, and my friends found that to be hilarious. It's just a certain range of what is acceptable there. People typically keep their bills neatly in wallets, all facing the same direction. They also deal with cash a lot more there--it's typical to carry around lots of cash and pay with cash, even when it's large amounts, and not use credit cards nearly as often as in the US. So with so many people keeping their bills neat and crisp, you'd stand out as a slob to not do the same. As a final note: while I was living there someone published a book about bacteria on public things. They took swabs of subway seats and handles, toilets, and money. It was extremely disgusting. There is a lot of crap (literally) on money. This pushed the public to be more aware of how money is dirty. There are even special ATMs in Tokyo that clean and press bills so when you go there, you'll always get pristinely clean cash.",
"My boss is Korean, and was mortified to find out I crammed my cash into a coin purse. The way he explained it was that you have to respect money. Don't fold it unnecessarily, face the bills in the same direction, trade old dirty bills for new ones. He says if you respect money it will respect you (meaning money will come into your life more frequently). He says it's definitely a cultural thing.",
"US money is highly sought after in China, in particular, as a more stable form of payment than the Yuan. However, there are many counterfeiters in China, of all sorts of goods, not just currency. As a result, merchants are only accepting of the most pristine currency. The $100 US note is particularly highly prized for its extensive anti-counterfeiting features. But only perfect ones. Whenever I travel to China, I'm one of those folks that goes to the bank looking for pristine money to take with me. Your oriental customers are probably planning to give/mail it to someone."
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7w05uu | Why can some large corporations get away with directly attacking other large corporations in their commercials without getting in trouble for slander/defamation? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Defamation (in US law) is a knowingly false statement of fact that causes damages. \"X sucks and is dumb and makes bad products\" isn't a statement of fact. It is an opinion, and opinion cannot be defamatory.",
"Technically since it's an ad, it would be libel, not slander which is an oral statement. And defamation is a broader term for either libel or slander. Take the recent Wendy's ad campaign. The basic message is \"Wendy's tastes better than McDonald's because we use fresh beef and McDonald's uses frozen beef\". What tastes better is a matter of opinion, and you can't defame by expressing an opinion. That McDonald's uses frozen beef is a verifiable fact, and it's not defamation if something is actually true. Making fun of a competitors claim is likewise not spreading an objective falsehood. The McDonald's statement \"our beef is flash-frozen to seal in flavor\" was mocked by Wendy's with \"Remember an iceberg sank the Titanic\". Nothing legally defamatory about that. Now if Wendy's ran an ad that said McDonald's used horse-meat for their burgers and they were contaminated with broken glass and *E. coli*, that would likely result in a lawsuit for defamation since it is neither opinion nor a true fact. That \"better\" is subjective is settled case law. Papa John's was sued by Pizza Hut. The gist of the claim was that Papa John's statement slogan \"Better Ingredients- Better Pizza\" was not objectively true. They won in a lower court which ordered Papa John's to stop, but then upon appeal a higher ruled that \"better\" is a matter of opinion and thus not subject to libel."
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7w3470 | Why is the devil portrayed as evil? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So if we go off the Christian side of things. Lucifer was an angel under God. Lucifer acted against God in a few ways, and was thus struck down and banished to the underworld known as Hell. He's supposed to be impure in thought, selfish, but the big thing is he doesn't like God. So the prophecy is that one day he would manage to escape his banishment and fight God and his angels once again. To do this, he tempts humans with things and ideas to get them to also doubt God and work against him, so that when they themselves go against God they would as well be placed in Hell, where Lucifer will use them in his army during Armageddon, the final battle. The real only big thing is that he's anti-God. Depending on the portrayal and source material other things are added, which can make him more sensible or more evil."
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7w4602 | why are mens feelings and mental health not taken more seriously in an abortion scenario? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I've always looked at it like this. Of course a man's wishes should be heard. But that gives you a democracy of two. That creates an obvious problem. How to break ties when each wants something different. Since it is the woman's body being affected she has more stake in the matter so she breaks the tie. Well if you break down the decision tree then, if both are in agreement the woman gets her wish, if both are not in agreement, the woman still gets her wish. So you might as well just say the woman gets her wish.",
"Because how do you measure or enforce \"feelings being taken into account\"? Women have the right to control their body whether it hurts someone's feelings or not.",
"I think that as the baby is physically growing inside the woman, it’s easy to assume that it effects the woman more so. Her body is changing. Her hormones are affected. She’ll feel that maternal instinct. For a man, he’s not physically part of the process, apart from conception. Men are traditionally thought to be less emotional. This is ingrained into a lot of people. ‘Boys don’t cry’ or ‘don’t be a sissy girl’. Showing emotions for men has negative connotations. Obviously men have feelings too and abortion effects them horribly. It’s a human baby, it’s a child.",
"It's the woman's body. Who cares if the man is heart broken about it or will face mental damage. If they can get the little thing out before it's a big thing blasting through her vageen that's when the decision must be quick made. There's no room for arguing. If the man doesn't want to do it wtf is supposed to happen? Rock paper scissors? In the end the female is gonna do what she wants m8."
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7w9497 | What's the origin of the hand shake? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It was a sign of peace. The handshake showed you that the other person didn't have a weapon in their hands."
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7wabbk | How did the world map that we use today become the standard for all maps? Why didn’t they go with a map where North America was in the eastern hemisphere? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Europe functionally controlled the world for centuries. So Maps were drawn to center europe. You can find different maps from different places that almost all center their own nations. In a modern era of mass printing people stopped minding and just used the previous most common, euro-centric, map"
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7wjwh5 | What's the difference between renaissance, baroque and classical music | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What you are describing are both styles and eras. These are the major ones as I understand them, from oldest to newest. I added a little description of what I experience personally: * Medieval - 1400's and earlier - haunting, beautiful, I'm in a mossy forest sharpening my battle axe * Renaissance - 1500's - I'm in a dimly lit cathedral with chanting monks * Baroque - 1600's - I'm at Versailles eating cake and sipping bubbly * Classical - 1700's - I'm going to the Vienna opera in my horse-drawn carriage * Romantic - 1800's- I'm canoeing through the wilderness with my native guide * Contemporary - 1900's - I'm going to the Met in my tux",
"There’s also a lot of difference in the harmony and forms used in all three genres. Renaissance was often very conjunct and the harmonies were simple. As music progressed through to the Renaissance and Baroque periods, harmony became more complex. Forms of musical pieces also changed. Pieces became less linear and binary, introducing new sections of music, a good example being Sonata Allegro Form. EDIT: Completely forgot what sub this was and now I’m a pedantic asshole with a nearly useless Music Degree. Nighty night.",
"I usually explain it using the household name composers which can be easily found online. It’s much easier if you’re able to listen to the differences than to explain with words. For baroque listen to Bach. Classical listen to Mozart. Beethoven is basically the bridge between classical and romantic. Chopin is a good romantic example. Renaissance music comes before the baroque era but there are far fewer iconic examples of it. If you listen to each composer in succession, the differences between them will be quite obvious. For simplicity of comparison, they all composed music for piano (harpsichord in Bach’s case as the piano had not yet been invented).",
"First, I want to note that this is very much heavily biased towards \"western\" musical culture. The easiest way to think about different forms of music is that people had rules of the type of music they listened to and thought sounded good. So, if you go back to music prior to baroque, there was an avoidance of certain forms of dissonance, because it was seen as \"ungodly.\" And because notated music came from the church, that's the form of music that survives to this day. Around the 16th century, the idea that melody and harmony should be unified and move in synch was challenged, and composers like Bach and Vivaldi and others playing with [counterpoint]( URL_9 ) as a musical concept. The structures for what was acceptable for tonality were still pretty common around that time. By the time the 17th century rolled around, the conventions that had been \"discovered\" in the 16th century had been formalized, and a lot of musical form was systematic. \"Good music\" had to follow certain forms and structures. The [exceptions]( URL_5 ) [are]( URL_1 ) [notable]( URL_8 ) for the complexity the composers started reintroducing to their work. The romantic period, then, contains music which is a lot more \"rebellious\" in a way; composers like Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin added a lot more [tension]( URL_2 ) via dissonance into their work. As music became democratized (music composition during the classical period was mostly really rich royals commissioning work for their courts), more experimentation was acceptable, and one could still make a living composing and performing cutting edge work. Composers were also starting to abandon the idea that everything had to be a formal structure; while there might still be some of the \"heuristics for familiarity\" that composers used, it was less about a very clearly delineated \"A\" vs. \"B\" theme, etc. The impressionists realized that you didn't need to have all of the instruments all of the time, and for a particular work it might be nice to use timbre to do, in effect, acoustical [painting]( URL_0 ). A lot of our popular cinematic music comes from the innovations that composers during this period (1890-1930) had. Travel was becoming more open, and so the exploration of instruments that traditionally hadn't been part of the equation were now used. More experimental and modern music begins to question \"what makes music\" ...so instead of necessarily needing to resolve dissonance, maybe it's worthwhile to hold on its own? Maybe instead of an open structure, what if we set strict rules about every single one of the [twelve tones have to be done in order]( URL_6 ). What if it could be up to the performers to decide when exactly to use a [different motif]( URL_4 )? Each of the different labels are a shorthand for major stylistic settings, but in reality it's more of a constant evolution of style. Beethoven's early career is considered classical, but his late work romantic. Ravel's early work is very clearly romantic in its tonality, but his later work played a lot with impressionist concepts and jazz. Barber is well known for his [Adagio for Strings]( URL_3 ), a more impressionist/romantic work, but twenty years later his [Piano Concerto]( URL_7 ) is very much in the modern style (and in my humble opinion, really cool but barely listenable).",
"Part 1 : The instruments themselves had limits in their capabilities over time . The piano is short for it's full name the \"piano-forte\" or the quiet loud. It could be quiet and loud, crazy right? Before it, was a harpsichord that looks like a piano but had plucked strings. The harpsichord had basically one volume so to make music interesting , people like Bach (baroque) used many notes in quick succession (ornaments) and quick moving harmonies to make it exiting . In later music like Mozart piano music, he was able to evolve the style with the wide dynamic range of the piano... So the harpsichord is mostly in Baroque music and the piano is classical and beyond... This is a brief explanation of how the available mediums can influence composition. I hope to add a part 2 asap ...that explains further. It can be very easy to recognise those 3 styles when a few more things are understood. But we'd have to point out that the styles of music were often tied to other arts. A simple thing I learned in college was classical era (1740 ish to early 1800 ish ) was defined by music that was mostly beautiful and ear pleasing for the sake of being beautiful. The previous baroque era was very ornate. ( How can we fit the most stuff in a short time or how can we fit the most decorative designs on to furniture to make it just full of stuff.... Later music like the romantic era was very driven by a wider emotional range. And harsher dynamic changes. I hope this adds to the conversation. And helps."
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7wq91i | why does something like "mob mentality" even exist? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Back in the tribal days, it was the simplest way for people to stay alive. Exile the sickly and you'll stay healthy. Send away the _____ and the tribe survives. Being included was the best chance of that survival. Being different usually got you killed."
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7wqrgo | why do customer support phone lines always say “higher than normal call volume?” | Like, if you’ve been in business for longer than a year wouldn’t you know what to expect by now? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This seems to be the default message everywhere I call anytime now. It annoys me. I know damn well it's because they have cut back on telephone customer service because they want me to just visit their website to save them money. No I want a real live human being to talk to.",
"They know what to expect for normal. When it's higher than normal, you have to wait. If that becomes the new normal, they'll hire more staff. Then when it goes higher than that, that will become the new higher than normal."
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7ww5le | why is Richard's nickname "dick" | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Richard- > Dick association follows the rule of \"shorten, then rhyme.\" Richard is shortened to Rick, which rhymes with Dick. Other examples include Margaret- > Meg- > Peg and William- > Will- > Bill.",
"It's a medieval shortening/rhyming thing. I don't know the exact reason, but I guess it was a thing, like a fad or whatever. Robert was Rob but also Hob, Nob, Bob, etc. Bob stuck. William was Will but also Bill etc. Bill stuck (Will is also used). Richard was Rick, Dick, etc. Dick stuck (Rick is also used) Edward was Ed, Ted, etc. Mostly Ed now, but Ted Kennedy. Banana Fana Fofana.",
"Michael: And this is the foreman, Mr. Rogers! Darryl: That's not my real name. Michael: No, Darryl. Darryl is Mr. Rogers! Ryan: Darryl Rogers? Darryl: Darryl Philbin. Then Regis, then Reeg, then Roger, then Mr... Rogers."
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7wx9ub | Curling. Why and how is this an Olympic sport? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Curling is an old sport which was invented in Scotland. It is a very strategic sport and many shots are surprisingly difficult to make. Think of a combination of archery and pool except on ice.",
"Curling has about 500 year history. It has been popular in various northern countries and locations where lakes freeze over. For many people in northern countries it was surprising that it wasn't included in the earlier Olympics. It wasn't available for Olympic medals until 1998."
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7wzglr | How do nationality suffixes work? (American, Swedish, Chinese, Thai, Afghani, Laotian, etc.) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I don't think nationality suffixes are actually supposed to \"work\" somehow, I'd guess it's more like an issue of cultural development in the English language. The suffix \"an\" is probably more common because it seems to mean something like \"someone from this place\" in English. There are peculiarities explaining other suffixes, though. Words such as Iraqi, Israeli and Afghani end as such because those are words in local languages, borrowed by English. E.g., Israeli in Hebrew is exactly Israeli. Now, words such as French, Turk and Greek are so peculiar because such nationalities came before the nations. E.g. there were Turks roaming around before Turkey (the suffix is in the name of the nation, not in the nationality). I know the word Greek is based on an ancient italic language word meaning foreigner. Traders back then travelling by the coasts of Italy came from the area (not a nation yet) known today as Greece (land of the foreigners), hence the name. Greeks call themselves something like Hellenians, though.",
"Fun fact, the word isn't suffix. Afterall, it's not always a suffix (ie Holland vs Dutch). It's demonym. Extra words to confound the tilbot, because they require longer explanations etc etc etc you know how it goes"
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7x0a1g | What exactly sparked the culture of the stereotypical "Wild West"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It probably originated with *The Virginian*, a novel published in 1902 authored Owen Wister set in Wyoming.",
"Travelers were disappointed when traveling west and not seeing the old west. The town of Palisades, NV would stage gunfights and bank robberies for tourists during their train stop in the 1870s. The newspapers ran stories about the “dangerous” town.",
"More than anything else the stereotypical \"Wild West\" was popularized by the [Dime Westerns]( URL_0 ) of the 1860s to the early 1900s. For example, Prentiss Ingraham, best known for his Buffalo Bill series, wrote as many as 600 novels by year 1900 and these sold wildly across the world. If one factor can be called the \"spark\" of the Wild West genre, it is the dime novel or dime western."
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7x525n | Why are portraits, any paintings of humans really, almost always left or right-facing instead of directly forward? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People often look less flattering when faced front on. If you’re creating an artwork you most likely want it to look as aesthetically pleasant as possible. This would be much harder if the subject looked ugly. Also when drawing or painting the (technical) purpose is to create depth. Facing front on would decrease the potential to display this depth and thus make it less realistic or 3 dimensional."
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7x60qp | How do coaches find enough people that 1) have similarly missing limbs 2) desire and skill to be an athlete and 3) live within reasonable distance from each other to hold practices so they can win the paralimbpics? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> paralimbpics First it is \"Paralympics\". > 3) live within reasonable distance from each other to hold practices This isn't a limiting factor. Athletes who are driven and can perform well enough to be Olympic level will move to be close to each other and train together. It isn't generally a part-time thing, it is what they do professionally every day."
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7x8bu3 | Why has the Chinese language become so widely spoken over such a large geographic region while Europe, for example, consists of dozens and dozens of different languages over approximately the same size region? | Sure the reasons are plentiful, but if we boil it down into one or two really major causes, what would they be? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"The Chinese language\" is actually a collection of \"dialects\". Linguists actually try to avoid distinguishing between \"languages\" and \"dialects\", because often it's hard to tell the difference: the different Chinese language varieties are similar to each other in the way that French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian are similar to each other. In fact, Chinese language varieties are often mutually unintelligible: the Hong Kong Chinese, who speak a variety of Cantonese, can't understand the Mandarin Chinese spoken in Beijing, for example. The various languages in Europe come in a few groups: the Romance languages (French, Italian, etc.), the Germanic languages (English, Dutch, Swedish, etc.), the Slavic languages (Polish, Russian, etc.), the Celtic languages (Welsh, Gaelic, etc.) and a few isolated languages that don't seem to be related to any of the other European languages (Basque, Hungarian, etc.). All except the last group are related to each other. There are two main differences between the Chinese languages and the European languages. First, China has been unified as one country since the late 6th century; the ruling classes used Chinese all the time, so Chinese languages came to dominate, unlike in Europe which kept fragmenting into many small states. Second, the Chinese writing system is based on logograms -- pictures rather than sounds; this writing system was used all through China, so local language varieties could take grammar, vocabulary and idiom from Mandarin Chinese, but just pronounce the words differently.",
"Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a single Chines language. A guy in Beijing and a guy in Hong Kong may be able to read the same newspaper but they won't be able to communicate easily by just talking in their native langue. Some of these varieties of Chinese are not actually closer related than some related European languages. A German and a Dutch guy will have an easier time talking together than the two Chinese speakers above. Also a bunch of current European languages were once more or less a single language, than the Roman empire fell and it all grew apart.",
"Chinese isn't a single language. It's a collection of languages (it's a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family). Saying all of China speaks Chinese is more like saying all of Europe speaks a Germanic language than it is like saying all of Europe speaks French. With a few exceptions, all of the languages of Europe are members of the Indo-European language family. China, unlike Europe, has a single government that has an official language (Mandarin). Many people outside of China call it Chinese, but there are other Chinese languages.",
"The Chinese language is not spoken, it is written. The characters mean the same thing, no matter who writes it or how they would pronounce it. This writing system is what is wide spread. This works because the Chinese language is not phonetic, it uses pictures that represent objects or ideas. This makes it useful to anyone because I could say dog, you could say perro, but we would both look at a picture on a piece of paper and the image of a dog and know what we were talking about. The writing system was used by a large empire covering multiple regions with dialects that could often have nothing in common(for instance, Cantonese and Mandarin), and it allowed for the government to issue proclamations and edicts in a single written language that could be read in any far flung corner of the empire."
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7x8q17 | How tabloids in supermarkets like National Enquirer and The Globe are still alive, even they have low credibility? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I don't think people are buying them for credibility. In the same supermarket capn crunch sells a shitload of cereal even though it isn't nutritious.",
"The overhead is low. They don't have real reporters, researchers, facts-checkers. They literally just write what they want and publish it. The cost of printing is probably 15-40 cents per tabloid and they sell for $3-5, so even if their volume is low they are making huge margins - enough to justify their sale. To your point, though, I've been going to supermarkets my whole life and never once remember seeing someone pick up or buy a tabloid. Strange.",
"I know two people who worked for The National Enquirer for over 15 years. They are both brilliant journalists and researchers: well-read/well-educated, and they easily win trivia at the bar (almost) every single week. They know every actor, movie, strait/isthmus, and most bits of history. They're both in their mid 70s now... both are now independent journalists. Real journalists. The thing they told me: they were allowed freedom to research even crazy stories, and many of the big scandals actually came first from these tabloids. Yes there's crazy big foot type stories, but they also broke the story during the election about John Edwards' infidelity, etc. So that's what helps keep the newspaper alive. I didn't ask specifically about funding... maybe they get paid directly to find dirt. That's speculation on my part. 😉"
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7xchtn | Why do first names change over time? | I understand that there are fads, and names become more/less popular/etc. But why? Why is this a thing people mess around with? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Popular names percolate down through the socioeconomic ladder. People with high levels of wealth and education choose some names. Then people with less wealth and education emulate them. The names then become associated with lower socioeconomic strata, so the people of higher socioeconomic status don't want to name their kids those names any more. Girls' names change more than boys' names do. I suspect this has to do with (probably mostly unconscious) ageist/sexist stereotypes about older women. The grass is greener. People think their lives would have been better if their names had been different. My sister is a Jennifer born in the 1970s. She often had another Jennifer in her class in school. She chose more obscure names for her own kids. Maybe she didn't like being one of several Jennifers in her class, so she didn't want that sort of thing for her kids. Names are associated with ethnicity. As ethnic demographics shift, names shift. If you have more Hispanic people, for example, you're going to have more Spanish-inspired names. Growing representation of ethnic minorities in TV and movies might also make ethnic names go more mainstream."
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7xcidf | what is Seapunk? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Seapunk is a subculture modelled on steampunk, but with a focus on marine-related motifs instead. URL_0"
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7xo9ws | Whatever happened to all those 1-900 psychic / astrology lines from the 1990's and early 2000's? Why isn't that a thing anymore? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They moved online, hotline number s like that just changed with the time as More people got intratnet.",
"I had a couple of friends who worked as phone psychics in the '90s. It was a rather slow decline; they went from working in offices at large cubicles for a few years to working at home with a company-installed line. They told me at the time that it was a great job: getting paid to sit at home in your underwear, get high all day, flip Tarot cards, and talk lonely people out of their money one minute at a time. Some of those people requested them by their \"psychic name;\" these were the employees who made the most money. But then the company they worked for went out of business. You'd think they would have seen it coming. The story from my friends was that it came down to poor management and extravagant spending by those at the top. I believe the advent of the internet put the final nail in the coffin; cheap telephony via landlines made the world a bit smaller, but the instant connectivity of the internet made it small enough to fit in your desktop."
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7xpjxj | Why aren’t the Pakistani people just called the Pakis? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not sure for the rest of the world but paki has been used in the UK anyway as a racist word call someone a paki and your probably gonna start trouble.",
"The main difference is that the other countries you mentioned are all named based on the major racial/ethnic groups living there or based on languages. Paksitan is a fairly modern nation carved out from erstwhile \"British India\" to form an Islamic republic. The name \"Pakistan\" means \"Land of the Pure\" (according to Wikipedia URL_0 ) and not representing the people or ethnic groups there (e.g. Pashtuns, Baloch, Punjabi, Sindhi etc.) Edit: Removed \"Pathans\". Just found out that \"Pathan\" and \"Pashtun\" are synonymous",
"Some people do call them pakis. Where I live it’s a very commonly used term but considered offensive.",
"Pakistan isn't named after the \"Paki\" or \"Pak\" people. The country was created by British to rule over the regions of Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan. ...and \"paki\" has taken on a very negative connotation, being used as a slur in parts of the world.",
"The word \"paki\" was, for a very long time, an extremely derogatory term (not just for people from Pakistan, but for anyone with brown skin, because racists can't tell the difference), almost(?) on a level with \"nigger\". I suspect this is probably a very large part of why the word isn't used any more.",
"Because they have been discriminated against in various countries and it has a negative connotation. I agree that calling someone a Paki should be acceptable but it's not."
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7xrjh8 | Why do white supremisists adopt the Nazi Swastika and Hitler himself as symbolic of their beliefs when none of them would pass Nazi "racial purity" standards? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You're absolutely correct. However the rise of white supremacy doesn't start off targeting EVERYONE who isn't \"pure\" rather it starts with obvious targets. Then slowly moves in to a narrower and narrower definition. First they target those who are obviously non-white, then the religions that are \"not white\" then the religions who stood against them, then the groups that didn't actively support them, then it becomes those who supported them but think differently because they \"might\" betray them, it just gets narrower and narrower until the staunch supporters realize that they are next."
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7xrl86 | In ASL, if you reflect the sign - right and left arm switch which does what - does it mean different things? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Signs are not generally hand-specific. A left handed signer will generally use their left hand for most one-handed signs and a right handed signer will generally use their right hand for one-handed signs. One major caveat is that a lot of ASL is based on assigning objects to a specific spot in space. If I'm telling a story about two people, John and Jane, I would sign John's name and point to a space in front of me to the right, then sign Jane's name and point to a different space in front of me to the left. If I'm signing the equivalent of \"John said, 'I like dogs'\", I would shift my body to the right (where I placed John in physical space) and sign as if I were John. In instances like that, it's important to be consistent with where I place things in space (it applies to many objects, not just people). It doesn't necessarily matter what hand I use, but it matters that I am consistent with keeping things in relative position."
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7xs5gg | why are onions in nearly every recipe? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because they taste very nice with other food. What dont you like onion?",
"Flavorful, cheap, aromatic. Well cooked onion adds sweetness. Less cooked onions add texture or zing. Lots of recipes without onion but I wouldn't make stock or soup without one, or anything with mixed veggies like stir fry or fajitas.",
"Onions are fairly cheap to grow, have a strong taste that most tolerate if not outright enjoy, and can have a wide range of flavors depending on how they are cooked or if they are cooked.",
"Because onions are generally terrible by themselves, but awesome at adding flavor to other things. Traditional cooking methods often use a particular set of components, and one of the most widely used and adapted styles, French, makes extensive use of onion in bases/broths/sauces, which tend to become ingredients in *other* dishes as well. The onion is also cheap, plentiful and hardy. A whole onion kept in a cool dry place can remain usable for months, unlike most other vegetables, which means that it's available year round and is a good value since you'll usually be able to use whatever you buy/grow."
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7xwzk1 | In the US, with 19 years old, you can't buy beer but you can buy a gun? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The drinking age was more variable in the past in the US, as it used to be a state decision, though, generally it was 18. In 1984, a law was passed, the effectively changed the drinking age to 21, everywhere and took power from the states (technically its a more complicated than that, but effectively, its all the same). So why was it changed? Well a lot of groups, such as MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) hugely lobbied for the age to change, and won. Guns were traditionally 18, though in some states, buying a handgun is 21 (long guns are 18 still usually though). There has never been serious realities of changing this, and is still mostly a state thing. Lastly. These are not the same and should not be compared.",
"The tick isn't that guns are unusual, it's that alcohol is unusual. With alcohol, there was a huge push in the 1980s to reduce the number of accidental alcohol deaths, especially those related to drunk driving. Honestly, the effectiveness of the grass-roots lobbying effort was a precursor in many ways to the modern gun rights movements in the United States. One of the explicit goals of this movement was to make it harder for teens to get alcohol legally. As a result, though most youth-specific restrictions end at 18 -- the legal age of majority in most the U.S. -- the age to purchase alcohol was expressly increased. This was justified by the especially dangerous proclivities of young drivers, as well as by the idea that by moving it up to an age well past high school, the overall amount of alcohol available to high school kids would drop.",
"You can buy a rifle or shotgun, but not a handgun. You have to be 21 to buy a handgun. There used to be no age requirement to buy a gun of any type. My grandfather bought a .22 new in a from a store all by himself when he was 12. You used to be able to buy a gun from a catalog and have it delivered to your house. Some laws changed in the 30's, a lot changed after Kennedy was assassinated. In 1986 the US basically banned civilians from buying fully automatic weapons (you can still own them but there are major hoops to jump through and you can only own fully auto guns made before 1986). A lot has changed."
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7xy05q | Difference between British and Dutch East India Trading Companies | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a lot of different questions packed in this answer, I can personally answer only a few: neither the British East India Company nor the Dutch East India company had a direct impact on politics, trade and industry in the America's, because they didn't operate there. See also the West India Company, which was (tragically) instrumental in the sugar, rum, and slave trade. It's important to realise that for 21 years the Dutch East India Company was the only company in the world that could buy spices in India and ship them to Europe: they had a *monopoly* on this market. That meant that they could ask incredible prices for pepper, cinnamon, salpetre, and other spices, so long as no other company would interrupt their market. The Danish, French, and most notably English East India Company would go on to do exactly that, establishing their own trade port in the Indies - and the Dutch East India Company wouldn't allow it. The Dutch and English company were both incredibly wealthy trade companies and competed agressively - in a literal sense. Mostly this trade conflict was fought by attacking the ports that sold spices to the British East India Company, by blocking port access, or by threatening the port rulers to close their ports to anyone but the Dutch. I can't explain the literal battles these companies fought but I'd like to refer you to at least read into the Anglo-Dutch wars and the Amboyna massacre, where Dutch agents killed English East India Company employees and caused a diplomatic crisis back in Europe. This established Dutch East India Company dominance in Indonesia, forcing the English East India Company to cooperate on Dutch terms. The Dutch East India Company kept their monopoly on spices for a while, the English East India Company searched for other ventures in China. A decreased interest in spices and a higher demand for tea, along with poor financial policy, caused the Dutch East India to take a dive around 1750. All the effort to protect their market proved to cost the company a fortune - wars, ships, fortresses, personnel, rent, tributes, all together more than the spice trade itself would earn. The British East India company adjusted to this change by focusing on the tea trade instead. In 1799 the Dutch company defaulted, making the British East India Company dominant in the East India trade. The British East India Company would continue to exist for another 100 years and become more important in actually colonising the Indies, moreso than just purchasing goods from Asian cities and shipping them to Europe. That's a different story I suppose, one I don't feel knowledgeable about. Oh yes, one more thing: both companies were incredibly powerful. I need to emphasize that although these were sort of tied to their respective nations, the Dutch and British companies could claim their own land, use their own currency, start their own private wars autonomously, and enter diplomacy as if they were a nation. For the Dutch company, that sort of freedom brought them to reckless expensive ventures that ultimately brought their decline. For the British company brought them in conflict with the British parliament. Note: am Dutch myself and our history books dedicated more time to this subject than they should, but that serves as a disclaimer that this answer may be quite Netherlands-centric. EDIT: Oh, and pirates? I don't know enough to tell you anything about piracy in the West-Indies, sorry ):"
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7y0j18 | Why are Spain and Portugal under Franco and Salazar considered "merely" authoritarian and not fascist like Italy and Germany under Mussolini and Hitler? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Fascism doesn't mean \"very authoritarian\". Rather, it's a particular flavour of authoritarianism — the communist dictatorships are most definitely not fascist, as anti-communism is one of the pillars of fascism! Fascism was, amongst other things, anti-religious (though they eventually toned that down), whereas both Portuguese and Spanish dictatorships appealed strongly to a catholic base. Fascism is anti-conservatism, while both Franco and Salazar were quite conservative. While they were both right-wing dictatorships (and, therefore, shared more similarities with Fascism than they did with communist dictatorships), they didn't quite go along with all the tenets of Fascism.",
"They became our allies against the communists after the war. Fascism becomes acceptable under those circumstances.",
"Franco was more or less a fascist, just a heavily Catholic one. Spain had a fascist party - the Falange - and Franco merged the fascist party with the Carlist party to create his movement. The Carlist party was very conservative and actually based on the idea of \"Spain was better when ruled by a king\" and so this mixture of arch-traditionalism and fascism marked the early years of his rule. Like other fascists, Franco was skeptical of capitalism, but softened this after the war. But he was an authoritarian that cared very much about a unity of the spanish people. Most other forms of fascism focused on war and imperialism, and Franco did not, but that may have been more out of weakness than anything else; Spain was in no position to expand the empire. Since fascism was certainly not a good thing to trumpet in 1945 Europe, Franco made efforts to distance himself from fascism.",
"Fascism comes from the roman word Fascis which means a bundle. Essentially, it's the ideal of a unified, strong, monoculture. Fascism is the idea that one particular group represents an ideal, that people not belonging to that group are detrimental to that ideal, and that the most important thing is to be unified. It believes in unquestioning acceptance of the norm and of authority so long as that authority is in the same culture. It believes that essentially anything goes towards outsiders. Violence, war, murder is OK as long as it benefits your group. Questioning, wavering, disobedience, free-thinking is antithetical. Fascism is about Autarky- self-sufficient, self-reliant, strong, ignoring tradition, ignoring the weak, banding the strong with the strong, improving themselves by excising the parts they feel bring them down. Authoritarianism is about who controls power. If a government is authoritarian, they are going to be making rules unilaterally, and enforcing them strongly. This doesn't mean fascist, it just means authoritarian. On the other hand, a fascist government is necessarily authoritarian because a key concept is the unquestioning loyalty to authority. Fascism is when you start to side with your faction regardless of the outcome, agree with your faction regardless of the truth, call those who disagree with your faction traitors, distance yourself from, hate or exile people within your faction for expressing views opposite to the prevailing thought, feel that your importance is tied to the importance of your faction, become unwilling to accept individuals from outside of your faction, willing hurt individuals outside of your faction without remorse but are unwilling to tolerate any injury to anyone within your faction without exception (though if the injured individual is found to be not worthy of being in the faction after the fact, then it's OK). If you start to parrot the lies that your leader says, and attack anyone who calls the leader out on their lies. If you start to dismiss anyone who disagrees with the leader as not a \"real\" member of the faction and work to distance them from the faction, if you think that your faction is strong, and the mere presence of outsiders is weakening the faction, and that they should be removed, punished or killed. These are the things that lead to fascism. Authoritarianism is about how a government acts. Do they make the rules themselves? Do they enforce them harshly? Are they unwilling to compromise? Do they ignore the will of the people if it doesn't suit them?",
"The easiest answer is that wiki is simply wrong. Portugal and Spain were absolutely fascist. They just adapted fascism to their own cultures and thus differed somewhat from the Italian Standard. But saying that makes them not fascist would be akin to saying Maoist China wasn't communist because Mao adopted his own twist on Marxism-Leninism. The harder answer is... More than I can type from the phone."
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7y6ifi | Why do Americans think that their 'freedom' is different from a lot of other countries around the world? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A lot of Americans see having firearms as the right that protects all other rights. It stems from the idea that as long as we have a means to resist the government, they can't take away our freedoms.",
"It's what we're taught. I remember learning in elementary school that America is the freest country and that other countries don't achieve anything close to the level of freedom that we have. Our troops died to protect our freedom, people stood up and gave their lives to protect our freedom. Everyone wanted to come here because everything is great here. When I grew up I realized that this was not all exactly true. I don't think uneducated people ever learn the truth.",
"It is different. Our freedom has more guns, less social services, more wealth inequality. Seriously, our bill of rights was a bit revolutionary for its time. We get hung up on that and fail to see the ways it hasn’t kept up with the standards of these times. Also, a lot of our citizens never travel outside the country or only do so in extremely safe and controlled tour groups. They don’t interact much with random people from other countries. These people are told by conservative media that life in other countries is less free and never see anything to challenge that lie.",
"Disagreeing with your government is one of the most American things you can do, but only the party that's not in power realizes it...",
"America does have many freedoms that the rest of the world does not. It values free speech far more than most nations. Many European governments restrict speech that could be considered offensive, which to [many Americans]( URL_0 ) is a concept that's easy for a government to abuse. While I am not myself a gun owner, the United States is unique among many developed nations in allowing it's citizens to bear arms. Admittedly, this idea was conceived in a time where those guns could be (and were) used to overthrow the government. I'm not as certain that it could practically be used to stand up to a tyrannical government today. However, minimally armed militants around the world have stood up to the American military, and our own nation defeated the most powerful military on Earth when it won its Independence. Regardless of whether you think it is still a practical right in this day and age, it is undeniably a governmentally protected right that most other nations don't have. Finally, Americans pay lower taxes than much of the developed world. Obviously, this means we have fewer social services. But it also means that we have the right to a larger portion of our own money. Whether you support this is a different story.",
"The issue is that it is written as one of the amendments in the United States Bill of Rights, the thought being If they take one of these amendments away what is stopping the government from taking any of the others away as well",
"I don't think that the statement \"A lot of countries in the world have the same amount of freedom as Americans, just without guns.\" is correct. Most (all?) other western countries have much wider restrictions on freedom of speech for example, criminalizing \"hate speech\" etc.",
"Freedom isn't the real issue, it's just the rhetoric. Gun culture is promoted by arms manufacturers, notably through the NRA, which is a remarkably powerful lobbying group on behalf of the industry, and it's this culture that promotes gun ownership as \"freedom\". The fact that gun rights are in the Constitution makes the connection easy to draw both culturally and legally, and there is a massive industry that has tirelessly exploited both of those avenues for its own gain. People say \"freedom\" because it's what their family and friends say, and they say it ultimately because it's what the NRA says. Gun ownership makes people feel powerful, and it's that feeling that gets capitalized on. \"Freedom\" is just easy marketing in this country.",
"One of the deepest cultural dimensions of the American psyche is rugged individualism. This mentality served a noble purpose in the early colonial times and age of exploration. Nobody would travel west through Indian territory unarmed. There was little or no government in the early years before the land had even been discovered. Life was harsh and only the strong, lucky, and prepared people survived. Trappers, hunters, farmers, cattle men, bandits and Indian fighters all depended on having guns for protection and survival. If a lawman came along and demanded that you turn over your guns he would likely get a bullet instead. Times have changed, but remnants of the early cultural attitudes and values of the American settlers and pioneers still pervade through politics and personal beliefs. - self reliance - puritanical attitudes - harsh punishments - distrust of government - outlaw celebrity - worship of money - violence Guns were the great equalizer between men and protection from the wild beasts and from the government. Culture is not always good but it made sense at the time.",
"It is for two reasons, IMO. Firstly, the founding fathers wanted to create the worlds first democratic republic, and ostensibly they did. Secondly, the USA was created through violence and as such freedom is inextricably linked to violence in the form of defense. Someone once said \"the tree of liberty must be periodically watered with the blood of tyrants\". It is why the military are, in some cases, elevated to gods. The second amendment set's out a need to remain vigilant. Unfortunately, that vigilance has transmuted to out and out fear.",
"It's literally written in our \"Bill of Rights\" in the Constituion. It's the second rule of what our right, as law abiding citizens of this country are entitled to. It shows how important gun laws were in the 1700's, and how little we have evolved as a country since then. America is still fairly young in perspective to the entire rest of the 1st world countries and that's one of the most important things that make up our culture. Other countries have rich culture of art, multiple languages, empires and regimes, renaissance love and food. What does America have? Stealing land with weapons and forming societies around our rights as people that are still worshipped, to this day. We have no real culture besides fighting with force and oppressing others (which is why we broke away and formed our own country in the first place) and it's just heartbreaking."
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7y8jk0 | Why do people feel like the movie 'Black Panther' is so important to modern black culture? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's just not a typical blockbuster in terms of its cast, characters, and themes. People are excited to see a movie that features more black characters than usual (and in positive roles that provide good role models) while also dealing with important themes like family and culture, as well as touching a little bit on things you wouldn't normally see in a comic book movie (slavery, mass incarceration, etc).",
"I think it's because every child deserves to see themselves represented among the superheroes.",
"In movie history blacks have been depicted as servants, comic relief, redshirts (in any adventure, the black guy always dies. always.), and sidekicks. This one is different, not just a hero sidekick, not an anti-hero, not a tragic hero, THE hero - a Marvel, big budget, big-time hero."
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7ydw7n | Why are Ivy League schools considered top schools? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Age, mostly. The Northeast, where the Ivies are located, was one of the first places in modern America to be settled. America’s first upper-class sent their children there and established them as desirable places to go. As time passed and the country grew, the idea persisted.",
"They're some of the oldest schools in the country & have the *longest* reputations in the country. They've also had multiple generations of very well-to-do students, meaning they have sizeable endowments. All of this gives them the money & the clout to recruit top-flight professors and ensure that they're some of the best schools. When you look beyond the academics, Ivy League schools tend to draw in some of the best students and the most socially important people. This provides an amazing networking opportunity for students. On top of all that, there's just tradition & the subjective nature of college rankings. Harvard could probably give out degrees to dead dogs for a decade before it negatively impacted their rankings.",
"Places like Harvard attract the best students because they have the best teachers and the best *other* students. This makes it a desirable place to learn. That process is a cycle. The best students attract the best teachers which attracts the best students and on and on. The reason it's the IV schools in particular is because they have been around the longest. Essentially they got a head start."
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7yegtp | Maritime Law and International Waters. | I keep hearing these terms thrown around, and they make it sound like you can do whatever you want as long as you're 24 miles out to sea. Surely there must be limits to what you could get away with out there, otherwise everyone would commit all their crimes on boats. Want someone dead? Take them out on a boat not waving the flags of any country, and toss them out. Want to grow and sell heroine? Set up shop a few miles offshore. And if a country were to try to convict someone of a crime that is "allowable" in international waters, would other countries step in to stop them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I recently completed a thesis on international maritime law, and I think I know where the confusion is. Everyone is welcomed to elaborate if I did not explain clearly or missed anything. We need to distinguish inter-state interaction ('governed' by international law) and crime (violation of domestic law which took place in international waters). When we heard of 'international waters', most of the time people are referring to UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). International law is different from domestic law, in the sense that countries are voluntary to opt-in and opt-out of any 'laws' set-up by the UN. UNCLOS is a customary international law, which means most countries agree to interact according to these standards, even if they did not ratify the UNCLOS. The 12 nautical miles territorial waters or 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones are set forth by the UNCLOS. **And these, most of the time, have NOTHING to do with crime**. They are just rules that countries agreed to interact with each other. Activities took place on a vessel are governed by (a) the country where the vessel is registered, and (b) the country where the vessel is located, if the vessel is within the 12-nm territorial waters. If an action is defined as a crime by the country where the vessel is registered, it is a crime regardless of locations. Therefore, in the example you gave, even though the murder was committed in open waters, the murderer is still subject to criminal investigation by the country where the vessel is registered. However, things can get tricky if (a) the vessel is within the territorial waters of another country, where such action is not defined as a crime, and (b) the person who committed the 'crime' is not a national of the country where the vessel is registered. In these cases, countries tend to interact based on politics, not law. For instance, a country might refuse to investigate an action or co-operate with the law enforcement of the registration country, and said law enforcement has to rely on diplomats to negotiate. Ultimately, whether a country will step in and interfere with another country's criminal investigation is often based on politics, not law. This also explains why casino on cruise ships only operates when the ship is in open waters. The cruise company registered the ship at a country where gambling is legal. And if gambling is illegal in the country where they took passengers, they have to wait until the ship is in open waters to start operating their casinos. EDIT: Someone mentioned International Criminal Court. ICC only deals with war crime, genocide, etc, and it only prosecutes state actors (e.g. presidents). ICC does not prosecute murderers in open waters, it is the job of law enforcement.",
"There are not really permissible crimes. It is a matter of jurisdiction. A ship will carry a flag, the flag of registration. It is nominally under the laws of that nation. But generally if a crime occurs the captain will notify the police in the next port of call. Generally other countries do not just step in to interfere with another country. That is how wars start. One thing I would never trust is a card dealer on a cruise ship.",
"Territorial limits of countries run out to 12 nautical miles offshore. That is the extent of what you can call part of that country. Exclusive economic zones run out to 200 nautical miles offshore, and that governs things like fishing rights. Beyond that is international waters. It isn't lawless out there though. In general, the laws applicable to any vessel will be those of the country under which the vessel is flagged, or those of the last port of call through which the crew and passengers were cleared. It is therefore possible to encounter a conflict between vessels which are operating under different laws, but all parties are subject to rules like the UN law of the sea treaty (UNCOS), and International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations regarding shipping. Criminal acts in international waters may be prosecuted by conflict parties, or by the international criminal court."
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7yez56 | Why is it so much more common to see people in Asian countries wearing masks during a virus outbreak as opposed to America? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Here in Korea, we have atleast 2 outbreaks each year. Because people started to wear masks so often, its basically fashionalbe to wear it now. I think the pollution from china also has a play in this phenomenon.",
"There have been more Pandemics in certain asian countries than in western ones in modern times, like in China with Avian influenza in 1918, 1957 (Asian flu), 1968–1969 (Hong Kong) and 2009 flu pandemic.",
"My wife and I had Adult RSV and we had no problem wearing masks to Doctor's visits and in our home when we had our children come over to see us. We considered it a courtesy and practical thing to do.",
"Personally when i see someone wearing a mask I'm grateful. I know they're sick so not shaking hands or not hugging isn't an insult. Plus they're doing their part to slow down the spread of germs. But I'm Canadian maybe the American part doesn't apply.",
"From my best understanding, it's a bit taboo in America because if you're sick and contagious, you should be staying at home.",
"I think that a lot of people here in America are more concerned with what someone else might think about them than about catching/spreading something. It's all about image to soooo many people.",
"Honestly, growing up in America, never once was taught to wear a mask for anything. Until this post, at 35 years old, I always thought people wearing masks were trying not to get sick from the rest of us. I never considered that they were sick trying to prevent others from getting what they have... Maybe that's some insight.",
"They teach respect for others. In the USA people are barely aware of their own existence, let alone what their actions do to others.",
"I work in an ER in California and no one wears masks here cause “they can’t breath” with it on. As a result I wear a mask every single day - this flu is no joke",
"American who lives and works in Japan; the mask is a common courtesy to not spread any illness you may be feeling as well a prevent from catching illness. A few of my co-workers wear masks to hide the fact that they are hungover and their breath smells like old booze. In Japan, it's a cultural understanding of courtesy and a cultural tradition of not imposing on others. It's a more harmonious rather than individualized focused country. You don't want to get someone else sick, so you wear the mask. You don't want to be responsible for someone else getting sick. In America, I think we take on the responsibility to not get sick as opposed to a sick person getting us sick (that's our individual focused mindset.) We think if we wash our hands, avoid others with symptoms, keep our areas clean, we are doing our best to avoid contamination. If we get sick, we then reprimand ourselves for not taking our own individual precautions. It comes down to our preception of responsibility in cultures I think. At least in Japanese/American cultural comparisons.",
"Many people that work in E.R.s in the US are currently wearing masks b/c of the Flu epidemic.",
"I'm American and sometimes wear a mask during high pollen count days just to breath easier. Masks aren't just for sickness.",
"because the logic in those countries is the same as what you see in hospitals in the west and more developed areas, where doctors, staff and surgeons are wearing the masks. It stops germs and salvia from infecting anyone. Except that everyone has been recommended to wear them by governments and it's now ingrained in culture. Also, you have to remember that healthcare is practically unavailable. Only the rich can afford it (you listening, America) and it's only accessable in urban cities. So simple illnesses such as the flu or common cold are difficult to treat or innoculate.",
"Places like Korea and Japan with high population density usually see mask usage quite often. America is less population dense (with the exception of large cities). The real answer however is because of culture. In Japan and Korea is it popular to, in America it is not. Its not that Americans are rude and don't care, but its because it is not engrained the culture to use masks when sick."
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