Caveats that I took the tests in rural town in the Midwest over a decade ago and didn't think I saw anything unexpected for what it was trying to do: This is not first hand knowledge.

Past versions have been found to have questions that rely heavily on knowledge that wouldn't be obtained during standard primary education. The worst I'd heard about was knots used while boating. If you're not privileged enough to have that exposure, you're failing that one. No other reason to expect it there, so no reason to learn that.

So humans have historically eaten a lot of plants. No doubt ground nuts, cattails, etc were eaten by someone. Starvation is bad time.

As we've moved forward into modernity, the "most suitable" options were selected out of the others as farming is quite a lot of work. Most productive/easiest to grow win out in the end.

The issue with many of options we don't traditionally eat comes down to life cycles of the plants, effort to prepare for consumption, or unreliable quality.

As an example in North America, acorns are edible. The native people here before European colonization very much ate them. But: Oaks take years to mature, maybe 1 in 10 actually taste ok (the rest being bitter), are a bastard to harvest from the tree, and don't typically bare all at once (Just generally throughout a season) What this boils down to is, a nice addition to a harvest if you know what trees yield good acorns, and happen to be nearby to catch them when they start dropping before wildlife eats them all. By the time North America sees large static human populations requiring a large, stable supply of food, humans had found other options (Squash, Beans, Maize; things that became mainstream domesticated crops due to their being easier to farm) Ultimately, all crops started as wild strains, and human selection began bending them towards being more useful. Wild Almonds have about the same chance to not be toxic (even domesticated ones have some cyanide) but because they were selected for early (thought to be done accidentally as early agriculture develops), by the time humans need larger scale agriculture, they're "conveniently" ready to go.

Capitalism has little to do with it early on, but later efforts around improvement (hybridization and later genetics work) are certainly driven by profit motives just as much as a desire to produce more food.

Tldr: they're definitely edible. But since we didn't really attempt to domesticate them (because of timing or general human nature to make our lives less difficult), they kinda suck compared to more mainstream crops. Capitalism increases this divide as we apply modern understandings of selective breeding and genetics to the naturally occuring modifications humans were already driving.

Non-Plant based caffeine is a thing. You can chemically derive it in massive quantities, making it cheaper than extraction. I've read that synthetic caffeine tends to be absorbed quicker than naturally extracted caffeine, and is supposedly why some brands bother using both: longevity. Fast upfront hit from the synthetic, then a later hit from the natural. Not something I've ever truly looked into though. For the most part I just drink coffee, so it's never really been pertinent.

Having toured a few dairy plants in Missouri while job hunting a few years back, the pasteurization is doing some really heavy lifting. Very concerned about hormones in milk. But not so much about open vat homogenizers in excessively damp rooms or cleaning the road grime out of the hoses on trailer trucks bringing the milk in. Give it quick 48hr incubation on TSA and call it good. "Milk expires too fast to bother with any other testing" Wild the F in FDA is apparently the least fucks given part. "Post in notes in the room where they're milling stainless steel down for stethoscope bodies?! Those could be uncontrolled documents!"

Depends on where and what kind of place. There's a Taqueria near me run by a handful of older hispanic ladies and if it's slow and you ask about/try the less mainstream stuff they'll keep bringing out the random bits they're working on to see what you think. "You liked the hot red sauce? Try this green one we make. Did you like the cow tongue tacos? We made fresh chorizo today, try it." (I learned real chorizo uses cow salivary glands. Or they were enjoying freaking people out with that story. Either way, tasty)

I have a biology degree, but am A: plant focused and B: now a manufacturing engineer, because of you wanna do plant biology in the Midwest it's corn or soy time. And those are boring. So only marginally more applicable.

You're pretty spot on. The vast range of skin biomes directly impacts what sorts of organisms can live there. Even between a human arm, armpit, nose, and intestines you'll have different organisms making up the majority of the biome, and potentially even organisms unique to that biome.

Changes to the region or loss of competitors in other connected biomes can allow normally less dominant organisms to gain a foothold. Absolutely how one gets a yest infection. You can even just KILL EVERYTHING and still different organisms might colonize the area faster, resulting in a difference that's noticeable even at our comparably massive scale.

I didn't particularly know what organisms prefer the fur, feather, or scale coated regions of animals, but they very much would have the same type of dynamic populations.

Ballpark guess, given how there's a Salmonella risk associated with reptiles, I'd assume they have some biome that allows Salmonella to survive, if not directly thrive. Similarly with some varieties of Armadillo carrying leprosy.

As a manufacturing engineer, I'm mostly in an office when I'm not actively dicking about on the production floor or talking with my production operators. Most of my desk time is

1. Answering questions from people who aren't me about my manufacturing lines: specifications, output, inputs, could I do experiment XYZ if they sent me info. Subject Matter Expert is the term the company uses. Debatable if it's accurate, but it's the expectation.
2. Answering stupid questions for people who could absolutely open an app or walk and look in person but would rather be handed the info.
3. Collaboration with other employees: be it Quality as to what hoops I need to jump through to do something, providing process data relevant to a manufacturing defect they were alerted to, pestering other engineers to see if they've done anything like what I'm up to because it's a good shortcut, or trying to work out how to use a system I'm unfamiliar with.
4. Tracking output metrics: Management loves the same numbers tracked 5 different ways and having them reported to them constantly.
5. Meeting prep: either making a slideshow, crunching data to present, updating a project tracker (see above), or reading all the relevant emails associated with the meeting because earlier I super just skimmed them for anything I was required to do urgently. 7: Tinkering on things at my desk: familiarizing myself with new equipment/parts, testing an idea out of scraps/easily sourced parts before I ask our Tool and Die team to draw up a design for something sturdier/more expensive, or rooting through boxes for things I inherited relevant to that manufacturing line when I was assigned to it.
6. Messaging folks on teams: lunch plans, thoughts on recent events, or even just sending memes, gifs, ASCII middle fingers to people I like. General screwing around.

That's partly because they fail to market it well. Meat alternatives never taste the same. Trying to replace beef or pork or chicken will always fail to entice people that already enjoy meat.

It's better described as a new meat with new recipe/cooking requirements. You wouldn't complain about how much the assumed pork ribs didn't taste right if I told you they were beef ribs. You'd agree, because you wouldn't expect them to taste the same.

For manufacturing I've taken to using spelled out numbers when quantities and names both use numbers. Four 4s rather than 4 4s. Makes it harder for someone to speed through an email and get the completey wrong information.

Is there not one? Seems like I, a person, can't just publicly use a song for my own gains if an artist really wanted to stop me. A politician, also a person (albeit a wealthy one) is still targetable by the artist right.

Like sure, rich asshole just gets a slap on the wrist fine and it gives their lawyers more more to do. But there is a law about this right?

Production operator with IBS pooped on the floor in a clean room. Kinda ick, and they had to call the spill team to clean up the hazard, but not really the employees fault and no one is really upset. Later, IBS employee is elsewhere, more poop is found on the floor. No one comes forward. No one is identified. Management puts out a "Please use the bathrooms" email and calls it a day.