There really isn't going to be one answer because there is a massive difference between forcing someone to switch branches of the same religion (catholic to protestant for example) and time in history.

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For the most part an uneducated peasant really isn't going to be hard to 'convince' to convert because most religious rules are pretty similar. Oh God is called Allah now, but realistically not a whole lot is changing there. Or now the big holy day/time is Saturday evening instead of Sunday morning. Really minus religion specific things (like genital mutilation) that guy whose farming really isn't going to care all that much

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Really the 'hard sell' is the nobility and other influential figures. Don't think of Christianity vs Islam (or whatever) as two competing religions - they are two different 'lords' that don't like each other. Generations of fealty to the first lord is important because that lord likely knows your family and may even have family members working for them and the lord won't want those family members associating with you anymore because of the concern that they will also defect. Maybe some/all of your family's property is contractually bound to the first lord and if you defect you lose everything.

This is one side of the scale, the other is the guy who currently has a knife to your throat is telling you to join his lord and if you don't he is going to kill you. It probably isn't all that shocking to realize that many people are more interested in not having their neck sliced open than they are keeping the first lord from becoming upset.

In Ukraine we call pickled cucumbers, because beckled tomatos, pepper and other vegetables are common too

One way to achieve that is syncretism. The practice of putting parts of the existing religion into the new one.

The people kept celebrating their old festivals the way they used to but they had to put some new labels on some things.

Some deities and stories were identified with figures and deities from the new religion. So nothing much changed.

This is a feature of religions in general and happens naturally especially if there is no central authority that says what is and isn't true. It can also happen on purpose.

Another factor is that in most places most of the time religion was not just a thing that stood by itself. It was part of politics and daily life.

The government and the religious leadership were not really separate things, but so deeply entwined that they were almost the same.

Keeping the old faith was the same as keeping to the old rulers. If the ruler themselves converted publicly this became even less a thing people would do.

Freedom of religion was usually not a thing. People were whatever religion they ruler said they were and going against that was like rebelling against the ruler. It was rebelling against the laws and customs that held society together itself.

Rulers were not keen on that sort of thing and neither were most of the people themselves. Finding someone in their midst who went against their rules and customs like that would not even always require the intervention of some far away tyrant to resolve but would be done away with locally by the community.

Yes and therefore is a product they do sell.

There's another brand they usually have in sydney as well. Green label, forget what it is.

For the most part, they are pronounced differently and shouldn't sound the same. Anyways, 'than' is used when you are making a comparison. 'Then' is used in different ways. "It was an easier time, then (at that time)", "Go straight, then (next) turn left at the light", "If you are him, then (in that case) come forward". There are some more ways to use then here.

Woah. Thanks a lots. You really made complex into really eli5. Thanks again :)

Same or similar pronunciation is not unique to any language. The words cannot be interchanged nor do they come close to meaning.

"then" is used in the context of timing or sequence. "Do this first then that" "I went to the movie then I went to the restaurant"

"than" is used in the context of comparison, choice and preferences. "A is larger than B". "I'd prefer to go to a movie than to go to a concert"

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your life will get better if you believe and stop getting beat up and arguing all the time and holy crap, it worked.

I’m Australian and without context I would assume pickles meant mustard pickles. If it was burger related I’d assume they meant cucumbers but otherwise pickled cucumbers are gherkins.

“I’d never let a lentil on my face” is the/a punchline.

It comes up with one result for a product they list as "free" and "out of stock".

If you are very religious you might view your defeat as a sign that your god has abandoned you or that their god is more powerful. Good reasons to warship someone else. If you are not, you might just not care that much either way.

Mushroom ketchup predates tomato ketchup.
Banana ketchup is apparently also a thing.

There is a difference in the availability of treatments, but this is difficult to equate to quality. It's just different.

A universal healthcare system should use statistics and costs to find the most effective "package" of treatments to offer to the population. There are plusses and minuses to this. Where it works really well is in screening out dubiously effective treatment and over or unnecessary treatment. For example if someone is old and has cancer, the UK system may steer someone to no treatment:

1. Treatment may be unlikely to actually extend someone's life.

2. Remaining quality of life may be significantly better without chemo.

Where it works less well is sometimes newer treatments take longer to be adopted by the system, and sometimes more customised care is unavailable. It's worth pointing out that private care does exist in the UK if you want it - but most people chose the NHS.

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Those of us who grew up on a farm that raised corn definitely do not conform to that convention.

Unless you're talking about eating it, just 'corn' is definitely 'field corn'. Raising it, hauling it, driving by it in the field, grinding it into animal feed; it's just 'corn'.

Picking or buying it to boil or roast and eat? That's definitely 'sweet corn', because you aren't eating 'corn'.

There is also an element of Stockholm syndrome as well. Not forgetting another religeon sweeps in often by force, clearly they are more favoured by the gods and your god wasn't real or didn't care.

True. Probably because most people don't think about what sauerkraut or olives actually are xD

I only look until I see the Polski Ogorki, and then I leave. I also worked in supermarkets for 14 years and don't remember ever seeing pickles labelled as cornichons, and if you go onto either of the colesworth online sites, they don't show up

Imma say no.

Helicopter works by pushing air down. That air hits the floor of the plane, giving the same "weight" as the helicopter just sitting there anyway.

A real interesting question is what happens if I have a big train going half the speed of light. Then stick another train on top going half the speed of light. Does the second train go at the speed of light?

That's a much more complicated question. To give the shortest possible answer, the new religion usually incorporates aspects of the old one, sometimes on purpose, like Christmas (pagan festival of lights) to ease the transition of conversion. The threat of death can also be very compelling. Each example in history was a bit different, so its difficult to provide a good answer.

I don't know, apparently one is larger and they are both beans, but not the same.

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Any even remotely competently written software will encrypt data when it's sent over the Internet.

A chat app that is not end to end encrypted (E2EE) will encrypt the connection between the app and the server. The server will decrypt the message, then encrypt it again for the recipient, and as a result, it will be able to read it.

If the chat app is end to end encrypted, your phone will first encrypt the message so that only the recipient's phone can read it. Then it will send it to the server (the connection to the server will typically still be encrypted one more time). Now the server can see that you're sending a message and to whom, but it can't see the content.

The hard part is doing it right and making sure you're actually encrypting it to the right recipient. Encryption is usually done with public key encryption systems. A recipient generates two keys, public and private, and gives the public key to everyone. You can use the public key to encrypt a message so it can only be read using the corresponding private key.

But how do you know which public key belongs to the recipient? Usually, you ask the server. The server could instead send you its own public key (pretending that it's the public key of the recipient). Your phone would now encrypt the message using that key. The server could decrypt it, read it, then encrypt it with the recipient's key.

For this reason, apps like Signal let you verify your contact's "safety number" which is the fingerprint of both your and their public keys (if you look closely, one half of your safety number is the same for all your contacts - that's your public key fingerprint!)

By checking this, e.g. if you meet in person, you can be sure that the attack I described above ("man-in-the-middle") is not happening. Some e2ee apps don't do this. This still means the server has to actively mess with the data rather than just reading it, but it's far from perfect.

Even e2ee is no guarantee: for example, a malicious server could send you a software update that just uploads your message history.

WhatsApp and signal use the same encryption, but a) WhatsApp doesn't warn you by default when your contact's key changes (because people lose their phones/reinstall all the time and it confuses people), b) WhatApp pushes really aggressively to back up your chats to the cloud, and once either you or your contact do that, the (already decrypted) messages are backed up to apple/google... (there is some other encryption involved but if someone gets the data from Apple/Google, and a key from Facebook, they can read those backups).