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c3rnh1 | What are the actual risks of talking about Tienanmen square massacre in China? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You’ll get re-educated to be a more harmonious citizen in re-education camp if you have families that would make a fuss if you’re missing, if you don’t you’ll just disappear. They actually talk about their version of the event in uni. The gist is: no protester die, many peace keeper die, there were no tanks. No info on how it started or why. It’s a little bit better than talking about being gay in a Muslim country but not by much."
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c3uoh1 | Why is Hunter S Thompson popular | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"His craziness wasn't an act. He was honest in his desire to get the most out of his words by any means necessary. Also, he was a turbulent man that lived in and documented a very turbulent time. He isn't the greatest writer but he has great content."
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c49bi4 | How did society’s typical standard for attractiveness come to mean “fit” body attributes, such as toned abs, strong jawline, larger chest, etc.? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not just society, there are some instincts at work. People are attracted to potential mates who signs of excellent health, because they tend to produce healthy offspring.",
"Evolution, having a body that fits traits that are ‘healthy’ are considered attractive as from a reproductive aspect you will have the traits that are desirable to pass on, hence why you are seen as attractive with these traits"
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c521pc | Why do people express less intense emotion as they grow older? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Exposure most likely combined with knowing that dropping a cookie isn't the end of the world.",
"Been there, done that, have a shit ton of T-shirts for an inconceivable number of things now that I am over 70. Show me something new and I might show some amount of excitement, but as for more of the same? nope. Although if that AH in the WH gets impeached I would prolly throw a party."
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c53rca | Why do so many languages have similar sounding words for mother and father, even when those languages seemingly developed separately? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Part of it would be that a lot of languages come from a handful of very old and now extinct languages. So those words would have been around since then The other explaination would be that those words are ones that babies would say by just making sounds as most words for dad is something like dada, papa, baba"
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c59mha | Why is diversity a strength? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People different from you have had different life experiences, because of that they may look at problems differently and have different solutions. Having lots of different solutions to problems is a good thing.",
"Because diversity brings unique perspective on problems and solutions encourages us to step out of our comfort zone and keeps us grounded in how many different people and ideas there are out there so that we can innovate.",
"Because often times there is not a single right answer, there are many right answers. Awareness of how other people do things so that you can incorporate the best of the ideas that come from a variety of cultures and histories and circumstances, results in a marketplace of ideas with more ideas in it.",
"If you've ever worked in a company where everyone in the company has been doing the same job for 30 years and there's no fresh blood so to speak, you'll know just how terrible at innovation or adapting to the reality of today (vs 30 years ago) it tends to be. Ultimately when you have a very homogeneous group of people with no new ideas or reason to try new things, all you get is stagnation. In a much broader sense, this is true for culture, economies, politics, and more or less universally. No, more diversity does not automatically mean that a given thing will be less stagnant or more efficient. But persistent LACK of diversity leads to stagnation which is rarely positive.",
"Many of the answers here already discuss solutions but it starts with problem identification. If you have a group of only really tall people designing a product, they may not realize flaws in the design from a shorter persons perspective and vice versa. When you add is the ‘classic’ diversity elements you also gain insights into challenges, sensitivities, and perceptions, and frequencies of certain approaches and problems. This helps a team cover as many potential side effects as possible and overall design the ‘best’ solution.",
"In decision-making you can run the risk of '[Groupthink]( URL_0 )' where a desire to conform to the group at large can lead to decisions being reached without anyone really challenging whether or not its a good idea. & #x200B; A diverse group can naturally help prevent groupthink just by ensuring there's a wide variety of viewpoints ready to go whereas a more homogenous group is more at risk. & #x200B; When you hear complaints about how congress doesn't seem to understand the internet and how to regulate it there you have a case where the body's relative lack of diversity means they're making less than optimal decisions because they simply don't have enough viewpoints in the chamber to help people understand what's at stake and what the fixes could be. That's broader than the groupthink example but its in play as well. & #x200B; Its also playing out with some of the rules like how some congress members need to have the ability to breastfeed their babies but current rules make it impossible to vote while nursing or wearing headgear (meant as a way to be 'polite' but presents a challenge for new members of congress who wear headgear as a religious requirement). If congress had been more diverse all along then these problems may have never come up."
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c5b6og | How do we know the verbal pronunciations of words and phrases from dead languages? | I've been playing a lot of civilization 6, and one of the cool things it does is have the characters speak the language of their Civ, even if nobody speaks it anymore, like Sarmatian, for example. It got me wondering about how we know the pronunciation of those words even though we've never actually heard a native speaker speak it. Thoughts? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically it just involves a ton of extrapolation through related languages that still exist, or through the modern descendants of those languages. For instance, we know how ancient Egyptian sounded because of modern Coptic, which is the religious/ceremonial language for Christians in Egypt, and the only living descendant language of ancient Egyptian. If it's a language with a ton of writing, as in the case of Latin and Greek, there's a lot of ancient writings of people complaining about how people pronounce things wrong and explain how to pronounce things phonetically. Also poetry is huge. Based on the meter and rhyme, you can figure out how a lot of things should be said.",
"People have already explained the process, but I thought I'd chime in to say that a useful thing when deciphering languages is names. Since names are pronounced more or less the same across languages, if you know a name in one language, and see it written down in another, you can work out which symbols must correspond to the sounds in the names. This technique was used in the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone - a key discovery in the deciphering of the Demotic script was spotting names in the Greek text and then comparing them to the Demotic script to work out the sounds.",
"Just because a language is dead now doesn't mean it was always dead. Back when it was not dead, there was a valuable niche in being able to speak it. This often led to folks writing down relationships to sounds as well an word translations between the language and others of the period. It may take a few steps, but it's possible to work backwards to a fair approximation. The largest problems are languages without a written form, like Navajo, which was almost eliminated in only a couple of centuries."
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c5hraa | How bad were British Workhouses? | I'm watching a show set in the 50s and they talk about the people who were traumatized by living in workhouses. So I'll say I'm an American. Many things that British had to deal with sadly wasn't discussed over here. So I really want to learn. I hope someone will explain. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Before the welfare state this was how poor people survived when they had no assets and were out of work. The food was pretty poor and families were split up, however it was better than being out on the streets."
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c5up82 | Aaarrrr there reasons why we think pirates sounded like this? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The pirate accent is actually just an exagerated west country accent, and they really do sound like that. An early portrayal stuck. West country accent for the UK is more stereotypically that of farmers, so if you don't really think about it it can catch you off guard. Can be a tad confusing at times to wonder why all these farmers are at sea or wonder why all these pirates are doing agriculture until you realize it's the same damn accent. For americans, Hagrid from Harry Potter has a west country accent, albeit a pretty comprehensible one. You now realize Hagrid is actually a pirate. Have fun with that. EDIT: Well shiver my timbers, this certainly did blow up. I want to emphasize by the way, Hagrid is a pretty mild case of West Country. As accents go it's a pretty mild one for the UK too in that it rarely gets ~completely~ incomprehensible. Still, you will know pain if you've ever had to get directions from a man who speaks like this: \"Arrrrrrrrr... a grockle aye mate? Orite, what ya wanndo is be gwain ta-rrrrrrrr, roit upp tat grarss o'there, te be a zign, then arrrr, s'right der be a zign at top neer 'ouse! Zee'at?\"",
"It comes from the depiction of Long John Silver by the actor Robert Newton in the 1950 Disney film adaptation of 'Treasure Island.'",
"Ahoy Matey! Most of our speech is rooted in historically inaccurate portrayals of pirates in film. I mean, yarrrg. Treasurer chest I pulled this dabloon from: URL_0",
"I believe, in the UK at least, most sailors/pirates were from the West Country and therefore did have a similar accent (though not as dramatised). All the little colloquialisms are probably from fictionalised accounts but the sound at least (according to my linguistics teacher) could just be standard Cornwall/Bristol accent",
"Specifically, the Disney film \"Treasure Island\" from 1950 starring Robert Newton as Long John Silver is what likely popularized what we now know as the \"pirate accent.\" As other comments have already pointed, Newton employed an exaggerated west country English accent to portray the character Long John Silver, and with the wide-spread distribution and popularity of Disney, most of the world began seeing Newton's pirate as the de-facto standard for how pirates sound.",
"A true pirate might be just as likely to have a Scottish or Irish accent as West Country one.",
"The reason pirates are thought of as sounding like Arrrrgh is because of Robert Newton's legenary performance in Disney's \"Treasure Island.\" He used the Western Cornwall accent.",
"To add to u/TheKnightMadder's post, that's actually sorta how English people talked in the *Pirate* period (for all intents and purposes the Baroque period). The softer, de-rhotacized and more-diphthongy accent we associate with England today was actually the product of a deliberate pronunciation promoted among the English elite in the mid-19th Century (probably inspired by French, since the French were at the cutting edge of fashion in the 19th Century). Because it was initiated by the elite, this pronunciation shift is more noticeable in cities and most noticeable in London. Continued contact with Britain meant that the trend also spread to the Eastern US, although it only really stuck in New England and New York City."
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c5vfsz | The difference between runway fashion and consumer products. | I don't think I really understand the difference. I see brands like Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga present these avant-garde outfits on the runway, but obviously you're not going to see those in the store..bedsides creative expression, what necessarily is the purpose of that? How does it make money / benefit the company? And why do you occasionally see some kind of celebrity wearing one of the runway outfits? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Think of it sort of like concept cars at auto shows... they show an overall trend and concept exploration, which will inevitably be toned down once they get some feedback from influences and potential customers. They may stick with the colors and fabrics, but not the outlandish cuts baring body parts not shown in public, dialing back oversized details."
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c5wrgh | Why does the US have so many federal law enforcement agencies, many with overlapping objectives instead of having just one or two for all crimes? | You got the FBI who investigates all federal crimes including drug and weapons trafficking but the DEA also investigates those things, the ATF pretty much does the same thing as the FBI as well and so on. Why have so many different agencies that besides a few minor things, mainly investigate the same things? I understand the Air Marshal Service and Border Patrol but cant the FBI do what all the other agencies do? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lawyer and former state-level prosecutor here, How: That's the way history happened. The Federal Gov't has limited power, and didn't really do much in the early years, e.g., under Pres. Washington. Each time a need for a specific task would arise, say to investigate counterfeiting, a new police force would be born! Here, the Secret Service. This happened in different Fed'l offices for different reasons throughout US history, giving us countless Fed'l police forces, each with overlapping authority and jurisdiction. & #x200B; Why it's arguably a good thing: Every organization is prone to \"group think,\" where everyone in a group develops similar perspectives. By having separate groups independently doing their own thing, redundancy becomes built into the system. & #x200B; edit: clarity",
"You have a school project to make a science experiment and poster board to present to the class. You have groups of 5. Tommy’s mom is rich so he’s buying the supplies. Tina’s mom is very hands on and likes to help, so Tina is doing the actual experiment. You are a good speaker so youre the one presenting. Luna is a good artist so she’s making the posterboard. That leaves Ike. Ike was added to your group late because he missed a day of class and you were one short. Ike starts to help by making some of the posterboard, but Luna doesn’t really need the help, and Ike is more adept at making computer presentations than hand drawn art anyways. But there isn’t anywhere else Ike is needed and it makes more sense for him to stick with the artsy stuff because he is still an artist afterall. Youre teammates and you all get together to solve this conundrum of what Ike can do, and decide he should make a power point for when you present because you’ll have the only power point and it can be a highlight of your presentation. So Ike then leaves Luna to the posterboard and makes a power point for your group. That means everyone is doing their part of the project now and Ike has found his place in the group. He may overlap some with Luna because they want to collaborate to use the same fonts and color scheme on the two art parts, but overall they are firmly seperate. And you and Ike might collaborate on making the power point better since you’re the one presenting it. And Luna and Tina have to collaborate with Tommy since he’s the one getting the materials for the project. This translates to the US agencies easily in that you have X agencies doing their own part of the whole picture (stopping crime), and when a new type of crime pops up, one of the existing agencies splits into two each specialised in their own thing. Sometimes the criminals force an overlap in specialities and make the agencies collaborate with each other.",
"The FBI also investigated domestic terrorism and kidnapping, the DEA operates overseas. They have different missions and objectives. The ATF and DEA might be merged into a single agency but they’re highly specialized in those fields.",
"Also governments like to keep them separate. A single organization with enough mandates would have excessive power."
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c60pcn | Why did people come to the conclusion that smiling in photographs was the best way to take a picture? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm not sure if that's the consensus anymore but anyways. People didn't used to smile because it took hours to get a photograph so they had to keep a neutral face. Smiling is generally how we like to see eachother so once we could smile in pictures it became the norm.",
"Body language is an important aspect of how humans communicate how they feel, sometimes without their knowledge. Studying existing primitive cultures, smiling and laughing are natural, innate ways humans express pleasure and enjoyment. Taking photographs are social events, at least indirectly. Photos taken usually are shared and of pleasant events, and this body language is natural.",
"When photography was first, um, _developed_ it was a sloooow process. So the best way to get a non-blurry photo was for the subject to sit as still as possible while the exposure was made. That “still as possible” posture would have likely included a closed-mouth, reasonably somber face. As the speed of the process increased, it got significantly faster to take photos, and it would have been simpler to get photos of more fleeting moments, like people smiling. And people enjoy looking at happy photos more than at somber ones, too."
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c66nl0 | - Why did humanity create new languages when they migrated? If we all spoke the same language wouldn’t international communication be much easier? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not as though they did it consciously. Language is always in flux, the English we use now is very different from that of 100 years ago even. Of course, in the past groups in distant places would have had very little contact with each other, so language naturally diverged over time to the point where even if there was one root language in the cradle of civilization, they have since diverged to the point of being unrecognizable.",
"Language is constantly evolving. It's not so much that they immediately spoke a new language, but the languages of people that were geographically separated evolved in different ways until it got to the point that they could no longer understand each other. Check out this family tree of languages for a cool visual of how some modern languages are related URL_0",
"It wasn't intentional. Linguistic drift happens all the time as new words are made, change in popularity, are modified, or are dropped entirely. For instance, almost nobody would understand what you mean if you said you had a \"score\" of something or something had happened a \"fortnight\" ago, but if you told someone like Abe Lincoln that you'd \"yeet\" something out a window or that his wife was \"dummy thicc\", he'd have absolutely no clue what you're saying. From what I've read, roughly 9% of the language changes with each generation, and this change is basically random. If you take two groups of people and separate them, their language will drift apart until a few generations later, they can no longer understand on another. We can see this happening in North and South Korea; North Koreans that escape, especially younger ones, often find nowadays that they barely understand anyone their age in South Korea, and it has only been about 74 years since the divide went in place.",
"You're assuming we had that sort of foresight at that time. I'm not a historian, but I suspect things like \"cities\" and \"international communication\" hadn't really become things by the time language was developing. In addition, you're ignoring linguistic drift over time, and the fact that multiple languages rose over time in different areas. You can hardly have one, international language if different people are developing different languages independently of one another in different areas."
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c6l61c | Why do British people and American people speak different English? | For example, Americans say schedule like (Sked-Youll)) and the British say it like (Shed-Youll). Why? Isn’t it all the same language? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Different geographic areas. Same way Mexico and Spain speak Spanish but have differences in the spoken language. Same with accents within the US itself. Southern accents vs western vs far north.",
"The answers here are already pretty good, so I'll go on a slight tangent. American people and English people tend to differ in pronunciation of some commons vowels, making a more round shape with their mouth, and probably more well known is the fact that English people tend to drop the 'r' in farm and target. American people actually speak the way they do in part because of the region of England that they came from. In the West and North of England, which are more agricultural areas, people tend to still pronounce that hard 'r' and use more full mouthed vowels. The main difference is between southern English and Americans. A cultural shift that isn't fully understood occurred in the south of England when nobles and rich landowners started pronouncing words differently to the rest of agricultural Britain. People with a status that wanted to emulate this culture started speaking that way as well, and today the Queen still uses something like it in \"received pronunciation\". The majority of american settlers were poor farmers from the west and north of England, and on top of that the cultural shift appears to have been more prominent after the early period of American migration. An interesting exception is the Southern United States where people traditionally drop the 'r' in the Southern English style. The large plantation owners in the South were also emulating the noble English accent, but there were less of them than there were working class Americans and so the accent isn't around very much.",
"Different parts of Britain speak completely different ways, it’s the evolution of language and happens everywhere",
"Very short answer: language evolves. Like the North Koreans have different words as the South Koreans or the Dialects of the same Language over different geographic locations."
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c6mqpg | How did taking a knee to propose become tradition? What was the original significance of it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Perhaps originates in chivalric code tradition. A knight would go down on one knee to signify loyalty and obedience and deference to his liege. Much of the code of chivalry was to do with rules of battle and fair play and prisoners, not so much the treatment of women and the vulnerable. But if you wanted to show respect for a wellborn woman you want to marry, it might be a natural way to show it."
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c6tat4 | Why are dental and vision separate from general health insurance in the US? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s nothing to do with what people’s attitudes are towards vision or dental. It’s a holdover from attitudes over a century ago. They used to not have the very well established, powerful organizations and schools of medicine like we have now. It was like the Wild West, with far less regulation or standardization. Medical teaching varied a lot in quality and content, and different people specialized in different things. Dentistry, like surgery, was bloody and dirty and agonizing. In England, surgeons were lower middle class. They cut off the limbs of screaming people and they followed armies and navies around cleaning up wounds.They were literally not “doctors”. The term “doctor” was a term of honor bestowed on people who had studied a long time, and lawyers, philosophers, and medical men got it after years of schooling. They were upper middle class or upper class who could afford years of schooling. Surgeons were just “Mr.”, never “Dr.” because they weren’t of the class that went to higher education, they apprenticed. Same with midwives, same with dentists. Over time, doctors absorbed the tasks of midwives and surgeons, making obstetrics part of regular medicine and making surgeons doctors. But what about dentistry? As committed, professional men began elevating medical standards and establishing rules for who could and could not be a doctor (rules in 19th century US for who could call themselves “Dr.” and what constitutes a medical school were very loose.), they decided NOT to assimilate dentistry into medicine. In 1840, some dentists trying to systematize and elevate their field contacted all the US med schools to try to convince them to make dentistry part of their curriculum. They were rejected. To accept dentists was to associate the distinguished status of doctors with people they considered to be sleazy. disreputable, and uneducated. So dentists went on to found their own professional associations, standards, journals. and schools, separate from doctors. They’ve all become so respectable that it’s hard to even imagine that that was the thinking in the 19th century. Here’s an article where you can read more. URL_0 As for vision: it is part of medicine and covered by insurance, in the case of ophthalmologists. But while optometrists and opticians didn’t have the same status situation as dentists, they did arise from different professions in the same way. They were artisans who ground lenses. Back when they started creating health insurance, a pretty small percent of the population used glasses regularly. Insurance cur lots of things out of coverage and that included some things like medical devices—glasses are medical devises, not a sickness of the body. Thus far that’s persisted."
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c6xrxu | How does misinformation proliferate in the age of information? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We simply don’t have time to fact check all of the information that we hear. With the overwhelming amount of information out there, it’s impossible for us to absorb it all. And even if we were able to, most of that information is just not worth our time to read. News companies understand this, so they mastered clickbait and catchy headlines, and they boil down very complex issues into a simple one-sided argument to invoke an emotional response. They get the opportunity to be a bit lax with their journalistic integrity, since they know so few people will bother to fact check them, and even if they do, people would have to go back and read something else that’s even more boring to know the results of the fact checking.",
"There's too much information, and the vast majority of it **is wrong anyway**. Say I want to figure out if Fox's most recent major story is true or not. I search it online, and I find a few thousand, maybe a few million, articles about it. Roughly half will be misinformed people arguing about it, another 40% will be people talking about the people talking about it and not the story itself, another 9.9% will be speculation about it, and MAYBE 0.09% will be discussion about the facts of the matter, but without firsthand knowledge of the material. And then, when you get to that very last 0.01%, you might actually find the facts themselves. But guess what? That still leaves us with anywhere from dozens to thousands of scholarly articles, written in language very unfamiliar to the majority of people, that is very dense and difficult to read for the majority of people, and which may or may not be biased, outdated, and wrong anyway. So, in order to get the correct facts and avoid misinformation, you need to get a college degree (or equivalent), and spend hours upon hours looking through all of this crap in order to find solid data."
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c70d5w | Why do the police get to investigate the crimes of other police? Isn't that a conflict of interest? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Anyone who is investigating a crime is police. That is a part of the definition. The moment you get someone to start investigating a crime in an official capacity they are now police. So if you want criminal activity done by police to be investigated at all it will be investigated by police. Virtually all countries/states have dedicated divisions of police that only investigate other police. This is to limit conflict of interest because they are not actively serving with those they are investigating.",
"It’s an absolute conflict of interest, however that’s the way the contracts with the cities are written... on top of that sometimes they will have an indefinite amount of time to run the investigation, however there is only a certain amount of time that there can be a prosecution, after the alleged crime...",
"> Secondary question is why aren't off-duty police seen or recognized as citizens/civilians when off duty? They're not at work, they're no longer cops. Would seem a pretty simple way to stop letting cops abuse power. I don't really have anything to address on your other points, but they don't stop being cops when they're off the clock. If they see someone being murdered or assaulted, they're always expected to intervene and make an arrest. Same thing as any other first responder (doctors, EMT's, etc.)"
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c72xkh | Why is the Mona Lisa so famous? | I get that it's well done but, there's a lot of well since paintings from the renaissance | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Scandal! News! It wasn’t a particularly interesting piece of art for most of its life. It was a da Vinci, so it was famous for its artist, but the piece itself wasn’t special. That is, until it was stolen in 1911. It was stolen from the Louvre and the theft became an instant media sensation that would make a Kardashian sex tape like impact. Everyone knew the painting now! It was recovered two years later and by then had achieved massive fame. Tl;dr: it became famous because it was stolen and the news made a big story out of it."
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c78cqa | What do people mean by "fixed" when they talk about wrestling? | In the WWE, don't the matches already have a predetermined outcome? If so, why is gaining the title so prestigious? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's prestigious in the same way throwing the One Ring into Mount Doom is heroic. It tells a story for the audience to enjoy, the titles are props but props with a lineage. You're putting your story on a long line of stories."
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c8dwcz | Why are there so many sign languages? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Are sign languages connected to specific languages, like how English might be connected with American Sign Language? In most cases, that's how it works, but not necessarily. For example, someone signing in American Sign Language would not be understood by someone who knew British Sign Language. Even though both sign languages are from an English language country, they are nothing alike. > It would just seem to make more sense if there was one universal sign language. It would also make more sense to have a universal spoken/written language.",
"The short answer is yes, they are connected to specific languages. Each verbal language will.vary because the culture and location have different words, expressions, etc. Sign language reflects the local language, usually. ASL has roots in French, most ASL signs from original ASL are actually French signs.",
"> It would just seem to make more sense if there was one universal sign language. Well yes, but you could say the same thing about spoken languages. Signed languages are no different. So the reason that signed languages haven't coalesced into a single language is the same reason that spoken or written languages haven't.",
"Historically, sign languages evolved with less communication between people of different areas. For example, Australian sign language (auslan) is similar to British Sign Language because Australia was primarily a british colony so the deaf people brought their sign language with them. Over time, language changed, new signs were needed but back then there was no skype or way for people from different areas to sign with each other (without travelling really far). So different dialects developed organically (often with schools for the deaf being the hub for change) and Auslan became further removed from BSL. There are even regional differences within Auslan, with a lot of signs for things like colours being different between different states.I don't know how ASL developed though, but perhaps it's due to the types of first settlers and the level of signing the few deaf people brought with them and then they made up the rest as they went along. You can't sign to your family back in the motherland in your letters, you use the written language which is thus slower to change. Edit: people have said ASL has french roots, which would mean that the first signers in what is now the USA had learned french sign language (whether fluently or not) and then it evolved from there. Imagine a group of people marooned (essentially forever) on an island and a couple of people speak french, but one of them is french canadian and the other is from france and they have to make it work as a common language, while teaching new people their common language. I don't know if I explained that well."
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c8vmej | what about the shoes that Kaepernick pressured Nike to recall was racist? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"the flag on the back of the shoes is from an era when minorities were treated horribly, so they associate that flag with those times and their oppression, and so don't want to have it visible on a bunch of peoples' feet. I don't have an opinion either way, but that's what's up."
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c8y45w | Why cousins marrying is generally looked down in the west but not so uncommon in middle east? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Just my own interpretation of it but marrying cousins is usually accepted or encouraged in cultures that still place a high value on class systems, like many eastern countries do - India in particular. Keeps the bloodline as pure as possible etc (despite the increased risk of birth deformities, but whatever). Most of the royal families of Europe are all related due to the marrying of cousins for the same rationale. As class systems became less important (at least from a genealogy standpoint) the medical rationale to not marry cousins became more important than the classist reasons in favour of marriage. Just my two cents.",
"Economic reasons Cousins marrying was not all that uncommon in the west until the 1800s and according to your definition of \"the west\" all the way to the twentieth century. Because the economy was agricultural and holding land was paramount, small landowners would inmarry in order to keep wealth within their family. Add to that the simple fact that in agricultural economies huge urban centers were the exception rather than the norm which meant that inevitably people could hardly find someone to marry they aren't at least twice removed related to. Even now many western villages are consisted of somewhat closely related people overall and no one would bat an eye at them marrying each other. For various reasons the middle east is economically still in a pretty backwards state, either through mismanagment or through the constant warfare, so the industrialisation and creation of large urban areas is many years behind as well as many people living as farmers which again means that it is economically sound to inmarry so as not to lose part of the family wealth."
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c9h61c | How come after a CIA or Military operation gets declassified the files say “redacted” for certain things? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because there are still secret aspects of the file that cannot be revealed to the public. A file doesn't have to be 100% declassified to be \"declassified\", if that makes sense - it just means that it has to go through the process of being cleared for public release.",
"When a document is \"declassified,\" it means, \"we've taken everything out of it that is still classified as secret.\" When a document is declared \"unclassified,\" it means, \"nothing in here is classified as secret.\" Classification isn't always \"yes/no\" thing in the US; there are many grades of it, and an individual document can contain many pieces of information that are classified different ways. The Freedom of Information Act, which governs a lot of declassification activity, basically says that, in principle, government agencies should release as much information as possible, so in a document where there are things that can be released, they ought to be released even if other parts have to be held back. In practice this is often left to the discretion of individual agencies or reviewers.",
"They want you to know about it, but not some of the details. Most are under the reason of national security. That's like \"we have nukes, the secret code is > !0000! < .\""
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c9h9w9 | Why has the US historically had trouble winning wars with Asian countries? | It seems like the US has pretty much dominated most of the countries its went to war with except for Korea and Vietnam. What is it about Asian countries that makes it so hard for the US to win wars against them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Korea was [crazy all-around]( URL_0 ); the US was literally *about* to win it (Communist forces had been pushed all the way north to the Chinese border) when the Chinese stepped in on North Korea's behalf, and the US was unwilling to actually fight the Chinese because we thought it would trigger World War III. Vietnam was never a war that we were going to be able to \"win,\" and we stopped trying to win when Nixon flipped China against the USSR, at which point there was no longer a reason to fight in Vietnam in the first place (hence why the Paris Peace Accord was signed less than a year after Nixon's trip to China).",
"Well the Korean and Vietnam war were completely different. In the Korean war, the US was winning easily, until China joined the war. The US had technological superiority against China, but China had huge numerical and logistical superiority, since they have a lot more people, and were fighting on their doorstep, while the US was fighting an Ocean away. The US was facing an equal adversary with China, but would have easily win the war against North Korea. & #x200B; For the Vietnam war, the US wasn't really fighting a war, it was helping the South Korean government fighting a guerrilla war, while bombarding the North. They didn't want to invade the North, by fear of repeating what happened in the Korean war and end up fighting China at their doorstep again. Fighting a guerrilla war is really hard for everybody, it doesn't matter if you are in Asia or not. History i is full of failure against guerilla war all over the world. The French in indochina, the Soviet and US in afghanistan, the Russian in Chechnya, etc. & #x200B; So basically you have two answer. Fighting China near their homeland is hard and Guerilla war is hard.",
"> Why has the US historically had trouble winning wars with Asian countries? I'm sure you mean \"with the exception of Japan.\""
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c9jxzr | India's Caste System and why it's important | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Indian society used to be separated into castes, meaning that you are born into your job, and that job defines your place in society. Social mobility was non-existent. The priests were at the top, then rulers and soldiers, then artisans and craftsmen, then manual laborers, then finally \"untouchables\". This system existed in various forms for thousands of years. When the british took over, they enforced it because it made administration easier. When they finally left, the indians decided to get rid of the caste system. But that's easier said than done. Indians have been taught for generations to never interact with people outside their caste. People there are still very discriminatory towards their \"lessers\", and it's a huge problem, complete with \"honor killings\" and lynching. It's a similar problem to American racism. American slavery was arguably a caste system with two levels; white owners and black slaves. Even though the slaves were freed 150 years ago, racism continues to this day. That's the problem India is dealing with.",
"Basically, you're born into a role/social class and you must live like that class does (Brahmin= Priest/Religious worker, Kshatriya= Warriors, Vaishya= Merchants and artisans, Shudra= Low class workers, Dalits= Impoverished to the point of total ostracism/ Literally means Untouchable) After enough cycles of living each role, you either move up or down, depending on how good of a person you were (karma) and how well you integrated into your social class (Dharma). It matters because these class destinctions exist to this day, and there is a huge stigma against the Untouchables.",
"As an Indian who lives in India.. I'd give you a very short and crisp answer. If you want more details, feel free to text me any time. * Early Vedic India had no caste system. They had a class (Varna) system much like the rest of world with **Priest**(*Brahmin*), **Warrior/Noble**(*Kshatriya*), **Trader/Artisan**(*Vaishya*) and **Serf** Classes(*Kshudra*/*Shudra*/*Dalit*). * Everyone was allowed to move up or down the varna system. A shrewd son of a warrior could become a merchant and a studious son of a serf could become a priest * As India entered the Late Vedic Period and foreign invasions began (Greeks under Alexander, Huns, Scythians, Parthians, etc ) the varna system became rigid and became the caste system. It was made hereditary and immovable. Still it wasn't that bad since many lower caste rulers are documented. * As foreign rules were established, the upper castes started exploiting the lower castes more and more and Dalits were literally made untouchable. The foreign rulers never did anything to abolish it and every successive foreign ruler encouraged the upper castes to exploit lower castes so that their subjects would never unite against them. * The Maratha Empire (the last Indian Empire.. not the Mughals according to common misconceptions) did try to eliminate the caste system and were successful to a very large extent. Many dalits were allowed to be care takers of temples and employed in high ranking posts in the bureaucracy. Although later Maratha rulers became more chauvinistic and started oppressing the Dalits again.. with the Dalits now turning to the British East India company for arms and training. Armed with musked and trained in European Warfare tactics, they defeated the still sword and spear wielding Marathas time and again and undermined their power greatly. * The British were amused by watching this and decided to capitulate on this and greatly encouraged the caste system in India. Upper castes were encouraged to exploit Dalits and were not even arrested for even murder of dailts. Inter caste marriages were discouraged and a sense of hatred was ingrained about other castes. Also the British only gave upper level posts to upper castes and Dalits were never given a post above janitors or guards. * The upper castes started extreme inhuman treatments of lower castes since the British essentially gave them a free hand. This inhuman treatment of dalits for over 2 centuries remained in Indian minds even after the British left. All the wealth and influential posts were held by upper castes. Lower castes were not allowed to study at all. * One by one the government started to introduce policies helping the dalits and revoking earlier casteist british laws. Also revolutionaries in both upper and lower castes sought to fought for equal rights. Some of the people who died for rights of lower castes were Brahmins and Kshatriyas too.. so it's not as black and white is portrayed. * As of the 90s, caste started losing its value in urban centres like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata. And as of the 21st century it's becoming irrelevant very fast. 2019 National Elections broke all records of caste-irrelevant voting. The current BJP government is extremely progressive in this case. ( Our President is a Dalit and our PM a Vaishya ). Merit is taken to be the only criteria everywhere. Intercaste marriages are rampant. I have attended more inter-caste wedding in this decade than intra-caste. * Hopely caste will become totally irrelevant in rural areas by 2050 too. Also how the government tried to get rid of the caste system was by making it criminal to use any caste based slur and to force elders to break their old habits and start interacting with dalits as if they weren't dalits. Share food with them, invite them home, etc. This all backlashed severely and instead of reducing hostility, it increased. So then the government and the good people understood that the only way is to educate and nurture the future generations properly and to let western influence seep in. My grandparents' generation is extremely casteist and still wouldn't drink a glass of water offered by a dalit. My grandfather once left in the middle of a wedding lunch when he came to know the bride was a dalit. On other hand, my parents' generation are much less casteist. They don't actively avoid dalits but would prefer not to be around them. I eat from the same plate as them. I actually don't even consider them as 'them'. It's the same with majority of my generation. As a kid I used to fight with my elders a lot. But we all realized that old habits can not be forcibly changed. All we can do is just sit and wait while the older generations die out. That's why you can still hear about casteism from the ideological remnants.",
"The privileged get to keep their privilege and the underprivileged have basically no way to gain more privilege. It's important so that the privileged don't have to \"worry about\" (nor feel bad about ostracizing) those \"lower\" than themselves"
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c9mgtp | what are all the down sides of the proposed USA census questions asking about citizenship? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People who are not citizens or those who host them, like land lords or relatives, will feel reluctant to report the true number of people living under their roof if they believe that doing so could mark them for raid and or deportation. It is put there as a scare tactic to make people afraid to be counted, similar effect of voter ID laws. Now if you feel that counting people who are not citizens is a bad thing, that you can take up with the constitution. The constitution states that all \"free persons\" should be counted. You could argue that they're not tax payers, but in fact they are. Every purchase they make is taxed and if they are using false documents, they're still taxed at work. Regardless, it is in the constitution so it would take a major effort to change it. As for the downside, it is an injustice to attempt to scare people out of their rights and we are judged by the injustices that we commit."
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c9v8sq | What's federally mandated busing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Racism has been a problem in the US for a long time. Up until the 1960s or so, white people forced black people to use different schools (and shops and bathrooms and so forth, but busing is about schools). This was allowed, even after the Civil War, because two different schools could in theory be just as good -- \"separate but equal\", they called it. Except they weren't equal. White people made things harder for the black schools in order to keep black people from getting a good education. Then the Civil Rights movement, and the Supreme Court said that this whole separate but equal business didn't work out, so let's get rid of it. So black kids could go to white schools. Mission accomplished, you might say from the back of an aircraft carrier. Except the mission (spoilers) wasn't accomplished. The people drawing the maps to say which kids would go to which schools were clever about how they drew those maps, and they made it so that no black kids could go to white schools and vice versa. In came federally mandated busing (also known as forced busing). The idea was that some kids from black neighborhoods would go to white schools, ignoring those maps, even if they had to take a really long bus ride. It wasn't that great for the kids being bused, because the racist white people made sure that the bus rides were really really long. It wasn't great for the other black kids, because they were stuck with the schools that were half rotting and the discarded half-broken supplies that their school managed to scrounge. It was really handy for the white kids, who had an opportunity to learn that black kids are just other kids and racism might not be good. Unfortunately, that last bit was a really hard thing for the racist white people to deal with. They needed to save their kids from the horrible fate of not being bigots, so they fled to the suburbs, leaving inner cities largely black."
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ca0pc5 | Why do some cultures love capsaicin, and some absolutely hate it? Where did the enjoyment of spicy foods come from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In warm climates, food will rot and turn rancid a lot faster than in cold climates. In order to keep food longer, as well as to hide the taste of rot, spices are added to food. Spices that include capsaicin, such as chilis, are especially effecting for slowing rot. So the cultures in hot climates had to either deal with spicy food, or die, leading to an association between spicy food and edible food.",
"I'd say the enjoyment of it comes from the endorphin release triggered by capsaicin. It also enhances other flavors if you can learn to handle the pain. I eat a lot of spicy food so I'm used to it, but when I eat something *exceptionally* spicy, I will actually get high for a while and break into giggles like I've smoked pot. Great feeling. Just don't rub your eyes, because you'll be crying, and those capsaicin fingers are not welcome in eyeballs. My dumb ass has learned that multiple times."
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ca4woe | Why do some countries have different names in different languages? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In Russian, German is немецкий, I believe, and from what I remember my Russian teacher telling us years ago, it stems from the phrase “the mutes” or “unable to speak,” because when Slavs first met Germans way back when, they obviously didn’t speak the same language and couldn’t understand each other, so the Slavic people just went ahead and named the entire German-speaking population after people who can’t speak.",
"It depends on what other countries called Germany in the earliest times when whatever tribes that lived there called themselves something else. Also, e.g. the Romans new the region and had a different name for it than let's say the Danish because they didn't know each other and therefore couldn't agree on one name. BTW there is a good Wikipedia article in the topic: URL_0",
"Germany is probably the most complex example. The concept of Germany as a country is quite recent. For a long time there were many smaller \"states\" (and before that: tribes) in that area, with their relative importance changing over time. One language started using a single name for the area at the time state X was more important - > named after state X. Another language might have started doing that later when state Y was more important (or closer to them) - > named after state Y. There are at least 6 different origins for the name of Germany (and equivalently 6 groups of names plus a few outliers). URL_0",
"People name countries for all kinds of different reasons. Some names are derived from what the country calls themselves, some are corruptions of the same name such as England in english and Engeland in dutch or España in spanish and derivates like spain or espagne. In other cases a country may be named after a specific region. The reason The Netherlands are often called Holland is because arguably this was the part of the country most other nations historically had most contact with. In other cases still the name may be derived from \"original\" names taken from another language or source. What we call spain is called sefarad or sfarad in hebrew. The reason being that a biblical location of this name was thought to be what the romans called hispania. When spain unified the country, over time, corupted this name turning it into España. Germans didn't stick with the roman germania even though the english did. Meanwhile spanish and french used the name of a specific german tribe, the alemanni, to name the country. Im sure this list isn't exhaustive but it should give you an idea.",
"Taking Germany as an example, the concept of a single German nation hasn’t consistently existed for very long. That means that there wasn’t an “official name” for the lands where German speaking people live, but there was still a need for neighbouring nations to refer to them collectively, so generally the nations surrounding Germany came up with their own names. There are 6 types of name for Germany which languages deviate from. The name “Germany” itself is based on the Latin Germania, which was named after the fertility of the land’s soil (think germination). The name stuck and the Romans applied it generically to cover all lands of Germanic speaking tribes. “Deutschland” just really means Land of the People (German speaking people in this case), Teuton, which is an archaic word for German, is a word derived from Deutsch, and the word Dutch is similarly related. The fact that in English, we already call people from the Netherlands “Dutch” is probably why referring to Germans as “Deutsch” didn’t catch on. The names similar to “Allemagne” come from the Alemanni tribe, who bordered France. The French generically applied the name to all Germanic tribes east of the Rhine and the name spread to a number of countries whose main interaction with Germans was via France. Similarly, few countries call Germany by a name derived from “Saxon”, who are a different Germanic tribe. Many Slavic countries refer to Germany by a word derived from “Nemet”, meaning mute. This is because Germanic and Slavic tribes had difficulty communicating, and thus the Slavs referred to Germans as mutes, ones who cannot speak (our language). This is similar to how Greeks called non-Greek speakers barbarians (bar-bar-bar essentially being the Greek equivalent of blah blah blah) and how Germanic groups refer to outsiders as “Walhaz” (Wales, Wallonia, Wallachia). Lastly, there are some Baltic names for Germany, but it’s not clearly where they derive from, though I’d wager it’s from another ancient Germanic tribe.",
"German: From the indogermanic word *teuta*- people and the language of the people *theut*. It turned into the old-highgerman words *diutisc* - part of the people or *diut[a]* - (a) people to differentiate between everyone speaking something kind of similar and everyone else. Theut turned into the old-highgerman word *diutsch* or *tiutsch*. Et voilà Teutschland or later Deutschland. English: Germany from the latin word Germania after the there living, many different Germanic Tribes. Germans - > Germany French: Allemagne after the specific Germanic Tribe of the Allemanni because they are pretty much closest to the French and spoke a more similar language to the Germanic Tribes than French Finnish: Saksa. Sounds pretty similar to the state of Saxony/Sachsen eh? That's pretty much where it's from. I don't really know how or why but there's on of those origins for every of those words.",
"Better examples would be names of cities. Munchen is Munich in english, London is Londres in spanish, Milano is Mailand in German We should call cities by their name in their original language if they use the same alphabet.",
"Do any other countries call 'Belarus' 'white Russia' as we call it in the Netherlands? Also the Netherlands in Dutch is just Netherland",
"Like the English call Nederland Holland and its language and inhabitants Dutch, while the Dutch actually call themselves Nederlanders and their language Nederlands, yet we always get asked to explain why its all called differently...",
"Dunno about Germany, but Korea was named after the Coryo dynasty (918-1392). After that collapsed we had the Chosun dynasty and now Hankuk (after the Japanese occupational period) but the western name just never changed. & #x200B; tl;dr: Korea is a very outdated name for the country",
"its not some countries, its virtually all of them likely because the translated versions are easier to pronounce in the target language. imagine trying to pronounce the mandarin version of China/some other obscure countrys language youve never heard of before everytime you wanted to refer to it",
"I can't answer for a general case but the polish word for Germany comes from old polish word for \"one who cannot speak\" and originally it meant any foreigner."
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caedgg | Why do so many historical paintings depict nudity in women and children, but not men? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because most of the painters were men, and homosexuality used to be a big taboo. You'll notice that in societies were it was less of a taboo (Greece and Rome), you end up with a lot more statues and paintings of naked men around. When Christianity came around, people became suspicious of the morality of a man who would paint another man naked, so the painters stopped doing it."
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cafl8b | What is the relevance of the “Gold Cup” to the US Men’s soccer team? | Is this just a North American tournament and does it have any bearing on making the next World Cup? Thanks! | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Gold Cup tournament is for teams from North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. In its current state, that basically means the US and Mexico are overwhelmingly the dominant teams in the tournament, and its no surprise those two are in the finals. South America has its own tournament going on right now called Copa America. It sorta matters for world cup, much like all international competition matters, but its still pretty early for the 2022 World Cup, and real qualifying won't get started until later, but it still matters a little bit. This tournament will occur again in ~2 years, which will have a more significant impact on who qualifies for the world cup as its much closer to the actual world cup."
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cagfl0 | Why do single person restrooms often have a male and female one? | I don't understand because it's not like there's gonna be anyone else in the bathroom but you. Also they both have a toilet and sink so there's basically no difference exept if there's a men's urinal, which you don't have to use if you don't want to or can't. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Both men and women are gross when it comes to public restrooms. That's not something associated to one gender. I would say the actual answer is that people expect public toilets to have a mens and a womens, societal standards calls for it. If they didn't put labels people would probably complain about men going in after a woman and vice versa. Or they might be confused and constantly ask staff which is which. Putting labels on it prevents confusion and prevents complaints. Short answer, they put labels on them because people expect it. If anybody were to go to the single person toilet and find no gender label on it, and there was a second toilet, I'd bet there's a significant probability the person checks the second door for a sign to make sure they're not using the wrong one, even though it ultimately doesn't matter."
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canu6h | Why can we tell when someone is speaking and when someone is reading out loud? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The cadence is different between reading aloud and speaking. When someone is speaking, they say what comes to their head and it sounds more natural. When someone is reading, they say things more monotoned because they don't know where in the sentence to put the most emphasis."
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caopsk | why are credit card terminals not accessible to customers in restaurants? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Man you Americans and your retro credit card Tech. Wireless terminals, chip and pin and contactlees has been standard in Europe for a good few years now. Feels wrong to let someone take your card away now.",
"In many restaurants they are. In nicer restaurants the restaurant will do the credit card transaction for you as a service to the customer, so that the customer does not have to get up and do the chore of running their card. Instead, they can remain in their seat comfortably while the server runs the card for them.",
"It's the service industry tipping part. If you pay for it at a machine up front you feel less likely to tip. Like you aren't being treated. I understand that sounds dumb when you are paying for it all, but dining out was intended to remove you from doing the work.",
"I haven’t had someone run my credit card in the back in a restaurant *outside the US* for about 12 years. Everywhere else has the wireless terminals.",
"Most of the chain restaurants in the US (Olive Garden, Applebees) are converting over to self-service kiosks on the tables that will let you do things like order drink refills, as well as pay via credit card."
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cb190e | When the CIA or Military release declassified documents they often redact names for the persons safety so why isn’t the same done to witnesses who take the stand during trial? | Why is someone being a witness made public record for everyone to see, putting them in danger? Why can’t we let them remain anonymous like people in CIA and Military files? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the witness's identity is relevant to the evaluation of their testimony, and a trial is about finding facts definitively enough to assess guilt publicly. There's a constitutional right to confront witnesses against you at trial - cross-examine them and challenge their testimony. If their identities were kept secret, that would be impossible."
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cb3oac | What are the US police and district attorneys roles in charging someone with a crime? Who is responsible for all of the different parts of the process? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories. DUN DUN!",
"Police: Take complaints and file a report requesting charges from the district attorney's office. DA's Office: Determines whether to amend requested charge, have police seek more information, decline to charge or charge as requested. Post DA (Depending on jurisdiction and severity): they may have to seek an indictment from a jury or \"bind over\" from a magistrate or judge Source: Former Prosecuting Attny."
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cb7u48 | Why do fans of eastern media (kpop, anime, etc) use dysphemistic labels (Stans, Otaku, etc) to identify themselves? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not sure about stans, since I've never seen anyone call themselves that. With Otaku, most western people have probably only had exposure to that word through the anime they watch. The anime I've seen don't really make it seem like a terrible thing to be called. It seems more like a word used to tease people, rather than actually offend anyone. It seems the same as calling someone a comic book/video game nerd. That used to be derogatory, but now people are proud of being into nerd/geek stuff, so it doesn't hold the same meaning. Until I read this post and Googled it, I wasn't aware otaku was used in a serious derogatory way."
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cbismr | why is science so political? And why does it make you seem left leaning to other people when you don’t deny scientific discoveries? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I [answered a similar question]( URL_3 ) to this on ELI5 around two years ago (and got gilded for the answer!). The previous question was more specific to climate change, but it applies to the politicization of science in general as well. Here's what I wrote then: > > Generally speaking, why are conservatives so opposed to the concept of climate change? > > A combination of corporate influence on public policy and a growing anti-science sentiment among American conservatives that is fueled (perhaps simultaneously intentionally and unintentionally) by religion, media, and access to the Internet. How we wound up with this mess took decades to coalesce. > > The corporate influence is the easiest to explain. Many large industries, including the energy industry, have traditionally viewed environmental regulation negatively, as additional regulation can create additional expense for industries, particularly in the short-term. This has put most large industries on the side of the Republican party which has traditionally been a proponent of smaller government and, thus, less regulation. So corporations that view additional regulation negatively throw their financial support behind Republican candidates that will vote against environmental regulation (and other types of regulation as well). > > The Republicans typically spin this as \"More regulation = higher expenses for companies = less jobs,\" while ignoring that throughout history the shift to newer and better technologies leads to economic growth and better-paying, higher skilled jobs. I.e., yes, we may have fewer horse groomer and wheelwright jobs now than we had before we made the switch from horse & buggy to automobiles, but those losses were more than made up for by the millions of jobs in manufacturing that came with the switch. Likewise, we will lose, for example, coal miner jobs as we move away from carbon fuels, but we'll wind up with millions of new jobs in newer, greener industries. > > However, that's not much consolation to the coal mining communities of West Virginia and their elected representatives and the coal companies that support and lobby them, though. So those representatives vote against progress. > > That part is fairly simple and straightforward and has played itself out over and over in the history of American politics. Eventually, progress wins (mostly). Where it gets trickier is when religion and media get mixed into it. > > Science has always had it's religious detractors (just ask Galileo), but until the mid-20th century there wasn't a lot of *direct* conflict between religion and science in the American political theater (mostly because religion held sway). However, science really picked up steam in the 20th century and started having amazing positive impacts on people's daily lives, increasing its acceptance in society and, subsequently, knocking religious/scriptural explanations of how the world works back on its heels. > > This gave rise to a fundamentalist evangelical Christian movement in the US that has a strong anti-science bent, as much science contradicts scripture. It particularly took off in the late 70's and the 80's, but you can see elements of it back to the 50's and earlier. Organizations like The Moral Majority strengthened religious opposition on scientific and science-related issues like abortion, stem cell research, evolution, etc. to the point of things like preventing evolution from being taught in some school districts (or requiring that creationism be taught along with it). Since fundamentalist, evangelical Christians disproportionately identify as Republicans these issues became core components of the Republican platform. > > Concurrently with this, there was a growing backlash among conservatives against universities, as colleges and universities, particularly in the 1960's, were seen (not incorrectly) as having been a hotbed of liberalism that generated significant support for the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and other liberal / Democratic issues. And where does science come from? Universities. So science gets branded with the scarlet letter of Liberalism by association. That adds to conservative distrust. > > And it's in the 70's and 80's where -- at least in my opinion -- stuff starts to really get murky. You have the corporate funders of Republican candidates pushing back against environmental regulations that limit their short-term profits. You have Christian fundamentalists pushing back against particular fields of science that contradict scripture. You have mainstream Republicans pushing back against liberalism in universities, and eventually, in primary and secondary school, which influences the Christian fundamentalists and spawns the home-schooling movement and the school vouchers movement (to use public money to send kids to private religious schools). > > **This all comes together in a weird mix of growing skepticism on the right about both science and education.** I think the corporate funders *picked up on this* and started backing candidates that expressed those skeptical, anti-science views because that landed them more Republican voters, hopefully more successful Republican candidates winning seats to get them (the corporations) more representation in government ... which then supports their anti-regulation desires. > > **So somewhere in that late-20th century political realm, religious skepticism about science got in bed with corporate anti-environmental-regulation interests and that anti-regulation, anti-science combo made a powerful mix for getting Republican candidates elected.** > > Then, in the next decade, the nineties, you introduce the expanded role of media -- particularly 24/7 cable news -- and the Internet into the mix. What this does is create echo chambers, so that the population that is voting for these anti-regulation, anti-science candidates can now get all of their information exclusively from sources (e.g. Fox News Channel and conservative websites) that support and reinforce the same anti-regulation, anti-science, pro-religion positions that they hold. > > That's how we wind up with a whole political party that not only regularly ignores science and logic, but goes through all sorts of mental gymnastics to come up with alternative explanations that, though having no basis in fact, can be piped through the echo chamber to strengthen their hold on their political base. > > If you [look at the data]( URL_2 ), from the early 70's onward, except for a small bounce in the 80's under Reagan but *particularly* from the 1992 election onward, there has been a pretty continuous decline of trust in science among people who identify as conservative. (Source of that chart is [this article]( URL_0 ).) > > I used to think that Republican candidates were just in the pocket of Big Business, and took anti-science stances to keep their corporate campaign donations rolling in. But increasingly I think the Republican candidates that are getting elected now came up and were educated in the political environment of the last 40 years that I described above and _**actually** don't believe in science_ at all ... or believe it's a liberal conspiracy ... or at the least are selective in what science they are willing to believe. That's *really* chilling. > > This is a troubling position for our country to be in. The one ray of hope that I see is that, in the long-term, corporations know that they have to invest in science to continue to grow and be relevant. > > [Even Exxon Mobile and ConocoPhillips, the two largest US oil & gas companies, urged Trump not to abandon the Paris Accord]( URL_1 ). Of course, that may have just been a PR move, since they had nothing to lose at that point. But they *are* global companies and know that _they must make the shift to different energy sources **anyway**_ to continue to sell into the global economy. > > I expect that at some point in the next 5-10 years, the corporations that fund the Republicans will be well on their way to making the switch to greener energy policies to stay competitive in the global marketplace and will be driving the Republican candidates they fund *away* from those climate change-denial policies that they drove them *toward* for the last 30 years because the corporations are going to want those sweet, sweet government tax dollars to pay for their conversion to greener sources. > > That does not bode well for Republicans. Republicans benefited over the last 40-50 years from an anti-science alignment between corporate interests and the religious interests of their base. But that anti-science -- particularly climate science -- stances on the part of American corporations was inevitably destined to be temporary. As soon as the rest of the world -- *and the rest of the world's corporations* -- get on board with greener technologies, the corporations will toss the religious Conservatives to the curb quicker than you can say \"quarterly earnings report.\"",
"Science is powerful and the current, most respected \"final authority.\" It used to be the church, and that was when clergy got highly politicized as well. And with politicization comes money, with money and special interests come corruption, it picks away at the credibility of an institution. As far as climate change is concerned I don't think it's the science and objective findings that are contentious, but rather the interpretation and reaction on part of the media, which is then projected onto science itself.",
"Science is political because it affects policy. If your job is to mine coal and science says coal is bad your job is now on the line. You will vote for someone who disagrees with the science because otherwise you and your family are going hungry Also you don't always seem left leaning if you don't deny scientific findings, it just depends on which scientific findings you disagree with. The antivax movement is largely liberal mothers, disagreeing with vaccine science doesn't seem right wing at all. However the most visible science argument right now is climate change which the right is against because a large portion of their base will suffer (at least in the short term) from policies made to combat climate change. This is why you think agreeing with science makes you seem left wing: the biggest most talked about example of this scenario supports it."
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cbph3r | How is the US the richest country in the world but still has homeless people who have to defecate on the streets? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Wealth inequality and a lack of social safety nets. There's a lot of wealth in the country, but that doesn't mean everyone is wealthy. A lot of that wealth is concentrated in just a small group. So some people are still very poor, or suffer from mental illness issues that make it so they can't maintain a job or housing. There's not sufficient government or charitable capacity to help all these people, so they live in poverty.",
"Homelessness is not simply a function of poverty. There’s a common misperception that the homeless are people who simply became *too poor* and, poof, out on the street. Obviously poverty is a major factor, but so is addiction and social factors like family. The biggest one, however, is mental health. Most homeless have some sort of mental health issue, many of them have quite severe ones. Many homeless, if given a house today, would walk away from it by tomorrow because they’re not in the right state of mind. It’s tragic because it is very, very hard to help people like that if they do not have friends and family who can do so.",
"Richest three people have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population. So, overly simplified, due to wealth inequality"
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cbq1gm | How did the Egyptians find or extract yeast to use in their bread? | If you search yeast online, you'll find a ton of information about how it is used, how long ago we've been using it for, how it works etc. But there's never information of how yeast was collected, how yeast extract is made, how bakers obtain their yeast, etc. How does it work? The only answer I found was 'it comes from various fungi' but that just leads to more questions. If it is microscopic, how did Egyptians know how to collect it? How did they know that it would make their bread taste better? Does that imply that before that point, were people making bread without yeast? How do yeast manufacturers today obtain/collect/create yeast to sell to bakeries? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ooh ooh! I know this one! There is yeast everywhere! Not surprisingly yeasts that are good at digesting wheat are naturally found on wheat so you get a little Jumpstart there. However, you can cultivate wild yeast by leaving a bowl containing a slurry of flour and water exposed to open air for a few hours to collect airborne yeast then and adding more water and flour daily for a few days. This is \"sourdough\" starter. It doesnt rise as quickly or as evenly as \"active\" yeast but it develops a more interesting flavor. Once you have a sourdough starter you just keep adding flour and water to replace what you take and you can keep a starter alive forever."
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cbr4vy | Why do people "knock" (not sure what to call it) glasses when they say cheers? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I've always been told it was an old norse tradition. That by clinking mugs together strongly enough, you'd mix your drinks with everyone else's and ensure that people trying to poison you would be poisoned too. Might be wrong.",
"In the past, drinks were served all from the same vessel during parties and such. As personal hygiene became a thing people started drinking out of separate cups. Clinking the glasses together came about as an homage to the single vessel idea. Or at least that's what I've been told. I'm sure that there are many different origins to the practice.",
"In support of /u/LORDOFTHEDANCE7's answer, [this]( URL_0 ) article tells the same history of bringing the communal container back together, symbolically. It also explains 'toast' added to cheap wine to make it more palatable.",
"Doesn't the clinking of glasses provide a more complete sensory experience of a toast? People toast to high spirits, to a good time etc so the high pitched sound of glasses clinking might produce a pavlovian effect, especially with alcohol consumption and revelry to follow said clinking."
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cbw44x | How are homeless animals able to survive years living on the streets? | I watch a lot of animal rescue videos on YouTube and a lot of times they mention that the neighbors told them that the animals they’re rescuing have been living on the street for years, so if pets can’t survive alone then how do homeless animals survive years on the street? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The same way wild animals do. They hunt and scavenge for food, find and build shelter where they can, and avoid predators as much as possible.",
"Pets usually aren't well equipped to survive out in the *wild*, but loose in your neighborhood isn't exactly the feral wastes. Human settlements come with no shortage of garbage to scavenge and have few large predators roaming around, so survival isn't impossible for an animal that never learned to hunt anything except garbage bags. That's not to say it's easy though, the death rates are high from traffic collisions and illness and cats and smaller dogs are susceptible to predation from coyotes and cold temperatures.",
"They gather food, that people drop/throw away, aslong as they are canivore hunt for prey (mice, rats, birds etc.)... Either they adopt or they die.",
"What I mean is I’ve heard a lot that domestic and captive animals cannot survive on their own yet I hear about homeless dogs surviving multiple years living on the streets"
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cc0091 | How did the letter Z become associated with sleeping or snoring? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"& #x200B; \"How and when did the letter Z become to be associated with sleeping?\" First of all, zzzz (or z-z-z-z) is sound of snoring, from at least 1918. (Sometimes \"a tiny saw cutting through a log\" \\[1948\\] would be used, and both the snore and saw would make the same z-z-z-z sound.) Over time, this became associated with sleep in general, but most comic reference books (e.g. 2006's *KA-BOOM! A Dictionary of Comic Book Words, Symbols & Onomatopoeia*, 2008's *Comic books: how the industry works*) still mainly associate it with snoring.",
"Related question for non-American English speakers: Do people say they're going to catch some zeds instead of catch some z's? Or is that a particularly American idiom?",
"Thanks, I just sat here for at least a minute making horrible grunts and moans trying to figure out how to make a snoring sound that includes a 'z' sound.",
"Just asking: in the german version of the Disney comics, sleeping is indicated by \"zzzz zzzz zzz\" and snoring by \"chrrr chrrr chrr\". Is it the same disambiguation in the originals? For a German speaker this is absolutely spot on. Especially the zzz sleeping sound if you are a breathing through your teeth a little when exhaling. Also, deep sleep is indicated by capitalization in both cases."
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cc12uj | Why is there not a movement to ban junk mail that is equivalent to the movement that banned plastic straws? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Straws make up a very small portion of \"how much waste\" that is created. The reason that they're the first target of bans is because they're the easiest. Seeing at how much people freaked out over the tiniest, most trivial, \"sacrifice\", we're fucked.",
"Plastic straws are only being phased out in a few, environmentally focused, places. There in no real plan to eliminate them systematically in the US. They aren't a product, to most people, only a means to access a product without smudging ones lipstick. Junk mail, on the other hand, is a significant product. More importantly, everybody gets paid to handle it, except the end target. The Ad agency gets paid to design the mail. The Printer gets paid to print it. The Post Office gets paid to deliver it. Everybody loves it, because they are getting paid to love it.",
"My brother works for an internet security company. They go to a few big carrier networks, the guys who actually own the physical wires that makes up the internet, and pitch a sale that hey, if you buy our service, we can help you cut out all your criminal and illegitimate traffic. Their response: & #x200B; \\ > Why? & #x200B; Why? How do you answer a question that seemed self evident. After some back and forth, the networks didn't care about what was going on, they got paid for bandwidth used, so to cut down on traffic, good or bad, meant a hit to their bottom line.",
"But how will I know it's time to refinance my mortgage for the tenth time?",
"I don't know about USA but in most developed countries, you can opt out of receiving junk mail. This happened 40+ years ago, hence why it is not currently topical. I am quite surprised you are forced to receive junk mail you don't want in the \"land of the free\" to be honest. Surely you get a say in it?"
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cc7o4k | If seemingly nobody agrees with the current drinking age of alcohol being 21 in the USA, why is it still illegal and taboo? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a cultural thing. America had a strong temperance movement wich lead to the prohibition. This was later removed again but drinking was still seen as problematic by many so they made this strict age limit. If really a majority was for a reduced drinking age, and would be loud about it, it would get changed. I imagine if politicians tried to the outrage by \"protect our children\" activists would be stronger than any current movements for reducing the age (are there even any?) Same why cannabis isn't widely legalized even though experts agree that it's not more dangerous than alcohol for adults.",
"It's the same as with any unpopular but 'moral good' law: no one wants to be the person saying 'You know what we should do? Let teenagers get absolutely smashed.' It costs a lot of political capital -- the people opposed to it will hammer you *hard* -- but there's very little political gain. There will be an eighteen year old who dies of alcohol poisoning (except legally, now) and the other side will get to use that as a sign that you're not acting in the public good. For a similar story, you can look at the recent porn laws in the UK. Very few people in the UK think they're a good idea, but no politician wants to be seen as voting against 'saving the children'. Moral panic is a depressingly viable political tool.",
"I live in a country where the minimun ge you can buy beer and wine is 16 and hard alcohol 18. But If I had to guess it's because even considering all drugs that exist alcohol is still one of the most dangerous ones",
"Your premise is wrong. A [google search]( URL_0 ) reveals: 46% think 21 should remain the legal drinking age. 35% say Americans should legally be allowed to consume alcohol at age 18. 8% favor raising the permissible age to 25. 5% think 16 is more appropriate. 4% think drinking should be outlawed completely.",
"The drinking age being raised to 21 was part of a bargain that President Reagan made with Congress in 1984 to raise the drinking age across the country to a single age, where before it was up to the states to decide. Congress withheld one dollar out of every ten for building highways until a state raised its drinking age to 21. The reason for this was research that showed that people under the age of 21 had a higher chance of getting into an accident because of drinking and driving.",
"It isn't taboo - underage drinking is practically expected - it's just illegal. The thing about America's drinking law is that isn't just/really a *drinking* law - it's a drunk driving law. Which, incidentally, is also why comparisons to Europe fall flat. European countries and municipalities are much smaller, and much easier to get around without a car. In many, many parts of the U.S., and arguably for most Americans, it's impossible to move around without a car/driving; the country is too large and spread out to have viable public transportation options like subways, trains, or even just extensive busing to everyone who would need it - especially, and most importantly, systems extensive enough to function in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, taxis and even rideshares are *expensive*. I live in Los Angeles, and part of the reason I don't go out much is that even using a rideshare from my home to the edge of town would mean I'd spend a *minimum* of $40 on transportation alone, and most probably closer to $60-80. The point of this being that \"just don't drive\" isn't really a viable options for many, if not most, Americans. While drunk driving is still a problem, it is not *nearly* as much of a problem as it used to be, and that's because the biggest and most common perpetrators of drunk driving now have a much harder time accessing alcohol, and have a lot more incentive to work to hide it and be careful with it: young adults. I imagine once self-driving cars dominate the roads, it'll be much easier to lower the drinking age. **tl;dr - America's 'drinking age' is a drunk-driving law.**"
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ccrq7w | Why do hotels have beauty bars, glycerine bars, moisturizing bars, lotion bars, etc but not soap. Because it's all soap. | In the dozens of hotels and motels (in North America) I've stayed in, they never have little bars of 'soap'. It's always called some euphemism for soap. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Soap is actually a specific substance manufactured by reacting a fat with a strong base. Ancient soap was made by mixing oil or rendered pig fat with lye made by soaking ashes in water. The \"beauty bars\" and whatnot you're seeing are artificial detergents mixed with some sort of gel that gives them a texture similar to soap. (Detergents are chemicals that latch on to dirt/grease with one end of their molecule, and water with the other end, just like soap does, but they're made in a lab with a different process.) I would bet they aren't called soap because they don't meet some legal definition of the word."
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ccrrh3 | Besides wealth, what other things seperate the upper class from the other classes? | What I mean by that, from my understanding, wealth is just one part of it, they are socialized completely differently, do different things and there are certain "tells". For example, someone who wins the lottery is very different than someone born and raised upper class. Can anyone explain? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Another thing I’ve realized with some of my wealthier friends is they are blissfully unaware about very day-to-day things you’d think would be common knowledge like how to do laundry or wash the dishes because they’ve always had someone else do it for them",
"Patterns of money spending, assets that can generate more money, connections to other wealthy and powerful people, sports, how they talk... For instance, if I won the lottery, I might have a million dollars, but I would not be able to reliably earn millions more since I'm still just a painter. I don't have any friends in high places, and I still talk like I used to. Not only this, but I have no idea what to do with that million. Rich people know how to turn their money into more money, while poor people tend to have just enough money to get by and so they often do not know how to invest large sums. Meanwhile, if Bill Gates was suddenly tricked out of all of his money, he still has all of his connections to help him recover, he still has a job that pays really well, he still has investments, and he talks like a CEO who has been in the business for ages. If something bad happened to him, it would be because he spends more money than he has without realizing, and this would have to happen very soon after he lost all of his wealth since he would make it back very quickly.",
"Working knowledge of legal and money lingo and practical experience with tax shelters, boards of directors, scam artists and so on.",
"How they ended up that way. Self-made millionaires are MUCH different than those who inherited it. I've seen this many times. Self-made still penny-pinch and have a frugal streak..or otherwise they never would been self-made. I've seen people born into money piss it away and not think twice about it. They have access to more and most likely don't ponder where it comes from or how it was made."
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cct7sn | What is suggestivism (art) ? | Thank you. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's not too much info about it online, but from what I've gathered it's basically art that doesn't demand that the viewer analyzes it in any significant way. Seems like it's usually highly absurd and not focused on technique or ability, allowing the viewer to take it in as more of a spectacle or something to gawk at rather than a statement of belief. The movement is in reaction to the general tendency of contemporary art to be very political or aim to convey some high philosophical message that \"you just wouldn't get.\" Basically a movement focused on taking inconsequential ideas to full realization."
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ccvrsn | Why are main dishes in the US called “entrées” when that word literally means “appetizers” in French? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because among rich French people, entrees in the 18th century would includes roasts and and things that Americans at the time would consider main dishes. As time went on, multiple course meals became less common and the meat dish entree disappeared but because the main dish had similar food, the word entree transfered to the main dish instead. To a lot of Americans, the word had been mistaken to mean the \"meat dish\" basically and since the main dish was typically the meat dish, the term came to mean any main dish.",
"It doesn't really mean appetizer. It means the first course (which isn't the same as an appetizer) of a 5 course meal which was at one point common place for the upper class. Over time menus were shortened to reflect the demand for less courses and the extra 4 courses were pretty much done away with leaving only the a first course (entrèe) which was somewhat a combination of all the courses. So yes the word doesn't literally mean the main course a meal but it's not an appetizer either."
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cd01wv | If, hypothetically, all 500,000 people were to show up at area 51 what would the military most likely do? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"How are 500,000 people even going to get to Area 51? The world's biggest traffic jam? Drive up to the gate one at a time? Park miles away and walk through the desert? Where do they sleep? What do they eat? There's only 3 million people in Nevada, 500,000 more showing up all at once isn't a movement it is a disaster. A group of random strangers that large would never even all make it to the perimeter, much less go through it.",
"Block access on all routes in preemptively. Create no go zones with martial law. Deploy non lethal crowd control. Order everyone to disperse or face federal charges. Evacuate any sensitive materials, facial recognition on crowds, tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, deployable barriers (portable walls) drones. When it’s over, prosecute trespassing etc as a group, with a couple of cases as few high profile organizer cases to send a message.",
"These people aren’t soldiers. All the military has to do is explode a few eardrums with their sound cannons, drop some flash grenades with their vehicle mounted launch systems, or simply fire some blanks out of machine guns in the distance and everyone will run away. Maybe they drop a few bombs that make a big puff of smoke a mile ahead of them. Maybe the military will get to try out their new rifle mounted non-lethal laser guns to blind people. They’re not the police lmao. The military has some serious non-lethal crowd control tech. Pepper spray? No try machine guns that fire pepper bullets. And seriously fucking [lasers]( URL_0 ) dude! 25km away your ass is temporarily blinded. No one is getting close to a top secret military base like that. Worse case scenario, everyone is dumb enough to rush the base and they block the roads. People wander into the highly probably minefields after many warnings and explode. The public just thinks they’re idiots for running into the mines after being warned."
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cd4ted | Where do shows like Stranger Things get all the period specific items from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"often it's not actually period specific. it looks that way at a glance, but anyone who's studied the period will see all kinds of mismatches. they might use a product that had already fallen out of use or wasn't on the market yet. or they'll get a clothing style right but make it out of the wrong fabric"
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cd6820 | Modern English has many word roots in Latin and Greek, but where did the Latins and Greeks get those word roots in the first place? Did somebody just make it up out of the blue? Or did they get it from an earlier language, and if that's true, where did they get it from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Latin and Greek, like English, German, and most European and many other languages such as Farsi, Hindi and Gaelic, are all ultimately descended from something we call “proto Indo-European” - we don’t know how languages originated in the first place, but as people add new words and change the pronunciation of old words, languages turn into new languages. [Here is a cool illustration]( URL_0 ) of how some of these languages are related.",
"Most languages (with a few exceptions which we call Isolates) are part of wider group of languages which diverged in the past, but were originally very similar. So there is Proto Indo European, Old Indo Aryan.....etc. It's easier to trace the origins of written language because....it's written so something is left behind. With verbal communication it's more difficult to understand some of the history simply because there are no records. So it's educated guesses. It's likely we would never know what the \"first\" language ever was, we can just see which ones are newer/older.",
"> Modern English has many word roots in Latin and Greek, but where did the Latins and Greeks get those word roots in the first place? As it has been mentioned in other comments, those languages are rooted on some even earlier languages. > Did somebody just make it up out of the blue? Or did they get it from an earlier language, and if that's true, where did they get it from? I would like to focus on this part, since it hasn't been mentioned. Yes, someone, or, instead, some group of people, made them out of the blue. People aren't born with language \"pre-installed\" or something like that, it has to come from somewhere. Here's the deal, we still aren't sure when it began. The more we dig, the more our understanding of language increases, leading us to look in some places we hadn't thought before. For example, we're now noticing that apes closely related to humans, like chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and such, have some sort of proto-language. They have calls, grunts, shouts, hums, and more that, in a way, count as a form of language, but it doesn't have all the rules and conventions that a \"formal\" language has. Our current understanding of languages isn't enough to say \"languages begin here\", so we can't say for sure -at the moment- what's the last common language ancestor, but that won't stop of from digging more and learning more about them."
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cdk4j6 | Why are silent letters a thing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Different silent letters are there for different reasons. Some are there because they didn't used to be silent. The K in knife and knight used to be pronounced, and the gh in knight used to be pronounced like the ch in loch or the h in Ahmed. In other cases, a silent letter was deliberately added to be more like the Latin word it evolved from. The word debt comes from the French *dette*, and used to be spelled dette in English too, but we started spelling it debt because in Latin it was *debitum*.",
"Oh I know this one! Because they used to not be. I asked a Spanish teacher once why H's are silent and he explained that they weren't always silent. Take the english word \"name\" he said. It used to be pronounced \"nah-may\", but over time, we emphasized the first vowel more and more until the m sound merged with the long A and the E became silent. Some silent letters were pronounced by themselves and some changed the way letters around them sounded. But eventually the pronunciation shifted, but the spelling did not. Edit to add: and we have to keep the spelling because how a word looks signifies its root origins so we can know its meaning. (Weigh vs Way, Weight vs Wait)",
"One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is that early modern scholars were big fans of latin (this is also the origin of 'you can't end a sentence with a preposition' which was true for latin but not for english). There were several words which had changed pronunciation, where some letters stopped being pronounced. And this *was* reflected in the spelling, but the latin-fans changed them back. Off the top of my head, 'debt' was often spelled 'dette', but the b was reinserted because it was present (and pronounced) in the latin root.",
"Linguistics and the development of human language can basically be booked down to \"why waste time say lot sound when few sound do trick\"",
"In addition to all the other answers, one thing I haven't seen mentioned is that while some letters might be silent, they're not always *purposeless*. For example, if you take nearly any three letter word in English that follows the pattern consonant-vowel-consonant (which there are MANY), the vowel will be \"short\". But if you put an \"e\" on the end of that word, the \"e\" is silent but it makes the other vowel be pronounced \"long\". Examples: * sin -- > sine * car -- > care * ton -- > tone * met -- > mete * cut -- > cute",
"In addition to previous answers about letters originally being articulate or to mark etymology, one other cause is that there are more sounds in English than the Latin alphabet, so inevitably the leftover letters either have to have new letters created for them, or just use combinations of existing ones. When the language became standardized due to the printing press and education, extra letters dropped out of use. For example, you know that \"Ye Olde Shoppe\" thing you always see in things? In addition to the final silent e's which used to be pronounced, the phrase has another history hiding in there: the \"Ye\" is actually a simplification of \"Þe\" where \"Þ\" is capital thorn, the old letter used for what we now use the digraph \"th\" for. The letter \"Y\" happened to look like a capital thorn to English speakers then, so that's why it replaced it when things were getting simplified and standardized. Add one more change down the timeline, and you realize that the phrase is really \"The Olde Shoppe.\"",
"The answers below have mainly focused on English spelling. I just thought it worth pointing out other languages have “silent” letters too. For example, Hebrew has two. Apparently they are not actually silent, and the difference between them amounts to subtle differences in glottal stop. But I’m no scholar. Thrn of course there’s the confusion caused by Irish spelling, which seems to have a bunch of unnecessary letters. Some are due to similar shift in sound over time resulting in diphthongs and the like, and done are to differentiate between “broad” and “slender” consonant sounds so that the word is clear when written (even if it seems infuriating to a newcomer).",
"Changes in pronunciation. Knight used to be pronounced k-nig-it but over time pronunciation changed but the spelling did not",
"I can't remember the exact history, but it's related to a phenomenon in English called 'The Great Vowel Shift'. As previous comments have said, words were pronounced phonetically, but the accent and tonal pronunciation of England changed rapidly over the space of around 200 years - making the phonetic spellings moot. Lots of spellings haveodernised since, but the silent letters have stuck around. The weird and wonderful world of medieval linguistics Edit: whoops: 200 years, not 20",
"\"spell boscodictiasaur?\" \"Um.. B-O-S..\" \"no I'm sorry, it starts with a silent M!",
"They were often not silent in the past, but I have a compeling reason to keep them, if that's what you're asking. They help you understand the underlying meaning and etimology of words. Imagine that instead of sign, you would write sine. sounds the same, only a much more \"logical\" spelling. You would be obscuring the connection between the word sign and signature, where the g is not silent. it sometimes connects the word to it's roots, like light (who we should maybe write as lite), comes from (the same origin, possibly, as) the german licht. we don't pronounce the hard ch sound like in german, but it shows us something about the origin of this word, though. many words that are spelled with gh and have this sound are also from german, not a perfect correlation, but a perfectly good rule of thumb.",
"Though I couldn't possibly give any grammatical or etymological reason for this, I think it's cool how some seemingly extraneous and unnecessary silent letters are like \"sleeper agents\" which become \"activated\" when you add a suffix (and sometimes even a prefix). Examples: GN: sign --- signal, signature; gnostic --- agnostic GM: paradigm --- paradigmatic MB: bomb --- bombastic MN: hymn --- hymnal; damn --- damnation UI: fruit --- fruition",
"I am talking for French mostly. I am not sure if this is true for other languages. First reason is that it was not silent long time ago. They used to pronounce everything, but the spelling is evolving faster than the writing. Second reason is that the clerks or monks used to copy the books (handwriting before the invention of the printer) they were paid by the length of the writing. Thus adding many silent letters was increasing the amount of money they were making.",
"Back in the day, the letters weren't silent. Almost everything that currently is written as \"silent\" used to be pronounced way back in the day (mostly until the 1600s) & #x200B; Some key sound-changes happened, after which we ended up with less distinguishing features between words: Which / Witch Lead / Leed Die / Dye Dew / Due / Do One / Won Shoe / Shew & #x200B; These are all pronounced the same *today,* but weren't pronounced the same 300 years ago: there's a reason they're spelt differently. & #x200B; But what does this have to do with 'Silent letters'? & #x200B; Notice that the 'h' in \"Which\" isn't pronounced (in all dialects except older American and northern British), effectively making it a silent letter by itself. But it doesn't end there; & #x200B; Older English grammar used to be a mess. There were many cases for nouns based on where they were used in a sentence, and one of the most common ways these were indicated was by adding a vowel to the end. & #x200B; For example, the word 'Axe' in old English was < æx > (pronounced like modern English 'axe', but in its inflected forms in Accusative, Genitive, and Dative it added a final -e to form < æxe > . Later on, these final 'uh' sounds disappeared, as the addition of a case ending *lengthened* the vowel sound that preceded it, effectively rendering it useless in most uses. But this sound change only happened once people already had somewhat standardised spelling; people who wanted to write 'properly' added these final -e endings without actually knowing if they should be there at all, giving us the classic \"The Olde Shoppe\" and so forth. & #x200B; In the word 'Axe', those very old noun endings live on, as the silent descendants of a much more complex and colourful phase of English that is centuries dead. & #x200B; Another thing, which I'm sure you're read from other comments, is the constant strife for perfection among English purists to keep spellings etymologically sound, for example adding the 'b' into the word \"debt\" to be more like its Latin origin \"Debitum\", or an identical case of b-addition to \"doubt\". & #x200B; Then there are words like \"Pterodactyl\", wherein the word starts with a cluster < pt > which isn't naturally found in any English word, and therefore can't be pronounced natively. Much like a word can't start with a < ng > sound, a word can't start with < kn > or a < gn > in English either (anymore). This relates back to the statement earlier that sound-changes happen, and that this changes the sounds the speakers will pronounce. & #x200B; And then there's the influence of French, where the sound /h/ is inexistent. This is why the word \"herb\" is pronounced without a h, and why the pronoun \"it\" has no < h > in it; early Norman contact with the Anglo-Saxons induced a sound change to transform < hit > (it, pron.) to < it > . The Dutch word for \"it\" still retains the \"h\", giving us \"het\".",
"My addition (which I've never seen substantiated, just something I've picked up): in English, adding an 'e' to the end of a word *usually* changes the pronunciation (typically giving it the hard vowel sound). Hat, hate. Plum, plume. Past, paste. Far, fare. I know it doesn't work for every one of them, but it's a pretty common thing",
"In some cases they may seem silent, but slightly alter the phenome. My last name starts with dze, and it makes the sound of a d while your mouth is in the shape for a z. My name is weird",
"Just something to think about: Things like Shope, could just be for style or societal norms. Like Ye olde in English, vs. \"the old\" in modern English. Old is the same but the spelling is different simply because... Style? Things like Pterydactyl or Ptolemy could either be because someone just felt like it or another (older) word that it was derived or translated from had another slightly different pronunciation that required the extra letter. TL:DR there are many extremely arbitrary and often subtle reasons that are in no way functional, which is why we can still use them."
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cdl89v | How do Russian bots or "agents" work? | I understand the general concept and purpose of "Russian bots" or "Russian agents" but I do not understand how they actually function. I am pretty politically aware and absorb quite a bit of political and social commentary on twitter, and youtube. The main thing I have noticed is that regardless of the content of the video, if it is left leaning or right leaning, 70-80% of the comments are negative across all platforms. What I can't grasp is what percentage of those negative comments can be contributed to Russian bots and what percentage of it is just "the yelp effect"? I have also noticed that even though a lot of these comments follow a similar pattern, a lot of them seem to type through the lens of a culturally aware American and cannot understand how a Russian agent or a bot could operate with such nuance. So, please tell me how it works! Are there actual humans making the comments? Is it as large of a percentage as we have been lead to believe? How are the "bots" able to display such nuance in their commentary? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Here's the basic idea. 1) A programmer makes a bot. It is designed to accept an input and generate hundreds of thousands of outputs. 2) The programmer copies his bot and gives it to the various Agents who are going to use it. There might only by 8 agents, but thats 8x the outputs. 3) If the bot is really sophisticated, it will post mundane stuff, post pictures, cast votes, whatever, in order to look like a regular person. These activities are not biased or political, they are just meant to hide the fact that it is a bot. 4) An event happens. Each Agent reads about the event in the news. A couple of them decide to generate a response according to whatever it is they want to accomplish. 4) Agents then supply their copy of the bot with an input. It might be something like \"lock her up, bengazi, personal email\" and then a few original phrases that the agent writes themselves. 5) The copy of the bot generates hundreds of thousands of outputs. These are comments, likes, upvotes, shares, posts and various types of short phrases that carry the same message, but sound slightly different. They utilize accounts at social media websites that look like real people. If the agent created any new content, like a meme, then the bots might post it (or repost it) or comment on it. 6) If the bot is sophisticated, then it will use multiple accounts at the same website to talk with itself. So a bot uses Account A to post a comment, then uses Account B though Z to upvote it, then uses Account AA to comment on the comment, etc. 7) All of this activity from all these accounts looks like public interest in a topic. Social media platforms see \"This post got 1,000 likes in 5 minutes, and the OP has 1 million followers, therefore it must be good, therefore I will push it to the front page.\" This means that the comments are now being promoted by the platform itself. 8) To real-life-people who use the platform, they now have to sift through the hundred thousand outputs. The same topic keeps popping up again and again, and \"people\" keep saying the same things over and over again. This starts to brand the message on the person, gets them to think about an event in a certain way. Maybe it pisses the person off, so they make a comment. This then feeds the cycle of making the topic appear to be popular. 9) Media influencers look through various platforms. They visit the front page and trending articles. They see the topics that were pushed there, and assume the items there are popular, then they generate their own content as a response. 10) We have now forced an idea into the conversations taking place on the internet. 1 person built a program that allows 8 people to appear to be 800,000 people, who then yell at each other until real people start yelling, and then no one can tell who is real and who is a bot. 11) Add to this the fact that all social media platforms have advertising of one sort or another. Agents can supplement their bot by paying a platform to push a comment to the front page, or buy sponsored content from a media influencer, or pay for a thousand clicks on an ad box. The Agent may pay the platform to allow the agent's bots to post more content, or to get priority views, etc.",
"> What I can't grasp is what percentage of those negative comments can be contributed to Russian bots and what percentage of it is just \"the yelp effect\"? That is sort of the point, their action is attempting to motivate the behavior of others who aren't agents. They aren't easy to track down by design. > a lot of them seem to type through the lens of a culturally aware American and cannot understand how a Russian agent or a bot could operate with such nuance. Russian intelligence agents will study American culture and language in order to perform their jobs. Think about it, a spy wouldn't be very good if they couldn't speak the language and fit in with the rest of the people. > Are there actual humans making the comments? Yes, Russian intelligence agents go to a big office building every day and post comments from various puppet accounts. The automated bots are just used to produce a pool of those puppet accounts, so it isn't as obvious what is going on. They farm karma and age the account so it seems like a real person from the start. > Is it as large of a percentage as we have been lead to believe? It is hard to say. There are probably at least hundreds of people working on this sort of thing, but by its nature as secret it is hard to quantify."
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cdrc68 | Why does punctuation go inside the quotation? | While we are talking about grammar, I've always been bothered by the rule that punctuation must go in a quotation. If I'm asking a question about a quote, I feel like it makes more sense to have the question mark outside the quotation to indicate it is my question. For example: When did you say, "it comes in pints?" This makes it seem ambiguous whether the quoted person was asking or stating. It seems like it would be better quote the person including proper punctuation and use punctuation for your own purpose. Such as: When did you say, "it comes in pints!?"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"/u/Laughatme13 is correct for American rules. Commas and periods go inside the quotes. Question marks and exclamation points go either inside or outside depending on if it's relevant to the original quote, e.g. put the question mark inside if the quote is a question. Finally, colons and semicolons go outside of the quotes. I believe British English puts them all outside of the quotes unless it is integral to the quotation. As for why, sadly it's just as simple as rules must be made to keep things the same. This is what was generally agreed upon and that's it. There are some that put them outside all the time and others that do it inside all the time, but the majority (at least academically) follows these rules.",
"Only commas and periods go inside the quotation marks. All other punctuation goes outside the quotation marks unless they were part of the original quotation. At least in the American rules"
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cdtc40 | Why isn’t every book advertised as a ”best seller”? And what’s the publisher’s criteria for choosing books that will be advertised as such? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The New York Times is a news paper which publishes a list of the books that sold the most copies in the previous week. Any book that appears on this list of best selling books is a NYT Best-seller. If it appears on the first place in that list it is a #1 NYT best seller. If an author has previously written a book that appeared on that list they can put \"from the NYT best selling author\" on the cover of his other books. The New York Times actually has more than one list, splitting it up into categories like 'fiction', 'non-fiction', 'children's books' etc. So each week there are potentially dozens of best-sellers and hundreds per year. Most books that get featured prominently in book stores and are advertised a lot fall into the category. There are many other books that don't, but you won't here as much about them, because nobody wants to spend marketing money on books that won't sell very well."
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cdytf5 | why can’t Scarlett Johansson play certain characters? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Firstly, a white actor can - and has - played across ethnic lines. The outrage is based on how often that has occurred! & #x200B; The problem arises from the fact that there are lots and lots of roles for white women in hollywood, and very few or asians (or any other race), and when they exist they are bound to ethnic stereotypes or are plucky comic relief to the \"real\" main and supporting characters. So...if we had proportional representation in mainstream film of the ethnicities of viewing public then it would seem more natural to have cross-ethnicity roles, but if we give - for example - the asian role to a white women then we're not only underrepresenting asians in characters, we're taking away a role for an asian that would most naturally go to an asian. We're adding insult to injury, so to speak. & #x200B; You can think of it as \"Dammit....can't we AT LEAST give the scant few good roles portraying asians to actual asian people!\". Then maybe someday the actual amount of roles will be proportional to the population and asian characters will be as numerous and robust-in-depth as actual asian people are in the viewing audience.",
"It is bad casting. People attacking her personally shouldn't be taken seriously. As for the Ariel thing, do you not think white people have enough representation in Hollywood? It's probably why everyone celebrating the casting is overshadowing the people that are mad about it. There are enough white roles to go around. I'm white and I couldnt care less about an actor's race. As long as they do their research and play the role the way it is supposed to be played, people shouldn't complain."
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cdz0wr | Songs Translated from English - Translate Words or Meanings? | ELI5: When songs are translated from English into something like Mandarin - is it a word for word translation? How to rhymes work in translation? Hearing the Mandarin version of "Yellow" while high made me think too hard about this. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Usually the overall meaning will be kept but the words will change so they rhyme. As in 99 red balloons.",
"Most will do a combination of both. Depending on the source language and the language it’s being translated in to, there may not be an exact translation available. Sentence structure and word conjugation can also vary."
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ce31i5 | What is social mobility? | Came across this term recently. Seems like when a person, group or family has their social status changed, but not completely sure if that's accurate. Anyone know? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Social mobility in the context you're describing is the ability of a person or group to move across socioeconomic stratas. The main question is generally whether an individual can accumulate wealth and become a social elite despite not having been born into this elite class."
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ceo4ei | How did the KGB work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The KGB was a network of informants. They had their ears everywhere. & #x200B; This presented the problem. If you said something that someone thought might get them favor, they passed it on. Eventually, it would reach the ears of an actual KGB agent, who were allowed to do whatever they saw fit to eliminate dissidents."
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cetwhm | Why are gold, silver, gemstones, etc. considered valuable? | Is it just because it's pretty? Is it because it takes a substantial amount of effort to acquire, thereby making it not something the common person can get their hands on? Is it something else? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pretty much what you said. Gold and silver are also valuable in their own right as components of manufactured goods.",
"[This article]( URL_0 ) does a good job explaining it in terms of gold & silver as currency but I'll do my best to sum it up. & #x200B; First the currency part: It's basically just a long process of elimination to determine gold & silver are valuable. It's based on the periodic table. People needed some kind of naturally occurring material to be used as currency. Using a man-made material wouldn't work because the richest people would just be the people who could make the most Currency the fastest. Looking at the periodic table you can immediately disqualify a bunch of elements for obvious reasons: some are gasses, some are liquid, some are poisonous, some are radioactive, some are too reactive, and some are too hard to distinguish from one another. Eventually you get down to 49 elements that could conceivably be used as currency. However, almost all of those 49 have practical drawbacks: some are too hard to work with and/or extract from their ores and some corrode when exposed to water or oxygen (ex: iron). Filtering out again leaves you with 8 elements, called the noble metals, that could be used for currency. These elements are all metal and all rare enough to be a viable currency; something that is too common (ex: iron) would devalue the currency too much (and, as a result, is why iron is relatively inexpensive.) Turns out most of the noble metals are *too* rare. Filter out those and that leaves you with, you guessed it: silver & gold. Silver is more reactive than gold, so gold is more valuable. This is obviously not to say other noble metals aren't valuable — platinum is expensive — just that gold & silver make the most sense for currency. & #x200B; Gemstones, on the other hand, have a slightly different answer: Part of the reason they are valuable is due to the same reason as gold & silver — they're naturally occurring and rare stones. The other part of the reason is: because we decided they're valuable. Diamond is obviously useful in that it's hard and can cut pretty much anything. But for the most part, people just decided they were pretty and they've been used as status symbols and signs of wealth ever since.",
"Gold and silver are also valuable as jewelry metal because they're not very reactive at all and won't rust, as opposed to metals like iron.",
"Gold is very hard to counterfeit, because of it's very high density. It's also very stable (note gold that's sat undersea for hundreds of years is still shiny). Characteristics like those (and others) make gold a very good currency when there's no trusted authority to back something else.",
"> Is it just because it's pretty? Yes. As much as we like to think we're evolved and civilized we are just monkeys with delusions of grandeur. We like shiny stuff. > Is it because it takes a substantial amount of effort to acquire, thereby making it not something the common person can get their hands on? Also correct. Because they are uncommon or difficult to get, they are increased in value. Basic economics - hard to supply, strong demand. You've covered it pretty cleanly. While there are industrial/manufacturing uses for a lot of precious metals and gems the main reason we value them is because they are shiny and pretty."
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cewgwk | Why are there different types of police forces in the US vs just one type of police? | For example where I live in California we have - California Highway Patrol - Sacramento Police Department - Yolo & amp; Sacramento County Sheriffs Departments - California Department of fish and game - Park Rangers - Bart (lightrail) Police Why have all these different agencies dedicated to different aspects of law enforcement vs having just one agency with departments focusing on different types of law but being knowledgeable and able to enforce *all* laws.? This might even cut down on the state and cities having to fund multiple agencies vs just the one. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Law is complicated. Being knowledgeable about all law is impossible, and more specialized topics like fish and game law is not something you want your run of the mill officers worrying about. Specialized agencies can do their particular job better, so you save by having a more effective force. Training, equipment, priorities, etc will all vary, and ultimately you'd wind up with different departments within the agency. That's not so different from having separate agencies; and from there it's really a matter of how you want to organize things for administration."
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cf7bdb | Why does English have different suffixes for languages (-ese, -ish, -an)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The \"true\" English demonym suffix is -ish, e.g. Spanish, Turkish, Welsh, Swedish. However sometime in the last few centuries English speakers stopped applying that suffix, and instead started borrowing existing demonyms from other languages, mostly French.",
"[\"English is a Germanic language, its native suffix for nationality is -ish, which accounts for the names of nearby nationalities. But before English had gone global and applied its suffix to other nationalities, it was influenced by Latin and French. The default suffix of nationality used in the language was replaced by the Latinate -ian/-ean/-an, so more recently coined nationalities made use of them instead. Later, the contact between Italy and the Far East, together with the European colonization of Africa and South America, brought in some nationalities ending in -ese. Then, Islamic countries near the Middle East retained their Arabic -i when their names entered English. Lastly, a few places that end in -land or Island make use of the suffixes -er/-ic.\"]( URL_0 )"
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cfapss | - why is the typical USA work week 5 days on and two days of rest? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It used to be 6 days a week (Sundays were for Church). The advent of labor unions were able to change labor rules to be 40 hours per week as the standard, and adding Saturday to the weekend. Labor unions became a thing during the Industrial Revolution (which got big in the mid 19th century).",
"I heard in a documentary that Ford led the big push for the 2 day weekend, incorporating what was traditionally the Jewish day of rest to encourage more people to travel and use vehicles. & #x200B; I think its mentioned about half way through: [ URL_0 ]( URL_1 )"
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cfgbnz | What is the legality around a TV film crew filming illegal activities? Like filming heroin production and smuggling across country borders. Or addicts buying and using meth? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"22 years in TV news (US). When seriously working on a journalism assignment, this not necessarily illegal. But, as a journalist, one cannot actively assist or enable the illegal activity. It’s important to act as an observer only. Also, if someone’s life may be in danger, ethics may require you to notify authorities as this exceeds the journalistic value of the story. There is A LOT more to this discussion with many, many exceptions, situations or levels of illegality that nullify my basic assertion. But, for journalists and documentarians, there are many situations and examples where recording of illegal activity is not considered illegal."
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cfiueq | Why do TV shows and movies have opening credits if the credits are shown at the end? | Like why do TV shows have music playing in the background while they list all the opening credits when the credits play at the end anyways? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Opening credits are advertising, both for the major companies producing it and for the movie or show itself. It's part of the 'star system' where big names are promoted, and used to promote future works. End credits are more about documenting the rest of the cast and crew.",
"Back in the day, it was a stipulation of the Director’s Guild that you had titles at the start. Don’t know the reasoning though. AFAIK this George Lucas did not join the Guild in order that he could start Star Wars the way it does: straight to plot.",
"The expectation is that most people don't watch the end credits. So to advertise themselves the actors, directors, producers, and studios want their names in the opening sequence. Contracts with the actors and directors guilds ensure that if anyone's name is included in the opening credits, all the significant people are. Of course a movie doesn't have to included opening credits so they can adhere to artistic vision, but studios and production companies generally insist on have their ad in there since they carry most of the work and risk of any project. George Lucas got into trouble with the prequels because he directed them and his production company is named Lucasarts"
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cfjpc7 | How can Nations build an empire when they're population is dwarfed by the those who they wish to conquer? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most people don’t actively resist conquerors. It’s only the armed forces that you need to beat. What’s a mere farmer going to do? Raise a sickle and get shot? Even if they massed up into multiple revolutions they won’t be organised and can be picked apart one by one.",
"Advanced technology and better training allows for smaller militaries to overpower much larger ones. Then, once the power struggle settles, most people will fall in line easily as long as they aren't actively mistreated.",
"The British were able to play \"divide and rule\" very well in India, which was and still is a wide collection of different ethnicities and linguistic groups. URL_0 The railway network they built also made transporting troops to put down any revolts much easier.",
"Most empires throughout history have been rather decentralized powers, in the absence of the swift telecommunications we have today. The central government simply couldn't make all decisions for all areas of their empire, so local affairs weren't really their concern. It wasn't uncommon for the invaders to plant someone the people liked into a local governing position, which made ruling those people easier and the people less suspicious of the new regime. Moreover, most people simply didn't care all that much. The farmers for example lived their lives on the farm. They didn't have a sense for the greater picture of world affairs and even if they did they probably wouldn't have cared. As far as they're concerned, nothing really changed except who they paid their taxes to, because nothing really changed on the plot of land that was their life.",
"In history, the most organized ones always one, even if they were outnumbered by unorganized soldiers. For example, Russian nobles ruled Russia for centuries even though they were significantly less than Russian folks because they were more organized than people. Then, the Russian revolution comes and overthrows the tsar government because revolutionaries were more organized than the aristocracy. The small group who knows how to cooperate quickly will always win in front of a bigger unorganized group.",
"I am going to give example of Subcontinent(India Bangladesh Pakistan) here.Majority of it was ruled by Mughals.Their decline led to local Rajas/Kings having more autonomy and most of the the time their own armies.This divided Subcontinent even more(Hindu ruler on Muslim majority population and Vice-versa).So using divide and rule was really easy.If a raja resisted they would simply bribe his general that if they win they would replace Raja with him.Technology played a role.But where local armies could have resisted defectors destroyed supplies ,added water to gun powder, stationed best corps to guard cattle.All of this happened because of ethinic divisions and infighting over everything.For more learning read about Robert Clive,Tipu sultan ,East India company"
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cfuon1 | How do paintings get their value? For instance a Picasso painting may be worth 1M. How is artwork value measured? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s demand. If enough of the right people want it, it’s priceless. If no one wants it, it’s worthless",
"I may be a bit cynical, but I think the demand has a lot to do with a form of money laundering. Art and real estate are things that can be difficult to value and can therefore facilitate large financial exchanges.",
"It is valued by the rule of supply and demand. The amount of people that are willing to pay x gets smaller and smaller as the price goes up, until there is only one person willing to pay a price, then that is the art’s value.",
"For a painting that is being sold, it's worth whatever someone is willing to pay. For a painting that is being appraised, the appraisers will look at the condition and recently sold comparable paintings based on the painter, style, subject matter, medium, rarity, size, etc. It's similar to how a real estate agent appraises a house that is one of a kind but had some comparable features. So, if you have an original Picasso sketch and another Picasso sketch of similar size and what just sold for $1M, your sketch might be appraised around $1M."
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cfwg6p | Why are people in medieval paintings often depicted with tilted heads? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Medieval European art developed directly from late Byzantine art, which was mostly religious in nature. In early Christian art, the people’s faces were always depicted as being turned attentively to God, the heavens, etc. to illustrate that their attention was on holy things, while their bodies were doing something else, meant to help identify who they were or what their station in life was. In combination, you often got strange or unnatural postures as a result. In addition, the artistic style was generally relatively primitive and non-realistic compared to modern tastes, so subtleties like depicting proper head posture while letting the eyes indicate the focus of a persons attention were more difficult to achieve."
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cfwumf | Why do places with hot climates like spicy hot foods more. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"capsaicin, the chemical that makes things spicy, acts as a preservative. One thing to note is that a lot of areas that have a lot of spicy food are not only hot, but humid as well. This is the perfect breading ground for bacteria so food doesn't really keep well on it's own.",
"I've heard it is because in hot climates food spoils more quickly, so they'd use spices to make the spoiled food more edible. In reality it is probably because most spices grow more easily in hotter climates.",
"And I thought it is because when you eat spicy you sweats more. This means more water on the skin which condensate and takes more heat from the body and you cool down"
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cg59by | Do religious parties change their stance on drugs such as cannabis when they become legalized substances? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"No, not unless they try to conform with societies modern standards and expectation. This doesn’t mean the religion itself is accepting of these decisions made by religious parties."
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cg6l5q | Why has television historically been seen as "bad" for you, while other superficially similar things (notably film) are not? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Tv is something you can turn on and sit in front of for hours on end. You could be doing more proactive things if it weren’t for tv. Film is different because in those days it was a special occasion to see a movie. You had to go to a theater and pay to see a movie so it wasn’t an everyday occasion. Nowadays they say the same thing about video games for the same reason."
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cg7ext | How did early humans ever come up with translations to words such as "the", "a" , "an" , etc? | Person K can point at an apple and says language K's name for apple, and person L points and says language L's for apple. But how do each end up coming with translations for stuff that doesn't exist, but needed grammatically. In this example, "an apple" would only translate apple, not an, if they just pointed and blurted out its name. However, in various languages, you see the term "an" apple when written as a sentence. & #x200B; Words like "the", "a", "those", etc---how did they get translated way back when people first began to travel and discover other languages/countries? & #x200B; Note: I remember learning there's a name for terms such as "an, the, ..." but I completely forgot. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Let's imagine a hypothetical situation in which you speak one language, and I speak another. I want to show you an apple. I say: \"This is an apple.\" Except you hear nonsense. So I point at the apple, and say \"Apple.\" You know what food and fruit looks like, so you know it might be edible, before I even tell you. So you're not *sure* if I'm saying you should eat it, if that's what it's called, or if I'm naming a quality about it. So I pull out an orange, and say \"Orange.\" Now, you're fairly sure I'm naming it. I point at the apple and say \"Apple.\" You're certain I'm naming it. You point to the apple and say \"Ukoja,\" and I know what you mean because we've figured out what we're doing. You point at the orange and say \"Alenus,\" and again I know that's your word for an orange. We go through this for a while, but over time we need more complex concepts. Eventually, you have an apple and I have an apple, and we have a rough system. You know the words for trees, and grass, and maybe rain and snow. You probably know my name, and words for common tools. I know your words, too, since we've shared them equally. At some point, you pick up my journal, and you start rifling through it. I get angry, and I say \"My journal,\" but you don't understand. What is \"My\" and what does it mean? So I pick a word you already know, like \"Shirt\", and point at your shirt and say \"Your shirt\". I point at my shirt and say \"My shirt.\" We go through this a few times with different objects in slightly different contexts, like \"Your food\" and \"My food\" but you begin to understand that \"my\" and \"your\" are possessive terms. What happens when I want to say *the* apple? *An* apple? *Those* apples? Well... it sounds crazy, but \"the\" apple isn't that complex in theory. It's harder to explain in one sitting, but it's not impossible to explain over all. Let's say I put three apples on a table. I point to one apple and say \"apple important, apple *the* apple, because we talk about apple.\" Then I point to another apple and say \"apple not important, apple *an* apple, because we not talk about apple\". It would take a few variations on that, but eventually you might begin to understand that \"the\" means the one I'm talking about or the one we've been interested in, it's the subject of my point. You'll probably figure out that \"an\" mean just one random object like what we're talking about but not the one we are talking about. Those might be interesting, and that might be interesting as well. Still, not too hard. Let's say that I set up three baskets of apples. I point to one basket and say \"get those apples\", so you go grab the apples. You're not sure what \"those\" means, but you know \"apples\" is plural. What if I said \"those\" and made a circle around the ones I pointed at, and then said \"not those\" while pointing at different apples. Do you think you might figure out, over time, that I'm referring to specific apples? That apple would be similar. I'd point an a specific apple and say \"that apple\". Now, in practice, the above would take months or years to truly translate over time, and easily a decade or more to truly understand all the minor nuances of a language. The point was to illustrate the cognitive adaptations as we begin to see how things work, even if on a much smaller scale.",
"Articles. The concept is not as weird as you make it sound. “This” apple is not very hard to distinguish from “that” apple. Same with “my” apple vs. “your” apple."
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cga9zi | How did the tip culture in America become so prominent + the unwritten rules for tipping. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the mid-1800s Americans discovered tipping habits in Europe and brought them back to America. Shortly thereafter Europe ended their tipping tradition but it was just picking up steam in America. It may have died out after a couple decades if nothing drastic had changed (because tipping was seen as elitist and was outlawed in a few places because of that), but in 1870 the slaves were freed by the 15th Amendment (of the U.S. Constitution). Slaves now were free and they needed jobs that didn’t require much education. They got jobs as waiters, servants, barbers, railroad porters, etc. These were pretty much the only occupations available to them. Employers found that it was more profitable to literally not pay former slaves anything ($0) and simply required customers to leave a small tip after the former slaves performed their service. Eventually race relations in the U.S. evolved but tipping laws never did. In 1938 Congress finally passed a law requiring employer wages and tips to add up to an hourly minimum wage. So if you only earned $1 in tips and minimum wage was $3 an hour, your employer would have to pay a tipped worker the other $2. This is still the law today."
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cgbubp | How do songs/poems get translated into a different language? | How can a poem be translated into a different language and still keep the same beat? Does it still rhyme? How can a poem even have the same meaning if all the words have been slightly changed? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So, there are (in general) two ways to translate structured language (i.e poems and songs) a ) You can change the meter, but preserve the wording. b ) You can change the wording, but preserve the meter. If you just translate it as directly as you can then no. the beat, rhythm and rhyme will change. If you try to preserve the meter you're going to have to change what words you use, find equivalent words that rhyme, have similar beat lengths, and convey *similar* meaning. A poem can easily have the same meaning if all the words have been changed (imagine replacing all the words with synonyms), but it's the job of a very skilled translator to do this well over the course of an entire poem. You're going to loose some of the nuance, and the meaning might slightly be altered, but a skilled translator knows what meaning was being conveyed and can try and craft a new poem with *similar enough* meaning that it passes general interpretation. You're probably never going to get an exact 1:1 translation of meaning simply because languages are different and convey different meanings under different cultural contexts: but you can get pretty close if you're good at your job."
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cgdj82 | What is the purpose of the raised and lowered numbers of some fonts? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The different normal and lowered “Old style” numbers are for readability. In lists, like phone books, menus, accounting etc. it is much easier to read and follow lines if all numbers are on the baseline and have the same height. But if you’re reading a book with a normal serif font that has glyphs that goes above x-height and below the baseline, some full height numerals look jarring. In this case, you can use the old style numerals and keep the flow.",
"If you are speaking of subscript₁ and superscript^(2) they are used for various notations, such as powers in math or for subscript the number of atoms in chemistry."
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cgias7 | When using sign language - is there a way to indicate you are just making a gesture as opposed to signing? Or is it just obvious? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Quick note for those who may not know: there is not one sign language. Most countries have their own sign languages (ASL - American Sign Language; BSL - British Sign Language; Auslan - Australian Sign Language; Chinese Sign Language, etc.). This is because sign languages developed naturally over time, just like spoken sign language, and they are different for all of the reasons that no one uses a universal spoken language. There are two ways to kind of think of gestures in sign languages. One way is to consider that gestures have their own \"meanings\" that are not a part of language, and are used by everyone, whether you're hearing or not. For instance, when you point at something, that conveys *something*. Usually it means \"look this direction\" or \"I'm indicating this thing\". But it's not grammatical. There's no sentence, there's no formal structure or meaning, and although pretty much everyone knows what you're trying to convey, it can convey a lot of things. So a gesture \"in sign language\" is still just a gesture, and it conveys whatever meaning it has in the culture that's using it. Another good example would be the middle finger in America. A lot of people say that the middle finger is a sign, but it isn't (in ASL). It's a gesture. It doesn't \"mean\" anything in sign other than that you've given someone the middle finger. That gesture certainly has meaning within the culture of America, and you can roughly translate that to \"fuck you\" or something, but it still doesn't *mean* that. It doesn't *mean* anything except that you're giving someone the middle finger, with all of the connotations attached to that. Incidentally, ASL *does* have signs both for \"FUCK YOU\" as in \"to have sex with\", like \"[I want to] fuck you\" or \"[I] fuck[ed a coconut]\"; and, \"FUCK-YOU\" as in, well, yelling \"Fuck you!\" to someone - which obviously doesn't mean you want to have sex with them, you just want to express that you are upset with them. Alternatively, if you want to consider random gestures that aren't associated with anything, you can kind of think of them like random noises people make that aren't words. Consider \"meh\" which isn't a word but still carries some meaning. Or laughing, which isn't a word but still indicates that you are amused. ASL does kind of have a sign for laughing, which is essentially spelling H-A-H-A... rapidly. (It's hard to explain but easy to show, go figure.) But signing \"H-A-H-A\" is kind of like *saying* \"Haha\" which isn't the same as laughing. The point is, users of various sign languages understand the difference between a gesture and a sign in the same way that a hearing person understands the difference between a word and a noise. One is a commonly accepted part of the language, which follows its grammar and is known among users of that language as a word or sign. The other is not a part of the language - although it might convey some meaning in the context of the culture around it, it doesn't follow the grammatical rules of the language, and people don't think it's a word or sign or use it like one. You can even just make up signs, just like you can make up words. If it follows the rules and acts like a sign, someone using a sign language would take it for an unfamiliar sign but it would still otherwise be nonsense.",
"As you said. It is obvious. Its much like if someone who actually speaks saying one or two words that dont relate to something. You wouldnt assume they are actually trying to form a sentence ."
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cgrsru | Why many people in poor places prefer to have male babies? | The advantages of making a man are probably more chances of the man geting a better paid job. But chances are against him, and it will requiere effort and probably money to educate the man, and he will have to compete with many men. The advantages of making a woman is that being a woman she won't have problems reproducing, specially when there are even less women than usually. And asuming an undeveloped place with "traditional roles", the woman won't need much education. Are they thinking in earning money from them by making male babies? It looks more "natural" making sure that your children have children? (Not talking in a logical way, I'm talking about biology and insctints). There is probably something wrong un what I said, but I don't know what. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not to do with biology, it's to do with culture. & #x200B; In many more traditional societies, the wife goes and lives with the husband's family once they get married and in most cases becomes a de-facto servant of the husband and his family. The wife takes care not just of her own children, but of her husband's parents as well as they age. In some societies (eg: most of India) there is the expectation that the bride's family will also pay a large dowry to the husband and his family. & #x200B; So if you have a male child, your family retains the earning power of the son within the family unit, reasonably expects to gain additional unpaid labour in the form of a wife, and possibly stands to acquire capital in the form of a dowry. & #x200B; Whereas if you have a daughter, all your investment will be lost to the family once she marries. If you are very poor this is likely to be a cost you cannot bear. & #x200B; This not only explains the gender imbalance in much of the developing world, but also why women have much lower status, education and life outcomes than men do. & #x200B; I hope this helped :)",
"It depends on the tradition, in poorer families males can do jobs that are akin to manual labour i.e that which does not require much education. When they get married of to a woman, (this is the tradition bit) the family on the woman's side has to give a certain amount of money to the groom's family as a gift for accepting their daughter. This is old custom and is being eradicated quickly across the world"
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cgt8x5 | Sex workers in modern times have acces to many forms of birth control. It is also a well know fact that sex work is one of the oldest professions in the world. How did people prevent pregnancy before the invention of modern birth control methods? Was birth control even used? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are plants that can induce abortion/miscarriage; a woman could consume those. There were also medicines/mixtures/potions (whatever you want to call them) that would have the same affect. They couldn’t really ‘prevent’ it beyond not having sex when they were fertile; but they could end a pregnancy",
"London prostitutes back in the day used copper tuppence inserted in vagina to kill sperm, as copper is pretty effective spermicidal.",
"One of the oldest forms of birth control is nursing, some women would nurse not just their own babies, but other people’s Some ancient women used paste made of acidic or anti microbial things (crocodile dung, fruit juice, honey, acacia ) to put in their vagina before sex. Lemon soaked sponges are mentioned as birth control in the Talmud Ancient Egyptian women used animal dung to make a flexible disc called a “pessary” to block sperm from the cervix. Lysol as douche was common (and awful) not very long ago",
"While there were methods of birth control sometimes they just ended up \"throwing them away\". Just think of examples of babies being left in monasteries/temples and such. I think there was an example of a Roman brothel/bathouse where it turned out there was a pit round the back that was just full of baby [bones.]( URL_0 )",
"Didn't people use the intestines of certain animals as birth control? Or am I remembering that from a novel?",
"It’s also worth noting that in Ancient Rome, babies weren’t considered people until they were about a month old, that’s why there’s so many myths and stories about babies being left in the mountains, because if you had a kid you didn’t want you just threw it away."
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cgu8jx | Why are animal sounds different in different languages? How did their spellings originate? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Different languages use different sets of sounds, and different ways of stringing sounds together, to make words. For example, the way an American would say the 'r' in \"red\" doesn't exist that way in Japanese. Another example, the way a Francophone would say the 'r' in \"rouge\" doesn't exist in English. The sounds that things make, such as animals, are described differently based on the sounds of the language being used. We think cats say \"meow\" because that makes sense by the standards of English. Japanese people think cats say \"nyan\" because that makes more sense when you're working from Japanese sounds. Nyan doesn't make as much sense in English, and meow doesn't make as much sense in Japanese.",
"My Hungarian father in law argues with me that ducks say mack and not quack. This comes up often.",
"in case you're interested: the russian word for meow is also meow, while for woof it's \"gahv\". chirp is chirik, ribbit is kvak, quack is kryak... moo is moo.",
"I think we associate the sound as it was when we grew up because that’s what we were told. “Arf arf!” Or “ruff ruff” both sound good to me but when I think about it “wan wan” works too. When I first heard that I was like hell no a dog doesn’t sound like that but now I hear it. I think it’s like those videos where it’s like “I hear this person saying all ten of these phrases” and you can hear it too if you’re told that’s what they’re saying."
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ch69sn | Why Does English Have So Many Strange And Varied Collective Nouns For Animals? | It just seems like itd make more sense to have one simple word for all or at least a handful. School for fish. Flock for all birds. Herd for mammals? But no a group of cheetahs is called a coalition? A group of ferrets is a business? These just seem like jokes and considering most of us have never used or heard of them they seem pointless. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> These just seem like jokes Pretty much, yes. [Terms of venery]( URL_0 ) are essentially an in-joke from the 1400s that happened to get written down. Some modern English speakers like them, most don't know about them.",
"There is no real point to it, it is as much a celebration of the sheer variety of the English language as anything else."
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ch9qm4 | Why doesn’t Wikipedia just run enough ads to keep the site running. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is inevitable for a business to have to grant some control to those that finance their operations - it becomes the source of your salary, that budget your sitting on that lets you get a raise, or give a raise, that plan for the new office, of for Friday donuts....all depends on money. If you create a channel of money it's _going to have influence_ and I admire Wikipedia to shutting of one that would be ripe for _problematic_ influence. The needs and wants of a corporate sponsor via ads are different than the users themselves.",
"At this point it is a matter of reputation. If they ran ads now after so many claims of never using ads, and so many customers knowing they have an ad free information source, it would look hypocritical and reduce its users."
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chfp1c | Why was it custom for men and children to wear suits, ties and other smart clothing during the 1900's? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That was just the style back then. You always had to look your best when going out in public. Edit: I had a neighbor years ago who was born in the 1910s, I believe and he'd put on a suit, tie and hat to go to the mailbox.",
"That’s what they had. Like an earlier poster said, knit fabrics were not yet being produced on an industrial scale, zippers weren’t invented yet and elastic was far less common. So the suits that seem like a “smart” option today are really just the hoodie and sweats of yesteryear. Even a tie was less formal and more just practical— think of it as being just a narrow scarf to hold your collar shut. And about hats: Sometimes I wonder if we’ve really become more practical, or just traded on trouble for another. I’m a woman so i sometimes think... well, back in those ol’ days, I wouldn’t have had to worry as much about my hair because I’d be wearing a hat (ladies were never required to remove their hats—indeed they were often pinned into the hair). We wouldn’t have to worry about our manicure, because we’d be wearing gloves. We wouldn’t have to shave our legs, because stockings. No need to worry about body shape because corsets shaped you. Clothes might have been uncomfortable back then, but at least you didn’t beat yourself up over bod maintenance."
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chl6ns | How did languages get formally translated long ago? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> how did people learn two or more languages without growing up around the respective native speakers? Typically they or their parents hired a tutor. Those that couldn't afford to hire a tutor and didn't grow up around the native speakers of multiple languages typically didn't learn multiple languages, with the exception of theologians and academics who would often learn a second language as part of their education."
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chtxf8 | Explain fads, why do things that seem great to us now, eventually seem so terrible? Like mullets or 1970s wallpaper. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Style, fashion, design is all pretty cyclical. So we are reminded of days passed where all was great and good. Of course, after a while, we realise that the memory was better than the actual experience and we see truths ugly face. The mullet or ‘Satan’s new did’ is perhaps the exception that confirms the above statement.",
"Fashion is liking what is new and different because it is new and different. The idea is to show you are 'with it' and special. Whereas style is to look good and rarely changes like a tuxedo or a little black dress. So fashion almost by definition cannot look very good or else it would be style and not change, when the goal of fashion is to change",
"Also keep in mind that fad fashions are waaay overplayed by movies. Every person didn’t go around in bell bottoms, most people didn’t. Same with mohawks (more common now than they used to be), mullets, etc. When a movie wants to say “80’s” every person in the scene will have be adorned with at least one iconic fad from the time period... it’s too exaggerated. Stranger things does a decent job of capturing the 80’s vibe for decor and fashion. Fads and trends are different. Fads to me are the more extreme attention seeking fashion styles. Examples today might be pants hanging down around one’s ankles, beats headphones worn always or more recently airbuds headphones worn everywhere. Whereas to me, a fashion trend is more universal. This is most noticeable to me with glasses styles. People in the 80’s really did tend to commonly have obnoxiously huge lenses and giant frames, vs. the generally much more subtle styling of frames and lenses today. You see trends in buildings also. The popcorn ceilings vs. textured. Flattened textured walls vs. the older more wavy/bumpy style. A return to tile / hardwood (or simulated hardwood) vs. linoleum flooring. Things like the wall paper, and general aesthetic (when looking in a room and immediately just knowing, yup, 70’s”) are more from trends that overall define a time period visually. Often it wasn’t a specific choice, it was driven by manufacturers. The wall paper looked that way because that was what was available commonly on the market, same with the glasses frames. It wasn’t so much that people truly loved that distinctive carpet style... it’s just what was in the store, and what people bought."
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chytwt | Why are names like Aaron and Aaliyah spelled with 2 A’s? How does that double A affect the pronunciation? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Traditionally Aaron is pronounced 'air-on'. It derives from the Hebrew 'Aharon'. Thus, the double a is from the loss of the 'breathy' second a. 'Aaliyah' is spelt with two as presumably to show the long a sound in the Arabic original.",
"Many names or words with double letters or silent letters are just artifacts of a time when we either did pronounce the letters (knight was keh-nixt or keh-nicht, light was lixt), or have dropped letters from the word that used to be pronounced (plough became plow, but used to be pronounced like plug). There are a ton of other reasons that a silent letter might pop up; letters that were **added for really no good reason** (the \"u\" in neighbour/honour in UK spelling), **to clarify an origin or meaning** (the s in isle was added to look like the Latin insula, and then later put in island for the same reason), **consonant clusters might just be pronounced differently in your region so they appear silent** (azma instead of asthma, or Chrissmus instead of Christmas) , **a letter may exist just to show it's a version of another word** (the n in damn reflects it's actually the shortened damnation, the g in phlegm reflects phlegmatic), and some other reasons as well."
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chzsa4 | Why are most of the houses in US constructed of wood compared to other countries where it's concrete structure? ( Just talking about single homes and not buildings) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The U.S. is heavily forested and has Canada (another forested country) as a neighbor. Wood is cheap, abundant, and can easily be molded/shaped. However, you do get more concrete structures in certain areas like hurricane/tornado zones. Edit: It's also cheaper to repair, replace, and build on to.",
"In the UK almost no houses are built of concrete, ours are built of brick or stone. Just after the end of WWII a lot of buildings were pre-fabricated concrete but they have since had the concrete removed in favour of brick (in my area anyway)"
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ci0zii | How are the classical dances in plays like the Nutcracker recorded/written down? | I’ve recently started watching bits and pieces of classical ballets and was wondering how the dance moves are written down? For example, in classical music, the music is written on a music sheet and so if you want to play music from the nutcracker, you can just find nutcracker sheet music. But what about ballets? Is there’s a system to record the dances so that you can teach it accurately next year? Or is it by word of mouth, like your teacher learns it by being taught by someone who knows it, and then teaches you? Then how do you know if it’s consistent? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a dance equivalent of musical notation. It's called dance notation. See [ URL_1 ]( URL_0 ) for details.",
"They just made a little flipbook with crudely drawn stick figures which gets passed down throughout the ages.",
"It helps to that in the country of origin (nutcracker for instance, Russian) that the Ballet is preformed often by the same dance company annually. So while parts of it are written down. It is simply passed from one generation to the next by the performing of it.",
"Word of mouth, oral history, was used in the past, before the invention of writing. But since then, pretty much everything can be recorded in written form. So, yes, people develop scripts, and notations, even drawings, to document whatever they want to transmit to others. Take for example a movie. Somebody writes a script and somebody makes a storyboard with scenes. Then the movie is made. If the original movie is lost, but you still have the script and the storyboard, you could in theory recreate the movie.",
"There’s a system of notation called [Bennish Notation]( URL_0 ) but I’m not sure if it’s widely used, from my understanding it was a relatively new creation compared to the age of ballet. For the most part people just learned the choreography from each other. I have a very old school teacher and he emphasizes that every dancer should learn the choreography for every role in the ballet, even if they don’t preform it, because it’s just good practice to know all the choreography. You can also write down dance fairly descriptively in language, and some historical dances follow the same rhythm pattern, so it’s possible to combine the written dance steps with what you know about the rhythm to figure out how the dance fits in the music."
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cifeeq | What is the difference between state and province ? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A federated state and a province are interchangeable terms. They have more specific names in some places, e.g. oblasts, emirates, etc. In much of the world the term state is usually used to refer to sovereign states unless directly talking about the US.",
"There isn't really a set answer. Every country gives different levels of power to its lower governments. You can't compare Canadian provinces to US States any better than you can compare them to Dutch provinces."
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ciiyah | How do we believe famous actors are the role they are playing when we are familiar with them outside the role? Why doesn’t our brain identify them as the actor instead of the role they are playing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That's the difference between an actor and a movie star. An actor disappears in a role while a movie star Is just themselves. Daniel day Lewis and Gary oldman are actors, they dont want you seeing them. Dwayne Johnson is just The Rock in all his movies, that's what he wants you to see",
"So you know how, when your brain sees a squiggly number that looks like a backwards curvy E, you imagine a number that is one more than the number of hands you have? Sometimes, if you look at a cow, you may perhaps have a thought about steak, or milk? Turns out the human brain is *exceptionally* good at symbolic thought. A squiggly line doesn’t mean anything. But to our brains it represents the number “three.” Cows are animals, but can also represent things that come from said animal, like meat or milk. So when you see a famous actor on screen in a role, your brain understands right away that the actor is a *symbol* for the character that they’re portraying. So if your brain sees the squiggly line, it automatically makes the connection that the squiggly line symbol stands in for “three” and your brain reads it as “three” even though it’s just a black ink mark on paper or a screen. In much the same way, if you see Robert Downey Jr. on a screen, your brain makes the connection that he is a *symbol* and that that symbol should be interpreted as “Iron Man” within the context of the movie you’re watching. And the opposite is true; your brain is also smart enough to realize that he’s not *always* a symbol that just means “Iron Man,” and that symbol is only relevant in specific contexts. Which is why when you watch Iron Man, you’re following along with the adventures of Tony Stark, and when you watch a different RDJ movie you’re following along with whoever that character is.",
"It's called suspension of disbelief. You wanna enjoy the movie, so you set aside the fact that you know it's fake in order to have a good time. It's the same with superhero movies and stuff. We all know Chris Hemsworth can't call lightning from the sky, but how lame would it be to sit there and think about that while he's laying about with his hammer and all that."
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cikuy6 | Why is the language of the Netherlands called "Dutch" and German not called "Dutch" since that is an Anglicization of "Deutsch", the German word for the German language? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The word deutsch (and dutch) originaly included both Dutch and german and the differences between german dialects were comparable to the difference between Dutch and german back then. Since England had more trade and contact with the Netherlands and flanders these were the Dutch they knew. When the german language started unifying they called that language (and eventually the country) by another name.",
"Originally Belgium, the Netherlands, and large parts of modern Germany formed a single realm. The common language was Dietsch. Later on, the people occupying the lands of the modern Netherlands + Belgium and modern Germany started forming two more independent communities and languages. These languages were Neder-Dietsch (the Netherlands and Belgium) and Hoch-Dietsch (Germany). Actual Dutch and German only really started to develop a few decades before Shakespeare’s birth, so for the English people, those of both Dutch and German descent were known to speak Dutch (Dietsch). Since England has always had better relationships with the Belgian and Dutch people, it makes sense that they would keep on calling the Dietsch (and later languages) of the Netherlands and Belgium Dutch."
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cizd3u | How do people know the names of uncontacted tribes if they’re uncontacted/speak a language foreign to most people? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lots of ways: 1. uncontacted tribes often know of the outer world, and people leave. 2. uncontacted tribes are often known to other tribes. 3. names are assigned by the discoverer, not the tribe themselves. 4. they are sometimes not truly uncontacted - e.g. past generations did make contact, but then they are left alone.",
"They're just given one. Usually by the person/group who found that they existed to begin with"
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cj5nri | Why do some believe that the world population will top out at nine billion and decline from there? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Earth is a limited system in terms of natural resource production. According to [Harvard sociobiologist Charles Wilson]( URL_0 ), the upper limit of food production assuming everyone is vegetarian and nearly all grain grown is used to feed humans is something like 10 billion people. Since both conditions seem unlikely, it is probable that the upper limit on food, at least, is actually quite a bit lower. Throw in other issues like fresh water availability, livable space, etc. and at some point the population of the human species will likely have a ceiling at which point mortality from shortages will balance out new births. If the population exceeds such a ceiling, we would expect mortality to exceed the birth rate for at least some time until a stable state is achieved (e.g. because people stop having many children for various reasons). This could be a \"decline,\" although it seems more likely that the birth/death rate would bounce back and forth and so population would gradually over/undershoot the limit until approximate stability occurs. Of course, specific numbers for a population ceiling are intrinsically a bit speculative because of the wide array of contributing factors and the uncertainty associated with some of them.",
"Finite space, finite resources. Though some estimates say the maximum population of the Earth may be 12 billion or more, the point is there is a maximum, that much is certain. I don't think the specifics of these estimates are really conducive to a n ELI5 post. In general, researchers model population dynamics to produce statistical estimates for population growth over time."
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cjam5x | Why are children viewed as more of a financial burden than they used to? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The expenses that have outpaced inflation the most are those that children require. Health care, housing, education. It can cost tens of thousands just to have a pregnancy and delivery.",
"Kids don't help increase the family income like they did when farming was less automated. Both my parents hoed rows of cotton, corn, beans, etc as children. They fed the animals, and in the fall picked cotton. Even though he lived on a farm, dad also worked at a full-service gas station before he was a teenager up until he left for college. All his earnings went to help the family.",
"Any household that had like 8 - 10 kids back in the 1900 - 1950 era would absolutely have a stay at home mom whose sole job was to take care of the 8 - 10 kids. After the women's rights movement and after WW2 we saw women enter the workforce at close to equal amounts as men. After a few decades the economy has become such that only like the top 8 - 10% of wage earners can afford to have their spouses be home makers. Which means for all the rest of us, both parents have to work, which means day care. For my two kids, daycare was $25/day, times two kids, times 20 days per month or $1000 per month. Somebody making minimum wage makes $7.25 x 40 x 4 or $1160 per month. In short, children are viewed as a financial burden because they absolutely are. And I've only used daycare as an example... That doesn't feed or clothe or house them, and even then, that's just keeping them alive... wait until I tell you about the ballet lessons that cost $800 x 4 classes per year. Oh... and we'd like our kids to be able to snowboard with us... lets tack on another 4 - 6 grand. Piano lessons? Gymnastics? Any other activity? More money. We estimate we spend about 14K per year per kid. With two kids we spend about as much as the poverty line just raising halfway decent kids.",
"I think it would come down to the cost of education being a lot higher. So when your grandmother was growing up, anything more than a gradeschool or highschool efucation was absolutley not neccesary to be succesful. For example, my great grandfather grew up and got an 8th grade education, left home and started working at chrystlers. He retired at like 45-50 im pretty sure. Had enough cash to live very comfortably until he died at 89. Today there arent any jobs that you could get with an 8th grade education and ever retire. So the quality of education is much higher and therefore so is the cost. I would also argue that the quality of life is much higher than before for a child. But i think its more education.",
"A couple of factors... Pay hasn’t kept up with productivity, requiring more 2-income households. But this means childcare, which costs more for more kids. When mother stayed home, going from 2 to 4 kids didn’t cost as much as adding 2 more daycare bills at $1000/mo. per kid. Lifestyles were cheaper. Homes didn’t cost as much relative to income, there weren’t cable TV, Internet, cell phone bills. And kids didn’t have sports leagues, piano class, and all the other activities people are expected to enroll kids in today. Middle class jobs without degrees. More workers could achieve middle class pay without taking on tons of student loan debt that had to be paid back from their salary, reducing discretionary income. Children were often expected to work, meaning they provided income to family rather than just added to expenses.",
"Cost of living has increased massively since your great grandmother's time but there hasn't been an equivalent increase in wages. From healthcare, daily amenities right down to education. To get advancement, you need investment, which will drive up costs for consumers. The \"have to have\" stuff isn't really necessary, it's just a product of the age old mentality of \"he/she has that, so I need it too\". Raising a kid like it was back then is nigh on impossible because of how much everything has changed. We are essentially living in a different world. To try and do something like that, the only way you'd have a decent chance is to isolate yourself from all of society.",
"Part of this is society as a whole has changed versus just the issue of kids. Examples of what I mean.. In the days of your grandparents it was common to have gardens and farm animals. It was ok to make kids work these. It was common for every piece of clothes to be maintained and to be passed down. It was ok for kids to not go to school. All of this is replaced today with store bought food, clothes, and kids having to be 100% presentable for school. Malnurishment was common before WWII and was a driver of making schools provide lunches and of required school attendance. Secondly we have health care. In America this is a massive expense. Family insurance (not single adult or single + spouse but actual family) is easily $1k+ per month. This plus out of pocket expenses are frequently 25-50% of a families expenses. This grows for every child nowadays. Add to that the time off needed for each child. Most workplaces barely give enough time off to take care of 1 child let alone 10. At 2-3 kids most families have a stay at home parent. In general this has lead to having kids being almost luxuries if you can truly afford them. Elsewise each additional child is (while loved) more of a burden than a benefit. People now think about giving each child the best they can and this is harder with more children."
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cjnn0o | What is it exactly about languages like Russian or German, that give them a "harsh" sounds? What is it about languages like French or Italian, that give a "smoother" flow? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I can't speak for Russian, but German's reputation as a particularly harsh language is largely undeserved and is maintained mainly by people whose only exposure to spoken German consists of Hitler speeches and the faux German spoken in British and American war movies. Most of the speech sounds that people believe make German sound rough exist in other languages that do not share a similar reputation. Perhaps most notably, the supposedly famously harsh R-sound in German is the exact same one used in French, where nobody seems to consider it particularly harsh at all.",
"Lots of consonants right? Red in French is \"Rouge\" whilst in German it is \"Rot\" Heavy punchy sounds Ambulance in French is just..\"Ambulance\" with a stretched A in Lance. Ambulance in German is \"Krankenwagen\"",
"German and Russian are mostly spoken gutterally which makes them sound harsh. Languages like French are mostly spoken right from the tip of the tongue, and the syllables flow from one to the other, and therefore they sound very smooth."
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cjqrdv | ; why are tattoos such taboo in some religions? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some religions believe your body is the physical property of God. You are just borrowing it for your time on Earth and at the end when you die he gets it back. You're not allowed to damage it because it's not yours and a tattoo is damaging the skin.",
"1 Corinthians 3: 16-17 (KJV Bible) says \"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are”. Since our bodies are temples we should treat them with the utmost respect. Tattoos (and other things) are a disrespectful way to treat our bodies that God gave us.",
"For hebratic religions is was often to make it clear who was a follower of who. It my understanding that many of the non-Jewish religions used tattoos as ritual markings and branding to show that they are devoted to a specific worship. Since the Hebrew God said have no other Gods before me, and demanded no markings, then one way to stay clearly separate from the other religions was to not have tattoos or body markings. A good chunk of the Hebrew law was for this reason, and as such many scholars feel like it is not longer relevant today.",
"because religion is a method of control. and therefore restricting what people can do / eat etc. helps maintain a grip on the populace. in Catholicism the act of confession was less about confessing your sins and more to do with placing the priest in a position of power by knowing the naughty things you did. giving him the power over the congregation by being able to remind them he knows there darkest thoughts."
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ck0s22 | How did last names stick? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There are different kinds of last names. Job based, Location based, feature based, familial (son of, daughter of, descendant of, etc), and assigned. For Job based names you took the name of the profession that you had. If you changed profession, then you would generally change or amend your name to reference that. Most professions were passed down father to son, but apprentices were also a thing and they would change their name from what they had as a child when they took up their trade. Location based. Names like Hill, Dale, German names with \"Von\", Spanish names with \"De\", etc are names that are location based. John Hill would be a very local oriented name meaning John who lives on the Hill. The last name Von Bismark means someone \"of Bismark\" which means someone who is from the city of Bismark. These would commonly change when you changed where you live, though the \"Von\" and \"De\" names changed less often as they are more origin based. Feature based names are things based on someones features. So Little would be attributed to someone who was small (or ironically to someone who is huge), the last name Green could be given to someone with green eyes. Black could be given to someone with black hair or skin. Etc. These names could change from one generation to another. Familial names. Some names are based on the name of your father. So John has a son named James. James could be called James Johnson. James then has a son named Peter, he would be called Peter Jameson. So on and so forth. In English we tended to stop the trading of names after a time, and just stayed on one for each generation but other cultures such as Iceland still switch every generation (and they have a different variant for son's and daughters). O', Mc', and Mac in the Gaelic/Celtic cultures means descendant of. They would be based on some famous or \"famous\" ancestor that the family found to be important. Assigned names were typically the kind taken or given to nobility. This name was likely the first to be passed down unchanged."
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ck11zw | How do we know what music sounded like in ancient cultures? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"**ELI5:** We often know what their musical instruments sounded like. Ancient peoples sometimes left clues about how their instruments were made. Then, a smart man can make a copy of the instrument - and play it! Sometimes, musical instruments are buried with people, and we can make a copy. Sometimes, an old type of instrument is still in use today. Drums are very old, and very common - you know what a drum sounds like. Flutes are very common, too. If you know the size, shape and makeup of an instrument, a craftsman can probably make a decent copy. Making old style musical instruments is a hobby for some people, and a job for others. What I do not know is what *tunes* were played - another poster may have the answer to that question.",
"I found a video on YouTube a while back purporting to have the oldest known melody at 1400 b.c. Music has come a long way! URL_0",
"We don't really as accurate musical notation was not developed until around the the late middle ages and renaissance in Europe. Fun fact: The Catholic Church developed the basic idea of staves, notes, and other basic music notation found in modern music notation. It all stemmed from them wanting to standardize the chants of the Church. Instruments were not originally allowed, and to this day we call voice-only music a capella (in the manner of the church.)"
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ck3u1f | why hasn't there been any attempt to push for an universal language for us to use? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There has been. Esperanto was designed after World War 2 to reduce the possibility of war due to miscommunication.",
"Attempts were made.. and ultimately one language exists which is spoken, or at least read by a big part of the human population.. it’s english... And to why there weren’t a attempt to make english, or any other language, the native language for everyone: In my opinion that simply isn’t a desire for most of the people. One reason for that could be the strong bond between language and culture. And most humans don’t really want to change his culture, or they even are afraid of a change, so they would block any attempt to change one of the two things.",
"After religion, language is probably the second most culturally sacred thing that most communities protect. While the idea of a universal language is not mutually exclusive to a cultural first language, this would be controversial if not absolutely opposed by many groups around the world. One could argue that a universal language benefits or at least has the potential to improve worldwide education disparities etc etc but it would be a huge lift to get nationalistic/conservative/ethnic groups to not see that as a threat against their communities. As a gruesome example, consider Nigeria's Boko Haram - which is violently opposed to \"western\" education especially, it appears, when taught to females. Although extreme, the thinking behind this is sadly, not uncommon.",
"English: Am I a joke to you ?"
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