Country's customs I wrote this as homework, my teacher said it could improve but didn't say how to, can you help? All countries have their own group of specific unwritten rules that every local fallows without even knowing about it. In the UK, mainly in London, is very common to talk about the weather on regular conversations but in the USA it could be seen as a small talk topic. One’s perception of reality and its interaction with other individuals may be interpreted as a local culture, or you could say “culture” instead. The country’s culture is something very powerful as it influences the relationship between friends, business acquaintance and even moral standards. Northern hemisphere countries, for instance, have been very close to democracy since before the 18th and today their people have a strong feeling about what is privacy and freedom. In the other hand, countries that have flirted with dictatorship in the last 200 years usually don’t care as much as their upper hemisphere counterpart. You see the former have trouble putting their personal data in the hands of people they don’t fully trust, since that gives power to those unknow forces, but the latter have do not see that as a big issue, thus they accept technological changes more easily. That explains why we see so many digital banks rising in Latin America regard many European cities majorly use local bills. It is very interesting to study how a society works by analysing how its culture have been changing and then, by understanding different realities, we may be able to make our own a little bit better.

What is the meaning of "pride" in this context? "Ma had said women need one another more than they need men, but she never told her how to get inside the pride." Also, is this the same used in Lion King II: Simba's Pride?

Is there any sort of animal called piper? I came across the following passage in a book I'm reading: "The damp sand revealed prints of crabs, herons, and pipers, but no humans." When I googled "piper", all that I've got were people playing pipes... so, if that's an animal, what animal is that?

"Maybe it was mean country, but not an inch was lean." What does this sentence mean? I really don't know what the words "mean country" are meant to mean here. Context: Those looking for serious land moved on, and this infamous marsh became a net, scooping up a mishmash of mutinous sailors, castaways, debtors, and fugitives dodging wars, taxes, or laws that they didn’t take to. The ones malaria didn’t kill or the swamp didn’t swallow bred into a woodsmen tribe of several races and multiple cultures, each of whom could fell a small forest with a hatchet and pack a buck for miles. Like river rats, each had his own territory, yet had to fit into the fringe or simply disappear some day in the swamp. Two hundred years later, they were joined by runaway slaves, who escaped into the marsh and were called maroons, and freed slaves, penniless and beleaguered, who dispersed into the water-land because of scant options. Maybe it was mean country, but not an inch was lean. Layers of life—squiggly sand crabs, mud-waddling crayfish, waterfowl, fish, shrimp...

What is the meaning of "Envelope" in this engineering context? I high cased the term in question to facilitate the work. The Brazilian Technical Regulation for efficiency in public buildings in use is RTQ n° 372, 2010 from Inmetro – National Institute of Metrology, Quality and Technology. This Regulation has the objective of creating conditions for the labeling of the energy efficiency level of commercial, service and public buildings. It also specifies the classification of the efficiency level of buildings, divided into these three individual systems: ENVELOPE, lighting system and air conditioning system (...) The weights of each individual system are distributed as follows: ENVELOPE (30%), lighting system (30%), and air conditioning system (40%).