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It depends on what your plans are for the money.

If this is long-term savings, I would invest it all into a balanced portfolio as soon as you can and forget about it - there are many portfolio examples out there that only use a few 'total market'-style ETFs, as an example. I too have sat on cash at times during the last couple decades and it has cost me a lot of returns. Trying to time these things is basically like gambling and it will drive you crazy.

If you plan to use the cash in the short-term or it's emergency savings, I would personally keep it in cash to protect the principal. High yield savings accounts or short-term treasuries will at least provide some inflation protection.

Completely agree. I think one main goal of introducing an African/European hybrid was to improve the productivity in tropical and sub-tropical climates (Central/South America) and arid climates (parts of northern Mexico and southern US) where the introduced European bees were less well-adapted.

It's now well-documented that African bees are considerably more defensive, making beekeeping challenging, although not impossible. While this is less desirable for humans, it turns out to be a very valuable set of behaviors for bees in the right environment.

Good list, but..

> Africanization - of honeybees has reduced their ability to withstand the cold.

has probably been saving a lot of North American bees (certainly in the wild).

Am. scutellata behavioral differences are vastly more beneficial than a typical European honeybee when it comes to survival everywhere in the Americas except the north. These bees forage sooner, store more pollen, build smaller colonies, swarm more frequently, and more strongly defend themselves against Varroa. In other words, they are survivors against still the number one threat to managed honeybees.

This is a bit sensational.

Most Boeing jets that you can book a flight on today are some of the safest the world has ever seen. For example, the 777 has been in service 25 years with only a few serious accidents we can conclusively say are related to the aircraft design or operation. The 737-NG (precursor to the MAX and also in service ~25 years) experiences one hull loss incident for every 4 million or so departures. Even their other fairly new jet, the 787, has never experienced a hull loss or fatality in almost 8 years of commercial service.

> very few animals other than these exhibit eusociality (humans aside,

Technically, humans are not eusocial, which by definition requires a biological division of reproductive labor. Most eusocial species actually have significant morphological differences in their classes (i.e. females that physically can or cannot reproduce).

Wilson tends to repeat the idea of humans and other primates as eusocial which I find confusing.

Eusociality and its evolution is indeed a fascinating topic. There are some great discussions on this from WD Hamilton (the study of led him to inclusive fitness theory and kin selection) and Richard Alexander (who discovered the only eusocial mammal - the naked mole-rat).

I'm also a huge fan of Wilson's books, but his most recent two evolution-focused works ('The Social Conquest of Earth' and the new 'Genesis') really double-down on the ideas of group selection. I guess this definitely qualifies as provocative, but it is certainly an extreme minority opinion, as you've pointed out. The writing is as eloquent as ever, but they're not books I would point someone to as a starting point on these ideas. His newfound doubts and critiques of inclusive fitness theory are not shared by the majority of biologists.

It's a very interesting topic and one that is widely debated these days as beekeepers face mounting threats from disease.

This is a good overview with some references that also worth digging into: https://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/darwinian-beekeeping

> My grandfather (a beekeeper) said the queen had likely stopped at each spot to consider it for a hive (leaving pheromones), then moved on, and the swarm landed at each place.

Usually (but not always) when you see multiple swarm clusters like that, a hive has sent out more than one swarm, each with it's own queen. The primary, largest swarm will contain the original hive queen while the others will contain virgin queens. If they happen to combine into one cluster, the queens will likely fight and only one will survive to lead the swarm.

The queen never leaves the swarm cluster, and has no bearing on the decision of hive location. The swarm sends out scout workers who inspect locations for suitability and report back to the cluster. Through a voting process, the workers decide and move as one to the permanent home.

If you're interested in this topic (which is fascinating), there is a great book on it called 'Honeybee Democracy' by the bee researcher Thomas Seeley.

> That said, my grandfather was a beekeeper and a father is a beekeeper and I'm a little uncertain about how much of their hobby is built on communal agreement, anecdotes, and personal experience as opposed to scientific data.

Partly because of the commercial value of honeybees to our food production, they have been studied to an extent not seen in many other organisms, certainly not most insects. We know a LOT about their behavior, although there is still much to learn.

What's really interesting is that beekeepers often neglect what we do know about how bees evolved to live so that we can keep them in ways that make our lives easier. This is often detrimental.

Looking at the link, this device measures formaldehyde in mg/m3. You'll need to convert this to ppm, just FYI.

1 ppm in air = 1.24 mg/m3 @ 25° C

If you're measuring 0.1 on the meter, that's about 0.08ppm (still pretty high).

I was also curious, as an owner of a box mattress and laminate flooring.

I used https://acsbadge.com/ to do a highly-accurate one time test of my home and was happy with the results. Piece of mind to determine if you have a potential issue or not. They also give guidance on how to interpret the numbers and what 'safe' means (results are in ppm concentration accurate to 0.002 ppm).

I am not aware of a consumer sensor that measures this accurately enough, but I'm also curious what is available.

I tested my home using a badge from this company: https://acsbadge.com/ They are not cheap ($60 for one test), but it's accurate to 2 ppb and will give you an idea what your chronic home exposure is and if changes are needed.

0.1 ppm is quite a high indoor concentration of formaldehyde. Most homes will not air exposure levels this high.

Just for reference, NIOSH recommends 0.016 ppm as the max exposure limit for a workday. CARB recommends a max safe level of 0.05 ppm. WHO recommends max level of 0.08 ppm for 30 minutes, etc.

0.3 ppm is extremely high for chronic exposure.

Indoor air quality means different things to different people. There are so many chemicals and particles that qualify as air 'pollution' that I find it helpful to rank how important they are. This article does a good job of quantifying the damage by pollutant, using a metric called 'Disability Adjusted Life Years': https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/which-indoor-air-polluta...

You can see that while there are a lot of things to consider, PM2.5 is by far the most dangerous. Surprisingly to me, mold is actually the next most dangerous, implying that indoor humidity control is also very important.

I'll second the LaserEgg 2. Great product and I've also had some eye-opening experience with cooking and indoor AQI. These used to be tougher to find in the US but I think you can get them on Amazon, now.

I bought an AQI / PM2.5 monitor and was shocked to find the same thing. I placed it in an upstairs bedroom, far removed from the kitchen, and the PM2.5 readings jump to unhealthy levels within minutes or cooking, even that far away. HVAC systems do a great job of circulating bad air throughout the home. I've also observed measurable CO level increases in the upstairs while running a gas oven, using a low-level monitor.

I've also come to the conclusion that a vented range hood is really an essential for indoor cooking of any kind. It should definitely be the #1 priority for any home to improve air quality.

The big particles are not what is most dangerous. Range hoods that recirculate air are not helpful. All kitchens should have externally-exhausted vent hoods, and it's even more important when using gas ranges, since a lot of harmful combustion byproducts are also being created (NO2, CO, etc). Sadly as you point out, this is far less common than it should be.

We already collectively pay for K-12 education (in the US). I'd rather pay a little extra and see progress equalizing opportunity in a world where complex skills are increasingly needed to succeed. Anyone who was able to go to a great school and get a great education without mountains of debt because mom and dad subsidized it should count themselves among the lucky. Everyone capable should get this chance.

Public universities are run like businesses now, with trillion dollar endowments and tuition expanding at insane rates. My own state school tuition has gone up 250% in the last 20 years, outpacing inflation by several times. Something needs to change to bring this under control.

> She makes the claim that DHA is required for proper brain growth. It's demonstrably incorrect.

There is considerable peer-reviewed research going back at least a couple of decades that would back up this claim, even if it has been elusive to demonstrate. It's widely accepted that DHA heavily accumulates in the brain during early life, infants require a large amount 'pre-formed', and insufficient supply is detrimental to cognitive and visual development. A quick pub med search will illustrate this rather quickly. The findings are so significant that most infant formula now contains DHA and ARA, in addition to LA and ALA. Even if mom does not consume animal meat, she still converts ALA into DHA and passes this on to her offspring during the third trimester and after birth through milk.

I'm a happy Google Fiber customer (Austin), and my neighborhood was deep-trenched. The results have been excellent, with near-zero reliability issues and a clean look on the street.

Unfortunately, not everyone is having the same experience. The perception here is that they are operating a shell of what the previous ambitions were. Service has been active in my area for close to 3 years now, but I have neighbors who have been on waitlists for months or years to get their house on the network, still being told to call back every few months.

It seems like any houses that missed the initial sign-up (now many years ago) are a crapshoot to ever receive service in a timely manner. Some streets that didn't receive enough sign-ups were never trenched, while adjacent streets were. Sometimes fiber is installed all the way to the house with months-long delays connecting to the network (splicing issues, conduit clog, etc). I've loved my service and it's been rock-solid, but there are certainly a lot of obstacles compared with traditional telecom providers.

You are correct in that the ways we commercially keep bees (our 'business needs') override the mechanisms honeybees evolved for defense against disease.

Swarming is just one of many natural behaviors that enhances the bees' ability to survive. This paper from a prominent bee researcher highlights 20 significant differences between how honeybees evolved to live and how we keep them today, all of which reduce the 'exquisite fit' with their environment:

https://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/darwinian-beekeeping

> Interesting that no self-cleaning (or mate-cleaning) behavior has emerged.

Actually, several behaviors have already emerged. Bees can groom each other to remove the mites, and they can also display hygienic behavior where they open up cells with infected larvae and removed them.

Apis mellifera has not historically lived with Varroa, but it's close relatives have and they successfully developed a stable host-parasite relationship with the mites. Wild honeybees left alone have quickly (a decade or two) adapted to the mite to develop this same stable relationship. Insect generations are short which enables more rapid evolution. In this case, the re-emergence of some now strongly adaptive alleles.

There are many beekeepers today breeding honeybees with these specific behaviors in mind, to avoid the need for chemical treatments. This is not the norm, but it's taking on more importance in the face of an escalating arms race - mites can evolve resistance to chemical treatments, too. It's also not just these behaviors that help honeybees live with mites. Many of the ways humans keep bees commercially to make things easier for us actually make things harder for the bees.

The microcontroller landscape is shifting rapidly. I think many of the things you've mentioned - no dynamic tasks, no filesystem, etc - are appropriate for some devices and some software but not all.

MCUs today are pushing the boundary on performance. We'll see GHz Cortex-M7 chips (already 600MHz+ today) running an RTOS in the near future, with external DRAM and flash. Users rightly want to push a LOT of functionality on them and that comes with advanced OS usage, including dynamic memory and threading. The developers using these systems are increasingly coming from an embedded Linux world as the performance line blurs, and POSIX is familiar.

I do both (walk + bus and bike) but it's a lot more walk these days even though it takes almost 2x as long as biking for me. The main reason is that the bike commute is uncomfortable and it feels pretty dangerous, even though it's not that far. This is a big problem in US cities: roads are designed and built for cars, while cyclists and pedestrians are an afterthought.

I grew up in a cold winter area before the modern age of technology and we found plenty of ways to occupy our time. For one, we still spent a lot of time outside! I remember fondly many winter weekends and evenings as a kid building snowmen, sledding, ice skating, having snowball fights with neighbors, etc. As an adult we (myself included) tend to view snow and ice as an obstacle - something to be looked at but not interacted with. I most certainly did not feel that way as a teenager.

There are plenty of other non-screen indoor activities. Games, books, being involved cooking dinner and doing chores, homework, etc.

> Office workers, sleepy truckers, hospital nurses on 10-hour shifts, cabbies, students, cops? They're not the only ones who benefit from a cup, or a few, Harkless pointed out.

Don't get me wrong, I love coffee. However, it may be more accurate to say that all of these people (including the athletes) are using caffeine to medicate their chronic sleep deprivation, which may be at least partly caused in the first place by caffeine consumption.

NBA basketball players are in a tough position because they often need to peak between approx. 7-10pm (local time), and they frequently travel between 4 time zones. Most individuals would be naturally winding down alertness during those hours, even with good sleep patterns.

Any organized reforms requires enough of the population to agree to substantial lifestyle changes and sacrifice, and that starts at the individual level. How do we expect people to agree to reduce meat consumption, or fly/drive less, or just consume less if we don't get enough of them to actually do it willingly?

Green technologies and innovations will certainly help but I'm not happy just waiting for some breakthrough and throwing money at it in the meantime. Arguing that individuals can't make any meaningful difference is also a cop out - if my small sacrifice won't help, then why bother? This seems like a terrible perspective.

> Individual action is merely pandering to the laziness and timidity of those who find it easier to stop eating delicious foods entirely than to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with them about politics.

What makes you think this is a lazy and timid group? It's also worth pointing out that many (maybe most?) who choose to forgo meat do it primarily for ethical reasons.

> 80-120g protein as a minimum. That's a fair amount, and far more than you're likely to get from vegetarian sources at the time alone.

The article says legionnaires and gladiators were eating 5000-6000 calories daily, with 78% from primarily wheat and barley. An average ancient whole wheat would probably be somewhere near 15% protein by weight. Daily consumption of those grains even on the low end of their estimates would contain well over 100g of protein.

That's an interesting point and one I haven't considered or seen any significant research on.

My gut take is that insects will be fine and would likely return to previous densities given a reduction in pesticide use and restoration of habitat. They reproduce frequently and in large numbers, accelerating natural evolutionary processes. There is no chemical control agent that insects haven't demonstrated resistance and adaptation to, given enough exposure time. History has also shown us that arthropods are the most successful animals of all time, emerging mostly unscathed through major climate shifts and extinction events that have decimated other animals. Insects have been flying on earth for over 400 million years (some today in almost the same form as then) and will likely be here long after we're gone.

> How would one donate money to these specific people? ... Why don't we support that more?

Insects and other arthropods are generally considered gross and annoying by most people. In many urban environments, less is usually considered better. Conservation efforts are a lot more attractive when they focus on big animals more like us.

There are some great organizations focusing on habitat restoring and arthropod conservation. Xerces in the US is one worthy of support to reach the kind of people doing this work -- https://xerces.org/