In a good example of correlation not meaning causation.

What's going on is this - some small population of people always have the flu at any given time, they're just the unlucky bunch. Now the flu itself needs to survive the journey from person to person, this might mean being suspended in the air in droplets, or lingering on surfaces. The flu does best in moderate conditions, somewhat humid to dry air, and middling to cooler temperatures.

Now think about a nice, hot sunny day. Everyone is generally outside where the air is blowing away the germs AND it's not an environment the flu can survive in easily anyway. So, probably not a lot of chance of a flu epidemic in nice, warm sunny weather.

Now lets go your cold and miserable day. You're focusing on the outdoor exposure, but what were you doing before and after? You were indoors, with all these other people avoiding the weather, in conditions the flu LOVES, no breeze, moderate temperatures, everyone touching everything. That's how the flu spreads.

Yes, cold weather can stress your body and weaken your immune system, but as you mentioned, being cold and wet does not give you a virus.

Another important point is cold air is generally very dry. When you're stuck indoors all winter, breathing that dry air it causes damage to the lining of your nose and throat, kind of like getting chapped lips inside your body. That damage means the flu can travel through the skin in those areas making transmission all the more easy.

Thanks! Edited.

Not dumb, a great question.

On the microprocessor level the hardware is designed to always read a certain number of digits, called "bits" in this case, and 4 bits become a "nibble", 8 bits are a "byte".

So a 16 bit microprocessor would read the value "one" as

0000 0000 0000 0001

and read "ten" as

0000 0000 0000 1010

So in older days, the processor size was a big deal, I played a lot of video games so I remember that the Nintendo was 8-bit, we then 16-bit systems (Sega and Super Nintendo). and then 32/64 bit processors with Nintendo 64, etc.

For the most part we've stuck at 64 bit for our processors for many reasons.

A liquid will absorb a portion of any gas it's exposed to, for example water on Earth will absorb gases from the air above it. It's just a natural process called "Boyle's Law", something we've learned from physics and chemistry.

The amount of overall gases a liquid absorbs is complicated, but has to do with pressure (for example, this is why soda and beer bubble like crazy when you open them, because you're removing the pressure in the can and the beer can't hold that much gas at room pressure) and the proportion of the gases dissolved is the same as the proportion of the gases in the air (again, using beer as our example, this is why carbonated beers are so bubbly but only for a short time [lots of CO2 in the beer, barely any in the air, hence it all wants to come out quickly] and why nitrogenated beers like Guinness don't bubble as much and stay bubbly for so long [lots of nitrogen in the, but also lots of nitrogen in the air, it doesn't have any place to go])

Two problems -

1. Most of food consists of cells of some kind, either plant or animal. Freezing creates crystals that are like tiny knives that slice up the cells, with refreezing you'll progressively turn your food into unrecognizable mush.

2. Many microorganisms will start attacking the surface of our foods and growing the moment they can, by the time the food is thawed they might have the beginnings of a rocking colony. It's not a huge problem if you just cook it and eat it right then, but if you re-freeze it and then rethaw it they can start again with their bigger colony, increasing the chances of getting you sick.

Fertilizer is basically "small creature food" and the algae and other micro-organisms eat it up and grow like crazy, sucking up all the oxygen from the water because they need to breathe too. They call this effect a "bloom", so the missing piece for you is the algae, they eat the food, they grow like crazy, they breathe up all the water-oxygen, everything else dies..

Thanks I just edited it. I assume that's my error and not some recent change.

Credit Scores are a number, between 300-850, that is used to measure how likely you are to pay back your debts.

In practice having a low credit score is an indicator that you are more likely to not pay your debts, and a high credit score indicates you are very reliable.

In turn lenders like banks and credit card companies will offer better (meaning lower cost) terms to people with high scores because they know it's a low risk of them losing money. They will offer worse terms (more expensive) to people with lower scores to offset the risk the person will not be able to pay them back.

The scores themselves are generated by private companies that don't disclose the math they use to generate them, but we know a little bit. Note that having no 'credit history' doesn't mean a poor score, it means no score. People who have never had any sort of loan or credit card at all have no score.

So to get a score in the first place you need some sort of loan, for example a credit card, and then start buying things and paying it off. The credit card company forwards your history to the credit score company and the credit score company takes note that you are borrowing money (using the credit card) and paying it off on time. This is "Good stuff" and gives you a good credit score.

For the bank question, no, not if you just have a checking account or savings account. BUT your credit score does factor in things like the size of your loans and the age of your accounts. For example if I have a massive car loan, and I pay it on time every month, the payment is a good thing (I'm reliable) but the size of the loan is a bad thing (I might not be able to pay other loans I get, because I already have a big one).

Other factors to consider are - people who look for loans need money and needing money is a good sign someone will have trouble paying loans, it's a Catch-22, but looking for loans will actually hurt your credit score for this reason. This is usually minimal and short-lived but it's important to know.

Dumb reason # 1- bike helmets don't keep your head and ears warm. Ski helmets should not be worn with a hat, so they have built in "hat" materials to keep your head warm. Biking helmets are usually designed with the opposite intent, to provide airflow and keep your head cool.

More Sciencey Reason - If you look at how a person falls and their head hits things on a bike vs. sking you'll see different patterns. Bonking your noggin' doesn't equal bonking your noggin in all cases. Specifically, snow sports usually involve sideways hits and biking involves front on hits. So the whole design is slightly different.

Planes fly due to two forces, lift which is generated by air traveling across the wing, and thrust which pushes the plan forward. Combine those two and you get flight.

The Earth's rotation doesn't really enter into it because in theory everything Earthy also rotates, including the air in the sky and the plane on the ground. In theory, since the plane and the air in the sky are part of the spinning Earth system it all cancels out and spinning or no spinning, the motion of the Earth doesn't interact with the physics of an air plane.

But of course the air in the sky isn't just spinning with the Earth, we have wind and storms and jetstreams and things like that mean the bulk motion of the air IS important to flight. For example, because of the Jetstream that blows roughly from NYC to Ireland, it takes around 45 minutes longer to fly back to the NYC from Ireland, because you're flying into the wind.

The Taste of Ink came on the radio the other day, that was a palpable trip back in time.

Ok, I didn't want to ask your salary, but since you offered it I can update my advice.

In theory, your debt is "bad" debt, meaning your interest is more than you'll likely get on the market.

The 401(k) is free money, so absolutely get that match first.

Then get rid of your credit card debt.

After that, shift to the Roth IRA. In theory you are in a "low" tax bracket at the moment, our current income taxes rates are historically low AND you're not a super high earner. That means the "smart" bet is paying your income taxes now rather than in retirement. Once you start to earn around $73k the law starts to reduce how much you're allowed to put into a Roth IRA, at ~$82k you can't anymore.

So here's the plan for you - get your match, pay off your debt, then start pumping up your Roth IRA. You're allowed to put in a maximum of $6,500 into your Roth IRA right now, I assume you won't be hitting that level but if you can, do it.

If you're a super-saver and you can save beyond the $6,500 or your get more compensation start going past the $73k limit, then start moving your contributions back to the 401(k).

Great questions! I'll do my best.

1a) In general splitting investment money between pre- and post- tax vehicles is smart. Good for you! Yes, Roth accounts function sort of like super high interest savings accounts. After a few years you gain the ability to extract your principal (the money you put in) just like a bank account with zero hassle or tax problems. Obviously I'd recommend not doing this but it's nice to know in case of emergency.

1b) The issue is that your ability to put money into Roth accounts varies based on your income. At a certain point you're no longer allowed to put money into Roth accounts if you earn too much money. I'd recommend you talk to a "fiduciary financial advisor" about this as your specific case is for you only.

2a) Your job matches 35%? Of what? That sounds like a confusion. Most jobs match based on your salary. So terms to look for are a percentage MAX and a percentage rate. For example my employer matches half of my contribution up to a maximum of 3%. So I need to put in 6% of my annual salary in order for my employer to give me 3% of my annual salary as a match. It doesn't sound likely to me that your employer actually matches up to 35% of your annual salary, if they do, that's a sweet gig.

2b) You should talk to you HR or payroll departments to clarify the match and figure out what you need to contribute to get your maximum match. Yes, then stop contributing and pay off your high interest debt. Maximize first, then pay off the debt is the "smart" path, if you can afford it.

3. Yes, I think it's smart to maximize your 401(k) match first, then pay off debt. I wouldn't go over the match though, I'd get it, and then pay off debt.

4a) REKTX is something called an mutual fund that is designed to appeal to people who want to retire around the year 2055. It's basically geared to be in high risk/high reward investments now and slowly over time move money to low risk / low reward investments as you get closer to retirement. That way you know what you have at retirement and aren't at risk of a market crash making you bankrupt the day you retire.

4b) Personally, I'd just keep dumping money into the 2055 fund if that sounds like approx. when you're going to retire. There are other funds usually in 5 year brackets you can jump to if that's not the case. If you're looking more like 2040, or 2065, there are funds that you can switch to for that. Personally, I'd not recommend the S&P 500 as an "all in" plan as that's a very high risk basket for "all your eggs". The retirement date funds are intended to be a "fire and forget" type of long term investment and are perfect for people who don't' want to micromanage their finances. If you are interested and would like to take more control over your investments again I'd advise you get a fiduciary investment planner to help you.

As a final word of advice, the key word in hiring someone to help you here is "fiduciary'. That term means they are legally bound to advise you and make choices in your best interest, and you pay them for their time. If they don't have that term, then they don't have that legal restriction and can advise you to do whatever they feel like, including expensive services that they receive kick backs or compensation for selling you on. Fiduciary agents work for you to make you money, non-fiduciary agents work for banks and financial services to make them money.

Egyptians by a LOOONG shot.

If you allow that Egyptian culture started with the first Pharaoh, that was roughly 3.100 BCE.

The Aztec empire only existed from roughly the year 1400 - 1521 CE.

So the Egyptians came first by almost 5,000 years.

I'd argue that any cup-shaped vessel is a cup.

So if you mean, drinking out of mason jars or bottles, that's not strange at all. Stepping away from those to something like a bowl or pot, yeah that's pretty weird, going all the way to lapping drinks from puddles being extremely weird.

So, the term I think you'd like to learn more about is called "KPI", or "Key Performance Indicator".

In general a KPI is broad term used to quantify (measure) productivity, we give it a vague name because it can be totally unique to the person or role, and even within a specific role but different managers, different people might measure different KPIs.

For example - a teacher

Possible KPIs might be - students who pass the class, students enrolled in the class, rates of student drop out from class, number of office hours per week, number of students attending office hours.

For a bus driver - Number of accidents per year, number of people who ride the bus, number of late (or early) stops, miles traveled, fuel burned. Etc.

Some KPIs you want to minimize, some you want to maximize, it totally depends on what you're tracking.

A big of being a manager is knowing which KPIs are important to track in a direct report and how to influence them.

As an employee, you might want to understand your KPIs and how you're being measured. Because you might think you're hot shit, but if you have terrible KPIs you're objectively not doing well in the role. Alternatively, it might help you understand what your manager wants from you. You might think you job is all about doing X really well, and you might be God's gift to X, but if all your KPIs are related to Y, again, you might not be performing as your employer expects.

One point of defense for the imperial system I'll add, is that it's easier for uneducated people to do math with.

A lot of the imperial system revolves around counts of 12 and 16, it's dumb and overly complicated for a number of reasons but it makes sense for dumb math.

Let's say I'm measuring 2 feet, or 24 inches.

I can easily divide up 24 by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc.

If I have 20 CM and want to divide that up easily, I pretty much only have 2, 4, 5, and 10.

I'm not defending the Imperial system and Metric is better in so many ways. But this might help you realize how and why the imperial system was developed to be what it is, and why it was so useful for so long.

"Regression" is a math word that means "finding a line that best fits the data".

In your example, "Linear Regression", is just one type of regression that assumes the data wants to fit a straight line.

You hear about it a lot in algorithms because they are all about taking points of data, and trying to figure out what the larger scale process that's controlling the data.

Alternatively you might have something like "exponential regression", where the data wants to fit a curve. For example, if you wanted to chart the spread of COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic, you'd want to use exponential regression. Linear regression would work at first, but once you started projecting out a week or two you'd see that your line stopped matching the actual infection rate suddenly, and then became very wrong, very quickly.

In practice, linear regression is much, much easier to both do and understand, so it's more "popular". Exponential regression usually requires computer analysis and is more confusing to lay-people. That's just why you hear about "linear regression" more commonly.

When you strike the drum it'll create a wave of sound inside the drum. Normally this wave starts bouncing around inside the drum, back and forth, giving a sort of lasting ringing a few moments after you hit it. That's not usually want people want, they want the sharp WUMP of the drum, and then silence.

So the pillow as an a "damper". To damp something is science-speak for "reducing the intensity" of something. In this case, it's reducing the intensity of the wave so that it dies quicker.

Not to be confused to dampen something, which means to make something slightly wet.

Not an expert here. I believe certain colors of other lights can also preserve night vision. Low intensity green light does it to I believe.

Not a fancy way of saying GMO. Plants can do a lot of wacky genetic things totally naturally, but keep in mind pretty much any plant we eat has had thousands of years of selective breeding by humans. We've essentially trained all of our domesticated crops, naturally, to be a certain way.

Specially, plants can do some "odd" things when it comes to reproducing and creating fruits. For example, we're familiar with the concept of getting 1 set of genes from our mothers and 1 set from our fathers, they would call this "2N" genetics. In theory plants work the same way but getting 3N, 4N, 5N, etc plants is really common and doesn't hurt them as much as it would us. If you ever see a box of monstrous strawberries at the grocery they probably aren't GMO, they are just 3N or 4N strawberries (natural genetic freaks, not human engineered genetic freaks).

What I'm saying in the above is some plants, if the flowers don't get fertilized will just kill the flower and move on (like apples), other plants will keep the organ alive and produce what's called a "virgin fruit". Since no fertilization occurred the plant can't make normal seeds, but they'll probably still be there. They will just be super small or soft and you eat them without noticing them. Those are the seedless grapes and oranges and stuff per OP's prompt.

So fun fact, they did just discover a variety of seedless apples very recently. Not sure if they are marketable, but it's a "thing".

The difference here is some fruit can do something called "parthenocarpy", it basically means the plant will produce flowers that aren't fertilized and will still grow into fruit. The resulting fruit, since it wasn't fertilized, will lack the reproductive seeds.

It turns out some plants do this and those are our seedless fruits mostly.

Some plants, like apple trees, don't do this, so we don't get seedless apples.

Your eyes contain 4 different types of light sensors. The first 3 see color and the 4th sees shades of gray.

In order to "respond" to light, the sensors use chemicals that interact with the light color they see. So chemical X responds to Green colored light, chemical y to Red and chemical Z to any light, but only responds in shades of gray.

Long story short, the gray chemical, chemical Z gets destroyed by bright light, any kind of bright light melts it away and your eye needs to build more up before you can see gray-scale.

So if you're in bright light and then suddenly go into the dark, you have no chemical Z and it needs to restore over a short few minutes and then you can see in the dark at least a little bit.

Fun Fact: Red light does NOT destroy chemical Z. This is why military aircraft and vehicles that operate at night use Red lights in the cabins before dumping the soldiers off into a battlefield. You can leave the vehicle with full night vision intact.

Adjusting to bright light is different, a muscle in your eye just squeezes the eye-hole tighter reducing the amount of light that gets through into your eye in the first place. It happens pretty dang quick.

Because of the commission split.

X% of the value of the home price goes to realtors as a commission. The realtors split up this commission amongst themselves as sellers and buyers agents.

The seller's agent usually spends less effort, and claims a bigger portion of the commission, hence it's preferable to be a seller's agent than a buyers.

Define "fired"?

Most states in the US are "at-risk" employment, meaning they don't need to provide any reason at all to terminate you. If they are terminating you and you specifically for whatever reason, that's "firing" (as opposed to lay offs).

You can be fired "for cause" which means you done fucked up and there is no compensation typically given for that. It's more of a "don't let the door hit you on the way out" type scenario.

You can also be fired "without cause", that doesn't mean you necessarily did anything wrong, they just don't want you to work for them anymore. There is typically some sort of severance given for many reasons, depending on how cynical you are.

1. Companies may be heartless but managers not necessarily so. Getting fired sucks and their at least making an effort to keep you on feet and minimize the impact to your life.

2. Sometimes there are actual laws stipulating severance for termination with-out cause. Similarly there are laws stipulating unemployment benefits for termination as well, in many areas you cannot file for unemployement benefits if you've been terminated with cause.

3. Companies understand that people who get fired are likely to sue their employers. Often these payout packages come with legal agreements that the person cannot sue their employer if they accept the money. Do the math and it's cheaper to pay many people a little bit of money to not sue, than it is to pay for all the lawsuits.