They have some powers, they got upset at Facebook and decided to flex a bit by sending one of the boys around, to invite one of his mates for a chat.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers

The person sent was the serjeant at arms. They carry a sword. Doubt they took it out but they also carry one of the House of Commons maces, which is gold covered and jewel encrusted, about 1.5m (4.9ft) long and weighs roughly 10kg (22 lbs).

Imagine some large, pissed off looking dude, dressed like he’s from the year 1415, kicking your hotel door in because you didn’t RSPV properly. Then being told hand over documents or we may stick you in jail (and you know the pretended it would be the Tower of London).

The 1,000 yard stare he must get when asked if he enjoyed London and how lovely that history must be.

Did you have healthcare before Russia invaded Ukraine and started murdering babies? Was it even on the cards?

It’s not an economic factor either. US health costs are much higher than other developed nations. It spends 17% of GDP, almost double of Germany (next highest).

Spending is without the positive outcomes. Infant mortality of 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births (17,000 extra dead babies a year Vs an average.rate), for context you are worse than Russia with 4.9 but better tha Chile 5.9). 23.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 births being 3 times higher than most wealthy nations.

The economic considerations are that you have a lot of heath businesses. If you socialised medicine and reduced spend, you may improve health outcomes but how would they pay for the very nice buildings they have loans for?

Finally, US doesn’t want universal healthcare as a society. Whilst they may be financially wrecked by costs and live shorter more painful lives, that is far preferential than seeing the low income family get the same free cancer treatment for their child.

Yes but not for long.

As (generally climate denying) people love to point out, wind and solar is erratic power generation. For this reason you need triple capacity Vs requirements.

This means that for a huge amount of time you’ll have excess energy, once we start to be predominantly renewables, battery storage is expensive. One of the solutions is to create hydrogen, also pumped hydrogen, etc.

Banking sector regulations require financial reserves that can be used to cover emergencies.

The EU revised the rules recently that meant banks could count the cost of its software as part of its cash reserves, increasing them by € billions each year.

You try and sell your copy of windows 10 and Norton anti virus to make ends meet.

Russia invaded Ukraine not the other way around.

Russia is threatening to attack commercial ships, NATO countries are going to restrict Russian naval moves through their territories to stop ther murder of civilians.

If commuting, I take public transport so charge on last bit of journey before (or after work) if needed or a heavy phone day.

At home/weekends - whenever it drops and I have time.

60 is useful because it’s easily divided by lots of small numbers, 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, other factors include 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60. This is why we can split our day so much.

The Babylonians popularised base 60. The origins of which were possibly derived from 2 separate groups in Mesopotamia, that started trade but one used base 12 and one base 5, multiply together to get 60.

You can count to 5 and 12 on one hand easily (12 by using thumb to count each section of your 4 finger). Using both hands you get to 60.

https://mathsciencehistory.com/2021/11/09/count-to-60-with-your-phalanges/

China also has counting to 10 on one hand, theory being you can indicate quantities with one hand full at a market.

I’ve been slowly amending my most like comments (leaving the most downvoted). Yet to see any come back, maybe Reddit didn’t value my top notch sarcasm Vs helping people with actually problems.

Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits different treatment of insured persons on the basis of their sex in connection with pension funds. This was a supreme court ruling, so kind of linked but not quite.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/253100

Interestingly, in UK and EU it became illegal to discriminate by sex for car insurance from about 2012, without very careful use of data - which doesn’t happen. It is allowed to be linked on things like jobs though.