The story of early hackers in the US and Western Europe in the '60s-'80s is fairly well known. Were there hacker cultures in the USSR or Warsaw Pact countries as well?

This came up on my Facebook page in a post comparing the words of a Canadian politician currently running for office. Obviously whether or not this is an apt comparison would violate the 20 years rule here, and I'm not seeking a political discussion here, but I'm curious if this is really a quote from Hitler.

I'm sure a few hours research on Google would answer this for me, but I don't have a few hours, so I throw myself on the mercy of experts here who might already know the answer.

Thanks

I'm not specifically concerned with dental health, as that's reliant upon diet more than anything else, but without chewing certain plants everyday, wouldn't everyone have had awful breath? Was the chewing of things like spearmint common? Was bad breath something so common that no one noticed that it was bad?

Everytime I read something on the life in the late '80 in the USSR, there's description of food shortages and similar occurences with basically every goods of necessity.

While I can somewhat understand a food shortage, I don't get why exactly such a country was unable to have enough, let's say, soap, for everyone.

Talking specifically about students in the U.S.

Thanks everyone!

Hi Everyone. I have a B.A. in History and studied revolutionary America, in which we discussed and read some of the federalist papers and had some exposure to the founding debates. It has been about 10 years since I took any courses on this topic and I might be losing my knowledge on this subject. I have been on social media debating Right wing relatives of mine and one of the things that always comes up in their arguments is that we live in a Republic not a Democracy. I remember there being some talk of this distinction in the federalist papers, but I always though a Republic was a type of Democracy, so wouldn't that argument be like saying, I'm a square, not a quadrilateral? I come to you today to ask: What was the difference in the two systems in the eyes of the founders and what, if any, distinction is there in practice today in the USA? Why is there this notion that democracy is bad and republic is good amongst the tea party people (when looking up republic vs democracy I only get tea party sites.) Thanks in advance.

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John of Damascus refers to Islam as the "heresy of the Ishmaelites", and many scholars of Islam argue that Islam, as a well-defined creed and set of practices, took time to evolve and take form. Before Islam, did the Byzantines make a differentiation between heretics (e.g. Copts, Arians) and other religions (e.g. Jews and Zoroastrians) or were they all lumped as non-believers? When, if ever, do the Byzantines start talking about Islam as its own religion?

It makes sense to me that the Chinese, the inventors of gunpowder weaponry, who also spent a lot of their history fighting off mounted invaders like the Mongols, would have used this technique when defending themselves from their enemies' more advanced cavalry. I am by no means an expert on Eastern history, and I just thought that this would make a lot of sense.

Looked through the FAQ but couldn't find anything on this precise view.

You don't have to elaborate too much if you can't be bothered. Feel free to just leave links and I'll read through them. Thanks!

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who took the time to answer.

This is an idea that came up in one of my classes recently. I had always looked at it in the sense that WWII was provoked and ignited by the outcome of WWI and Versailles. However, the idea that the European theatre of WWII was simply picking up where we left off in 1918 (going with the idea that Germany was doing very well up until the end and was "stabbed in the back") seems intriguing but hard to argue, as the battles and motives for war were quite different.

I'd be grateful for any and all ideas on this topic!

It seems so idiotic to me to call a side "allies" when it could have been used to describe all 4 groups in these these wars. If some PR/advertizing firm were to give each side more apt names, what would they be? This is just for fun, I know at the time they didn't use the words to describe themselves as we do now.
From wikipedia...

WWI: Allies included Britain, France, Russia, Italy

Central Powers which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria

WWII: Axis Powers were Germany, Italy and Japan

Allies were Britain, France, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, the Soviet Union, China and the United States of America.

They were near and they had colonies there. They were more technologically advanced and had a better knowledge of war. They could stop them before they became a big power.

The documentary is available on Netflix.

72 names of god, 72 virgins, 72 old men of the synagogue, 72 disciples of Confucius. This number appears a lot in several different culture independently associated with religion. Normally you hear about 3 (Trinity) or 7, where did 72 come from?