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eq73ni | How are the inflated health care costs in the US not just systemic fraud? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because companies can charge whatever they want, and hospitals know that you'll pay it because insurance. Requesting an itemized bill helps cut down on it because they can get nailed for real fraud if they do that.",
"Nope, they pretty much are. Lobbying is essentially legal bribery. And since they're for profit organizations and often publicly traded, they are *legally obligated* to make as much money as possible for the shareholders. They then charge as much as most people will pay and as much as health insurance companies will pay, and it's basically an upwards arms race"
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eqb21y | why does everyone here hate emojis so much, when they seem to be proliferating on all other platforms? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Reddit has an entirely unique culture compared to most other popular platforms, which gains it popularity with some and hatred with others, the ELI5 answer is that emojis are seen as a lesser form of meme on reddit. Reddit culture is fairly conservative with memes, preferring lennys and simple \":)\" to emojis."
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eqbncr | Why are drugs advertised to regular consumers and not doctors? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because American healthcare is a capitalist enterprise; those ads are counting on you to bring it up to your doctor that you want to try the medication you just saw advertised on TV, since it will be you and not your doctor ultimately paying (tooth and nail) for it",
"Drugs ARE advertised to doctors, but not through channels you will see unless you're a medical professional or do their paperwork. Drug adverts, including boxes of free samples, are mailed to doctors regularly. Doctors get invited to conferences, dinners, retreats etc funded by drug/equipment companies with a sales pitch during the event. Doctors get paid to run drug trials. Doctors with positions on regulatory bodies get paid by lobbyists.",
"Others have explained the why, but I wanted to add that your instinct is correct and this is in fact illegal a lot of places (e.g. the whole EU)",
"Drugs are advertised to doctors and healthcare people insanely more than to \"regular\" people. Insanely. There's entire huge industries around selling, marketing, advertising drugs and treatments and medical devices directly to healthcare professionals. As a regular person, not involved in healthcare, you only a trickle of what they are doing. Their main targets are doctors and others in the healthcare industry, but if you're not in that, you don't see it.",
"They're advertised to both doctors and potential patients because that's an effective way to sell more of them and drugs are profitable. Yes, in theory, doctors are aware of every new and existing drug and prescribe the best one to everyone. In practice? Not so much. There are literally thousands of prescription drugs available, and that's just a fraction of what a physician does. So it's unlikely that they are aware of every drug, every side effect, every interaction and nuance. Is the patient? No, of course not, but they do have the ability to research the drug further, or at the very least ask their physician to do so."
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eqioc4 | Why have I always been told there is no cure for the common cold? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because: * The cold is a virus, and their treatment is significantly harder than, say, bacterial infections. * The cold isn't a single virus, it's a whole family of them, rendering vaccination and anti-viral treatments rather impractical."
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eqtvua | What are the characteristics of the different branches of the US Forces? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Navy people are water type pokemon. Air force are flying sneaky pokemon. The army are ground type and grass type pokemon."
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eqznd7 | Why are most American toilets not fully separated from other stalls? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It's because people want to have as many stalls as possible per squarefoot but that means they must have toe clearance for ADA compliance. URL_0"
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er21ax | where did all of the “in Soviet Russia car drives you” jokes come from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This post would be better suited for another subreddit, but the simple answer is [this]( URL_0 ) guy, Yakov Smirnoff. The style of joke you're referring to is known as the Russian reversal."
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er568c | I just saw a report that the homeless population in Los Angeles is currently 33k. A few years ago, there were 90k+ reported in the media. The issue has only gotten (substantially) worse since then. How is this current number calculated? Did the definition of “homeless” change? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The people doing the census are the ones who decide who qualifies as homeless. Depending on what their goals are, the definition could be anybody who lives on the street, anyone staying in a shelter or anyone without a fixed address. People looking for funding for charities often want to inflate their numbers to get more funding and will include people who are couchsurfing while a politician may want studies that show that they've reduced homelessness so they commission a study that limits the definition of homelessness so that a small number fit the description. Pay attention to who did the count, why they did it and what criteria they used. That will give you the answer.",
"The number reported depends on the source of pay for the people doing the calculation. If a high number would be embarrasing for a political rival a high number will be generated. If a low number, or high delta is needed for a re-election then a low number will be generated. There are 3 kinds a falsehood; lies, damned-lies, and statistics."
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erq2nt | Why do people who post pictures of their cars often blur or cover the license plates while the general public always sees your plates when driving around? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Mainly because it’s a link from your online username to your real life name and identity. So it makes sense to protect yourself."
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errk8r | Why are younger people becoming less and less religious? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because we have access to the internet – a.k.a. the nearly infinite wealth of human knowledge – from a very young age now. People are less likely to blindly adopt their parents and family’s beliefs when they have free access to other points of view.",
"Religion is a sham to control the weak minded. People are (slowly) waking up to this simple fact."
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es3oh9 | what's the point of .99 in prices ? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a psychological element of making the price look cheaper than it is. I think there is also a strong cultural tradition of people doing it and others following it because they think there must be science behind it."
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es3w96 | Why do Arabic words, when written in phonetics for learners, have numbers in them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Don't really do much of that but the reason is to represent the Arabic letter. The numbers used are the closest thing that look like the letter. For example 3 looks like the Arabic letter ع (ayn).",
"They are used the same way letters are, they’re used to represent specific sounds in the language. Sometimes languages, like Arabic, will have multiple sounds in their language, which if they were transliterated in English would represent the same letter. Now if you were to take the transliteration and try to form the original Arabic word, it would be pretty difficult. In Arabic there are 2 “H” sounds: a voiceless pharyngeal fricative ( ح ), like the “H” in heart, which is pronounced by lifting the back of the tongue to the roof of your mouth, and a voiceless glottal fricative ( ه ), like the “H” in hat, which is pronounced by tightening your throat. Because both letters can appear in the same place in a given word and they both make an “h” sound, you would want use want to two different letters or symbols to differentiate between which sound that you are trying to represent. TL:DR: They used a 7 to tell you which “H” they used"
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es8epb | How the people buy food in baseball games | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you're in the middle of an aisle, you hand the money to the person next to you who will hand the money to the person next to them until it gets to the vendor. Usually the food will make its way to you via the same method but if it's like a bag of peanuts yeah it might be thrown to you.",
"Heyo, from Michoacán but living in California now. People selling food will walk down the stadium main aisles with food (hot dogs, pizza, snow cones/raspados, and stuff) and yeah you just wave them and they will take your money and hand over whatever you bought. Usually it's a single food item per person, so like one guy sells pizza, another sells hot dogs, and so on. They don't throw the food, they can walk it over to you usually or people carry the food down to you if the aisles are small."
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et00z0 | Why did we start associating red as bad or stop, and green as good or go? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"it comes from railroads, as the red color has a longer wavelength, which makes it possible to see from a greater distance. Quite nice when it comes to knowing that you have to stop sooner than later."
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et5ugw | Why did it take so long for the West to implement the bidet? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most uncivilized Americans don't like the thought of water being squirted at their nether regions. They'd rather rub sandpaper down there and cook hot dogs in the microwave like heathens.",
"No necessity. Even now, you don't need it. Paper does the trick. Some people are getting them now because they're cheaper in the long run, but that wasn't really a concern for a long time. Northern European cultures tended to use broad leaves and make a scoop with their hand and scoop the shit out, what with Northern Europe being covered in forest and sparsely settled. Then cities really got groovin, and so did manufacturing, and voila, TP culture. Also, for the US especially, when you shit in a glorified hole in the the ground because your plumbing is only in the house if you're lucky and your toilet is an outhouse 50 yards away, you don't want to go to the house or the well every time you shit. You want a convenient roll to hang on the wall The Roman's did use a bidet type thing, but then they were destroyed by Germanic tribes, who used leaves. And then you got whatever happens in Italy."
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etjcp3 | Why do all presidential candidate campaign Commercials end with "I'm ____ and I approve this message"? Of course you do, it's your own commercial | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> The \"Stand By Your Ad\" provision (SBYA) of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA, also known as McCain–Feingold Act), enacted in 2002, requires candidates in the United States for federal political office, as well as interest groups and political parties supporting or opposing a candidate, to include in political advertisements on television and radio \"a statement by the candidate that identifies the candidate and states that the candidate has approved the communication\". They do it because it is the law. The idea is that candidates need to associate themselves with their own ads, hopefully discouraging attack ads aiming to simply discredited their opposition while avoiding the negative implications."
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etwrj2 | What determines if a word has a male and female version (actor/actress waiter/waitress) as opposed to one version that describes both? (Programmer, driver) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Which language it derives from and whether or not the word is gendered. English is a fucked up language that has stolen from all of its peers.",
"Also, how \"new\" the profession is. Things that were male-dominated in the past often came up with a female version of the word when women became involved. Now, we're seeing that one gender-neutral word can be the best option.",
"English sort of gave up having genders for most nouns a long time ago, but it was kept for a few words where the distinction was significant enough for the people using those words to keep making it. New words like programmers were made up centuries after gender was lost and it never occurred to anyone to make it a gendered word at the time. Many words for professions actually were gender neutral for the longest time, but in recent decades have been gendered or regendered. For example all the names for professions ending in -man are nowadays seen as referring to men only when originally the word meant 'man' was just to refer to person in general (although that does not mean, that the people who actually used it that way generally would not have been very open to women in such roles.) This is why now spokesman or chairman get the addition of spokeswoman or chairwoman to make it fit better. Sometimes words get adopted from other languages and keep their gender due to a very gendered usage. A dominatrix for example is from Latin and the female form of dominator. Having such a word borrowed from other languages and used exclusively for one gender for long enough makes people consider that word gender exclusive. Sometimes new words are coined based on old ones and people apply the few stray bits of grammar english still has left due to familiarity. If an unfamiliar or new word sounds a lot like a word that has a male and female form in english, especially the ending part of it, people might use the same rules for the new word because they feel right."
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eu3xei | Why is DJ Khaled considered a musical artist? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If he’s on the decks, mixing tunes then he’s a DJ. If he’s on the mic shouting or rapping then he’s an MC, or just a Hype Man",
"To understand why he is famous, it would be more important to know where he came from and the progress of hip-hop and I guess the music industry in general. Right up to maybe as recently as 6 to 8 years ago, \"mixtapes\" and getting your song played by DJs both on radio and in clubs, was the equivalent of going viral on the internet and becoming famous as a rapper or even a producer. So especially during the 2000s, Khaled and other radio/mixtape DJs (some names you might have heard: DJ Clue, DJ Drama, DJ Whookid, Funkmaster Flex, The LA Leakers) became a sort of the gatekeepers of what rappers and songs were hot. By getting songs first from the already established popular rappers, they would increase their own profile and listener base which would make new rappers/producers want to get their music on these DJ's mixtapes and radio shows. These DJs would release their mixtapes and it would contain freestyles, first listens and exclusive songs from a variety of artists. Basically, the DJ's own playlist. So what Khaled does right now is an extension of that - he gets artists that are \"hot\" together on songs and releases those songs on his albums which are just more refined versions of what mixtapes used to be.",
"He primarily facilitates the \"right\" artists coming together on a track. He used to be more of a producer before, but now it is mainly the facilitating.",
"Reminds me of that family guy where Pitbull(a similar \"artist\") says he's off to Vegas to make bank for shouting \"make some noise!\"",
"He's essentially the manager. Pays money for all the worker. The beat makers, the producers, the artists etc.. He doesn't make the beats. You can hear it in many songs where either the producer or the beat makers tag will appear. He's stated on interviews his essential job is taking the risk. Which has payed off in some fashion. Ultimately he used to DJ when he was younger on an early interview you can see him talk about it. But i dont know where that ever went",
"I just finished watching the Sinatra spectacular from 65 on YouTube where Sammy Davis Jr. sings an incredible piece accompanied only by drums that blew me away. He dances and does some comedy, then some impressions. All impeccable. I find it difficult to bring myself to mention this DJ by name in the same sentence as Sammy Davis, even when doing it specifically to point out the unfathomably vast disparity of talent between them. I don’t know what this DJ should be called, but I call him untalented.",
"we were talking about this at work the other day, I have only seen him yelling his name also lol."
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eudu0l | What makes Klingon and other fictional languages a "fully functional" language? What are the criteria? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Using that descriptor would just be an opinion. But I believe they're describing the situations when someone went to the trouble to make a very large list of vocabulary (though certainly not equivalent to an actual dictionary), and creates grammar rules."
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evcvg4 | Why is the United States not considered multinational? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Multi-national means more than 1 nation. No nation is multinational by that definition. North America is a multinational continent however. As far as territories, well the territory is still part of a nation. And the people born there are still Americans. They may have a different ethnic background but they still are American. I'm just using the most common definition for multinational. Maybe there are others.",
"People in Guam and Puerto Rico have more rights than in places that are \"not the US\". People in the District of Columbia have more rights than PR and Guam. People in the 50 states have more rights than people in DC. All of these details have specific histories, and reasons that they are not being changed. Some people in DC want DC to be a state, but it's too small for the other states (and even PR) Some people in PR want to be a state and other people don't. There are financial advantages that people/companies in PR have, and some don't want to give that up.",
"Multinational State doesn't have a rigid definition, it's a loose term. Depending on how you define the term, it could mean every country in the world, since there isn't one country with 100% of their population included in the same ethnic group. Maybe someone could find one (maybe a small Island nation), but it's a very rare situation. There is two main characteristic that are important to look at. The first is how much each ethnic group represent as a percentage of the population. If you have a country like Japan where 97.8% of the population are Japanese, vs a country like Belgium where 58% of the population si Flemish, 31% is Wallon and 11% is of another ethnicity. Where is the line exactly depend on who you are gonna talk to. The second characteristic is does the different ethnic group have their own administrative division within the country. So for example Germany have 20% of their population that isn't German, but it mostly come from immigration and there can be a concentration of certain ethnic group in a city, there isn't a region in particular where an minority could attain majority. The different ethnic group are spread accross the country. Compared that to Canada where the Province of Quebec is 75% french, they have their own provincial governement and work differently than the rest of the country that speak mostly english. I would say that the US is in the grey zone. For most of the US, you get a situation similar to German, where most of the different ethnic group are mixed together in the different states. California is one of the most diverse, but you have 36% white and 39% hispanic. So it's not like the Province of Quebec, where you have a minority of the country that have the majority in the province and govern themselves. Same with Hawaii, which is made of around 37% Asian, 25% White, 10% Pacific Islander, etc. Puerto Rico is close to a nation, with 94% of the population speaking Spanish at home. But at the time time, Puerto Rico only represent around 1% of the population of the US. You could also say the same for the Indian reservation, they are semi-independant administrative division, but like Puerto Rico, those represent around 0.5% of the total population of the US. To me, it doesn't seem logical to call the entire USA a multinational nation, if ony around 1.5% of the country fit that description. It seem more appropriate to call the US a multi-ethnic country, than a multinational one."
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evs186 | Why is school out for several months each summer in this day and age? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"While it's true that we don't need kids to spend the summer working on the farm with their parents anymore for the most part, once a tradition starts it becomes incredibly difficult to change it. Switching to a year-long system with more holidays or breaks would likely be more efficient, but would be a major hassle to implement, and result in a lot of unhappy people who like the way things currently are."
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evweu1 | Why Kings/Queens/Counts/Etc. Kept prisoners in dungeons of the same building they slept in. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The prisoners in the palace dungeon were not generally common folk convicted of some minor crime. They were more likely political prisoners, rivals for the crown, or nobles captured on the battlefield held for ransom or to secure a peace treaty. Commoners convicted of a crime such as theft were hanged, banished to a colony, or forced into military service.",
"The castles were the most secure location prisoners could escape to the outside assassins couldn't get in from the outside."
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ew8wbq | What is a fetish, how does it form and does it have a psychological basis? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Fetish is a sexual attraction towards something. For example, fetish of people in socks, or fetish of people with red hair, etc. Some fetishes are created - almost in a pavlovian fation. Vast majority however are just something you're born with. Just like you're born liking one color and not another, or like some prefer cats over dogs, etc."
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ewkqqh | Why is it illegal in canada to setup online predators? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's called entrapment, and it's generally considered unethical to bait someone into a crime they wouldn't have otherwise committed.",
"In most civilized countries outside of the US, it is illegal to trick someone to commit a crime, as the crime might not have happened without your intervention. It makes you an accomplice"
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ewmh3d | Why can the defending party in a presidential trial deny witnesses? Isn't a trial all about hearing the important witnesses? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not a criminal trial. Trump isn't at risk of going to prison. The absolute worst thing that could happen to him is that he's removed from office. Therefore, the normal rules of a criminal trial don't apply to this. Instead, the rules are decided by the Senate (or, in this case, Trump's pocket senator Mitch McConnell)",
"The impeachment process is a political process. The US system is divided into three branches and is deliberately designed to be somewhat vague so that there will need to be a working compromise between the three branches - no one part is considered supreme on all areas all the time over all the other branches. In practice this means when one branch \"unnaturally\" tries to intervene in another - many issues are left to be determined on almost a case by case basis. Impeachment is one of these occasions. Here you have the legislative branch trying to remove the head of the (duly elected) executive branch in a trial that the head of the judicial branch is presiding. They don't use the rules of 'normal' trials carried out by the judicial branch because this is a legislative branch led process. Of course, the President will voice his own opinion of the \"executive privilege\" in order to counter this. None of this is written in stone nor detailed in any form. Hence the entirely political nature. Very early on (way before the House of Representatives passed the articles of impeachment) it was very clear that the chance of removing the President was very remote, given that the Senate's majority is the party of the President. Hence, this entire drama could be interpreted as a process to embarrass the President and the Senate."
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ewvohw | How are new words added to sign language? | 20 years ago, words like Google didn't exist. How are new words added to sign language and how does everyone who uses sign language get told of the new words/signs? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[Same as with any language]( URL_0 ). Someone creates a new sign, shares that in casual conversation, explains what they're signing, and that word is fine tuned through mass use ... or it doesn't catch on and dies.",
"A lot of words in sign language are spelt out. Burrito is my go to example. That's the case for new words I'd say.",
"I only have a couple semesters of ASL and it was years ago, but I remember it didn't take long for the more adept students in class to start making up signs either based on fingerspelling or some easily recognizable associated gesture."
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ewvsxp | Why isn't the Aenied as popular (culturally significant) as the Odyssey or the Illiad? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Aeneid was actually studied near as much as Homer throughout the Renaissance and into the early modern period, though this was partly because an education in Latin was expected of scholars and it's considered one of the absolute classics of Roman lit. But as a story, the themes and characters are a little less universal than those of the Iliad, and the adventures a shade less colorful than those of the Odyssey. This is partly due to its purpose - the Aeneid was written in the aftermath of the Roman Empire under Augustus taking over from the Republic, and so it can be read either as a celebration of the new regime or as a subversive critique of it. But in either case, its most important themes were relevant to that specific time - the new Empire and its implications. While Aeneas's piety is an interesting character trait that's been studied for 2,000 years, the wrath of Achilles and the hubris of Odysseus have interested scholars more over those times; they're a little more universal, and they aren't as closely tied in to current events for their meaning. And as an answer to your question in another comment thread, Aeneas was a character in the *Iliad,* probably the bravest of Troy's heroes behind Hector himself. His most important moment came in a fight against Achilles, where Poseidon saves him, as Aeneas, from a lesser side of the royal household, is destined to become the ruler of Trojans after the rest of the royal family are killed in the war. Virgil takes that and follows it, showing how Aeneas led his surviving Trojans to found Rome.",
"The Aeneid wasn't written by Homer, nor was it Greek, and was written later than the Odyssey/Illiad"
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exa7k2 | What’s the difference between race, ethnicity and nationality? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ethnicity is anything that differenciate between groups of people, it could be language, race, culture, religion, etc. Which differences is more important depend on what is important for the people living there. So for example, in the US it's mostly about race, hispinic, white, black, etc. In Belgium is mostly about language and culture between the Walloon, Flemish and German communities. With Serbo-Croats, it's mostly about religion and history. What ever cateristic is important to the people will define them as a ethnicity. Race is about genetic, but it's mosly a spectrum of genetic differences and it become harder and harder to categorize people with that, since people travel and mix up a lot more in the modern days. In the day to day culture, race usually mean pick a couple of external caracteristic and associate a race with it, which can be misleading. For example, someoen can have black skin, but have mostly caucasian (white) genes. Nationality, the country you are a citizen of. In the cast majority of time it mean that country you were born from, but some people can have multiple nationality."
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exc2kr | Why are 18 and 21 considered “adult ages” and what’s the difference between them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, in the U.S. it’s because 18 is when you are legally independent, you can vote, sign contracts, and other legal matters for yourself. At 21 you can drink alcohol (and I guess the tobacco age moved to 21, I think there are other rights you have around this age). Tbh what’s considered “an adult” is kind of a cultural thing that varies from place to place."
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excn38 | why does a lot of peple say or write "shoul of" or "would of" instead of using "have"? (non-english native here) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"“Should of” is almost phonetically identical to “should’ve”, so they’re mistranslating the sounds they’re meaning to communicate when they then go to write it down. Then it turns into a common mistake that people copy from each other when it looks correct based on what sounds they’re going for. “You could’ve done that by now” is almost phonetically identical to “you could of done that by now.”"
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exghji | How did the Chinese succeed in reaching a higher population BCE and continued thriving for such a longer period than Mesopotamia? | were there any factors like food or cultural organization, which led to them having a sustained increase in population? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You might be familiar with how the Nile River in Egypt works from school. If you aren't - for 9 months out of the year the Nile has a moderate flow rate that is sufficient to support human settlement and agriculture. For the remaining 3 months the Nile's flow rate increases dramatically and it floods a huge area around its river banks. That flooding might sound bad but its not. Using soil for agricultural purposes will deplete it's minerals within about 100 years. That's a long time compared to a human life, but not compared to a civilization. When the soil runs out of minerals you can't grow anything in it anymore, and it turns out that this is the limiting factor for most civilizations. IE, a civilization will begin intensively farming its soil, deplete the soil, then starve to death. In the modern world we're able to replenish the soil's minerals with fertilizer. They were sort of able to do this in the ancient world as well, but this involved transporting huge amounts of animal manure which is difficult to do and, in practice, if an ancient civilization had to manually fertilize the soil it would result in very low agricultural yields. This is what makes the Nile's floods so good for the development of civilization - every time the Nile would flood it deposits a huge amount of new soil in the areas that got flooded. The source of that new soil was hills and mountains in Central Africa, so it was filled with minerals. Or to put it another way - every year the Nile naturally dumped a huge amount of fertilizer on Egypt. This natural fertilizing allowed Egypt to be by far the most productive agricultural region West of India for thousands of years - everyone from the Pharaohs to Alexander the Great to the Roman Empire fed themselves using the food that the Nile was able to grow. How does this relate to China? The Yellow River in China is the same type of river as the Nile. It spends most of the year with a moderate flow rate, then has massive floods for a few months that deposit a bunch of new soil along its banks. Where the Yellow River is different from the Nile is in its size. The Nile is a single, small river with practically no tributaries or lakes. The Nile's floods only cover a small geographic area located immediately adjacent to it. The Yellow River, on the other hand, is a massive system with hundreds of tributaries and lakes. When it floods, it covers almost the entirety of South East China - which is an area thousands of times the size of that covered by the Nile. The Yellow River basin has been among for the most productive agricultural areas on Earth for much of human history. Because the only limiting factor to population size is a region's ability to produce food, this also means that the Yellow River Basin (and by extension, China) has managed to maintain a huge population for the entirety of human history.",
"From my understanding, it was due to location. The Yangzi River provided very fertile soil. On top of that, there was a unique type of food in the region. To understand this, there is an important concept that is required. Food is required to support a population. A population will grow till it reaches an equilibrium with the available food sources. If there is food to spare, the population will grow. If you take a look at the [population of the UK over time]( URL_0 ), you can see when the industrial revolution started. Back to the unique food in the Yangzi river valley, that is Rice. From my understanding, for a given acre of farmland, Rice can provide around ~10-11 million calories per year. While an acre of wheat can only provide ~5-6 million calories per year. From this alone you can see that the Yangzi river valley can support a huge population. Edit: Mixed up my rivers. Meant the Yangzi river, not the Yellow River. Also changed the wheat caloric output from 1 million per year to 5-6 million per year since I had that value wrong.",
"Not only did the Chinese have one of the most fertile rivers in the world along with a tributary network rivaling the Mississippi River but they were *really* into organization and public works. Organized networks of canals, mills, terraces and other vital infrastructure like no where else at the time. Massive legions if government officials also kept track of yield and distributions to make sure the population was fed. China also had rice, which has an extremely good yield along with a ton if land to grow it on. That said it wasnt fool proof. China declined and collapsed several times over, they just never had a big enough foreign invader to supplant them and wipe out their general way of life. If anything foreign invaders just went with it and found the Chinese systems superior like with the Mongol Yuan dynasty.",
"It's not an apt comparison. In terms of geographical size and and the variety of regions and cultures, it's better to compare ancient China with the whole Mediterranean region and Mesopotamia. The region now covered by China has had multiple empires, often competing empires, just like Western civilization. China now has over 200 living languages, and probably a similar number of cultures. So of course the \"Chinese\" (not really Chinese) thrived a long time. There was always someone nearby to carry on the torch. The same thing happened in the West, but the whole region of early western civilization isn't covered by a single country, hence the confusion.",
"In addition to what everyone has commented. Chinese healthcare and sanitation has always been more advance than the rest of the world. Chinese medicine started over 2,200 years ago, in fact anesthesia was already used in 140 AC. Chinese sanitation culture is also very different - Chinese always boil their water and food had used lots of curing, smoking, and fermentation. Additionally public sewage and disposal existed in large cities, which helped reduce diseases. China also pioneered vaccination by using the scabs of smallpox patient to inoculate others. These are probably smaller contributions to their large population but over thousands of years, it can add up",
"Not just China, but India also. There are probably a dozen factors that contribute to the long term large and sustained human populations of those regions, but if I had to pick ONE and only one, I would pick a reliable water supply. The headwaters of the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yellow, and Yangtze rivers are all fed by melt water from the Himalayan snow pack. The Himalayan snow pack is built up every year by the seasonal Indian Monsoon Current and that snow pack is MASSIVE. If the monsoon fails or is weak one year, or even several years in row, there is still enough snow pack from previous years' monsoons to provide plenty of water for drinking, irrigation, and navigation along those five rivers. With a large and reliable source of fresh water for drinking and irrigation you can sustain large populations. These large rivers also provide a means of navigation so trade and communication are easier. This makes it easier to organize a civilization with a centralized(ish) government, making it easier to create a larger, more homogenized(ish) society and culture. In contrast, the rivers of the Fertile Crescent, the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile are all fed almost exclusively by direct rainfall. Annual melt water from snow pack is almost non-existent for those rivers, so they have no buffer if seasonal rains are abnormally low or if there is a drought. YT video of historic human population from 200,000 BCE to present day: [ URL_2 ]( URL_0 ) Also: Billions Rely on Himalayan Glaciers for Water. But They're Disappearing. [ URL_1 ]( URL_1 )",
"Maybe because they have a territory that's entirely composed of land, and mountains and forests, whereas the mesopotamians only had a little space around their river? They couldn't really extend their territory and so their population, because it was hard to get things to grow.",
"Intensive agriculture in a large area of land which could support it due to plentiful water supply, combined with a fairly well organised bureaucracy which enabled a reasonable system of government over the large area.",
"As said before, China - even ancient pre-Qin China - was much larger than Mesopotamia in terms of easily-replenished fertile farmlands. This was a major factor, but I won't repeat what everyone else has stated. Another major factor is its comparatively isolated location. Mesopotamia is often considered the \"crossroads of civilization\". It benefited from easy access to many other settled agricultural areas like Egypt, Persia, India, Greece, etc. - but was also threatened by them as well. While there were certainly some rough deserts in the area, the Fertile Crescent was fairly easy to march an army through. There really aren't any significant land barriers to conquering the Fertile Crescent. Early on, Egypt's relative isolation, and the difficulty of invading a land surrounded by desert, helped it grow into a more powerful and stable regional force, along with the previously-stated Nile's more stable replenishment mechanisms. China was probably somewhat similar. While there were peoples out in the steppes, nomadic lifestyle is generally not able to sustain massive populations, so their threat to early Chinese civilizations was comparatively small - certainly dangerous, but not \"completely wipe out your civilization\" dangerous. And it was pretty common that these peoples would often integrate into Chinese societies anyway. The steppes were north and west; the south was dense jungle. East was the sea, and West were the Himalayas and some massive deserts, all of which were relatively difficult terrain for large armies to pass through in ancient times. Now this doesn't mean Chinese civilization was anything like peaceful. In a sense, China's relative isolation from much of the rest of the world 2000-4000 years ago allowed the separate groups that lived there to fight amongst themselves, conquer each other, and eventually develop into a single hegemony that, by about 220 BC, was a clear dominant power surrounded mostly by much, much smaller civilizations. I say 220 BC because that's when Qin Shihuangdi \"first\" united all of China. While other hegemons had existed before, Qin's reforms helped create much tighter cultural unity, and streamlined the economy (i.e., standardizing the written language into what we now know as classical Chinese; standardized currency, measurements, etc). The previous centuries of warfare had allowed Qin - and then Han - China to really orient the entire power of the state into producing all of the things needed for vast military power projection, which would be used to unify the region.",
"Anti erosion agriculture. Asian can feed people indefinitely with the rice patties, but tilling the soil is civilization suicide.",
"It's a confluence of factors. I recommend reading the long and a bit tedious book: Why The West Rules, For Now. It gives a history of human prosperity in \"western\" and \"eastern\" geographies. To sustain population growth, humans needed to make the leap from hunter gatherers to agriculture. There were a few locations that had a climate to support this, fertile land that could be consistently farmed, and nutrient dense high production grains (of which there are surprisingly few). In the end, this left the hilly flanks of Mesopotamia and the yangtze valley as two of the few potential locations around the world for civilization to develop. Why China lasted longer? If I recall, the book claimed climate change, collapse of civilization in the middle east around the bronze age (China was insulated geographically), warfare, Mesopotamia shifted it's Central locus to other Mediterranean countries, etc. In short, it's a lot of things, and not a simple answer why one side leads the other at a given point in time. Definitely read the book if you can. It's not comprehensive either. It's his best summary incorporating all the facts he gathered and even with all the facts, we still don't fully understand everything."
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ext731 | Why did artists from the Middle Ages depict real world things in such a bizarre way? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Things such as artistic anatomy classes were nonexistent, and if you made a mistake you kinda just had to roll with it. If a painting looks great but you screwed up the face on the cat, tried to fix it and just ruined it again, you might literally not have the resources to paint it again... it’s not like things were unlimited back then like they are now. Furthermore, They had little to no understanding of skeletal or muscular structures or generalized anatomical proportions. It wasn’t until the renaissance that these became popular. Finally. Sometimes they’re just stylized, such as that white cat drawing. If you looked at a cartoon cat today, it looks nothing like a real cat. Why do we draw them like that? Because we can, it’s simple, easier, better conveys a message or feeling, or we lack the supplies or skills to do otherwise. You have to remember, a lot of people drawing were religious leaders like monks, who’s main focus wasn’t art but religion. Source: I took a lot of art history classes in college so I could be wrong but that’s my understanding of it. I agree with the mod tho",
"I took one (1!) art history class! I can't say so for cats, but with human beings- there was a shift from the idealized proportions depicted in Roman art (contraposta ha know) to a more schematic approach which correlated to the rise of Christianity. I believe that the rise of iconoclasm (which forbade the depiction of \"graven images or any likeness of anything\" due to a strict interpretation of the 2nd commandment) during the medieval period also led to a less realistic approach. I think you see a return to more realism with the rise of Duccio and Giotto and other artists from the 1300s. So you know! It's a style thing- wanting to depict religious figures as \"otherworldly and distant\" which eventually transitioned to wanting to \"connect with religious figures\", thus depicting those figures within a three-dimensional space and more realistic proportions. I hope this is accurate, and any art history experts may feel free to correct any inaccuracies or expand upon this! I realize I might not have answered the question exactly as asked, but I think it brings up great discussion!",
"It's worth pointing out that the second and third of those examples were rendered by monks who were trained as calligraphers, not artists, and the animals etc. were simple embellishments of the text. Having the talent to draw a realistic cat was not a requirement of the job.",
"In addition to what others have said, the lack of an understanding of perspective contributed to the odd looking nature of early art. Often faces and landscapes would look flat. People would be in poses where all their limbs were showing because creating a perspective where parts were occluded behind other parts was confusing. It's something we take for granted. Perspective was \"discovered\" and \"rediscovered\" by individuals independently, before it became applied in a widespread manner. So even though there's earlier examples with correct perspective, they were isolated early on. Some artist would paint on pieces of glass, so they could sit at a specific point and paint onto the glass exactly what they saw, where they saw it, to solve this problem. Some of the early concepts of perspective lines were used by architects: URL_0",
"I think it's just the fact that there wasn't obvious access to reference material. You try drawing like a giraffe or something from memory, it's gonna be kinda wonky. I think this is why babies all look weird too. \"What's a baby look like? Me but small?\"",
"I think that the spanish jesus-face is a good example. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) Sometimes an amateur gets a gig. Adding the fact that they had fewer media to look at and learn from, were more isolated when it comes to travel and had limited time and ressources, it is understandable.",
"In addition to all of the other feedback, it is worth pointing out that domestic animals actually did look a bit different back then. Look at pictures of dogs from 100 years ago even, and their proportions are a bit different. i.e. German Shepherds are one good example from breeding changes. And that's just 100 years. You can expect ~2x the difference over 300 years. Edit : here's some examples - URL_0",
"Art teacher here. Most people hit it... there was a lack of understanding about proportions and perspective as well as a lack of reference material. In terms of the cat example, the artist may not have seen many cats in their life time. They didn't have a still photo or model to work from. However, this topic usually comes up in reference to images of jesus. That was a cultural thing... they made him look like an old man because they believed he was wise and holy."
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ey2hrf | What it means for a movie to have “pacing issues” | I know what the words mean but I dont really have an eye for these things and I usually just get sucked into the movie as a casual viewer | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pacing refers to how quickly the plot moves along. Some movies have a lot of dialog and character development and move along slowly, others are all car chases and explosions and take you on a roller coaster ride. Pacing issues can refer to one of three things: * too slow -- the movie isn't making good use of slow pace and audiences get bored * too fast -- the action is outrunning the plot and audiences aren't sure why things are happening * inconsistently -- the movie speeds up and slows down without serving any coherent purpose",
"Generally, it's how fast or slow the story unfolds. Like a single scene that doesn't advance the plot and takes up a lot of screentime or a whole bunch of things happening right at the end with no time to establish them would be example of pacing issues. [This scene]( URL_0 ) is a legendary example of terrible dialogue pacing, but pacing issues tend to be more structural."
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ey720m | how does the American democratic Caucus work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are two questions in your question: What is a caucus, and how are party candidates selected? > What is a caucus? A caucus is one of two common method states do voting in the primaries. A *Primary* is what you expect. You show up on voting day, tell the nice people up front who you are, get a ballot, go in to a booth, and secretly cast a vote. a *caucus* is a public vote. You arrive at a set location at a set time, and when the time comes someone will go around and count how many people there support each candidate. Essentially it's a \"Raise your hand if you vote for Bill Bobson, Go to that room if you vote for Penny White\" or so on. Your vote is public, and you have to be present when it is counted. Leave too early, and your vote is not counted. > How much control do the votes have vs. the Party? This is a bit of a touchy subject. So, at least as far as the Democratic party goes 2/3 of the delegates that select the nominee are bound by the results of the public vote. the remaining 1/3 are *superdelegates*, and represent party interest. They can vote however they want, but are not allowed to vote in the first round of voting at the party convention unless one candidate already has a significant majority. While the voters have a significant influence over the chosen nominee (and it's much better than it was before 1970) the Party has enough of a say that it can easily decide the race if it needs to. 1/3 of the vote concentrated usually decides over a split 2/3 vote."
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eyab9b | who/when was the day of the week that we are in decided? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We do not really know as there is very little written about this. What we do know is that the Ancient Greek and Romans used an eight day week which were also divisible by their calendar. So they could use the same calendar every year which made planning of festivals and other events easier. The calendar also followed the lunar cycle. We start finding references to the modern seven day week a few decades before year one. The days were named after the seven known planets at the time who were again named after gods. This is still largely true today. The seven day week became more and more popular over the eight day week. Especially as the calendar were reformed and two extra months were added to complete the year meaning the eight day week did not fit the new calendar. If there ever was a book discussing the change from the eight day week to the seven day week or the reasoning behind the naming of the days after the planets it have been lost to history."
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eygytn | Why is there a tendency to censor vowels in explicit language rather than consonants? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Censoring words only partially (e.g. f\\*ck or sh\\*t) has an interesting function. It's not really to stop the word from being recognized. Anyone who knows these words can easily figure out what's being \"hidden\". It's done more from a sense of propriety. *We* wouldn't use this foul word, you see, but the speaker did and we want to print the quote and retain the meaning. So we obfuscate the bad word a little, so that *we* technically don't use it in our publication, and you technically don't have to read it. If you really wanted to hide the word, you would censor it completely, and sometimes that's exactly what people do. But if you want to have only this appearance of propriety, and still allow the word to be recognized, then you don't want to hide any important letters. You want to hide the ones that don't matter very much. Well, it turns out that vowels are less important for recognizing words than consonants, and letters in the middle of a word are less important than letters at the beginning and the end. So if I write c\\*\\*t or d\\*\\*k, that's a lot easier to read than \\*un\\* or \\*ic\\*.",
"It is easier to determine a word by it's consonants than it's vowels. Fun fact: Modern hebrew has dropped the writing of vowels completely. Still readable."
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eyj8xb | Why is the Iowa Caucus So Important? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Iowa is the first state to have caucuses in the US presidential primary session. Because it is the first, the candidate that wins, or even those that do better than expected, may get an even bigger boost in subsequent states because of this vote getting a lot of media attention across the country. Hopefully that helped.",
"Because the parties and the media make it important. Iowa prides itself on having the first activity in a political year, even if the methodology used to score the Iowa caucuses is pure bullshit.",
"Evidence (from polls, believe it or doubt it) suggests that voters take into account the idea of \"who can win\" when they vote. As the first state to have primaries, the idea is to build momentum (ie if voters believe you can win, they will more likely vote for you) in an otherwise not significant state (by population) Doing unexpectedly well or unexpectedly badly, has been shown to have major impact on future primaries. The impact doesn't have to be large to be significant in a closely contested race (even a +/- change of 2-3 points can be a swing of 6% - ie going from 48:52 to 51:49)"
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eysn1m | Can you explain the concept of "counter-intuitive"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's when the opposite of what you instinctively would think is the correct answer. Like if you lose control of a trailer behind a truck your instinct would be to brake but you should actually speed up to straighten it back out.",
"Intuition is your innate gut feeling on how a thing should be. Intuitive is an adjective describing that something feels like you feel it ought to be; if you turn the steering wheel on a car left, the car turns towards the left. This is intuitive for most people, even if they have trouble with left vs right: you turn the wheel towards the direction you want to turn the car, and the car turns that way. Something that is counter-intuitive works in the opposite way from what you would expect. For instance: I have one light switch in my apartment where down is \"on\" and up is \"off\"; every other light switch I've encountered generally is the other way around, and so I've developed an intuition for light switch down = light off, light switch up = light on, and working that light is counter-intuitive for me. (note: I know I could theoretically flip the switch or that it might be a 2-switch setup where the position of 2 switches controls 1 outlet/light, but this is ELI5 and I'm fresh out of ideas). The key take-away when we get into intuitive vs counter-intuitive, is that if something is counterintuitive, that doesn't necessarily make it incorrect. In fact, a lot of science is counterintuitive to what we know beforehand. Take the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun, not the other way around. If you're an observer on Earth, you might observe the Sun rising in the east, setting in the west, and then rising in the east again, which would suggest that it is orbiting Earth, but in reality that is just a function of the Earth spinning relative to the Sun while the Earth orbits the Sun. So counter to our intuition, the Earth orbits the Sun.",
"The simplest example I can think of. At work we have emergency shutdown buttons. Intuition tells you to push it but in reality you have to pull the button to shutdown equipment.",
"It’s when you think, based on previous evidence, things will go one way, but they go the opposite. Examples: Free needle exchanges actually reduce the amount of transmitted disease and it’s cheaper in the long run. Comprehensive sex education actually lowers the teenage pregnancy rate and kids actually engage less in sex and risky behavior towards sex.",
"Intuition is the expectation to extinguish fire with water, as this is common knowledge and experience. Counter-intuitively, dousing a grease fire with water will result in a large fireball - the opposite of the intention. The water violently boils, dispersing an explosive mist of flaming oil. Grease fires should be smothered with the pot lid, baking soda, or a dry chemical fire extinguisher."
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ez021a | Explain the meaning of Un-orthodox | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Orthodox means a strict following of the rules and norms. Unorthodox means the opposite; a divergence of the rules or the norms. A lot of people get confused about this because of the Orthodox Catholic religion. People think that the Orthodox faith split from the Roman faith because they wanted to be different. However, they believed that it was the Romans that were bending the rules, and that they were the ones following the rules by the book, making them Orthodox. In the case of Orthodox Jews, they are following the religion down to the letter. This makes them different because other Jews take a more liberal approach. They are different, but are the different because they are focused on the rules.",
"Orthodox is the norm, Unorthodox is breaking from the norm. So the orthodox way to solve a problem is the normal way, and an unorthodox way to solve a problem would be different and strange."
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ez306h | Why are 'Dad Bod's' Veiwed so Positively and 'Mom Bod's' viewed so Negatively? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A quick Google search using the term 'milf' might change your mind on this. The fact is that making the claim that dad bods are sexy is in fashion at the moment. It is a trope that the media likes to use right now. That doesn't mean that they are objectively more attractive than six packs.",
"Security. A dad bod gives her the sense of security that he won’t be able to get anybody else. Just joking obviously"
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ez4xse | who founded La Cosa Nostra back in the old country? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nobody knows. It wasn't really 'founded'... like the yakuza, it grew organically to fill the space between feudalism and capitalism. When the laws were changed and commoners became landowners, there was a vacuum between when the feudal lords policed their own lands and when the state was capable of policing everything. When the organizations that sprung up to fill that void needed a specific name, they chose 'mafiusu' (Sicilian, 'swagger' or 'bold'), popularized by the popular 1863 play \"I mafiusi di la Vicaria\" about a prison gang. They knew they were organized crime, but also saw themselves as a sort of post-feudal social service. Before them, the feudal lords paid forces to police their lands; with the rise of common land-owners, the people themselves needed to be taxed to pay for protection. The mafiusu stepped up to be that protection, and to be the thing people needed protection from. A brilliant marketing move, really. Create a problem, provide a solution. An Italian deputy in 1876 said that the term 'mafia' found Sicilian thugs \"ready and waiting for a name\" to distinguish their important place in society from that of common vulgar criminals. After his report, the general term 'mafia' became the proper label 'Mafia'. Later, in 1963, a mafia turncoat told US officials that internally the mob didn't refer to themselves as the 'mafia', or as *anything*... they just referred to their activities as 'cosa nostra', which just means 'our thing', 'this thing of ours'. This was mistakenly taken to be a proper name by the FBI, and turned into a capitalized proper name by them. They also added the 'La', sometimes resulting in awkward phrases like \"The 'La Cosa Nostra'\"."
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ez7xn2 | How do people create a whole fictional language? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"iirc the people who do this are already language experts. They know how different languages work and what rules it would need to follow. Once you have a basic grammar down, you can invent words. On Star Trek, the original writers would just come up with a few words or phrases. Later on, real experts jumped in and did the 'fan fiction' thing.",
"So using Tolkien as an example, many people who do this well are already masters of linguistics. So all languages follow certain rules, patterns, formulas and you can decipher them. For instance take romance languages, these are languages that all evolved from one root language, if you learn 2 of them you basically know the other ones, just with minor differences here and there. so once you see patterns and rules and understand them you can make up your own. you design your own rules, your consonant vowel pairings, and go to town"
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ezankb | How do cultural anthropologists conduct fieldwork? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The main technique of cultural anthropologists doing fieldwork is participant observation. You go to your chosen location and both participate in the community as well as observing and taking notes on activities. You interview people and you may also conduct surveys. You may also explore archives."
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ezbn2l | where did standing ovulation come from and why was it invented for theaters ? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Standing ovulation? For when the performance was SOOOO GOOD you're moved to conceive."
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f0b0l1 | how did so many unrelated languages around the world come to have essentially identical systems of communication? | Such as very similar or near-identical vocabularies, phrases, greetings, yes/no/maybe, exclamations etc. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because they are, in fact, related. For example, just about any language spoken in the Americas, Europe, parts of Asia and the Middle East are all part of the Indo-European family of languages, that all evolved from the same language thousands of years ago.",
"As another post has said, a great many of the world's languages are related. Hindi and German (and many languages in-between) are part of Indo-European, which is a family that people pretty confidently think came from just one language thousands of years ago. A lot has changed, but some basics of how the language works, and even some words have stayed similar. For example, the Hindi word for fire is \"Agni\", which is related to the English word \"Ignite\". That's not coincidence - it's because thousands of years ago, they were one language that changed as people moved apart. Remember, if you read English that's only 600 years old, it's very hard to understand. Imagine how big that difference would get over many thousands of years. Now, there are many languages that *aren't* part of that big family. But many languages are indeed part of a different big family like that (for example, Afro-Asiatic is a big family that encompasses languages like Hausa, spoken in Nigeria, to Hebrew). If you did know that, and you meant it on a more fundamental level, we don't actually know. But it's easy to imagine that everyone needs a word for things like \"yes\" or \"no\" and to describe things like colours. The actual words for those concepts might and do sound very different in languages with no relation to each other, but they will exist because they're words that people almost always need when interacting with each other in a society."
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f0m59i | Why is it that the colour red is used the represent emergencies? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The main reason that I'm aware of is that it's sort of been bred into us. Out in nature, red things are typically poisonous or deadly. And, if nothing else, our eyes are drawn to red for reasons, like seeing blood. The reaction of avoiding those types of things persists.",
"All colors draw emotions from us. Reds tend to bring out urgency, passion, or otherwise strong emotions."
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f0zitw | How can millionaire/billionaires have more influence on a presidential candidate than other donors that donate the same amount, if the maximum contribution is $2,800? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are limits, but they can contribute to multiple different groups (candidates, PACs, parties) with different limits. And they can host fundraisers which can generate large amount of donations. Or use their corporations to also donate.",
"Because the $2,800 limit only applies to donations directly to the candidate's campaign. They can donate *unlimited* amounts of money to super PACS that support the candidates. So, for example, Bill Gates can only give $2,800 directly to candidate X, but he can give $280 million to a super PAC that can spend as much money as it wants to benefit candidate X."
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f1h4nt | Why arent cigs illegal? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pretty much lobbyists. They have paid politicians for years. And tobacco is a big business with a lot of economic influence. It is easy to go after vaping for instance because it is a much smaller business and does not have clout."
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f1iy3o | Why is the slippery slope argument not considered a valid argument? | This has always bothered me, because I can think of instance where bad behaviors can definetly lead to worst behaviors. The classic, if you smoke pot you'll use harder drugs, is clearly not true in itself. Weed doesn't cause you to want to do harder drugs, but since weed is illegal in a lot of places, it could expose you to hard drugs and you could become a user. I understand that this is not always the case, but I'd like to better understand why this is considered a fallacy when it could be true sometimes. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Fundamentally, A argument (legit ones) require proof and logical deduction. Slippery slopes USUALLY rely on assumption. While doing weed = illegal = more likely to commit other illegal act seems legit at first glance, IT IS BASING it's legitmacy on 1 single prospect, and then making more assumptions. You simply don't do this. Just like how you don't see a person being late once and conclude he have trouble keeping time and thus is a unreliable person. A Slippery slope requires multiple stages and multiple assumptions, where A- > B and B- > C and C- > D thus A- > D. We know A =/= D, there is 0 correlation or causation but because you look at the flow of thought thinking \"huh it has a point\" thus you believe in this false statement. This is why fallacy are so powerful, not just because they are wrong, but because they can seem legit.",
"A slippery slope argument is not the same thing as an argument which says that one choice or behaviour will lead to other behaviours. People do confuse them a bunch though. The slippery slope fallacy is typified by having an antecedent and a consequent that do not have a causal link. So for example, the argument \"If you smoke weed then things will snowball and you will be doing crack soon\". The arguer has not defined any link between the idea that smoking weed will make you smoke crack. They are just kind of implying that one thing leads to another without offering any evidence. This is a slippery slope argument and fallacious. Now take the argument you made: \"If you smoke weed in a place that it is illegal then you increase the risk of being exposed to harder drugs when acquiring the weed. Person's who are exposed to harder drugs are more likely to use them. Therefore smoking weed if it is illegal can make you more likely to be a user of harder drugs.\". So now the arguer has defined a causal link between the two behaviours, so it does not have the typical problems of a slippery slope argument (There are still some issues though).",
"Because they don't always (or even most of the time) lead to the worse possible scenario. Often the Slippery slope is used to say only one (highly unlikely) possibility will result from the first action. Perhaps my favorite example was one that was used against same-sex marriage before it went legal. The argument went something like this: \"If we let people of the same sex marry, that destroys the institution of marriage itself. If it happens, next people will want to marry immediate family members, and then people will be want to marry animals. We can't let that happen so, same-sex marriage must remain illegal.\"",
"A slippery slope is not a logical fallacy if it is an argument in itself. You need to back it up with logic and evidence otherwise it's a fallacy and not an argument. The argument/valid use of slippery slope would be \"this is a slippery slope because...\". The fallacy/invalid use would be \"you can't do that because it's a slippery slope\" without providing a valid reason why other than that it's a \"slippery slope\". Slippery slopes are real and happen all the time, and are probably one of the biggest reasons people debate in the first place (such as debating about political ideologies leading to worse and worse things - which they often do)."
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f1qkat | Why is it that during election campaigns, a politician distributing t-shirts is allowed but distributing food stuffs is considered vote buying? Aren't food and clothing at the same level in the hierarchy of needs? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"T-shirts are primarily about spreading the campaign's messaging and allowing people to show their support for the candidate. They're also usually pretty ugly and low-quality, so their pure use value is capped at a few dollars, whereas nice food could be worth much more. Even if you personally believe that candidates are buying votes with T-shirts, the fact that you can make an argument that they're more like advertising will kill any legal case."
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f22vjc | Back in the 90’s, how did they play multiplayer video games offline? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A console, a couch and a couple of controllers. You’d sit in your best mate’s living room (physically present) and try to figure out which side of the split screen display on his TV was you. Jesus fuck I feel old now.",
"Everyone plugged into a router/modem and could see each other that way like they were on the internet but not online",
"If it was like street fighter, You used multiple controllers. Mario you took turns. Goldeneye 64 you had split screen and you had to not look at the other players section. It was on the honor system.",
"Congratulations, you have made me feel old. Earlier consoles had two controller ports, starting with N64 4 became standard. You would go over to your friends house, sit down, and play on the same television, with the screen split into 2-4 sections, one for each player. If you're talking about computer games, you would have what's called LAN parties. Everyone would lug their computers to one person's house, find corners to set up in, and all connect to the persons Local Area Network, which is like the internet, but only for computers in the one house."
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f26se5 | Emma Watson's Bulimia line in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower. | What does the line 'I'm not a bulimic, I'm a bulimist" mean? I've seen this film many times and never understood it. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The *-ist* ending signifies someone who is a practitioner of something (ie artist, psychiatrist) or an adherent to a belief system (ie socialist, royalist). Modifying \"bulimic\" with that suffix indicates that she is consciously adopting the behaviour based on a belief that it's beneficial or desirable to do so. The *-ic* ending is often (but not exclusively) associated with medical terminology which is an association she wants to distance her behaviour from as she wants to see it as a lifestyle choice rather than an illness."
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f280x2 | Why aren't Republicans pro choice and Democrats pro life? (U.S.) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the 70s, 80s and 90s, the republicans found that Christians shared many conservative values. The party made a conscious effort to embrace the conservative Christian Right and made opposition to abortion part of the party platform to gain the large religious base. The Democratic Party responded as the party of human rights and solidified around defending the rights of women.",
"Political organizing around abortion was 100% a response to the civil rights movement, specifically, the integration of schools. In the 1960s and 1970s, even post-Roe, the evangelical community was actually fairly open on abortion when compared to today. You can look up quotes from leaders of southern baptist churches explaining how important it is to have available abortion for rape, incest, danger to mother, fetal abnormality, etc. You can even find a quote about how until the baby is born, it shouldn’t be considered a separate life. The issue became a rallying point for evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell who wanted to open whites-only schools in the face of federal efforts to integrate education. Jimmy Carter was actually a southern evangelical, but he did not help stem the tide of integration, he actually was in favor of it. They turned to the *other* party, and Ronald Reagan, who was, let’s say, ambivalent about civil rights and racial integration. Reagan won in such overwhelming landslides that the religious right was able to consolidate its political power.",
"I think it's better to label the two parties as liberals and conservatives in this case. Conservatives - respect for American traditions, republicanism, **support for Christian values**, among others. Liberals - **civil liberty** and equality with support for social justice and a mixed economy. & #x200B; Conservatives follow \"thou shalt not kill,\" while liberals believe in \"the freedom to decide.\" That's also why the two camps are called pro-*life* and pro-*choice*.",
"Republicans are anti abortion not pro life, it is down to interpretation of the bible and where the life begins the issue is that they think that terminating a fetus is \"killing a baby\"",
"It is only the hard liners on both sides who are ultra strict to this. In my view the average person on both the Republican and Democrat side is a combination of pro choice and pro life. Perfectly fine with pro choice for months 1 to 4, and very troubled with late term abortion in the last 3 months.",
"Because none of the American political parties have a cogent political philosophy. They are not interested in advancing a moral agenda they're interested in winning elections. They pick issues that divide the population and see if they can position themselves advantageously on them. One example of this is how the Republicans came to dominate most southern states through, \"the southern strategy\" which was at odds with the Republican parties history on civil rights. Another question where is the political home of the \" life is precious\" people who oppose gun ownership and abortion rights because \"life is precious\". This is a simple and understandable position that is largely absent from our public discourse. We don't have political parties we have, to quote Eisenhower: \"conspiracies to seize power.\" If we want to fix this we have to get rid of first-past-the-post voting which is the only effective way we can change the American two party system. TLDR: no-one believes anything. Everything's a lie. They put mind control drugs in the water supply."
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f2k47e | how does someone get signed to a record deal? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Anyone can sing, to make a career out of it, is much much harder. First get trained, get a vocal coach. And now the fun part... sing and sing, and try to get people to give you money. Now getting signed, is 50% luck and 50% skill. Someone with money has to think you can make them more money, be you be your best and good luck."
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f2p77k | what do you call a phenomenon where you're thinking of something and then suddenly a guy next to you speaks about it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm far from knowledgable about this, but a way close to explaining it would be the Baader Meinhof phenomenon. This is where you learn about something new and all of a sudden its popping up in loads of places. This is because its fresh in your mind (just like in your case you're thinking about something) you start paying more attention to it and start seeing it more. It's to do with your brain trying to organise your thoughts in to a pattern Hope this somewhat helps? Hope people disagree with me if I'm wrong I had to google what the idea was called again because who in the hell remembers baader meinhof (probably a lot of people, but now you know you might hear it come up more often)"
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f2s9wt | When did 'American English' change the spelling of certain words? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are two instances where the difference between American and British English forms became codified. In 1755, Samuel Johnson published *A Dictionary of the English Language*, the first widely published English dictionary, and this set the British standard. A few years later, Noah Webster published *An American Dictionary of the English Language* in 1828, in which Webster went through great effort to introduce spelling reform. Some will tell you that he did this specifically to spite the English, but scholars are relatively sure that the reason for Webster's spelling reforms was because English spelling was extremely inconsistent up until that point. Well, along with the spiting of the English.",
"It’s also important to note that spelling standardisation is a relatively recent phenomenon. Shakespeare famously spelled his name 6 different ways in his lifetime (ironically none of them was “Shakespeare”)",
"It was Noah Webster. He published several introductory books before the titular Webster’s Dictionary where he simplified spellings according to their spoken counterparts. A lot of -our endings were changed to -or, some double letter words were changed to single, and words became closer to their pronunciations. Not all of Webster’s spellings caught on, but American English diverged from British English. [source]( URL_0 )"
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f33027 | What happens when the U.S Executive Branch doesn’t respect Judicial Review? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's called a constitutional crisis. What would happen depends entirely on the political situation. Impeachment is one option, but a lot depends on whether or not the executive branch would continue to obey the president. This has basically happened in other countries, and it's how they become dictatorships or oligarchies.",
"The Emancipation Proclamation was justified as a war measure. It only freed the slaves in the states that were in rebellion, so you could argue that it was like bombing the enemy's factories: weakening their economy. It was the 13th Amendment that *legally* ended slavery."
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f3bhl6 | How did the heart become the symbol for love and affection when the brain is responsible for those emotions? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It was a long ass time before we realised what the brain was actually for. Given you can actually feel your own heart beaten, it probably got associated with love thousands of years ago because we could feel it beat faster when we're with people we love.",
"Because the brain rarely shows physical side effects in response to emotion. The heart most definitely does, so it was logical, if incorrect, to conclude it has something to do with emotions.",
"The heart shape was used to represent the heart-shaped fruit of the plant Silphium, a plant used as a contraceptive. Ancient Rome used the plant so much for contraception that it went extinct. URL_0"
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f3mxlf | Why is it ok for buildings in New York(for example) to not have elevators in their buildings? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Accessibility is actually a huge problem! Many/most places are't accessible to many disabled people, even the ones that claim to be. For example, it's much harder to find a seat at the movies/theatre as a wheechair user because there are very few places you can park it (also, did you know? Many people leave the wheelchair and sit in the seat next to it). And if you're deaf, forget about captions. Disabled people have had to personally fight for every accommodation. If a building isn't accessible, it's because no one forced it to be. ):",
"The ADA doesn't require any building that isn't, I believe a shopping mall, a hospital or a government building to include elevators unless it is both over three stories high and over 3,000 ft² per story. I personally agree with you it would be better if society were more accessible in general. But the reality is that the laws are not very strong and enforcing accessibility in a wide variety of places. Your restaurant doesn't need a ramp it can have stairs up to it, nor does your apartment building etc. nor really many types of buildings unless they are government buildings. Definitely with our current administration there is no movement towards making the ADA broader, or any money for trying to support making more places accessible."
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f3pott | Why are reclining seats on airplanes such a controversial subject | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Probably because airplanes are very cramped unless you're flying in business class, and somebody reclining their seat cuts even more into the very limited space the person behind you has. Also I suppose there's the social element. You're both stuck in an uncomfortable position and there's nothing much that can be done about that. But when somebody makes themselves more comfortable at your expense, that's a very intentional choice they made, and something that was done by the person right in front and not some nebulous corporation.",
"The more the person in front of you reclines, the less space you have. People like their space, but they also like being able to lean back and recline. This means that people love it when *they* can recline, but hate it when the person in front of them does. All of which means there's a lot of conflict going on within this subject - and conflict means controversy. Also, this whole thing has lead to some sneaky tricks - you may have heard that you can jam a water bottle into the tray of the seat in front of you to stop that person from reclining and taking up your space. That's great for you - you get to keep your space, so you're happy, but it sucks for the person in front, because they don't get to recline, so they're unhappy. So the whole act of preventing the person in front of you from being able to recline is also controversial - after all, is it fair of you to sacrifice their happiness for yours?"
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f3ytyj | Why do drug addicts bend syringe needles? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So that they don't get reused. No one wants dirty needles in circulation, so they destroy them.",
"I am an active drug user and have used a needle for well a lot of drugs that can be dissolved in water. We bend them so others don’t use them, some of us have abscesses, hep c, god forbid HIV, the bent one symbolizes someone who is very sick....",
"The better question is, why doesn't anyone develop a syringe that you can dispose within itself? Just pop the needle back inside, twist a cap or something to make it unusable.",
"When they are directly done using they immediately bend the needle so no one gets poked by it if they were to accidentally stumble upon it, or, so that no one can reuse it if they know they might have a disease. The reason it gets left behind is because after getting high they usually wander off because staying in the same spot that they got high makes them feel unsafe. Only reason I know any of this is because I live near PDX and watch plenty of addicts do exactly this. You’re lucky your addicts bend their needles. Ours either cap them or discard them.",
"It happens over time from reusing a syringe too often. It can bend when you cook it up and press the needle down in to the container you used. I know this from personal experience in fact I have a bunch of bent needles right now",
"Lots of different answers, but from my experience, users tend to use the same needles for multiple injections, causing the needle to dull. Eventually the dull needle will bend before it can penetrate the skin, and that is when the user will toss the needle"
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f494ye | Since most animals have some sounds that they can make and most members of a single species make the same sounds, why do humans have so many very different languages and is there a single language that is the most natural for humans to speak? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your question sort of answers itself. Humans use the same “library” of sounds to construct many different languages. In that way, we are the same as animals. We know that birds and whales can learn different songs depending on the region where they live. That would be analogous to different human languages. Is there a human language that preferentially uses the “best” sounds or the fewest sounds? That is difficult to answer definitively."
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f53ki0 | How did famous writers and artists (Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Pablo Picasso, Andy Worhol, etc) make their money? As in, how was it they turned a profit enough to pay for life while writing or painting? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Vincent van Gogh is a sad example in that he never really made money, I think he only ever sold one painting in his life and was pretty much destitute the whole time. He was originally supported by his parents while he was in seminary to become a pastor but failed out of that and stopped receiving support. After that his brother was his only source of income and that only lasted until his brother became married and had children. A lot of famous painters never made a lot of money and lived off inheritance and family support. Of course there are some that lived off commissions from the wealthy but I don't know much about those."
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f54978 | Difference between es and ist in German | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I’m not sure what you mean with difference. They are two different words. Es = it and ist = is Can you give an example where it is unclear? You can : Es regnet Which translates to: It is raining or it rains You can also say: Es gibt keine Einhörner Which translates to: There are no unicorns I can see how this can be very confusing as there can be a non direct translation of “es”. Maybe a translator can pitch in, i’m just a german living in the US. Good luck and kudos to you for learning german. Even I don’t get some of the weird stuff either."
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f5pann | Can someone explain the significance of typing with a mix of upper and lower case letters -lIkE ThIs? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a mockery of the original phrase or words to invoke a tone of dumbassery. Or in simpler terms, it's that kid that copied whatever you said back to you, except he said it in a really annoying way, except upgraded.",
"Sarcasm,mostly. It’s inferred /s. A lot of people want their voice heard so they express themselves quite strongly."
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f68xjw | How were the very first languages created? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Uguk finds deer. Uguk cant kill deer alone. Uguk finds Gogok and makes sounds enticing him to follow. They hunt deer and get tasty meat. Next day Uguk finds more deer. He finds uguk and makes same sounds as yesterday. Gogok recognises sounds to be same as when he hunted deer, and goes with Uguk expecting deer. They both get meat. Gogok later finds deer, and finds Uguk and Bobok. He makes same sounds as Uguk did, and Uguk recognises that Gogok found deer. Bobok hears the sounds too, and then understands that the sounds meant deer. Now Uguk, Gogok and Bobok have a common sound that they recognise to have a specific meaning. That sound is a word. Multiple words form a language."
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f6jaje | Who were the Kulaks and why do so many people defend/attack them? | I've heard a lot of people, especially in left wing groups, defend and attack them and constantly call sources either biased or propaganda. Who were they and why are they so controversial. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The kulaks were a sort of middle class under the czar. They didn't own land but made enough money from the land they worked to become an irritant to the autocracy, yet not enough to pose a real threat to th czar's power. Stalin wanted to exterminate them because they did pose a threat to his collectivization efforts.",
"The Kulaks were \"wealthy\" peasant farmers in early Soviet Russia. Now I use the term wealthy fairly loosely here, as the what constituted a Kulak tended to vary widely during different periods of the Russian Revolution and the early Soviet Union. Generally speaking though, most were not big time plantation owners, as one might image. But rather peasants who had managed to obtain larger than average landholdings, owned a mill, or had hired hands. Much like a small family owned farming business that you still see in rural America today. Now, a big part of Marxist theory is the class struggle. Where the lower classes rise up to overthrow the bourgeois in an inevitable revolution that would bring about socialism, and eventually communism. Things were a little more cut and dry in the urban centres. Which is where much of the Revolution was rooted. Factory workers vs industrialists, soldiers vs aristocrats, etc. But not so much in poor, rural villages. In order for the theory to work and make sense, the Bolsheviks pretty much invented a class system for these regions. Bednyak, or poor peasants; Serednyak, or mid-income peasants; were considered class allies. Kulak, the higher-income farmers who had larger farms, were the class enemies. The bourgeois to be overthrown. But as I said, what constituted a Kulak varied widely. For the most part though, Kulaks were anyone who had more than what was considered \"normal\" for the village. But even that was subjective. In 1918, Lenin ordered the Red Army to seize grain from peasants. Anyone who resisted, or was thought to be hiding grain, was labelled a Kulak and punished accordingly as an enemy of the revolution. Lenin would go on to described these people as \"bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine\". This practice continued through several bouts of agricultural collectivization into Stalin's regime, as grain quotas were made artificially high to support urban regions. Many persons labelled as Kulaks were subject to extrajudicial punishment. Their property was seized and many were either murdered, disappeared, or sent to the gulags. A few did migrate to the cities. The whole process became known as dekulakization, and it ended up taking a lot of skilled farmers off the land. The whole process of farm collectivization, including persecution of the Kulaks and other rural peasants, has been attributed to causing many of the Soviet famines of the 1930s, including the Holodomor."
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f6v6gj | Why do non-native English speakers from the same country make the same grammatical errors when speaking English? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Either, they are speaking the words in English but applying the grammar of their native language, they don't know the words they intend to use (especially if their language does not have such a word), so they construct an approximation of what they mean, or the correct grammar for a particular situation is not consistent with usual grammar for the rest of the English, and they are applying usual English grammar instead. For the third point you can consider the English verb \"be\" which doesn't follow the normal conjugation rules of English and gets conjugated as \"to be,\" \"is,\" \"are,\" \"was,\" \"will be,\" \"have been,\" etc. As a result, non native speaks often conjugate it incorrectly. In comparison, a regular verb like \"run\" gets conjugated as \"to run,\" \"ran,\" \"will run,\" \"is running,\" etc. Most of our language has regular verbs with predictable conjugations, but \"be\" does not. Consider you lived in an alternate world where you spoke English, the word toe didn't exist, and in your world they called toes leg finger. If you were suddenly dropped into this world, and someone said \"I hurt my toe.\" It would sound incorrect to you in that universe.",
"Since everyone else has answered, I’d like to let you know this is called L1 Interference (read as “L” “one” “interference”), which means first language interference. Basically, their first language grammar rules are applied to English, and some of the terms you hear are direct translations from their first language into English."
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f6xov4 | What are the key differences between Confucianism and Neo-confucianism. I read a bit about it in a book and it just kinda seems like Confucianism with extra obedience to those who are above you. I feel like there is something I'm missing since that seems too simple | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Neo Confusianism is the western name for the philosophy of Song Confucianism, which is essentially all the teachings of Confucius, but also deifying him into a god. This gives his teachings, which in Confusianism is advice and teaching, added weight, and the force of divine law. Essentially, it is the difference between believing Jesus was a teacher and believing he was the perfect Son of God."
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f6y0oe | If Dagestan and Chechnya are part of Russia why are they called Republic of Dagestan and Chechen Republic? Are they technically countries in the same way that Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are countries within the United Kingdom? | I see that they are called federal subjects to Russia but I'm not really sure what that means. I see that there are 20 other republics within Russia. Is their ability to operate more autonomously than other areas including krais and oblasts give them the title of "Republic" and do they operate similarly to countries within the United Kingdom? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Is their ability to operate more autonomously than other areas including krais and oblasts give them the title of \"Republic\" Yes, that's the theory. The Russian Federation is made up of different types of federal subjects, with different powers. Unlike say the USA where there is only one type of state. I know the US also has territories, but the point is they aren't members of the union. Krais and oblasts are the basic type of federal subjects. Republics have a bit more autonomy than them as they are allowed their own constitutions and official languages. Generally republics are places where there is a native non-Russian ethnic group, even if ethnic Russians are the majority. There are some other types of federal subjects too, I'm not sure of the exact differences. I don't think there's that much similarity with the UK's countries. The UK isn't a federation, so the UK Parliament has full jurisdiction over the entire UK, even though Scotland, Wales and NI also have their own governments. But since Russia is officially a federation, the power of the central government is limited *in theory*. Although in practice I'm pretty sure Putin can do whatever he wants.",
"Russia is organized kind of like the United States, but with the distinction that it has two kinds of states; Oblasts and Republics. The Republics are essentially large areas that have historically been dominated by a given non-Russian ethnic group. On paper, the Republics are supposed to enjoy a little more autonomy than the Oblasts, but in practice (particularly under Putin) they're functionally no different than the Oblasts."
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f768x7 | How was the Chris Hanson predator show not entrapment? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Entrapment involves inducing someone to commit a crime they otherwise would not be inclined to carry out. For example threatening someone to get them to buy drugs. However posing as a drug dealer and arresting those attempting to buy drugs is not entrapment, as people not inclined to illegally purchase drugs would not do so even if the opportunity was presented by the undercover officer. In the case of To Catch a Predator the police were simply posing as underage children. Someone who was not a pedophile wouldn't be caught up in such an act, so it isn't entrapment."
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f7l6vu | When words are translated to English, how is the spelling of those words determined, and who makes the decision? | The question struck me while playing a game featuring a character named Ratonhnhaké:ton (pronounced Rah-Tone-Ha-Kay-Tun). Reading his name in the subtitles made me wonder how it’s spelling (using the English alphabet) was determined. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends on the language. There are often standard or semi-standard ways of transliterating between different languages. (BTW the term is transliterate not translate). For example, a standard way of writing Mandarin in the Latin alphabet is called Pinyin which has rules for how to write down the sounds in Mandarin. My first language is Urdu, there is a semi-standard rules for how to write Urdu sounds in the Latin alphabet (called Roman Urdu). In your case though the name is in the Mohawk language whose writing system uses a variant of the English one. The colon in the writing is used to indicate a long vowel sound. You can read more about it on the [wikipedia page]( URL_0 ).",
"Some linguist comes up with a transliteration scheme, and if other linguists and translators like it, it becomes a de facto standard. Sometimes academic organizations and governments pick one and make it official. That's why words sometimes change (Peking - > Beijing) or are used inconsistently (Qaddafi, Khadafy, Gadhafi + about 100 more), the transliteration scheme changes or there is no single scheme everyone agrees upon."
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f7mugi | Why does it seem like someone here always has an answer to even the most outlandish and distinct questions? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As you get older, you learn stuff. All those “go look it up” moments start to add up when you’re curious by nature. Personally, I like taking complex concepts and breaking them down so that they’re easy to relate to and understand.",
"Chances are if there is a question you have someone will know it. There is all kinds of people with all kinds of knowledge on people's interests as well as an example I don't know shit about math but I can pick locks and work on cars."
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f8f0vf | What is the SCP foundation? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a fictional organization that is the center of an internet-based collaborative fiction project. Many people from around the world all post fiction about an organization that studies and captures odd creatures or strange phenomena, in the form of \"database entries\" about these monsters or odd objects. There's some interesting horror writing happening there. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) is where the writing occurs, and you can read the various entries. There's a lot now."
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f8uiuf | Are people born with empathy or can it be through practice? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most people are born with the capacity for empathy and some natural inclination to be empathetic. After all, it’s evolutionarily advantageous for a community to care about one another’s survival Fun fact: Some historians credit the printing press during the French Revolution with spreading empathy in a new, more visceral way For the first time, novels could be mass printed and read by more people, offering intimate accounts from perspectives they would’ve otherwise never considered Specifically, there was a book written from the perspective of a servant girl. Wealthy men wrote that they were reading it and sobbing and couldn’t BELIEVE the plight this servant girl went through. It was the first time they’d been able to step inside someone else’s shoes in such a vivid and visceral way",
"”Empathy” is a complex phenomenon of perception, cognition, emotional and cultural response etc. I think there is a general consensus that while children are born with capacity for complex emotional states, environment affects how/whether these are experienced, developed and expressed. Like language, social behaviours, etc, children develop full emotional capacity through interaction with their surroundings, micro and macro social systems etc, so yes, it can be developed, if you’re not suffering from some other forms of pathology...",
"Becoming empathetic is a normal stage of development, normally at around three years old. Children can be tested using a story with dolls and props to see if they can understand things from another's point of view.",
"If a person is naturally disinclined to empathic thinking, empathy can be 'learned' or conditioned if the person has sufficient mental capacity and is willing. Example: The hallmark trait of Autism is *Significant deficits in empathic thinking*. People with autism can often be 'conditioned' to think empathetically in order to be higher functioning. However, if that person also has diminished mental capacity as well(i.e. lower on the 'spectrum) they may not be as able to fully grasp the concept of imagining another person's point of view.",
"I think both. People with ASPD (popularly called “sociopaths” or “psychopaths”) lack empathy, but also are very good at getting what they want. They can be charismatic or charming to get what they want, and that sometimes means they learn to act empathetic. Of course, one can argue that “acting empathetic” is not REALLY being empathetic. But I believe this is somewhat debatable. If you “act empathetic” towards me and I feel like I’ve received empathy and compassion.. I will walk away from that having received exactly the same benefits that I would’ve if I had gotten “real empathy”. So if your “fake empathy” makes me feel like you indeed were empathetic, is it really fake?",
"There is no conclusive evidence, but some people think [mirror neurons]( URL_0 ) are involved in processing empathy. It probably stands to reason that if you mindfully apply empathy that you will reinforce brain networks involved in processing empathy similarly to how other cognitive behavioural techniques work.",
"Do you mean that someone that is born without empathy can be taught empathy?",
"Most (almost all) humans are born with all the tools necessary to use Empathy. However, most people Choose not to use it very often, because it hinders their ability to take selfish actions",
"I'm taking a Psychology class for my Nursing studies, and we are learning about this in the current chapter. It seems that people are born with empathy, but you have to learn how to see the way others are feeling, so you can figure out what to do, to make them feel better. The ability to feel guilt, embarrassment, and shame comes about at around 18 months of age. They are especially influenced by parents’ responses to children’s behavior. If you are not born with it, then I expect you can learn to mimic it. I am not far enough in my studies to tell you about that. I expect autism or psychopathy would change the inherent way that empathy is shown to present itself, though. If someone did not know that they had made someone feel bad, or that something had made someone feel bad, then they wouldn't know how to respond to that, or that they needed to respond to it at all. u/astronautmyproblem presents an excellent fun fact that it does not even occur to a lot of people, that other people even have a different point of view. So many people are just walking around thinking that we all see and experience things the same way. The book is Essentials of Life-Span Development by John Santrock, and it has many resources cited, of course. Edited: added some words.",
"There's a genetic tendency towards or away from Empathy. The rest is developed or acquired via life experience.",
"My two cents is that empathy can be learned to a certain degree depending on experiences and environment. I’m a doctor. My job has altered my capacity for empathy in interesting ways. When I work Emergency for long stretches I start to lose empathy for people because of the environment, goals of the job, how people behave, etc. Let me expand on that. The environment is fast paced and stressful. The goal of Emergency is to rapidly determine if someone’s problem is urgent and/or limb or life threatening. If it’s not then we get them out of there, as quickly and safely as possible. Sometimes it’s not the nicest but it’s what has to be done due to time pressures, the needs of more unwell patients and resource limitations. We are particularly bad at dealing with things like miscarriage, where it’s not dangerous, there’s nothing we can do to stop it, and they don’t need to be in hospital but they are very upset and emotional. Plus in Emergency people are more prone to manipulation such as drug seeking or trying to get something out of you. It’s creates a much more cynical mindset. When I work family medicine I have more time to talk and listen, to get to know people and care about them. I can be there for them to cry and debrief about their miscarriage or divorce or parenting stress or mental health. It’s a very empathetic role. I’ve found that when you hear someone’s side of things their terrible decisions do make sense in the context of their lives. I’ve become a lot less judgemental and am able to find love and empathy for even the most challenging patients. I like who I am better in this job. I’m their person I’m on their side and I’m there for them. It’s nice."
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f93p79 | American here, what length are rulers is non-imerial countries are they a foot long (obviously not but around 30 cm) or can ya'll get wild with your ruler lengths? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Canadian here We have meter sticks but I seldom see those outside of the classroom Your average rulers is 30cm, which is about a foot. You have 30cm on one side, and 12 inches on the other. The downside of the US making so many products we use is that they are often made in Imperial instead of Metric so our measuring devices from rulers, to tape measures often have both on them for compatibility reasons. Also I'll let you in on a secret. In everyday life we also frequently measure things in inches and feet because it's a more practical system of measurement for everyday things. We just use Metric when we need to do a lot of converting or when we have to do something official or regulatory. Seriously though the US should just convert already, it's silly that you still use a system based on the Kings Foot.",
"30cm 12inch for school when you're young. I'm a metal worker so we also have on the wall: * 600mm, 24inch, 2foot. * 1000mm (1m) this is entirely metric. * 2000mm (2m) so is this. Centimetres are for dress makers. Everyone else should work in millimetres and whole metres. Also: A *meter* is what you put money into for street side parking. Small tid bit: Apparently the US & A can use the metric system lawfully and optionally but that was later redacted. I don't know what law I'm refering to and only saw it on reddit the other day."
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f9kt2f | Why/How did the Bohemian ethnic group become essentially synonymous with "hippies" and a certain aesthetic? Are Gypsy, Romany, and Bohemian terms for the same group? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Okay, first let get the 'g' word out of the way; it's kind of a curse word. Think the 'n' word, but *they* don't even say it for the most part. It's that bad. They're just Romani.[^1]( URL_3 ) And Bohemian is actually a misnomer. The Czech Republic wasn't always a thing, so they were the Kingdom of Bohemia back then. The French later borrowed it because that's where they thought their influx of Romani had come from. [^2]( URL_0 ) [^3]( URL_0 ism) The Romani are just a nomadic group. They span a wide breadth of nationalities and cultures, but began in northern India. They are kinda what's left of our propensity to travel, although they don't all travel nowadays. [^4]( URL_1 ) You see, like most primates, we're kinda built to eat off one section of land, travel, then eat off another. Usually in rotation so that the place we left can regrow and redevelop. This, of course, turns into... the source of most of the problems we have today, but I'm off-topic... So college students in colleges in the 50s, 60s, and 70s find all this out and love it. A LOT. War was going on, and also we were starting to science out things surrounding our... efficient use of our planet. So in an effort to fight these things, they mimicked the style and lifestyle, and THAT became a thing. Then media moguls later took that this was their nostalgia, and now the whole Hippie thing is a major western cultural thing. I'm condensing, tremendously, but that's the basic jist. [^5]( URL_4 ) PS: Fact-checking myself, I didn't even know the 'Kingdom of Bohemia' thing, so I learned something. I just knew the 'g' word thing and most of the rest, and felt the need to answer... Soooo, thank *you*. :3 Edit: ~~NUMBERS~~",
"It was thought that Romani in France got there via Bohemia, so they became called Bohemians. From there, a certain type of lifestyle became called \"bohemian\" by associations (whether real or imagined) with what the Romani lifestyle was perceived to be. \"Gypsy\" was mostly used as an offensive slur against the Romani, though that's not aways the intent as it fell into more common usage. However, usage in contexts like \"I got gypped!\" always implied an intended offense - you're using the word to mean something negative. It's the equivalent of using \"jewed\" as a verb.",
"Bohemian became a term for hippie after the French saw an influx of Romani and thought they were from Bohemia, subsequently equating the traits of the Romani with the name of the Bohemian and later morphing into the hippe idea that exists today. Bohemia was its own territory before the Czech Republic happened and us Bohemes are actually not very much like the idea of 'bohemian' or 'boho' you see today; we're more known for our quaint houses, often traditionally-dressed citizens, and honey cake. Source: my family is Bohemian; my great-grandmother was the first of us to immigrate to America around the early 1900s",
"In early 19th century France a lot of artists, actors, writers and other creative types had begun to live in lower class, low-rent neighbourhoods that were often home to large Romani populations. Other comments have mentioned that the Romani people were thought to have originated in Bohemia. It's also worth pointing out that the word 'gypsy' is derived from the Greek for 'Egyptian' because they were thought to have been exiled from Egypt in the Byzantine Empire. Modern genetic evidence suggests they actually originated from northern India, but that's not really relevant. Some Romani groups find 'gypsy' to be offensive so it's best avoided, but that's not universally true and it's equally offensive to lump all Romani people together. There are many disparate subgroups, but let's not get into that here. The original lower-case bohemians were associated with unorthodox lifestyles and anti-establishment politics. They often lived in voluntary poverty, working less than they could to have more time to pursue their art and having few permanent ties, furthering their association with the upper case Bohemian people in France who were generally poor. Both groups were also associated with lawlessness (probably unfairly) as in the opera *Carmen* where the title character (who is Romani) sings that \"love is a gypsy child, it has never ever known the law\". The unorthodox way of life of French bohemians quickly spread out of France and the name was adopted in New York by a group of writers, poets and journalists in the mid 1800s. Amongst them was Walt Whitman, whose poetry was highly controversial for its overt sexuality, and Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose book *The Hasheesh Eater* describing his experiences using cannabis helped to popularise its usage in the United States. Whitman was a big influence on the Beat Generation of the 1940s and 50s, particularly on Allen Ginsberg. The Beats also broke with conventional lifestyles in favour of spirituality, sexual liberty and creative pursuits but they tended to be less politically active than the previous generations of bohemians. A lot of them also hated being called 'beatniks'. Again, that's not really very relevant, but I find it interesting. 'Beatnik' was coined as an insult, associating the Beats with the Russian satellite Sputnik, and therefore with communism. Because the Beats were generally not very political they didn't want that association and thought of the people who embraced the beatnik moniker as being poseurs who were copying their aesthetic but not really being part of the Beat Generation. The counter-culture revolution of the 1960s and 70s took some influence from the Beats, but it ramped up political engagement in light of the Civil Rights Movement and escalation of the Vietnam War, and it moved away from the darker, more drab style of the Beat Generation in favour of a brighter, more colourful aesthetic. Combined with the popularity of psychedelics at the time (Ludlow's *The Hasheeh Eater* had a popular resurgence in the 60s) and the 'flower power' protest movement and their influence on hippie fashion, their style was partly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of artists who worked in England in the mid 1800s, during the height of the original bohemianism although the two weren't closely associated at the time. They rejected the prevalent art of the time which they considered 'sloshy' and drab, in favour of brighter compositions, similar to the way the hippie movement rejected the darker Beat style. They considered the study of nature an important part of depicting it, and held that their art had to Express 'genuine ideas' and not just be conventional and 'learned by rote'. Given that their paintings often depicted the fashions of their era, those fashions became popular as part of the 'boho' style of the 1960s and 70s.",
"Bohemia the region of Western Czechia. Bohemians are Western Czechs. Romani are an ethnic group with Indian roots and heritage, although Romani have been in Europe for centuries. Gypsy is an ethnic slur against Romani people. People called Romani people “Gypsies” because they thought they were Egyptian. Some Romani people use the word Gypsy as an identity, although non-Romani shouldn’t use it. It’s similar to how “Red Indian” is a slur against Native Americans, but many Native Americans use the term and identify with it. In France, Romani people entered the country via Bohemia, so French people used to called Romani people Bohemians, although nowadays they don’t. Bohemians (People from Western Czechia) and Romani/Gypsies have nothing to do with hippies or hippy culture. Hippies appropriated these terms for themselves, and nearly all Bohemians and Romani/Gypsies don’t like the fact that they did. Source: I am Romani."
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fa8m17 | - Ralph Waldo Emerson states that "Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for a universal one." | I'm playing Civilization 6, a video game on PS4, and they give insightful quotes about the different cultural and technological advancements from different inspirational figures when you finish researching them. Normally it seems like common sense or it's obviously related. Regardless, this one went way over my head and I'd never even heard of the apparently famous person. Please help =( | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This quote is part of Emerson's *The Poet*, in which he describes the difference between poets and religious men. He says that a poet sees what nature has to offer, it's color and form and meaning, and uses them as exponents to make greater works and thoughts. Mystics (his term for religious men) on the other hand, create symbols out of what nature has given them. He thinks this is a bad thing, because he believes all natural things are transitive, meaning they change over time (and often quite rapidly). In essence, the quote means that because nature is constantly changing, any individual symbol that a religion adheres to is going to change over time and therefore cannot have any real universal meaning. Furthermore, it means that religious people have to look at all of the individual symbols in their religion and translate them into things that they can relate to in a meaningful way, rather than just taking them for their original meaning."
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fa9bed | what do people mean when they say "my last braincell"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"usually in reference to being so tired/exhausted/overwhelmed, that it's taking all their mental energy and concentration to do a task"
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faog0g | What's cancelation culture? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"when individuals on social media who have nothing else better to do find something irrelevant and offensive (even if it was just a joke) that a celebrity has said or done in the past (sometimes it's as old as 10 or more years ago when they may not have even been famous or old enough to know better in some cases) and use it to destroy and opportunities or positive attention the celebrity may be recieving right now to the point of hoping companies will sever ties, fans will turn against them and they will lose money and disappear from the media or end up in jail. Cancel culture is usually implemented by progressive (liberal) young adults who run social media platforms like Twitter. The majority of the world finds cancel culture creatures to be annoying because they are looking for any reason to bash someone else to push their own agenda and control the media for momentary gain just because they want to force everyone to follow their ideals of being uptight about someone's past. They tend to have characteristics of being insolent, rude and entitled. Cancel Culture Creatures precisely want to ruin the world. A recent example is the sexual assault accusation that Kobe Bryant went through years ago and the charges were dropped. After his unfortunate death, Cancel Culture Creatures were going after him (while he is decreased) and trying to say that he should rot in hell, ripping apart his legacy, etc. but they conveniently had nothing to say while he was alive, they only cared when he was getting positive praise, eulogies and sadness during his death."
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fatqgz | What's the reasoning behind the law that felons are not allowed to vote in some states of the US? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's primarily in states that had jim crow laws and many of the states adopted or expanded the laws the exact second , it's very very very transparently the drop in replacement. Like there is fake justifications. It was just openly that in the states originally. \" America responded. The exception in the 13th Amendment allowing slavery as punishment for a crime was paired with “Black Codes,” which basically criminalized Black life. Blacks convicted under Black Code laws were leased out to do work, providing cheap labor to boost the South’s faltering economy. In 1850, 2% of prisoners in Alabama were non-white. By 1870, it was 74%. At least 90% of the “leased” prison laborers were Black. In the 15 years between 1865 and 1880, at least 13 states — more than a third of the country’s 38 states — enacted broad felony disenfranchisement laws. The theory was simple — convict them of crimes, strip away the right to vote, imprison them, and lease them out as convict labor and Blacks would be returned to a condition as close to slavery as possible. No one tried to hide the intent of these laws. \""
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fb4lc9 | Why did farming happen simultaneously? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Farming is the cornerstone to having a civilization in the first place. That's the technological breakthrough that allows us to stop going to where the food is to hunt and gather it. \"Around the same time\" is a bit of a weird way to put it, as there is a 6,000 year gap in when farming was discovered on different continents; the middle-east figured it out in about 10,000 BCE and the Americas figured it out in about 4,000 BCE. There is the same amount of time between the Middle East discovering farming and American Natives discovering farming, as there is between American Natives discovering farming and the moon landing, give or take a few hundred years in either direction."
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fb5q79 | What is it that leads people to be so toxic in online games? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There is no consequences to their actions. Since they have complete anonymity they feel they can act say or do whatever they want and no one will call them on it."
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fbbkzf | How can a criminal be charged with multiple death sentences? Isn't one enough? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Each crime gets its own sentence. Each crime needs to be appealed if you want to try and change it too"
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fbbq0x | Why is tipping such a big deal in the US? Why can't a service charge just be included in the total amount of the check? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It started during the Great Depression. Restaurants couldn't afford to pay staff, so they started guilt tripping customers into doing it, that way they can still advertise low prices. And it just sort of stuck around. They absolutely COULD just charge more for food and pay their staff, in fact I've heard of a few restaurants doing this. But if the system is already working for them, they have no incentive to change it.",
"It needs to end. It's a fucked up system that guilt people into paying extra for their meals and services. I didn't really have an issue with it in concept until I saw a tip jar a t a McDonald's drive up once and thought \"what the fuck\". Before that I had always avoided situations where I would be expected to tip. It just makes me really uncomfortable; I worry that I didn't give enough and so never go back. It really makes it hard to get haircuts since I have to find a new place each time. If it were limited to restaraunts it would be OK. But tattoo artists expect tips, hairstylists expect tips, everybody nowadays expects a fucking tip and if I don't pay it people accuse me of being cheap and uncaring. As I said. Tipping is a broken system. Pay these people at least minimum wage (not required in most areas where tipping is customary) and just end it."
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fbqz4x | What does "Meta" means? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The way \"meta\" is currently used means \"an X about Xs.\" So a meta-joke is a joke about jokes; a meta-movie is a movie about movies; a meta-theory is a theory about theories; a meta-donut is a donut made out of donuts, etc. HIPSTER 1: \"I want to make a documentary about Michael Moore.\" HIPSTER 2: \"Dude, how meta is that.\" The concept of \"meta\" has become more popular, partly due to the personal computer and abstraction in software. Bill Budge wrote a computer game called Pinball Construction Kit. It was a computer game that would let you create other computer games. (Cue Hipster # 2.) He then tried to create a computer game called Construction Set Construction Set, but that turned out to be too complicated ( URL_0 ...) See also the movie Inception, in which people dream about dreaming. The original meaning of the Greek prefix meta- is much more prosaic: it simply means \"after.\" For example, Aristotle's \"metaphysics\" simply means \"after physics.\"",
"It means something regarding the level above the topic you're talking about. The sub r/gaming is about video games. A meta post there would be about the subreddit itself. Hopefully that clears it up somewhat. :)",
"Meta has a proper usage as a prefix. It means something that refers to itself. An example of correct usage is meta data - data about data. For example in a database you store information about the database itself. It's popular usage is similar. It usually refers to deeper or recursive meaning, like a dream within a dream or a game within a game. People have built working computers in Minecraft - that could be said to be meta, because Minecraft is already running on a computer.",
"Meta means multiple different things, depending on the context. In competitive video games, the meta refers to what strategies are both viable and widely used across a majority of the playerbase. In d & d, being \"meta\" refers to you acting outside of your character's role to just talk about stuff like the crazy situation that's going down in the game or just to order a pizza. In some other contexts, discussing what is the meta can mean discussing about the general state of things. For example: say that there's a community that's had very little actual discussion on what it is centered around, and mostly is infested with a constant stream of raw sewage waste on the regular. Some might want to talk about the meta of that community and how it should *probably* tone the funnies down (only to get downvoted a bazillion times). I hope this clears up what meta means.",
"Meta is a greek root that refers to something that transcends the subject or something that is a more comprehensive description of the subject. In philosophy, the term 'metaphysics' typically refers to subjects that are beyond the physical realm. With regards to games, imo, it refers to speaking about the finer, lesser known parts of the game mechanics. For a personal example, I used to play Street Fighter starting with SF2 as a kid and progressed to playing newer ones. I was decent, but I hit a plateau, up until I met some people in college who taught me about the mechanics of overhead attacks. I wasn't really aware of them and the game never explicitly tells you about them and their use, but with that, I was finally able to attack people who were blocking low. With that knowledge, I no longer needed to rely simply on the special moves that characters had and was able to start mixing it up with regular attacks and throws. With that knowledge, I was able to use it in other games like Soul Calibur, Tekken and Mortal Kombat because the same rules still apply. Heck, I've been able to pick up games that I rarely, if ever, played, like King of Fighters, and am able to eke out a competitive match or even a win against people who happen to play those games regularly, or at least more often than I do."
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fc46de | What happens to all the political donations once a candidate drops out of the race? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"First, funds need to go toward closing out payroll. Unlike what another poster said, most staffers do not receive lucrative severance packages--At best, they will get one additional paycheck beyond what they've earned. Frequently, people only receive their scheduled check. The campaign also will still have debts that need to be paid off to vendors, which can be anything from consultants to caterers to office space. Remaining funds can then be donated to other political candidates and committees. For instance, they could choose to donate funds to other candidates (for races of all kinds) that they support, within FEC limits. They can also choose to donate funds to their party, or to charity. Funds could also be saved to be used for another run at Federal office. Source: Worked on multiple campaigns."
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fcck70 | Why are there so many cities with the name Union Station as one of their stations? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"A Union Station is a railway station with tracks and facilities from multiple railway companies to make exchanges simpler. So the are common where rail networks were built by multiple companies back in the day."
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fcnxy7 | Why is Easter celebrated with bunnies and eggs if it's something to do with Jesus? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"[Article with detailed answer]( URL_0 ). Short answer, \"Jesus\" (Christianity) often adopted \"pagan\" holidays and traditions and turned them into Christian religious holidays."
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fcpn66 | How do languages like Latin die? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A combination of factors. In the case of Latin it was due to lingual drift (the way language naturally changes -- consider how different people sounded even 200 years ago when writing the American Constitution, and how different US English is from British English after only 400 years or so) and the breakdown of the Empire, which made it more difficult for people in different parts of the Latin speaking world to communicate. After a couple of hundred years, Latin turned into French, Spanish, Italian, etc. A language is considered \"dead\" when it has no native-born speakers. So at a certain point, Italian had changed enough that people from Rome no longer spoke the same way their ancestors did, to the point that Latin was barely intelligible to them, the same way that Old and Middle English are basically unintelligible by English speakers.",
"Latin didn't really die. It became the Romance languages. All languages change. Modern English is as far from Old English as French is from Latin. Latin has stuck around in religious circles so we can point to it as something that isn't spoken any more but there are plenty of other \"dead\" languages that have just morphed into modern ones. Caveat: I'm not an expert. My analogy may not be 100% accurate.",
"It didn't so much die as evolve. To oversimplify: After the its fall people throughout what used to be the Roman empire continued to use Latin. Existing regional dialects continued to drift apart and became their own languages. Modern Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese or Romanian are all descended from Latin but each went their own way. Imagine reading some text in an older version of English, like Shakespeare or the King James Bible. As a modern speaker of English you can still understand what it being said but you also can see how the language changed over the generations. This is a natural thing that happens to all languages at some speed or other. The English spoken a few centuries from now will be different from the one spoken today too. Now look at what happens when speakers of the same language are separated. Just look at stuff like American English and British English. The two have only been separated for a short time and kept in relatively close contact with one another due to such things as immigration and communication. It is easy to imagine that if after the American revolution, the Americans shut its doors to all contact with Europe the languages would be much more different from one another today than they are. After the fall of the Roman empire there wasn't much in the way of mass communication. The vast majority of people didn't travel much and only spoke to a small number of other locals. Languages drift apart and develop in different directions under that sort of condition. Of course the church kept a version of Latin that didn't change much alive for their rituals and it was used to preserve and accumulate knowledge. But this was not a living language. Often languages die because the people who speak it are killed or forced to switch to the common tongue of whoever has conquered them. Latin didn't die that way, it just split apart and the parts changed over time and became almost unrecognisable."
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fcqjs5 | what does the "key" refer to in music? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First important concept: the human brain usually cares about \"relative\" pitch much more than it cares about \"absolute\" pitch. You're much better at hearing how far notes are *from each other.* If you hear someone play a C and then an E, you're not specifically hearing \"C then E,\" you're hearing \"starting note and then some note four half-steps above it.\" So with that in mind, a key can be understood as a \"shape\" or \"pattern\" that defines those relative-pitch relationships. A generic major key is any pattern that looks like [starting note, two half-steps up, +2, +1, +2, +2, +2]. F major is the specific version of that pattern where the starting note is F, so [F, G, A, B flat, C, D, E].",
"In the \"western\" tradition of music, there are 11 different notes within an octave. Notes one octave apart are double the frequency and \"sound\" the same and are given the same name. Although all the notes (and this includes the notes in higher and lower octaves) can be used in a piece of music, in most music not all the notes are used. The most common notes used are in what is called a diatonic scale that is the common doh-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-doh. (where the first \"doh\" and last \"doh\" are an octave apart and the scale continues) This scale is a relative scale and what is important is the \"space\" or interval between one note to another note. The key refers to the actual note (ie C or Csharp or A) that represents the \"doh\". This is called a diatonic major scale and there are many types other than this (minor, etc). Any note can be used as the \"doh\" and as long as the intervals are preserved a song played will \"sound\" the same. (to most people.) So you can play any melody with different keys (also called the root or tonic) and to most people the melody feels more or less the same except higher or lower. The idea of scales and keys are to allow musicians to quickly communicate certain things - for example if the song is written in C major then the root is C and the notes used (mostly) will be C D E F G A B C. This idea of keys is important for many reasons (many of which I couldn't explain) but for singers especially, shifting the root/tonic note allows certain (usually pop/modern) songs to be within the vocal range of the singer. Also for easy accompaniment (casual jams or simple performances) saying that a song is in C major means that the chords used (for guitarist, pianists that use chords) are also easy to figure out - eg C Dm Em F G Am chords within C major will sound \"right\". One skill that musicians develop will be to refer to notes/chords relative to the root/tonic key. So a fifth of C will be G. If they key changes to F then the fifth of F is a C. As long as you know the relative intervals, switching a song from key to key to accommodate a singer (for example) is easier.",
"A photo on a cat on a page looks the same whether it's in the middle of the page or at the top or at the bottom. You don't care where the image starts, just that it makes the shape of a cat. Keys in music are similar. You can start at any pitch you want, but as long as everything after that moves up and down in the same way, it sounds like the same song. For most people, it's really hard to even *tell* where the song started, at least for smaller changes (of course a song is going to sound different if you change the key way up or way down). However, people who get musical training from a young age tend to develop \"perfect pitch\", which means they can tell exactly what key a song is in, instantly. For those people, different keys really do sound quite different (but they still understand the idea that it's the same song)."
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fd8503 | Why aren't there regulatory boards or advisory bodies dedicated to making sure that passed laws are dispassionate and objective? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because that is not he purpose of laws. Laws exist to control behavior and address a perceived issue. They are always biased in some manner and can never be dispassionate nor objective in their nature. Anything that was dispassionate or objective would have no need to be made a law."
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fd94r5 | Why don’t Car Insurance and Car Rental companies typically look deeper than age and sex when determining risk? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'd say its not really your age that comes in play, but your drivers license date. If your driving without accidents for > 5 years you'll get a rate. > 10 another rate. > 20 another rate (probably getting the best deal possible from this one on). Sex is just idiotic and I'm pretty sure that's not that common these days (in Europe at least). Also, your skills and hard work that got you running a nuclear reactor are not really relevant to this topic because only your colleagues and evaluators will recognize them. Hell, I'm not an insurance company and I'm here scared shittless of a 24 yo running a nuclear reactor."
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4
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fd9916 | Why is it the norm for airlines to hire traditionally attractive people as air staff? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There is some safety and efficiency issues when working on a cramped airplane which might make it harder for wider people to get a job in the cabin. Apart from this it may not be legal to discriminate on looks. But for any hospitality job it does help to have good looks as people tend to have a better time around attractive people, are willing to spend more money on services from attractive people and are more likely to want to return. This is down to some fundamental psyciology. So airliners will help provide tailored uniforms and makup to make everyone who interacts with the passengers look attractive.",
"their looks don't affect how they physically work but people are more willing to hand over money to attractive people."
],
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6,
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fdb9ed | what does "cover the spread" mean? | hi guys, i was watching the simpsons, specifically Lisa the Greek, Season 3, Episode 14, and in that episode homer and lisa start betting on pro football and find out that lisa never ever loses on anyone she bets and that she wins every time, anyway, in that episode lisa goes up in front of her class and talks about how a football team kicked a meaningless field goal to "cover the spread" and here teacher goes "dear god" link to the clip right here [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) what does "cover the spread" mean and why was the teacher so shocked she said it? thanks. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Instead of betting on who will will the game outright, some people bet on the \"spread\", or the point difference in the final score. So to \"cover the spread\" would mean to create a greater difference in the final score, enough to ensure Homer won his bet on the final point difference. The teacher saying \"Dear God!\" was probably a tongue-in-cheek lament on Lisa's gambling influence from her father."
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fe0nmd | Why do so many pieces of East Asian media include the occasional word or phrase in English? | I've noticed this in anime, video games, advertisements, songs... I don't get it. If they're doing it to appeal to westerners, there's not nearly enough English, and if they're not, why bother? Is it like how Americans will sometimes throw in a Spanish phrase for emphasis (i.e. claiming a dish is "Muy Caliente")? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"You hear it because your ears are sensitive to English words. But in fact all languages contain words from other languages. If you said: I picked up my kids from *kindergarten* where they had been making *origami* shapes, packed their *rucksacks* with *croissants* they hadn't eaten then dropped them off at their *karate* lessons (they are hoping to be *ninjas*!). I then had a *rendezvous* with a well-known *entrepreneur* at that *cafe* opposite the *delicatessen*. He told me his favourite music *genre* was *Ballet* and he loved *waltzes*. Then after, we went to a *karaoke* bar and ate *burgers*. That contains 6 French words, 4 German words and 4 Japanese words. Anybody from those counties would have had their ears perk up when they heard them, just as yours did when you heard the English words in East Asian.",
"Some words simply do not translate well. A great example is the word email..we use it all the time it is a very simple term. Some are borrowed because the people are more familiar with the borrowed word than the \"native\" word. France controls their language careful so they use the word \"courriel.\" Rather than email. Or that is what the government would like to have happen. Many other languages borrow words too. Resume is a borrowed word from French as our most of our English words that describe textures. URL_0",
"I'm guessing it has to do with a \"coolness\" factor. Kinda like how Americans were obsessed with the word \"*Ciao*\" not that long ago :)",
"For the same reason that so much English has bits of French in it; sometimes it's just the need for a word or phrase that exists in one language but not the other, which other times it's simply tray sheek.",
"It's nothing to do with translation, it's seen as cool to have English words in whatever product you're pushing. You see it all over in Japan with random \"Engrish\" on lots of products from clothing to bottled drinks.",
"Americans have been throwing spurts of other languages in their media forever now. Only seems weird to you because you understand the English but I guarantee you people that speak the languages we throw in our songs feel the same way.",
"1. the west had a big impact on east asia's modernization, introducing new concepts and words associated with them, which didn't have easy translations. some of them still use english-derived words 2. using english words is cool and cosmopolitan, so good for marketing to young people 3. [it's funny]( URL_0 )"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITMjAeWz5hk"
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femvm8 | Paradox and Juxtaposition | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Paradoxes are when you have a situation that contradicts on itself. For example, \"This statement is a lie,\" is one. If it actually was a lie, then it wouldn't be a lie. But if it were true, then the statement would be lying to you. Juxtaposition is an artistic choice to put two things next to one another, to highlight the differences or similarities that they have. If a painting were to have a forest teeming with life, next to a factory polluting the sky, that would be an example of juxtaposition, as it shows the difference between the two situations."
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feti7w | How does war work? How does two armies fighting in the middle of an empty field help to solve any issues? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The point isn't the fight in the middle of an empty field on its own, it is to take control of territory, infrastructure, or resources. By taking things of importance from the other nation, a nation can improve it's own conditions, such as by gaining resources, it can improve its prestige by increasing its territory, and by holding these things it can gain bargaining chips in negotiations which can be traded for whatever has brought the nations into conflict in the first place. The nation may also aim to destroy the regime of the country completely, and so take over the whole of the country or install a friendly government who will do what they ask. The enemy army is simply trying to stop them and do the same to them. These are called strategic objectives. To achieve them, the army of the country will have to defeat the army of the enemy country, whicb may involve fighting in the middle of a field.",
"Well, let's say my country wants the stuff in your country. You don't want to give it up, so we decide to come beat and kill your people until you give it up (or you're too beaten up to stop us from just taking it). Your people like being alive, so they pay some folks to fight back. If we win, we take your stuff. If you win, you get to keep your stuff. That's war. People who say that \"violence isn't the answer\" are ignoring history. Violence has solved a whole lot of disagreements throughout the history of human interactions. Is it the best answer? Usually not. But it sure is effective.",
"One army tries to go where the other one is. So the other army stops them before they get there. They fight. If attackers win they go to their destination and take power over that area. If they lose the defenders remain there. Lets say the defending army has a lot of gold the attackers want. Or, like in troy, they snatched the wife of the attackers leader. The attacking army would get the gold or wife if they kill everyone in their way."
],
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fetq0k | What is the purpose of those "safe/supervised injection sites" and how are they better than just trying to stop drug use? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"I've used these services when I had an active addiction. It makes all the difference in the world in terms of helping you eventually quit. Think of it as having periods of life-threatening lack of caring about yourself. Using IV drugs, especially heroin, is like having the ability to feel bliss and oblivion at the press of a button. Everything goes away for a few hours, and the shittier your life is at the moment, the more desperate you become for that on-demand escape. So when the effects of your drug use comes knocking (i.e. getting thrown on the streets, testing positive for HIV, seeing a friend OD), your mind automatically thinks \"the solution to this feeling is more heroin\". There's no logic to it, other than 'the more bad feelings=greater desperation for heroin\". At safe-injection sites, you have health care professionals that do the minimum amount of caring for your life for you. They will provide sterile equipment, test the random bag of drugs you've just gotten from a stranger, they'll advise you on which vein might be less damaging to use, they'll administer you a reversal agent if you overdose. They keep you alive and somewhat in a better physical state, so you have more to live for. Most importantly for recovery, the time you've tried finding a vein for 45 minutes and throw your syringe across the room in utter defeat... they're there to ask \"is it today that we can look at getting you to a rehab?\". So because that you don't have an amputated arm and HIV, you're more likely to say yes because not *everything* is hopeless. These are just the direct benefits to the user. The benefits to the society are also immense. No one wants people using in their apartment entrance, needles on the sidewalk, people OD'ing on the subway.",
"The theory is that some people are going to use no matter what, so you might as well give them clean needles and the like. I've never heard of a proponent of such sites saying we should stop trying to curb drug use; they just claim that drug use won't go away entirely.",
"Drug addiction is a disease and instead of criminalizing them for it, these give them safe places to use where they won't hurt others, won't spread diseases (from sharing needles), and are safer for themselves as well. Eventually, most people reach a point when they are ready to quit and do so, but until that point, these sites treat them like and let them feel like people instead of scum like America typically treats drug users.",
"The purpose is to keep them healthy and alive while they’re suffering from addiction so that they have an opportunity to get well and recover."
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ff5cr9 | why does ‘the back of 6’ (or whatever time) mean between 6 and 6:15/6:30??? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"fjvz0ix"
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"text": [
"If you are traveling towards something, the back of it would be just beyond it. So, as time passes, and you approach 6, the back of 6 is what you reach after you get to 6."
],
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3
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