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bor9je | that in English it’s ‘a’ unicorn but ‘an’ umbrella. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The u in the first word sounds like a y, which is a consonant while the second one sounds like an a, which is a vowel.",
"\"Unicorn\" begins with a consonant Y sound, as in \"you,\" while \"umbrella\" begins with a vowel U sound. \"An\" is used before words which begin with vowel-like sounds, \"a\" is used before words which begin with hard or consonant-like sounds.",
"You would say \"a yardstick\" or \"a yellow brick road\", and \"unicorn\" starts with the same sound as those words. You'll see a similar thing with some h-words, like \"an hour\" (pronounced like \"our\") versus \"a horse\".",
"The starting letter does not matter in determining use of \"a\" or \"an\". It is the starting sound. If the word starts with a consonant sound you use \"a\", and if it starts with a vowel sound you use \"an\".",
"You generally want to avoid redundant/similar vowel sounds to allow for clearer understanding of individual words. The article \"a\" is used when the following word starts with a consonant, rather than a vowel (e.g. \"a boy\", \"a cat\", \"a tree\"). Whereas, \"an\" is generally used when the following word does start with a vowel (e.g. \"an instrument\", \"an opera\", \"an explanation\"). The \"n\" in \"an\" helps to break up the back to back vowel sounds, rather than allowing the words to blend into one another. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, especially in English. In this case, the word unicorn does start with a vowel (u), which might lead you to use \"an\". However, in this case the \"yoo\" sound in \"yoo-nicorn\" creates the impression of the consonant \"y\", which suggests using the \"a\" article, thus creating \"a *y*oo-nicorn\". More conventionally, the word umbrella starts with a natural vowel sound (\"uh\"), so using \"an\" is the preferred variation as it avoids the repetitive vowel sounds of \"a\" and \"u\"."
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boz3aj | For languages that use characters (i.e. Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, etc.), do they have autocorrect on their phones? How are words misspelled? For reference I'm native English speaker. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Korean uses letters. Japanese uses a mix of letters and modified Chinese characters. Cantonese and Mandarin use the same written language: Chinese. There are multiple types of Chinese keyboards. The most common type requires typing out the phonetics of the characters you want. The keyboard then gives you a selection of characters to choose from. Typically, a typo involves selecting the wrong character.",
"Yes, they do, and their auto-suggest is much more necessary. After entering a few characters in rōmaji or pinyin or other entry script, the UI will start offering up possible words and most will do some level of learning the user's most common choices. For example, in Japanese the user may select Kanji (Chinese-style characters) for some expressions or retain katakana spelling or even Latin spelling for borrowed words. Korean is a phonetic alphabet that groups letters (jamos, consonants and vowels) into syllables to build each character. Korean editors still have to deal with borrowed Chinese characters that they call Hanja, the Chinese call hanzi and the Japanese call Kanji.",
"For Chinese: If you look at a number of characters, you will start noticing that the characters are made up of the same types of strokes. These are called \"*radicals*\" and in Chinese there are a set number. All Chinese characters are made up of these radicals. Although the language is iconographic where each character has a meaning, there are also plenty of compound words. For example, \"*飞机*\" means \"*airplane*\", comprising of \"*飞*\" meaning flight, and \"*机*\" meaning machine. Also, much like any other language, some characters look similar, but are not. Like \"*要*\" and \"*耍*\". So generally, any autocorrect will look in context to see if a character is wrong. Otherwise, the main system will be a list of potential characters for the user to choose from, but like English, will pick the most likeliest one. Now when it comes to typing Chinese, there are a few systems. There is pinyin, which is romanization of the word coupled with a tone. In Mandarin, there are four tones for each word, giving a different word and meaning altogether. for example ma1 can be 妈, which means mother. ma2 can be 麻, which generally means numb. ma3 can be 马, which is horse. ma4 can be 蚂, which is grasshopper. You will note that ma3 is the same as ma1 and ma4, but the left side is different. This is what the radicals mentioned above. So to autocorrect pinyin, it might look at whether the tone or pinyin itself is different. Did he mean ma1 instead of ma3? There is also various systems based on radicals like t9, but this is often for traditional Chinese (compared to simplified used in China). To add a bit on writing Chinese, there is a proper order you write each stroke and radical to form a word. It actually gets quite symbolic and artistic, but that is beyond the scope here. So to use these systems, you will choose the radicals in the same order you would write the character. A list of potential characters will appear for the user to choose. So the autocorrect itself is there. Otherwise, if the combination of radicals is nonsensical, no character will appear. Finally, there is handwriting. You write a character and the program guesses what you want.",
"I speak Mandarin, and there is something of an “autocorrect” feature on Pinyin input programs like the one on iPhones. When you input the incorrect but close English phonetics, it will guess based on the limited letter combinations which word you meant and make character recommendations based on that. For example, “ni hao” is hello. If you accidentally type “bi hao” or “ni jao” the characters for hello will be recommended.",
"Korean uses “letters” so there’s autocorrect. I use pinyin when I write chinese so there’s also autocorrect. Sometimes I’ll hand write if I don’t know the pinyin. Cantonese and mandarin are dialects so they use the same character set with minor differences in the way they write.",
"Nobody has mentioned cell phone keyboards for Japanese yet. The one I use has 10 buttons あかさたなはまやらわ and 2 for adding marks and punctuation. It proposes not just possible kanji, but also missing marks, eg. if I write てす. It will suggest です as well. It also suggests emojis, like if I write りんご (apple) it will suggest 🍎 and 🍏 as well.",
"Japanese is pretty easy to type. You use a English keyboard and type out the letters of the hirigana in their standard representation. That is easy for a computer to convert. Then the computer looks up kanji that might be said that way and recommends them to you. The most common mispelling I make is forgetting if a sound is lengthened. In English a lengthened sounds has no special meaning but in Japanese it does and can change the word. Very easy to forget that and then the computer recommends totally different words."
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bp7x8w | How can certain words, such as "Baroque", be used to describe so many inherently different styles of art, such as architecture, dance, music, and paintings? | I don't understand how you can look at a painting, a building, or listen to music and try to compare the 3 in any meaningful way. Trying to get a grasp of art history, but I feel like I'm failing to grasp some sort of core-concept. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Baroque style usually refers to a period of time usually associated with 17th/18th century European culture. This was after the Renaissance, so things were pretty extravagant during this time. Think chamber music being played at Versailles with all those fancy paintings hanging out.",
"The same way \"the 80s\" can be used to describe music, fashion, movies, etc. If somebody describes something as \"that's so 80's\", you have an immediate understanding of the general aesthetic.",
"Humans like to categorize things. Often times, a word like “Baroque” is used to categorize and describe a range of artworks. For example, baroque paintings are usually characterized by “dramatic” lighting and scenes that treat human subjects as actors to convey a narrative. In a word, baroque paintings are “theatrical”. When you use baroque to describe architecture it refers to architecture that was designed to be dramatic and theatrical. The goal is similar to paintings, but the methods used are different since architecture deals with three dimensional space rather than a flat surface. However, if a term is used across multiple fields the characteristics of artwork between the fields often have nothing to die with each other except maybe the period of time they are from (and even that can be called into question). For example, “Modern” is a tricky word when used across the arts. A “modern painting” mentioned in parlance could just be someone referring to a nice abstract painting they found in Bed Bath and Beyond. Or, if used by an art historian, it could refer to a period of paintings produced between the 1860’s and 1950’s OR even a completely different date range if you ask another art historian. The word “modern” also has very different meanings when it is used to describe architecture or sculpture. In the field of typography, a “modern” serif actually refers to a style of typefaces developed in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s (not a very intuitive use of the word “modern”). The point being is that experts across different, unrelated fields may decide that a term has strict categorization requirements, but the categorization requirements only apply to the field they study. The same term used by experts in another field may use the same term, but it doesn’t necessarily have to follow the same categorization rules. Experts in different fields of art don’t necessarily get together and decide the meaning of the terms they use to categorize artworks."
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bpbfjp | Do memories get destroyed overtime or are they still locked away in your brain inaccessible? Would there be a way to access said memories? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A memory is a reflex, but instead of moving muscle, it's a brain path for an idea/feeling. If you can recreate that reflex, you should be able to remember something. As you acquire experience, these reflexes seem less and less unique, making memory retrieval difficult with age: like how a catching reflex is the same for any hand-ball sport, so it's difficult to remember every single time you caught something. Some people have incredible memory, usually by building a strong meaning or story for these different reflexes. Anyone can conciously train this, and some do it subconsciously. To sum up, some memories fade into a blur, while theoretically they could be accessed or partially salvaged by activating the specific reflex. Conciously, playing word association can retrieve a memory as you manually turn on paths near the specific path for that thought.",
"Forgetting is an error in retrieval. Basically, you have a school backpack with no folders or binders and just throw all your papers in there. Your homework is in your bag, but you really don't know how to find it in the mess. This is analagous to forgetting. The memories are probably still present, it's just that you don't know how retrieve it from the filing cabinet that is your brain. This analogy isn't completely accurate, obviously, but it does help explain the process.",
"Nothing really gets destroyed...unless you got some degenerative brain disease. They slowly fade like muscles, but dont disappear. More you use a wet of neurons, the stronger they become, like muscles. If you want to \"train\" thise muscles of certain memories just think about then, try to recall them. Try writing or drawing your memories. But the fact conscious you don't know about a memory doesn't mean it doesn't exist. (Also. Fact you remember something doesn't mean it is an actual memory. It might feel like it is, but it isn't.) Here is a thing you can do. Get comfortable and relaxed in a space where you got no distractions. Choose something from your past and try to remember it. Take a trip in to your memory. Then make few notes or drawings, whatever suits you. You'll realize that you remember more than you think you do, and it allows you to explore and understand your past. And often the present. Kinda how going to a gym can reveal to you that you got muscles in places you didn't think you had. Tho keep in mind, that you might remember things you'd rather not, but you can at least process them.",
"Imagine you've got a bulletin board with a number of pictures on it. You then use pushpins and twine to link those pictures together in some fashion. Now, you get another picture you want to put on the board. But you don't have any more pushpins/twine. So you remove a pushpin from an existing picture and re-use some twine from a previous link to connect it into your bulletin board structure. That existing picture is still linked to other pictures on the board. But it isn't linked quite as strongly as it was before. Likewise, your new picture is now linked to other pictures on board, but not quite as strongly as a long-standing picture that you've reinforced over time. Your brain is quite a bit more complex and interconnected than you could ever represent with pictures/twine on a bulletin board, but the basic principle is the same. Every 'memory' is really just a set of associations with certain stimuli and those associations can become stronger/weaker/modified over time. As those associations become weaker, you start to forget."
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bpexvx | Why aren't amendments made to religious books to keep up with growing times like they are to the Constitution and Government documents? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Religious texts (books) are seen as the word of the god or prophet that wrote them. Because of that, they are not supposed to be rewritten or reworded. In a way, we have seen \"amendments\" to the Bible, though. There was the Old Testament, and then the New Testament that was created as an \"addition of revelations from God\". Ultimately though religious people can't just change or add to a religious text, so they change how the text is interpreted to suit their world view or sometimes to adopt new scientific discovery."
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bpfokc | Considering conservatives have the highest rates of obesity, why is personal responsibility a cornerstone of their politics? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This might not be the sub for this. Not sure what sub it would be, but this is still kinda loaded, even if you're being genuine, which I believe you are."
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bpgse6 | Native American singing | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The lyrics can be made of actual native words and “vocables” which are sounds that used to be words, but their meanings have been lost. Kinda like when you’re singing along in the car and don’t know the words, so you mumble something that sounds like what they said, but isn’t actually a real word (and you don’t know the real word). I shouldn’t have to say it, but of course all the songs are always about *something*, usually interal to the culture. Then there’s the rhythm, drums are sometimes *intentionally* played off-beat. So the singing might be at 150 bpm, but the drums might be at 140 bpm. IMO it gives a spiritual feeling to it, as the drums and vocals sync and de-sync, but it’s hard to put your finger on why without knowing the beats are off. It’s also pretty difficult to sing at one tempo but play at another, so it’s a display of skill. Kicking that up a notch is playing and singing with a group and everyone staying on both tempos. Then there’s the flute songs, which are usually improvised. IIRC, it’s meant to capture the player’s feelings right at that moment. A tradition I heard about was someone would carve a flute after they proposed to someone, and then would play a solo during the union/wedding ceremony. This is all stuff I remember from a Musics of the World 101 class, so obviously I’m not an expert haha. It was just really interesting to me.",
"I don't know much specifically about Native American music, but I took a few courses on music ethnography in college and we learned quite a bit about the exact experience you are having. While almost every known human culture has music in some form, much of our response to music is influenced by our social and cultural upbringing, and not in any way predetermined. The best example of this was when we were studying music from India. As someone who grew up around Western music practices, I assumed that the concept of harmony was universal to music, and also that the idea of two notes being \"dissonant,\" or sounding harsh when they clash together. But this is not the case, as many non-Western cultures find the dissonant intervals pleasant just as we feel with harmony. In fact, the only musical concept that appears to be universally understood by most cultures is the octave, which makes sense given that an octave interval is double or half the original pitch. & #x200B; To your ear, that has been acclimated to the traditions of western music structure, a foreign music structure is like trying to read a different language. You see the parts there and you know that they are supposed to go together in a certain way, but your understanding of it doesn't align with what you are hearing. It might as well be random shill noises because your brain doesn't know by what standard to measure what it's receiving. As I listened to more music from around the world in this class my understanding of it did start to improve and learning what to listen for helped a lot, but it would never become the music I listen to in my downtime. & #x200B; Many musical practices that have long cultural backgrounds are deeply intertwined with important communal events. They can be ways of telling religious stories, ways of marking special occasions or of mourning. One thing unique about Western culture in this regard is that making music is no longer a communal activity. In many cultures, a group of people all make music together, rather than some performing it for the rest."
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bph8zd | Roe V Wade | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Although, this would allow banning abortion, wouldn't revoking Roe V Wade potentially allow the government to have a say on what surgeries I can and cannot receive? Abortion **is** a surgery that people want the government to say whether you can or cannot receive. Don't separate one medical procedure from another just because it's been politicized beyond all reason."
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bpn90e | Why are bad words referred to as swearing and cursing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"***TL;DR:*** *Both words can be associated with negative actions or judgements of something when used in certain of their original meanings, so that was easily adapted to mean the negative words we use when we hit our thumb with a hammer or when we forgot to charge our cell phone and discover we have a dead car battery.* \\-- The word \"curse\" original meaning was of a \"hex\" or a \"spell\" which was the opposite of a blessing, and where a person wished a negative result on someone else through some magical power such as \"that witch has cursed me!\". (It's used in that form in the Harry Potter books, where the wizards fling \"curses\" at their foes using wands.) This was adapted to cover a negative wish against an object or an act that you didn't like, such as \"Curse it, I hate doing taxes!\", and from there to \"Those cursed taxes that I have to do!\" as an adjective. Comparing this to \"Those \\[expletive\\] taxes that I have to do!\", and you have the word curse becoming a socially acceptable label for many other forms of swearing. With respect to \"swear\", the original form here was of an oath, where you were making a strong declarative statement that you committed to do something. You'd often do it in older times using an oath in God's name, as in \"I swear to God\", with your hand on a bible, as a profound commitment. This is easily adapted to taking the name of the Lord God in vain, which is a sin according to the Bible, if you tack on strong and negative emotional targets or apply that strong promise to something that's not really a promise you're actually making to God. An example is \"Junior if you don't turn that music down, I swear to God I'm going to brain you!\", In that case, it's clearly no longer a strong commitment and becomes a form of 'blasphemy' (where you're trivializing your commitment to God). Well that was a pretty huge bad thing in the Middle Ages when the Church had a lot of power, and so the alternate meaning of \"swearing\" as \"using blasphemous (bad) words\" came to be, and it has since extended to cover sexual expletives too."
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bpp79c | How did we come to the point where we have chocolate eggs for Easter? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because Easter is a fertility celebration -hence the eggs and bunnies (known for rampant shagging) - that was sabotaged by Christianity along with so many other 'pagan' religious events.",
"[Eostre]( URL_0 ) (also known as Ostara) was originally a proto-germanic goddess of spring and fertility. Eggs are a common symbol of birth and new life and hold a strong connotation to Eostre (as do easter bunnies for being very....very fertile). These celebrations took place during the same time as the Jewish celebration of Passover (commemorating the Jewish Exodus from slavery in Egypt). Later on, Christians interpenetrated Passover as an allegory of the resurrection of Jesus, and co-opted the holiday for Christianity. This is why Easter is never a set date, but instead follows the Jewish lunar calendar - i.e. Easter is always the first Sunday after the full moon following the Spring equinox. Also, everyone loves chocolate, so chocolate eggs > normal eggs."
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bptkj9 | How is it socially acceptable for men to show nipples on TV and in public, whereas it's socially unacceptable for women to show their nipples on TV and in public? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No reason, it's just a cultural norm. In other words, it is that way because that's the way it is. Breasts are not sex organs, female breasts are not more sensitive than male breasts. It's the same as some cultures requiring women to cover their hair or even their faces."
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bpum5a | Why do island nations typically drive on the left (UK, Japan, Australia, etc) while mainland nations typically drive on the right (US, Canada, Mainland Europe, etc)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the past, almost everybody travelled on the left side of the road because that was the most sensible option for feudal, violent societies. Since most people are right-handed, swordsmen preferred to keep to the left in order to have their right arm nearer to an opponent and their scabbard further from him. Moreover, it reduced the chance of the scabbard (worn on the left) hitting other people. Furthermore, a right-handed person finds it easier to mount a horse from the left side of the horse, and it would be very difficult to do otherwise if wearing a sword (which would be worn on the left). It is safer to mount and dismount towards the side of the road, rather than in the middle of traffic, so if one mounts on the left, then the horse should be ridden on the left side of the road. In the late 1700s, however, teamsters in France and the United States began hauling farm products in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. These wagons had no driver’s seat; instead the driver sat on the left rear horse, so he could keep his right arm free to lash the team. Since he was sitting on the left, he naturally wanted everybody to pass on the left so he could look down and make sure he kept clear of the oncoming wagon’s wheels. Therefore he kept to the right side of the road. In Russia, in 1709, the Danish envoy under Tsar Peter the Great noted the widespread custom for traffic in Russia to pass on the right, but it was only in 1752 that Empress Elizabeth (Elizaveta Petrovna) officially issued an edict for traffic to keep to the right. In addition, the French Revolution of 1789 gave a huge impetus to right-hand travel in Europe. The fact is, before the Revolution, the aristocracy travelled on the left of the road, forcing the peasantry over to the right, but after the storming of the Bastille and the subsequent events, aristocrats preferred to keep a low profile and joined the peasants on the right. An official keep-right rule was introduced in Paris in 1794, more or less parallel to Denmark, where driving on the right had been made compulsory in 1793.",
"Most countries that drives left because they were part of the British Empire. Australia and Hong Kong fall under this category. Japan drives on left because same reason UK drives on left in beginning. Because swordmen on horses kept to left because they were right handed."
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bpwsk2 | What is Superflat? What does it mean both as an art style and as an idea? | I have a hard time understanding Superflat art and what it is supposed to mean. I see examples of it when I google it (ie Murakami) but most attempts to explain it leave me more confused. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's basically a word Murakami uses to describe his own work, and people use to describe similar art. It's loosely defined but the general idea is he takes some japanese pop commercial art (anime/manga/toy figurines/model building) and mixes it with a shocking or out of place element (often something grotesquely sexual or violent) & #x200B; It's a little weird now, because so much time has passed and his most famous works are decades old. A lot of the grotesque imagery he was working with got absorbed over time into actual japanese mainstream so it's less obvious he was doing anything but drawing 4chan posts. Like in 1996 taking an manga drawing of a small hello kitty style child and making them into a grotesque monster made of breasts and vaginas was a more out there take on the sexualization of manga and of children in media and stuff because it was so over the top compared to other things. But like, now \"X rated hyper violent cute animal manga\" is it's own section in the book store so a lot of context is lost compared to when he started."
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bpza61 | How are they filming violent movie scenes casting children without traumatizing the young actors? | I remember the horrific scene of *American Sniper* where a young child is having his head drilled. I mean, I personnaly would have freaked out for the rest of my life if I would have been this young boy. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The process of filmmaking is nothing like the finished , edited work. Scenes are shot out of order, you probably just had lunch with the monster who’s going to kill you in the next scene, and nothing kills the mood like seeing the bored PAs standing around craft services. Most sets will also take special care to make filming as enjoyable of a process for child actors as possible, by making sure that everything is thoroughly explained and they aren’t forced to do anything they aren’t comfortable with. Edit: the films I’ve worked on have had child actors, and it’s really hard to phase them.",
"The only part of the scene that might be scary for the kind reading the drill is at [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) when he put a non rotating drill toward his head. The other scene when he drills in the leg it is almost centrally just props part as you do not see the head and the prop arm move a bit. Later you only see the drill held close to the had but you can see a drill bit. & #x200B; Remember that the scene is filmed in part and the screaming and yelling and scary music was not there when they filmed it. What the child actor did was laying on the ground when the person that was just another actor that he talked to couches down and hold his hand on his neck and he is instructed to scream. A the same time to actors sand around with guns and another group stand a bit away. That is not especially scary. Yo do not see any one else even scream when the the child is in frame except for one scene when it is from behind and the actor that stand above him is likely silent and just do the motions. The scene is scary because other parts it put together and you thing about it as a if it was a real but the that is not how it is when you film it. The other people there are not terrorist that try to kill you but other actors that is nice top you. If you look carefully at scary scene with children you do not often see them and the scary thing at the same time but it look that is was that way when the movie is cut. You construct the scenes so what is look like for the audience is not what it look like when you film it. & #x200B; Even if you put scary looking prosthetic on a child with for example fake blood and damages it might look real but when you have seen that is is something painted make out of rubber that you can touch and the blood is just read liquid and it is applied by a nice makeup artist is it not scary when it is applied to you."
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bq0syv | passive aggressiveness | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No, no it’s fine. I’ll just stop cooking my breakfast to answer this post. It’s fine. I’ll just drop everything right now. No problem.",
"I think that somewhere in that mix is usually a veiled threat, but those are the words, not actions, of passive aggressiveness. I define it more as an action. Without directly confronting the target person, the mad person will do something to the target person. Many times, the target person may not even know that they are targeted or know what happened to them. For example, my dad would get mad at my mom. He was a very non confrontational person so he would do something to mom to get back at her. He would do little annoying things like leave the cap off of the toothpaste, rearrange things in the refrigerator, move her cigarettes, etc. It was things that he could do to annoy and inconvenience her to punish her for making him mad. Passive because he did not directly confront her but aggressive because he punished her. Does that help? I hope that I am correct in this, but it's what I always thought he was doing.",
"Passive aggressiveness usually happens when someone is upset, but doesn't want to talk to the person that's upsetting them. This can happen if they know that talking won't fix anything, or if they're too cowardly to address the problem directly. There are lots of ways to be passive aggressive, often with different levels of actual interaction with the person involved. In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the narrator gets back at someone by slashing their car tires. My dad sometimes threw away or donated my mom's possessions when he was upset. In these cases, the person isn't directly interacting with the target at all. In other cases, a person might give backhanded compliments or try to guilt trip the other person. The most direct form of passive aggressiveness is if you explicitly mention what the person did wrong, but minimize it and act as though it doesn't bother you. \"[It's okay, I don't blame you for ruining everything like you did.]( URL_0 )\" Effectively, passive aggressiveness is any retaliatory action made to grief another person that gives you plausible deniability if THEY decide to confront YOU, while also skirting anything that would explicitly tip the person off as to why you're upset with them (in less subtle cases it's often obvious, but it still is not explicitly stated.)",
"Being non-confrontationally confrontational. Expressing your distaste with someone in an inobvious way.",
"There are three general categories of social behavior as a whole, and of \"things you can say\" in specific: passive, assertive and aggressive. If every interaction involves two people with needs and wants, passivity would be completely ignoring your our own needs and wants, aggressivity would be completely ignoring the other person's, and assertivity would be the sweet spot. All three are parts of healthy social interaction, but, ideally, people should be assertive most of the time. Well, passive aggressiveness is aggressive behavior (\"fuck what you want, I'll have it my way\") PRESENTED as passive behavior (\"have it your way, I'll accept even if I don't like it\"). In other words, \"do what you want to do, I don't care\" with an obvious tone of \"do what I want you to do, or else\". It exists basically because society frowns upon open aggresiveness more than it does upon passivity. And yes, if it was called \"aggressive passiveness\" it would make much more sense.",
"> being upset at someone, indirectly confronting them, and mildly lying, all at the same time? Pretty much. Being passive-aggressive often means you are angry and trying to hurt someone, but (1) you do not admit you are angry, (2) you take revenge in a deniable way, and (3) you do not actually address the reason for the conflict. Imagine my co-worker is named Bob. He does something that makes me angry. There are three ways I can handle it: 1. The reasonable person would say, \"Hey, Bob, I'm upset because you did X... We need to talk about how we can fix the problem.\" This is the best way to handle conflict, because I can explain what the problem is and we can work out a solution. 2. An aggressive person would say, \"Hey Bob, you suck!\" Then I scream at him and tell him how stupid he is. This is not a good way to solve a conflict. I admit that we have a problem, but I'm trying to hurt Bob without looking for a useful solution. 3. A passive-aggressive person would say, \"Hey Bob, I hope you are having a good day,\" while simultaneously deleting his work from the computer. When Bob asks why his files are missing, I say, \"Oh no, that's terrible! I don't know how that happened.\" I am 'aggressive' because I am seeking to hurt Bob and take revenge. However, I am not acknowledging that I have a problem and Bob doesn't realize I'm the person who took revenge on him. Of the three, being passive-aggressive is arguably the worst. Solution 1 is obviously best. Solution 2 is a bad solution, but at least Bob knows what the problem is and how unhappy I am. But in Solution 3, Bob doesn't even realize the problem exists. It's really hard to solve a problem when you refuse to admit or explain what the problem is."
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bq3ng4 | What does an MEP do and why is it important that we vote? | I know that I want to vote because there is a candidate in my area that spouts hateful bile and incites racial violence, and I don't want him anywhere near politics that affect my friends & family. However, I don't know enough about the mechanics to make a properly informed decision (yet). Any good links would be really useful to read through and understand a little more. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"An MEP is a person elected to the European Parliament. They have the power to vote on laws being passed in the EU, and European wide laws cannot pass without the consent of the majority. There is also a good chance the head of the EU commision will be appointed based off of the preference of the largest group in the parliament. Voting is important for two reasons: 1. Whilst the EU parliament does not have as much power as Westminster with regards to their repective organisations, it still has some power. So voting is important because you get to pick who represents you. Its fundamentally the same reason you should vote in general elections. Brexit makes it matter less, but there is still the possibility we remain, so voting still makes sense (and if that possibility upsets you, voting for the Brexit party is a more effective protest than not voting) 2. You mentioned you were from the UK. In our case, who wins is going to be looked at and analysed with regards to Brexit. So the EU elections are a good opurtunity to express your wishes, and support/opposition to the government. For voting for the right MP, I would reccomend looking for party manifestos to get an idea of what laws they would approve, looking at group memberships to get an idea of what kind of government they would appoint (Labour are the only major UK party in a group with any real shot at this, so its primarily vote Labour to back the S & D, or don't back Labour to ease the fight for the EPP), and looking at Brexit stances to see what kind of domestic message that would send."
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bq5vzd | In the US, what’s the difference between a road, street, avenue, way, terrace, etc.? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First they are used to allow the use of the same name in the same city. A street, avenue, way, terrace, and lane are generally interchangeable. As they are roads that serve to start or end a ‘trip’ from a home or apartment. Sometimes Avenue will be used as a connection between these ‘end’ roadways but not meant as a primary mover of people. Boulevard is usually meant to indicate a more significant roadway that serves a a connection between other roads. Generally its intent is not to serve homes directly but to facilitate the movement through the city. This is also true of ‘Roads’ like County Road 10. These roads usually carry the designation of ‘Class A Minor Arterial’ on the road planning maps. Obviously the final step is to highway / freeway with the only different being the speed limit and if there are signals on the road. TL;DR - nothing really, but they all indicate ‘small’ roads that serve homes. General flow of road size from smallest to largest would be: Street/Lane - > Avenue - > Boulevard - > County Road - > County/State Highway - > Freeway",
"It’s all over the place in the US. Some places have hard and fast rules (Avenue=north to south, Street=east to west) others don’t. There’s no standard convention for all cities and states in the US."
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bqcz7d | How do companies test invasive treatments like freezing fat off or liposuction? Wouldn't many people die/be seriously injured in the process of making it "safe" for the customers? | Are there really people that just sign up to be guinea pigs for these intense procedures in the testing phase? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Devices go through strict testing on animal models before a human can even come near it. They know the treatment is atleast safe on mammals, which are very similar to us in terms of physiology. This is not always the case, sometimes clinical trials on humans do run badly.",
"To add to what other people are saying, people do die from cosmetic procedures and the field of cosmetic surgery is still learning from these mistakes. The surgeon who killed Kanye West's mother probably will be a bit more cautious next time, especially if Kanye follows through with his promise to put his photograph on the cover of his next album."
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bqe4r6 | How did identity and identifying people work before pictures? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I would suggest that a letter from a person who is known to a recieving part worked fine. A handwriten letter contains many hints proving that it's origin. Script, a sign, a seal, facts and names in the text, manner of expressing thoughts, etc.",
"For stuff like forensics, we were just asking one another about people based on facial features / hair color / eye color. At some point, we started sketching pictures based on the descriptions, which still happens today. & #x200B; In your example, if the famous scholar was known for some distinctive mark (unique hair style/color, identifying facial scar, distinctive style of dress) then it's possible someone could have guessed, but unlikely."
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bqii4h | What is the point of honorary doctorates? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's usually awarded to honor a person for their contributions to the field. It can also serve as a marketing tactic or promotion for a specific academic institution. Though of course it's not the same as earning a degree the usual way. Some people with honorary doctorates put \"Dr.\" in front of their name and choose to be addressed that way, though this is controversial."
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bqnxip | How did peoples with different languages communicate during first contact in antiquity? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally what happens is that both parties start pointing to objects and saying what the object's name is. After defining what things are and establishing a baseline for communication they start working into more complicated examples. There's a story about how Canada was named that the word Kanata meant village but the explorers thought it was the name of the area itself. Standard mistranslation while trying to work out communication."
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bqt8h4 | What caused Adolf Hitler to hate Jewish people so much? What were his specific problems with them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Anti-semitism had always been ubiquitous in Germany, and was particularly rampant at the beginning of the 20th century. Ian Kershaw, renowned historian, writes in his defining Hitler Biography: > “Not least, in the search for scapegoats, Jews increasingly became the focus of intensified hatred and aggression from the middle of the [first world] war onwards. The sentiments had all been heard before. What was new was the extent to which radical antisemitism was now being propagated, and the degree to which it was evidently falling on fertile ground. Like every other sector of society, Jews had been carried away by ‘the spirit of 1914’ – at last, they thought, at one with their fellow Germans. By 1916 such presumed unity had been destroyed for ever. A new wave of vicious, increasingly radical völkisch antisemitism was blatantly fostered by the annexationist lobby, and found more ready support than at any time before the war. Jews were now attacked as racially inferior immigrants flooding Germany, as war profiteers thriving on the nation’s suffering, and as shirkers avoiding service at the front. That the numbers of Ostjuden entering Germany were insignificant, that four or five times more non-Jews than Jews were directors of armaments companies, and that the proportions of Jews and non-Jews serving at the front scarcely differed could not, of course, prevent the spread of such a slander.” Excerpt From: Kershaw, Ian. “Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris”. Hitler in particular was strongly influenced by Austrian anit-semites and the pan-German nationalist movement around Georg Ritter von Schönerer: > “The almost homogeneously German population of the provincial town of Linz, numbering around 60,000, was strongly German nationalist, but politically divided in its expression of nationalist feelings. Hitler’s father’s nationalist sentiment was of the kind which vehemently supported the continued dominance of German interests within the Austrian state (especially at the time in the later 1890s when they seemed threatened by concessions made to the Czechs). He would have no truck, however, with the pan-German nationalism of the Schönerer variety – the ideas of the movement that had emerged in the 1870s, led by Georg Ritter von Schönerer – which rejected the Austrian state and lauded the virtues of Wilhelmine Germany. Adolf, on the other hand, was plainly drawn in his Linz school – a hotbed of German nationalism – to the symbols and incantations of the shriller Schönerer-style pan-German nationalism which, whatever its limited general appeal in Linz, found ready backers for its emotional appeal among the youth.” > [...] > “The strongest and most thoroughly consistent anti-Semite that Austria produced’ – before Hitler, that is – Schönerer’s antisemitism was the cement of his anti-liberal, anti-socialist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Habsburg ideology. Hitler had imbibed the Schönerer creed in nationalist Linz. The ‘Heil’ greeting, the title of ‘Führer’ (bestowed by Schönerer on himself and used by his followers), and the intolerance towards any semblance of democratic decision-making in his movement were among the lasting elements of the Schönerer legacy which Hitler carried over to the later Nazi Party.” Excerpt From: Kershaw, Ian. “Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris”.",
"It was not only hitler and the nazis that really hated Jews. Overall, a lot of people disliked them. A lot of Europe was still in bad shape because of the Great Depression and the after effects of WW1, and the unemployment rate was high. A lot of Jews were well educated and had safety through good jobs. After some fraud cases with high up Jews, and Conspiracies, about them controlling illegal markets. People started blaming them, for the problems they had. This was the general view, also in the allied countries. Or at least some of them. But luckily in the late 1930’s, people started getting sympathy with the Jews, because hitler was starting to exclude them from society on a whole other inhumane level. And rumours also started, that he had done the first deportations (which he had) Think of it this way. Germany had the biggest economic issues in Europe, so it was the easiest people to brainwash, into the belief, that it was the Jews fault.",
"To give you an idea of how the general tone was towards Jews before WW2, here is a quote from a danish newspaper from 1938, a week after “The Night if Broken Glass”, where some hundred Jews died, and 25.000 were deported. “We know, that thousands of Jews despise the Jewish business sharks, the Jewish speculators of pornography and the Jewish terrorists. But it still can’t be denied, that the experiences, the Germans - together with other Europeans - have had with Jews, are justifying their emotions” Even though, a terrible thing happened against the Jewish population, they were still showing some kind of understanding for the actions. EDIT: I have to state that it was a newspaper that belonged the right side of the political spectrum. But it was not an extremist newspaper in any way."
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br0sdf | Why do Japanese things have such weird titles? Like, Steins;Gate and FLCL, and all the songs with hearts and stars? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well it depend on what you mean by nonsense. Steins;Gate for example, the author said that they are no deep meaning behind it. He use the name Steins, because it felt like Einstein. It started has a visual novel and the people that workd on Steins;Gate worked on Chaos;Head before so it fit the visual style. I don't see any nonsense in that title really. & #x200B; FLCL director Kazuya Tsuramaki said in an interview once that he always wanted a short english name for his show. He used the FLCL which is an abbreviation of fooly cooly thinking that it meant fool and cool, no knowing that it's not the meaning at all. This one is more of a mistake that turn out really funny. & #x200B; I think that American culture and English as their language influenced a lot Japan in the last 70 years of so. After WW2, the US became one of the most important ally of Japan, even today there is about 60 thousand US military personnel in Japan, they train together. For civilian, Japan trade almost as much with the US as they trade with China and after that they trade mostly with South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, 3 other asian country with a lot of US or British influence. I think that Japanese culture just think that using english word is cool, even if they don't alway master how to use it, it doesn't realy matter, because most Japanese are in a similar situation. They know basic english, but don't really master it enough to be bother by those things. & #x200B; As for the stars and hearts, I think it's just emoticon that a lot of the younger generation use a lot, so it make sense if they use it in their culture like the name of their songs. Usually you only found them in pop songs."
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br5fi6 | British aristocracy, their meanings, and their rankings (i.e. earls, dukes, barons, etc.) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"These originated under the monarchy long, long ago. & #x200B; The short version is this: in medieval England it was understood that all land in the kingdom belonged to the king. Or in her case, queen. They would, in turn, appoint land managers to oversee parts of the land. Even today it is not practical for the king or queen to travel to all parts of a kingdom on a regular enough basis to manage the week to week needs of the areas under their rule; and in the days of horses and foot such travel was even more impractical. & #x200B; Common people would rent from the land overseers, who in turn paid tribute to the king or queen. In turn, the local overseers would maintain an army and defensive efforts, law enforcement, justice, a local 'palace' where the king could stay on his visit, and so on and so forth. & #x200B; It was common for the monarch to award land for valor in battle, to family members, or to particularly wealthy businessmen/traders. & #x200B; The various titles, duties, responsibilities, and all that goes with them evolved from this basic setup."
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brb7a1 | Why is it common for religious people to think that God is “up there”? Why is God associated with the sky? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pagan roots is the short answer. Early people worshipped The Sun and The Moon. The Moon likely was the first, followed by The Sun when it's link to agriculture was realized.",
"There's no such thing as a \"new\" religion - every religion is just an offshoot of the one before it. As a result, you have to absorb, tweak and spin the practices and stories from the previous religion(s) you're absorbing into your new one. Islam has to deal with it's predecessors (Christianity and Judaism) so the Quoran has whole passages that are basically pulled from the bible, or about biblical figures. That's just a recent example. If we go back really far, Christian-Judeo-Islamic religions all sort of started from a similar area, and they had religions that gave spiritual significance to the objects in the sky. It makes sense, the Sun is necessary for life, the moon is equally as large (from perspective) and it's easy to start giving stories to the other points of light up there. You see this in almost all religions. It follows that the gods would be \"up there\" where they could see us. This just is so ingrained that it went from literally the stars being the gods to god just being up there. As we explored the heavens (with telescopes, then later space craft), it became euphemistic and stayed ingrained. Hinduism and Budhism are two interesting exceptions: believing God(s) live in everything around us (as well as in the skies).",
"it used to be common to think gods live on earth. the problem with that approach is that people can debunk your belief by walking over and seeing that they aren't there. so gods were moved to harder to reach places, like the sky. and now that we can go there too, people are revising their beliefs again and claiming they actually exist on a different plane of existence or outside the universe entirely",
"To ancient peoples, the \"heavens\" were populated with Gods (the stars, planets, moon and sun), and they looked down upon mortal men. Various cultures worshiped the Sun, Different constellations of stars, etc. Somewhere along the line, Abraham, decided there was just one God, and it wasn't any of the 'heavenly bodies', but was instead invisible. Because, why not? But he still resided up in the heavens. The God of Abraham, was passed along to his sons. His son Ishmael from his wife Hagar (who was Egyptian and actually his other wife's handmaiden) left and that line became patriarch to the Arabs and eventually gave rise to Islam. His sons Jacob and Isaac, from wife Sarah, left and formed Judaism, which also birthed Christianity. Moses is directly descended from Abraham through Isaac. Both the Koran and the Bible document this to varied degrees. So our entire concept of God, whether Christian, Muslim or Jew comes from one guy. Abraham."
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briycn | what is the meaning of the phrase “it’s a weird hill to die on”? | It’s a phrase I’ve seen often on Reddit | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"“I will die on this hill” is the original phrase here, meaning that you will defend this viewpoint to the last. A related and possibly alternate origin is calling an opinion or viewpoint someone’s “hill to die on”. The variation you’ve brought up is a humorous/sarcastic way of saying that someone has made an odd choice of opinion or viewpoint to defend so vigorously. For example, being a militant supporter of putting toilet paper on one way or another would be a weird hill to die on.",
"It’s a choice to defend a position, the hill, which makes no sense to expend all your effort on. It’s a generic reference to the idea that some territory would be worth dying over. If it’s a strategic important place then sure, defend it to the last man. Say if it’s your insistence that democracy or communism or something impactful is the right choice and the argument impacts whether or not it happens, it’s a sensible hill to die on. A weird hill to die on is something like getting into a heated argument over Star Trek vs Star Wars to the point it hurts your friendship with the other person.",
"A hill is a highly defensible position. In Ye Olden Dayes, it was very common to build one's fort or city on top of a hill. The hill would be the last point of retreat, the position from which you would fight to the death. If someone says, \"that's a weird hill to die on,\" or \"that's a bad hill to die on,\" it means the subject has chosen a position that is not worth defending. It implies that (a) the result will be ruinous to the person's health, reputation, career, or whatever, and also (b) the thing they are fighting for is petty, foolish, silly, or otherwise unworthy of sacrifice."
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brotpu | What’s the difference between psychology and sociology? What’s the difference between sociology and cultural anthropology? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sociology focuses on groups/ multiple people as the unit of analysis, while psychology focuses on the individual. There is overlap because each field recognizes that the individual is never \"just\" an individual but always influenced by others (and even takes the perspective of others in its own minds). Sociology is broader than cultural anthropology, and comes from a different academic disciplinary history, but includes the same topics: the meanings, practices, and artifacts of a particular culture, and how they work. Sociology also includes lots of topics besides \"cultural meaning\" itself, and many levels of analysis, from social psychology to economic behavior, to history of politics, etc. Source: PhD/ B.S. in sociology from two top tier American universities",
"Psychology focuses on the study of an individual's mental health and attitudes. Think of a therapist who helps a patient through depression or extreme anxiety or a phobia of something. Sociology focuses on the study of a community's culture and attitudes. Think of political campaign managers who have to understand the population to help connect the politician with the voters. Or a marketing team who has to advertise a product - they have to know who the target audience of the product is, and then understand how to best present that product to that audience to make it as attractive as possible. There are more aspects to it, of course, but those are a couple easy examples of how it can be used. Cultural anthropology is also a study of a community's culture, but it is specifically to document that culture and understand how it relates to other aspects of that community's life (their biological features, their environment, etc.). It can be the study of historical cultures or present day cultures or both."
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brsbs7 | What is a 'narrative' when it comes to claims about reality? | I have been hearing the word narrative thrown around a lot in the news and in counter-news articles. umm, reality isn't a storybook - so what does this even mean? Note: I did a quick search about narrative first and found only [one relevant eli5]( URL_0 ), but I don't understand it... so if we're actually talking about the same thing then I need an ELI5 on their ELI5 | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's the interpretation or \"spin\" you put on a story or a situation. Choosing which facts to include in the story and which to leave out, choosing how to describe people or their actions, and choosing whose perspective to take, are all part of turning a factual account into a narrative. The term is usually used in discussing politics. But you are also \"controlling the narrative\" or \"serving the narrative\" whenever you use stories to persuade people or get them on your side about something. Your resume is a narrative about your career and skills - you're going to include jobs and accomplishments that make you look good, and leave off or minimize ones that make you look bad. You can even see people framing a narrative in subs like AITA - the first version of a story usually makes the teller look really sympathetic and the other person look bad. If more details come out in discussion, the situation can look different.",
"So I think there is a confusion of terms here (or conflation is probably more accurate). When it comes to facts (ie gravity pulls objects with mass toward each other) there isn’t such a thing. However political issues, say abortion, has some gray area as far as when a life is a life, people cherry pick what information they use to support their arguments thus supporting their belief in their narrative. Basically the same idea as a documentary. They clearly interviewed real people and found actual documents, but which parts of the interview they use and which parts of the document they put on the black screen between scenes is used to support whatever narrative the film is putting out there"
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brzno0 | Does US have a federal health care system? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes, it's called Medicare/Medicaid. & #x200B; Medicaid is for low-incomepeople, and the benefits and requirements vary by state, with minimums set forth by federal standards. Medicare is for anyone 65+ or disabled, and is 100% unified as a federal system. & #x200B; It should be noted that in many states, Medicaid is very fucked up, with the cutoff being about $12,000 annually, which is far, far below the national poverty line of about $25,000 annually."
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bshb1z | Why does the Japanese language have English loan words for things they already have words for? | Words like "relax" (rirakkusu) and "hose" (hosu) seem like something that would have existed before contact with English-speaking people. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The words often have slightly different connotations. For example, the English loan word *kyanseru* (cancel) is an informal, modern-sounding way to talk about canceling something. If you were talking about canceling a contract or other more formal arrangement, you would likely instead use the Chinese loan word *kaiyaku*. And if you wanted to talk about canceling in a more general or abstract sense, like taking back your words, you might instead use the native Japanese word *torikesi*. Japanese is not unique in this regard. English has many French and Latin loan words for terms that already had native semi-equivalents: pain/hurt, rage/anger, response/answer, prior/before, commence/begin, creed/belief, abdomen/belly, corpse/body, fraternal/brotherly, construct/build, etc.",
"While the other answers are also correct about there sometimes being subtle differences between English and Japanese words, there's also another major historical/cultural factor: English is \"cool\" (*kakoii*) in Japan. While other languages certainly borrow loan words, this is a uniquely Japanese phenomena related to the country's post-WWII relationship with America. Many people forget that while we did bomb the hell out of them in WWII, we also helped build the country back up afterwards (and secretly forced them to adopt modern rights for women and some other progressive stuff). This it led to a unique love of America in Japan: there's a reason why the only non-English loan word I can think of is bread or \"pan\" (it's use predates WWII). As an example, here's a story my Japanese teacher told me. She was in Japan having dinner at a restaurant with an older Japanese woman, and the woman ordered *torii-niku* (chicken). The younger waitress \"corrected\" her and said \"you want to order the \"*tchi-ken*\"?' The older woman corrected her back \"no, I don't want to order the *tchi-ken*, I want to order the *torii-niku*!\" Eventually the waitress gave up, but it highlighted the basic fact that in certain cases in Japanese the English versions of words are \"hip\", and what the cool young people use. It's also used heavily in advertisements, apparel (see URL_0 ) and (evidently) trendy restaurant menus. But it's not like the original Japanese words went away or anything, and (for instance) older people still use them exclusively. If you watch anime or otherwise listen to Japanese pop music, you'll hear English words used this way frequently. It's not all English words though, because not all Japanese (young or otherwise) know English well enough to have a full vocabulary. It's just a certain subset of words that the \"cool kids\" use that everyone (or at least the younger generation) knows.",
"This is true in a lot of languages and I think part of the reason is just the ever presence of English in media and music - words become familiar and comfortable to use in given situations, even if Japanese (or polish, or Hungarian or whatever) words already fulfill the lexical gap",
"Because Japanese students learn limited English over the course of their education, it's easy for loan words to cross into the lexicon. You will see, sometimes, these loan words will become more common than the original Japanese, and sometimes they are only used in special situations like music. Relax, for example, can be リラックス (rirakkusu) or it can be 寛ぐ (kutsurogu), \"to feel at home\" or 寛げる (kutsurogeru), \"to loosen or ease\", or 憩う (Ikou) \"to rest\" Hose can be ホース (hosu), or it can be 導管 (Dokan) meaning \"Conduit\"",
"Definitely the same with Thais, especially the youth. We use a lot of english loanwords in conjunction with the Thai words that describe the same thing for no apparent reason. It's really apparent when ordering food. In Thailand, menus at chain restaurants usually have food items written in both English and Thai. Young Thais tend to order food using its English name in a Thai accent (so for example, 'grilled chicken' becomes 'griew chikaen') while most other people would just use the Thai words for 'grilled chicken' (Gai yaang). I think a factor is that speaking English was/is a sign of being 'educated,' so many Thais started substituting Thai words for English words. Now, our inferiority complex has reduced significantly, although these loanwords have become so pervasive in conversational speech that it's become a part of our vocabulary. I think this would ring true for Japan too."
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bsjlx5 | Why do TV stations play so many shady college and class action medical injury lawsuit commercials during the daytime on weekdays? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"because the people who watch TV during the day are more likely to be unemployed due to either lack of education or disability. These firms know that, so they are offering the TV viewer a way to improve their situation.",
"Because that is when their target audience is likely to be watching and advertising at that time of the day is fairly cheap compared to peak time viewing and sports events."
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bsnets | What is the cultural significance of mangoes in India and Pakistan? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mangoes are indigenous to South Asia and initially, the major producers were just India and Pakistan. Later it was grown in other countries like Mexico. Because of being the major producers, Pakistanis and Indians became very proud of the mangoes, which continues to this day.",
"They taste really good and are relatively common fruits in that part of the world. Beer is a big deal in Germany, cheese is a big deal in Wisconsin, Scotch is important in Scotland, etc.",
"Idk about Pakistan.. but we .. especially those from the Indian state of Maharashtra hold mango very dear because it is one of the very few things that puts us on the global agricultural map. Alphonso mango from Maharashtra is so much in demand in the world that we Maharashtrians barely get the top produce. The farmers absolutely don't want to sell it here and would export their entire produce. Also mangoes are very sensitive to rains and hence countries where they don't have a 'rainy' season cannot grow high quality mangoes and thus we know that we aren't gonna be displaced from that position soon. So we hold on to it. Also it tastes pretty great imo. The only fruit I like better is guava. I'd also rate strawberry below mango."
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bsocwx | Why is it when Chinese words are spelling with Roman letters they are spelled like that? | In many languages that don't use the latin alphabet (a, b, c, ect...) words are often written romanized so people not familiar with that script can understand. For example, in Japanese with word for thank you is ありがとう. It is romanized like arigato and pronouned ah-ree-gag-toh. However in Chinese, the word for that you is 谢谢 and is romanized as Xie Xie. It's pronouned Shay-Shay. Another example is the word that's romanized as Qing is pronounced "Shing". Why is this? Why isn't 谢谢 romanized as Shay Shay. Why isn't Qing written as Shing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> It's pronouned Shay-Shay It’s not. How an English speaker pronounces “shay shay” is completely different from how “Xie xie” is pronounced. Pinyin was designed to write down Chinese, not how Chinese sounds to an English speaker. “X” represents a sound that doesn’t exist in English, likewise for “Sh” and “q”. The vowels in this example are different as well.",
"It's a foreign mispronunciation. Xie is pronounced \"see-eh\", but just one syllable. Qing is not pronounced \"Shing\" either. Like another comment mentioned, once you get used to pinyin (characters written romanized), you'd be able to read pinyin easily. It's like Romaji (for Japanese), for instance \"to\" is pronounced as such instead of reading it like English.",
"It's called pinyin and it was developed in the 50s by linguists for the Chinese government. The pronunciation of Roman letters varies even among languages that use it natively. Think about John vs Juan. Same letter differnt pronunciation. You just have to learn the correct sounds for the letters in pinyin and it makes sense."
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bsrjwp | why do teenage pregnancies and younger parents seem to run in families? | But this doesn't seem to be the case or as common the other way around, where generations of parents are waiting or older before having children for the first time. Are these younger parents (around age 22 and younger) like that because they were able to find partners and engage in sexual activities at an earlier age as well? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You might sum it up in the old adage, \"the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.\" Good or bad, people tend to repeat behaviors they're familiar with.",
"People who have kids later are still sexually active about the same time and with the same number of partners as people who have kids earlier - in my experience, the later parents are more diligent about birth control, less bothered by abortion, and from families/cultures where young parenthood isn’t the standard.",
"Children pick up on a lot of behavior and education from their parents. Having a kid is a huge burden on your finances and your time, which most people aren't equipped to deal with as a teenager. Moreover, it will interfere with your education, since you can't sit in class with a crying baby, taking care of the baby outside of school cuts into time you would spend studying, and the expenses can push an expensive college education out of reach. Obviously this isn't universally true, [but it is *usually* true]( URL_2 ), especially where the teen parent doesn't have a supportive family for one reason or another. So now those teen parents are not as well educated [formally] (I'm not calling anyone *dumb* or disparaging them, just talking about the objectively measurable level of formal education). To the surprise of hopefully no one, the level of education of the parents [affects the level of education their children will probably achieve]( URL_1 ). That is to say, if the parents are poorly educated, their children are more likely to be, too. Also obvious, [education correlates with income]( URL_0 ), so that those with a lower formal education tend to earn less. And also to the surprise of hopefully no one, [poor education is linked to higher teen pregnancy rates]( URL_7 ), and [lower income is also linked to higher teen pregnancy rates]( URL_5 ). The wisdom to make good decisions isn't usually taught by books, it's taught by observing the adult leadership around you, particularly your parents. If your parents don't make good decisions or have good impulse control, it's harder for you to learn those things. Impulse control also has genetic factors. That's not to say that having sex is a bad decision, or that only poorly educated people do it. Rather, children who have a better education are more likely to have the tools they need to make better decisions, like using a condom. They're less likely to [believe myths]( URL_3 ) like if you have sex standing up you can't get pregnant. Better educated parents are less likely to believe those myths as well, and are more likely to be supportive and help with things like condoms and birth control. They're more likely to be able to afford to help with those things, too. And *if* an accident happens, the parents are more likely to be able to afford to help their new grandchild financially, or be able to (and willing to) pay for an abortion. Here it's also worth noting the geographical factors: states that make it harder to get an abortion are usually also the ones teaching abstinence only education and are also usually the ones with the lowest incomes in the country, worst education, and, you guessed it, highest teen pregnancy rates. ([I'm looking at you, Alabama]( URL_6 ).) So once one teen gets pregnant, if her family doesn't already have a lot of disposable wealth, it begins a cascade wherein she misses out on her education, earns less, and isn't able to demonstrate good decision making and forward thinking to her children (because being poor means you sometimes can't afford to think about the future, and also being poor [literally makes your brain work differently]( URL_4 )). Because of all this, her children are more at risk for teen pregnancy and when it happens, it continues the trend of being lower educated and lower income. Every generation is fighting the odds to climb out of poverty and in all likelihood won't be able to.",
"As with any societal issue, teen pregnancy is a [complex phenomenon]( URL_0 ). Factors that correlate with high teen pregnancy rates include weak family structure and poverty. Teen pregnancy is correlated with both of those. Teenage mothers are often very stressed single-parents, and often the demands of parenting interfere with the mother's ability to earn an income. Correlation is not causation, but correlation is enough to create the appearance that the phenomenon \"runs in families\"."
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"https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/business/economy/a-simple-equation-more-education-more-income.html",
"https://www.studyinternational.com/news/parents-education-levels-affect-childrens-likelihood-attend-college-study/",
"http://www.sedl.org/txcc/resources/briefs/number5/",
"https://stayteen.org/ask/series/sex-myths",
"https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-brain-on-poverty-why-poor-people-seem-to-make-bad-decisions/281780/",
"http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/teen-pregnancy-prevention.aspx",
"https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/teen-births/teenbirths.htm",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9055705"
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bsvjdt | Why is it common to pronounce some latin names like Caesar and Cicero with a soft C instead of a hard K (the traditional latin pronunciation), but not names like Cornelius and Caius? | Title | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I mean, in Classical Latin, it really is pronounced \"Kae-sar\" and \"Kae-sero,\" but English speakers are terrible about not butchering names. Plus, it's how Ecclesiastical Latin pronounces some of them, because it's more related to Italian.",
"In English ... c makes its soft sound /s/ before the vowels i, e, and y. C says its hard sound /k/ when it comes before a, o, u. This is a generalization though. A similar pattern is found with hard and soft g sounds. I’m guessing the ae in Caesar is treated like the vowel e since it makes the long e sound.",
"the rule in latin languages goes, that every C before of a I or E is pronounced as an S. But a C before a different letter is pronounced like a K in English."
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bsvzpr | Asking as a non native speaker, what is it about different pronunciations of j as in San Jose and hallelujah and joy? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm not a linguist, but I think it's probably due to the fact that they are all different languages. Jose is Spanish, and since the J's in Spanish are pronounced differently than in English, that's where the difference comes from. Same thing for Hallelujah, which is originally a Hebrew word. The different pronunciations of the J probably comes from how it is pronounced in it's original language rather than some secret meaning. Edit: If I'm wrong someone please correct me, I'd love to know the proper reasoning if this isnt it!",
"Modern day English is a blend of words from many different languages and roots. San Jose is common in english but comes from Spanish. Hallelujah traces its origins back to hebrew. The current pronunciation of joy traces back to old French. Another example is fiancé. Very common in english usage but is actually a French word."
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bsx30e | Why are wooden houses more common in the U.S when block/brick houses are more common in Europe? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Wood is really, *really* cheap in the US. It is easily the least expensive and quickest way to build a house. Concrete block houses are more common in hurricane-prone areas that have strict codes.",
"1) Wood is very very cheap. You therefore get a larger house for your money building it out of wood. 2) Wood is just as durable as Stone for most weather catastrophes (though it has to be maintained a bit more). A tornado will rip apart a stone or brick house just as fast as it will a wooden one. It is really only fire that brick and stone fair far better against. 3) Wood actually is far superior to stone or brick in areas prone to earthquake.",
"Much more wood available and the vast amounts of space to have \"plantations\" of quick-growing pine trees."
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bsxggk | Why do the Japanese refer to themselves with their family names in public? When is it okay to call them by their first names? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Only if you're very close to them is it okay to call then by their first name. It's an intimacy thing, while adding -san, -kun, -chan, -sama, -dono to their names is a respect thing. If someone's name is Bob Bobbins, you'd call then Bobbins-san if you don't know them. If someone is a higher rank than you (leaders etc), you add -sama to their name. If you're both of the same rank in a formal situation, you go with -dono. If someone is your junior, you go with -kun. If it's a kid, -chan is apropriate. If you're bedfellows you'd probably drop all that and go straight for Bob. I might be wrong on this since I'm just a semi-weeb, but I hope it helps.",
"In *most* countries until recent times it was/is normal to refer to people by their family name unless you know them quite well. Only in the past 60 years or less has that changed in many countries. In such a country, you don't call an adult by first name until invited to do so."
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bsyap6 | What does DJ Khaled really do in a song? Like what's his job about beside randomly shouting his name in the track? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Dj Khaled is a songwriter and producer. So, while it may seem that all he does is yell WEDABEST!!!, he actually helps write lyrics and create the beats to his songs. Then he tries to find other artists to get on his track.",
"As much as I hate hearing his name he is a producer. His job it to make sure that very talented people sound their best. He’s also a smart businessman that knows that a feat./ & /w. Credit means that he makes money twice on every song."
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bt1y6b | how did the shape of the heart come to be if it looks so different than an actual heart? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Nobody is quite sure, but there is speculation that the symbol comes from the shape of the seed pod of the now extinct silphium plant. This was used in ancient times as, among other things, an aphrodisiac which explains its present usage."
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btg2bg | why there is a concept of article in most of the romance languages while there is no such concept in Latin. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's been a while since I studied r/latin, but my understanding is that the definite articles in the modern Romance languages (and possibly also “the” in English through Roman contact with various Germanic tribes) are descended from *ille, illa, illud* in Latin."
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btsbui | Why is today Tuesday? By that I mean why isn't the week shifted over x days? What decided when the first week ever started? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Our current calendar, the Gregorian calendar, was based off a previous, very similair calendar, the Julian Calendar, which was in use since the early Roman Empire. The current calendar started in the late 1500s, but adoption in different areas varied over the next about 400 years, but was in widespread use in Europe during the 1700s. so who decided it: Basically someone in the 1580s just F-ing decided it, and everyone went with it."
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btzzdn | Why is the English alphabet not phonetically accurate? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"English vocabulary is a mish mash of various other languages, using an alphabet which was not designed for it. Fundamentally English is a germanic language, but with lots of words taken from other languages such as French, Latin, Greek and many others. The alphabet comes from Latin, which didn't have all the same sounds as English, so sometimes the same letter is used for multiple sounds (which to be fair was already true in Latin). The words from other languages have in some cases kept their spelling, even though that doesn't match the pronunciation \"rules\" for English words. Then there's the great vowel shift. For some reason English speakers gradually changed how vowels were pronounced over the course of a few hundred years. In some cases the spelling stayed the same despite not making much sense any more. There are also some other cases where pronunciation changed but the spelling different. For some reason people stopped saying the k sound in words like knife and knight, but they kept writing the k anyway."
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bui5yl | what are imperfect rhymes? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"A perfect rhyme has the same stressed vowel and the same sound ending the rhymed words after that vowel. Take the first two lines of \"The Tyger\" by William Blake > Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; *Bright* and *night* are perfect rhymes - the stressed vowel is the same (the I), and they both end in the \"ight\" sound. Imperfect rhymes are anything else - like words that sort of rhyme but have a slightly different sound like, say, *lean* and *gleam.* The sounds ending them are different (n vs. m), but similar enough that they sound pretty close to a rhyme, since they have the same vowels. Or they could be words that have to be fiddled with a bit to make them rhyme, like, say, \"hammer\" and \"Alabama.\" If I fiddled with the word a bit and said hammer like \"hamma,\" it would rhyme perfectly with \"Alabama,\" like the Red Hot Chili Peppers do in \"Dani California.\" And then there are eye rhymes, which are words that look like they should rhyme when written, but don't actually when spoken. Remember \"The Tyger,\" and its perfect rhyme from before? The next two lines are an imperfect rhyme - an eye rhyme: > What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? You're not supposed to pronounce it like \"sym-met-trI,\" or anything. *Eye* and *symmetry* don't rhyme, but they look like they could, and historically, they might have rhymed back before English started shifting all of its vowels (well before this poem was written, by the way). But it still gives your brain a little bit of that rhyming pleasure when you read it, so it's not uncommon to see poets use eye rhymes like that."
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buz0is | How did 'old English' develop into present english? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"In 1066 A.D. William the conqueror and a group of Normans, descendants of Scandinavians living on the coast of France, crossed English channel and began a campaign of conquest that eventually ended in the complete subjugation of England. The language that these Normans brought was a version of French. They spoke this French while the native Anglo-Saxons spoke Anglo-Saxon, or old English. Eventually the Anglo-Saxon and Norman/French speakers begin to mix languages into a combined patois. This was when the most direct ancestor of modern English was born. This language, middle English, eventually had some changes that occurred due to cultural shifts. What it really boils down to is that one generation of English speakers felt that word should sound one way while the next generation thought they should sound a different way. This led to some vowels becoming other vowels. Shakespeare was alive during this time and so that’s why some of what he says sounds similar to modern English, well other things he says don’t sound like English at all!",
"Language evolves over time. It doesn’t just become a new language out of nowhere. (Not usually, anyway) The rules of grammar and vocabulary changed. New words were used; older ones stopped being used. We found ways of expressing things that were better or just different. We misused words until they stuck. We dropped some letters. We changed some spellings. Before you know it, the language looks very different."
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buzkc5 | What exactly makes a song sound "funky"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Syncopation, mostly, which wikipedia defines as > a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is \"a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm\": a \"placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn't normally occur\". More specifically, syncopation within the rhythm section - which most critically comprises the drums and bass, though also sometimes includes rhythm guitar, keyboard, other percussion etc. For example, this drum beat is not at all funky: > K - S - K - S - This drum beat is at least a _little_ bit funky: > K - S - - K S - More specifically _still_, syncopation *between* the elements of the rhythm section. For example, [The Meters - Fire on the Bayou]( URL_0 ). Note how the bass guitar is syncopated 'with itself': it hits on beat one, two and a half, and four. But note further that it actually plonks out that rhythm in an extremely solid way. Although it is syncopated, it's actually very predictable and stable, the bedrock, the consistent pulse. And then notice how (the genius) Ziggy Modeliste on drums takes this opportunity to play absolutely _everywhere_. The bass is serving as the 'metronome', and he gets to play with super loose, shuffley freedom. He doesn't pop out any sort of backbeat with his snares. He drops them in occasionally for accents more like a jazz drummer, while floating that second-line cowbell polyrhythm over the top the whole time. Contrast with [Ohio Players - Skin tight]( URL_1 ), the snare is pretty much metronomic on 2 and 4 like a standard rock backbeat, but the bassline (and bass drum) is going all over the place, with little runs that start and stop exactly where you don't expect them to, with regard to the bar line (measure line). Basically funk is setting up these push-and-pull feelings where parts of it are rhythmically very surprising, whilst the overall composition remains anchored around a strong groove, a beat that you can intuitively nod or dance along to without feeling _consciously_ surprised all the time (without which you just end with abstract jazz or something). Then real god-tier funkiness comes in applying the same general principles but in microscopic scale. Like, you're not just delaying that snare until \"beat 2 and a half\", you're delaying it until beat 2.53. And you're using the dynamics and articulation of each note/hit as well as the placement of it (e.g. it's not just on beat 2 and a half and a bit more, it's a little rimshot or ghost note or pull off or whatever). In particular, I don't think most people, even musicians, put nearly enough conscious analysis into where notes stop, which is pretty much as important as where they start. Back to that Meters example, the three main metronomic bassline notes, the *donk, donk, donk*, are all pretty short and tight with a clear gap between them, although not quite staccato. But the 'fills' in the alternating bars are held long, with no gap before the next *donk*, creating a little 'floaty' feel, a little aerial swoop into the next downbeat. If the main *donks* were all slurred the same way it would sound plodding. If the fills were staccato it would sound robotic. It's the mix of both which works."
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bv4e9k | why are vehicles insured, instead of people/drivers? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I some countries it's actually both. The vehicle is insured, but the insurance won't cover driver liability, so the driver needs their own insurance too.",
"- Some cars are more valuable than others - will cost more to repair - have a higher risk of theft. More desirable - easier to steal. Weak security features - some cars are faster. Higher risk of crashing"
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bv7pyr | Why do people in the western world see alcohol as fine, but other, objectively less harmfull drugs as extremely dangerous? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Propaganda from the govt in the past so they could get the people on their side and a lot of it people still believe",
"Alongside the negative effects taking longer and being less severe than most hard drugs, for most of western civilization’s development alcohol was a constant in life. Before we knew about sanitation and germs alcohol was often safer to drink than water. It’s also much more of a social drug than most, not only in its consumption but also in its effects on people. These developments over time changed the public’s perception of alcohol from a drug, closer to simply a part of life that has its up/downsides like anything else."
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bv94wh | Who were the protestants, why is there still such a divide between them and Catholics, and how was Henry VIII involved? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Protestants are a group of christians who didn't like how the Catholic church was changing. There were many critisms, often revolving around how the church was too secular or corrupt, and that it was selling piety. The reforms started with a German named Martin Luther, who released some papers critising the church. The major difference between Protestants and Catholics is their attitude to the Pope - Protestants do not recognise the supremacy of the Pope over Christianity, Catholics do. There is a divide because there are significant differences between how they worship their God, and how their Churches are structured. England was a Catholic country up untill Henry the 8th. He wanted a divorce from his first wife, but the Pope didn't allow it. So he reformed the Church in the UK, declaring himself its head, and England became protestant country. This also aided him as he was able to seize the Church's wealth (in England) which helped fund his wars.",
"Protestants are christians that broke away from the religious authority of the Catholic Church during the [Protestant Reformation]( URL_0 ). This is a hugely complex section of European history, but the broad strokes are that people became skeptical of the Catholic Church's practices in the 1500's and started their own churches in \"protest\" of the Catholic Church. Henry VIII plays in because during this period, we wanted a divorce that the Catholic Church refused to approve. He then took advantage of the protestant movement to create his own state church, the Church of England (AKA: Anglican Church), headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. This archbishop then approved the divorce using his new religious authority. There continues to be animosity between Protestants and Catholics because prior to the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church exercised exceedingly powerful political power via its religious authority, and many kings and princes that backed protestant reform did so for political reasons. This caused the Catholic-Protestant schism to be be basis for a lot of violent conflict in Europe over the next few centuries, including the 20th century with groups like the [Irish Republican Army]( URL_1 ) conducting insurgencies/terrorism on the (partial) basis of religion, as the English became Protestant (per Henry VIII) while the Irish remained Catholic. *Note: this is a necessary oversimplification of specific conflicts and should not be considered an exhaustive explaination of complex topics like the relationship of the English and Irish.",
"In the past there was no true separation of church an state so in some countries where there was a large Roman Catholic influence it crossed over into them controlling the government (some cases even holding political power) and having influence in a country's government. In a nutshell Henry VIII used to be Catholic but his main issue with the Roman Catholic church at the time was he wanted to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon because she didn't give him a son. He asked the church if they would make an exception for him but because it goes against the teachings they gave him a hard time about it. He then decided to begin to try to get rid of the Roman Catholic church and establish the Church of England so that he could have his divorce. They passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534 which allowed them to get rid of the Catholic church and made the king the Supreme Head of the Church of England. They no longer identified as Catholic but now Protestants. The main differences between the two in terms of faith: * Catholic: Faith in God and good works. * Protestant: Faith through believing alone. Organization: * Catholic: The Pope is the leader * Protestant: Based on the congregation (can differ place to place) Clergy: * Catholic: Priests, Nuns, Clergy-they can't get married. They are married to God. * Protestant: They can get married Other things to consider is that ALL Catholics are Christian but not ALL Christians are Catholic. Also there are many Protestant denominations (i.e. Lutherans, Presbyteriansm Episcopilians). Catholics are all just Catholic. There are more differences but those are main takeaways."
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bvgru5 | How poor, homeless people survive, especially in 3rd World Countries | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I live in South Africa, and we have landfill pickers too. Simply put, they live a life of true poverty. Their houses are crude A-frames constructed from materials they find on the landfill or in the trash - sheets of plastic over sticks lashed together just well enough to keep the weather out. They live at the landfill/sorting ground on vacant land. Their clothes have holes in them, are caked in dirt and smell of wood smoke, likely picked from the very landfill they live on. They have no healthcare, or access to social grants. Many of them aren’t even citizens and so couldn’t receive much even if they were able to make the journey to apply for such things. They look aged beyond their years. Staple food is cheap. A kilogram of maize meal here is R10, that’s less than a dollar to feed yourself for at least two days. They can’t afford much more than this. Some canned tomato and onion might be a treat if they have a good day. Many are slowly starving and in no way receive adequate nutrition. So the take away? Food is cheap, and you can survive without everything else if you absolutely have to.",
"Im a homeless person have been for 3 years. Having a job helps. My big issue was finding one stable enough to justify making a commitment to things like rent. But ultimately being homeless isnt near as bad as people assume it is, particularly if youre actively trying to get out of it. Very little bulls means most of you income is expendable. And once you learn how and where to sleep (and get used to it of course) its relatively easy living.",
"They beg. Enough to keep them almost alive. Some eat from the trash. At least in my country."
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bvjfnt | Where is the line between criticising Israel and being antisemitic? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Antisemitism is negative treatment of someone purely for their jewish etnicity. Criticising Israel or specific jews can be perfectly valid - if for good reasons. The etnicity someone is born with is not a good reason."
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bvkbw6 | The 80/20 rule | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s a rule of thumb that can be applied to a number of fields. I can give you the application of this rule, also called the Pareto Principle, to the field of process improvement. You can then figure it out for your context as a homework assignment. It all starts in Italy in the early 20th century (or late 19th century), where Pareto, an economist, calculates that 80% of all land in Italy is owned by 20% of the population. Since then, people use that example to state that when you have multiple causes bringing about an effect, 80% of the effect is caused by 20% of the possible causes. An example from process improvement: let’s say you manage an assembly line. Each year, there are hundreds of defects being produced, and it’s your job to reduce that number. You take a look at the data: hundreds of defects, and multiple causes attributed to them. Which “cause” do you tackle first? Which problem do you fix to give you the biggest impact on quality? This is where the 80/20 rule comes in. You run through the defect data and you tally how many defects were due to each possible cause. What you generally find is that a small amount of causes (the “20%”) are triggering a large amount of defects (the “80%”). So you go after those 20% to give you the biggest bang for your buck. Is it always 20% and 80%? No. It’s just that 80/20 is a nice mnemonic to remember. You can totally apply this to any other field. 20% of employees account for 80% of sick days. 20% of menu items account for 80% of daily sales. 20% of clowns account for 80% of clown-related crime. Hope this helps! Edit: those damn, pesky silent letters!",
"Just to add in the good answers that have already been posted, here’s a real world example. Let’s say you have a bad habit of running late to work. You could list out all of the reasons why you could be late - you overslept, there was bad traffic, you lost your keys in the morning, you had a flat tire, your car battery was dead, etc. All of those are legitimate reasons you could be late for work. But for most people (myself included), the reason you are late is usually because you overslept or there was bad traffic. So those are the items you should focus your solutions on. Wake up when you alarm first goes off and build in a little extra time in your commute for bad traffic. Sure, every now and then you might wake up to a dead battery or flat tire, but those cases are rare and not worth that much of your attention. This is especially true in a business environment when you only have limited resources to attack an issue or defect. Last thing to point out is that it’s not so much of a “rule” as it is an idea. So I wouldn’t take the 80/20 split too literally, but use it more as a tool focus your attention on the solutions that will give you the most bang for your buck. Fixing every tiny defect in your life, business, process, etc. is usually not realistic nor worth your time.",
"80% of the outcomes in a system will be a result of 20% of the potential causes. this rule appears in chemistry, physics, language, mathematics, societal studies etc. it just seems to be an efficient biological algorithm for selecting norms, trends and eliminating inefficiencies. there is nothing special about it; its just our observation of it which seems to break our intuition.",
"The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity)[1][2] states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.[3] Management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted the 80/20 connection while at the University of Lausanne in 1896, as published in his first work, Cours d'économie politique. Essentially, Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. It is an axiom of business management that \"80% of sales come from 20% of clients\".[4] Mathematically, the 80/20 rule is roughly followed by a power law distribution (also known as a Pareto distribution) for a particular set of parameters, and many natural phenomena have been shown empirically to exhibit such a distribution.[5] The Pareto principle is only tangentially related to Pareto efficiency. Pareto developed both concepts in the context of the distribution of income and wealth among the population.",
"Another example is in software development: 20% of the work takes 80% of the time. (The rest of the work takes the other 80% of the time)"
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bvpj1e | What happened in the Tiananmen Square and what is the backstory/context and the consensus on what happened? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Intellectuals and students were protesting the Chinese communist government and it's policies. Protests against communist regimes were commonplace in the late 80's near the fall of the Soviet Union. The Chinese government responded with a violent crack-down by rolling tanks into the square and putting town the protests with prejudice. A unknown number of people were killed or arrested. The most notable image from the incident is the widely publicized \"tank man\" a lone man standing in the road in front of the tanks in non-violent protest. Which has become a lasting symbol of anti-communist propaganda. The events of Tiananmen square have been effectively erased from Chinese history by the ruling Communist party. While it is widely discussed in the Western world the Chinese population as a whole have no idea it happened because discussion about the subject is forbidden and the evidence is actively suppressed by the ruling party."
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bwgnja | How do we know the prehistoric art pieces we found were not just some back alley graffitis? | Every suggested meaning of prehistoric art is always either spiritual, proto-scientific, or socially meaningful. How do we know they weren't just some random graffitis from random people back then, similar to the tons of shitty wall-arts we see in our cities? I guess we find them in isolated caves because that's the only ones that were able to "survive" this long. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We don’t really. There’s a lot of evidence that suggests that ancient art found was literally no different from how we’d make it today. Even if you want to ascribe it some reverence a step above above “graffiti”, it’s equally likely that someone made a kind of mural and everyone was like “woah sick art Brad!” Everything we find has to be interpreted through our modern viewpoints, our modern culture, our own way of thinking. Most stuff gets filtered through the lens of archeologists first, some of which maybe take their job super seriously and don’t have much sense of humor about their finds. That’s kind of changing though, it’s becoming pretty common knowledge that things like penis drawings found in Pompeii are obviously not religious virility tokens and are the same thing as bathroom stall graffiti. Take scientific interpretation with a grain of salt.",
"Speaking about the cave drawings in southern France and northern Spain: Some of the art is extremely well-formed, like the ones in Lascaux. Those weren’t haphazardly drawn—there was training and practice. We also see stylistic differences by area and time, meaning there was communication about the art and learning involved—a spread of communication. The art also features specific themes, indicating subject matter wasn’t random. Dick and pussy drawings can be found at these sites, too. Interestingly, the earliest drawings are the most realistic when pornographic. As time goes on, the most recent images (still over 10,000 years old) are the most abstract and stylized, giving us insight into the artists’ mindset when drawing. A lot of stuff might be more casual—like a popular subject was handprints. Putting dye on the hand then pressing the hand onto the cave wall, or putting the hand on the cave wall and then blowing the dye onto the wall around the hand so we get a negative print. But one thing that’s important to remember is that there was a lot of labor involved in creating these drawings, so they couldn’t have been done casually or haphazardly. While it’s easy to pick up a can of spray paint today, it was a laborious and skilled process to create the white, black, yellow, and brown shades of color used by the artists. There was experimentation to create the colors. grinding, mixing, and then transportation of all of the colors to the spot where the drawings were made",
"Graffiti has meaning behind it, whether religious or against a greater power. Its purpose is to send a message where many people can see it."
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bwj3yu | What Nietzsche meant when he said 'God is Dead'? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He meant that the Enlightenment killed the possibility of belief in God due to the rise of scientific rationalism. It also has to do with the moral vacuum that was left in Western Civilization since we couldn't point to a divine being to justify what is right and wrong. But, that lead to Nietzsche's belief in the Power of Will, and his idea of the Übermensch. People who would form their own morality and act upon it, which was the true expression of a mature \"Race\". It's interesting to note how the Nazis and now the neo-Nazis used the concept of the Übermensch to bolster their numbers when it's actually the opposite of what Facism needs to flourish. We can thank his sister for that bullshit.",
"He didn't believe in any God, really. It was about the concept of God. Nietzsche believed that once upon a time, religion was sufficient to give us purpose and moral structure. But rationalism came and shattered that forever. Even though some still hold on to it, Nietzsche considered those hollow attempts that couldn't save us from nihilism - the inescapable truth that there's no grand purpose, no objective values to the universe. Like schopenhauerson said, this was the starting point for Nietzsche, not the end - he believed that one day someone could come along and say fuck it, I'm going to assert my values and truly live it up anyway. The Ubermensch, who others could observe & do the same themselves."
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bwnbcl | What makes a continental breakfast, “continental”? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a British term where the \"traditional\" English fried breakfast is large with eggs, bacon,fried bread, fried tomato, and a few other things. The \"continental\" breakfast is traditionally served cross the channel (I.e. on \"the continent\") which is a smaller fare just to get you going. This is something like coffee/hot chocolate, croissant/toast, etc. The true European continental breakfasts I experienced may also include sliced meat or cheese. But it's a lot smaller that the bigger breakfasts we tend to have in North America.",
"It's referring to continental Europe where breakfast is typically a lighter meal than the traditional English breakfast. American and international hotels picked up the term and began using it as well. Essentially it's things like coffee, tea, juice, toast, muffins, croissants, pastries, fruit, and sometimes cold meats, and cheeses, and cold cereals. It's also served buffet style. Generally anything that's served hot or cooked is not included. Edit because smartasses gonna smartass: OBVIOUSLY hot drinks are served hot and all the things that have been baked or cooked have been doneso beforehand. Cooked means things like eggs, pancakes, waffles, sausage, bacon, oatmeal...etc. I'm fairly certain given the context of the question and my own answer, you all knew this already.",
"It's not quite breakfast, it's not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end. You don't get completely what you would at breakfast, but you get a good meal. -- Jacques to Marge \"The Simpsons\"",
"Interesting answers. Here in the US, it simply means it won't be a hot meal. It's pastries, fruit, breads and jams, juices, coffee, cereal, yogurt. I don't know why the term is \"continental\" though."
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bwnjhi | When to address and not address someone Sir or Madam? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You all are missing the fundamental regional distinction. In the South, sir and ma'am are polite terms of address that are used with both people you know and people you don't know. So you can say \"yes, sir\" or \"yes, ma'am\" to your teacher, your coach, your parent, as well as the stranger. In the North, however, sir and ma'am is a polite term of address that is used for people that you don't know, and you have no intention of having any relationship beyond the immediate transaction. So \"excuse me, sir, may I have the check?\" said to the waiter, \"excuse me, ma'am, but I was here first\" said to the person who butts in line, \"excuse me, sir, how do I get to 123 Main Street\" said to the passerby, and \"sir, your car is ready\" said by the mechanic to the client are all appropriate, because these are distant, transactional relationships. But sitting in a business meeting with your client Bob and calling him \"sir\" would be inappropriate, because you KNOW Bob. Just like saying \"yes, sir\" to your father would be inappropriate, because he's your FATHER, not some stranger on the street whose attention you are trying to get."
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bwoog2 | Why do so many otherwise great TV shows struggle to end their stories well? What is it about the creative/production process that makes this so difficult? | Specifically talking about shows versus movies, and shows that are widely considered to be good throughout many seasons. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Simply put, it's easier to tell a 2 hour story than what amounts to an 80 hour story. With a 2 hour movie you spent 20 minutes introducing your characters, build your story a little and then spend 20 minutes ending it. If you've got 65 hours story building, it would feel very cheap to spend 20 minutes on ending it. In modern times the internet also plays a factor here. With fan communities theorizing your possible endings, a lot of writers feel an obligation to avoid ending things the way fans expect, so if the obvious ending is the best ending, it may not get used.",
"Movies are self contained story. By the time the author finish the story he know the beginning, the end and everything in-between and can make sure that everything work together, fix any problem in the story. Sometime the story can be worked on for a long time before it's approved for filming, which give more time for the author to improve his story. & #x200B; The story of a TV show is written as the show aired. Usually it go right for the first season, the writing is done for the entire season by the time the filming start and the author can stat to work on the second season. That's when the problem start to happen. 1) Author now have limited amount of time. They have date by which the filming of the second season will start and they need to finish the writing before that date to let the time for all the preparation. It doesn't matter if the author want more time to work on a story element that he want to improve. 2) As you write you story, sometime you end up writing something that doesn't work with someone you wrote previously. If that happen for a movie, it's ok you rewrite what you wrote before to make everything fit together. But if what you wrote in the past is already on screen in a past season of your show, you can't change it anymore. It's surprisingly easy to write yourself in a corner, something you wrote about a characters or the rules of the universe put your story in a bad situation. 3) The industry can also put the writer in a bad situation. Maybe one of the character is really popular with the audience so the boss ask to put more screentime for that character. Maybe you killed off that popular character and now you are asked to bring him back, because he is good for the ratings. Or maybe the writer change to someone else between 2 seasons and the vision of those two writers is completely different."
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bwz9km | How did Columbus communicated with the Aztecs if they didn’t speak their language and vise versa? | Edit* I meant Hernan Cortes not Columbus. I have failed my history teachers! | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Columbus didn't communicate with the Aztecs. He never met them. Hernan Cortes was the man responsible for destroying the Aztec empire. When Cortes first landed in the Yucatan he met Geronimo de Aguilar, a Spanish Franciscan priest who had survived a shipwreck followed by a period in captivity with the Maya. This priest had learned the Mayan language. Later, Cortes fought and beat the Tabasco natives. They gave him 20 women. One of which was called La Malinche and would become Cortes' mistress. She knew the Aztec language and the Mayan language, so Cortes was then able to communicate to Montezuma of the Aztecs through these translators."
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bx1taj | Why isn’t authors collaborating on fiction books common? | Given that pretty much every other form of art and even non-fiction writing is full of collaborative works, why is it so uncommon in fiction writing? It’s so uncommon that I didn’t even think about it until a few days ago when I heard about Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman having collaborated on the Good Omens book. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The warcraft lore is a victim of this. There are a ton of books with just as many different authors. The story contradicts itself over and over. The timeline is a complete mess. In one book a character is alive and well and in the next book he died in battle 4000 years ago and in some books he never even existed.",
"Writing is one of those jobs that is just a heck of a lot easier if there is only one person doing it. Collaborating creates all sorts of extra complications and problems, and while it can result in some really good work, it is a lot more likely to result in frustrations that caused the people to abandon the project. The only situation where you commonly see multiple writers working together is in TV, and even then it tends to be relegated to comedy shows where at any given time only one Rider is really working on the plot and the rest of the writers are just coming up with extra jokes to throw in there.",
"It is, just not in popular media. See the Warhammer 40k universe and Warhammer Fantasy. They have over 100 books and pieces of lore and fiction that exist in a shared universe written by dozens of authors. Just because they aren't best sellers or out in the face of book stores doesn't mean it doesn't happen, a lot."
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bx76el | What does it mean that race is “socially constructed”? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It means that humans have decided to classify people as different races, but that there are really just variations along a continuum and not artificial break points with biological differences. While the difference between the average Swede and average Kenyan might be obvious, if you go from country to country, you'll just see gradual changes over the distance.",
"It means that how we view the concept of race is largely based on definitions based on societal views. Take the simple question \"what is a white person\" and you would probably get a pretty simple answer of \"a fair skinned person of European descent\". Go back 200 years though and you get a much simpler answer of British people. French, german, irish, italian people have all been seen as not white at some point in the last 200 years. What about the first black president of the united states. Everyone identifies him as black including himself yet he is interracial. He is as black as he is white yet no one would even consider calling him white. Then you have situations like in Taiwan where china says that Taiwan is Chinas and the people there are Chinese. The problem arise where the people in Taiwan disagree. They are their own state and see themselves as Taiwanese. Except they have been under Chinese rule before. At some point someone who saw themselves as Chinese raised someone who has saw themselves as Taiwanese. These contradictions occur because there is no objective basis for race. Race is defined by how the society you live in defines it.",
"Like, while people from different parts of the world look different, the idea of breaking people into categories and judging them differently based on their looks is totally arbitrary. Are Irish people white? They weren't considered such in turn of the century America. The idea of race and how we interpret it is made up, just something society has created. A social construct. There's nothing backing it up beyond just \"people who live closer to the equator tend to have darker skin.\"",
"Our ideas on race are not based on anything quantifiable. Yes, we can see how people have different skin tones based on genetics but our concepts of race go back way farther than genetic theory and so trying to map our contemporary understandings of race to genetics quickly falls apart. You can also tell this just at looking how concepts of race vary from country to country. What counts as \"black\" in the USA is very different from what counts as \"black\" in a country like the Dominican Republic even though obviously no one's skin is getting darker and lighter.",
"It mean that there is little scientific basis for defining the various \"races.\" It's more something we invented for the purpose of grouping or separating people of different heritage.",
"There is greater genetic variance within one 'race' than there is between two such 'races'. This tells us that race is likely not a meaningful genetic category.",
"Nobody denies that humans have different phenotypes. But it's essentially impossible to create a fail-proof system of racial classification. How would you build one? Someone who's black in the United States may not be considered black in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. And even if you were to try pinpointing genetic similarities, you'd notice significant overlap between groups, often becoming lost between gradients or clines. Do different groups of people in different places often look different from one another? Yes. But it's practically impossible to draw a boundary between where one group ends and another begins. So race, in everyday discourse, tends to be defined or brokered as superficially physical or reductively physiological difference. So, in a sense, our conceptions of \"white,\" \"black,\" \"Asian\" or \"indigenous\" have more to do with cultural takes on what constitutes group membership than any actual scientific criteria--thus race persists as a useful (and sometimes very harmful) mechanism for classification and identification within the context of society and culture but is otherwise tenuous and difficult to accurately define with any real precision. I'd try to give some specific examples, but I'm already several beers down."
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bxdwhd | Why did we spit the day in half with AM and PM? | Why not just use a 24 hour clock, like military time? I understand what am and pm mean, but why did we even start, why haven't we switched so there's never confusion? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ignore most of the answers before mine The day has two parts, the sun is either rising or falling. Sun dials. When the sun reaches its apex, it essentially resets on the sun dial and starts a new shadow on the other side. Thus, 1 pm.",
"A lot of countries use the 24h format. Especially ones that don't have English as their first language.",
"We split the day originally because we lived our lives mostly in the daylight. It was convenient to mark time from sunrise to mid-day and then from mid-day to sunset. We haven't changed to a 24 hour clock because we're used to the 12 hour clock, as cumbersome as it is. I personally use a 24 hour clock.",
"Solar noon is easy to observe without instruments and it happens at about the same time regardless of season, it's only off by 6 or so minutes, unlike sunrise/sunset which drift several hours. So it was just a natural split for ancient people to see time as before noon and after noon on their sundials or whatever. Another natural reason for splitting day into halves is night and day, but as I mentioned it's harder to observe when that split is crossed."
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bxff6h | What does romantic nationalism mean? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Romance in this context is essentially equivalent to Fantasy. So it means a degree of nationalism that attributes fantastic or even Supernatural ideas to the country in question. If you believe that the United States is not just a really good country, but is chosen by God to be the leading country in the world, then you are a romantic nationalist."
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bxfn1f | How do people make up languages for films/books? Do they go through a dictionary word by word and make up a translation for each one? Or is it more of a pig-Latin type process? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That strongly depends on how competent or ambitious said writer is. Sometimes they actually hire a linguist to help construct their languages and make an actual consistent language from the ground up - with vocabulary, grammar, and idioms to fit a real language. Often this constructed language goes far beyond what actually appears in the work it features in, but it helps give it an air of authenticity. Often they use a real language family as basis, but in some cases it's made up. Tolkien, being the prolific world-builder he was, constructed [several languages to some degree]( URL_0 ). Klingon for instance is a real language you can learn. You probably won't get much use out of it in your day to day life, but you could learn it to a good enough degree to hold a conversation. Sometimes you just need to construct enough of the language so that your characters can speak it to the degree required for the book. That language might never have a word for \"Relax\", but it might have a couple of war-related phrases for that big battle sequence. Sometimes it's just pig-latin esque, but that's a bit lazy and is easily found out: language is more than just english with a 1:1 word replacement.",
"Tolkien for example was an academic who specialized in languages. He actually invented his fictions languages and built the world around them first before starting to write a story to use all of that in. Of course not everyone can be a Tolkien. Sometimes they just make up some random gibberish words that aren't part of an actual language. With Klingon the language of the Klingon aliens from Star Trek, they started out with a few random phrases that didn't mean anything, before they got a professional to build a consistent and complete language based on the original meaningless throwaway lines. The Language in Avatar was created from the ground up by a professional who tried hard to make more alien than most created and constructed languages. Some movie makers go the other way and include actual real world languages. Star Wars fro example had multiple instances of actors being encourage to speak in their native tongue as the makers didn't expect many movie goers to recognize exotic languages like Kalenjin and it sounded alien enough. Sometimes writers who haven't actually studied any of that want to try their hand at creating a language. this mostly ends in embarrassment for them. At worst they come up with a cypher that just replaces english words with their made up words but keeping all the other parts of the english. This is especially noticeable when the writer only speaks a single language themselves. At best they make up a language based on what they know, but all they know are indo-european descended languages so their alien or fantastic tongue ends up being a lot more familiar than languages actually used here on earth. Most readers of course won't know the difference, but some writers like to go overboard in their world building and think having an actual language is neat."
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bxo5k4 | How do reporters find out about crime and accidents so fast? How do they pick which incidents to report? | I'm in the UK if that's relevant | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Radio scanners. (Even for jurisdictions with encrypted radio comms they sometimes give credentialed news outlets a radio programmed to hear dispatch) Citizens reporting. Twitter. Friends of friends sending texts. The police themselves, especially if it fits their mandate."
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bxtk2o | What does DJ Khaled actually do besides yell his name? Is he a musician, does he produce the beats? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"DDDEEEJAY KHALED. is a producer so he mostly arranges the beats and figures out how a track will sound. Think of him like the coach on a team. He also suffers from success apparently"
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bxzok2 | Why is it rude to call my aunts/uncles by their first name? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Just social standards. Depends where you live, I call certain relatives by their first name and others by their relation",
"I’ve always called my aunts and uncles by their first name. Seems strange to address them any other way?",
"We use titles to imply respect. Older generation family members like parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents are typically given the respect of a title, while same or younger generations like cousins and nephews don’t get the same obligation of respect. It’s a time honored tradition in many families, but it’s certainly not universal."
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by4yuw | Why do songs and poems usually rhyme? Why is rhyming so pleasing for us humans? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The human brain loves patterns. Rhyming is just a pattern of sounds. Like how we see faces in odd shapes. It's just a natural thought process to find and enjoy patterns"
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by6i1j | How can the Chinese government block 1.4 billion people talking about tianemen square on Chinese social media ? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They use the same technology that US based social media blocks people from swearing and posting nude pictures and pirated movies and songs. They just change what the filters look for.",
"The Chinese government controls all the servers/hardware your machine would be using to talk to the outside world. They have a project called the \"Golden Shield Project\" which polices all traffic. This does (amongst other things): 1) Has a list of blocked IP addresses the servers refuse to serve. 2) DNS request faking (DNS is, say, asking where URL_0 is and the DNS server says it's IP address 216.58.198.164 which is how your PC knows how to find google), if the URL contain any banned words they don't forward the request to the DNS server - they just reply with a fake IP address. 3) They have Machine Learning algorithms trained to spot things like Tor, VPN, SSH tunneling. I _think_ it works by keeping a score over time of how \"suspicious\" it thinks a users actions are and slowing down their internet connection based on that score. Too suspicious and all your internet requests will start to timeout. So for a website, say google, facebook, twitter, to be accessable in China they have to not be on the list of blocked IP addresses. Which means not allowing posts to show that contain banned content (which they have the tech to do, high profile sports games get detected and blocked very quickly on youtube for example).",
"You’re not necessarily blocked from talking about it but the risk vs reward of being caught deters many people. The social media app in China (Wechat) is a super app and is used for virtually every aspect of life - so to have your account disabled would basically render you useless. Natives also have a social credit score that can be disrupted which potentially leads to the inability to travel or obtain loans, visas, etc. From my experience here, the first people to usually get in trouble are admins of large group chats with undesirable content. Next, it’s when screenshots are saved and reported. Of course there are the usual trigger words that allow BB to track high profile stuff. But one dude dropping a few words about this or that isn’t going attract much attention. In my opinion, it’s mostly the threat of losing a lot of opportunity in an incredibly competitive country that means most people would never consider discussing sensitive things online. There’s no way the gov has the resources otherwise.",
"Take a classroom, and you want to stop then from taking about what happened in the market yesterday. Now, you know that most kids already forgot about the market, and they won't talk about it unless prompted. So that leaves maybe two kids to worry about. You know who one of them is, so you have a good talk with him about this, and for good measure you put him at a desk alone in the corner. The other kid you can find by listening really carefully. As soon as any kid says the word market, you talk over him and send him to the headmaster for re-education. That's essentially what the Chinese government are doing, but with everybody at the same time. It's really easy to listen to certain information online if you have control over every ISP.",
"I heard recently they just slow down certain websites who don’t play by their rules like Google, Twitter, Facebook and others that they can access it just takes a million years and the majority won’t visit. For Tienamen square specifically i’d guess they are extra cautious to where they probably have an algorithm or people disallowing or slowing down even more access to those pics or sites.",
"TLDR: Due to control of all channels of information proliferation and the punitive results and incentives, the population lives in a sort of echo chamber that self-polices itself on top of the more commonly-known methods. The biggest social media in the country is Weibo, WeChat, Renren, and QQ. These are all owned by companies with very close ties to the government because they are so large and were kind of designated as the \"Golden Children\" for social media. They not only have very powerful filtering software, but they employ a lot of people to check for these kinds of words and are constantly updating filters for words that are nicknames in an attempt to get around these censors (which is why Winnie the Pooh is censored here. It was used as a moniker for President Xi, same with \"Uncle Steamed Bun\".) What also allows them to block it is through the way they control all the information everyone can access and learn about. What I mean is that the education system completely ignores these less than positive aspects of the Communist Party's history, so no one can learn about it. This continues for scholarly and news articles that could be punished. They have complete control over both of these more traditional sources of information. Finally, they can actually have friends, colleagues, relatives, and acquaintances report on these people. Because of how everyone is taught and many eventually come to believe that the Communist Party has helped to create one of China's most profitable and wealth-creating eras in its history. Therefore, no one wants to rock the boat to get rid of their chance to strike it rich or lose everything they have because the punitive repercussions will not only hit them but also family members. Their cousin's business would suddenly become audited. Their child would be removed from school due to \"behavioral issues\", and their landlord might refuse to keep on renting to them, or even immediately kicking them out thanks to the police or even scarier enforcement agencies coming to \"have afternoon tea\". This means that anyone would, to save their own skin, report those that are undermining harmony or hurting the social order, plus they will reward those that report these goings on as well.",
"One interesting thing is they make fake information. Like if you search June Forth in Baidu (a well-known Chinese searching engine. Google is blocked), what you will get is bunch of wrong information about this incident.....",
"I believe they use, among other methods, the keyword-method that is utilized by a lot of governments, perhaps most notably by the CIA. Basically, all the calls, internet traffic, messages and others are filtered through a system that tags the calls, messages and other things by the use of words relating to terrorism, bombing etc. The more hits, the more suspicious the call for example is and if the call scores high enough in the \"suspicious-scoreboard\", it is tracked. Of course automatic and manual content blocks are used as well."
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byprch | How hard would it be for the UK to just scrap its plans and stay in the EU? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If parliament agreed to do it, it would be very simple. Straight vote, revoke article 50, cancel the process. Politically, it would be very fractious, probably political suicide for many MPs voting for it."
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byul11 | Why do names have meaning even though they're never used conversationally for that meaning? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Typically they are words from other languages, or from older versions of our language, so they had meaning in their original context but don't in our time and place."
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bzp2i0 | why is the west (europe, america) so quiet about the protests in Hong Kong? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When \"The West\" gets involved it gets criticized for sticking their nose where it does not belong. When \"The West\" does not get involved it gets criticized for not caring. Given that the end results is the same (being criticized for what you do) it is simply more economical not to get involved in political situations where there is no natural resource (e.g. Oil) that you can then benefit from.",
"Imagine if the UK commented and took a side in the Ferguson riots, the US took a side in the Anti-Brexit protests in London, Russia came out against the confirmation of Kavanagh to the Supreme Court, or Canada commented on the Yellow Vest protests. Although this is a major protest, it’s a protest against the government making a law that may deteriorate peoples’ rights. From a liberal democratic perspective, it might seem bad, but there are countless countries around the world where governments are doing far worse. Regardless of who is right and wrong, it’s never a good idea for foreign powers to take a side on the internal affairs of another country. These are sovereign nations and countries try to avoid meddling in each others’ affairs because they don’t want other countries meddling in theirs, unless there is a *blatant* human rights issue going on. Even wrt to China, this protest is small beans compared to Xinjiang and Tibet. If a western power is going to confront China on one issue, why would a protest in Hong Kong be at the top of the list? Not to say that western powers *won’t* comment on issues like these, but you have to consider the geopolitical implications. For example, NATO countries would have reason to comment on the affairs of other NATO countries if it involves the military, for example.",
"As a Hong Kong citizen, I need to agree with the fact that the western countries just want to solve this issue by using diplomatic strategies but not real actions. They can punish China by imposing economic sanctions, but they won’t do so because China will do the same to them.",
"I love Hong Kong and am all for these protests. I'd prefer it be independent or still under British rule rather than go v back to the PRC. To answer your question though, I would guess the west is quiet for the same reasons it's quiet on Tibet and Taiwan...they don't want to upset China. Especially now as Trump continuously threatens, propses and enacts his horribly dumb tariffs.",
"ELI5. China gives the West shiny new toys. And the West likes their toys too much to say anything. So China can be a bully and bully whomever they please because they know the West likes their toys too much to truly care about \"human rights.\" And so far, China has been right.",
"Generally speaking they care about things that directly impact them and this is not one of them. Specifically, two of the most powerful also have their own shit going on that sucks up a lot of the air for things like this. The US has Trump who is a nonstop story generator who is now looking more and more likely for impeachment and the UK has their whole Brexit fiasco still to deal with. Most Western countries aren't overly friendly with China but they represent an immense power both militarily and financially and they've proven recently that they're more than willing to throw their economic weight around if they feel slighted so world leaders are hesitant to \"take a stand\" against China.",
"Britain has a responsibility to stand up for the people of Hong Kong under the Sino-British joint declaration but they are too busy shooting themselves in the foot and squabbling over which clown gets to pull the trigger."
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bzp7bg | What's the basis for US Confederate support today? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In before the historical revisionists ... > I was taught it happened because the new constitution abolished slavery and the Confederates wouldn't have it. First, some clarifications. The Constitution wasn't new. It had been around since 1789; the Civil War started 72 years later. And the Constitution didn't abolish slavery until the 13th Amendment was ratified in Dec 1865, seven months *after* the South had surrendered to the North, ending the Civil War. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, changing the legal status of existing slaves, did come in 1863, but even that was already almost 2 years into the Civil War. However, prior to the Civil War 19 states (out of, I think, 34 at the time) had abolished slavery at the state level. Eleven of those remaining states that supported slavery seceded from the Union rather than face the obvious direction the country was heading. Four of the slave-owning states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, & Delaware -- the so-called border states) remained in the Union. Clarifications made, the Civil War was absolutely about slavery. It was the central, defining issue of the war. There are going to be people who tell you that the Civil War was about individual states' rights vs federal power, and it was ... to the extent that the states wanted the *right* to own slaves. There are going to be people who tell you it was about economic differences, the industrial North vs the agricultural South, and it was ... to the extent that the economy of the agricultural South depended wholly on slavery. There are going to be people who tell you it was about territorial disputes in the expansion of America west of the Mississippi, and it was ... to the extent that Southern states wanted slavery legalized in the new territories. And so on. You're probably going to find people in this thread trying to convince you of Southern heritage and values and the reasons they have to take pride in their heritage and how the war wasn't *really* about *just* slavery and how the Confederate battle flag reflects their Southern heritage, not the secessionist battles it flew over in the name of slavery. Don't buy it. The Confederacy was built on the back of slavery. That's it's heritage.",
"Racism is certainly a factor as other comments suggest but it's far from the only reason. The US, as much if not more than any other western country, drives into its citizens a sense of pride in their heratage.its why so many Americans insist America is the greatest country in the world. With that desire for pride baked in people search for their own personal contributions to that pride which leads them to family history. For those descendant from Confederacy its difficult to do that when taking the entire conflict into context so rather than face the hard truth many pick and chose the aspects of their family history they are proud of and ignore the inconvenient parts that are shameful. So the Confederacy becomes about rebellion instead of slavery to them and if you tell a story long enough or enough times it becomes true to a number of people. I think base support for Confederacy today doesn't come from true racism, it comes from pride and the general difficulty of empathizing with how people may have suffered in the past as a result. This is bolstered by racsims certainly but the average person with a confederate flag is likely not racist, just ignorant, or ignoring what it means to everyone else for the sake of their own pride and refusal to admit their family past might not be worth celebrating. Edit: ironically you might argue that calling them ALL racist because they have trouble letting go demonstrates a similar lack of empathy from those outside."
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bzt8om | Why are people protesting in Hong Kong? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Hong Kong has existed semi-independently for a while with their own criminal justice system. But now, mainland China is trying to integrate them into their criminal justice system. This is a bad thing considering how corrupt it is."
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bzuw6d | Why do select jurisdictions frown upon luring/baiting criminals and/or performing sting operations? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So the first issue is the concept of \"entrapment\" which basically says you cannot trick or coerce a person into committing a crime and then charge them for that crime. If an undercover cop tries to sell drugs to me, I refuse, and then he keeps pressuring me until I cave, that is entrapment. The problem with many \"pedophile hunters\" is that they cast a wide net, with no direction, and without proper training in how to identify and execute sting operations there is the very real possibility of accidentally creating false evidence. Additionally it is a 4th amendment violation."
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bzy1lm | Why are people protesting in Hong Kong? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because a new law will enable people to be taken from Hong Kong to China and tried there possibly on trumped up charges meaning that what limited freedom there is in Hong Kong will cease."
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c0062v | Why are there so many trilogies? Why the combination of exactly 3 books/movies is so common? Why we don't hear much of duologies, quadrilogies etc.? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You set the characters up in the first book, go through traumatic experiences and hype the villain up in the second book, and beat the bad guy in the 3rd book. Really easy format basically",
"The reason is because of the 3 Act Structure. The 3 Act Structure is the most common narrative you have probably encountered. While each movie goes through the 3 Act Structure, with a trilogy, each movie can also be an act of a larger meta story. That's why you see so many trilogies.",
"The three act structure is a very efficient way to structure a story. Act One is the setup. The story is giving you information about the world, important information to the story or simply give you an image of the everyday life of the character. Then you have the inciting incident, which is the catalyst that will set the story in motion, and finally the main character take the first step into the story. & #x200B; Act Two is the Confrontation. The protaganist start to learn about the challenge of the story and encourter the first problems. That's usually where you start to know more about the characters and the big conflicts in the story. Then there is a big moment, sometime it's because something goes horribly wrong. This is when the protagonist goes from passive passenger to active actor in the story. & #x200B; Act Three is the resolution. This is where the protagonist engage with the antagonist and you start to see his true power and usually win over the protagonist before the final confrontation where the protagonist need to learn from the past failure to finally win the day and give us a satisfying ending. & #x200B; Of course that's just a generalization, but the 3 act structure is just really effective and can be use a different level. You can use it for a really important moment in a story, you can use it for the whole story or use it for 3 differents movie in a bigger story. Take Lord of the Ring for example. & #x200B; The first movie you have the setup. Things are relatively normal in the world, we have the ring, we decide to go destroying the ring, but the group is seperated and each member decide to continue their own part in the journey. The second movie you have the Confrontation. Now each of cast are in their own Journey and they start to dicover the true nature of their challenge. Frodo meet Gollum while Aragorn pursuit the Uruk-hai. But then thing go horribly wrong. Helm's Deep is under attack and is about to fall, but is saved at the last minute, while Gollum is creating doubt in the mind of Frodo and leading him into a trap. The third movie is the resolution. This is where Frodo really face the true strenght of his antagonist, Gollum show his true face and Frodo need to face his own internal demons carrying the ring, but in the end is able to finish the job. While Aragorn need to face his duty as the King to recruit to Army of the Dead to fight in the final battle against Sauron to allow Frodo to reach the volcanoe. & #x200B; But each movie also had a 3 act structure in them. In the first movie we see the everyday life of the hobbit, then they find the ring and Frodo decide to carry the ring to the council, that's the first act. The second act is where the group face their first obstacle when Frodo get stabbed, before reaching the mid-point when the fellowship of the ring is formed to bring the ring to Mordor. Finally you have the third act, the resolution. Here we face the true nature of the protagonist, they are facing the orc for the first time, but then Gandalf ''die'' the group flees and end up seperated."
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c0549j | Why do people sometimes say persons instead of people? Like “displaced persons”, instead of “displaced people”? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Both \"people\" and \"persons\" are plurals. \"Persons\" is generally used when it is a group which is specified, in your case \"the displaced persons\". \"People\" is generally used when it is a generic group, like \"people from France\". Note that I said \"generally\", because these definitions can be different based on the local culture.",
"The general rule is \"persons\" when there is a known/knowable number of them and \"people\" when the number isn't known/relevant. So a facility providing housing would serve \"displaced persons\" after a flood because it presumably does this for some knowable number of them. Conversely the rules of an insurance program covering \"displaced people\" would presumably be the same no matter how many there were.",
"Often you might talk about a group of people as a single unit. For example \"the English people\" that unit is made up of people. If they join with another group of people like \"the Scottish people\" and \"the American people\" you might refer to the group as \"the English speaking peoples\". It's made up of a bunch of very distinctive groups of people which collectively form a larger group of people. This is similar, using persons is done to emphasise the individuality of those in the wider set. Usually for a group that would be otherwise not closely related, for example displaced persons.",
"The whole thing with distinguishing between known and unknown numbers, groups and individuals, that others have mentioned, matches what it says in the dictionary, but I don’t think it tells the whole story about common usage. I don’t know any culture where the common natural language usage has the word persons at all. From what I can see, persons is used a lot in legal settings, where person is a jargons word meaning something specific and technical, and not exactly the same as common usage. IANAL, but I have heard that a company, for example, is a person, as is a ship! I see people consciously or unconsciously emulating that usage sometimes. Perhaps it is in an effort to sound formal, or educated, or authoritative, I don’t know. Your example of “displaced persons” is a good example of legal usage emulated by journalists and others: the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 is a legal usage, which then spreads as others talk generally about people who have had to leave their home due to war, etc."
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c08j0e | Why do inmates spend years, and most times decades on death-row? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One word: Appeals Someone on death row has literally nothing to lose by trying to fight their conviction so fight they do. While death row cases generally cost more at all stages of a trial the greatest disparity is in the post-trial phase where death row case cost on average 10x more to adjudicate. These appeals take a long time which is why death row inmates spend so much time there.",
"Under American law, the death sentence carries with it several automatic appeal processes that start immediately upon sentencing. That means that these cases take an unusually long amount of time to drag through the legal system as they're reviewed by multiple legal teams and multiple judges for bias and errors. Unlike other sentences, you can't turn up new exonerating information later and say \"oops\" so the states subject these cases to very rigorous review. Some defendants have been known to decline the reviews and get it over with, but that's rare."
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c0bcvt | Why do works of fiction usually use acid instead of alkali to depict corrosive substances? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because most people understand what you mean when you say acid but would have to question what an alkali is. It keeps it simple for the majority audience"
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c0edky | Why do job applications in the U.S. always separate "Hispanic or Latino" from everyone else in the ethnic background section? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Hispanic/Latino heritage overlaps skin color, as there are White, Mestizo, and Black Hispanics. They are a separate ethnic group that the US measures in the census, and they have unique issues with racism and discrimination, so Hispanic/Latino is separated out from the other questions to help with measurements and statistics.",
"Why can’t Mexicans who are 99% Native American click Native American? Always had that issue.",
"So my SO (who has been to Spain) told me that Spaniards were as white as me and her are (we're both of English ancestry) and when I saw pictures I was blown away. I leaned the difference between Spanish and Latin that day.",
"So why would a company need to ask this?"
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c0egng | How do countries with multiple official languages (like Canada, Switzerland, and Belgium) organize their military. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Usually you can be pretty sure that the officers will speak the main language of the country. Speaking the language is most likely a requirement to be accepted at the Military Academy and if it's not, it's likely a requirement to get a promotion to higher rank. The officer are usually the one that coordinate between different units with the help of veteran NCO. The vast majority of soldier on the field will mostly talk only without their own unit. In that situation the people speaking a secondary language will all be put in same or several specific unit where everyone speak that secondary language, while the upper leadership of that unit will be billingual. & #x200B; So for example in the Royal Canadian Air Force they have the 3 Wing Bagotville which is a unit located in Quebec and speak french. The leadership, communications and pilots are bilingual, but for most of the ground personel are not obligated to be bilingual. About half of the population of the Province of Quebec speak both language, so it give you an idea."
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c0es9w | Can someone please breakdown why/what they are protesting in Hong Kong? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Right now Hong Kong and China operate under different legal systems with different laws, despite in concept both being part of China. What the proposed change would do is allow people to be arrested and extradited to China from Hong Kong, meaning for example the bookseller who distributes literature critical of the Communist Party won't need to be kidnapped but would instead simply be arrested by Hong Kong police and turned over to Chinese police to be tortured and imprisoned forever. Hong Kong residents are protesting because they don't want to be subjected to the oppression of the Chinese legal system, much preferring the Western style rights and freedoms they currently have."
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c0ic2s | The difference between a Story, Saga, Epic, Cycle, Novel, etc. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Story, novella and novel are single works of literature in ascending order of length and complexity. A cycle is several novels united by a common setting and protagonists. Epic and saga are cooler words for a cycle. However, epics and sagas tend to be more monolithic than \"normal\" cycles. For example, several novels about Alice and Bob in the world of Mediocre Earth are always a cycle, but if they have a common overarching plot like Lord of the Rings or A Song of Earth and Fire, they are a saga or an epic."
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c1a3xi | Why is metal detecting outlawed in some areas or even some states? | The only reasons I can draw from it right now: - Significant archeological finds being sold instead of mapped and reported for finding - People wandering into private or restricted government property - Possible disruption of ground-based habitats through digging But why in some places like public access beaches? Wouldn't it be good for people to find fishhooks, beer can tabs and other trash to throw away, or to help find lost things on the beach? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its more the first one, and from what I can see is more so about concern about the destruction of archeological finds by amateur metal detectors than anything else. And while they can be used at the beach its like having a personal lock pick kit and telling the police you are an amateur locksmith. Sure thats possible but 90% of the time they are using that device in a way that is against the law.",
"Where is it illegal? Never heard that before."
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c1bisv | Why are there millions of protesters in Hong Kong? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Extradition Law. China wants to be able to extradite \"criminals\" from Hong Kong. This is in quotes because everyone believes China would abuse this power to imprison political rivals and other social dissidents, who are not even on Chinese soil. Hong Kong has a long complicated history with Chinese control/interference, so that is also at play."
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c1eyg3 | What are the protests in Hong Kong about? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are protesting a new law that allows Chinese government to arrest residents inside Hong Kong and bring them back to China. You see, Hong Kong used to be a British colony, and was ruled like a western, free country. It was turned over to China a few decades back but China has *promised* not to enforce Chinese rule in Hong Kong for the next few decades. People of Hong Kong of course do not want authoritarian rule from China, are protesting against encroachment of Chinese rule in this new law."
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c1gi1r | How did higher education work in the Soviet Union? | What options were there if you wanted to continue studying after school? How accessible were higher education institutions to the average citizen? How would things like funding work? Like say you were really good at Physics in school, would you have a realistic chance of being able to get a Physics degree for example? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally, college was free and job placement was 100% since it was government centralized and there was a huge focus on preparing students for the workforce, and education was a priority. You picked a job before you graduated and had to work there for a certain number of years to sort of ‘repay’ the education. Unfortunately degrees gained in the ussr weren’t transferable (in at least some cases). I know a few professors here who had to redo their PHDs because they weren’t accepted in the us.",
"I was good in math and physics at our rural school. Got some additional self education. Wanted to become a 'computer guy'. Went to Moscow to apply to a leading profile university. Wrote exams. It was like 2-5 applicants on a place. I went through. No money was spent, except transportation. I lived for free in the campus. I even received scholarship enough to feed myself, buy clothes, etc. It was common for 70-80% of the students. We were promised to be hired on the local electronic plants. But USSR collapsed so I never worked the profession I was taught.",
"From historical records, if you wanted to continue studying it was just a simple application and vetting process. Based on records from the former Soviet Union and East Germany, it was pretty common for people to get higher education after applying for them. Arguably you could say that the Soviet Union's strong strength in mathematics, applied engineering and early rocketry was due to this system. However, funding wise you still received \"pay\" on top of whatever the state provided for you. The higher you climbed, the more \"benefits\" you earned. Generally speaking the more talented you were, the more state benefits you received and the likelihood of earning better pay. I need to find an old citation, but I remember being told that higher education in the Soviet Union was actually easier to find than in the US. However, due to the quantity of students, the Soviet Union had far less to spend on funding universities and they had worse facilities and equipment as a result. The Soviet Union even had an excess of some higher educated citizens to the point that they did not have enough jobs for highly trained citizens. And yes, they were meritocratic so its likely you would have a very high chance of getting a physics degree if you were good at physics. In some cases it might even be mandatory if the SU deemed it important that you pursue it."
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c1hlsl | We have goat milk and cow milk to consume, but why is it merely impossible to find pig milk in a grocery store? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Firstly, it just doiesn't taste very good. Pig's milk is watery, and quite gamey. The real reason though is that pigs simply don't produce very much milk, and don't like being milked. Cows have been domesticated for thousands of years, and selectively bred for milk production and docility. Pigs, on the other hand, will put up a hell of a fight."
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c1pviz | - can radio hosts lie about sponsored products or services they have “tried” or “used”? They seemed to have tried and loved every product known to man. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are limits to what you can say without having to prove it, such as slander. However in general it is not illegal to lie, even in public broadcasting. In the radio hosts defense they are just actors that is acting in a commercial. And they might have tried the product once and their fondness towards the product may be biased by the advertisement money they get from promoting it.",
"The only requirement is that they disclose that it's a paid sponsorship. If they're being ethical, they probably chose to endorse a product they already know about, or it's something they knew they'd likely use anyway, which would also have the side effect of liking everything.",
"They can't lie about the product if it's a materially demonstrable fact(like, they can't say that a car seats 6 when there are only 5 seat belts, but they can tell you that it's roomy and comfortable to ride in even if the only way those 5 people will fit if if they are REALLY friendly), but they can lie about everything else. However, they can't lie too much because it costs them their credibility, so they have to make reasonable claims about the product. I listen to a news radio station, and the newscasters often shill for some company or other- one thing to notice is that any given individual on the news team often shills for the same few products or services (this dealership, that exterminator, etc) For less big items, it's actually quite reasonable that the company will have sent a free sample of their service or product- after all, what's a couple hundred dollars in product when you're already spending several thousand dollars for the radio spot to reach tens of thousands of listeners?"
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c1rr65 | How is a word created? How does it become a generally accepted term by a population? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I feel like this phenomenon is a bit too complicated to eli5 but here's the best I've got. We know there are different shades of red. For a long time though, we only had one way to describe the different shades so they were all red. The some day, some one said something like \"burgundy\" or \"crimson\". We find a new way to describe something so that ideas become more robust and easier to picture for others.",
"There can be existing words that are modified (eg. magestical) or made up words (like today’s slang) . Mainly these words need to be said a lot and then they sort of become offical. That’s the best explaination I have.",
"It's a popularity contest, literally. If I decide to use a new word to describe something, people around me will either no use it or start to use that word too. Maybe it's a convenient word, maybe it describe something that they didn't know about, maybe it just sound better than the word they used in the past, or maybe there is a word already existing, but they don't know about it. No matter the reason, if more and more people start to use my word is become a popular word and that's it. & #x200B; Now at that point, a linguist could look at that word and classify it a certain way, a group of people in charge of a dictionary can decide to include it, or maybe a standardisation office of the language can accept it officially, but that just give legitimacy to the word, but doesn't change the fact that word was used by a lot of people and part of the common language.",
"Have you ever read the book, Frindle? It's a cute story and the main character asks this exact same question.",
"Not a language expert. But i assume that our earliest ancestors needed to communicate. What started off as grunts or sounds needed to become more complex to actually describe what they were trying to communicate to each other. Eventually rules were made to help everybody understand each other and language developed from there. English as a language is a mash up of many different languages, with words that have their origin in all sorts of ancient and more modern languages. Nowadays words are either made my mashing words together or modifying already existent words (think spork) or just making up a new word and if enough people use it and it catches on, then that's a word. Scientific words are often based on latin or Greek origins, or named after the discoverer or something important to the discoverer."
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c2bnua | Why are bad words bad to use and why are people who use them often considered "uncivilized" and "uneducated"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most societies will have words that are “taboo”. I believe cross-culturally taboo words usually deal with sex or bodily functions (eg. “fuck” or “shit” in English), but I may be wrong. We speak differently in different social situations. You generally wouldn’t speak to your boss of college professor the same way you speak to your best friend in private. As we learn language, we also learn what language is appropriate in different setting (casual vs. formal). While it is usually acceptable to swear in a casual setting, it’s not expected in a more formal setting. For example, when I give a presentation in front of my coworkers I speak very differently then when I talk to my friends, both in tone and in the words I choose. So, people who swear in formal settings tend to stand out as odd, and might be considered uneducated because they have not learned the “proper” way to speak in these settings."
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c2mxhl | What is the uncanny valley? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The \"uncanny valley\" describes a graph like [this one,]( URL_0 ) showing how humans react emotionally to things that start to resemble humans. The valley itself is the dip that the graph takes as we get closer to a human likeness, showing that humans are most uncomfortable or scared of things that look *almost,* but not quite, human. And it's easy to see this in action! Take a look at some YouTube videos of humanoid robots - odds are that the ones that are *nearly* human and trying to emulate human behavior, like the ones with fake skin that can make human facial expressions, will make you a little bit uncomfortable, or look a little bit creepy. Seeing a human do those things wouldn't creep us out, and seeing a robot that looks less human (like one without skin, or without a human shape) won't creep us out too much. But as you approach that point of being nearly human in appearance, those little details that are wrong start to stick out and make us uncomfortable. That's also the key to a lot of horror, honestly. Zombies and vampires are scary to us because they look nearly human, maybe could be mistaken for a human at first. But the things that are different about them - the rotting skin and shambling walk of a zombie, or the fangs and lack of reflection of a vampire - trigger our fear instincts pretty well. Same thing with a witch, or a human doll that comes to life, or an alien disguised as a human, or any other number of human tropes. When something is just a little off from perfectly human, it falls into that valley and makes us uneasy.",
"When we look at cartoons, our brains \"fill in the blanks\" when interpreting an image. When we look at a real image, we don't need to fill in the blanks because, well, it's a real image. But when you have a fake image like a cartoon, but it looks a little bit \"too realistic,\" your brain no longer fills in the blanks, but it doesn't look quite right either. This is known as uncanny valley.",
"The uncanny valley is the phenomenon where as computer graphics especially of people get closer and closer to reality, there comes a point where they're almost perfect but not quite where suddenly they become almost repulsive for most people to look at, they elicit a response almost of disgust. [Polar Express]( URL_0 ) is a commonly cited example of a film where this happens. As they improve further, that weirdness should go away. This slightly crap looking [graph]( URL_1 ) gives examples, and shows why the uncanny valley is named as such, it's down to the shape of that graph."
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c36p3p | Why is the last name "Smith" so common? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I was once told that in certain cultures last names were frequently related to your job. The Smiths were the local blacksmiths, the Bakers were the local bakers, the Potter's were pottery makers, etc. And that is why these names are fairly common even if they aren't all related.",
"Just scanned the wiki. From what I understand the name began when people were being named for their occupation. For instance a blacksmith would have the last name smith. These people were considered esteemed members of their communities, so when genealogical names came around and you didn’t have a family name, you were likely to choose smith. This initially may have caused some popularity. However after this it’s popularity was mostly compounded simply by how common it was. People who needed a name were likely to choose it. Then in the US smith’s were among the first family move to the new world. This could have helped the name become even more common but again the main factor was simply that people who needed a name often chose names they were familiar with. Native Americans sometimes added smith to their name to deal with colonists. African American slaves would often be given the surname smith, and many Germans during WWII Americanized names like Schmidt or Schmitz to smith to avoid discrimination. Over time all of these factors added up, contributing to the use of the name today. I’ve also heard a story about smith being common because blacksmiths didn’t have to fight in wars, so we’re more likely to survive. But I don’t think there’s much to back it up.",
"Smith makes sense, but what about another common one like Jones?",
"Here's what the [Wiki]( URL_0 ) has to say: It is common for people in English-speaking countries to adopt the surname Smith in order to maintain a secret identity, when they wish to avoid being found. Smith is an extremely common name among English Gypsies During the colonization of North America, some Native Americans took the name for use in dealing with colonists During the period of slavery in the United States, many other slaves were known by the surname of their masters, or adopted those surnames upon their emancipation During the world wars, many German Americans anglicised the common and equivalent German surname *Schmidt* to *Smith* to avoid discrimination",
"In the USA, at the time of the American Revolution, the largest ethnic group were the Ulster Scots (Scottish people who had lived in what we now call Northern Ireland). In the years that followed, many more Ulster Scots, as well as people from Scotland and England emigrated. Smith is the most common surname in all three countries."
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c38q1p | When organizations do those “ run for the cure“ cancer run fundraisers aimed at finding the cure to different types of cancers, where does that money go? | I mean after the event is over do they give the money to some group of scientists they’re contracted with ? If so, what do the scientists do with it? How does this work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Research is inherently expensive - you need to buy expensive scientific equipment as well as pay specialist scientists to work on potential routes to a cure, most of which will not be successful. The money raised is usually donated to a charity, who will spend it in different ways. Some will spend it on hospice care (ie, making life easier for people afflicted with cancer) but others will combine that money with other charities raising money and then fund research. Usually what might happen is that a company or more likely, a university or research hospital, will submit a proposal to whoever has the money. in the proposal, they will describe what they want to research (or continue to research) and why/how it will help find the cure to cancer. These proposals are evaluated by cancer specialists who work for the charity/whoever has the money. if the proposal is deemed to have merit, they will give them some money (say, 300,000 USD). the same proposal can be sent to numerous charities/research grant providers. This money is all pooled (so in the end, they might have a 2,000,000 USD), and is used to pay the salary of the researchers, the consumables for research (test tubes arent free!), utilities, adminstrative costs etc. Usually, every year whoever is doing the research needs to present their findings to whoever provided the cash, and prove that the money is being put to good use. If they agree it is, the next years funding is released. otherwise, the river runs dry. & #x200B; The nature of research is that most of the research that takes place will not result in anything useful, or only marginally useful. But, it helps to build the overall knowledge on cancer, so that research might be used by other researchers in future, who might *actually* find the cure. This is why research takes so long, is so expensive, is usually not productive, but nonetheless must still be financed."
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c39p7a | Why does China put Falun Gong worshippers in jail? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The peoples republic of china has a pretty strict code for worldview. Minor details not aligning with \"the official opinion\" can end you up in jail or even sentenced to death. There is a pretty detailed narrative of what is okay to believe in and what not. I don't know exactly wich detail makes Falun Gong a target, but basically any non mainstream thought is banned",
"Its the truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance that's the problem. When we are talking about people who murder others to harvest their organs for profit it shouldn't come as a surprise that they are evil in other dimensions as well."
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c3cjiu | Why is it rude to ask how much someone’s salary is? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Companies don't want their employees talking about how much they make amongst one another so they can negotiate wages rather than giving specified pay per position. That kind of drilled in mindset primarily to the benefit of employers has made discussing wages a faux pas culturally. There should be more discussion about compensation to ensure that compensation is education and experience based to leave less opportunity for employees to be low balled or over compensansated.",
"Because a lot of people immediately feel envy or get the feeling someone else envies them for their (probably) higher salary. It should be normal to talk about money, but we live in a world where status symbols and numbers on the bank account count more than other values. Those are common reasons for people to not like talking about salaries and money overall. Therefore it is considered rude to talk about it.",
"Some people struggle to get to the end of the month and don't want to admit it, which is totally understandable",
"It depends a lot on the culture. Some are open about it while others a lot more secretive. Where I'm from (Vietnam) almost everybody knows how much each other makes, though it's becoming less common with the younger generation. Generally, knowing someone's financial situation often leads to immediate judgement, either of envy, disdain, indignation, or pity. None of those feelings are desirable.",
"Humans are greedy, envious, prideful creatures. They want more than the person next to them and will do stupid, and sometimes hurtful things to each other just to be better off than their neighbors. If person A finds out person B gets paid more, person A will make it their goal to be paid at least the same as person B, and may act out trying to achieve said goal. On the otherhand, if person B finds they are paid more, they may think themselves better than person A and try and rub it in. This developed into a don't ask don't tell mentality so the problem doesn't occur. TLDR, humans being shitty to other humans made a social stigma",
"It's easy to judge, intrude, or get envious. No one likes a braggart, no one likes unsolicited advice about what to do with one's life - and money has a significant impact on how one lives one's life, and the disassociation between two people with vastly different incomes leads to a lack of empathy. It just gets ugly, it's best to avoid the conversation, most of the time. & #x200B; That doesn't mean, though, that we shouldn't talk about salaries. If you and I are both doing the same work, we should absolutely know how much each other make, so that we can guard against getting under-paid. Secret salaries are a short term benefit to a company. It only works so long as it remains a secret. But people talk, and as soon as you find out, you have two options, ask for a raise, or leave for one. Typically, companies are short sighted, and if you ask for a raise, you likely won't get one, but that's a sign you're a flight risk, which they ignore. So companies see turnover, which is often more expensive than higher salaries, so it hurts them in the long run. But company internal structures almost universally incentivize short term planning and resolution. & #x200B; So do ask and do know, but don't make a discussion about it, right? I want to know where I stand, I didn't ask you how I should spend my money. Now, people who make less than you might get mad, you might find out someone makes a shit ton more than you - AND THEY SUCK AT THEIR JOB, and YOU might get mad. Help your friend, help yourself, and direct your anger not at them - kudos to them for negotiating a great wage, but at the employer, who is happy to pay as little as people are willing to put up with like that."
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c3gdl2 | What is the difference between 3rd and 4th wave feminism? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Super short version? 1st Wave focused on enfranchisement (the vote) 2nd wave on equality (workplace rules, legal independence, etc) 3rd wave on empowerment (sexual freedoms, personal autonomy) And the 4th wave on intersectionality (how are all of the above also impacted by things like race, religion, class, ability, etc)",
"Basic background information First and second wave feminism were basically voting and jobs rights movements. They wanted to get women the right to vote and to work, and they got both of those. Third wave feminism was about going beyond voting/employment rights and making society handle women's issues better. Reproductive rights, domestic abuse, sexual liberation and pay equality were all important third wave issues. Fourth wave feminism is a reaction to third wave feminism, in the same way that third wave feminish was a reaction to first and second wave feminism. Third Wave feminism is all about how being a stay at home housewife with 2.5 kids isn't the One True Way to be a woman, and that if a woman wants a job or raises her children as a single mother, or wants to work in a traditionally male job, she should be given all the same rights as a man making those choices would be allowed. It all comes back to the idea that there's no wrong way to be a woman and that society should let women be as free as it lets men be. Fourth Wave feminism focuses on intersectionality, the idea that the problems faced by a double minority (like a gay woman, a black woman or a trans woman) aren't just the sum of the problems they'd face for being a member of either minority alone. For example, if you want to understand lesbian issues, you can't just take straight women's issues and gay men's issues and combine them - lesbians have specific problems that are unique to being a lesbian, and you have to actually ask lesbians what their life is like to know what they go through."
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c3orac | Why is tipping in USA so common, yet in the UK for example, it isn’t? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cause the UK pays service workers a living wage. They build it into the price of the entrees. The US wants the struggle to be real so they pay like $3.52 per hour to service workers and tipping is supposed to makeup for the shit hourly pay.",
"Wages. In the US, there’s a separate, lower legal wage for people who work for tips (one third the federal minimum wage). So tipping is required and customary to make up for the fact that service jobs don’t pay enough. Can you feel the free market? I sure can.",
"There’s a flip side too it too though. If you roll high tips and don’t report it, you can may not pay much in taxes. It’s illegal, but it happens. In the UK the taxes are much higher and this way they can track all the money service workers make."
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c3pm5i | Why do Americans talk differently than Brits, even though they emerged from them only a few hundred years ago. | I feel like in any documentation or representation of the 19th and 18th century of the US people talk the way they do nowadays, in an American accent, not a bit of British. Did the Brits that came to America already talk that way? How can an accent shift so fast within such a short period of time, and at what point exactly did that happen? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Bear in mind that there are 150 British accents.",
"I think the British dropped \"r\" came after the colonisation of the Americas. In the time of Shakespeare the r sound was still in use. URL_0",
"There is some indication that the 18th century British accent was actually closer to an American accent. For example, words like y'all or geetar came from British calvary men. Then when people came to America they were no longer talking to and being influenced by British speech patterns. So whatever changes occurred in Britain were lost in America and vice versa.",
"I've always heard that Brits developed the modem British accent after the war as a way to distinguish themselves from Americans. Like a social\\intellectual FU to Americans for leaving or something Edit: original source below. I remembered it almost correctly URL_0",
"> How can an accent shift so fast within such a short period of time A few hundred years is not a short time when it comes to accents. It's generations and generations of people! It's more than enough time for accents to shift. And remember there's effectively twice that amount of time, because American accents have had a few hundred years to diverge on the one side, and British accents have had a few hundred years to diverge on the other side.",
"The British were not the only group to settle the US. Over a few hundred years of Germans, Dutch, Swedish, etc coming and learning English contributed to the current accent.",
"Check out the usual suspects in this thread who fantasise that \"the\" British accent is a thing, as opposed to the reality of dozens of extremely different accents.",
"The short version is that, back in the 18th century, the overwhelming majority of Brits and their colonists sounded like New Englanders do today. After the war, British shifted away from that accent and towards modern Received Pronunciation, which ended up being the accent that all *other* British accents kinda-sorta emulate. Meanwhile, in the US, New England/New York English remained the dominant language of politics (alongside Southern English before the Civil War), until the development of TV and Radio as mass media. At that point a particular accent of English from the Missouri River Valley became the primary accent, in major part because that particular accent of English has basically no accent whatsoever, and is easily understood by almost all English speakers. This is also why a huge swathe of TV news anchors in the US are from the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, or Missouri; they grow up naturally speaking that particular accent of English, or one of the related accents that just slightly drift away from it, and so they don't have to adjust their accent much (if at all) when on the air."
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