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ck58ym | Why is that usually the richer people get, the more conservative they become politically? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Once you have something to lose you May begin to feel threatened by the “takers”...or something like that.",
"A very simplistic view is that when you are young and have nothing, the idea of sharing and equality sounds great because it may actually benefit you. When you get older and you’ve had to work your ass off to get what you have now, the thought of sharing your earnings with people who don’t want to work becomes a lot less appealing.",
"Conservative economic policy tends to lean on the side of less taxes and less government regulation, which are good for corporations and not as much for the average person. So, once you get more wealth and get into the higher tax brackets and have more and more regulation apply to you, the more you might dislike such policy and edge toward the economic right."
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ck9tpn | Why are so many artists pulling out of Woodstock 50? | Is it because the event moved to Maryland? Why does no one want to play in Maryland/Merriweather Post Pavilion? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Speaking as someone who runs events (albeit no where near on this scale) the first rule is book the venue. Until you've done that and it's firm you can't plan anything else. The festival apparently doesn't even have its permits yet, which is appalling in terms of planning. The last minute move to Maryland is a sign they don't have their act together, and it's a significant logistical problem for many artists. A number of the acts were already booked for pre + post shows in the original area, so there are no hotels booked, trucks and equipment have to be moved around last minute, it's a giant mess. One act called the show a Sinking Ship.",
"The original idea was to have Woodstock 50 in upstate NY. That was going to be a stadium-sized event with lots of fans and tickets. Alas, nobody would agree to provide the venue. At the last second, literally Fyre Festival late, the venue switched to a 30K+ place south of Baltimore. That's not the sort of thing that artists agreed to, and moving it out of NY gave them the option to cancel their participation while keeping the advance money they were paid. So, the artists did that. They are worried about this going the FF disaster route, and nobody wants to be associated with that."
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cky7fj | What makes older folk Central European/Middle Eastern music sound different from 'Western' music? | I've never taken a music theory class or played a musical instrument, but I've been noticing a lot of similarities in the melodies of some disco or surf rock tracks. They feel like they have a more shared sound to folk music from other parts of the world and sound very unlike most of the music I listen to. What makes these songs sound more 'foreign' to my American ears? Examples: Disco- 'Voulez-Vous' by ABBA, 'Rasputin' by Boney M Surf rock: 'Jumping Someone Else's Train' by the Cure, 'Misirlou' by Dick Dale & The Del Tones Foreign folk example: Vesna by DakhaBrakha | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Hi! All the songs you’ve listed (except Misirlou) are in “minor” keys, which tend to be favored by Middle Eastern or Central European cultures. I suspect the songs you’re comparing them too are in “major” keys, favored by more western music. The difference between these two are the intervals between notes. Musicians tend to measure the distance between close notes in the number of half-steps between them, with a whole step being equivalent to two half-steps. What a half-step is, besides a unit of measurement, isn’t super important for the sake of this explanation. Below, I’ve represented the notes with the number (1 is the first note in the scale, etc...) and then put the distance between the notes in between. A major scale looks like this: 1 - whole - 2 - whole - 3 - half - 4 - whole - 5 - whole - 6 - whole - 7 - half - 1 (and then the scale repeats itself.) A minor scale looks like this: 1 - whole - 2 - half - 3 - whole - 4 - whole - 5 - half - 6 - whole - 7 - whole - 1 (and then the scale repeats itself.) This causes a huge difference in what the music sounds like. Additionally, some songs use scales that aren’t either of these. Anyway, feel free to let me know if you have any more questions, I tried to keep it as basic as possible but let me know if you want more detail. TL;DR The distances between notes are different in the songs you’re describing. Edit: Misirlou uses a [double harmonic scale]( URL_0 ), which is different from both major and minor. The original ELI5 still stands, though, as the resulting difference is still because of the difference in the interval between notes."
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cl2t20 | what are the Panama Papers and what did they expose? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine it's Halloween and you just went trick or treating with your friends. You all collect a big bucket of candy which you want to eat all by yourselves. The prolem is that when you get home your parents will want some of your candy as well. But it's not just your parents who do this, all of the parents on your street take some candy from their kids when they come back from trick or treating. You get a bit annoyed because you wanted to eat the candy on your own, but you move on and start eating the candy that they left you. The next day at school you start talking with your friends, and you bring up how you hate it that your parents take 5 candy bars from you each time. Your best friend gets upset because his parents take 10 candy bars from him each time. Then one kid at the table then says that his parents only take away 1 candy bar each time he goes trick or treating. You're all outraged at how much your parents are taking away from you, and you wish you could find a way you could somehow give away less of your candy. The kid then tells you that he can keep your candy safe from your parents at his house if you give him 2 candy bars as a fee. You quickly realise that the 2 candy bars you lose to this kid plus the other candy bar his parents would take still leaves you with 2 candy bars more than if you were to just take the candy home with you. Many other kids on your street start to keep their candy safe with this kid, and you all think that you've come up with the perfect plan to keep as much candy for yourselves as possible until one day a teacher finds out what has been happening and sends an email to all the parents. Your parents are furious, but since you didn't break any of the house rules by keeping candy at a friend's house, they can't punish you for it. If you had sneaked in the candy and hidden it in your room, then you would have broken the rule about hiding candy from your parents, but by keeping it at a friend's place with the knowledge and consent of his parents you're not actually breaking any rules since nobody thought to put that in the rules. The same thing happens to all of your friends. Their parents got mad, but couldn't do anything about it. This means that the kid who keeps the candy bars safe can just keep hiding candy for a small fee. His parents don't want to speak up or increase how much candy they take because they keep getting lots of candy coming through the door. The fact that they only took one candy bar is what allowed them to get so much of it. This is a problem, though. There is a children's hospital a few blocks down the street to which your parents used to donate the candy they took from you. Since you and all your friends keep your candy out of reach of your parents, the hospital gets much smaller donations of candy each year, and it's starting to not be enough to make the sick kids inside happy on Halloween. This leaves you with kids that have lots of candy just getting more and more, but all of it is inconveniently out of reach (you can own the candy but not eat it because it's in a different house). Kids that don't get enough candy to afford the fee for safekeeping end up losing more candy bars to their parents than all the kids who have lots. The sick kids who can't go trick or treating also suffer since the hospital isn't able to provide them with enough candy anymore. Most people on your street agree that this is a problem, but there is no incentive for anyone to change the system anymore, since all they can think about is keeping as much candy as possible for themselves.",
"Offshore companies serve their purpose well and the rich hardly get imprisoned even if they are on trail for years.They evade justice because its easy to do.Countries like UK and Switzerland fully support this as loopholes in their laws are used to launder and hide some third world countries stolen tax-payers money.This is just a plus to their economies",
"Let’s imagine you’re a kid living in a neighborhood with a number of other children. You and all your friends have started lemonade stands and have started to make money. At the end of the day, you take your money and put it in your piggy bank in your room, but you have to tell your parents whenever you do this, and how much you put in your piggy bank. They also tell you that you can’t take out more than $10 at a time unless you tell them what it is for, and they have to approve of the spending. Most of the other kids have to do the same. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Your parents maybe just want to make sure that you are keeping track of your money and not spending it on bad things. One day you hear from one of your friends that little Billy down the road doesn’t have to tell his parents when he puts money in his piggy bank. They don’t really care what he does with his money, and don’t keep track of how much he has and takes out. One day you decide that you don’t want your parents keeping track of your money, and you start keeping some, if not all, of your money in Billy’s piggy bank. You’re not even doing this for bad reasons. Maybe your trying to save up money to buy your mom a new necklace, or your dad a new golf club, and don’t want them knowing about it before hand. What a sweet kid you are. But not all the other kids are as sweet as you. Other kids start keeping their money in Billy’s piggy bank too, but unlike you, they’re doing so because they want to start using their money for things that their parents wouldn’t approve of, and this keeps their parents from being able to keep tabs on how much money they make at their lemonade stands, and how much they spend on things. Well, somebody snitched and now all the parents know about their kids hiding their money at Billy’s, and that many of those kids were doing so for bad reasons.",
"It was a great scandal and probed conspiracy. Still literally nothing happened to the responsable people nor to the system which allow their scheme.",
"They exposed that the rich can keep all their cash and nothing will be done about it except that any whistleblowers will be murdered.",
"Is there a list of people that this incriminated? I always hear \"wealthy, famous, rich, politicians\" but that doesn't help me know if I need to start fighting my local politicians or trash talking a celebrity.",
"Here in Argentina, our president and cabinet were involved in this scandal but nothing happened."
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cl4f2h | Why does every movie have 7 or 8 production companies shown before the movie? What do they all do in relation to the movie? | Additional question, why do they have such odd names and seemingly only produce one or two movies before never being seen again. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally there's only 1 production company that does the actual production work. You've probably seen them, it'll be Fox, Disney, Universal, Lionsgate, and so on. Now why you see like 3-4 others sometimes is that they are other companies that helped get the thing made, although most of them are \"production companies\" consisting of like 3 people. These companies are often owned by actors or directors (such as Brian Cranston owning his own production company, but its like 3 people) or the Producer of the film having is own production company (again which is probably like 4 people). These companies often come up with ideas, option books, stories, and may help put together the film... but they don't actually make/shoot the film, however, they of course still get production credit, because thats just how credits work In addition, sometimes investor companies in the film (think like a big investment firm that does movies) may have their production company credited as they invested heavily in the production. It's a bit of a racket to dissect, but overwhelmingly, if you see a \"big\" company (like Disney), they did all the work, and the others are tiny little companies or investors that get credit based upon the rules setup by the movie industry, or they negotiated for them. Yes, you can negotiate for a credit, even if you didn't do much of anything, and yes this is absolutely negotiated. Distributors, CGI/Special effects companies, and those things would NOT be included in the production company category (they fit into different areas of the credits)",
"Some production companies specialize in special things. Like if a movie has a lot of CGI or special effects you'll have special production companies that help on those. Like Industrial Light and Magic. & #x200B; The one-offs may be a special combo of producers working together on this film so they form the production company like you might form an LLC for freelance work you do but if you don't collaborate again then the production company functionally stops. & #x200B; And then if one production company involved gets to be in the beginning credits you get a power trip where all the entities want to get involved rather than be shunted off so you can end up with several animations."
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clb8h4 | What is the differences between copyright, patent, and trademark (any others not listed) and how/why/when should a person use them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"*Copyright* covers characters and specific settings in works of art like books, video games and movies. For instance, I could not make a movie where Luke Skywalker and Mickey Mouse have a lightsaber battle at Hogwart's because those characters and that place are protected by copyright. *Patent* covers novel ideas, like inventions or new products. For instance, if I design a new type of mechanical engine that can produce energy from whiskey, I can patent that design so that other companies can't use it in their cars. *Trademarks* cover business names (Sony, Microsoft, Ford) and their product names (Mustang, Windows, Playstation, Xbox). I can't make a product called \"Xbox\" because that would violate Microsoft's trademark on that product name.",
"I'm a patent attorney so I guess I'll answer Patents: the government grants you a time-limited monopoly to make, sell, import, and/or use an invention. The grant of the monopoly is in exchange for your disclosure of the invention to the public. To be an \"invention\" it not only has to be novel but non-obvious (in the US) or novel and inventive (outside the US). Trademarks: somewhat debatable whether it is a form of intellectual property. In the US, it is much more focused on protecting consumers from deceptive business practices. The law basically says \"if someone uses this word or image in trade, would the average consumer think the good or service came from the wrong company?\" You get a trademark when you want to protect your company's reputation and the goodwill/familiarity you've built with consumers. Copyright protects original works. Under international agreement, copyright rights arise immediately upon publishing a minimally creative work. It can be a play, a song, a poem, a choreography, etc. The copyright not only protects the work, but protects others from creating new works derived from yours. The final big form of IP is trade secret. Trade secret is often described as the \"alternative\" to patents. Instead of disclosing to the public, you have to keep it a secret. If you keep it a secret, the law gives you some protection from others using underhanded tactics to discover your secrets. It's of a pretty limited scope, but actually is a big area of practice."
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clktna | Why are jungles sparsely populated or have a low population density similar that of deserts? Are living conditions in jungles bad? | And by jungles, I mean dense jungles such as the Amazon Rainforest, the Congo Basin, or the jungles of New Guinea. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Very warm and humid, many dangerous animals, alot of ways to hurt yourself, no medicine / health care, massive amounts of rain and farming is hard (can really only grow a few things like yams ) It's not easy to live in the jungle",
"As someone who lives in the middle of nowhere somewhere in the amazon rainforest, I have to say that, while infertile soil, hostile enviroment and the climate still play a role in the unpopularity, it's in my opinion the way transportation works (or doesn't work). It takes three hours for me to reach the nearest city (by boat, because the rain basically obliterated the only street), and a whole day of travelling to go to the nearest international airport (by boat, ofc.). It's no wonder then, that there's poor healthcare, almost no access to higher education like universities, etc. Why would you want to live in the jungle if all your chances are in the city, dozens of kilometres away?",
"Although there are lots of resources in a jungle, they require great specialization to reach. Every animal is adapted to a specific type of food, and does not do much outside of that. Humans have trouble there because it is difficult to cultivate food, build shelters, etc. Deserts also require a great deal of specialization to survive, but are more open to generalists who can make use of many different sources of food and water. If there is a water source available, cultivation is also possible."
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clmpnc | Why is Buddha sometimes portrayed as fat and sometimes not? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Fat Buddha\" is actually a completely different figure named [Budai]( URL_0 ), who is also known in Chinese as the \"Laughing Buddha\". They are often confused for each other in the west. Note that Buddha isn't a name, but a title.",
"Statues of a jolly fat man often depict [Hotei, a Chinese Buddhist monk]( URL_0 ), not Siddartha Gautama, the original Buddha.",
"Buddha and Fat Buddha are two different people, there is Gautama Buddha (the skinny one) and Budai (the fat one) Budai (also called laughing buddha) is a symbol of happiness and joy. Budai is thought to be a later incarnation of the original buddha (gautama). Budai is popular in chinese buddhism this isnt a very well put together paragraph but it gets the point across",
"ELI5: The term 'Buddha' is a title to indicate that a person has achieved enlightenment. Siddhartha was the most famous one so he gets portrayed as the default, in general as the skinny version. The fat version is another deity figure who also achieved 'Buddha'. Buddhism is non-theistic so there can be an infinite number of Buddhas and nobody cares which one you worship or whether you even worship one of them. ELI5, TLDR: Buddha is a title not a person EDIT: Siddhartha was a celebrity, not necessarily the first or the best.",
"'Buddha' is not a singular person like this Christian god and Jesus, or the various characters described in Hinduism, but a title given to those who have found enlightenment in Buddhism, and then gone on to pass on their teachings to others. The statues most commonly seen are those representing the Siddhartha Gautama - the 'original' Buddha, with the different poses representing different stages of his life. The statues of the 'fat buddha' are not actually of a Buddha at all, but of 'Budai', who was a Chinese monk who is venerated as a deity in Chinese buddhism. Chinese buddhism in particular included more elements of more traditional Chinese folklore, which is why characters like Budai are more commonly seen than they are in other areas."
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clrjhv | Is "pitch tone" in Japanese important? | Example: the 2 ames, the ones that mean rain and candy with different pitch tones. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends what you mean by \"important.\" In terms of being crucial to communicate effectively as a second language learner of Japanese, no, it's not important – if you're trying to say *ame* meaning rain and accidentally pronounce it with the pitch for *ame* meaning candy, it'll still be pretty obvious which one you mean from context. It'll make you sound non-native, for sure, but presumably you already sound non-native from other features of your accent; it's extremely unlikely that you will ever encounter a scenario where you getting the pitch wrong will impede comprehension. This is different from, e.g., the various Chinese languages or Vietnamese, where tones play a crucial role in you not sounding like you're just talking nonsense all the time. Of course, if the question is, \"is pitch important in me sounding as native-like as possible when I speak Japanese?\" then obviously the answer is yes, it's very important. But I'm guessing that that's not the question you're getting at here. A handy shortcut for you to think about when it comes to this question: do they teach it in the 101 level of the class? If yes, it's probably important for being able to communicate successfully (e.g. learning tones is probably the first thing you do in a Mandarin 101 class). If no, then you probably don't have to worry about it (e.g. I studied Japanese for four years and was explicitly told not to worry too much about pitch, and that it was more important to focus my energy on getting other aspects of pronunciation right)."
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clsx8q | The difference between "written by" and "screenplay by" in film/television credits? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"All the above answers are not quite correct. All these credits have precise meanings that are defined by the Writers Guild of America. It may be different in other countries, but not by much. Simply put, the WGA divides the writing process up into three seperate components 1. Source material. Generally speaking, this is any **written** material that was published or distributed outside the WGA jurisdiction. That is, anything that was written for any purpose other than making a movie/tv show/web series etc. For example, a novel, a newspaper article, a short story, etc are all source material. The only exception is for a remake or a sequel, where the script of the original film is considered source material, even though it was written under WGA jurisdiction. 2. Story. This is any **written** material that outlines the characters, ideas, themes and plot **of a movie etc**. It may be that very little or none of the writing that makes up the story actually finds it's way onto the screen eventually. 3. Screenplay. This is any written material that is actually shot and becomes part of the finished work. It includes dialogue, directions etc. With that out of the way, let's talk about credits. \"Based on\" - this person wrote some or all of the source material. \"Based on characters created by\" - this person wrote some or all of the source material and this source material was itself a screenplay (ie this movie is a remake or sequel). Note, not all movies have source material, so not all movies have a \"based on\" credit. \"Story by\" - this person made a significant, written contribution to the characters, ideas, themes or plot of this film, but is not otherwise entitled to a screenplay credit. A significant contribution is either writing the very first version of the first story document that is specific to this film (eg outline, full treatment, entire screenplay etc), or writing a story document that creates at substantial amount of the characters, ideas, themes or plot of the final movie. This credit can be used when the movie is original or when the movie is adapted from source material. \"Screen story by\" or \"Adapted by\" - these are the same as \"story by\". They can be used optionally in movies that are adapted from source material. \"Screenplay by\" - this person made a significant contribution to the actual final script that wound up on screen. A significant contribution is one that creates a substantial amount of the actual script (varies between at least 33% up to at least 50% of the actual words of the final script, depending on circumstances). Obviously this credit can be used in original or adapted movies \"Written by\" - this credit is required when the \"story by\" and \"screenplay by\" credits would be exactly the same. It can be used in both original or adapted movies. It implies that the same writer or writers did essentially all the writing from the first outlines to the final script that actually got shot. It doesn't imply that the movie is original."
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cltorj | Musical Chord Progressions. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your question is pretty vague but I'll give it a shot! A chord progression is essentially a sequence of chords, often repeating multiple times throughout the duration of a song, that have been selected and placed in a specific order due to their relationship to one another. To break it down further; a chord itself is a collection of multiple notes (often 3 or 4) which are played together. Chords are usually built from a sequence of notes known as a \"scale\" as those particular notes sound pleasant (harmonious) when played together, as opposed to unpleasant (dissonant). In a chord progression, different chords have different roles, also known as harmonic functions, which gives the progression its feeling. For instance, the second to last chord in the progression may be \"unresolved\", which gives a feeling of incompleteness that is then satisfied by the final chord in the sequence. The exact same chord can have different roles in different progression depending upon where it is placed in relation to other chords, as well as what the other chords are. In practice, an example of a common chord progression is C-G-Am-F (in the key of C). This means that the instrumentalist in question will play a C Major chord (i.e. the notes C, E and G) followed by a G Major, then an A Minor and finally an F Major. This progression is extremely widespread in popular music due to it's harmonious quality when repeated. Hope that makes sense!"
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clv2kh | Why do some languages have masculine and feminine nouns? | I'd like to understand both from a historical perspective, and also how it is decided for new words? Being English I've found this the most difficult aspect of learning a new language such as Spanish. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's important here to distinguish between grammatical gender and biological gender. Grammatical gender describes what rules a specific word follows in the grammar of that language. Biological gender describes living things that reproduce sexually by splitting in two separate genders. Despite the name the two aren't strictly related. Grammatical genders are more akin to word classes: words in the same class will behave in similar ways, such as declining and conjugating after similar rules, using similar adjectives when described in a sentence (i.e all blue masculine words in Icelandic are \"blár\", all blue feminine objects are \"blá\", all neuter blue things \"blátt\"), or take a specific determinate forms (i.e la vs le in french). So grammatical genders are a description of how a word behaves, not the other way around. > Historical perspective We frankly don't know for sure. Some theories suggest that genders initially started as classes to separate inanimate and animate objects, Later feminine and masculine split due signify a group of things, and words that didn't properly fit with the other two classes. There are some evidence that genders slightly increase comprehension and comprehension speed of a sentence, as well as slightly reducing ambiguity, but research seems to be situational. > How is it decided for new words. By observing how people use the word. Remember: Gender isn't imposed from on high by an absolute authority. it's a handy box that we use to group similar words together. If the new words is displaying characteristics of either gender we put it in that gender. People will morph new words so that they fit in with the grammar and don't sound stiff and unnatural, and during this morphing process people decide if the new word sounds better as masculine, feminine, or neuter (or other genders some languages might have).",
"In addition to what other people have said, Proto-Indo-European is the ancestor for a lot of the modern-day languages spoken (as the name suggests) in Europe and India. The PIE language is generally believed to have sorted nouns into three classes: masculine, feminine, and neuter. If you look at today's most widely-spoken Indo-European languages, you'll find a lot of the well-known examples of grammatical gender, descended from the original PIE classification system: * German, Russian, and Marathi still have the full three-way distinction. * Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, French, and Italian distinguish masculine/feminine but have lost the neuter class. * English has lost the gender distinction in nouns but preserves it in pronouns (he/she/it). * Bengali and Persian have lost gender distinctions entirely.",
"For some languages it might have been based on observations of the world and to make communication more clear, but in other languages it was more a result of cultural norms. Some languages even have more than two genders, too. As far as how the gender of new words is decided - they can look at how people talk about it and decline it already and go off of what's popular, or they can look at the word itself and see which gender it would match up with just based on how it ends. In Russian for example, words that end in a consonant are masculine. Since the word \"computer\" ends in a consonant (in Russian), it was logical to treat it like a masculine noun."
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clw50q | How does a politician choosing his/her party work? Why aren’t there more “double agents”? (USA) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally, you have a certain ideology of your own that's not perfectly in line with any party but you have goals that are important to you and you don't have enough influence on your own or with a smaller party so you pick one of the big ones which actually has a chance of winning and you join that. If your goals are against what that party stands for, you won't be able to rise in its ranks, however, and you won't achieve these goals. So it's better to join the party that's a better fit for your goals, while still big enough to have a chance at governing. That's how people end up in their respective parties.",
"> Why don’t we see more democrats trying to throw off the republican party by joining and bringing it closer to the center rather than far right? You should talk to moderate/classic conservatives who have been active in Republican politics and tried to have an effect, like tamping down the racism and misogyny. Many of them eventually just become passive, still Republicans but not advocates any more. Some simply leave the party. So the notion that Democrats could join the Republican Party and push it toward the center is not practical. However, members of both parties *frequently* register in the other party to vote in primary elections. That can be effective occasionally. But it's not always to vote for moderates in the other party, just as often it's to vote for candidates who can't win in the general. For example Trump in some early 2016 primaries."
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clwn00 | why reprints don't affect the value of comic books, novels, or music but do affect games. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The current value of Action Comics #1 comes from people who appreciate having \"the original\". A reprint is not an adequate substitute for them. In a hypothetical world where you simply could not consume the first adventure of Superman without buying Action Comics #1, it would be worth even more, because you would add to the market people who just want to read the book. That is, reprints *do* reduce the value of Action Comics #1, but because of purist collectors, that value remains high even with reprints. Meanwhile, MTG cards or game disks are working objects. Many (not all) of the people who demand them want to actually play with them, either in competitive Magic or just to enjoy the game. Reprinting those things would certainly reduce their value, but I suspect that (at least in the case of old MTG cards) originals would retain *some* value even if you mailed a set of the Power 9 to every person in the US. The same collectors impulse that makes the original Action Comics #1 different from any reprints would apply."
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clxbj7 | Why is the right to bear arms so ingrained in US culture? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The right to bear arms is in the Constitution to protect against a tyrannical government. It prevents the government from seizing all firearms to insure it always fears the population it governs.",
"It was what helped feed, and provide safety of the early settlers. We could not have become the United States without them. We were a rebellion that grew into country, and without guns it couldn't have happened. The second amendment is to protect the people from the government, because defenseless civilians are controlled civilians. The part where people get crazy started to happen like 5-6 years ago when it seems (I'm a white dude) these weird as white fucks have convinced themselves through the echo chambers of the internet that they are normal and go shoot fucking difference races and kids up. It's gotten touchy because there has been a lot of shootings lately and the vast majority of gun owners are hate it just the same as nongun owners. Then when responsible gun owners start have to getting rid of their guns because essentially you're put in the same group of the murders (oh you can't have a gun, you might shoot people up) which is not the way we live in the US. Individually has always been important here so you get very defensive responses from both sides of the gun debate. I don't know the solution man. You can't force people to get rid of them because the law abiding people will, but those are the people who should have them. The guy who wants to kill people won't go to the cops with his shit. It's tough man all I know is a few common trends with the people who do this shit. Anti psychotics, and antidepressants and a social media presence that is full of hateful and racist shit.",
"I’m not American but I’m constantly amazed at how responsible the overwhelming majority of US gun-owners are. Of course, people with safely-kept, legitimately-used guns aren’t news. I, like all of us, abhor mass shootings but it’s far too easy, and simply wrong, for non-US observers to grossly generalise, and equate gun-ownership with anarchy and lawlessness.",
"For me, like a huge portion of US citizens, i live next to bears, cougars (not the spunky kind in their 50's), wolves and other big ass animals. I have kids and a family that are exposed to the same things. We also live pretty far from any kind of help. When i was younger my step dad (Who is very anti gun) was attacked by stay dogs out in our field. He almost died. The dogs ran a half mile to our neighbor's farm where he shot both of them. Took 14 rounds. They got to his 3 year old before him, though. She lost an ear and almost an eye. My step dad is still anti gun but my mom has the best rifle for her where she lives: a scary semi - auto rifle with a large capacity. If you want to think that guns are just cool, that's fine too. Target shooting is a legitimate hobby. That's not why guns are important, though, at least not to me. A bear took a 3 year old out of her backyard earlier this year next to my brother's house. I don't think Europeans or people who live solely indoors or in cities even consider the fact that they are not the top of the food chain."
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cm61p9 | how did culture's such as ancient Egypt and ancient China write names? | I may be wrong but the Egyptians used hieroglyphics which were pictures that described the word. Each word had a unique symbol. How would they write names if they did not have an alphabet? I belive China also did something like this. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They would name people after their words, such as King Tuts name literally meaning “the living image of Aten” This is why a lot of cultures names have a word meaning associated with them",
"Well, consider modern names. Peter sounds like a name, but it's really an anglicized form of the Greek word for stone. Gabriel comes from Gavri'el, meaning \"God is my strength.\" Names come from words.",
"Most cultures give people names that mean things. It's just english and many europeans cultures took the sounds, but not the meanings. For example David means \"beloved\" in hebrew. Chinese and Egyptian are no different. They just skip the import and give everyone's name obvious meanings. Tutankhamun means \"The Living Image of Amun\" (he used to be called TUtankhaten \"The Living Image of Aten\", but that's a long and interesting story) Nefertari means \"beautiful companion\" Mao Zedong given name means \"Brilliant East\" Xi Jinping given name means \"Immediate Peace\" Do note: in Chinese naming convention, it is a common practice when giving two word names to have the first word denote the generation for that family. For example: the current Prime Minister of Singapore is Lee Hsien Long, his brother is Lee Hsien Yang."
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cm7jpw | Why do religions have different gods but the same satan? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Do you mean the Abraham ones? (Christianity Islam Judaism) it's because they worship the same God, just have different rules and such for it. Christianity copied Judaism. Islam copied Christianity. (To overly simplify things).",
"At least among Abrahamic religions, it's much more like the same God, different satans. Obviously the Trinity isn't represented in Judaism or Islam, but Jesus is still marginally distinct from God. In Judaism, 'satan' is an agent of God, who controls good and evil. In Christianity, 'Satan' is Lucifer, the adversary of God (this is a totally Christian invention). In Islam, there are many devils and demons (like djinn) and no 'satan' or Lucifer. Satan doesn't exist in other religions. It's a Hebrew word with very different meanings between Jews and Christians."
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cm7x1t | How did de Maya's, Native Americans and other similar cultures reach the American continent? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ancient humans likely crossed a land bridge from Northeast Asia (now Russia) to Northwest America (now Alaska) over what is now the [Bering Strait]( URL_0 ).",
"Sea levels used to be a lot lower tens of thousands of years ago compared to now. It was so low there was land between Alaska and Siberia. Some people walked over that land into the Americas."
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cmaxz9 | How did English become THE global international language? Was it an agreement or? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Britain gave it a good head start when their empire was so big that somewhere in the British Empire the sun was always shining. And then the United States came along and became an absolute economic powerhouse. So if you wanted to do trade with the big boys you needed to speak some English. Basically money decided it. English is the language of business.",
"Colonization and Imperialism. England and The US were better at exerting their power and influence on the globe. This is also the reason countries in Africa also speak French and Dutch and why South America speaks Spanish, Portuguese.",
"I guess you can thank the British Empire for that. They created a world where, in lots and lots of places everywhere, it was suddenly very advantageous to learn english, since being able to communicate with your overlords was never a bad thing, and created opportunities for yourself that other people simply would not have. That, in turn meant, that an indian trader suddenly had a common language with a trader from egypt, even if it was a secondary language for both of them. So, even when the British Empire went into decline, the benefits of speaking english remained. That pretty much locked english down as the language of international communication. The United States as a superpower being an english-speaking country did not hurt either, but that was probably not the decisive reason.",
"It did so on the back of trade. First we had the UK - much of europe, the middle east an asia were either trading partners with or colonized by the UK. Pretty long period, pretty much had to speak english or not be able to participate (or were put under forced education and so on). Then...the U.S. economic dominance after WWI lead to developing countries to learn english to be able to sell things to and buy things from american. Then...when things develop more you've got two countries who have both wanted to trade with the U.S. but don't speak the same language as each other...so...they talk to each other in English. No formal decision (there are contexts where English has been decided), but a practical driver - more people wanted to work with americans and brits to make money so they decided to go more than half way to make it happen."
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cmepks | Could it technically be possible to replace a government with a computerized system where all citizens vote on matters via alerts sent to their cell phones (a app perhaps) instead of having a select few who vote on decisions (health care,environment,school funding, overhauling utilities, etc)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is called *direct democracy,* and most experts believe it's a bad idea because average citizens don't have time to study the issues, and are easily fooled by liars, deceivers, and populists."
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cmpzhy | What are “whataboutisms”? | Edit: thank you guys for the quick response! ♥️♥️ | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's also worth noting that in this situation, whataboutisms are inappropriate or false equivalencies, meant to push the person arguing a point away from this point and towards another one. This removes energy and focus away from the thesis and towards a secondary claim that often has little or nothing to do with what is being originally argued. A good example would be something like police brutality. Conversations about police brutality and it's disproportionate use against Native and Black people are often met with \"what about black on black crime\". So instead of actually talking about police brutality, the conversation is now about black people, and the original person now has to defend and address black crime. It's a derailing tactic.",
"It's a debate tactic where you bring up a similar but generally unrelated topic that's tangential to your opponent's position. Typically in internet usage that means you've criticized a politician, so someone brings up a political figure on your side who has done something similar in the past. It's not related to or refuting the core criticism so it's not a great debate tactic, but it can effectively call out hypocrisy if you were perfectly willing to accept that behavior from an ally but not an opponent.",
"It’s a argument style where instead of addressing an argument at its core you instead attempt to bring in other points for a person to counter. Usually done when people done have a good argument. E.G.: “Atheists can be moral without religion” “What about the atheist Stalin killing all those people?”",
"It's an argument that tries to justify one situation by comparing to another subject that does the same thing. For example, I stole a bike and an officer caught me. \"Why are you arresting me? Kevin also steals bikes!\" This is an whataboutism, I'm trying to justify my actions because someone else is also doing it. The fallacy here is that just because someone else does it, it does not mean what you are doing is justified.",
"Most of these comments are correct but I'd like to add a twist. It's true that the REAL meaning if whataboutism is an attempt to distract from an argument by introducing irrelevant cases. BUT what nobody has addressed so far is that CLAIMING that a whataboutism has happened is ALSO a debate tactic. That's an interesting twist. So some people will shout \"whataboutism\" not because it actually is a whataboutism but because you've cornered them in an argument. That usually happens when you point out their hypocrisy. Example 1: A: I think it's outrageous that our neighbor yells at his kids. B: You're in no position to talk. You beat your kids. A: Whataboutism! Example 2: A: Israel commits lots of human rights violations. B: You're right. I hear you say that often. How come you never criticize countries with far worse violations? A: Whataboutism! In both cases A has a point. It is bad to yell at your kids or commit human rights violations. But B has an equally good point which A is dodging. A claim of \"whataboutism\" says, in effect: \"You're changing the topic. You cannot compare things. You may only debate this narrow topic the way I've defined it.\""
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cmz41y | Why is “manspreading” considered rude or sexist? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For me, as a female, by doing that it takes up more room. The only times I've been annoyed by it was in a situation where everyone is sitting close together. I'm \"expected\" to cross my legs to let the other person have more room. This is not only a Male thing, plenty of women have pissed me off by placing bags between their legs causing the same situation. I just want my fair share of leg room.",
"For the posture part: If you sit straight on your buttocks, then there is no reason for spreading your legs to sit more comfortable. If you sit/lay on your lower back, then it is easier to sit with your legs spread. For the social part: You are sitting next to others, please share the space equally. If moving to a better posture helps this, then it's not only good for everybody else but also for you. For the sexist part: If you expect members of the opposite sex to sit different just because you cannot be bothered to sit a normal posture, that is the sexist part.",
"Am female. Honestly don’t care about “manspreading” unless everyone’s sitting packed like sardines. Then, you’re just taking up a ton of space for yourself at the expense of packing everyone else in tighter. I wouldn’t call that instance of “manspreading” sexist, just rude because it inconveniences everyone else there for your own gain. Even in this context, spreading a bit because of the anatomy reasons you explained is fine with me, as long as you don’t spread enough to invade everyone else’s space."
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cn0irx | Why was sex ever considered "shameful" in the first place | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'll answer this from an evo-psych perspective. Most early human (and modern day) societies are male dominated. So the question is why then, in a male dominated society, would women be discouraged from having promiscuous sex? The answer is that *promiscuous sex for women decreases the relative evolutionary fitness for men.* Why? It's because while women have what is called maternal certainty, men do not have paternal certainty. If a woman has a child, then it is obvious that the child is hers, since it came out of her body. But a man doesn't have the same biological guarantee that the child is his. Non-monogamous women increase the chances that a man is cuckolded and raises a child that is not his, which is, evolutionarily speaking, one of the worst things that a man can do. Not only are you not getting to produce offspring, another person gets offspring that they don't even have to devote resources to to raise. Thus, it makes sense for men to discourage female promiscuity, from an evo-psych perspective.",
"Oscar Wilde may have explained this aspect of the human condition best — ‘Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.’",
"People started reading a book that detailed a story of some old guy in the clouds throwing a couple out of his garden for eating magical fruit that tought them that they were naked and they took it way too far.",
"Because long ago when women had a baby out of wedlock/partnership, it often fell to the community to raise that baby. Most communities did not want to pay for those babies, so it was easier to do a shame campaign and try to keep the babies from happening in the first place. There are parallels in the modern day.",
"A few reasons, preventing disease and getting father's to care for their kids. If a father is uncertain about his paternity he has little reason to invest energy in them. If sex is seen as shameful outside of marriage it makes men more likely to care for their children. It works too, if you'll notice since society has begun to abandon the idea single motherhood has gone up considerably. When it comes down to it it's about taking into account the fact that we're animals and we still make decisions based on primal drives even if we think we don't. The idea of premarital sex may be outdated or it may still be valuable, it could be driven obsolete by birth control I guess. We still have use for marriage though and most children are the result of marriages so the underlying psychology that caused the mentality in the first place is still very much present. I wouldn't be surprised if society backlashed against the change in mentality. That being said a number of things have changed in the recent past that disrupt society. It'll be interesting to watch it all play out.",
"I’d say procreation. A man and his lineage is almost always been super important. And in order to ensure that it was intact his lineage carrying on having a chaste/virgin woman was a good way to ensure it was intact your child and that you weren’t raising another mans child. Also also for the benefit of society. The impact and drive it has for a man to contribute and work knowing he has his family to feed and provide for has been largely why we have all the goods and services we do today. If you remove that “skin in the game” and men ceased to work as they had for all these years it’d be the end of civilization as we know it.",
"A long time ago there weren't any good ways to find out who's children women gave birth to, that was a problem since back in those days a lot of the societies were built around clans and families, so not fully understanding who's children belong to who would have inheritance become a problem. To make sure the children were legitimate, societies put forwards basic guidelines for what to and what not to do in regards to sexual activity. Men weren't often as prosecuted since they didn't actively carry or primarily raise the children, so women had stricter rules (or at least more enforced guidelines). This was where the \"shameful\" aspect of sex began, the main reason it's stayed with society all the way to today despite these types of societies not being as important is because of religion, religions adopt the customs of the societies that create them, because this was a normal thing for those old societies they had them as part of their religion, with those religions existing all the way to modern day they have brought those customs with them."
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cnaoz9 | Why is it comfortable to talk to most colleagues while working and yet awkward as soon as you're outside? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because you know is small talk to make it to 5pm, you are not really interested in his or her life. If you like someone you may end up talking after work and build a friendship from there."
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cnk6ee | Why Is Losing Your Job Called Being "fired"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"According to [etymology online]( URL_0 ) it has its roots in the concept of firing a gun. Being fired (from a job) is called being discharged, which again is another word for firing a gun. I guess \"discharged\" colloquially became \"fired\" over time. Also, you can drive something out by fire, which definitely seems connected.",
"Its a phrase from the middle nineteenth century. Fired out used be many any sort of forceful ejection from a place. so you used to \"Fire out\" belligerent drunks from a bar, \"Fire out\" non-paying tenants, and \" fire out\" terrible employees from a job. It was synonymous with throw out but with a more angry connotation.",
"It may have already been stated, and I'm not sure if it's a folk etymology, but it supposedly relates to travelling tradesmen that carried their tools around from job to job. If you were 'sacked' you were able to leave the job with your tools in your sack. If you were 'fired' your failing was so egregious that your tools would be burned (I.e. Fired) making it much more difficult for you to get a job anywhere else. Edit: removal of the extra 'a job'.",
"There are 2 theories going around: It comes from people's stuff getting set on fire after they get dismissed from a job when they did really badly. An example for this would be the laws of the mendip miners against thieves: > that if any man of that occupacõn doe pick or steale any Lead or Lead oare to the value of xiiid. ob. the Lord or his officer may arrest all his Lead and oare house or hearths wth all his Grooves and workes and keepe them as a forfeit to his owne use And shall take the person that soe hath offended and bring him where his house or worke and all his tooles and Instruments belonging to the same occupacõn bee and put him into his house or worke and set fire in all together about him and banish him from that occupacõn before all the Myneders for ever. [Source]( URL_0 ) The other one is about it not being taken in the literal sense, but more metaphor of firing a bullet being fired/discharged.",
"In sSpanish you say Despedir, which means to give someone their fairwells, but that literally translates as to “unask” someone.",
"i wonder if canned meant put in a barrel and then thrown overboard... old england was brutal"
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cnsxjg | Why has Beyoncé been elevated to such a high status? Last I knew she was a pretty good artist, but lately it seems like people/other celebrities refer to her like she is royalty or something. What did I miss? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"i've always wondered the same thing. she's beautiful and has a good voice but i don't understand why everyone calls her a queen. personally, destiny's child had better songs than anything she's put out solo.",
"I don't get it either. It's not like she's done anything worthwhile. Just sang and danced and got paid way more than she deserves."
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co10yo | What is Stoicism and how can people live like that? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's an ancient Greek school of philosophy that teaches that virtue is the highest quality that a person can have, and a virtuous life can be achieved by not reacting impulsively to whatever life throws at you, but rather thinking about and trying to understand whatever's happening, first. [Wiki article]( URL_0 ).",
"Addendum: I really enjoy what little I know and understand of philosophy but it is always so hard to grasp, so intangible. I really like the concept of Stoicism but as with all philosophy I do not understand enough of it to be able to practice it.",
"That nothing is good or bad and to live in the moment without being controlled by fear or pleasure; that’s to understand one’s place in the world.",
"Stoicism is about being content with your life regardless of circumstances. The book \"The Tao of Seneca\" is a series of the stoic philosophies written by the man himself. Tim Ferris frequently talks about Stoicism on his podcast and in his books. One thing that Seneca talks about in his letter to his friend is about \"practicing poverty\" so that if he ever loses his wealth, he will be just as happy and content as when he had it. There's a quote that I love and keep in my life it goes roughly like this: \"all the while asking myself: is this the condition that I most feared?\". This is what Seneca would ask himself while practicing poverty. I recommend listening to the Tao of Seneca audio book. Just get volume 1 and see what you think :)"
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co8ojq | What factors caused India and China to have such large populations? | I know they are relatively large countries that have been inhabited for a very long time, but so is Europe if taken as a whole. Yet Europe only has about half as many people as just one of these two countries. What historical factors lead to their massive populations? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's more geographical than historical. You need to feed a large population. India and China have lots of suitable farmland. Farming takes a great deal of labor so the more people in your family, the better you can farm, encouraging a large population. Nowadays with modern farming methods and fertilizer, you can produce even more food to support a larger population into the billions. The other regions that have comparable farmland are the fertile crescent (Middle East) and the Nile flood plains, and the United States. The fertile crescent spanning the Mediterranean, Black, and Red Seas is where farming originally began. However, the history of conflicts there have not allowed stable farming in that region. Despite supporting the Ancient Egyptians, the Nile's flood plains have been in decline. Lastly, the US is recently settled and most of the farming goes towards exports and animal feed.",
"They both had a perfect mix of political reasons, geographics reasons and cultural reasons that allowed for their populations to aggressively spike to the point that they had the largest populations in the world. & #x200B; Politically, having extremely large families was encouraged (before China had one child policy). As a means to fill the gap left by huge populations losses. WW2 took it's toll on both nations and they desperately needed people to help the population back to a stable level. & #x200B; Geographically, both nations can support a large populations. With lots of rich farmland and generally easy access to water, it allowed for a large population to be developed. & #x200B; Also culturally, having a large family was either wanted or not looked down upon. As both countries had lots of farmers, kids were a source of free farm labor. Also both cultures encouraged having male children, so parents of females would \"try again\" until they got a boy. & #x200B; TL;DR: A mix of different reasons and conditions at the right place and the right time",
"Arable land that is good for agriculture. India have 1.7 million square kilometer, US have 1.6, Russia have 1.2, China have 1.1, brazil have 0.7, Australia have 0.47, Canada have 0.46, Argentina have 0.38. As you can see the US, Brazil, Australia, Canada and Argentina are all new world territory that didn't have much people since they were not connected to the Old world for a long time. Russia is a rather cold country and didn't developped until the middle ages so that leave us with India and China only. Just for comparaison, Western/Central Europe have around 0.6 millions square kilometer of arable land. So it's near the top, but still not as much as China or India.",
"In the 18th century, China’s population, which had been relatively stable at between 50-100 million for almost a thousand years suddenly started surging. The origins of the population surge can be traced to three factors: 1. Extended period of international peace that followed the Manchu conquest of China. (With the country at peace, there was a decline in domestic mortality rate) 2. The Manchu regime carried a major campaign to repair long neglected dikes and irrigation works along the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. (This lead to fewer fatalities from flood, drought, water borne diseases and malnutrition) 3. There was a significant rise in female fertility, resulting in a substantial and prolonged “baby boom.” This population surge beginning in the early 18th century did not abate for more than two centuries thereafter."
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cocnyt | Why did French suppress other languages like Occitan to become the national language? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is somehow \"normal\" when it comes to nation building. Many countries as we know them today had to push their national language from varieties spoken in the capital city, which was usually considered the educated language of the elites. If they hadn't done this, maybe that country wouldn't have become a single entity as they exist today. The Iberian peninsula has Romance varieties like Catalan/Valencian, Castillian (modern Spanish), and Galician/Portuguese, and Basque, a language that is not Romance, but in its own family. From there two countries were born, Spain and Portugal. At some point in history they were a single country. If history had played differently, today the entire peninsula could have been a single country, and maybe Portuguese would be a regional language like Catalan is today. Instead, currently we have two countries, and some Catalans and Basques want to create their own countries. Italian has many varieties as well, Venetian, Florentininan, Sardinian, Sicilian, etc. They eventually settled in the varieties surrounding Rome and Florence as a standard Italian. The German world has very heavy dialects in the South, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, but also Austria and Switzerland, while in the north there are dialects in Niedersachsen and Nordrhein-Westfallen that are closer to Dutch. When the Prussians became the principal German kingdom, they basically created the Standard German by pushing their Berlinesse-Brandenburg dialect. If you don't define a national language, you have fractures, like the process of Balkanization that occured in the Balkans, where Serbians, Croatians, Montenegrins, Bosnians, etc., basically speak the same language but with small differences and regionalisms. They consider their languages to be different, although most linguists classify them as just being varieties of the same language. Yugoslavia was supposed to be that single country, but it didn't work, and it just broke up.",
"As /u/mel0nwarrior said, it's pretty much what almost every country in the world does. In the UK almost nobody speaks Gaelic or Welsh. Likewise in the US, there was (and still is!) a movement to force everyone to speak English, despite the fact that the US has had regions that were previously populated by French, German and/or Hispanic speakers. Countries that have more than 1 language as national languages tend to be the exception rather than the rule. There aren't many Belgiums or Switzerlands in the world.",
"Napoleon really formalized the language with the reinstatement of the Académie Français, which has existed for centuries and regulates the French language to this day. No other language has such a well established regulatory governing body. If you originally had a group of scholars of non-Occitan speaking French, they will reform the official language to the vocabulary and grammar they are using/speaking, and eventually things became standardized. Edit: it is stated that in 2008 the Académie Français opposed the French Government‘s attempt to recognize Occitan and the regional dialects as the languages of France. So there is a bit of snooty-ness there. Edit2: Francais* Source: URL_0"
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cogoyw | Why is the USA the only country that doesn’t use the metric system? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"After the revolution, Thomas Jefferson was trying to implement a standardized system of weights and measurements to make trade between the states easier. He heard the French came up with a standardizes system and they sent him a 1Kg weight to be used as the standard. The ship the weight was on got stopped by pirates so Jefferson never got the standard 1Kg weight URL_0",
"We're not fully converted in the UK, still use miles, mph, feet, inches, stones and pounds for body metrics. It's not a bad thing being exposed to both, you get good at converting between the 2. eg, I work in engineering and have Danish colleagues that have no clue what in inch is",
"The US technically uses the metric system, however they convert that to their standards after it arrives on shore",
"American’s know both. We use metric when it makes sense. It doesn’t make sense to spend a shirtload of money changing street signs and factories just so Europeans will stop whining.",
"Actually us isn't the only country with imperial system, there's this one place on africa which name i don't remember. Also, i think that metric system should be worldwide, its easy and consistent, contrary to imperial",
"Which system is used by American scientists? Are scientific publications adapted per country ?"
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coipvd | Who was Jeffrey Epstein? Why is him committing suicide suspicious? What does him committing suicide mean? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Had a child sex slave trafficking ring with multiple elite billionaires involved but hasn’t given much info and was supposed to go to trial soon also was on suicide watch but somehow still committed “suicide” it’s suspicious because there’s a high chance it’s a coverup"
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cokat1 | Why does everyone use the AD and BC years even if they don't follow Christianity? | I feel genuinely dumb for asking but I'm not sure where else I can ask lmao | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"IIRC, Christians were very influential (and still are) when a standard dating system was established. As such, non-christians had to choose between using the standard AD/BC system or inventing their own non-standard system and causing a lot of confusion. Some people tried the latter, but eventually pretty much everybody gave in, and now the system is so normal that it would cause an awful lot of confusion and complaining if we tried to change.",
"Most do it because that's how it's always been done, without thinking about it. Some are starting to use CE and BCE (common Era and before common era)",
"It’s also 2019 of the common era. Also there’s not a huge reason to change something that is so universally used. No need to complicate it all.",
"I think just because the current year system is so widely used in Western countries. It's 2019 at the moment, and the reference point for that historically/traditionally happens to be the supposed death of Jesus Christ. But it's not universal - in Thailand it's currently 2562 and in Taiwan it's 108 (just because I've lived in both those two countries in the last couple of years, and still could never get used to them)."
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commh9 | Why did ancient civilizations make so many damn vases? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Storage and transport. Once agriculture and irrigation really took off, people needed a way to store and preserve harvest for the next year. Also imagine how hard it would be to trade items like beans in Mesoamerica without a way to move them. Some cultures also saw vaseses something you'd need to take with you in the afterlife to help you in your journey.",
"Most aren't vases, they're storage and shipping vessels for everything from oil and wine, to grains. It's like asking, \"Why did people in the 20th-21st century make so many shipping containers?!\"",
"I feel like in a few thousand years people will be asking \"why did people make so many plastic tupperware boxes in the past?\"",
"In a time before plastic containers and mass produced glassware the best way to store and transport liquids was in pottery. There were also lots of other things made but that did not last as long after being abandoned. Pieces of a vase might be the only thing remaining of a settlement after a thousand years. There might have been lots of wooden furniture and beautiful tapestry but the only thing we have left is the pottery that were used to store the jams, wines, grain, etc."
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coqey5 | The whole Jeffrey Epstein situation | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So he was charged with sexual trafficking of minors and was awaiting trial in jail. Two weeks ago he was found in his cell unconscious with neck injuries, he was placed on suicide watch and released a few days later. Today he was found dead, reported hanging himself. Those are the facts. What's odd is he was taken off the suicide watch at all. He should have stayed on it and there are even doubts about it being a suicide. So that leaves us to ask why would he be taken off suicide watch? It is all strange we will see what happens as more facts come out. As of now the US attorney general has ordered an investigation into the matter."
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cousbm | Why have guns in common stores in the US? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not as many Walmarts have guns for sale as you think. Mostly areas with heavy hunting in it because there aren't as many chain hunting shops out there and they can be cheaper to buy from than mom and pop gun shops. But almost any Walmart with a sports area sells ammo.",
"We also have stores that are specifically for guns, and they are often considered to be better stores with more knowledgeable staff and often better prices. The simple truth is that a lot more people in the USA both legally can have guns and actually do buy guns. Plus hunting is super common in rural areas. So for big-box stores that by default try to sell literally everything... That includes guns.",
"In some parts of the country, Walmart has basically pushed all the smaller retailers out of business. They want a monopoly so they sell everything people want. In some parts of the country, it's perfectly normal to have guns & shoot them recreationally. There's plenty of people who live in the country & need them to shoot varmints & larger pests. It's not at all weird to see guns or just go shooting on a weekend outing. Some of these people live an hour away from the nearest cop & know that they need to be able to protect themselves. Since people buy guns, Walmart sells them. As much as you hear about violent gun crimes, the majority of gun owners are responsible people who would never consider breaking the law. The core of the gun control debate is balancing out these people's wants, needs & feelings against the unhinged assholes who are criminal and the views of people who live in more urban areas where there's no good reason to have firearms..",
"The main appeal of stores like Wal-Mart is that you don’t have to go to seven different places to complete your shopping list. And in plenty of towns, guns are as commonplace as tools or sports equipment. Sure, the actual gun store might have knowledgeable staff and a more carefully arranged selection, but they sure don’t have ground beef, socks, or recliners. Sometimes, the Wal-Mart becomes so popular that it drives all of the local specialty stores out of business.",
"It's just a business decision for Wal-Mart -- guns are something they can stock and sell at a profit, same as everything else on their shelves. Whether that's stupid or smart, morally right or wrong, isn't part of their decision-making process."
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cowa4d | How did we know how to translate between different languages. | Let's say for the first time in human history, someone tried to translate something from Chinese into English or vice-versa. How would they know what the right words and sentence structure were in the other language? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For any living language, it's possible to learn a second language the same way you learned your first. Go to a place where everyone is speaking it and be curious. You'll eventually pick up enough of the basics that a current speaker can start to teach it to you formally. For languages spoken nearby, dual speakers will naturally arise in children who spend some time in each region. Chinese to English may have been harder at one point, but because of the nature of trade in olden times, if you even *had* any Chinese text, you probably also had a Chinese person who had traveled a long way to deliver it, perhaps so long that they had no intention of returning any time soon and could learn English and translate. Dead languages are trickier, and European scientists had a famously difficult time translating things like Egyptian hieroglyphics. That problem was addressed by the \"Rosetta Stone\", a fortunate archaeological find that printed the same text in multiple languages, one of which we already understood and one of which was hieroglyphics.",
"Follow up question: how did the native Americans learn Spanish? There was no pre-existing translation pretty much, at least not to my knowledge. Did they point at studd and name stuff like you see in those cartoons or what",
"They’d have to learn the Chinese language, such as Mandarin or Cantonese. For instance, I’m English and can speak Dutch so I could translate the meaning of a sentence either way as well as the literal translation. If you have no reference at all, you might be able to guess some spoken language by frequency of sounds. A computer might be helpful there to speed it up. For instance, people often have a way of greeting one another. It can vary but sampling would help. Before Egyptian hieroglyphs were figured out, the [cartouches]( URL_0 ) were guessed to represent people of significance. From some context, this was worked out to be particular persons. The breakthrough was, I believe, through learning Coptic which is/was the language of the Christian church in Egypt. Like Catholics with Latin, the spoken language was similar to that of the ancient Egyptians and still in use. Through lateral thinking, the glyphs were decoded over time."
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cp2jz0 | Why are Arkansas and Kansas pronounces differently? | *pronounced | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think Arkansas was inhabitated by a large French community and the pronunciation remained.",
"“Arkansas” is a French word, and “Kansas” is named after the local native Americans."
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cp3d0b | How / when did having a first and last name become global commonplace? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It isn’t a universal thing, first off. Icelandic, Burmese, Javanese, and many East Africans still don’t use them. In some cultures, like Japan, their use is also a relatively new thing.",
"So almost everyone here sucks at answering your question. For general populace It generally started with censuses that required more precise population tallies. Nobles would usually have a second name or title attached to their name. China and Rome started super early with censuses but Rome fell. European countries started censuses, and last names, in the 1500s but even Western Europe only wrapped up the practice with the Napoleonic conquest as at least the Netherlands were forced to pick names. From European Colonial powers everywhere else followed suit because Europe conquered everywhere with the posted exceptions. edit woke up, did some fixes.",
"Another variation is that the last name was usually where a person was from. Like Catherine de Sevilla. Drop the “de” and Sevilla just becomes a last name. Although I do know some who still keep “de” as apart of their last name.",
"The second name was usually used as a job description, rather than an actual name, but you’d still have differentiate between them, thus first names. Over the time those jobs formed the last names. I.e.: “John the Smith” became “John Smith” Edit: Spelling, cause me dumb dumb",
"I don’t think anyone really answered your question. I know that surnames became common in Europe for census purposes, in the 1500s. There is a good description of this in the book “From Dawn to Decadence”.",
"Two separate orgins: The Chinese started it many millennia ago for their census needs , the Europeans started it (inspired by the Chinese, maybe or maybe not) many hundreds of years ago. Now, the Europeans IMPOSED this on all the societies they colonized - often times, AGAINST the will of the people. Some cultures were matriarchal and disagreed with this patriarchal system, some didn't understand why it was necessary, one name is enough. Even today, there are cultures that find this weird and are trying to get the system rolled back (good luck with that!).",
"Just look at Leonardo Di Vinci. He was born as a child out of wedlock. Hence, he was known as Leonardo of Vinci, where he was born. No last name, per se.",
"Isn’t that how last names like miller, baker, fletcher came about? In a smallish village, Adam was the one of the only smiths so Adam Smith. I like how in Scandinavia, you get a lot of -son names. Erikson, Henderson. Robertson. Basically, a long time ago, a guy named Robert.... had a son.",
"We only have them because of colonization. They were pretty much forced on us. Prior to that, our last names were the name of our people. That or if you became well known there was usually a description of your personality in there. So I would be Tane O Porou if I didn't do anything of significance, and probably Tane, Smartass of Porou if I became known.",
"My family comes from Norway. About 9 generations back the father/son names go Sven Ralphson, Ralph Svenson, Sven Ralphson, Ralph Svenson. (It's not Ralph, but I can't remember the name). Basically, it depends on ehat naming pattern they follow. Is your last name your trade, your father's or mother's first name with a suffix of son or daughter, or your parents' surname? Hunter can be a first or last name and is common in both instances. Names like Jackson are common, Anderson less so. If your family's surname is Douglas you'll all likely have two first names.",
"In a word: Napoleon, when he conquered most of Europe he force the the newly incorporated countries to conform to the new French laws and customs now called the Napoleonic code and is the basis for most European law (im not sure if it still is youll need to check that) but amongst the reforms was to force the citizens to have legal last/family names. Im not sure how widely spread the use of legal family names was before the Revolution but i do knwo that in The Netherlands most people thought it would only last a few years so loads of people choose very silly names, my Grandmother's maiden name translate to Fish Hook and ive heard that one family took the name Poope (i cant validate that) TLDR: There is probably a lot that im missing from this but what i learnt was the Napoleon force much of Europe to conform with French law which included having a LEGAL last name (probably for taxation purposes)"
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cp9hb4 | What is the Stalinslavski method of acting and why is it so good? Is it hard to do? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Stalinslavski method is a way of portraying emotions more realistically and believably compared to the over the top performances of classical acting styles. Almost all modern actors use Stalinslavski's method to some degree. His method requires actors to analize the script in detail, then answer seven questions about their character: Who am I? Where am I? What time Is It? What do I want? Why do I want it? How will I get what I want? What do I need to overcome to get what I want? Oftentimes, these questions need to be answered for the character as a whole, for each of the three acts of a film, or even on a scene by scene basis. His method also recommends the actor to think of a time they were in a similar circumstance as the character they're portraying. For instance, \"The character I'm portraying just lost her husband. I've never been married, but I can remember how I felt when my dog died or my childhood best friend moved away.\" The actor can then think of how they felt in that moment to actually look like they are experiencing a great loss on camera. As for how hard it is, it really just depends on the actor and the script/character/circumstances. With practice though, any halfway decent actor can do it in my opinion. Hope this helps!"
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cpf9uf | How come we know so much about ancient philosophies from texts but there is so little information on technology acquisition? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You compare a complete field of studies against very specific technology. We know a lot about ancient technology, but some specific we don't have much information for different reasons. Same with philosophy, we know a lot about it, but some specific writing were lost. In addition, we can really only know about philosophy through text, so if some of those were lost, we wouldn't really know about it. But if a technology is lost, we can see know about it because some people saw that technology and talk about it in other writing, making us aware that something was lost. For the specific technology you talked about. Roman Steam Engine or the Aeolipile was a cool concept, but it wasn't practical. It was more of a party trick than anything else, so it make sense that not a lot of people wrote about it. Greek Fire was a closely guarded formula, since it was a secret weapons of the Byzantine. So again, it make sense that we can't find any writing about the specific formula. That said, greek fire isn't something special that would be useful today. It was most likely a mixture of saltpeper, so would have been a early form of gunpowder, nothing special today or even 300 years ago. If the exact formula was know, we probably wouldn't even talk about it, it's mostly because of it's unknown nature that it become interesting to people. Baghdad batteries couldn't have been powerful and there was not that much use to electricity back then, so like the Aoelipile this was most like not use on a large scale or particularly useful for pretty much anyone. There is controversy about it, some thing that what we found couldn't really work, so maybe it was a failed experiment, other think they could use it for electroplating of metal, but with the possible power of these batteries and the fact that we don't really have any mention of it anywhere else, mean that if there was a use to those batteries it was very small scale. Archymedes heat ray was just focusing solar energy to heat something, it's nothing that special about it and it was most likely not very pratical at the time. Again, a small invention that didn't really have any impact and so people didn't write about it much. I couldn't find much info on vitrification and I have no idea what you mean by mechanical robots. Those seem like conspiracy theory to me. Anyway most of what you talk about is mostly small technology that didn't really work well or had minimal impact so nobody wrote about them or built them on a larger scale. Except for Greek Fire, but that was most likely a early for of gunpowder and it's been hundred of years that we do better version of that stuff."
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cphj5e | why is there a correlation between wearing glasses and being perceived as smart? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Back in the day (hundreds of years ago) very few people even could read, much less needed to read on a regular basis. Generally, only scholars, priests or other learned men had a need to read and write. Since reading glasses are only really necessary when you need to read (you can get by on almost all other tasks without them) and glasses were _very_ expensive to obtain, only scholars ever got reading glasses. Hence, only smart people wear glasses.",
"In the past -- especially before the industrial revolution -- the only people who *needed* glasses were those people who needed to overcome eyesight problems be able to read. Think back to jobs people had 250+ years ago. Farming the land? Don't really need glasses. Hearding cattle? Don't really need glasses. Soldier in the army? Don't really need glasses. Making barrels? Don't really need glasses. Smithing swords at the forge? Don't really need glasses. Etc. etc. (Clearly those people may have benefited from corrective eyewear, but since such eyewear was an expensive rarity, they didn't *need* them for their daily work.) The only people who *needed* glasses were book-readers who were unable to read said books without spectacles. Owning and reading books meant you had an education. Hence the association."
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cpm5la | what are the Hong Kong protests about? All of the news reports are long winded and full of irrelevant information. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The people in Hong Kong are used to a Western style government and society where you have free speech and can vote on government policy. A law was pushed through that would allow a HK citizen to be extradited to China, meaning if a HK citizen spoke out against the Chinese government they could be arrested in HK and deported to China where they would presumably be tortured and killed. Basically nobody in Hong Kong wants that. They are protesting being absorbed into the oppressive authoritarian China."
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cpqyjk | Why is tipping such a big deal in the USA? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because in most states employees that expect a tip are not required to be paid minimum wage. They get paid waiter's minimum wage which can be as low as $2.25/hour by their employer.",
"Everyone telling you that the employers can pay less than minimum wage have no idea what they're talking about. Employers cannot pay an employee less than the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour - possibly more depending on the state they live in - but tips can count against that down to the employer paying $2.13 per hour plus tips so long as the total of the tips + wage is no less than $7.25 per hour. This means that if during one 5 hour shift an employee makes $50 in tips they've made $10 an hour which is above minimum wage. Because they've made more than minimum wage then their employer only has to pay $2.13 per hour extra. In this example, the employee's take home pay would total $60.65 - the $50 in tips + another $10.65 from the employer. However, if the the employee's tips + $2.13 per hour don't equal $7.25, then the employer needs to increase the wage they pay to compensate. So, for example, if the employee made $10 in tips during a 5 hour shift, they made $2 per hour in tips. The employer then needs to pay $5.25 per hour to bring the total wage up to minimum wage. None of this prevents an employee from having an agreement with their employer that sees them have a base wage that is far higher than minimum wage. This just establishes the baseline that employers cannot go below. The reason that tips are seen as being so important is more or less summed up by [this scene from Reservoir Dogs]( URL_0 ). Which is to say, if you're earning minimum wage then chances are you're either at or below the poverty line. Although being a server has never been a high paying job, its a job that many people are able to live a lower middle class lifestyle on. The reason they are able to live that lifestyle is because tips push their effective wage far above minimum wage."
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cq1us1 | How does a person determine how much an art work is worth? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"If you work for a city procurement department that buys art you just pull a random (ridiculously high number) out of your ass and use the taxpayers money to buy it. If you are a private dealer you look at what the art is commanding on the free market pertaining to the relevance of the artist and the demand that it is generating.",
"Art dealers will look at what that work of art has previously sold for and what other works of art have been selling for. When the market is stable, the assumption would be that the work of art will sell for about what it sold for before. If the market is up by 20%, it should sell for about 20% more. Of course, if a particular artists work becomes in greater demand, that has to be factored in, as well. If you are talking about new art work that has never sold before, then often the artist will ask for however much he thinks he can get out of the work. It's worth may be guesswork, especially if the artist is an unknown. Known artists are easier to estimate because you can compare their work with what their previous works have sold for."
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cq22t6 | Why are many of the Hong Kong protesters using English on their signs? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"ewtdvy3"
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"text": [
"Hong Kong used to be a British colony, and so there's still a pretty high English speaking population there, compared to the rest of China. Part of it also is that they know that the rest of the world is watching, and will be more likely to read their signs if they are in English."
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3
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cq27oh | what’s the difference between stereotypes and culture? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"ewtqsu3"
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"text": [
"Every culture has its own aspects and tendencies. Some good and some bad. This is one of the reasons that learning about other cultures is so interesting. Humans have been gifted with a talent which allows us to see patterns. It's a survival thing, at the lowest level. And at the highest level, it's what allows us to think. It created science. As we view other cultures, we sometimes see things that are not positive. From our point of view. If we absorb these patterns, and comment on them... we sometimes upset others. Those others then accuse us of having stereotypes. Sadly enough, \"stereotypes\" are often used as a way of shaming people for noticing patterns."
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cqmu67 | meaning of neo Nazis vs Nazi? | What is the difference between a neo nazi be a Nazi if there is any? My assumption is that a neo nazi is someone that supports Nazi beliefs after Hitler died. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ewxg09u",
"ewxgbcy",
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"text": [
"neo- literally means new. So it's Nazis that are people who've decided to go down that road in modern times, rather than back in the 1940s.",
"It is just new nazis rather than old one. After WWII there were still some Nazis left who openly continued their support for the defeated ideology. They organized and got together in groups, but they also grew old. Eventually new people flocked to the ideology who were too young to have been adherents when Hitler was still alive. To differentiate between the old who kept their ideology and the new who joined up later, the new ones where called neo-nazis.",
"It's rather simple. \"Neo-nazi\" is a terms created by political scientist who thought nazism couldn't exist without hitler, and where a bit dissapointed."
],
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cqtzjn | Why can't we outlaw "Fake news"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Law is all about defining what is wrong. It usually involve a clear meaning describing an action. Stealing, for example, is an act where you take something that doesn't belong to you. It would be nice if everything can be explain as easy as that. Unfortunately, it's much harder to define something that isn't exactly clear cut, like fake news. One might say Fake news is the news that is not true. It would be nice if that is what fake news usually is (which they are law against, as a matter of fact). Most \"fake news\", how ever, are not actually false information, but rather how they use the truth partially, leave out detail, use wording that make it sound different that what it actually is, or combinations of those, none of which are easily define in legal term. This make it really difficult, if not outright impossible, to outlaw fake news.",
"The first amendment protects the freedom of the press to say whatever they want to. \"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.\" Basically, no law can prohibit anyone saying anything about any topic.",
"Every news story would end up in a court case, with one side claiming that it was fake in some way and the news outlet defending itself. Everything can be challenged as misleading or incomplete if it is going against your particular leaning. It would be unworkable.",
"The [Fairness Doctrine]( URL_0 ) was eliminated in 1987. Also, personally, I think \"talk and opinion\" shows should have to frequently remind viewers/listeners that their content is opinion and not necessarily factual.",
"Because of the first amendment with freedom of press. They are allowed to report anything as long as it's the truth, or an opinion. They just know how twist the truth to fit their narrative, and how to make an opinion sound like a fact.",
"One reason is financial, big media companies make a lot of money by not being responsible for facts. Since they're still raking in dough without \"fake news\" being outlawed there is little reason for them to want to change. Politicians generally don't want such legal restrictions because they want to be able to manipulate the news themselves, BOTH SIDES do this regularly. Another reason is that it can be difficult, sometimes there are conflicting reports from crazy events and who knows which one is correct and which is \"fake\"?"
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cqxrbf | What exactly is the role of a producer during filmmaking? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"ex0feme"
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"text": [
"Producers generally have a managerial role over the production. Things like budget, scheduling, hiring, contract negotiations, and other supervisory stuff. The roles can often blur a bit, but the traditional way to think of it is that the director is in charge of all of the artistic choices - acting, editing, lighting, costuming, etc., and the producer's job is to take care of all of the business aspects that come with filming something so that the director can just focus on that artistic side of it. Plenty of producers get involved in the artistic choices - after all, they represent the studio and thus the movie's funding, so if they say \"cast this person, she's big right now\" or \"take out this scene with all the blood, we want to get a PG-13 rating,\" it might be their call to override the director there and have the final say. And similarly, the director might handle some of the business aspects like scheduling or whatever, because they want to have a hand in the business-y side of things. The writer, ideally, isn't involved at all once the script is finalized. Their job is to write the movie and pass it on for the director (to envision and create) and the producer (to actualize), with the writer only involved if any rewrites or punch-up is needed, unless they take on another role. Many writers also serve as producers and directors, because they like to be involved in the project start to finish. But in the sort of ideal scenario where none of the lines are blurred, the writer writes a script, and sells it to the studio. The studio gives the project to a producer and hires a director. The director dreams up what he wants the script to look like on film, and it's the producer's job to handle the budget and the business decisions to make that director's vision a reality. The director handles the day-to-day on set and in editing, and the producer oversees production to make sure everything goes smoothly, on time, on budget, and handle any issues that pop up."
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cqy2cw | How did “hello” become the default greeting when you answer the phone? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ex0gqna",
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"text": [
"Nobody liked 'Ahoy!' which is what the creator of the telephone wanted the standard greeting to be.",
"> The use of hello as a telephone greeting has been credited to Thomas Edison; according to one source, he expressed his surprise with a misheard Hullo.[11] Alexander Graham Bell initially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting.[12][13] However, in 1877, Edison wrote to T. B. A. David, president of the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company of Pittsburgh: > Friend David, I do not think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. > What you think? Edison - P.S. first cost of sender & receiver to manufacture is only $7.00.[14] > By 1889, central telephone exchange operators were known as 'hello-girls' because of the association between the greeting and the telephone. As /u/ChoadyWalker says, this was in contrast to Bell's desire that the greeting be \"Ahoy-Hoy\"."
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crflk5 | How do antiques gain their value, and why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ex4iabu"
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"text": [
"Depends on what antiques you are talking about but first off they’re rare; either few were ever made or plenty were made but only a few survive. Plus, generally speaking the craftsmanship and level of detail are of a quality that we can not replicate. Then there’s the history of the item, which can be extraordinary even if the antique seems mundane."
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crjw4v | Why does music licenses make songs region-locked with things like Spotify and Apple Music? | I had to make another free spotify account just to listen to some Japanese songs that I can't find in the US region even though I can find a few other songs by the same artist. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ex5yj6q"
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"text": [
"Imagine this example: a small, national record label finds an awesome band and signs them up to create an album. And then, a month later, EVERYONE wants that album. But...the local record label are not in a position where they have the financial muscle or the practical means to help the record spread around the world. SO, in order to help sales, they sign a contract with a huge record label to handle international distribution. In, say, all the continents where they don't already have agreements with other labels. With some of those distribution contracts, they also sign over the right to the Spotify earnings. As long as they get a cut themselves too. But at home, they refuse to sign a contract with Spotify, because they find the service cheap. They are simply not paying enough. And they want their own home market intact. But overseas they don't care, since they get a cut by doing nothing. EDIT: in short, Spotify has to honor the distribution rights of the record label they are authorised to distribute *for*."
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crnnuq | What is the origin of the current use of the word "flex?" | Only in recent weeks, I have seen a serious uptick in the number of people using the word "flex" in place of words like, "show," "display," and "present." What is the origin of this alternate usage? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"well, flex and -flect come from the same latin root meaning to bend. When you flex a muscle (most notably your biceps, to show off) you bend your arm. so that’s that etymological root for flexing your muscles. in terms of flexing on someone, you’re showing your strengths, the same way flexing your muscles shows off your physical strength.",
"I've always felt it has been adopted from the bodybuilding community, its certainly where I first heard it",
"Urban dictionary is often a terrible source of information if you take the entries literally, since people use it for all sorts of joke entries and it’s not aggressively edited like Wikipedia. But one thing that is useful is noting the earliest dates that a word got thrown in there. For words that entered popularity after urban dictionary was around, they often give you an idea of how old the current meaning is. URL_0 As best I can tell, flex in its current meaning seems to go back to 2005 or so and comes out of rap."
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cruxzb | Has celebrating birthdays historically always been a thing? If not, when did it become a thing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ex9r0fa",
"ex9t44r"
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"text": [
"In the Bible, Pharoh had a birthday party. I’m not sure about before that. On the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, he made a feast for all his servants and lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants. - Genesis 40:20",
"Within society births are often celebrated and likely have been since before recorded history. I imagine celebration for your actual date of birth were less/not common prior to accurate calendars. Calendars themselves, even rudimentary ones likely sprang up within settled societies due to their necessity for agriculture, which itself is really the birth of settled societies. Still seems likely that people would celebrate another “year” as we know it in line with a harvest, which if having a number structure in their society would be regarded as adding to their age. Spitballing now, but it just seems intuitive."
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crx5xz | What is bussing? | I’ve been watching the Democratic debates and Kamala Harris mentioned the “bussing” and how she was “bussed”. What exactly is bussing? Was it good or bad? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"exadtd7"
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"text": [
"They were referring to a policy of forcing racial integration of schools by bussing kids from one district (like an all black district) to another, and vice versa. When the whole thing was going on, Joe Biden argued against a law that allowed bussing kids to other districts to go to school. Kamala Harris was a young girl who benefited from bussing."
],
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11
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cs1rcm | Why do some countries have names that are nothing like what they call themselves? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"exbwjsm"
],
"text": [
"Usually it just results from foreigners trying to pronounce words in a language they don’t understand. In the case of Japan, the Japanese use Chinese characters for some of their language. But they don’t pronounce those characters the way the Chinese do. So the Japanese write their country's name with the characters 日本. They pronounce the characters 日本 as \"Ni-Hon\". The Chinese pronounce those same characters as \"Jat-Bun\", or \"Zhi-ben\", or \"Ri-ben\", depending on the dialect. When Marco Polo heard the Chinese talking about Japan, he heard that pronunciation as \"Cipangu\", which is what he wrote in his books. Over the years in the translation from Italian to Portuguese to English and the changes in pronunciation through all of those languages, we came up with “Japan“. There are similar other stories for most other countries though not all of them are that interesting."
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cskexl | Why are so many of the tallest statues related to buddhism? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"I think this is actually a question better stated as \"why do other religions *not* have many giant statues?\". I'll try to answer, although I have limited perspective because buddhism is fucking huge and fucking complicated. I think this stems from the core difference between Buddhism and western religions. Western religions, including Islam (which in the religious sense, is definitely much more western than eastern), focus on organisation. When you're a Christian or a Muslim, you're a member of this organisation. It's important that you're a member of this organisation, and if you're not, then bad things will happen to you. In western religions, the religion is more important than the faith when it comes to doctrine. Buddhism is a much more personal religion. In fact, I'd be hesitant to call it a religion at all. What's important in Buddhism is your own personal exploration and understanding, and your own journey to escape samsara, and particularly in Mahayana Buddhism, the all-importance of Daibutsu, the cosmic buddha (long story very short, Mahayana buddhism is interested in the science and philosophy of buddhism, rather than Gautama buddha himself, so ended up inventing a huge pantheon of different buddhas. The cosmic buddha is the conglomerate identity of all of those buddhas, if I'm understanding correctly, and is therefore very big and important). In Mahayana buddhism, the branch most practiced by the countries that have the big buddha statues (China, Japan, Thailand and so on), it's all about Cosmic Buddha and you. There's no centralised religion, really, so when you want to honour your cosmic buddha, you tend to build a statue. A really big one, if you can afford it and *really* like Cosmic Buddha. It's also due to circumstance, I think. When buddhism was being introduced to Japan from what is now Korea, the emperor at the time was finally getting his shit together and trying to take control of the entire Japanese archipelago (which at the time was still split a few ways between the Yamato people (the people we consider to be Japanese today) and some native cultures like the Ainu). The Emperor has always been a religious figure in Japan, but that emperor was trying to project an image of himself of basically a super-all-powerful-deity-guy, which is very similar to the portfolio of the cosmic buddha, so he decided to build a big-ass buddha statue to say \"hey look how great I, the emperor, am!\". As a side note, Kannon and Guanyin (the same deity) are also Buddhist and take up many, many positions on the tallest statue list because she's a hugely important deity in many far-east divisions of Buddhism. Western religions *don't* have massive statues, because they're not really about their figures, they're about their organisations and doctrines. Even Jesus is more of a symbol and image than a massively important figure - certainly nowhere near as important as the various big-buddhas are in buddhism. Western religions still make big financial gestures of course, but they do so in the form of buildings - giant cathedrals and mosques - rather than statues, because these religions are focused on bringing people to a central location for purposes that you can describe in many ways depending on how cynical your perspective on western religion is. There is an exception to this in Christianity in primarily Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries, it seems. No idea why. Note also that Muslims pray towards Mecca, a sacred *location*. Then of course, there's the fact that Islam literally doesn't let you depict the prophet, so I would be quite surprised if Islam *ever* had a spot on the world's biggest statues list. Even on a smaller level, the same fundamental difference between western religions and eastern religions exists. Every religion has gathering places, but the gathering places of western religions are designed to seat many people, usually an entire community, for the sake of worship, while gathering places of eastern religions tend to be much smaller. In Buddhism, only monks live and work in the temples, and most people have their own buddhist monuments at home."
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cspu6j | Why is it generally frowned upon to have song writers if you’re a rapper but not frowned upon if you’re a singer? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"exgdauy"
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"text": [
"In rap people look for well written lyrics instead of a melodic voice. While being a singer people care much more about their voice than the lyrics."
],
"score": [
3
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ct3q6h | why people clap to music on 2 and 4, and why does clapping on 1 and 3 mess musicians up? | I recently saw a montage of musicians stopping their performance to stop crowds from clapping on 1 and 3 and asking/teaching them to clap on 2 and 4. All of them looked like clapping on 1 and 3 was making it more difficult for them. I asked my mother about this who has been first chair for clarinet in many concert bands and she had never heard of this. Any insight would be appreciated. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"American music is based on syncopation, which is when weak/off-beats are stressed. In a bar of four, the strength of each beat goes: *Strong, Weak, Less-strong, Weakest.* Different instruments serve different roles in every genre of music. In jazz, the bass is expected to play on beats 1 and 3 at the very least because the bass represents a more harmonic function in the ensemble. A drummer is playing every beat and subdivision in some way, but they are also emphasizing beats 2 and 4, because they hold a rhythmic function. (This way, bass and drums are doing a kind of call-and-response thing which is a trait inherited from various African musics.) Hand Claps, as an instrument, serve a similar function as the drums in that their role is to accent 2 and 4. When you clap on 1 and 3, it sounds unnatural because you are playing agains the role of the instrument in this genre (and in American music in general).",
"Check out this video where Harry Connick, Jr. is playing and the crowd gets to clapping on the 1 and 3. Using his talent, he musically shifts to get them back on 2 and 4: URL_0",
"Clapping on 2 & 4 is called a backbeat. My understanding is that in situations where there’s a lot of ambient noise, like when large audiences are cheering or clapping along, the musicians find it harder to hear each other and keep in time. The backbeat helps with this. Source: read an article/interview about a band playing live concerts and the drummer used backbeat this way.",
"In rock music the musical accent (emphasise) is on 2 and 4, and also the snare usually plays on 2 and 4. The claps serve as emphasis and their sound is more similar to the snare sound than the bass drum (which plays on 1 and 3 typically)."
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ctbr34 | Why is it that in many Asian countries, a large portion of a child's immunizations are done all at once, but in the US, it's over essentially their entire childhood? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"exjy7u2"
],
"text": [
"The scar is from BCG, or for much older folks possibly smallpox. The US doesn't require this vaccination because its a relatively low risk of infection. In order to keep the risk low, TB tested for instead. As for immunization schedules the US and Philippines actually look to have pretty similar schedules. The schedules tend to be tweaked depending on what diseases are higher or lower risk."
],
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ctepw3 | Who/what is Qanon, and why are people obsessed with him? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"exkb5km"
],
"text": [
"It's actually not a person but a conspiracy theory basically iirc back in 2017 a soldier was seen with patches that had QAnon and it evolved into a deep state conspiracy theory that QAnon was against Trump and Trump supporters. the essence of the conspiracy theory is that \"there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who rule the world, essentially, and they control everything. They control politicians, and they control the media. They control Hollywood, and they cover up their existence, essentially. And they would have continued ruling the world, were it not for the election of President Donald Trump,\" who was elected to put a stop to the cabal, and whose struggles behind the scenes are being revealed by \"Q\". \"The Storm\" is an anticipated event in which thousands of people, members of the cabal, will be arrested, possibly sent to Guantanmo Bay prison or face military tribunals, and the U.S. military will brutally take over the country. The result will be salvation and a utopia on earth."
],
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ctfw7q | Why do toilet cubicles in US have 1-inch gap everywhere? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"exkh3zl"
],
"text": [
"Boils down to cost. It is cheaper to install the way that they do. There are some places with full on private stalls but those are usually in high dollar places. Just maintain eye contact to establish dominance"
],
"score": [
8
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ctl0m7 | When did hats stop being fashionable? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"exlibba"
],
"text": [
"Hats had gradually been declining in popularity, but the thing that is credited with ending hats for men was the parade for John F. Kennedy's inauguration. He went hatless, and he looked so young and handsome that hat sales fell overnight."
],
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ctopdq | What is the British Identity? I often hear it used as an alternative to English, but doesn't the term British include Scottish people? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"exmcwck",
"exmd0d0"
],
"text": [
"Britain should normally include all of the mainland so England Wales and Scotland, the UK is the United Kingdom of Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and Northern Ireland.",
"It depends on the individual. My British and English identity is defined by the history of my family. Working class people who worked in the pits, on the railroads, and who fought in the trenches for this Union. My British identity is hard graft and toughness, resilience and candidness. Being English, they are one and the same. Which is Probabaly very different from the British identity of a middle class Scotsman, or a welsh aristocrat."
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cts6ji | How are countries names created in different languages and why are they not just the same across the board? | Using the country of Germany as an example, there are several names, none of which are similar. Ex: German - Deutschland Latin languages - Alemania (or some derivative, depending) English - Germany Japanese - 独国 pronounced Doitsu (Sorry for formatting ahead of time, I’m on mobile) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Usually it happens to do with when and how the people speaking a language encountered another people For example, China is called \"China/Chin\" in a ton of languages because most of those countries encountered the Qin dynasty, but \"Cathay/Kitay\" in others because of Silk Road encounters with the Qara Khitai/Western Liao dynasty, \"Seres/Ser/Serica\" from ancient Greek and Romans calling it a \"land of Silk\" and \"Sin/Sinae\" also from ancient Greeks and Romans referencing a region close to Seres"
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ctwguq | Why are we obligated to censor people's identity, when we share a post/picture that they have made on an open and public forum? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We aren't. It's just considered good behavior and it follows rules established by this forum in particular. The reason they made the rule is because doxxing in general is a malicious action and has serious consequences. Not the kind of thing you want your forum known for. And it isn't worth the effort of trying to carve out special exceptions from the perspective of the forum. That's probably the right call. The internet is a poor judge. But If you want a place where doxxing vile people is allowed, you can always make your own website after all.",
"> But for those special cases where someone has made a racist/bigoted/violent/purposefully offensive comment or post, why are we obligated to censor their name/username? Those aren't special cases, though. It's a person exercising their right to free speech, and it isn't the internet police's place to punish them by destroying their livelihood just because they make an offensive comment online. The punishment in that case is far more severe than the offense, and people have been fired from their jobs for some really ultimately minor things. **ALSO**, a community might not want to be associated with that type of behavior. If I own a website and word got out that people from my website were doxxing people, it would attract a lot of negative attention and make me and the other community members a target.",
"Lets understand that you can't pull out a 1980's etiquette book, flip to the section about shit talking people, and find an answer to this question. We have a brand new thing (i.e. the ability for you to go and find out what some random person on the other side of the planet has said to an audience of a dozen people) and show MILLIONS of people who are ideologically aligned with you, what that other person said. This was never an issue average people dealt with before but it WAS an issue newspapers dealt with. Generally the divide was about \"newsworthiness\" and if the person was a public figure vs. a private citizen there was a huge difference. TV preacher - OK, Teenager at a political rally - Not ok. Now though everyone has this ability. So what's the solution? We don't know. I have a very strong intuition that society cannot function if a few thousand \"influencers\" regularly pick out random people to be crushed for no offense other than having the misfortune to come across such person's online path. It isn't so much a question of justice - maybe the guy who slapped a black baby and called it the N-word should be nationally destroyed. But more a question of having arbitrary systems of punishment in our society. I can absolutely guarantee you that I could get you fired from your job, and ostracized by a significant chunk of your friends, based on something you have said, done, thought, or used to think, say, or do. And if the only think preventing that from happening to people is blind luck I don't think that represents a very just society.",
"There are a lot of crazy people on the internet looking for excuses to ruin people's lives, and once the ball's gotten rolling less-crazy people are also happy to join in on the hatemob for their 2 minutes. It's just good practice not to encourage this, not just for the sake of potential targets, but also for your own website as you don't want it to become know as a hub for lunatics. Heck, even sites 'well-known' as hubs for lunatics try to keep this behaviour on the down-low.",
"Sending the keyboard crusaders after someone for an out of context and unverified quote/picture has repeatedly resulted in false attacks and mischaracterization. Remember how the internet identified the wrong person in the Boston Marathon Bombing? Or attacked an immgration-rights protestor because they didn't understand the context of her sign? Or piled on a high school kid because some agitators got right in his face? The idiots online let loose the dogs of war over the slightest perceived offense without bothering to verify context or even truth, and respond with wildly disproportionate action."
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ctzj0g | I’m sure there are some exceptions but why is being a JR. or named after your father generally only something that happens to boys and not girls? | You’ll find tons of men named after their fathers but you rarely meet a woman named after her mother, why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The main obvious reason. When women marry they change their last name to his in tradition. Therefore they wouldn't be Jane smith jr anymore if their last name is Jones now."
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cuuuin | What is it about people's voice "back in the day" that give it that distinct sound? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Back then, broadcasters were more stringent with their requirements for people whose voices they chose to put on the air. In the UK especially, any accent other than standard, plain English - Received Pronunciation, as it's known, the type of English the queen uses - was considered a sign of unintelligence. The reason everyone sounded the same is that they were hand-picked specifically for their voice type.",
"Follow up question, but while people have been focusing on broadcasts I notice the accent or dialect change even in home videos and personal recordings from the past. Or shots of regular people. Even if from the same location you can almost tell the decade by the way they sound, word choice aside.",
"I had voice training back in the day. People were taught to enunciate very clearly because audio equipment wasn't that great or was simply unavailable. Think about how Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi says, \"Never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.\" Every letter of every syllable is distinctly audible, and the cadence helps make it easy to understand as well. This technique can allow a performer to be heard from the stage all the way to the back row without a microphone.",
"I worked on the radio for a long time (not in the US) and can provide you with some insight. Radio and TV had a very careful and serious selection for anchors and newsreaders, and it became even more serious when choosing the voices for documentaries, commercials and so on. Voice tone, pronunciation, diction, many parameters played a role here. Serious media companies had even speech and language therapists (logopedic), phoneticians and so on - involved in productions. It is strange today when you have YouTube channels that feature people that need even urgent medical help or surgery so that we can understand what the heck they're saying. In reality, maybe one in a thousand persons can be suitable for professional audio. And that production had its price. What you are talking about is even more noticeable in the '40s and '50s. Those guys seem like shouting when reading some text. Especially if it was a commercial feature. Or sports. But all of that makes you think that the language had changed. It did, but not in the sense that old footage can make you think. There is another - social change, that concerns this matter. In ancient times, any form of media talk was considered important and participants were considered celebrities, professionals of high dignity. It was simply said - a social position. They had fame of being the chosen ones. Their voices were remembered, compared to other, commented and rated. So, in return, they behaved like actors, more pompous. Today nobody gives a shit, more or less. Another thing I forgot: in those times 99% of the material was read from the carefully prepared scripts. Since the eighties, another approach prevailed - that the best professional is the one that is spontaneous, does not read and resembles everyday talk.",
"The midatlantic/transatlantic accent has been discussed to death, but every day people also had a distinct way of talking that had nothing to do with the transatlantic accent. Part of it was that pop culture from the 80s on created voices, with the “valley girl” probably being the most distinct, which was emulated and adopted by young impressionable kids and we’ve lived through different permutations of that. This video of [Sandy Meisner teaching an acting class]( URL_0 ) is a pretty good example. I feel like everyone just talked softer. They go up at the end of their phrases a lot. It almost sounds flirtatious. I’ve always wondered about it too.",
"Not sure why nobody is talking about the [mid Atlantic accent]( URL_0 ) which people literally trained their voices for. People didn’t just sound like that back in the day it was something of a status, a way of speaking that was important in the entertainment industry and took practice.",
"They actually still teach this style of speaking in some colleges for oration and communication classes. It’s also taught in certain call centers for “non-regional” dialect so that people can curb poor English habits. They show videos of old programs from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s as examples.",
"Everyone here is talking about English but there's also the same thing in French at least French from Québec. Even further then regional accent (there's a bunch of different accent in the Québec province) I always thought it was some kind of generational \"trend\" for exemple a lot of people in old records from France and Québec emphasis a lot there \"r\".",
"I will give an example that could fit your question. Here in Brazil we have literally hundreds of accents. Back when I was a kid the cartoons (mainly Japanese animes) were dubbed with \"plain Portuguese\". Nowadays, however, the cartoons (Brazilians cartoons in general) are dubbed with São Paulo accent. This leads us to the following: all the kids here in my region, which have a completely different accent from são Paulo, now speaks with a São Paulo accent. I think that is the reason people speak different for you nowadays",
"What everyone is saying about accents and dialects is correct There's also the fact that recording equipment of the time would favor different frequencies and changed the way people sound.",
"In Latin America there's something called \"Neutral Spanish\". International TV shows, Dubbed movies/cartoons/anime, International news, telenovelas etc... Use a fictional accent, so that the show can be broadcasted everywhere from Mexico, the Caribbean to Argentina.",
"I fee like men’s voices were way deeper, and I don’t think that’s just the sound of aged tape. Watch some vintage news from the 50s-70s.",
"Aside from accent, it probably also depends on recording medium, songs got recorded on vinyl, which allows great quality and fidelity, but other means didn't.",
"Seth McFarlene actually explains it here: URL_0 Has to do with the responsiveness of old microphones to the human voice. They chose people with voices that the microphone tech at the time picked up well.",
"The funny thing is that right now, American network news use a very distinct way of speaking (tone and especially cadence) that, to our grandchildren's ears, will sound old-fashioned in exactly the same way that \"Mid-Atlantic accent\" sounds to us. You know what I'm talking about, that [over-exaggerated sing-songy voice]( URL_0 ) that accentuates words and adds pauses at random. I'm 2059FF, and THIS, is Reddit.",
"Apart from the intelligent answers people are giving let's not forget that everyone smoked like they were being paid back then",
"I feel like this thread has been taken over by talking about news reporters and 1930’s accents. What about movies from the 1970’s where kids and teens speak with this weird accent? Or the kids in leave it to beaver? It starts to fade by the 80’s, but you can even still hear it a bit with some of the kids in ET.",
"Its an accent everyone did. I wanna say theres deleted scenes/gag reels from old b & w films where they \"break character\" and speak like regular people",
"On top of voice training that i'm seeing a lot of here, the radio itself was limited to a specific frequency. Where a voice ventured from this wave length it was cut off. As well as picking people well within this frequency to let them best articulate themselves, most people who didn't sound like sounded like they sounded like that in the broadcast.(Same reason most people sound different on telephones phone) Edit: /u/platitood is correct. A single frequency as in the radio frequency, not a single pointed frequency.",
"A lot of it has to do with what was considered the \"correct\" way to speak back then. I don't know if that's what you mean. But that's not why everyone seems like they're talking in a high-pitched nasally voice, really quickly, when we're talking about old newscasts and stuff like that. The real reason is that what you think of as the \"old-timey\" voice was recorded at a slower frame-rate. When that's played at modern speeds on your modern television, the voice is ever so slightly sped up, making it sound like everyone is on really good cocaine. Source: Was the producer for a line of pre-1960 history-DVDs using footage shot by the public.",
"Everyone talking about accents but a huge part of it was the microphones and recording equipment and the frequency response and EQ of that. It definitely has a big part in shaping the sound.",
"It’s mostly due to the ‘transatlantic accent’ - a specialised accent used by actors and broadcasters of the time that sat somewhere between an upper-class American accent and British accent. Useful video explaining it here: URL_0",
"Women on the radio? Like on NPR? That talk like this? Where everything is a question? Even if it's a statement? I think they learn to do this? In a special radio school? For women? It drives me up the wall? Why.",
"I wanna know what the hell with the 1930s. Everyone seemingly had a very distinctly different way of talking. Maybe it's just that accents sort of evolve. Since America is a relatively new country and has been populated by so many different waves of immigrants, the accent was and is still solidifying.",
"Most of it can be attributed to a handful of things: Radio quality was much worse so words had to be spoken and enunciated particularly clearly. The \"Mid-Atlantic\" accent was very popular (Cary Grant is the best example of this), a sort of compromise between American and British English. And obviously because the medium was so poor, there was often distortion, both adding static and pitch shifting. There are a few other factors that are worth mentioning as well: a different vocabulary, a culture where radio and television hadn't lost all novelty, and a more disconnected world where charm was easy to imitate, because so much was new (topics, news, food, words etc.). This veers more into content than sound quality, but there is overlap."
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cuvja6 | What is the difference between magic realism and low fantasy? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically, how the magic is treated within the fiction. Low Fantasy refers to stories set in the real world, where fantastical events happen. Something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where it's clearly set in the modern world, but there's also vampires and werewolves and ghosts. Magic Realism tends to refer to stories, set in the real world, where fantastical events happen, but are generally treated as perfectly normal. If a woman cries a river that drowns the whole town after she gets dumped, that's not treated as a bizarre supernatural event that must be investigated. Just... people cry, and it's sad, and we must comfort her. Whereas in Low Fantasy, if a woman cried a river that drowned a whole town, it would be clearly something out of the ordinary, and we must find who cursed her and lift that curse! Magic Realism is much more concerned about using the supernatural elements as metaphors for human emotion, rather than as literal elements of a fantasy story."
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cv5lma | Is the learning difficulty of languages the same in either direction? | What I mean is that is it equally difficult for an English speaker to learn Mandarin (for example) and vice versa? Or are there some language where you have to trade up/down to learn. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some languages actually have grammar built in a way that allow them to understand other languages easier than those languages could do the reverse. It's called [Asymmetric Intelligibility]( URL_0 ).",
"It really depends on the root of the language. Some languages have very similar gramatic structures, so the likes of verb conjugations etc will be easier to learn. Some have very similar vocabulary, so individual words might be easier to learn, but grammar could be difficult. For example, I'm a native English speaker who took six years of Spanish in school, and found it pretty tough because the grammar is so different. I have since tried learning Italian, and a lot of the vocabulary is quite similar to Spanish, so I know a lot of words, but cannot at all figure out how to string them into sentences, because Italian and Spanish grammar don't seem particularly alike to me."
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cv6ecg | Why is it often called "extremely time consuming" when I've seen pics and uploads whereas an artist has colorized black & white footage? Why is it so difficult? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because, for the most part, it's all done by hand. It's like a color by number but without and numbers and with hundreds or thousands of colors instead of maybe a dozen. Honestly, it's probably easier to just redraw the whole thing in color than to recolor a black and white photo."
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cv7m21 | why do tampons in North America have applicators? | I have never seen applicator tampons where I am from but recently learnt that they are the most common type in America | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"My understanding is that it's 'cleaner', and btw not just North America, at least also the UK",
"So you dont have to shove your fingers up in your vagina. And we do have tampons that are applicator-less, but not that popular. Tampons all together are being phased out by a lot of American women."
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cvkh5w | How have actions such as the head nod and head shake become universally understood in contrast to languages. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They haven't really. Lots of places won't know what you mean if you shake your head. In India they do a side to side wobble instead of nodding. Stuff like hand signals can mean completely different things in different places, like the OK sign is seriously rude in Thailand.",
"They're not actually universal. I've heard that countries like Bulgaria and Macedonia use the opposite signals. Same with giving people a thumbs up. It's an insult in Italy and Iran(?)."
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cvr4ex | How do small landlocked countries have different languages? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because there are plenty of geological barriers that would, historically, inhibit travel, such as mountains, rivers, oceans, vast swaths of desert. Even lacking something like that, most people throughout history simply didn't travel. You were born in a city/town/village, grew up there, and died their, without ever leaving or traveling to visit some other place. All it takes for a language to diverge is relative isolation over time.",
"This is a very modern type change of languages being more unified. For much of history, even people in the town next to you might not speak or same language or if they did, it may not really be mutually understandable between the two towns, it could be that different just a town away. Transport and travel were pretty rare, people almost never left within a very close area of where you were born and resided. This meant that there wasn't as much mixing as you see now and each town or area would often have their own language or dialect, and since interaction wasn't that common, they didn't really have more standardized stuff or a reason to need to understand others or coordinate on a mutual language. For example, French that we know today wasn't even widely spoken in France until the 1800s, it was really just in Paris and some of the surrounding areas. The rest of the country spoke various, often not mutually intelligible versions of French or local variant languages, and even basque, italian and such. Yes it seems weird as an English speaker to think that only a small portion of France spoke french, but until reforms after the French revolution, which spread modern French (forcibly spread), the country certainly had nothing of the sort of a universal language/dialect and with especially if you lived in the south of france, where likely to speak a dialect of french that didn't extend past within a couple towns of your birth, and past that you were totally un-understandable to a modern french speaker",
"Historically, transport was terrible. If you lived between two mountain ranges, you likely spent your whole life without ever leaving your area."
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cvrgrg | Why are rivers considered gateways or otherwise associated to entering the underworld in several cultures and religions? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Long ago, boats were often the only feasible way to make long journeys, since roads were terrible and motors nonexistent. So when people thought about going to a different land, it was over water."
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cw4rbk | Why people care so much about their remains? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Just throw me in the trash\" - Frank Reynolds But seriously, I think it is because how you are treated when you die reflects your status when you were alive. So people take comfort in the thought \"I was loved and respected in life so my funeral and body will be treated as such.\""
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cwa2t4 | If ancient Greeks and Romans worshipped the Gods, why are all the parables in their mythology about the Gods being stupid assholes? | Especially the likes of Hera, Zeus, etc. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The way that the Greeks and Romans worshipped their gods wasn’t quite the same way Christians, Jews and Muslims worship today. They saw the gods as distant but powerful beings who had the ability to intervene in human affairs, but not as beings who necessarily loved all humans. Worship and sacrifice were done to appease the gods and curry their favour. In a way, it was more like people at a company trying to keep the CEO happy.",
"Their gods were human-like. They had human qualities to be extreme versions of regular people. We do the same thing when we create stories like The Justice League. They're effectively gods in our own modern mythology.",
"The Greek relationship to their gods was not like the Abrahamic (Jewish/Christian/Muslim) relationship to their God. \"Worship\" may be the wrong word. The Abrahamic god is seen as infallible and ineffable; the Greek gods were seen as human-like, with shortsightedness and selfish behavior. \"Worship\" was either giving thanks to gods for good fortune, or attempts to appease the gods through festivals or rites.",
"If you hadn't noticed the world is sort of a stupid asshole, so the explanations formulated for natural phenomenon tend to follow that pattern. Also the stories aren't particularly interesting in terms of plot if all the decisions are reasonable and warranted. By having a story about a god acting crazy they can be stories referenced in daily conversation; someone could refer to a person being \"narcissistic\" with the included outrageous penalty for example, or point at the antics of Zeus being an adulterous lech bringing chaos and tragedy.",
"On the same topic: Can anyone recommend a good read about religious practice in ancient Greek and/or Rome? How much and what do we know about temple visits, public feasts, private worship, oracles, and so on. I imagine that religious practice by the rules and what people actually did are two separate things, but then again, how much can one say about everyday practice if it's 2000 years in the past?"
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cwgoi0 | You see tons of British people playing American characters in popular American movies but the opposite isn’t so common, why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In general the American film industry is bigger and can pay higher wages. So a British actor will get a lot better pay in an American movie then an American actor will get in a British movie. So why should an American actor chose to play in a British movie to have to deal with lower pay and higher travel costs when he could get a part in an American movie? There are of course exceptions and a lot of famous American actors have played in British movies, for example Brad Pit.",
"I think there's also the fact that American actors find it more difficult to adopt British accents. Meanwhile, people in the UK have been exposed to American media more, so they are already quite familiar with the American accents and have an easier time mimicking them."
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cwnm8e | What is happening in Britain's Parliament and why did the Queen "close" it. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are starting a new session of parliament after electing a new Prime Minister. In order to do this they have to end the old session and the only way to do that in their system for the Queen to order it."
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cxrv2w | Why is a silent "p" a thing in the English language? | Like in pterodactyl, psalm, and psychology. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"words that use a silent \"p\" are from greek, which, for example, uses the letter \"psi\" (ψ). since psi and s aren't really that different vocally, the silent \"p\" exists vestigially.",
"It is not part of the English pronunciation system to begin words with sounds such as *ps* or *pt* so in theory there should be no words that start like that in English orthography (English spelling) However, these words are imported from Greek usually and have carried across the original Greek spelling. So we end up spelling some words with letters that we don't say. There are other examples such a tsunami, mnemonic, which are also foreign words where we have kept the spelling but ignore the sounds they make.",
"It's important to note that in the original languages where these words came from, the \"p\"s were pronounced! All of these words came from the Greek. \"Ptero\" from πτερόν (pteron), \"Psycho\" from ψυχή (psyche), and \"Psalm\" from ψαλμός (psalmos). While the \"p\" and \"t\" in \"pterodactyl\" are separate letters, \"ps\" is part of a single letter psi and the p sound is definitely pronounced. The \"p\" was there all along in the origins of the word, and the word lost the sound but not the letter over time."
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cyjg8o | Why does the Japanese language have four alphabets? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"eyscwe5"
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"text": [
"There is hirigana which is the phonetic alphabet similar to the English alphabet. Then there's kanji which isn't really an alphabet it's just a bunch of symbols for words, things, or ideas. Then there's katakana which is for spelling English words, but it's the same as hirigana just different symbols so it's kind of redundant. Then there's romanji which is pretty much just the japanese spelled out with English letters so it's not really its own alphabet. In summary hirigana and kanji are for native Japanese speaking. Katakana is for English words in Japanese. Romanji is Japanese spelled in English letters. Why do they need all of these? I don't really know, it's my understanding that they could just as easily use only hirigana and a lot of the time kanji is skipped and just spelled with it's hirigana pronunciation."
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cyppmd | () Why is codependency considered inherently negative? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"eytsmr2",
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"text": [
"You enable people's poor behaviors. Would you like to know more? Check out the wiki. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )",
"Nothing is inherently bad, it always comes to what criteria you're using (it is basic philosophy) but I will give you my opinion on that. - You don't reach self actualization. Your fear of losing the enabler (the SO) and trying to become a better person for the them becomes your number 1 goal and motivation to live. Puting all of your possible true tastes and true preferences aside. - you will become dumber. Since you are worrying about the SO so much due to your codependency on them, you lose the capacity of puting studies/work or whatever at a high level of focus. - You feel more often bad than good. I think this one is a necessery condition for the codependent relationship. The fear of losing the enabler is the main tool they use to have you attached to them. You're convinced that they are improving your life and without them you would be lost and unhappy, and it is the lack of validation that keeps you hooked on to the relationship. Whenever the enabler FINALLY decides to give you the validation, it feels like the best sensation in the world (thats why ppl say codependent relationships have the best sex) but it is 90% of the time being anxious and worried and 10% geting validation and feeling good. - you become awkward. In the typical codependent relationship, as a codependent, your feelings and emotions are disregarded, it is the enabler's feelings and happiness that matters the most. You start getting used to telling jokes and not getting laughter, you get used to avoid displaying insatisfaction when someone violate your boundaries and at some point, even when you are interacting with others, you will naturally be prone to avoid telling jokes or not believing you could be funny, you could also develop fake nervous laughter (this one is common), you will naturally let people interrupt you, you will naturally let ppl do shit with you that you shouldn't let and others will notice this and label you a weird/weak person (and they are right). As for the enabler, I don't think there is any 'cons' for them, it is all good having a desperate person willing to put up with you. Haha they are usually very inteligent charming charismatic and attractive. I feel ashamed for have let myself be the codependent one. I think only weak people with shitty parents become dependent on others.",
"Codependency requires you to care for someone else to the point that it is damaging to yourself. Additionally, you end up assuming all responsibility for their failures, which you actually have no control over. It also gives the other person permission to take advantage of you, and they will. Codependency used to be called \"co-alcoholism\" because the relationships between addicts and their partners and pretty much always codependant. It's the only way those relationships can survive. I am a recovering codependant. I am extremely close to my husband, and we rely on each other, but there is a give and take that was never present in my former codependant relationships."
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cyqi8z | Why is it that all labors work on this day, but all non-labor people get a paid day off? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"eytkdb8",
"eytkaju"
],
"text": [
"What? Who works or doesn't work, and who gets paid vacation and doesn't (apart from federal employees) varies wildly from business to business and industry to industry and in some cases, job to job.",
"All the government can really do is make it a Federal Holiday (which they did), which means non-critical governmnet employees will have it off as a paid holiday. They can't mandate that private companies give employees a day off. It is completely up to to the company."
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cyuwpb | Why are coins usually round? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"eyucm98"
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"text": [
"There's a forging answer and a functional answer, and both have historical precedent that has lasted to today. The forging answer is the easiest way to make coins out of precious metals like gold or silver was to \"punch\" or press them, essentially smooshing an emblem into both sides of a small lump of precious metal with a press or a hammer. The smoosh action would press a defining image, like a king or emperor or emblem, while flattening the metal in the coin. It was easier to press a coin into a round shape than a square one - put a roundish blob of metal down, hit it with your pressed-image, and there you go, a more-or-less round coin because it spread out evenly from the pressed middle point. Tougher to do that with a square or oblong shape. The functional answer is metallic round coins are less damaging to wallets, pockets, purses and other containers than other shapes like rectangles with pointy bits, as well as less injuring if, say, one in your wallet got crushed against your thigh by a bucking horse. So although there have been various triangular or odd-shaped coins over time, the general standard has been round. Bonus factoid: They do occasionally mix this up by roughing the edge (like on a dime, for example). This was because way back when coins were actually made out of precious metals, people would \"clip\" the edges to steal a little bit of the coin's precious-metal weight. But a smooth spot, say on the ridges on a dime, would tell you it's been clipped."
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cyxluv | why do they only sell diapers with characters on them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"eyut3nj",
"eyutxka",
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"text": [
"Yes. Cause it works. Changing diapers is not fun for kids or parents but characters on them will distract the kid and get them excited. My daughter would love to see which character was on her diaper. Made the process much easier.",
"I’m not sure of the motivation, but have noticed the dame. There are some brands that have different shapes or animals or whatever, but outside cloth diapers there don’t seem to be many plain options. We’ve used this to our advantage for potty training because “we don’t want to pee on the elephant” actually works.",
"I'm a sales rep, and one of my clients is a large nappy brand in Australia. A few things come into play here; 1) Multiple colours on a nappy make it feel like a 'premium' nappy to parents, as opposed to a plain or mono colour nappy. Parents like to think they are buying a superior nappy on a budget. When you've got a licensed character/character set that is exclusive to a brand, this only amplifies this feeling. 2) \"limited\" runs of licensed characters can cause parents to buy up in traditionally slow times, because if little 2 year old Taylor likes Big Bird, he's less likely to have a tantrum when you put a Big Bird nappy on. Why not buy 4 boxes now and have a few months of relatively easier changing (and thank you for the last month of the financial year sales boost, Mrs. Taylor's mum!) 3) for patterns as opposed to characters, you can have parts of the pattern that are moisture indicators - when the blue stripe changes to red as a result of moisture seeping through the absorbent gel/pad, that's a good sign that you need to change even if there's been no #2 (or god forbid a #3!!)."
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cyzx8f | How come there is Puerto Rico team in the basketball world cup while Puerto Rico is part of the US ? | As i understand Puerto Rico is part of the US, so in my mind they should be part of the national team. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"eyvcil0"
],
"text": [
"[This]( URL_0 ) explains why Puerto Rico is allowed to compete independently from the United States in the Olympics. Basically the people who make the rules say it's okay. I would imagine it's the same with the basketball world cup. If they can field a team that can compete, & no one else minds, why not let them?"
],
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"https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/08/why-puerto-rico-has-its-own-olympic-team.html"
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cz04q6 | Why is anything that doesn't travel on land called a "craft"? Aircraft, watercraft, spacecraft, etc.. Why aren't vehicles that travel on land called a landcraft? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"eyvb66c"
],
"text": [
"Like all things in English, it is a very long origin to the current word. \"craft\" comes from \"kraft\", which is a Nordic word, which means \"strength/skill\". Eventually, the trading vessels of these nations were called \"kraft\" because they took skill to handle effectively. Thus, anything that takes \"skill\" to drive is referred to as a craft. & #x200B; Whoever downvoted this might wanna look at a dictionary, it has no latin origin, nor is it a recent word."
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czb2dl | What's the difference between "nation", "country" and "state"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"eyx9h3t"
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"text": [
"A nation is a group of people with the same ethnicity, culture, religion, language, etc. A state is a territory that has it's own institutions and populations. A sovereign state is a territory that has a ruling, singular government, a permanent population, a defined border, and is able to interact with other sovereign states. A country is a name for an area with a government. Now with the United Kingdom, I believe England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all states, however they are not sovereign so they fall under the United Kingdom, kind of like states in the Unites States. (I think. That's a tricky area) And even though these are separate things, everybody uses them interchangeably just because it's easier."
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czcru1 | - How did the alphabet get its order? Why are the vowels not grouped together? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"eyxiwes"
],
"text": [
"Unfortunately, it's unclear for English. It's theorized that the order was derived from the ordering of Greek letters and a similar ordering in an ancient Semitic language (see: URL_0 ). However, some languages do have an order that's more logical. Japanese contains two sets of 46 characters each called Kana. Now, Japanese has a syllabary instead of an alphabet (each base character is a syllable, rather than making syllables with multiple letters). The traditional way of writing them is in a grid, starting with the vowels in the right-most column, transcribed in English as a, i, u, e, and o. The next column to the right is the k sounds, ka, ki, ku, ke, and ko. So on and so forth until all of the characters have been mapped. You can see a current grid here: URL_1 When you look for things in stores, they'll be organized from the top right to the bottom left (a, I, u, e, o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, sa, etc.)"
],
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"http://mentalfloss.com/article/29011/why-are-letters-abc-order",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Table_hiragana.jpg"
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czd0o1 | What is nudism and why do people practice it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's the idea that clothing shouldn't be mandatory, that it's not natural to wear clothing, and that people shouldn't need to wear clothes as part of their identity. People practice it because they feel like it is liberating and allows them to be comfortable with themselves and others in a culture that lets them be themselves as nature intended."
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czfb8n | How does the UK’s unwritten constitution function? | Brexit has been making the news in the US lately, and Boris Johnson’s plan to suspend Parliament has been in the headlines. There seems to be debate over whether this violates an “unwritten constitution” or not — considering how scrutinized the minutiae of the US Constitution are, this seems so alien to me. I’m not looking for anyone to litigate the constitutionality of the actions taken, just explain how you can have a constitution that isn’t written down like that and how it remains consistent over time. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The rules are there, they are just not written down, or rather not organized into a single document. Whenever an issue comes up, they see if similar issue came up in the past. If yes, they use the past solution as law. If nothing like that happened in the past, they use their best judgement today, and their decision becomes law for the future. More reading: URL_0 US has a rather similar thing with court decisions. I.e. legalization of abortion is not in Constitution (or any of Amendments), but a decision of Supreme Court on a single case (Roe vs. Wade) US constitution is not super clear either. E.g. some feel that \"right to bear arms\" is limited to a \"well regulated militia\".",
"It's often described as \"unwritten\", but that's not literally true. It is all documented somewhere. The difference is it isn't organised into one coherent document. One of the key principles is parliamentary sovereignty. If Parliament passes some legislation, that is the law. That includes laws which are constitutional in nature (i.e. change how the government functions). An example of this would be the 2011 Fixed Term Parliaments Act, which changed the rules about how and when an early election can be called. Other than that, it's down to conventions and precedent. I.e. this is what we've done before, so we'll continue to do things that way, until someone decides to do it differently. If a convention is broken, and Parliament is unhappy about that, they can turn it into actual legislation so it's no longer merely a convention. This is the \"unwritten\" bit in the sense that they're not actual laws, but they will still be described in writing somewhere."
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czftv4 | Where did the practice (not the idiom) of throwing down a gauntlet to declare a challenge come from? | I know that the modern idiom comes from the old practice, but how did the practice first originate? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"eyy5iux"
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"text": [
"This is surprisingly difficult to answer. All I could find is his webpage: URL_0 claims that gauntlet represented knight's honor, and dropping it at someone's feet was a major insult. It is also possible that the whole concept was invented in Chivalric romance books (much like the cowbow duels were invented in hollywood) Perhaps you should ask in r/AskHistorians/"
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czmywg | What is the benefit for large companies doing things like self-evaluation, employee satisfaction surveys, career goals, etc? | So much time is devoted to these things year after year, but in my many years of experience, I don't see any benefit to me or the company. Yet all large organizations seems to do this with much enthusiasm. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"eyzb7vd",
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],
"text": [
"* The cost of finding and hiring new talent is high. * It costs much less to keep the employees you currently have. * These self-evaluations are aimed at finding ways to make or keep current employees happy. * While you may not have seen any improvements....it sounds like you are still with the company in question, so at least in regards to you...it worked.",
"It helps them pick out who to promote and keep on and who to keep at a certain position and let go, who is a potential liability and if there are any major corporate culture problems. A hard working employee who is meeting their goals and then some can be offered courses to enhance their skills in order to promote them. A jobsworth isn't someone you'd want in a senior role though due to their effect on corporate culture. Also if many people have the same complaints, upper management knows there is a problem. Management needs metrics in order to gauge this stuff. Metrics cannot be obtained without data, and spying on you would be a bad way to do this for *many* reasons. So instead you get forms."
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czokjr | The Good Friday Agreement? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"eyznbum",
"ez3bopd"
],
"text": [
"The Good Friday Agreement was the output of the Northern Ireland peace process that ended The Troubles, a decade long war between the UK and the Irish Republican Army. It's in the news because it agreed that Northern Ireland would remain part of the UK and that there would be no customs border between Northern Ireland and Ireland (the rest of the island is its own independent country). This was not a problem because both Ireland (the country) and the UK were part of the EU and the EU abolished all customs borders between member nations. If the UK leaves the EU it seems the GFA must be violated. Either Northern Ireland has a customs border with the rest of the UK (the so-called \"backstop\") meaning it's not really the same country, or it has one with Ireland (unless somehow Ireland is expelled from the EU).",
"The major changes brought by the Good Friday Agreement were: 1. The opening of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, allowing totally free movement of people and goods between Northern Ireland and Ireland. 2. A *de facto* peace treaty or ceasefire between the IRA paramilitary on one side, and the British government and unionist paramilitaries on the other side. Alongside this, many (but not all) of the paramilitaries agreed to give up and dismantle a lot of their weapons. 3. The creation of a few cross-border shared institutions between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. 4. The Republic of Ireland would officially recognize Northern Ireland as being a legitimate part of the UK, rather than occupied territory that was really part of the Republic. 5. Britain agreed that Northern Ireland could have a referendum whenever they wish to join the Republic of Ireland, and they would respect the results of such a referendum if one were to ever occur. 6. The creation of a Northern Ireland Assembly, a parliament/legislature that would give Northern Ireland some autonomy to manage their own affairs instead of having all major decisions being made in London. An important element of this Assembly is that some of its decisions must have majority support from both unionists and nationalists, rather than just simple majority support. This protects the minority from a tyranny-of-the-majority situation. 7. The early release of hundreds of prisoners convicted of violent crimes committed as part of unionist or nationalist paramilitary activities during the Troubles. [I numbered these in essentially random order, don't read too much into the numbers.]"
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czr17j | what is the significance of bauhaus? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ez3taab",
"ez0vo5f"
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"text": [
"Bauhaus was a school of design in Germany that was shut down by the Nazis. But the word has since grown to mean a style of minimalism and simplicity, used in art, architecture, furniture, typography, etc. It’s also grown to mean a movement that ushered in the current style we now call “modern” (think 1950s sleek styling). Bauhaus was a rebellion against the classical ornate style that was popular in Europe 100 years ago. It preferred fonts without serif (ie, sans-serif), buildings without decoration, embraced modern art in graphic design, etc. These ideas have become so popular in western culture since then, that they are now de facto mainstream. The bauhaus movement is the grandfather of modern design, and our world would look a lot different without it.",
"Bauhaus is a run of the mill asteroid. It is about 9.6km in average radius. It is part of a family of asteroids that may remnants of a collision of some celestial body with the asteroid 221 Eos approximately 1-2 billion years ago. It is of no particular significance."
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czv2c3 | What makes things kosher? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ez24wyi"
],
"text": [
"To be Kosher something has to contain no pork, no shellfish, can't mix cheese and meat, the animal has to be slaughtered in such a way that most of its blood is lost, there can't be any large nerves in it, and a rabbi has to oversee/bless it."
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d00wyr | How did people learn foreign languages in the old time, when there were no dictionaries or teaching books? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ez4qm97",
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"text": [
"They had to work with native speakers or bilingual teachers. Hell, you can drop someone in a city of people who don't speak their language and given time and effort, they can puzzle out enough of the language to get about (although a teacher *really* helps there), learning with the speed of a dumb baby.",
"They interacted with people. You will be surprised how much you can learn, and how quickly, if you have no choice but to learn it. For example, you travel across the border into Mexico, where they speak Spanish but not English, to sell knock-knacks. Only, no one knows Spanish where you came from, and there are no guidebooks. You will eventually learn various words related to your wares, their money, and everyday life, just by talking with the locals for long enough. If you don't, you will find yourself lost, losing money from sales and unable to support yourself in a hostile land.",
"You can do this by yourself: just travel a few weeks in a foreign country and you'll start to pick up the local language.",
"\\*Spanish speaker holds up an Apple to an English speaker\\* \"Manzana\" \\*Spanish speaker points to a tree\\* \"árbol\"",
"Those who needed to learn languages learned it either by immersion or by using a teacher like you would in school. Writing has been around for a long, long time and we have traces of very old tabulae (wax tablets) that students used to write on and then delete to reuse them. Slaves played a big role in spreading useful skills. Forget about miners and those who were chosen to do menial tasks... slaves who could be used as language\\philosophy\\math teachers commanded high prices and were well respected... to the point where they could be see more as respected servants than prototypical slaves. Many people also employed interpreters, just like we do today and translating contracts in both languages was also a thing :)",
"I moved to a different country when I was much younger and learned by immersion , there were a lot of people who could speak English so when I got stuck I could get help. Because I only heard the language I learned fast, within 6 months I could speak the language badly but get my point across. 3 years later I would call myself bilingual You learn much faster with immersion and don’t hear your mother tongue",
"ask yourself this first : how does anyone learn a language given humans are born without the ability to read a dictionary ?",
"Not a full answer, but still interesting. Historically, pretty much all languages existed on a dialect continuum. This means that nobody spoke \"English\" or \"French\" or \"Japanese\". People just spoke whatever was spoken in their local village. The dialect of two villages close to one another would be similar enough that you would say that it's the same language, but farther away the dialects would become unintelligible to each other. It would be like: the village next to yours speaks your language with an accent. The village a couple days' walk away speaks your language with a heavy accent, uses some words you don't recognize, and uses a grammar rule which you don't use back in your own village. The village a month's walk away might share half of your vocabulary, but the meanings of the words are slightly different, and their accent makes it so the words you have in common sound really different, also the grammar of this new village has added a bunch of rules that you don't use, and removed a bunch of rules that you do use. So, an ancient traveler wouldn't need to suddenly learn a new language as soon as they got somewhere new. They could pick up words, phrases, and grammar as they traveled, just by talking with the locals. Eventually, when they got far enough from home, they would be speaking \"a different language\". Edit: Technical notes to address some of the comments. 1. This does not work if your mother tongue and the target language exist on different dialect continua. For example Latin and Greek are both descended from Proto-Indo-European and probably had a dialect continuum at some point in the distant past, however any such continuum had disappeared well before the introduction of writing to the area. 2. The language families and subfamilies which exist today all came into existence well before any \"classical\" or \"ancient\" period. The standardized forms of languages which exist today almost all arose much more recently, as a result of things like centralized government, the printing press and public education. For example, the process of standardizing French started in the 1500s, but it wasn't until the early 1800s that a majority of people in France spoke the standardized version of French. Before this standardization, most people in France would have spoken some western Romance dialect loosely related to the dialect spoken in Paris.",
"[ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) People learn just enough to get by with foreign people. A Pidgin is a simple hybrid language that allows two people to talk without learning the complex grammar of each other's languages. You learn \"five pig for five cow\".",
"Reading books in foreign languages was a very common method to learn them, Hungarian polyglot Kato Lomb sayd that books and radio helped her a big deal learning new languages. She lived in the 20th century, when dictionaries were widely available. But my point is that she spent a lot of time reading, rather than studying, and this must have been a very common way to learn languages for literate people since very ancient times. There were no grammar rules, but there were examples of how people would speak foreign languages. Also, ancient romans would buy a Greek slave for their children in order to make them learn Greek.",
"How did you learn you native language? You could not read so dictionaries or teaching books was not used. So how did you do that? It can be done the same way for a adult. It might be harder because of how the brain develop but the same way that a you learned you native language can be used to learn a new language.",
"There will be the day when someone will ask ELI5 how people got a date before the internet.",
"English person: \\*points at an potato\\* this is a potato French person:Non, c'est un pomme de terre \\*800 years of war\\*",
"Many ways, actually. I learned english by immersion. Television, radio, and speaking. You learn a massive amount through interaction and attentiveness. Eventually translating to small books and writing. It isn't as difficult as you might think, however I'm sure the older you get, the more difficult it is.",
"That is a really good question. I know people like Queen Elizabeth I was taught languages. She must have had tutors. There must have been some kind of books . . . .she probably read books in the language.",
"Not real life, but I remember there being descriptions in Gulliver's Travels about how he methodically went about learning a new language when he landed on one of the islands. That's probably close to how it was done for at least some travelers back in the 1700s.",
"The first missionaries would arrive in the country. Some might stay for years and would be able to communicate on a daily basis, and some missionaries do get assistance from the lords / kings of the countries to study the writing systems, and even send reciprocal missionaries to do the same. Some of these missionaries would then write dictionaries and phrase books, and went on becoming the inscription translators, language teachers, etc. Later missionaries would continue the works on top of existing literature. Some missionaries stay in the foreign countries till the end of their lives, and their kids would grow up to communicate perfectly in both languages.",
"This just reminds me of an anecdote told about the early days of Australia being colonised by the British. There’s a British explorer going through Australia and he sees a kangaroo. He’s the first white person to ever see this animal and he’s amazed as it bounces passed him. He looks round and sees an old aboriginal man sitting a short distance away also watching. He goes up to him and says “excuse me, but what was that beast that just went passed?” And the old aborigine man looks at him in a contemplative way and finally says “kangaroo” But it’s only in recent years with the study of native languages that they’ve discovered that “kangaroo” means “I dunno, mate”"
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d09w6m | How did plastic straws specifically become targeted for eco-friendly banning, but similar disposables like plastic forks and spoons didn't? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Public backlash over e.g. turtles being harmed by straws in the ocean. Companies noticed the anger, loudly and publicly started using fewer straws, and (correctly) assumed that customers would fail to consider how small of a fraction of the waste stream is straws specifically. That way, they can sidestep calls for regulation or more drastic options.",
"A nine year old girl say a photo of a turtle with a straw stuck in its nose, and wrote a paper about how bad it is that plastic straws end up in the ocean. Somehow it went viral, and bada bing bada boom, cities are outlawing straws.",
"I think it has more to do with the fact that the majority of people don’t actually need a straw. It’s very easy to sip from the cup. If we compare it to eating spaghetti or some other food, you kinda need a utensil to eat it. We should definitely consider all plastic a problem, but straws definitely are not necessary in order to drink a beverage.",
"A couple of videos made rounds on the internet a year or two ago in which straws were stuck in the nostrils of some sea turtles. The videos were tough to watch and kinda sad. I think that's probably what made the straws a really easy target.",
"I knew of cutlery being targeted first. I was introduced to non-plastic biodegradable disposable tableware in the early 2000’s. This article on compostable cutlery (though not from ~2005 when I was actually introduced to those products) does predate the anti straw fad. URL_0 Single use plastics have been on the hit list for coming on decades (plural) now",
"How often do you use a straw in your life and how often do you use plastic forks and spoons in your life? Almost every drink you get at a restaurant, or fast food, or a movie theater etc. has a straw. The only time you use plastic silverware really is the occasional fast food meal that requires it or at a picnic or on a trip or moving. and if you are using plastic silverware 100% of the time, you reeeally should take a long hard look at your life.",
"9 year old makes false claim 500million straws are used in US every single day based on a random guess from business, in a school project. Has become a political talking point and cultural movement.",
"I sort of question the premise. Compostable utensils are becoming increasingly popular at most places. Perhaps straws have the slight edge for reasons people have described in this thread, but other plastic utensils are not far behind.",
"Every place that has plastic spoons & forks also have plastic straws but not every place that has plastic straws have plastic spoons & forks. - Convenience stores that don't have hot food but soda fountains. - Coffee shops or juice stores (Jamba, smoothie king) that don't have food but only drinks. - Restaurants that have metal utensils but plastic straws.",
"People are missing the point in these comments: Banning straws is like the near-ban of the 6-pack plastic rings (they didn't get fully banned, but you've seen a ton of companies stop using them or using them less over the years). It's about stopping the use of something that causes *direct harm* to sea life - not about the overall amount of plastic in the oceans. Couple that with how endangered green sea turtles are, and when you have a product that is directly killing them, there is action that needs be taken. It's not about \"an emotional reaction\", it's about making sure a species doesn't die out.",
"In EU at least, it's not just straws but all plastic single items, see URL_0",
"Plastic forks and spoons have a greater justifiable need whereas straws are more easily done without",
"Other silverware disposables are less common, so they don't fall under as much scrutiny. Straws are at every coffee/shake place, and every restaurant. It's mostly that they're visible. Normal plastic product packaging and soda/water bottles are many many times more destructive to the environment than disposable food plastics. So is it misguided ire? Probably. Is it gonna kill us that CA is limiting straws? No",
"Things that came with straws are more commonly ordered than foods that require disposable utensils. The volume is considerably higher. For example, most fast food you can eat with your hands, but you still get a straw with the drink. Iced coffees you can drink with a straw are more popular than ever. Most drinks at bars came with a straw that people would immediately throw away. Etc.",
"Off-topic but I just tried one of the new paper straws this week. They need a bit of work--there is a slight taste and texture to it in your mouth as you can feel a tiny bit of the straw come apart due to your saliva. Kind of like you're licking cardboard. Also, I did not drink very quickly and the straw that was in the liquid started to get soggy. What I would like to see is it becoming normal to carry around utensils and a re-usable straw of your own, and perhaps get served beverages more often in washable cups/glasses that require no straw.",
"I think because you really dont need a straw. For many foods you need a fork of knife of spoon to consume whatever it is but i cant think of any drink that you cant just drink out of the cup instead of using a straw. I for one despise plastic bags, single use containers and plastic cutlery and plates etc. I try to bring reusable wherever I go and even for those big gatherings seek eco friendly alternatives. We actually spend the extra spend the money on palm leave plates. I hope for the day where everyone has a picnic basket in their car with reusable everything concerning food. Bringing your own dishes and cutlery to large parties would be an awesome cultural norm. bio degradable take away containers should be mandatory, plastic bags illegal.",
"Plastic forks and spoons have a greater justifiable need whereas straws are more easily done without",
"Because the climate death cult crowd needs something new to blame the end of the world on. Plastic straws aren’t the first thing.",
"Its the stupidest thing. Yea ban shops from using them... now I have to watch my straw deteriorate and hurry my drink because a restaurant wants to be woke. The trash is controlled at a restaurant, those bought at a shop not. Even then, environmental me cannot control dont give a sh!t you and your friends, its up to each and all of us. Yes, believe it or not, corporations and factories consist out of people. Who knew!?"
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d0cnod | Why does shoe-throwing start happening sometimes when Arabs get into disagreements? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"From what i understand, shoes are seen as very dirty and filthy and to throw a shoe at someone is considered a huge insult in their culture",
"Because theowing one's shoe (s) is seen as a great insult, as shoes are dirty your feet are the lowest part of you.",
"It's not just Arabs. Throughout the Middle East, people take off their shoes before entering homes or a house of worship because shoes are seen as dirty. So, throwing shoes at a person is a sign of great disrespect because shoes are considered dirty. The idea that shoes are dirty and should be removed before coming indoors can also be found throughout East, South, and Southeast Asia. Trying to trace the exact origins of this idea isn't totally clear, but it might be rooted in the fact that in many Asian cultures, it's common to both sleep and eat on the floor."
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d0d16e | Kevin Spacey, Danny Masterson, and Louis CK get charged with sexual assault and their careers are ruined. Nobody will hire them. So how does Chris Brown, who has a ton of charges against him, still constantly get work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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