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94xtej | What are Turkeys being pardoned from if they have not done anything? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are \"being pardoned from the sentence of death for being a turkey at thanksgiving\". It is just a silly tradition."
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953bp0 | How does a culture like Japan develop where nobody wants to stand out and yet another culture like the USA develops practically worshiping individual achievements? | Basic human needs don’t change between places and yet nearly opposite cultures can dominate different parts of the world. Can it simply be government policy and enforcement, are the people responsible, or is it fauna and flora or other environmental issues the impetus? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basic human needs don't change, but how you most easily and effectively achieve them does. America is a huge country by landmass, like 3rd largest in the world, and a huge swathe of it in the middle is extremely sparsely populated. To put it into some context, I live on one of the coasts in a decently-sized suburb of a major city. My county houses ~1.5 million people. Just my county. There are ~ 10 states in America, 8 of which are in the midwest, with smaller populations than my county. These are places that were settled by frontiersmen and single families trying to stake out land in the expanding lands of the country, where self-reliance was a necessity when you were literally going out to hunt so your family could eat. Contrast Japan, a relatively small island, where once cities popped up and became population centers, with a few notable exceptions they didn't really *stop* being population centers, so people had to coexist with each other in a small space, because their only other option was to get on a boat and leave the country."
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953uai | Why do people naturally find bald men threatening or aggressive? Does it relate to some innate instinct? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Do people naturally find bald men threatening or aggressive? That's not a stereotype I've ever heard of before. However, I guess it's possible that some people could make an association between baldness and aggression because male pattern baldness is associated with higher levels of testosterone",
"I don’t know if that’s true all the time. But for some reason white, bald, middle-aged men do, on average, look more intimidating than otherwise. It might be a kind of “no nonsense” look, or it could stem from some combat instinct from ages ago. Maybe it’s also a lack of an identifier (hair color, style, length), or a show of maturity (because men lose their hair when they grow old). My bet is it’s a culture thing. We associate the guys who tick the boxes I mentioned with gangs or thugs or tough guys, as a society. I personally think of Agent 47 first when I think of scary bald guys, but that’s just me."
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9546b0 | why is bullfighting still a thing with all the animal rights activists and the general hate against it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the people who like it are politically powerful enough in their own countries that they can ignore foreign complaints (foreign complains may even add to support, similar to someone picking on a family member), and nations are sovereign which means other countries can't make them do anything (unless the maker is willing to commit to a war and occupation)."
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954cmj | How Are Companies Able to Use "Real People, Not Actors" in Their Ads? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"False advertisement is very, very limited - all it prevents an advertiser from doing is making objectively false or \"misleading\" statements about their product. \"Misleading\" - in the context of false advertisement - means that a normal person would both believe the statement and rely on it to make the purchase. So, for example, you can't say that you use \"real beef\" if, in fact, there is no meat in your product because that is an objectively false statement. But how does that apply to \"real people, not paid actors\"? Well, everyone is a \"real person\" - so as long as they are using actual people they're fine on that. As to what constitutes a \"not paid actor\" - the people in those commercials are people who have signed up through an extra agency or responded to a casting call. They aren't *professional* actors, and if you encountered one on the street you would not refer to them as an \"actor\" like you would someone like Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves. You can debate whether or not they should be called actors within the context of the commercial, but the fact that there is a reasonable argument against them being called actors means that the statement that they are \"not paid actors\" is not *objectively* false. All that leaves you with is whether that is a misleading statement. So would a normal person both believe and rely on the statement \"real people, not paid actors\"? Now maybe the dumbest X% of society might be stupid enough to rely on the fact that other \"real people\" are buying a product in making their own purchase - and that's who those statements target. But what the dumbest segments of society do doesn't matter, at least not legally. For the purposes of false advertisement, what matters is whether a person of normal intelligence would rely on the statement, and its clear that no one of normal intelligence would rely on, or even care about the fact that other \"real people\" were buying a product in making their own purchase. Because a normal person would not rely on that statement it is not considered to be misleading within the legal context of false advertisement. Edit: Also, advertisers are allowed to use certain \"terms of art\" - which are words that are generally understood to have a specific meaning other than their dictionary definition. Because nowadays most people have come to understand that \"real people, not paid actors\" just means that the people in the commercials are not professional actors, that phrase has almost certainly become a permissible term of art even in the extremely unlikely event that it may have been inappropriate when it first came into use.",
"These people definitely come to the warehouse with the intention of filming a commercial, and they are most likely given at least a little bit of a script. More likely they fit some picture of people they are trying to sell to that maybe themselves just bought a car and offered to pay them to say some words about it."
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95ak31 | What happened that made Afrikaans and Dutch considered to be separate languages, whereas, for example, American and British English aren't? | Dutch settlers settled in what's now South Africa around the same time British and Spanish settlers arrived in North America but their "colonial" dialects are considered just that - dialects. What's different about South Africa? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"According to Wikipedia ([here]( URL_0 )) there is no universal criterium, but mutual understanding is the most used indicator. Again according to Wikipedia ([here]( URL_1 )) this isn't the case between Dutch and Afrikaans. Since Afrikaans uses a much simpler grammar, it is much easier for Dutch speakers to understand Afrikaans than the other way around. For example in Afrikaans they use 'ons' (='us') also as subject, so it would be equivalent to saying \"Us did something\" instead of \"We did something\". It's easy for us to understand, but they wouldn't know what the word 'We' means.",
"Dutch is a very different language from Afrikaans even though they share the same root. I can understand 30% of the words that Dutch people are saying IF they speak slowly. Dutch people can understand more of what I say if I speak Afrikaans slowly I’ve heard Dutch people call Afrikaans baby Dutch because it sounds more like Dutch spoken by very young children. I believe Afrikaans and Dutch were closer at one point but Dutch continued to evolve in Europe separately from Afrikaans while Afrikaans absorbed some African and English words into the vocabulary If you went back 200 years in time, I think you would have a difficult time understanding a lot of the English spoken. ( I speak Afrikaans but I’m not a native speaker)"
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95caqc | what is QAnon and why are it’s/their supporters at the President’s rallies? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So on 4chan and 8chan there is a guy who occasionally pops up by the name of Q, and because everyone ends up being referred to as an \"anon\" by the rest of the users of the various boards, he's known as QAnon. The name is also in reference to a Q-level security clearance, which is a very high-level clearance within the Department of Energy. Anyway, QAnon has been posting conspiracy theories and broadly claiming that Clinton and Obama are planning a coup against Trump, (falsely) claiming various democratic politicians or staffers were involved in the murder of Seth Rich, or other such things. QAnon himself is probably just trolling because it's trivially easy to push /pol/'s buttons.",
"QAnon is a series of conspiracy theories put out by someone calling himself \"Q.\" Q claims to be someone in the Trump administration who has a Q-level security clearance. (I think that's a real security clearance in the Dept. of Energy.) Q believes the Obamas and the Clintons and Soros were part of a pedophile ring, that sort of thing. Here's an introduction from GQ: URL_0",
"Just to add to what others have said, they're at Trump rallies because they're 100% Trump supporters. It's a conspiracy theory designed to either rally or parody Trump supporters, but in either case it's exclusively the domain of Trump's base. The conspiracy is everything they desperately want to believe is true -- that Trump is actually playing 372-dimensional chess, that Mueller isn't after Trump at all, and that Obama/Hillary/Soros/etc. will all be in jail soon."
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95deju | Why is sex seen as worse than violence? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because children have context for violence, but not for sex. Even in relatively peaceful times, children have likely experienced interpersonal violence on the playground. But they haven't experienced sex at all - much less with all the attendant social elements that surround adult sex. As a result, they have no ground truth for understanding sexuality in films while they have some degree of understanding the nature of violence.",
"Social conventions and parenting styles vary from region to region and person to person and do not need to conform to any form of logic or consistency. There are plenty of parents that would not allow their children to partake in violent media at such an age as well. For example, my mother forbade me from playing Goldeneye on my brother's N64. As an example of inconsistency, she did not mind me playing Half Life. At the end of the day, gratuitous violence and some displays of sexuality may be harmful to children and it's up to parents to determine what they do and do not think their kids should be watching or doing. Not because they know exactly what's best, but because they're legally responsible for their kids and also (generally) want what's best for them. Your mom might not have known exactly what sort of \"sexual references\" were in the sims and instead decided to be on the safe side, or she might have had some other reason for not wanting you to have it and used an excuse. > I don't understand why people getting shot or stabbed is more acceptable than a boob. That much I share confusion on. But again, people aren't consistent in their opinions."
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95exh9 | Why don’t we use tomato leaves as herbs, they’re fragrant, edible, and easy to grow? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Many plants in the Solanaceae family are toxic. Even genera with parts we can consume, like chiles, tomatoes, and potatoes have toxic parts, such as the stems and leaves.",
"Are they edible? I was under the impression that tomato leaves contain toxic alkaloids like their nightshade brethren.",
"At the end of the day, pretty much everything that you can think of has already been tried. Maybe 0.5% of the chef's out there are doing anything completely original. If you don't see anybody else doing it, there's a 99.5% chance that there's a very good reason for that."
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95k1p7 | What does this Nazi dinner guest story mean? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He's saying that if people aren't offended enough by a Nazi that they wouldn't have dinner with them, they're Nazis too. As a corollary, he's saying if people aren't Nazis, they don't tolerate Nazis.",
"During Hitlers rise to power, most of the people in Germany weren't really convinced by national socialism as an ideology. Nevertheless, a lot of people either supported or tolerated him - most importantly the military leadership as well as powerful bankers and industrialists. The only ones to resist the signing of the \"[Ermächtigungsgesetz]( URL_0 )\", the law that gave Hitler the legal basis for his dictatorship were the communists (who were already outlawed at that point) and the social democrats, who followed the communists into exile or concentration camps right after. After the war, there was a sentiment that the nazis were just a small group of people around Hitler who mislead everyone else and carried the guilt for all that happened during that time. Politicians, officials, officers, industrialists and bankers who helped to run the nazi state or even actively contributed in war crimes were whitewashed and continued in their position after the war, see for example the [clean Wehrmacht myth]( URL_1 ). But many started arguing that this really just wasn't true. That the nazis weren't just a small clique of people, but that all those who associated with the nazi state were nazis. They were the other ten people at the dinner party.",
"Recently, a professor at an American university, originally from Germany, stated that this was a common saying in Germany. It attracted a lot of attention, and that's probably where your manager got it from. It was part of an ongoing debate about how you should deal with right-wing extremists. One view is that everyone with extreme right-wing views should be sidelined and denied a platform, because such views are positively harmful to a democratic society. Another view is that many people with such views probably have them because of certain grievances they have, and so the best thing to do is to listen to them and address their problems in the hope that they will then give up their extremist views. This saying is on the side of \"deny them all a platform and don't listen to them\". It takes the view that anyone prepared to listen to Nazis must themselves be a Nazi: Nazi ideology is so beyond the pale, so obviously and objectively evil, that any sane and sensible person will shun all Nazis. If they don't, they're a Nazi. Unfortunately, it's actually not a common saying in Germany. It might be a thing in the professor's own family, but I've been living in Germany for 25 years and I've never heard it, and neither has any German I have ever spoken to about it. Of course, it's impossible to say what your manager thinks is the \"good lesson\" here. Some people simply repeat stuff that sounds clever to them without actually understanding it at all. It may be that the reason you're confused is that your manager hasn't the slightest clue what it means and so used it inappropriately."
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95nci3 | What does the term wasp mean and where did it come from? | I recently read somewhere that wasp was being used as a term for a particular kind of person, it was used to describe a type of person to be cast for a movie back in the days and a young Robert Redford was mentioned as the quintessential wasp. Is it used in a similar fashion as dego or guido, or like how kike is used (although derogatory) in reference to a jew? Just as an FYI, I'm not from North America and I would really like to know since I'm interested in these type of cultural linguistic things. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, wasp lower-case means a stinging insect. WASP stands for [White Anglo-Saxon Protestant]( URL_0 ).",
"White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. That is a white person (male most of the time), of British or Germanic origin that is also a Protestant Christian. Most people in a position of power, at least in politics, are WASPs",
"White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. So any white American who is of at least partially English ancestry, and often would be descended from the individuals who were among the original European colonist groups. Because they've been here for a long time, the WASPs are generally more rich and powerful than the average American. Because of this, the richer WASPs are the closest thing to Gentry/Nobility in the US. However, a lot of their influence has been fading, particularly since the Kennedy family came to power (as the Kennedy's were Irish Catholics, which to stereotypical old-school WASPs means they're barely differentiated from black people). WASPs will typically live along the Eastern Seaboard, particularly north of Washington DC, and most heavily in New York and New England. South of DC you start running into the White Southerners, who will have a lot more Celtic genetics, and who lost a lot of their power and influence in the Civil War. Of note; WASP isn't just \"rich white person.\" It's honestly an ethnic group in-and-of-itself at this point."
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95pqcl | where did the terms “first world” and “third world” countries come from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First World is the USA and their allies during the Cold War. Second World is the USSR (Russia) and their allies during the Cold War. Third Word are those nations that were neutral during the Cold War. Both the US and the USSR gave a lot of money to their allies for economic and military development during the Cold War. This is what brought the idea of the developed world being First World and Undeveloped world being Third World as the undeveloped world did not get much foreign aid for development during this time. It is also interesting to note that countries like Ireland and Switzerland were neutral during the Cold War so are technically Third World nations.",
"IIRC it originated during the Cold War. NATO countries were \"first-world\", Soviet-influenced countries were the \"second-world\", and \"Third-World\" referred to all the developing countries that were up for grabs in the ideological battle/proxy war between the US and the Soviets."
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95td5s | Why is seeing someone in pain funny? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Schadenfreude, a few studies have related it to seeing other people’s bad luck, makes ourselves look better. Source: Wikipedia",
"It's not seeing someone in pain that's funny, it's seeing how they got there. Most of our lives are pretty pain and accident free. When something happens that goes against what normally happens it's very novel and we tend to think novel things are funny. That's basically how jokes work as well."
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95wttk | when do you pronounce a(n) 0 like zero, nil or “oh”? | English is obviously not my native language but I speak it on a daily basis and watch a lot of series and movies, all in English including English subtitles. Have a lot of English speaking friends as well, so my arrogance assumed: fluent in English Earlier today I was thinking about the number 0 and was dumbfounded after realising I’ve got zero knowledge on how to pronounce it in different cases. So how does it work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For example: why is James Bond called *double-oh seven* and not *double-zero seven*?",
"The correct pronunciation is zero, but in a lot of conversation “oh” is faster and easier to say as it’s basically a shortened zero (zer-oh)Most of the time I’ll say “oh” for zero, but if it’s something official or scientific I try to say zero. I often flip back and forth so you can say either really, but context and sentence structure is also key. Sport scores are an example. The score is zero to zero (not oh to oh), but the teams record is oh and ten (0-10). TDLR: Context is key, you sort of learn for each situation."
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95xgi1 | The mechanisms of voting in the US and the controversy about requiring government ID in order to vote | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You have to register to vote a month or 2 before the actual election is to take place. You then get a voter ID card but your name goes on a list. Your local voting station gets a list that contains your name (and others who registered). You then tell the voting station your name, they cross you off a list and go to vote. Source: I worked at a voting station a few years back. The issue is that for starters we don't automatically register people to vote, if you don't register before hand you usually can't vote or you have to go through a huge process to be able to vote. Additionally in terms of having a photo ID, most people use a drivers license but there are large swaths of people that don't have a license. Ok so use a state ID, well that requires a bunch of documentation that poor people are statistically expect to lose. Social Security cards and birth certificates are generally required and if poor people lose them it's super hard to get any sort of ID. Then tac on the fact that you have to go to the department of motor vehicles to get this ID (notorious for being slow) it's really hard for a poor person to take off work to find a bus to ride for an hour each direction and wait 3 hours at the DMV. Edit: also go search for the DMV in the state of Texas you'll see a handful, but you'll also notice that many people up North and West have to drive a huge distance to get to one. It's more of an issue with how we don't register and don't automatically give people access to state issued IDs.",
"First, the US does not have any nationwide universal ID. Instead, each state issues its own ID (typically a Drivers License or similar) or there are photo IDs for members of the military. 2nd, a LOT of people don't have a driver's license. If you don't have a car, you don't need one. This primarily impacts the elderly and the poor. Getting state ID means gathering the necessary documents, getting a ride to the driver's license office (which may be FAR away if you live in a rural area) waiting all day, paying a fee, etc. If you don't have a car this is a huge pain. If you're poor and work two jobs you just don't have this kind of time. If you're 90 years old it's unlikely you even have the correct documents any more.",
"Throughout the United State's history there's been discrimination in voting. Sometimes it was overt (women can't vote and black people can't vote). So we amended the constitution to change that (15th and 19th amendments). The thing is, voting is controlled by the states so states that still didn't want black people (mostly) to vote instead brought up all sorts of rules that said \"okay, you can vote IF you do X\". Things like poll taxes, literacy tests, etc. So you'd show up to vote and it'd be $10 supposedly to pay for the expenses of the day and if you didn't have that money (because you're poor) then that's too bad. So then we passed a law called the voting rights act that severely restricted the rights of states to do sneaky things like that. Fast forward to today and you have voter ID laws. Some people allege this is just the latest tactic in the same pattern set up as before. It's just an extraneous requirement meant to keep people from voting rather than really having anything to do with election security. That's because in the USA you usually have to register to vote beforehand. So you prove that you live where you live and then you can just go vote whenever there's an election. Sometimes you can use any sort of ID (doesn't even need a picture) but some proposed laws narrow the scope of what's allowed (so student IDs are no longer valid to prove you are who you say you are).",
"Other people are saying it in more detail, but in essence the root of the problem is that actually getting appropriate ID (e.g. a driver's license) in America is *unspeakably* difficult compared to in most other first-world nations.",
"Your country probably has a mandatory national ID system, well-funded by the national government. Due to long-standing worries about being tracked by the government, the US does not. Instead, it uses state driver's licenses as IDs. These licenses require a fee and often involve a bunch of other hidden costs and hassles, so many poor Americans don't have one. As a result, there's no way to have a positive ID of all voters without locking some out of the voting process. The obvious solution to that problem is to roll out a real national ID system, but some civil rights groups worry it will be used to track and monitor citizens, and some lawmakers are rather happy with the way the current system disenfranchises poor urban voters.",
"> How does this work in the states where ID is not required? You show up and just vote? I walk into the polling place, tell them my name and address, sign the register, and they hand me a ballot. > Why is it a problem to ~~register/~~obtain an ID? It takes a significant amount of time (on the order of up to half a workday), and the documents - driver's licenses and passports, at least - aren't free. (Voter registration generally *is* required, so that you appear on the rolls.) --- The logical argument in favor of ID is that, considered wholly independently, it shouldn't be controversial to prove your identity before casting your vote. The logical argument against ID is that the sort of voter fraud it would fight simply doesn't happen on any meaningful scale. Requiring ID, in practice, is a solution without a problem, which would create a *host* of negative side effects.",
"The province of Alabama created a voter ID law. Then they closed DMV offices (where you could get an ID) in predominantly Black areas. For some people, getting proper ID would take three hours of driving. In other areas, they reduced the hours that the DMV offices were open -- sometimes only a few hours a day, two days a week. Every requirement in the way of voting is a chance for people to peddle racism via bureaucracy.",
"Because the US voter ID supporting contingent is composed of equal parts well meaning but not fully aware people and cynical bigots who would say anything to disenfranchise more people. Our public transit systems are atrocious and our local-level government is a mixed bag, so a policy that seems sensible and easy to support, like an ID for voting, can easily become a nightmare to comply with for many people in some areas. Some people, mostly elderly people living in rural areas, don't have a birth certificate, for instance. Not like they don't have a physical copy of one, there was never a BC created. Someone like that can be barred from voting by apparently benevolent voter ID laws despite their status as an American citizen."
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95y4ax | Why is it so many languages have some form of "mama" and "papa" as one of their words for mother and father? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Way back when (around 5-10 thousand years ago), there was this group of people who lived in Central Asia who spoke a language called Proto-Indo-European. That language and those people became the ancestors of pretty much every language spoken in Europe, India, and parts of the Middle East. Guess what their words for mother and father were? \"Mehter\" and \"Pehter\"",
"They're the most linguistically simple sounds you can make. Just open and close your mouth while humming: mama. That means they're usually the first few sounds a baby makes, so people just decided to use them as names for the first few people a baby will interact with, mom and dad. Nana and baba are also pretty simple, and tend to be assigned to other close family members for the same reason.",
"Because those sounds are easy for young babies to say when they're just babbling and figuring out how to make sounds...",
"During the early stages of child development (6-12 months) kids naturally repeat phonetic sounds during the babbling stage of speech development. So they say stuff like baba, papa, mama, etc",
"Babies spontaneously make these sounds at ~9 months. They are known as \"bilabial consonants\" and are the first real sounds babies making after they learn to \"coo\". Babies like to say \"mamamama\", \"bababababa\", and \"papapapa\". This is the main reason mama and papa (or dada/baba) are so preserved globally as labels for parents. This is according to the developmental pediatrician I worked with."
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960mr0 | How does law enforcement figure out who starts large forest fires (such as the arrest of a suspect such in the recent episode in California)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The really short and unhelpful ELI5 is \"they investigate\" The longer answer is that it really depends on the case; if the fire was shown to have started at site X, that has a path leading to a road at point Y that is attached to highway Z by exit Q, they can see who used that exit at [time of the fire - (rough driving time from Q to Y + rough walking time from Y to X)] through nearby traffic cameras and pull license plates to get the owners of those cars."
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964jro | Why is Malcolm X so celebrated? Wasn't he a racist? | There are multiple high schools and streets named after this person. Why is he so celebrated? Wasn't he very controversial? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Malcolm indeed was racist for a large period of his life. He is celebrated for emboldening black people to defend themselves, by any means necessary, against violence. If not for public figures like Malcolm, Dr. King's message of non-violence would not have been so urgently needed and embraced by many politicians and media outlets. Malcolm and King, when taken together, made the message clear: we have gotten to a point where, as WH Auden put it, we must love each other or die. As for his racism, Malcolm disavowed it after his pilgrimage to Mecca, where he saw people of all races worshiping peacefully to the God whose name was used to radicalize him. He was a man of great dignity, resolve, and open to changing his opinions as insight moved him. He always did what he felt was fair and right, even if it meant admitting he'd been wrong. That makes him a great example to all of us. He helped black America embrace their fervor for survival and made white America see what could happen if racist policy did not change by peaceful means. In this way, he was an integral piece of the civil rights movement.",
"Malcolm X was racist for most of his life, but toward the end when he rejected the Nation of Islam, he similarly rejected racism. Otherwise, to put it succinctly, he was one of the most prominent black intellectuals and activists during the Civil Rights Era. He spoke, wrote, and put himself in harm's way to promote the rights of black people in America. He was also so genuine in his convictions that he was willing to walk away from the Nation of Islam, which he had vastly more popular, disavow it, and ultimately be assassinated by its members. He's considered to be something of the flip-side to Martin Luther King Jr.'s approach to black empowerment, being much more militant but no less compelling. White people seeing and hearing Malcolm X's words made them a lot more amenable to the alternative approach of Dr. King's.",
"This is probably too big a subject for an ELI5, but the TL;DR is: He was a person who was willing to make enemies and die for a cause, and the cause was just, even if in the process of promoting the cause he sold his soul. The cause was policing the police, for ALL people. The Black Panther movement isn't exactly what you'd expect from reading a Texas school history book. See URL_0 for more details.",
"He was for the most part, but he was a major source of inspiration for many African Americans to stand up. While many of the things he stood for are counter productive to improving race relations and to improve African American opportunities (segregation for example), what he did do was change to conversation about race. When there are two vocal sides to an argument, most people tend to take a position somewhere in between those two vocal positions. This is true even when one side is being completely rational and the other completely psychotic. If one voice is convincing people that white people are inherently better than black people and should be rewarded as such, and the other side is arguing for equal rights, casual observers will tend to pick position somewhere in between, which is still very racist. If however you have one voice saying that white people are inherently better, and the other saying black people are inherently better, then casual observers will tend toward a midpoint where everyone is equal.",
"It's considered more acceptable for \"the underdog\" to be racist/offensive/drastic than it is for \"the bully\". Kicking upwards is OK, kicking downwards is not. Edit: Or, think of it like this: You shouldn't fight in school. If a big bully beats up a little kid, it's wrong. However, if that little kid gets angry and hits the bully back, he'll have your sympathy."
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96auyr | Culturally or linguistically, why do Italian Americans stereotypically come up with such odd nicknames? | [There's this list of real-life monsters for example]( URL_0 ), and the phenomenon seems to be a staple of movies and shows like the Sopranos ( "Uncle Junior," " Big Pussy, " "Tony Uncle Johnny," " Johnny Sack, " etc.) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It comes from older Italian culture where they used nicknames to identify specifically which \"Paulie\" you are referring to instead of using surnames."
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96c123 | What are the differences between the 3 types of queens, and what type of queen is Elsa? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Queen Consort: She's not queen in her own right, but her husband is the king and as his wife she gets the title \"queen.\" Dowager Queen: The king has died and his queen consort is still alive. The new monarch is typically their oldest child. She's not *the* queen anymore, but she doesn't just get her title stripped from her either. Queen Regnant: The queen is the actual monarch in her own right. Her husband can be king consort (*very* rare) or prince consort or whatever title she and/or her government chooses. The current queen of the UK, Elizabeth II, is a queen regnant. Her mother was queen consort while Elizabeth's father was alive, and then became a dowager after Elizabeth became the monarch. Elsa is a queen regnant.",
"What method of classification are you talking about? If you name it perhaps we could help you out. If you are talking about the kinds of Queens based on their authority there are 4 kinds not 3. 1) Queen Consort. This is the wife of a King. Since King is a higher rank that Queen he is the Monarch ruling the Kingdom and the one actually on the throne. 2) Queen Dowager. This is the widow of a dead King. Normally the mother of the sitting Monarch. They may have some political influence but they are not in control of the kingdom. 3) Queen Regent. This is the widow of a dead King who is temporarily sitting on the throne and in control of the kingdom. Normally this would happen if the heir is too young to take active control of the kingdom. 4) Queen Regnant. This is a Queen that is the sitting Monarch. They are the one that is in charge of the Kingdom. Elsa is this kind of Queen, though she mostly ignored her duties and hid in her rooms.",
"Which three types of queens do you think there are?"
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96c5q2 | Why is Asia considered a separate continent to Europe, when the two are a part of the same landmass? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's purely due to historic/cultural differences and the fact that continent doesn't have a strict definition. The typical definition of a continent is a large unbroken landmass surrounded by water. There are traditionally 7 continents. North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia (or Oceania), and Antarctica. Of course, most of these don't fit the definition. Some people learn that North and South America are one continent (making 6 continents), and some people group Europe and Asia together as Eurasia (making 5). However this is weird because it leaves out Africa. Africa is also an unbroken landmass connected to Eurasia, so technically they should be grouped togethermaking one big Afro-Eurasian continent. Doing this isn't any different than grouping America together. This makes 4 continents, America, Afro-Eurasia, Australia (or Oceania), and Antarctica. This has some problems too though. Antarctica isn't a singular landmass. It's actually an archipelago buried under all that ice. So if Antarctica get's to be a continent, then Greenland and Baffin Island in northern Canada should probably be their own continents too. Both have similar land masses to Antarctica. Also how big do you have to be to be a continent? Australia is big yes, but there are other big islands too (Greenland, Baffin Island, Madagascar). So what about culture? This is where we get the Europe/Asia divide from, but again, we are really inconsistent with applying this definition. If we are going to split up Europe and Asia based on culture, then why is Russia part of Asia? Also, why is the Middle East, India, and China all part of the same continent? If you're going to split Eurasia into Europe and Asia, then why not also add a Middle East continent and an Indian continent? So what about using tectonic plates? That's even worse. Now you have a Middle East continent and an Indian continent AND California is no longer part of North America. California now gets to join Japan as a brand new Pacific continent that contains mostly water, and a bunch of islands. In summary, there can be as many or as few continents as you want there to be."
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96l1f3 | Why are hoppy beers so popular in the US? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"IPAs became popular in a lot of the former British Colonies because they were the kind of beer that could survive the long sea voyages. Hops are more than just a flavoring agent, they are also a preservative of a sort that extend the shelf life of beer. So the \"India Pale Ale\" which is extremely hop heavy was developed specifically to let beer last long enough to get to India. The techniques were used for most exported beers so almost all colonies had very hop heavy beers until they started to brew their own and chose to not make it hop heavy. Though by this point in time a taste for the hop heavy kind had established itself in society. This was disrupted with prohibition and after it was lifted there was a shift to the Pilsner style Lagers preferred by German immigrants and their descendants took over as the dominant style drunk in the USA. The current trend to like them is in part associated with micro-breweries becoming popular. These are small breweries that have either taken up old familial recipes from pre-prohibition records, or are simply choosing a style very different from the common beer made by Coors, Budweiser, and Miller. This combination of obscure historical ties and counter culture made them attractive to the \"hipster\" crowd and that bled into millennial and post-millennial society as a whole.",
"Its because IPA is the only term a lot of people know and they want to sound educated when ordering beer.",
"It's less that hoppy beers are more popular, and more that hoppy beers are easier for small breweries to make. Worried about your microbrew's flavor? Throw in a bunch of hops and call it an IPA. It'll cover any imperfections in the base product. It should be noted that lagers are still the most popular beer style in the US.",
"I've maintained for awhile that IPAs are \"fancy\" beer for people who don't actually know what beer is supposed to taste like. But I'm a stouts-and-porters guy with a terrible palate, so take that with a grain of salt.",
"I think it is because many people believe that an overly hoppy taste is an indicator of a craft beer."
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96s9hb | The difference between the terms "people of color" and "colored people" | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a semantic difference. The first emphasises \"people\" while the second emphasises \"colored\", although it could depend on just how you say it rather than the words themselves. However, it's really all about the history of the terms. \"Colored people\" was a term used by racists to disempower people. \"People of color\" is a term designed by the disempowered people to describe themselves. With most terms, it's generally friendlier to use the term that the people call themselves.",
"What you are referring to is called \"euphemistic drift\". A term or label which may have started off with good intentions may develop negative connotations over time and some even reach the point of becoming an epithet. This will then cause people to look for new terms. It is pointless to look for hypocrisy in the fact that many of these terms have very similar etymologies. Just try to use terms that haven't accumulated too many negative connotations. If a word that is acceptable today becomes unacceptable twenty years from now, just roll with it and adapt. It is not that hard."
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96spsm | Why Japan seems to talk about challenging God in their media? | I've noticed that in the games I've played and anime I watched, without giving spoilers, Japanese tend to write about fighting God himself. Is there a reason for this culturally? I always found it fascinating. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most people in Japan follow Shinto, but Shinto is not a \"complete\" religion in that it deals mostly with the formation and history of Japan, while only touching on other subjects. As a result, most people who are Shinto mix it with Buddhism and you get a very non-uniform religion with thousands of possible gods or other dieties. However, one underlying constant of this mythology holds that the universe is filled with Kami, which functions fairly similarly to mitoclorians from Star Wars. Kami are sentient energy beings that attach themselves to both physical and spiritual beings, granting those beings divine power. There's nothing inherently special about the gods in Japanese mythology - they are just beings that existed before the world did and so were able to amass vast amounts of Kami due to the lack of competition from anyone else. Similarly, there is nothing inherently good about these gods and most have exceedingly bad tempers that cause them to lash out and do evil things. In this system exceptionally virtuous people can also attract enough Kami to ascend to godhood upon their deaths, and there is nothing that would stop such a person from challenging an existing god and defeating them to take their place. This lends itself well to an anime where the protagonist is slowly powering up and defeating evildoers on Earth. Once they've run out of earthly targets, the next obvious choice is to go after the less virtuous gods. DragonBallZ is actually a good example of this. As weird as its mythology is, its a reasonable approximation of the Shinto laws of nature being applied to a different universe.",
"Power scaling/Power creep possibly. In some shows I’ve watched they usually make the protagonist stronger and stronger, meaning the villain also has to be stronger in order for it to be a challenge, so eventually they reach a point where they’re probably too powerful for anything/anyone who comes from earth/space etc.",
"Maybe the issue is the other side: how often do characters in Western culture fight God? Probably very little, outside of the Bible or metaphorical situations in serious philosophical literature. Western / Abrahamic religion cultures have a taboo against humanizing God too much, so good humans aren't supposed to fight God, even though God can be an asshole sometimes and not act the way we humans want Him to. But those taboos are not native to Japan. There have been commercial products in Japan that have the English word \"God\" in them. If any American company came out with \"Green God Laundry Detergent\", Christians would throw a fit, but something like that would not cause a stir in Japan. (I made up that example, but I know I have seen equally banal Japanese consumer products with the word God in them.) In the Japanese cultural context, \"God\" just means \"some all-powerful being\", not \"the fount of all power and love, the being to fear and worship\". So why not a laundry-detergent with that attribute? So Japan doesn't have that taboo towards God; Christianity and monotheism are foreign cultural ideas. God is just another Big Boss. Superheroes gotta fight Him."
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96x0c5 | Why did the Latin language die if so many words are rooted from it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It did not die, in a sense. It just evolved in a similar way old english evolved into modern english. The romance languages are all decended from Latin. Spanish, Portugese, French, Italian, Romanian and the lot are all languages that started out as Latin and then evolved nd changed troughout the centuries. Latin itself is a very hard language, so the commoners were already speaking a simpler version named \"vulgar Latin\" that became the basis for the rest of the family. Languages tend to evolve towards simplicity",
"Actually, Latin is the *official language* of the Holy See and of Catholic Church, although it is no more the native language of anyone since many centuries. It was used during Catholic masses until a few decades ago, and it is still used in official documents in Vatican. Also ATM machines in Vatican offer Latin as a language alongside with Italian, English and others (image: URL_0 )."
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96x3vb | How is paying taxes for a public schooling system any different than paying taxes for socialized medicine? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's really not any different... Paying for public education has just been part of the picture for a long time now. Additionally, you have the whole \"no taxes! Government stealing my money!\" Crowd pushing the idea that all taxes are bad, not realizing (or blatantly ignoring) the fact that taxes are kinda necessary for society to function as we have come to expect",
"I don't have a source but I would probably have to jump down the rabbit hole of blaming special interest groups. Primarily insurance companies who profit off of private healthcare. I don't have an answer for those who would say that private healthcare leads to more groundbreaking knowledge and equipment since I don't have any kind of education to refute that, but I can't wrap my head around the blatant classism that has formed due to privatized healthcare. No matter which way you cut it, more money = better care. On the flipside to that, I worry about the quality of care based on my own experiences with the VA. It's all free for me but it's not exactly the most efficient healthcare model either. In my experience, at best, I'll have to wait a minimum of 2 weeks to see a doctor for non-emergency situations. At worst, it could be upwards of 3 months. Hence the laughably broken choice program that has yet to really improve on that concept. That's a whole other story of tomfoolery though."
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972o7p | Does anybody know the historical context behind why women in their menstrual corses have traditionally been considered unclean? We see it across multiple religions and cultures across the globe. But where did the initial idea of uncleanliness come from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are literally discharging blood from their bodies at a semi constant rate. All bodily fluids are generally considered unclean.",
"To add to the other comments: In most of those religions, blood is considered sacrosanct. Animals killed for consumption needed to be pre-bled, and letting too much of your own blood out resulted in death (not just from blood loss, but from infection because they didn't have antibiotics). Blood was considered the core of the person (English Core comes from the French Cour, which means heart). This is where a person's identity was thought to reside. So with all this background, having the female leak blood for 1/3 of every month obviously meant that they were at risk of dying and of spreading disease, not to mention the fact that they weren't all there (due to leaking their identity out of their body). This is also where women being considered more frail comes from. [edit] Of course, none of the men setting up these traditions never seems to have thought to ask a woman's opinion....",
"There are two predominant theories. 1) A lot of ancient cultures viewed illnesses and unexplained injuries as the wrath of the gods. When faced with the prospect of the menstrual cycle, and not knowing the cause, many ancient cultures thought that the monthly bleeding was wrath placed upon women for some kind of sin inherent in women, thus her cycle was a time when she was under judgement and therefore unclean. 2) Ancient pagan cultures associated the menstrual cycle with the lunar cycle (which is the reason why in most pagan religions the lunar deity is almost always a virginal goddess, the cycle pauses during pregnancy and since the moon never ceases in its cycle and the gods are perfect and cannot be barren or impotent she must be untouched by a man) and by extension the moon goddess. Therefore the menstrual cycle is when a woman is being touched by the moon goddess and it would therefore be blasphemy to touch her during that time."
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975cpe | With Saudi Arabia being the mystery buyer of Tesla, how does this look for the future of the company economics wise? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The basis if Saudi Arabia's wealth is oil. If electric cars take over, oil will lose much of its value. Maybe Saudi Arabia is out to squish a dangerous competitor. Or maybe they want to diversify as a hedge against when the oil runs out. Who knows? What we do know is that Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship with a shitty human rights record."
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978mio | How come in a world with hundreds of different cultures, languages & societies that often do not agree with one another, we have a Clock/Calendar that is universal? For example, how did everyone agree that this is the time and the year? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Calendars are not the same everywhere. Having the same time system was crucial for trading across nations, so they all benefited from adopting the same system.",
"How did everyone agree? Well, we didn't. For Thai people the current year is 2561. For Islamic people the current year is 1439, the current month is Dhul Hijjah and the current date is the 3rd. And so on.",
"European colonization efforts around the world exported their culture to pretty much every continent. As we globalized, it became useful for everyone to at least know the Western calendar system. Over time that just became adoption, and now most people use it. There are other calendar systems in use, but they're kept more for tradition than any practical purpose.",
"There are other calendars in the world both historically and today. However, just as with language, it is useful to adopt partially (or totally) the system used by major powers to improve the ability to interact with them, cut down on confusion, and so forth. If there's a huge market, you want to eliminate as many barriers as you can to get in there."
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979r44 | Why are handshakes used in meet and greets or why are they a sign of friendship? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I believe they were originally used as a way to establish trust where both parties prove to each other that they are not concealing anything (like weapons) in their hands"
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97ahlo | Why do photos of highschool kids prior to 1990 look much older than the kids today? | I don't know if it's just me, but I see awesome photos of people's parents and grandparents on r/oldschoolcool, and it always seems like 18 year olds in the past looked much older than kids today. Is there any cultural reasons for this phenomena? I'm not the only person who sees this either. My best guess is that in our societies ever-increasing search for youth and beauty has lead to a more youthful standard. I think hairstyle plays a big role too. Just my thoughts. I am curious about the real drives behind this phenomena | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Probably because you associate the styles they’re dressed in with the people who are from that era. What was popular in the 50’s-90’s with the youth is still getting worn by people from that era only they’re older. Hairstyles mostly. That’s why a lot of senior citizens wear their hair in curls bc it was popular in the 50’s. When we get old I suspect us to be wearing the same style clothes pretty much, and they’ll be considered “old” in time too.",
"in addition to what /u/devthefirecat says photography has changed a bit too. At least where I live we had to settle for crappy black and white shots in the year book and most of the yearbook itself was in black and white, somewhat grainy, and shittily printed in the early 90's and before. Nowadays the kids get glossy high-quality yearbooks and every page is full color."
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97byt4 | Why do truckers have a tough guy rep? | Just saw it again on a message boards with a trucker stating his occupation as though that in and of itself was enough of a threat. With all due respect, don't they live the most unhealthy lifestyle imaginable? Sitting down all day and living on road food? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Truckers are assumed to live with and move through the absolute lowest levels of society. They sleep in their trucks by the side of the road or at truck stops - not exactly nice or well-policed places. They have to sleep with one eye open in case they have to defend either themselves or their cargo from being robbed. Despite their poor diets/fitness, they eat and drink at seedy redneck bars where they have to be able to handle themselves in a fight. These dive bars also bring them into contact with biker gangs, another \"tough guy\" crowd. To stay awake on their long hauls they often use amphetamines, which means they're tied in with the meth & other drugs industry. Finally, truckers communicate with each other via CB radio and have a \"brotherhood\" with one another - if you piss off one trucker you can assume that other truckers will harass you, too. And regardless of the driver's physical fitness, being run off the road by an 18-wheeler is not a fun experience. In essence, they are the epitome of having \"friends in low places\".",
"Many (though not all) truckers belong to the Teamsters Union. In the middle of last century, the teamsters union was infiltrated by the mafia and had a reputation for beating, robbing, and destroying the property of their rivals. To this day, their strikes can be some of the most damaging to the economy, so they are still powerful. Though (to my knowledge) the violence has stopped, they still carry that reputation."
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97cu7g | Why are Jewish people historically the subject of so much hatred? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Jews traditionally only marry other Jews. They worshipped in their own way. They were insular culturally, so they were very obviously outsiders no matter where they lived. So it was easy to treat them as \"other\" as \"different.\" And humans are VERY good at being cruel to people who are different than them, very good at blaming strangers for all their problems rather than accepting the blame themselves. Because they were a visible minority, Jews living in Europe became easy to hate by people who needed some target for their anger. And that tradition just has never gone away."
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97fxld | why is the Hispanic population only 2-3% in Louisiana? (Seems it would be bigger, being right next to Texas. Is there old law or zoning or whatever that helped cause this?) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pew research says Hispanics are 5% of Louisiana's population. It goes down as you move east. Alabama 4%, Mississippi 3%. The reason is probably history. Texas was originally part of Mexico. As were the states West of it. Louisiana was a French colony, and a heavy slave state, so there was a cultural border that has carried over to the present day.",
"Hispanic population in Texas decreases as you travel eastward. Louisiana is just a continuation of that and not that different from the eastern edge of Texas URL_0"
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97jan1 | What characteristics define "swear" or "curse" words? | When I heard swear or curse word, a few words come to mind, but how do I know they are even swear words? Am I saying words that I feel are light hearted and I am actually swearing? I've never found a solid answer, so I ask, what characteristics define "swear" or "curse" words? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some (mostly 4-letter) swear words are actually old Anglo-Saxon words used to define body parts or bodily functions. At the time, they weren't considered swear words, just a normal part of the language. When outside influences, such as French, entered the language, the elite began using French words instead of Anglo-Saxon. The lower classes, who didn't speak French, continued using the old 4-letter words, which were considered crudisms by the upper classes. Shit yeah!",
"I'm gonna save you some trouble and give you a fun read. Check out the book \"Holy Sh*t! A History of Cursing\". My local fucking library has it, maybe your goddamn library will too.",
"Society simply defined some words offensive enough to be swear words. Usually they have basis in disgust (shit, piss), sexuality (fuck, cunt), blasphemy (damn, hell), or oppression (nigger, bitch). This is a social construct for a specific culture; for instance, in the US, \"cunt\" is a phenomenally offensive word compared to Australia. Since it's arbitrary, you'd just have to memorize which words are deemed offensive enough and avoid using them in situations that wouldn't allow them."
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97kt1p | Why do one-hit wonder music artists have one song that becomes wildly popular while the artist's other songs go unheard of by most people? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"That one song is better than all of their other ones?"
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11
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97oq1g | Why are there statute of limitations? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It's not fair to have to defend against charges when evidence has disappeared / degraded and witnesses have died or their memories have faded. Bringing trumped up charges that couldn't be defended due to the passage of time was long a tool of oppression, hence statutes of limitation to protect people from that."
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97rk58 | Why does location-based slang develop in a single language (e.g. saying “pop” vs. “soda”?) | For instance, there are some examples where the words for the same thing are completely different - “sneakers” and “tennis shoes”. There’s also a huge difference in slang between American English and British English, despite American English being based in British English. Where do these differences come from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Where do these differences come from? Languages are always changing. Look at pop culture or the internet. Everyone has their favorite inside joke, meme or funny nickname for everything. Everyone notices that their parents don't understand their slang. Where do the new words come from? People just make them up and they catch on. Sometimes they catch on for just a few years, sometimes they catch on forever. Now imagine a world where everyone is not connected. There is no internet/television where people from California, Boston & London are all watching the same stuff and talking to each other all the time. In this world 99% (or more) of the people you talk to are in your neighborhood. You'll all develop slang, new words, etc, and there would be *no reason* for the people from California, Boston & London to be in sync."
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97u411 | Why does modern pop rely so heavily on Pachelbel's "Canon in D" chord progression? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Interestingly, it's because a) people like it and b) you can't be accused of stealing a chord progression that's in the public domain."
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97vnsy | Why is Latin a dead language? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's considered \"dead\" because no one speaks it as their first language. People still know how to read Latin because it has continued to be used by the Catholic church, and Latin words are used in science and so on. Yes it could be revived. If enough people decided to start only speaking Latin around their children so they learn it as their first language then it could be \"revived\". That's actually what has happened with Hebrew. Like Latin it stopped being used as a day to day language, but continued to be used for religious/cultural purposes. But then people in the Jewish community decided to start speaking it in their daily lives and teach it to their children, and now about half the population of Israel are native speakers (with most of the rest also being fluent in it).",
"It isn't exactly 'dead', it has *evolved* into the Romance languages. A lot of words from these languages come from Latin. It simply has evolved into other languages, making it rather 'dead'.",
"Because it is no longer spoken by any natives. I believe that we also aren't exactly sure if we are pronouncing it correctly. (citation needed)",
"All languages change and evolve over time. Eventually people speak differently enough that no one can understand it the way it used to be spoken. Really, Latin is no more different from Italian than Old English is from English - it just has a different name than Italian for historical/cultural reasons."
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97zjjz | Why does the Catholic Church seem to have so many issues with sexual abuse? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because when you take a bunch of adult males and tell them to be celibate.....it doesn't work and they act out."
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982dii | How is it that priests who are accused of sexual abuse not processed like any other criminal? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"You should have about 50 different answers on here because each state has different laws governing this. Generally a large reason is that these allegations don't come out until many years later at which point the statute of limitations apply. These are laws that say \"if a crime has gone unprocessed for X number of years you can no longer be prosecuted\", it some situations it's a good idea because it can prevent the government from black mailing you. Additionally many of these are \"allegations\", it's not that I don't believe them, but there may not be enough evidence to convict them \"beyond a reasonable doubt\". So the allegations hurt their reputation in the community (thus getting removed) but the court system can't go off of just allegations."
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983d3m | why there is such a push to ban plastic straws, yet the cup, knife, fork and spoons are still plastic; in every restaurant? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Plenty of restaurants have metal forks, spoons, and knives. This encompasses basically every sit-down restaurant ranging from Olive Garden to fine dining, as well as plenty of fast casual places. On the other hand - reusable straws at restaurants are simply not a thing. Will it actually make a huge difference to ban plastic straws and move to paper or other biodegradable materials? No. Will it do anything? Yes. Should it be banned? That's entirely up to personal opinion.",
"What kind of restaurants do you go to??!",
"When dining in, most restaurants will serve you with a set of reuseable metal utensils but any beverage will include a one-time-use plastic straw. Straws are common in other areas. Getting a cocktail at the bar? Plastic straw for stirring. Cold beverage at a coffee shop? Straw. The number of straws add up and they do not recycle well due to their size and weight compared to heavier plastic utensils. Most of them will end up in landfills. When thrown in the ocean, they have a heavy negative impact on marine life that may mistakenly assume the straws are food.",
"I think an image of a sea turtle with a plastic straw stuck up it's nose went viral a few years back and started the movement. And, this might sound a little conspiracy theorist, but I think governments support stuff like this to move the light from actual pollution issues they don't want to deal with. It's a lot easier to blame pollution in the ocean on the general public using straws than it is to actually regulate, say, fishing gear (which makes up most of the pollution in the ocean), or reliable, ethical recycling (e.g. not sending it off to 3rd world countries to have children to sort through it). Plastic straws are actually pretty important for people in hospital and for people with disabilities. Yes, people should cut down on plastic if they can, but we should also have some healthy scepticism when it comes to things like this.",
"Part of it is that you have to start somewhere. Nobody would approve a ban for all plastic utensils at once. Its far easier to phase things out slowly. Also animals are more likely to eat straws than plastic knives and cups, so they made sense as a starting point.",
"Because the various huge industrial interests that are dumping the vast majority of waste into the seas want to deflect from their responsibility for the mess they know they should clean up at the expense of their profits.",
"Because straws are easy. Even though they only account for 0.3% of the waste in the oceans. If you were to tell everyone to stop eating fish to save the oceans people would say get fucked. Even though fishing nets make up 43% of the garbage in the oceans.",
"Because banning straws has become popular, so every company wants to jump on that bandwagon so they can advertise that they care too. Most companies don't give a shit what helps and hurts the environment, they care about their public image. Same as Budweiser donating $100k of water, then spending $5 million on a super bowl commercial to tell everyone about it.",
"Because most people will only do something righteous if it's easy. I can drink my triple caremel iced latte without a straw and still pat myself on the back for being so environmental. It's a little more difficult do that without a cup.",
"Only seen plastic cutlery in kids parties or picnics... What kind of restaurant uses plastic?",
"Seattle, a city that is usually on the cutting edge of this type of stuff. Has banned all plasticware in restaurants. They either have metal utensils or compost utensils. Either way, they are designed to have a very small impact on the environment when they're done. Tldr: Straws might be at the forefront, but environmental activists are pushing for all utensils.",
"What kind of restaurants are you going to that have plastic cutlery? Wtf?",
"If you think every restaurant uses plastic cutlery you might want to up your standards a little bit."
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9845i4 | In a skull and crossbones, which bones are they supposed to be, if any? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The skull and crossbones was not originally a warning of poison or impending doom. It was a Christian emblem, like the cross or the fish. You can often find old crucifixes with a [skull and crossbones at the bottom]( URL_0 ). The bones represent the grave of Adam and the skull represents Golgotha (\"the Place of the Skulls\"), where Christ was crucified. Early Christians believed that was the same place -- Adam was buried at Golgotha and Jesus was crucified there. > Tradition has it that in this city, nay, more, on this very spot, Adam lived and died. The place where our Lord was crucified is called Calvary, because the skull of the primitive man was buried there. So it came to pass that the second Adam, that is the blood of Christ, as it dropped from the cross, washed away the sins of the buried protoplast, the first Adam, and thus the words of the apostle were fulfilled: *Awake, you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.* -- [St. Jerome]( URL_1 ) (386 A.D.) So the skull and crossbones represented the full arc of Christianity -- from Adam to Golgotha. Adam, the first sinner, died there; Jesus, who redeemed all sinners, also died there, and washed away those sins.",
"You can read up on it, but essentially the different types of pirate flags were White Black (no logo) Black (skull only) Black (skull and bones) Each one meant a different thing. White meant you were peaceful/surrender - I believe Black with no logo meant they only waned to rob your goods, but not harm anybody. Black with skull I think would mean they kill anybody putting up resistance and take anybody aboard captive for ransom. And skull and bones means they would board and kill everybody aboard/plunder and sink the ship As to why there were those specific bones, I don't think anybody knows, but somebody at one point laid out some dead guys bones and skull and thought it looked cool."
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98591f | What's the point in giving more than one life sentence? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Multiple life sentences are given when there are multiple crimes that each are punished with a life sentence. Kill 10 people, get 10 life sentences. It also means that if one of the sentences is appealed, the person still stays in jail for life."
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985y3f | Why are jeans traditionally blue?! | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Jean denim is dyed with an indigo dye, which appears as the standard blue we see on most jeans. The reason this dye was used was due to its chemical properties. Most dyes permeate fabric in hot temperatures making the dye stick, however the traditional indigo dye would only dye the outside of threads. As this denim gets washed, the dye would partially wear off, creating that 'jean' feel of white/blue. This softness made blue jeans manufacturers main choice, especially as demand for blue jeans skyrocketed",
"Because denim material, made in Nimes, France, is traditionally made with indigo-dyed thread weaved with white thread. That gives the material a distinct blue-outside/white-inside coloration"
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9868bj | Why do Americans have 5k races when we use miles? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Running is an international sport, and the standard distances are in meters or kilometers. Other sports, like tennis, traditionally have Imperial measurements, and those are used even in countries that use the metric system.",
"Americans mostly use imperial measurements but do use metric as well. Metric is taught in schools alongside Imperial and most Americans have at least a basic understanding of it."
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988lmb | Why is it rude to say that an argument, concept, idea or alike is in error? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Your term “in error” assumes there is an objective right and wrong. Often in social situations, the right and wrongs are subjective and often not agreed upon. When the opinion differs, it comes off rude. In general, to evaluate someone’s input at all is often seen as confrontational. Even if you’re technically right, the receiver may take it offensively. The human brain can hold lots of false beliefs that make people respond illogically to innocent or even accurate statements negatively. In a nut shell, many people would rather remain wrong than to be corrected in the conversation.",
"I'm assuming this is occurring in casual conversation and not in a discussion group. People don't like being told they are wrong. It feels like you are attacking them, rather than their idea, and puts them on the defensive, even if that is not your intention. If you aren't already doing this, rather than saying something like, \"that's wrong, < insert-argument-here > ,\" try phrasing it more like \"I disagree, < insert-exact-same-argument-here > .\" Try to phrase things in terms of you opinion, rather than terms of fact. This should make it less of a personal attack.",
"It depends. Sometimes people are not looking for input, and they take any such as an attack on their argument/idea/beliefs. Sometimes it's the delivery. Interrupting people, not listening to what else they say, to be of voice (that can say \"I know more than you\") can all be rude. Sometimes it's because you're correcting something that they feel isn't important. Correcting pronunciation or word usage is a big one here. But sometimes it's a part of the idea that they dont feel has any real impact on the rest of it... And sometimes it's because they're insecure and it comes across as \"I know more about this thing that you are an expert in, even though I only heard about it from you 30 seconds ago.\" That one is harder to figure out.",
"actually, it's \"the like\", assuming you meant \"and other similar things\". \"alike\" on it's own just means \"in the same manner, form, or degree\". Alike is an adjective, you're describing a trait. The rest of that sentence is a list of things with that trait. It's like saying \"trees, leaves, and green\", doesn't really work. If you're like most people, you're rather annoyed right now that I'm obsessing over an irrelevant and minor detail while totally missing the point of your question. And that is part of why it's rude to say something is in error or point out the flaw in what somebody else has said: you're spending time on a detail that is irrelevant and meaningless to them. The other part is that saying something like \"you're wrong and here's why ...\" sounds very arrogant because, one, you're implying that you are smart and better informed than they are and, two, you're ignoring the possibility they are actually right and you're wrong. It can come across as condescending to assume they haven't considered those arguments and found them unpersuasive. Basically your behavior is saying 'I think I'm smarter than you are' and 'I think you're ignorant or stupid'. Both of which are only well tolerated from people who are VASTLY smarter about the immediate subject than others. Stephen Hawking could get away with saying \"I'm smarter than you\" to most people. An actual rocket scientist could point out somebody's error or ignorance about in math or physics. A medical doctor could call your home cure bullsh*t, or point out your misunderstanding of biology. You, however, are simply an equal to your friends and coworkers. No dumber or less than them, but certainly no better. At most, you may be slightly more familiar or better informed than them about certain topics you specialize in, and they'll tolerate your feedback about those subject, but not certainly every topic that comes up."
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988qt5 | How did Ancient Egypt end and what did Rome have to do with it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Rome actually had nothing to do with the fall of Ancient Egypt. The period considered to be \"Ancient Egypt\" ends in 525 BC, 20 years prior to the end of the Roman Kingdom and founding of the Roman Republic. It ends because Egypt was conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire and made into a province Rome's conquests of Egypt come after it has been conquered by the Achaemenid empire, revolts and rules itself for a couple hundred years, is conquered by the Achaemenids again, is conquered by Alexander the Great, is placed under control of one of his generals, and then is in the middle of a revolt when Caesar arrives almost 500 years after the end of \"Ancient\" Egypt Egypt is really really old. You live closer to Julius Caesar than Caesar lived to the building of the Pyramids"
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98e0er | What is an "8-inch mix"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Without more context I believe you are talking about a 7-inch mix which is a hold over from the days of vinyl records. Albums were on large records with lots of tracks. Single songs were sold on smaller 7-inch records. Sometimes the same song would be released as a single and also as part of an album. Often there would be small differences in how the various instruments and voices were mixed down for the single version versus the album version. So the single version came to be known as a 7-inch mix."
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98eevr | Why does traffic happen if there’s no accidents or anything to cause it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"More cars within the same area mean those cars have to be closer together. At some point, they get so close people don't feel safe traveling at highway speeds. They slow down, which makes the cars even closer together which make even more people slow down, and you get traffic."
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98ehyn | Why is the term "austerity" seemingly never used in the US? | I constantly hear about austerity measures to reduce debt and such in European countries, but in the United States, I never hear conservatives/Republicans use the term "austerity" to describe reducing government spending. Instead they call it "fiscal responsibility" or "measures to reduce the deficit" or "reducing the national debt". Why does the US seem to not use the word "austerity"? Or do they use it and I've just been missing it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because our budget is so far from austere it would be absurd and they might be mocked. Both major parties support spending that is hundreds of billions of dollars beyond the amount we collect in taxes.",
"Because austerity is something someone imposes on you because they want their money back and you've signed agreements to give it back to them in their own currency. You bail them out, you set terms on your bailout, and they have to cut social services WAyyyy back to meet the terms of your bailout. This is not as good for the average citizen as simply ceasing to pay debts, but the (extremely) negative impacts are streched out over much longer periods of time and the government can stay in power because most people aren't starving in the streets. The USA has never had to borrow in a foreign-controlled currency and therefore has always had the ability to inflate it's debt away. There has never been a force more powerful than America that was able to force America by violence or threat of violence to repay it's debts. Also involves good money management, which is questionable these last 30 years, so you'll probably see a USD monetary collapse in your lifetime.",
"Because the US is able to pay off its debts and there is no reason to believe this won't continue. Austerity starts when a country is in danger of not paying its debts. Fiscal responsibility is \"the balance on our credit card is getting high, let's try to manage it a little better.\" Austerity is \"they are about the foreclose on the house...sell the car, get a second job, eat nothing but beans and rice, do whatever it takes to keep the house!\""
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98gu3u | Mennonites and traditional dress | While on vacation in the United States (visiting various locations in Colorado), I noticed several groups of Mennonites in a traditional (as we Americans would describe it) style of clothing. The women (old and young) had braided hair and wore ankle-length dresses, and the men often (not always!) sported suspenders and shirts of similar color (in one case all the men were wearing light blue shirts). Does anything in Mennonite doctrine support or encourage dressing in a traditional style? Do their confessions specifically require or advocate such clothing, or is it a dictate/tradition of their specific community/culture? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"I’m from the American Midwest and we have a sizable Amish population. They dress similarly. It’s to impose a feeling of humbleness and piety in their society. It’s not so much in their doctrine of faith but very similar to how Orthodox Jews wear yarmulkas and the curls with a full beard. The Amish don’t wear embellishments and most of the time make their own clothes. They don’t wear bright colors and they are mostly kind and courteous if not a little wary of outsiders.",
"Mennonites are supposed to be modest and not draw attention to themselves. Their possessions should be plain. This shouldn't stop them from wearing simple modern clothing, except whoever changes to more modern fashions first would be drawing attention to themselves.",
"I'd like to ask for a little clarification here. When you are asking about Mennonites, are you accidentally referring to the Amish? Mennonites and Amish are Anabaptist sects that are closely related...but different, and that includes in rules of dress. From what you describe above, it sounds like you are describing those of Amish faith and not Mennonites."
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98hxj6 | Why do MLMs almost always seem to be selling either 1) "oil" 2) juices 3) skincare | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"They are products whose’s benefits can’t be seen until you finish applying after a long time and failed results can be dismissed as not using the product enough or other lame excuse. Plus there isn’t any proven science it doesn’t work so they can say it works without repercussions. Plus generic products can be cues all to multiple problems so they can sell to a wide audience."
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98ne6e | When someone is sentenced to death, why does it take so long to carry out the sentence? Up to 25-30 years in some cases. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because there are a lot of procedures and automatic appeals often involved. Killing someone isn't fixable, so a lot of effort is made to make sure it is appropriate and air tight.",
"When you are sentenced to death you are automatically entitled to appeal. This process like any other legal process takes time. As the punishment is so severe the whole process can go all the way to the highest courts and even the President. This takes time. Assuming you exhaust that process there are only so many executions carried out. They have to do things in a certain way in order for it to be legal, they can't just let the person starve for example. The most popular method is by lethal injection, the supplies of which are low because the drug breaks down over time and it is supplied to the US by Europe. Europe recently stopped supplying the drug because they disagree with capital punishment."
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98oe9d | How does language in China work? | Is there one dialect that everyone at least knows how to read and write, and how widely is it spoken in everyday use? How common is it for someone to know more than one dialect? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Today, most people will know two dialects: Mandarin and their local dialect. There are local differences in Mandarin too, but they are subtle, just like comparing UK English to US English. Also, written language is same regardless of dialect, except for subtle differences, just like with UK English to US English. For example, a Cantonese speaker may have no idea what a Mandarin speaker is saying (if the Cantonese person doesn't understand Mandarin), but they will both write the same. Most Simplified Chinese readers can recognize Traditional Chinese as the characters are pretty much the same, but certain, repeating parts would be \"simplified\", so that a common say...15 stroke \"radical\", as they are called, may be shorted to 3 strokes.",
"There's several major languages. People know the language they speak in their location. Most people also know at least a little bit of either Mandarin or Cantonese if that's not their local dialect. If it's a location that has multiple dialects, then people that do business with multiple people will know multiple dialects that they deal with."
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98qb84 | If the Japanese invented haikus, how are they translated effectively? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"I’m so disappointed. You missed the opportunity on that one. Japan invented Haiku, are we translating Their poems correctly??"
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992505 | How did we start using cutlery (spoons, forks etc.)? Also, why do some cultures not have them (like the Indian subcontinent, where they primarily use their fingers)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Originally cutlery was used mostly by the wealthy. Wealthy folks would carry decorative knives for eating and it spread from there. The process of mass producing cutlery used by common folk required lots of timber to burn for the fires and metal to craft them, so it only really took off in areas that could sustain the industry. Europe had lots of metal and timber, so lots of places in Europe used cutlery, but less so in other parts of the world."
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996fm7 | Why aren't those sentenced to death, and through admission of guilt, or refusal to appeal, put to death immediately, or at least more expeditiously? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The Innocence Project does, among other things, DNA testing that has conclusively proven the innocence of many people who were convicted of serious crimes. Of those that we know to be innocent, more than **1 in 4** were convicted based in part by a [false confession or incriminating statement]( URL_0 ) So, because statistically a bunch of confessions are bullshit.",
"Because of the \"finality\" of the death penalty, the accused are given a lot of appeal opportunities, and the US court system is also designed more to prevent innocent people from being wrongfully punished than to ensure criminals pay their dues for the most part. That's why things like the 5th amendment, statute of limitations, and the \"Innocent until proven guilty\" premise are in place."
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|
99akfp | What would life really look like if ALL single-use plastics were banned? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"You know back in the day, probably pre-WW2 or earlier, Americans barely used single use plastics. Paper bags were used for groceries and boxes for any packaging. As far as trash bags, I think they just dump trash straight in those typical metal cans. Package stuffing like styrofoam popcorn or air bags were just all crumpled paper. It's just that it's way cheaper, and MAYBE at the time, said to help the environment."
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99jejh | - how did the recorder become the instrument children learn in elementary school? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can make them for like 9 cents each in factories in China. They are small and easily portable. The instrument itself is very simple, and lacks the more complex keys of other woodwinds, such as saxophones. The fingering is pretty intuitive, and allows kids to understand the idea of raising and lowering pitch in an easy way.",
"They're small, inexpensive, simple to play and, since they're one piece with no movable/removable parts, pretty durable instruments. This makes them an ideal choice for early music education. Let's compare a sub-$10 recorder to some other options. * Clarinet - the absolute cheapest ones on Amazon are $75. They're full of moving parts to break. They also require you to buy, adjust & maintain reeds. * Flute - Cheapest one is $70. Still full of moving parts. No reeds but learning to blow them properly takes a bit of work. * Trumpet - $100. Lots of valves to keep clean & oiled. Harder to blow properly than a recorder. * Guitar - $40. Strings to break/replace/tune. Often too large for small hands of young children. * Piano - You can get a cheap keyboard for $40 but they're big & bulky and hard to carry around * Violin - $40. Smaller than a guitar but still have strings to deal with. Unfortunately, you *also* have to deal with a bow and, if you think a poorly played recorder is painful to hear then you've clearly never heard a beginner on the violin."
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99ou3m | How does every other movie get to advertise that they are the "NUMBER ONE MOVIE IN AMERICA"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"They are the NUMBER ONE ^new ^comedy MOVIE IN AMERICA ^for ^the ^time ^period ^between ^August ^17th ^and ^August ^23rd Basically, subdivide up the movies into so many microclassifications that you're the best movie by being the only movie.",
"There are so many varying demographics and categories they can use to make this claim. For example, a comedy comes out and is the #1 comedy movie for that week in terms of ticket sales (maybe no other comedies are out at the time) so once the initial weekend is over they can accurately say that THIS IS THE #1 COMEDY IN AMERICA (without having to specify context)"
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99t228 | Why is talking about politics in the United States taboo, socially, when that is what the nation was founded upon? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The old axiom is that you never talk about religion, politics, or money in polite conversation. That is because the first two subjects almost always turn adversarial very quickly, and the third is likely to make people feel bad about not making enough (or making too much) compared to their friends. The key word there is **polite**. Polite conversation isn't meant to sway people's core beliefs. It exists to pass the time, to lubricate social interactions, and to amuse and entertain. More intense discussions are for different occasions, and different company. If you want to talk politics with your friends invite them to a political occasion. Given a fair warning and a chance to politely decline most people will be happy to argue their stance.",
"Your friend groups are closed minded people. They don't like challenges to their status quo.",
"Talking Politics is a fight in a box. It gets dicey even in Canada and places in Europe... But in the USA? Where people are regularly told they're under attack and that anyone who disagrees with deregulating mining protections of national parks wants the terrorists to win? Talking politics with friends can be a quick and easy way of making sure those who were quietly holding radically opposing views are about to drop the whole 'friends' part. You can probably naturally end up talking politics with good, close friends, but work-colleagues and the like, people are used to it ending badly."
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9a04rg | Why is reading from a book considered a more worthy/constructive form of reading than browsing websites and articles? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"I’ve also heard that you read differently when it’s on a screen. I was listening to a podcast and they referenced a study, (I can’t remember the group who did it)about reading in print vs. a screen. They found that when you read on a screen you are more likely to skim the article for the information needed. In a printed format you are more than likely to read the information more closely and read more of the article.",
"I've read (coincidentally, on my phone) that you retain less information for a shorter amount of time when you're reading from a screen compared to a page.",
"The most obvious answer is that reading a book takes a lot more commitment than browsing websites, and generally speaking, the more you put in to something, the more you get out of it."
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9a6edc | When and why did the notion (in fiction) that acute exposure to ionizing radiation causes drastic changes in an individuals (extra limb/super powers) arise? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Early on in the discovery and understanding of DNA, we believed that DNA could be manipulated in certain ways to achieve superhuman effects. Everything from increased strength and endurance to regeneration or even extremely increased intellect were believed to be encoded somewhere in our DNA. Then we discovered that certain kinds of radiation can actually cause DNA to spontaneously and randomly mutate, and thus the trope was born. Much more recently, we've figured out that DNA isn't some all-powerful designer, but instead just a sort of framework for epigenetic factors to express themselves, and it's highly unlikely that our DNA can be manipulated in order to achieve those kinds of superhuman factors.",
"Remember how before those tropes it was a lab explosion with mysterious chemicals, or before that, lightning? People not fully understanding how something works leaves an air of mystery and possibility that is easy to drop into a story to explain the unexplainable. We don’t expect the audience (or ourselves) to know how it works (or happened to work that one time because of that rogue variable) so, why not have it shake out that way?"
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9a6eig | Why did some civilisations develop left-to-right writing, whereas some developed right-to-left writing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I heard that it comes from a time where letters were mostly chiseled in stone. As a right handed person, it's quicker, easier and more natural to chisel from right to left.",
"Also, top-down vs. side-to-side, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there are any bottom-up written languages.",
"I can’t speak for other languages, but for Chinese, the tradition is to write in on bamboo slates, vertically from top to bottom. When a slate is filled, it is removed so ink smudges was never a problem. It’s possible that they use their right hand to do both writing and slate-moving, so right-to-left makes it easier.",
"A lot of countries for a long time considered being right-handed to be \"normal\" and left-handed to be \"wrong\". It would make sense if those were the ones writing L-R (which is easier using the right hand). However, I believe also arab countries had (maybe even still have) strong feelings against being left-handed and still write R-L.",
"I think that the way a person holds their writing utensil would adapt to suit whatever style/direction of writing, as well as which hand being used."
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9a6tnn | why can’t you text 911? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There are often ways to do that but the short answer is there's no way to track location off a text. Was much easier for 911 when everybody had a landline attached to a physical address. If you need to text for emergency send a message to a friend and relay to 911. URL_0"
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9a8ple | How was the order of the Alphabet decided? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The order of our alphabet actually predates the alphabet by a very long time. The current alphabet with Latin letters ABC was inherited from previous alphabets like the Greek Alpha, Beta, Gamma and its predecessors like the Phoenician alphabet that went Aleph, Bet, Gimmel and so on. There have been archeological finds dating back as far as 1300 BC that show what we recognize as the alphabetic order being used in cuneiform abjads (alphabets without consonants). [Wikipedia-link]( URL_0 ) Over time letters were added and removed and some were put in in another order and it evolved quite a bit, but we are still undeniably using the same order as those people in ancient Syria did 3300 years ago. It isn't quite certain where they got it from, but chances are they didn't come up with it either. At this point if there ever was a reason we lost it ages ago."
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9aov2w | Why does having a happy childhood seem to be less common than a traumatic one? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I don't think it's less common. I think people with happy childhoods just don't publicize them as much as people with bad childhoods do so it seems like there's more bad ones",
"It isnt rare. The bad cases just are \"louder\". Basically like the whole \"very vocal minority on the extreme side of the spectrum\" thats going on with every major topic ever. If \"happy\" childhoods were rare and \"soulcrushing trauma\" was the norm, id say the world would be a far worse place overall. Thats not to say traumatic childhoods are rare in the sense that we shouldnt care though.",
"The opening line of Anna Karenina is pretty famously translated as: > All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It's a wonderful line and means that happy families need a whole bunch of factors to all be in place, so missing any one of them leads to an unhappy family. Since few families get everything right, most families are unhappy each in their own way. It's also a great summary of the novel which looks at a litany of ways the various families are unhappy.",
"I'm going to paste a poem by Philip Larkin which I think about covers it for the vast majority of families: \"They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.\"",
"It's not rare. People just don't talk about it, because why would they? Nobody cares about the time I spent a summer on the lake and it was awesome. Also, every childhood has *some* trauma in it, because hey, it's life, shit happens. Parents fight, dogs chase you, you play outside and get hurt, your best friend decides he likes someone else more. A happy childhood doesn't mean one with no traumatic events, it means having the love and support you need so you can grow past the setbacks and not have them define you.",
"Because parents are people too. They have their own flaws and problems that have existed before the child was born. Every person has something they don’t like about their childhood or parents, no matter how idyllic it was.",
"Because wounded people are trying to heal and many need support to do so.. When you dont cut yourself chopping vegetables you aren't likely to call a friend and announce as much. When you DO cut yourself chopping them, you will probably mention it to someone."
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9av8wn | for the crazy specific world records, are they long standing or do people make them up? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"You don't come up with an 800-page book of records without a little (or a lot) of filler. A lot of the records were more about spectacle than achievement, and often reflected the fads of the day (like dance marathons). Unfortunately, once a record makes it in, no matter how silly, it tends to be grandfathered, and what seemed to make sense in the 1950's (when the first books were published) often seem crazy specific today."
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9ayzpv | why is it socially acceptable for women to dress like men but not the other way around? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Historically, femininity is seen as inferior to masculinity because women were seen as inferior to men. This is called sexism. It was socially unacceptable for women to dress masculinely for a long time, until the feminism movement came along and protested, and did it and people realised that the world didn't fall apart. So women have liberated themselves from femininity and they can express masculinity. Men have not had such a movement. Current movements are not focused on liberating men from masculinity, and when femininity is seen as 'inferior' to masculinity (even up until the 21st century within feminist movements, particularly the second wave), no one wants to fight for it. It will only be socially acceptable for men to dress femininely when everyone (both men and women) see feminine and masculine expression as equal. Men need to do the same as women did and embrace feminine expression, and liberate themselves from masculinity."
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9b4z4y | How do actors and actresses do nude scenes in front of so many technicians? What goes through their mind? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Many \"nude\" scenes are performed with some sort of modesty-preserving tiny garment. However the general idea is that the staff is reduced to as few people as possible and they are all professionals. Nobody is snickering in the back, nobody is there who doesn't have a very specific and important job to focus on, and everyone has seen naked people before. Everyone are adults and can handle a bit of nudity (especially when their careers are riding on it). Of course what goes through people's minds is impossible to answer but likely the actors are simply thinking of how to perform their roles properly. Sean Connery famously gave Seth Rogen a tip for his nude scene with Katherine Heigl, where he said that he tells his co-star \"I'm sorry if I do, and sorry if I don't.\" The idea is that it is embarrassing to respond physically under such circumstances, but equally embarrassing not to react. There is no non-awkward state under such a condition.",
"I believe in sex scenes most actors have skin colored underwear they use. Some actors are notorious for not wanting to use it."
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9bhsn6 | How did Germany not go into a civil war? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There were violent clashes. Hitler's first attempt to overthrow the government in Munich ended with 16 Nazis shot dead and Hitler in Prison. Seeing the guy marching next to him shot dead convinced Hitler to work inside the system instead. So he wrote \"Mein Kampf\" while in prison and when he got out he tried again this time legitimately. There were clashes between the SA and violent groups on the other side of the spectrum, which sometimes ended with people hurt or dead, but for the most part the nazis worked inside the system. The had enough support that they could use the rules as they were against the system itself and turn democracy into a dictatorship. Anyone wanting to stop it got turned into a criminal and a traitor by their changes to the system. There were some medium and large scale protests during the last phase but most of them peaceful. Peaceful protests against murderous Nazis don't work very well. Hitler turned the system against itself anyone protesting what he and the Nazis did was not just someone with a different opinion but a criminal, traitor and enemy of the German state itself. There were resistance movements while the Nazis were in power, but they to were in part non-violent (the Nazi's response wasn't) and some violent (Hitler escaped a lot of assassinations). There never was a real civil war because too many supported Hitler and he took over the normal system of government gradually enough that the ones who opposed him could not really do much.",
"> Nazi regime required a long time to set up and reach its full power. No, it didn't. January 30th, 1933: Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Before this, the Nazis never had any government powers. Feburary 4th, 1933: The [Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the German People]( URL_0 ) massively restricted the freedom of the press and demonstrations. Organized resistance was made much harder. February 28th, 1933: The [Reichstag Fire Decree]( URL_1 ) nullified most civil liberties and allowed the Nazis to imprison political enemies, including members of parliament. Resisting the Nazis at this point would get you thrown into prison. March 23rd, 1933: the [Enabling Act]( URL_2 ) removed all parliamentary and judicial oversight of the government and rendered the constitution irrelevant. After that, there were no legal limits to what the Nazis could do."
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9bjjzh | Plato's Theory of Forms and Aristotle's criticism to it | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Little Kid: \"Dad, what's a dog?\" Dad: \"Well, we have Buster at home. Buster is a dog.\" Little Kid: \"Yeah, but what *makes* Buster a dog?\" Dad: \"Well, he walks on four legs and is covered in fur.\" Little Kid: \"Yeah, but so does our cat Oscar.\" Dad: \"Yeah... well, Buster barks.\" Little Kid: \"But bears walk on four legs, are covered in fur, and kind of bark. Are bears a type of dog?\" Dad: \"No dingbat, bears aren't a type of dog. When I tell you to think of a dog you don't think of a bear do you?\" Little Kid: \"No . . . but what if you shave Buster? Is he still a dog with no fur? Cause that's not what I think of when I think of a dog.\" Dad: \"No, he's still a dog. He's just . . . different. Dogs just sort of have that dog-like quality to them. I guess dogs are just something where you know it when you see it.\" This sort of illustrates Plato's Theory of Forms and Aristotle's critique. Plato was basically saying that when you're trying to define something, you ultimately will need to invoke a kind of knowing that isn't a matter of grasping a definition of one term by means of another terms, but of grasping the thing itself. In other words, the concept of a \"dog\" is an abstract universal entity that exists independent of dogs themselves. Aristotle said yeah, but there must be some knowledge of the substance which is *in* the thing. There must be something *in* Buster, some type of dog-like quality, which makes Buster a dog.",
"Both were wrestling with the human experience of the abstraction of ideas and terms for things in the world. E.G. we think lots of things are beautiful, so what is \"beauty\"? Plato argued that things like \"beauty\" were abstract concepts (and universal concepts) that exist independent of the things we'd describe as beautiful. E.G. \"beauty\" is a form, and \"a beautiful flower\" is a flower that invokes that abstraction. Aristotle rejects this abstraction and says that beauty is an inherent attribute of the object and we can't talk about them independent of the objects themselves in any real sense. E.G. the idea that beauty somehow exists without us having any objects we'd describe as beautiful is non-sensical.",
"Basically there's a place where there's a perfect form of everything that exists. Like a perfect chair or perfect cat or perfect pencil. According to him when we are born we are born with the knowledge of all these perfect forms but we forget as we get older so we live in an imperfect version of the perfect form world. In other words there are no new inventions we are just remembering."
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9bkxeu | Why do countries like England who use a 24h clock say times as "___ PM/AM", rather than the double digit time such as 14 o' clock? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I would imagine it's just a mish-mash of new and old ways of doing things and we're still in the transition period. For example I always WRITE the time in 24hr format but when I SAY the time I will always say it in the 12hr format (though I don't really say AM / PM) for example if i read 15:00 out loud I'd just say \"3\" or \"3 in the afternoon\". The UK also officially uses the metric system yet we still use MPH on our road signs. Just a slow transition from old to new I guess."
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9bsrzm | it seems like protest music was big in the 1960s. Despite similar levels political turmoil, why isn't it as popular now, or is that just history taught wrong? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"How are you defining “protest music”? Political themes are still very prevalent in music, even the stuff on the radio. This is America - Childish Gambino, Same Love - Macklemore, When the President Talks to God - Bright Eyes (okay this is old), Take me to Church - Hozier Just to name a few from the top of my head. Edit: added commas",
"I would attribute that perception to the fact that musical popularity was more genre-specific in the 60's, whereas now it isn't unusual to hear elements of metal, hip hop, or other genres that would have been distinguished from \"pop music\" even 20-30 years ago. The culture around protest was arguably stronger and gave artists more to identify with so there are artists like Brother Ali that come to mind whose music could certainly qualify as \"protest\" but I tend to just think about it as hip hop. There's still plenty of protest music; what constitutes pop just covers more territory these days.",
"Turmoil was far greater in the late 60s than it is today. \"Orange man bad\" memes on politics subreddits arent quite the same as the race riots, an active draft into an unpopular war, and assassinations that happened in 1968.",
"Protest music had a bigger impact in the 60’s because of how the music business was structured back then. You had a small number of powerful record companies and very controlled radio playlists. If an artist that was making records and getting radio time because of previous commercial success put out a protest song, that song was going to be heard by a wide range of people, including people who may not previously given a lot of thought to the circumstances behind the protest. It “spread the word”. Now, there are so many ways to put out your music and so many ways to listen to it, it is difficult to get a message out to anyone beyond your normal audience (and the uninformed people who need to hear the message the most won’t be exposed to it).",
"System of a down was all kinds of political. Nofx had a couple. five finger death punch has some, rise against. you're just listening to the wrong music",
"We need to get you into punk music my friend because \"protesting\" is the theme [The Criminals-Anti Flag]( URL_1 ) [Walls-Rise Against]( URL_0 )",
"From my memory, protest songs are generally about wars or come during period of war. While the US is still at war, it's simmered down and isn't in the front pages as much as when we first invaded Afghanistan and Iraq—during which time there was protest music. Here's one I remember from early Bush years by Bright Eyes: [ URL_1 ]( URL_1 ) Even the Cardigans (Swedish group) song \"You're the Storm\" (allusion to Desert Storm?) that came out in 2003 seems pretty related to the recent Iraq invasion: [ URL_2 ]( URL_2 ) It came a bit later but Coldplay's \"Violet Hill\" was anti-war: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) But in the 1960s war was on television way more than it is now, whereas it's much more sanitized for the non-military public now.",
"You think it's even close to the same amount of political turmoil? The government isn't currently forcing young men to go to their probable deaths. Unless there's an assassination of a significant public figure soon I really don't know what you're talking about.",
"I have wondered about this as well. But once you really look into, you see a great deal of protest music being produced. As other's have said the visibility is just so much different than during the 60's. Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer Prize winning album Damn. is in the vein of protest music. Of course, \"This is America\" is exactly that. But look deeper and you will find it everywhere. Some artists to look at: Santigold, James McMurtry, Neil Young, Bruce Springstein, Jason Isbell, There are many more.",
"Folk singing was very popular in the 60s, and much of their material originated from the likes of Woody Guthrie and other lesser known protest songwriters of the 40s and 50s. Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and The Kingston Trio were some of the biggest selling names in the folk genre in the early sixties. But they sung mostly the older, well known anti-establishment songs of old and for the most part, they were ignored by radio as we came into the late 60s. Bob Dylan was one of the ones that kept the idea of protest songs alive. Then, in 1969, Stephen Stills came out with 'For What It's Worth\". The song was an instant hit. It resonated with every young person who couldn't stand the dated songs of the folksingers, but still appreciated their message. It spoke of current events and that, in itself, was something different. It had a slow but still, decidedly rock and roll beat. I think every political or protest song writer after that breathed a little sigh of relief in knowing that it may not happen often, but a song critical of the status quo could become a hit. The songs of Springsteen, Jackson Browne, U2, Bonnie Raitt and others, in my opinion owe as much to Stephen Stills as they do to Woody Guthrie.",
"People (not just artists, but the exec's, producers, DJ's, etc. all up and down the line) just want to make money, so protest music isn't getting any exposure.",
"I wonder if part of it as well is which songs have longevity. The protest songs of the 60s have a sort of “era defining” aspect to them which contributes to them being more well-known now in retrospect. And it’s difficult to see that while we are still in it.",
"Music was a big part of the cultural shift happening in the 60's. Listening to rock music was in some ways a protest in and of itself. That made it very natural for that generation to use music as a way to communicate their views. Political opinions still exist in music, but the everyday person doesn't connect with music in the same way the young generation did then.",
"\"Protest\" music hasn't gone away, it's simply become far more acceptable to openly discuss concerns about society than before the 60s. At this point, it's entirely expected for a hip hop artist to openly discuss poverty, violence, or inequality, or for a punk band to write songs against war, greed, or addiction. We don't call that \"protest\" music, because writing about socially conscious topics has been normalized over decades and is now something a broad set of artists can include in their work.",
"There's plenty of protest music now, but the issues are less defined. During the 60s, protest songs were clearly about a specific issue (think of all the Vietnam War protest songs). Now, protest music tends to be less topical and focus on broader issues, so the lyrical content isn't as obvious. Short of some very specific protest songs, you generally have to take a few steps mentally to define the issue being sung about. That's not to say that modern protest songs are any worse, or that the issues are more or less severe, but the way that musicians approach their topics is just different.",
"The answer is that the music industry is back to the 50s style of cranking out pop music at a low cost for maximum profit. Thats why today you see a lot of acts not last too long, everything sounds pretty similar, and is easy to create (not saying one style is good or bad. Pop music can be really enjoyable). In the 60s through the 90s, you had a rare era where popular music and more complex music were more intertwined. The top of the charts could have some songs that were less poppy and had more meaning behind them. The issue is that we all wanted to stop paying for music. And the music industry is greedy AF. They needed a way to capitalize on this lack of income and they control what is played on radio stations today (as they always have). You can still find the music you're seeking, but you have to dive deep and use things like Spotify, rather than turning on the radio"
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9btzql | Alemnic (Swiss) German language vs regular German - what's the difference? Can they understand each other? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Grammatically Swiss German and Standard German are very similar. There's no simple past tense in Swiss German, that's about the biggest difference. The biggest difference is the pronunciation. The 11th and 12th century saw the forming of what is called today New High German, which saw a shift in the pronunciation of a set of longer vowels. The alemannic dialects in the southwest largely stuck to the old pronunciation, what makes them sound different to Standard German today. An example would be \"My new house\" (I tried to add a phonetic translation to english in brackets, though I'm not sure how good they are): Swiss German: Mis neue Huus (Mis noy-e hoos) Standard German: Mein neues Haus (Mine noy-es how's) And this is what makes Swiss German nearly unintelligible to most Standard German speaking people in the beginning. Though it only takes them a short amount of time to learn to understand Swiss German. In short, alemannic dialects are in pronunciation closer to the old Middle High German, which makes it hard for Standard German speaker to understand initially, despite having very similar words and grammar.",
"It can be quite hard sometimes as a regular German speaker but definitely possible. There are some words that are used a little differently but overall it’s still the same language. If you go far in the south west of Germany the local dialect there is quite similar to Swiss-German. Most differences are in the pronunciations as Swiss people seem to always accentuate the first syllable of any word and tend to make heavy use of diminutives.",
"From what I understand, Swiss people can generally understand german people whereas German people have a harder time understanding swiss people. Its not so much that words are different, but the way they say the words. It would be like someone who's only heard how americans speak, and then you try to understand someone with a very heavy australian accent. Youre not speaking different languages *per se*, but the way youre speaking the language causes some difficulties."
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9bytv4 | What’s the relation of Black American culture and the barbershops as an important social space ? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is a space where black people can communicate freely. Problems can be articulated and solutions discussed. Narratives about events in society can be constucted. The need for the barbershop is historical. For much of world history, disadvantaged groups - women, working class, racial minorities, sexual minorities - had no access to the means of communication. The problems that were discussed on the national news or in national newspapers were of a certain group of a certain class of a certain gender. the barbershop is also a place where a black person can see their dollars being recycled. It is the last stronghold in the black community. We will go to everyone else for every other product and service except a haircut. That is why it is very important for us to support black products in our shops, ie hair products, skin care products, clothing etc. There is no place else to do it."
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9cgjdc | Why is men's fashion so limited compared to women's fashion? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pure demand, there is far less demand for varied mens clothes than women, as generally men wiher want to conform or don’t care.",
"Mens fashions are driven by practicality (trousers/pants rather than skirts, no loose clothing etc) in most cultures due to do men traditionally having practical jobs. As this changed the fashions have not caught up. There is also a cultural aspect to it in that (depending on the particular culture) men can be conditioned to be less expressive. This reduces the selection. In addition, group conformity will stop outliers from catching on, particularly in business and politics. Look at the crap Obama got for wearing a tan suit. Dark suits with light shirts is all that the group will allow. Same probably goes for things like jewellery and makeup, guys have bad skin days too."
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9cqaft | Why do virtually all American Chinese restaurants seem to be so similar? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I recommend watching the documentary \"The Search for General Tso.\" I believe it's on Netflix, and it pretty much answers your question, with a focus on the dish \"General Tso's Chicken.\" The gist is that the earlier Chinese immigrants adapted their dishes to American tastes, and when more Chinese immigrants came after them, they also set up restaurants, because it was easier to enter a business in which your relatives or friends already had experience - thus many of the early Chinese restaurants shared the same style, and the restaurants of today evolved from that style.",
"There’s a documentary called general tso ‘s chicken that goes into fetal about how they’re all part of a big group. Like how all the menus are printed in the same place and people from aisa can go to America and get in a network of busses and find work somewhere. It was a good watch"
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9cs1hk | what is gentrification | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"An area that is run down or poor has money dumped into it, usually by outside developers, but sometimes cities will do it. Usually when you hear someone talking about \"revitalizing\" an area, they're talking about gentrification. Anyhow, money comes, buildings are rehabbed and repurposed. Businesses come, followed by an influx of people. The demand for housing increases, and so do the demand for businesses. As demand increases for both, landlords can and do charge more for rent. As these costs go up, so do prices for things like food as the rent increase is passed on to consumers. Eventually people can find themselves priced out of the area entirely."
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9cu2be | Why does the music when you're on hold sound so crappy/distorted? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Traditional telephone lines can only transfer sound frequencies between 300 and 3,400 hertz. Humans can hear from 20 to 20,000Hz and this is roughly the same range as music uses. Therefore, on a phone line you will lose lot of the bass (low frequencies) and treble (high frequencies) which causes the music to sound crappy.",
"Not quite sure if links are allowed in here but Tom Scott did a video about it a while back URL_0 Basically the compression that’s used to compress more conversations into one signal mangles everything that’s not in the human voice range",
"Modern phone connections (cellular and some landlines) are digital (instead of having a virtual or real wire line connected between the two parties, at least at some point the sound is converted to digital, compressed, chopped in packets, then injected in a stream with thousands of other packets in a wire or radio signal, to be picked, reordered, reassembled, uncompressed, and converted back to analog sound). A packet containing X milliseconds of sound has to take much less than X milliseconds of wire/radio time for that to be efficient. To achieve that, the systems use \"vocoders\" (voice encoders/decoders), which are highly tuned to make speech compression extremely efficient. That compression for example ditches away silent sections (and even tells the other side about characteristics of the background noise so it's generated locally to avoid a complete cut in the sound there). Then of course a music has much wider frequency ranges and a very different set of sounds, which the vocoder is not made to preserve. It could be made to, but it would take much more transmission bandwidth (think about sending a low res highly compressed video vs a full hd high quality one), which costs more. So what we hear is the vocoder trying to compress/decompress music as if it was pure speech, when it just can't do right."
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9cvfdf | Where does this whole “Alexa play despacito” thing come from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"This is more r/OutOfTheLoop than ELI5 but it boils down to \"people on the internet trying to activate other people's Amazon Homes.\" There's an \"oh shit you got me\" factor to a youtube video suddenly activating your home AI and making it play the most overplayed, annoying song on the Billboard."
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9cxr4f | Why are Americans boycotting Nike? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Racism. If they cared about humanity they would have burned the shoes long ago due to the slavery and child labor Nike takes advantage of to produce shoes.",
"Nike made a deal with former football player Colin Kaepernick. It's a huge controversy in America now about football players who are refusing to stand for the national anthem. Some see it as a valid form of protest against social injustices, some see it as disrespectful and traitorous. Kaepernick is the man most often thought of as the person to start the not-standing-during-the-anthem thing.",
"They signed an endorsement contract with Colin Kaepernick, and thereby support his right to peacefully protest.",
"Nike did an ad featuring a certain football player named Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick has been controversial lately due to his protests of the national anthem. A lot of Americans don't like his protests, therefore they don't like him. So when Nike features him in an advertisement, they don't like Nike."
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9czhyy | Why do all the gods from Greek mythology have their equivalent in Roman mythology, with just their names being changed? What’s the story? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If I recall correctly, before the Romans had much contact with the Greeks, they believed in \"spirits\" rather than \"gods.\" So the names for the spirits were first. Jupiter was a spirit. Then, the Romans had substantial contact with the Greeks and Etruscians and their \"spirits\" took the form of the Greek gods. Sometimes, like in the instance of Apollo, just straight up stealing the god, name and all. You could even argue that the Greeks converted the Romans to their religion."
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9d08k5 | What is the Burning Man Festival? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"This falls under \"google it or visit the website.\" However, the short explanation is that it's a festival held in the middle of the desert at the end of every August, with lots of drugs and sex, not too many rules, and results in a week-long party where artists create art of various types amidst a city population of anarchists and avant garde thinkers. You can only create with/survive on what you bring with you, unless you trade with others. Money is not supposed to be allowed on the site. One of the big events during the festival is when the giant effigy of \"the man\" is burned, and this is what gives the festival its name."
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9d3f64 | Why is the national anthem sung at sporting events? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"International sporting events: It first started in rugby when the Welsh captain lead the Welsh fans in a song (a country famous for it's singing ability) in a response to the All Black's doing the Haka. The Kiwi captain later recalled that he have never experienced anything like that in his life. New Zealand went into that game with a winning streak of 27 games on tour but Wales beat them that day. Mordern recording before a game [Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau] ( URL_0 ) Non International games: I don't know, just American's being American I guess.",
"The band played it at the 1918 World Series, and everyone liked it. So they did it again. Then other teams started doing it. Then other sports started doing it. URL_0",
"Nationalism portrayed as patriotism. Most of the pre-game stuff in the US is paid for by the DOD, for example. International events between multiple nations is a fine time to sing the anthems however.",
"They sing it during international sport events to represent their country, because *nations* compete there, not people. It then bleeds into other not international matches.",
"In Japan the national anthem is not sung before baseball games, instead they sing a team anthem. & #x200B; [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )",
"It all depends where you are from. In Thailand they sing the national anthem at the cinema before watching a movie",
"In America it's weird because they sing at every major sporting event I believe. But the rest of the world only does it at international sports match's as those players are representing their country.",
"Because Americans have a massive fetish for this kind of patriotism. This includes the near idol-worship of our flag and the Pledge of Allegiance. All of this, especially the Pledge of Allegiance, are things you expect in a fascist nation where the people are mindless followers of the government.",
"I'm positive that the founding fathers would be abhorrent at the idea that it is sung so formally at domestic events. This dilutes it's power everyday.",
"In India, they also play it in theatres before movie starts. In India at least, I think it's just a oneupmanship on who is more patriotic.",
"If you believe [this vox article]( URL_0 ) then: > Playing the national anthem before national sports games started for very specific historical reasons — the need to get the public to help the war effort during World Wars I and II, specifically. I've heard this touted on reddit a few times with various slants, but always with some initial connection to the military."
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9d5mlk | on the new fad with burning Nike merch please | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They support kapernick. Kapernick supports kneeling for nat. Anthem. So Nike now is supporting this guy and people don’t like kneeling for the anthem therefor they are burning shoes to protest the support of kapernick.",
"Nike hired some Football player who was sighted wearing socks depicting comic Police officers as little comic pigs. Apparently, he also had the audacity to kneel during the US anthem, which is apparently disrespectful to the military and veterans. So, politically far right people boycott Nike....",
"People who wear American flag underwear are upset with an American football player who knelt during the anthem, so they are burning their trainers to prove how much they love America.",
"The guy in the ad, Colin Kaepernick, is an American football player who is controversial because he kneels during the national anthem as protest. This pisses some people off. These people are burning their Nike merch in protest."
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9d5n1v | Why are Americans so individual and selfish when it comes to politics and social programs? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Your question seems a little subjective, and the answers I saw were also. To that end, I suggest you post in r/askanamerican.",
"You think a man is selfish if he wants to keep the money he works for to provide for his own family and protect his future? And then, somehow, you think the people who want to take his money without working for it are NOT selfish... Americans ARE charitable. But they should choose who and when to donate to, not have it literally forced at gunpoint."
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9d5vfu | What is a NIMBY? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Not in my back yard. An acronym for things that are needed but not wanted close by. Prison, garbage dump, Nuclear Power plant etc.",
"Not in my Backyard. The name is pretty self-explanatory, but it's usually something that provides a net benefit to a given area but inconveniences one person or a small group of people. The first example that comes to mind would be something like a cell tower, undesirable business, or a noisy highway.",
"Not in my Backyard. It's referring to people who want all sorts of public services, but at the same time oppose building it anywhere near their homes. For example, they want highways so they can get to work faster, but they don't want a highway anywhere near their home. They want great public transit, but they don't want a train station built down the block. They also don't want buses going down their street every day. They want an airport that is close to their home so it's easy to travel, but they don't want one in their town because the planes are too loud. The result is there is typically a huge list of things (mostly public infrastructure) that most communities completely agree they want, but as soon as they go to build it everyone nearby says \"but not on that block, I live there\", so these projects end up canceled because they can't find a spot that people won't complain about."
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9d80hl | How are honest journalists able to report information from a credible source and protect the source's identity? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The source typically isn't anonymous to the journalist, from what I understand; the journalist will find information about their source to see if they're credible, and get supporting information that might not be enough evidence by itself without the source putting the pieces together, but it's generally understood that an anonymous source to us is someone the journalist has met, vetted, and talked to in order to do their level best to make sure that the information is good.",
"The journalist knows who the source is, but agrees not to tell the public who they are. A lot of trust is required— the source must trust that the journalist will protect their identity. And the public must trust that the journalist *actually does have* a source and isn’t making stuff up. That’s the value in established, trusted reporters and media companies. It can be hard to pin down “how trusted” somebody is, but that’s the reason that an outlet like NBC is *actually more reliable* than an outlet like InfoWars or Breitbart. It’s also the reason conservatives and producers of fake news try to discredit the “mainstream” media and paint them as untrustworthy, instead of simply putting out their own news and letting it speak for itself. Those mainstream outlets actually have something they don’t, which makes them more trustworthy."
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9dmph3 | Kantian Ethics | I've been watching videos for HOURS. Much tears, many frustration. SOS PLEASE HELP. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The categorical imperative states that you should only act in ways that you would wish for everyone to act. It is similar to the golden rule though it is applied to all of humanity. You should behave in ways that would be good required behavior for everyone. I’m sure there is a lot more but this is the most famous one if I remember correctly. URL_0",
"A lot of people get Kantian Ethics wrong. It doesn't help that Kant is a dick who refused to stop making up words *in German* and lived his life like a recluse. Kantian Ethics is an ethical system derived from pure reason rather than an authority like Gid. Let's start with a simple question: *Why should anyone do anything at all?* Because... Presumably because they had a good reason to right? And if they didn't have a good reason, well then they shouldn't do it. You can't really get past this. As a human - a reasoning being - reason itself is inescapable. It comes as a behavior before you even know or discover anything about the world. He calls that *a priori* knowledge. It's built into reasoning beings that we reason. If we see philosophy as the study of *what a rational actor should do* - then all we need to assume is that there are actors capable of reasoning (somewhere someone has rational capacity). Morality doesn't apply to hurricanes or wildfires. They don't have reason. Once you assume the actor has reason - what should they do? Well they should use that reason to achieve their goals. Any other way is less reasonable and less effective. Reason demands that all right actions be mutually compatible. I can't have goal A and goal B, if goal B = ¬A. Because then I'm trying to A and ¬A at the same time. That's guaranteed failure. Ah look, a maxim has appeared! Goals must be self consistent to be reasonable. And in fact, if we keep going, Kant discovered that all rational actor's must have self consistent goals too. Meaning my goals and your goals are compatible to the extent that we are rational. Therefore, anything I'm doing must be something I'd be doing if I were you. And since reason is a tool for achieving goals, increasing rational capacity is good. And decreasing it is bad. The shorthand for the conclusion here is the Golden rule. Only act as though the rule your following could be a rule every rational actor should follow."
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9dnx6a | Why are women generally more close and intimate to other women than men to men? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They don't tend to be more close. But they do tend to be more affectionate. Men in Western Culture are trained to rarely display emotions. We are allowed to show anger, and to some extent excitement but most emotions have to be limited or hidden entirely. When it comes to affection you are allowed to show it with your significant other and to a lesser extent other immediate family such as siblings, children, or parents. But it is not acceptable to show much affection to friends. Some of it does stem from not wanting to seem homosexual, but it is mostly a general sense of propriety and restraint expected of men.",
"Also, there's a separate topic here: sexual arousal in women is tied as much to narrative and social context as it is to physical context; with men, the physical context is almost everything. This means that men are able to be more close and intimate with each other in some ways that would make a woman uncomfortable, and vice versa. The physical closeness doesn't always register with women because it's \"obviously not sexual\" to them, where to the average man, even observing it in two women comes across as sexual."
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9dxfhz | How come there are things common to almost every culture? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"That birthday thing is a learned norm. Most cultures had gifts as a rite of passage i.e marriage, childhood-teenhood, farming seasons etc not every year since calendars weren't as pervasive. And for the exact parental names such as ma and pa are mainly because babies find it easier to pronounce the sequence. For other language cues, they pretty much stick within similar linguistical backgrounds. But otherwise humans as a whole have a similar social hierachical structure that pretty much puts the mother and father at the core of any simple social structure. That means a child's importance peaks on those two then grows out later to the rest of the society."
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9e3tsk | The concepts of "simplified Chinese" vs "traditional Chinese". | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It used to be that there was only one form of Chinese. Then the communist government of China decided to simplify the characters so that they were easier for people to read and write. In Taiwan, which has never been under the communist government, they didn't make that change, so they still use the traditional characters. That's all. Edit: I'm talking about written in Chinese, of course. Spoken Chinese is at completely different beast.",
"On top of what others have said, the technical differences are in terms of stroke number. Some traditional characters have up to 20+ strokes (lines used to draw the character). The simplified version aims to cut the number of strokes down to be easier to read and write.",
"The communist Chinese government came up with the simplified characters in the 1950s to help improve literacy, as everybody else has already stated. It is argued that they were also created help stamp out certain artefacts of Chinese cultural heritage, especially Confucianism, that the communist leadership saw as contrary to the vision and intended ideals of communist China. Chinese characters are composed of 'radicals'. These are basic sets of strokes that convey meaning or sound. For example, 好 (good) is composed of two radicals: 女 and 子. (As an aside, those two radicals are also characters in their own right meaning 'woman' and 'child' respectively) The main means of simplification was to reduce the number radicals **or** the number strokes in complicated radicals. For instance, 語 (language) is composed of 言, 五, and two instances of 口. This was simplified to 语, where 訁 was reduced to 讠. It should be noted that Japan also uses some simplified versions of characters, known as 新字体 (*shinjitai*), such as 学 (study) which was 學, and 楽 instead of 樂 (whereas Simplified Chinese uses 乐). Sometimes the *shinjitai* and simplified Chinese forms are the same, sometimes they're slightly different, sometimes they're very different, and sometimes one country or the other hasn't simplified a character at all. The debate about whether or not Confucianism was being subverted for political capital by the communist government is one that I have no qualification to weigh in on other than to say that the debate exists, with different conclusions to be drawn depending on (A) the politics of whomever is making their point, (B) their nationality, and (C) their views of language/orthography reform. Read more about it here: URL_0",
"It is the same spoken language. Majority of the written word is the same, but for simplified Chinese it is easier to write for about 3000 of the characters. Only Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau learn to write traditional Chinese (I guess the English equivalent would be spelling words differently in British English vs. American English). I learned traditional Chinese, so when I see simplified writted Chinese, it is very obvious, but you can kind of guess what character they are writing.",
"Traditional chinese characters are really hard, actually intentionally made hard so only nobles could read and write. Simplified characters were developed once the government decided that mass literacy would actually be a good thing and traditional characters were way too complicated. Think of it like sort of going from a super fancy cursive to print writing.",
"Think of it like this. Pretend everyone used to write in cursive. Some people had a hard time reading or writing cursive. Then they put out printed English, stuff is a little bit easier to read and write. That’s similar of a transition from Traditional to Simplified Chinese",
"Traditional chinese words are more complicated and require more brushstrokes. The china govt then created simplified chinese which made the words simpler and easier+faster to write. In terms of meaning and pronunciation they're exactly the same",
"A lot of other languages have had reforms to simplify the language. You have institutes in Germany, France and the Netherlands which deal with this. It's not a \"let's change it for the sake of changing\", it's an \"the spoken and written language have inconsistencies, analyse them and make it easier for people to learn it and to write it.\" Countries with the English languages never had such institutes, as such you end up with words like \"blue you zoo two shoe\" which all end with the same sound but are all written different."
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9e8awo | How did we settle on a 7 day week? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"According to [ URL_0 ](https://www. URL_0 /calendar/days/7-days-week.html): > Each week for each Moon phase > The reason why we organize our lives around a 7-day week is, quite literally, above our heads. Like many other calendars, today's Gregorian calendar is ultimately based on the phases of the Moon. It takes the Moon around 29.5 days to cycle through all Moon phases. > For everyday purposes, this is a fairly long and impractical time span, so it makes sense to break it down into smaller segments. > Enter the Babylonians. This ancient society, who lived in Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq rounded the Moon cycle down to 28 days and divided this time span into 4 periods of 7 days each, using leap days to stay in sync with the Moon phases in the long-run.",
"It's important to note that most ancient civilizations came up with the seven day week on their own. It wasn't invented by one culture and everybody else thought it was great and adopted it. The ancient Babylonians, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Norse, Japanese all used a seven day week. In the case of several of them, notably the Babylonians and the Romans, the week is tied to religion and astronomy. In ancient astronomy, there are seven visible celestial objects that move independently of the stars (the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). Various religions tie important events to a seven day cycle (Christian and Jewish sabbath, Babylonian and Roman rituals, and so on). It's completely unrelated to years or months, which is why years and months can't be evenly divided into weeks. Same reason why years can't be evenly divided into lunar months and lunar months can't be evenly divided into days, they're all completely unrelated to each other.",
"During the French Revolution they sought to remake society. One change was to implement 10 day weeks, which was quickly reversed after workers protested have 8-day work weeks. Thanks Revolutions podcast."
],
"score": [
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"text_urls": [
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|
9ea51v | How can Cops and Live PD obtain consent from suspects? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e5ncgx7"
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"text": [
"In general: People in public/on the Public way have no expectation of privacy and therefore consent to film them and that film being shown during the show does not require consent. Private property is a different story for the most part."
],
"score": [
5
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"text_urls": [
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|
9ecdgh | Why do children in America require a pass to go to the bathroom? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It's a safety thing. They do it in Britain now too.. E.g. If there's a fire, one person isn't on the register as they're at the toilet. Or if they are seen out of class it's clear they aren't a trespasser as they have a pass.. There is no uniform in most public American schools.",
"In the schools I went to it was to let people know you actually had a reason to be out of the classroom and werent just hanging out in the hallway.",
"It so that teachers and admins walking about know that the child has a reason to be out of class and not just skipping.",
"My high school used these in the uk around 10-4 years ago. Not all of the teachers actually bothered with them. Was so that other teachers knew you were allowed to be out of class and weren’t just loitering around the hallways. My primary school had a similar thing I think but instead of a bit of paper it was an object I think. I think that was so it was clear that only one child in the class could go to the toilet at a time, you’d have to wait if the object was already gone."
],
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9ejal8 | Why do some candidates refuse to accept money from PACs/Super-PACs as if it's a bad thing - for example, what's the difference between me donating to a candidate directly or me donating to a PAC which donates to the candidate? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"e5per8f"
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"text": [
"A PAC (or more specifically, a Super PAC) in some cases doesn't have to declare where the funds come from; that's the main issue, although there are some (small) steps being taken to change that. They can be used to funnel a great deal more money towards a nominee's interests than an individual could. They can only donate limited funds directly to a campaign, but they can run ads that benefit a particular candidate -- as long as they don't coordinate with the candidate directly. On top of that, you can only give a maximum of $2,700 to a given candidate, but you can give $5,000 to any number of PACs that support your interests. If you want to dole out $5,000 apiece to Yellow Team Sucks, Purple For A Brighter Tomorrow, MauvePAC and FuchsiaPAC, you can do that. That's $20,000 in campaign money that's going to support the purple candidate, which is a lot more bang for your buck than the $2,700 you'd be able to donate personally. Additionally, taking the support of a PAC might come with certain conditions attached to it. The idea of behind beholden to big-money interests is increasingly unpopular among certain sections of the electorate, specifically in the wake of things like the Citizens United ruling."
],
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9eq47y | Etymology of Long Island "Sound"? | I find it pretty strange that the word "sound" is used to describe this body of water. Why is it called a "sound?" | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The term sound is derived from the Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse word sund, which also means \"swimming\".[2] The word sund is already documented in Old Norseand Old English as meaning \"gap\" (or \"narrow access\"). This suggests a relation to verbs meaning \"to separate\", such as absondern and aussondern(German), söndra (Swedish), sondre (Norwegian), as well as the English noun sin, German Sünde (\"apart from God's law\"), and Swedish synd. English has also the adjective \"asunder\" and the noun \"sundry', and Swedish has the adjective sönder (\"broken\"). In Swedish and in both Norwegian languages, \"sund\" is the general term for any strait. In Swedish and Nynorsk, it is even part of names worldwide, such as in Swedish \"Berings sund\" and \"Gibraltar sund\", and in Nynorsk \"Beringsundet\" and \"Gibraltarsundet\". URL_0"
],
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"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_(geography)"
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