Devial

No it isn't. Not in large airplanes. The typical takeoff weight of an A320 is in the neighborhood of 50-70 tons. The pilots do not give a shit if a few passengers weigh a couple 100kg more than the average, and that's a narrow body. A couple PAX being grosly obese on a widebody, with typical takeoff weights in excess of 100 tons, is even more negligible.

Fuel calculations and weight&balance is calculated based on assumed average weights for men, women and children, generally something in the neighborhood of 85kg for men, 75 for women and 30-40 for children (includes assumed average hand luggage weight as well)

No it isn't. It's debatable if the safety features are still necessary with modern wiring and electric code imporovments, but the features are objectively there, and they objectively make the plugs safer.

And the design of these features wasn't because of "substandard" wiring. It is because the UK used to use ring circuits in old houses, which are unsuitable to be protected by central breaker boards with breakers for each room, necessitating fuses in the plugs. That doesn't make the system any less safe. As long as a fuse is present, and the circuits are adequately sized, where precisely on the circuit a fuse is located is irrelevant.

Also, the fuse inside the plug provides an utterly unique advantage that no other country has: The fuse can be used to protect the external wire from over current. Centralised fuses are exclusively designed to prevent over current on the main, internal circuit, they don't give a crap what happens on the other side of an outlet. A central fuse protecting a 16A circuit will do nothing to stop you from pulling 15Amps through a 3 amp cable. A fuse inside the plug, appropriately sized for those 3 Amps, will in fact protect the cable itself, allowing you to safely use low diameter cables on low power appliances. This is particularly useful for extension cords. Other countries without fused plugs need to either just flat out mandate ALL extension and multiplug cords be capable of safely handling the maximum current of a household circuit (e.g. Germany) OR just ignore that rather major safety hazard entirely and just kinda hope that nothing bad happens (e.g. USA) (if you've ever wondered, that's specifically why chaining extension cords together in the US is considered dangerous)

Jup, that's a really good feature. You can get aftermarket child shutters for EU style plugs as well, but they require you to twist the plug before inserting, making them kinda inconvenient, and they have to be specifically installed by parents. Though I don't think that's the worst thing in the world. After all, we don't make any of our other products or home designs toddler safe by default. It's generally regarded as the parents responsibility to ensure their home is child proof before they get a child.

But the UK version of just having it in every outlet as a hidden feature that you wouldn't even notice if you don't know it's there is definitely the best approach.

(Though it does make low form factor UK plugs almost impossible, because every plug must have a ground prong, even if there's no actual safety need to have one)

A GFCI is the same thing as an RCD, they're just different terms. They both have the same function: detecting leakage current, and isolating the electrical connection as soon as it does.

They are referencing the lack of isolation on the prongs for US plugs. If a US plug isn't fully inserted, it's possible for both of the two prongs to form electrical connections with the outlet, whilst not yet being fully inserted.

This means a small part of the prongs which are now at 110V potential to each other is exposed, and could potentially be touched by a child, or cause a short circuit if an object gets into the gap.

So yeah, the electrical code in the US for household plugs is just straight unsafe.

You can see the way to do it properly in this post: Notice how the two L+N prongs only have exposed metal at the very tip, this, if they're inserted deep enough to create contact, it's not possible for any exposed metal to still protrude from the outlet.

Having switched outlets wouldn't make US plugs any safer, at least not in any meaningful way.

The individual switches on UK outlets don't really add significantly to safety, they're mostly just a convenience feature, because for an electrical plug/outlet to even be considered safe in the first place, it has to be always safe, whether it's powered or not. You can't rely on people switching off unused outlets instead of doing actual safety design.

The main factors that make US plugs less safe than UK ones is the potential for exposed metal contacts with a closed connection to the outlet, the lack of internal fuse and the lack of polarisation, and, particularly in combination with the first point, the comparatively weak grip strength and protruding design that make it easy for a plug to become (partially) unplugged by accident.

Best plug+receptor design in the world for electrical safety.

Worst plug design in the world for bottom of foot safety.

That's like a principal letting the bully keep all the lunch money they stole from someone, let the bully chose what lunch they're allowed to buy in future, in exchange for the bully pinky promising to stop bullying the victim, and then acting surprised that the victim doesn't fall on their knees in gratitude for this amazing deal

That's pretty much universally the view on freedom and rights that today's neo conservatives have.

They cry states rights and freedom when someone else wants to ban them from doing anything at all, but the instant someone else is doing something they don't like, they suddenly make up moral panics to justify federally banning those things.

That is to say, conservatives by and large don't have any principles beyond being selfish and hateful towards minoritied. Everything else, including fundamental freedoms and human rights is negotiable so long as it doesn't negatively affect them OR negatively affects the people they hate more than them. They just use terms like freedom or rights to virtue signal when it suits them, but are just as happy to drop the pretence the millisecond doing so becomes beneficial to their goals.

A good example is the free speech screeching of conservatives in the heyday of fact checking, Vs. Their tortured justifications and dismissals of Trump's blatant attacks on free speech and press today.

Or alternatively, many TERFs and their open willingness to draw support, and work together with misogynistic conservative groups and even straight up open Neo Nazis, just because those groups also hate trans people, all whilst turning around and claiming with a straight face that they're doing this for women.

The quote in the original french version is, at least iirc, let them eat brioche, so cake isn't even a good translation. More something like "let them eat sweet bread".

But translating brioche as cake instead makes the quote sound even more tone deaf and outrageous.

The ISS orbits at about 400km, or about 250 miles.

"Thousands of miles" away from earth's surface would be further than any astronaut, except for the ones on Apollo 8, and 10-17, have ever been.

Did the north not decide to abolish slavery federally until after war was already over? Because surely otherwise, the south would have fought for both of these things.