Million, not billion. But the 20% deductible probably means that insurers can't get that money, because the way it's stated they'd have to pay out more than 20% of their (total) premiums for coverage to begin.

Reminds me somewhat of when Paul Bremer, Bush Jr's "vice-roy" in Iraq, decided to disband the Iraqi Army overnight, leaving tens of thousands of heavily armed Iraqis stranded without a job or source of income. IIRC, that's how the Iraqi insurgency started.

2025 feels like a completely different century than 2016. Whatever reasoning there was for the UK to do its own thing then, it's obsoleted by the new realization that the biggest partner and ally of both the EU and the UK seems to have lost interest in both.

Honestly, for a long time I thought of Rustaceans as the new coming of the "Java uber alles" and "Ruby can do everything" people. Then I saw uv for Python and I was sold.

Please, consider donating to archive.org. They are under assault right now, and they are the only outfit that records everything that might get lost otherwise.

It certainly worked during COVID. Republicans said they'd rather die than give up their unmasked freedom. Hard to ask their graves if they regret that, though.

Sort of. A unilateral tariff generates a trade imbalance in favor of the economy imposing the tariff. By applying commensurate tariffs in the other direction, you keep the trade balance you had before the tariff was imposed.