When a product is marked up, much of that difference goes to covering other expenses... rent, employee labor, utilities, condiments (milk, sugar, cinnamon), loyalty/rewards programs, marketing in general, etc. So there isn't a ton of profit left after all that. After all that, maybe 10% is left.

First off, I have to correct an earlier mistake: a single die roll is fully independent from other rolls, but a sequence is not. If the ask is about the probability of rolling a sequence and you've already rolled some, then you can't ignore what's been rolled so far. It doesn't affect the next roll, but it does affect the probability of the sequence overall.

As for your nonsensical question, you could still apply Bayes' to independent events, but P(B|A) is just P(B), which cancels out with the denominator, leaving just P(A|B) = P(A) (which is to be expected, by definition).

Going back to the dice sequence: if dice sequences were fully independent, then P(3 6s given 6 6s) wouldn't be 1, but be (1/6)^3 , by definition. But that's silly, because we know the given here is that we already rolled them.

But we're now talking in circles. You insist on updating the expected scenario at each step (first, you ask about 6 6s, then about 5 6s, then 4 6s...) while I keep the information along the way (first, 6 6s, then 6 6s given 1 6, then 6 6s given 2 6s...). The answers were get are the same, but my notation preserves the original ask and the history of events.

The preservation of information between rounds is important, because it will impact the probablilty of arriving at that original end goal. The Monty Hall problem is a classic example of this: if you treat the second decision as independent of the first, then the odds for each door from your perspective becomes (1/2); but if you include the given information about prior events, then the odds of your first door being right becomes (1/3) and the other door becomes (2/3).

The asthenosphere, which makes up most of the mantle, is mostly solid. It's squishy, but solid.

The diagrams you're talking about are simplifications. In reality, magma usually rises through a series of cracks in the rock, filling out hollows within it as it goes. (These hollows mostly weren't actually empty to begin with, but they were weaker areas that cracked open under the high pressure of the intruding magma.) If the magma hardens underground, it forms one of a variety of intrusive rocks in one of a variety of shapes, depending on how much space it could make for itself by cracking open the surrounding rock, and these shapes show us the variety of ways magma can force its way through rock.

In some cases, the cracks are more or less vertical, and the pictures in your textbook are (while still simplified) more or less accurate, with a vertical-ish shaft descending through the crust and down to the source of the magma in the upper mantle. This is the case for most hotspot volcanoes, for example. In other cases, the network of chambers is exceptionally complicated with lots of back-and-forth - you can imagine something like an anthill - and would form a complex network of caves if drained of magma.

It's worth keeping in mind, though, that the mantle isn't actually liquid for the most part. We used to think that it was, because, well, it's where magma (which is a liquid) comes from, but it turns out that the mantle is mostly a squishy hot-wax-like solid. It only melts under volcanoes because there's some unusual condition (more water in the mantle -> lower melting point, less pressure above it -> lower melting point) present.

The entire crust, including the volcano, sort of “floats” on the Mantle.

The Mantle isn’t quite liquid, but it’s not quite solid either. It’s highly viscous molten rock under considerable pressure. It “flows” over very long time scales but you couldn’t swim in it.

Think of it like really thick tar. You could walk on it, but it’s not solid.

When running a national food chain one of the most important characteristics is making all your products taste pretty similar. Your prime customer is someone who comes in regularly and gets the thing he expects each time.

With coffee that means you want all your coffee to taste the same day after day, and year after year. Doesn't matter if your buyers bought extra beans from Brazil or Sumatra or Ethiopia because those were the years those nations had perfect weather and bumper crops so your bill of materials is down 15%, the coffee needs to be the same or close to the same every single cup.

So roasting enough that most of the flavors are coming from the roast is a really good way to ensure consistency. And because everyone's chain coffee is like that, they want their home coffee to be like that too. So dark roasts sell better and soon light/medium roasts become a niche product.

My old car dealership used to have a masseuse and snacks!

My old car dealership used to have a masseuse and snacks!

Starbucks DOES like their destruction! Haha

Awesome thanks!

Yep, I was going to mention that as well but I had Starbucks on the brain, and their MO is to crush, rather than buy out.

(Unless it's equipment. Then they do both )

They didn't force Japan to copy their alphabet

Or just buy you for a huge (to you) price. Happens so much in every industry.

Plus if they moved beyond mom and pop status and somehow kept their costs dramatically low, there's always a bigger company willing to buy them out to protect their spot.

This is all true and insider trading law always feels to me like it's being strung together in real time any time the boundaries are tested.

In practice, many executives of companies with a significant portion of their wealth tied up in stock will not sell as a tax mitigation measure, and instead borrow using their holdings as collateral to service their cash needs, so the question comes up less often than perhaps it otherwise would.

When did the world decide that dark roast coffee was the only choice?

I can only buy one bag of coffee at Costco that isn't dark or French roast. My all-time favorite cup of coffee is a Kona light roast peaberry, fresh brewed at the source.

The problem is more of a cost/economic one than a construction one - there are already plenty of freight rail lines that go through nearly all of the US’s varied topography.

Making it competitive with the established airline industry and actually getting the infrastructure built without descending into a California High-Speed Rail money pit is the problem.

Cross country travel is a “solved” problem with extensive aircraft infrastructure. A system that is slower and requires additional infrastructure is a hard sell without some very obvious and immediate benefits.

Also worth noting that because of everything you said, you actually DO see companies coming in and dramatically undercutting if they have a different business model.

• Dunkin and Starbucks have a similar business model so they have (roughly) the same markup which is relatively high.
• If you go to a diner, you'll find that not only is their coffee cheaper, but it often has free refills which makes it much cheaper. This is because their business model is even more skewed toward higher priced meals being where the money is made rather than coffee.
• Even farther along the spectrum, if you go to a car dealership to get your car serviced, you'll often find they'll give you free coffee because their business model is so heavily skewed toward the service fees for the car.

> Trains already mass over/through both mountain ranges.

They do, but not on routes that could support a high-speed train for the most part. Though OP has actually missed the most difficult mountains, which are the steep, uneroded peaks of the Cascades and Sierra Nevada. To this day, only a couple of rail lines cross them, and all of those involve some pretty curvy paths except for the ones through the Columbia Gorge.

It's obviously not impossible, but it's not as simple as using existing rail lines either.

Babies don't "inherit" immunity in the sense that it's passed down genetically. During the last three months of pregnancy, antibodies from the mother are passed to the unborn child through the placenta. The antibodies are what give them immunity. Also, after birth, breast feeding will similarly pass on antibodies from the mother to the child.

That's actually 2 different questions: Why hasn't anybody charged less?

They have. Little ma and pop cafes charge less for more and do pretty good against Starbucks in their little areas.

Why hasn't anyone taken market share?

Because of overhead which dictates cost as much or more than materials cost. And because it takes a huge amount of up front cost to start a chain. A company would have to offset the startup costs by charging more for coffee and their advantage would.be lost.

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The talent aren't marketing experts. Almost everyone is willing to be spoonfed 3x the deals for a 20% cut.

Over roasting is quite costly indeed.