The University of Georgia would prefer you to use a moving average.

The assumption is that time travel to the past would return to the same absolute point in space. Since the mechanics of time travel are unknown, there is always the possibility that time travel could be anchored to a large nearby gravity source, like the Earth or the Sun.

Joan Wilder?!? The Joan Wilder?!?!

As much as I abhor the constant whining about the electoral college, the popular vote still carries meaning.

A president who barely edges to an EC victory, but has a huge margin in the popular vote can lay claim to a bigger mandate than a president who wins a decisive EC victory, but only squeaks by with a slight popular vote win. And of course either of those scenarios are preferable to being president without winning the popular vote.

Perception matters in presidential politics.

The thing that annoys me about the popular vote whining is that people get confused and think that if a candidate won the popular vote, than that person would have been president if we used a popular vote system to elect presidents. That is absolutely an annoying fairy tale pushed by the media.

I think a lot of these answers are losing the forest for the trees.

What are the two most pointless symbols in mathematics education?

The symbols for multiplication (×) and division (÷).

Why? Because they disappear when you get to algebra.

Multiplication instead becomes the default of two values are next to each other without an operator, then they are multiplied:

Instead of 5 × x, we just write 5x.

All division turns into fractions.

Now think about something like a polynomial. For example,

5x^2 + 4x + 3 = 0

Is much easier to write than

5 × x^2 + 4 × x + 3 = 0

Which is also easier to write than

5 × (x^2 ) + 4 × x + 3 = 0

Now consider how the order of operations makes expressing the terms of a polynomial straightforward:

exponent first, so the variable can be raised to the appropriate power given for each term.

Multiplication next, so each term can be multiplied by a constant.

Addition last, for the final combination of fully calculated terms.

PEMDAS makes writing a polynomial straightforward and helps the notation capture meaning.

Obviously, there is more to math than polynomials and as other answers have touched on, there are lots of reasons why multiplication comes before addition.

I would also like to add that subtraction doesn't exist and it would be better if we stopped teaching it once negative numbers are introduced, but I do think that ship might have sailed.

There is a military helicopter weapon launch scenario that does involve significant enough loss of weight to affect control positions:

Hover launch of a torpedo. Torpedoes weigh ~750 pounds. When that much weight comes off the aircraft, controls will need to be adjusted.

That being said, if a military helo is launching a torpedo in a hover over water, most likely it is a coupled hover, i.e., the autopilot is keeping the helo in a steady hover.

Even more interesting, is that the only time a helo is dropping a torpedo in a hover is if it is using a dipping sonar for targeting, meaning the pilot has to be careful not to drop the torpedo on top of the dipping sonar cable! The pilot will usually give the helo a small lateral drift towards the side of the aircraft that the torpedo is launched from to ensure the sonar cable isn't in the way. It has happened a few times where the pilot has mistaken which direction to drift and instead actually increased the odds of the torpedo striking the cable. At least one dipping sonar that I can remember was lost at sea due to an incident like that.

Immediately after launch, the autopilot will sense the upward motion and slightly lower the collective to compensate, causing the RPM to stay the same, but the engine output to decrease by a few percent.

It's weird that Hurricane Ian is referenced here. The uncertainty with Ian was not the intensity prediction, which was accurate days out.

The problem with Ian was the massive uncertainty in the track a few days prior to landfall. Even then, the forecasters were extremely upfront about this, BUT only if you read the forecast discussions. The real problem with Ian is the graphics don't always give a good sense of what the forecasters know and how they know it, and everyone from the media to the county/state officials seems to only ever look at the graphics.