Some modulation schemes send multiple bits at a time. For example in phase shift keying, the phase of an oscillating wave encodes the information. If you do this with 4 phases, 90 degrees apart, then you send 2 bits at a time, 8 phases 3 bits, etc.

The difference is largely historical.

Data storage devices are byte-addressable, in that the smallest unit of data you can read one write is one byte. We long ago standardized on 8-bits per byte, but in early computing there were different byte sizes.

Early data transmission devices (what we now call network hardware) measured their speed in bits per second. The byte wasn’t standardized as 8 bits yet, and different ends of the transmission might have different byte sizes.

Modern networking gear basically always sends data in some whole number of 8-bit bytes (in the context of networking they are sometimes called octets to be absolutely clear they are 8-bit units), but the bits per second terminology persists.

You wouldn’t want to be the manufacturer who unilaterally shifts to bytes per second when you peers are still marketing bits per second, for fear of people thinking your stuff is slower than it is!

The human body is like 60% water by weight, and the difference between being well hydrated and dehydrated is like 5 lbs. So, you can easily lose “water weight” by exercising hard without proper hydration. You really do lose weight if you get on a scale, but it’s highly impermanent because you’ll get the weight back as soon as you drink enough water.

Archery has been used in combat since prior to written history up until firearms started to get really good in the 1600s. This is a really long time and the bows, the archers that fired them, and the tactics are quite varied. So, it’s difficult to totally generalize.

Ammunition is always a concern, and the amount of mobility the archers needed affected how many they could carry.

Range and accuracy varies a lot. Sometimes archers shot big inaccurate volleys over long range, like longbows. Sometimes they were shorter range and individual accuracy mattered.

The effectiveness of archers also varies over history. Better shields and armor, or swift movements like cavalry could be a hard counter to archers of their day, only for better bows and tactics to bring them back to the fore.