Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 July 5

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July 5

Elizabeth of Bavaria's English country house

According to our article Empress Elisabeth of Austria, "in 1881 she purchased an English country house and had a spiral staircase built from her living room into the kitchen, so that she could reach it in private". The source used, Vandereycken, Walter (April 1996). "The Anorectic Empress: Elisabeth of Austria". History Today. 46 (4)., does not name the country house - can anyone here identify it? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 00:58, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Maybe a lead: in 1881 she rented Combermere Abbey. According to the article she had some alterations made, but there's no mention of a staircase. --Wrongfilter (talk) 05:24, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

This article does mention a newly installed staircase: Alterations at Combermere went even further. The Empress wished to take her meals in her apartments, unseen by others, and she also wanted her meals served hot. Thus a completely new staircase was built, just for this purpose – though we don’t know at what expense! --Wrongfilter (talk) 05:29, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

According to the WP article: A total of £10,000-worth of alterations were made for her stays. 2603:6081:1C00:1187:4DE7:BC1F:BEF5:2BD0 (talk) 08:28, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Why Indonesia has been demoted into "lower-middle income countries"?

I don't know have any ideas to see the mechanism. Please anyone can answer it? It's especially ironic to see tuvalu has slightly higher gdp nominal percapita than indonesia. because tuvalu has very low overall gdp nominal due to little population but indonesia is opposite by having a large population meant the country has very high gdp nominal. 110.138.82.239 (talk) 06:52, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

It would help if you could tell us the source of your information. Who do you think has "demoted" Indonesia? Is this in reference to a Wikipedia article?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:22, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I do not see the irony. One's income does not get any higher if very many compatriots have the same income.  --Lambiam 11:25, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

The ranking depends on the measure. Indonesia ranks considerably higher than Tuvalu on both the List of countries by GNI (PPP) per capita and the List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita.  --Lambiam 11:35, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Now look at this evidence that tuvalu has slightly higher gdp nominal per capita than indonesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita 182.2.136.218 (talk) 14:43, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

According to economy of indonesia. Indinesia has been downgraded from upper middle income to lower middle income. What a shame. I give you a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Indonesia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.2.136.218 (talk) 14:50, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

The source used at Economy of Indonesia is this. It has details on how these things are calculated. Indonesia seems to have made it to the upper middle income group only one year and the thresholds are updated annually, so I'm not sure the "demotion" shows something as noticable as it can appear to be at a first glace. Personuser (talk) 15:41, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

GDP per capita is an imperfect measure of income per person/household, and the cut-off points between various (fairly arbitrary) strata are not useful for comparing standards of living across economies. More useful might be things like caloric intake, female literacy, natal survival, etc. DOR (HK) (talk) 14:00, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

oh no. why tuvalu has a higher gni nominal per capita than indonesia? i cant believe this was exact opposite because tuvalu has a narrow ppp nominal per capita ratio while indonesia has wide ratio. see this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(nominal)_per_capita 125.166.155.105 (talk) 07:46, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

"Diet" Library

What is National Diet Library? Do I have to go on the diet in order to use the diet library? Does meals with special diet provided within the library? Does this diet library provide the detail information about the diet?

--Hmht45tgree3d (talk) 10:24, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

• The word ”Diet” has more than one meaning… See Diet (assembly). Blueboar (talk) 11:01, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) See National Diet, the parliament of Japan - the Japanese apparently adopted the term from the Germans in the 1890s. A source of endless gags for school children was the Diet of Worms, which had a pivotal role in the Protestant Reformation and used to form an important part of the history syllabus in British schools. Alansplodge (talk) 11:07, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

We have an article about the National Diet Library. There's a song about the Diet of Worms which every schoolboy used to know - it starts "Nobody Loves Me..." DuncanHill (talk) 11:19, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

The Complete Worm Song. Alansplodge (talk) 11:26, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Notable the origin of the word diet has for meaning "daily" ([1]). If in the abstract those days were to be arranged into chains, they would probably figure in the abstract a patch of worms. I understand the "Nobody"... --Askedonty (talk) 12:29, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I only learned it was called that in English after my schoolboy years. I first met it later, in Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms. ---Sluzzelin talk 18:24, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Alansplodge:, turns out some companies are interested in providing such a diet commercially in the form of preserves, but they had trouble finding a packaging vendor at the right price, until they found a suitable one on the Plain of Jars. At least, that's the buzz. Mathglot (talk) 17:42, 10 July 2021 (UTC)