>There are mild nutritional differences but it's not right to say one is "healthier" than the other.

FWIW, this is the primary benefit I've heard -- that grass fed has a better profile of fats (more omega 3 versus omega 6, I believe), but that's always seemed strange, since someone really worried about their fat profile would be much better off eating something like salmon instead of fancy beef.

The money went to the person who sold you the $5,000 worth of stock.

It's a little bit like buying a car for $5,000 and then crashing it into a tree and selling the scrap for $5. The money didn't disappear. It went to the old owner of the car. You just lost value because of the crash (either of the car or the stock value).

Someone who would like to talk to a journalist to provide information without being identified can ask to speak to the journalist "off the record." If the journalist agrees that the source is off the record, the journalist would use the information without naming the source. This is common where the source would face consequences for being quoted -- e.g., the source wants to give information about their employer without getting fired. This is an agreement between the source and the journalist, which means that the journalist must agree to anonymity up front and the source cannot insist on it afterward (e.g. because they realize they said something that can get them in trouble). Journalists generally follow these agreements because it would be harmful to their reputation and ability to get sources in the future if they were known to burn their sources, but there's likely no other recourse for a source that believe that they were "off the record" and where then cited by the journalist.

There are various types of "off the record" that are understood to exist, and people, especially in politics or national security would generally be familiar with them. The most common are "background" and "deep background," with "background" indicating that the source could only be cited with consent (i.e. the journalist can't say "My sources in the White House tell me..." unless the source agrees) and "deep background" meaning that the journalist can use the information but they can't even anonymously cite the source (i.e. no "My anonymous source at the Pentagon tells me...").

Sex is arousing in both the general and specific sense of the term. It's exciting. It's a big, important thing for us humans, and it's something we rarely see because its culturally taboo.

From an evolutionary psychology perspective (and speaking very generally), men get physically aroused when they are in a position to compete for sex, and women get physically aroused when it appears likely they will have sex. Seeing other people having sex triggers those responses.

This is also common across other mammals, so it's likely to go far back from an evolutionary perspective and not something that we can rationalize in terms of human behavior.

This is good. I would just add that in many cases companies will make a severance payment in exchange for a waiver of claims. Better to pay someone $5k or $10k to leave on good terms than have them leave on bad term and find a lawyer to bring a wrongful termination claim. That amount can be plowed through very quickly in legal fees.

Yeah, no argument on that, although I think there are more "law and order" types than criminal justice skeptics in a typical jury pool.

Yes. I'm not claiming this is new.

>Still, it's a 95% chance of a guilty verdict.

We've had many people let off of death row from DNA evidence exonerating them. These are the cases that are supposed to be the most scrutinized and the cases where the system is the most certain. And DNA exonerations are only a subset of the people who are actually innocent and on death row -- it would be foolish to think that DNA has caught all of the actual innocence cases.

Why do we have so many exonerations? Because trials are a highly imperfect tool of determining guilt -- police and prosecutors have vastly more resources than public defenders, people tend to trust the system (I think many people agree with your view that prosecutors only bring cases to trial when they're sure), the guy in the jumpsuit and cuffs looks guilty, jurors have a view that an innocent person would testify but defendants almost never testify based on how the rules of evidence work, etc.

If I say, "many defendants who insist on going to trial do so because they are innocent," and your response is "but they're almost all convicted." That only disproves my point if we assume that all convictions are correct, and I don't make that assumption.

> If a case is in trial, there is a more than likely chance that the case is that solid...

I'm not sure this is true. Open and shut cases tend to plead out. A primary reason a case goes to trial is that the defendant won't take a plea deal because they have a strong case for innocence.

Peer pressure. We have pretty good anecdotal evidence that when there's one or two holdouts that they will give in and go with the majority. Part of that is also that prosecutors are pretty good at identifying and excluding potential jurors who are likely to hold out for ideological reasons.

Most precipitation comes as part of large weather patterns that move over thousands of miles (although this is less true in hot, humid places that create enough of their own moisture for localized storms). Generally storms start as big masses of warm, wet air over an ocean and then blow across land. Seasonal weather patterns will affect which times of year a particular location gets more of these warm, wet air masses bringing large amounts of rain.

Skiers have two edges (one on each ski) to dig into the snow to turn. They're both directly on the skier's body. A snowboarder only has one edge, and it's outside of the body mass, so a snowboarder has to lean to dig in. This is why you see new snowboarders spending a lot of time trying to lean back and then balling on their butts.

As others have noted, our tendency to use "want" or "designed" around evolution tends to lead us to more intention from the process than is factual.

For viruses the primary issue is R0 ("R naught"), which is the number of people who become infected for every infected person, so an R0 of 2 means that if I catch that virus I will infect (on average) two people. Anything over 1 means that the virus will spread to more people for each generation of spread.

A virus that is highly contagious will have a high R0 value. If a virus has a high R0 and also kills people after they spread the virus, that's irrelevant for the virus because it has already spread. The severity of the virus will often correlate with its contagiousness because the symptoms go along with the method of spread -- for example, respiratory viruses make people cough, which spreads the virus in the air, and a particularly virulent respiratory virus may make someone cough/spread a lot and also kill the host. If a particular virus evolves to be "worse," and that means it spreads to four people instead of 2 and also kills the host in 20% of cases, that virus will still spread faster than the old virus, even if the host is now dead.

>Mint tends to have a "refreshing" feel, flavor and smell, so is often used to indicate something being clean and fresh.

Right it's the alcohol-like burn of menthol from the mint that feels cooling and refreshing. The slight burn feels like its cleaning.

That's not the case here, but in cases where it is there are a few different steps that are put in place: the Board of the target company appoints a special committee that is comprised of people who are not affiliated with the majority owner, the special committee hires an investment bank to evaluate what price would be fair to the shareholders and give a "fairness opinion" that the committee can rely on, the special committee (with help from investment bank and lawyers), and then once a transaction is agreed on its approve "majority of the minority" (i.e. by vote of the shareholders other than the majority shareholder/buyer). Then there are inevitably lawsuits claiming that the transaction was unfair.

"Drag along" rights are a thing, but that's no what's going on in a public company going private transaction. These transactions are completed by merger, which does not require consent of all the parties.