There Is No 'Best' Seat On An Airplane, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: A good airline seat does not exist, bears don't shit in the woods if they're hibernating and most millennials in New Jersey live with their parents.
JUST PLANE AWFUL
Sitting Just About Everywhere On An Airplane Is Terrible
Let's get this out of the way: Former flight attendant and writer Beth Blair is not talking about $21,000 first class seats in her canonical Where Should You Sit On A Plane for the BBC. She deals in the class of the people: coach.
So where should you sit in order to make your time hurtling through the sky in a giant metal tube as painless as possible? As it is in life, there are no simple answers, just compromises.
Sitting at the back will increase your chances of finding overhead bin space and an empty seat next you, but will drastically increase your deplaning time. Sitting near the front, and closer to the wings will give you a smother ride during the flight and then afterwards, but will probably leave you SOL for stowing a carry-on. Sit in the middle and you might get the exit row, but then you're on the hook in the very rare event something happens to the plane.
Our humble advice is to not stress too much about it. The flight isn't your destination.
[BBC]
BORN TO RUN (THE DISHWASHER BEFORE MOM GETS HOME)
Most New Jersey Millennials Live With Their Parents
Look, we get it. It's hard out there for young folks. They're having less sex, not buying homes and never go on vacation. And now, according to this chart from Metric Maps, most people aged 18-34 in New Jersey — and to some extent the greater New York metropolitan area — live with their parents.
Surprisingly, most young people in the Midwest tend to strike out on their own while a large portion of the eastern seaboard tends to, uh, not. Pew points to wage stagnation, lower marriage rates and the echoes of the Great Recession, but we would also assume that higher education might also have an impact on where a young person lives. Maybe it's the smart thing to do?
BUT IS THE POPE CATHOLIC?
A Bear Doesn't Shit In The Woods If It's Hibernating
We all know that famous and elaborate way of answering in the affirmative. And yet, it turns out it's not 100 percent true. While hibernating, bears do not defecate. It turns out they form a fecal plug with the cells from their intestine that, well, plugs up the plumbing down there. Of course, when they do wake up, they shit in the woods — a big, fecal-plug-enhanced shit that must feel excellent. Reports say that they don't smell great, but hey, it's not like your shit doesn't stink.
[The Dodo]
copy that
'Roger That' Is Short For 'Received That'
You know all those awkward moments on the phone when you're not sure if the person understood everything you said, or if it's your turn to talk, or even if someone wants to get off the phone but can't find a polite way out? Yeah, radio operators figured that shit out decades ago.
Finished talking and want a response from the person on the other end? "Over." Finished talking and don't want to hear back? "Over and out." In either case here, "over" is just short for "Over to you." Makes sense.
What doesn't really make sense is the use of "Roger that." "Roger" isn't really short for anything. It's the phonetic alphabet word for the letter "R" — which is supposed to be a stand-in for "Received that." In short, people are saying "roger" to mean "received." To make things more convoluted "roger that" isn't a stand-in for "affirmative." It just means that you've heard and understand whatever was just last said to you. If you want to let the person on the other end know that you both understand and agree to what's been said, you have to say "Roger Wilco" — where "wilco" is a concatenation of "will comply."
So yeah, human communication. It's complicated stuff.
Previously on What We Learned This Week
Some People Refuse To Upgrade From OS 9
It's The Beginning Of The End For The Headphone Jack
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