Recent comments in /f/todayilearned

eairy t1_j9x0z1a wrote

Reply to comment by Infamous-Anybody-693 in TIL there's an "ancient druids temple" in England that was actually built 200 years ago as a solution to local unemployment by alexwasashrimp

In 1800s Britain receiving welfare (i.e. free stuff) was seen as extremely insulting/embarrassing, and there was very little in the way of state provision, poor people were just left to die. The attitude was that even charity ought to be earnt. Hence the system of The Workhouse came into being. People were given really really horrible jobs to do in return for some food and a place to sleep. Workhouses were seen as a place for the completely destitute, they stigmatised those that lived in them and The Workhouse became something to be avoided at all costs, especially as they were seen as a trap that once entered was hard to leave.

Thus when economic hard times struck and lots of men ended up out of work through no fault of their own, local rich people would pay them to work constructing esoteric things, often referred to as 'a folly', to keep them and their families from falling into the workhouse system. These follies were usually some kind of stone tower on a local hill, but there was lots of variation.

It was busywork that was a fig leaf for receiving charity.

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flippythemaster t1_j9wxtwq wrote

Reply to TIL Poltergeist, which came out in 1982, was rated PG. This is despite not just the movie fitting perfectly into the horror genre, but also many adult themes including the smoking of marijuana and a deep dive into the occult. by duganaok

Backlash to Poltergeist is one of the events that led to the establishment of the PG-13 rating, along with similar reactions to Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Before the establishment of PG-13, it was G for general audiences (that is, parents wouldn’t need to be involved at all) PG for parental guidance (that is, there are scenes and content a parent might have to discuss with their kids afterwards), R for restricted (that is, this has scenes that are not appropriate for kids regardless of parental intervention) and X (typically considered “extreme content”*). With the dawn of the 80’s it became clear that film productions were pushing at the edges of these categories and, while certainly PG’s name would imply that a parent should be aware of potentially objectionable content, there were pearls to be clutched and most parents didn’t want to go through the effort of screening the films their kids watched—which were typically substitutes for babysitters—anyways. Remember that this is the same era that brought us the great Satanic Panic over D&D!

So a stopgap was established and PG films pretty much became exclusively the stuff of kids fare, with PG-13 becoming the go-to rating for content of the kind you’d see in those wonderful Spielberg films of the 80’s

*not to be confused with XXX, which was adopted by porn distributors who figured that if ONE X was saucy, imagine how good THREE would be!

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