No, they do – it’s just not a codified constitution like almost all other countries have.

Uncodified constitution

Proponents of the idea believe that a constitution that has evolved bit by bit over a long period of time and across a bunch of different charters and unwritten agreements/customs is stronger that one that’s done all in one shot. You’ll see the unflattering metaphor that “a tree is stronger than a weed”, which seems a bit unfair but it’s reasonable point – if not one that’s beyond argument or anything.

Commonwealth countries are politically conservative, small “c” and not big “C”, as the general attitude is “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, even if it’s objectively kind of stupid”. There was a good reason for every one of the decisions that led to today, don’t &^%$ with it, just in case.

The key word in “constitutional monarchy” is “constitutional”, not “monarchy”. The monarch must follow the parliament’s requests, and not doing so is unconstitutional. Parliament is sovereign, at least in all of the countries that derive their monarchy from the UK’s.

Outside of the UK there wouldn’t be a fight anyway: in all the Commonwealth countries (except the ones that have since gone fully republican), the monarch has a representative called “the governor general” who is selected by the Parliament and recommended to the monarch at which point see above. The monarch has to take the advice of who is to be their governor-general. Issues basically never get to the monarch for them to mess anything up. The loyal-to-his-country deputy gets first crack at everything the monarch does in theory and has no reason to go against Parliament. If somehow the g-g or the king did speak out, it’d be a legal mess but everyone would ignore them. Practically we’d either get ourselves a new monarch or just say to hell with it and become a republic.

To answer your specific question then, yes, it’s pro forma. The monarch’s role is to be the embodiment of all legislative, judicial, and executive power, in a fairly close analog to what the American Constitution is. But the Constitution can’t exercise any of those powers and the monarch can’t either. It’s just a historical oddity that they can walk and talk, unlike a piece of paper.

Nice find! They had me at “the Devil’s Balls”.

Actual footage of the ice spirits:

Commander Keen is probably the one that I liked the most that is also well known.

My personal favorite was Bass Class, which is weird because I’ve zero interest in real-life fishing, then or now.

The identification depends on how correct Jerome’s rescuers were in thinking his amputations were not completely healed and so were recent. Gamby showed up across the bay four years previous and was missing his legs then.

Well, yes – in the 21st century women should be encouraged to enter traditionally male-dominated fields like excavation and mining.

Though the split happened because the Soviets thought they should be master of all Communist countries and the Chinese had different ideas on the topic.

Yes, the Diplomatic Revolution for one.

Spoken like a true burglar.

Good thing he didn’t throw his drinking problem overboard instead.

Fingers crossed it’s Thingumy and Bob.

In fact he covered it on the same album! This one went to #1 on the US Charts and “Beyond the Sea (La mer)” went to #10.

In the case of velocity, all neutrinos move at essentially the speed of light (they have the slightest amount of mass which slows them down, each of the three types of neutrino a different mass compared to the other two but still very, very, extremely low masses). Only neutrinos less than 2 eV are noticeably slower than light, and that’s quite a low energy. The almost-exactly-light-speed has been confirmed by, among other methods, comparing bursts of neutrinos from supernovas and other intense sources to the photons coming from the same sources.

The photons move at the speed of light by definition and MeV and GeV energy neutrinos show up in detectors at the exact same time down to as close as we’ve been able to measure it (roughly one part in a billion, I think it is).

Yes, but it doesn’t matter enough. The Square-cube law means that the mass being supported goes up faster than the area of the layer doing the supporting does. So each additional brick on the bottom still ends up carrying more weight as the pyramid gets taller.

Depends on the compressive strength of the material. Sooner or later the weight of the pyramid above the base exceeds the base’s ability to support it. Considering that a mountain is basically a stone pyramid, Everest has to be in the neighbourhood of how tall you could go – call it 10-12 kilometers high. Other materials would do better.

I loved that movie especially because his parents in it are duplicates of my parents. I even had a copy of the Bay City Rollers album that had the original version of this song, when I was a kid in a very Scottish immigrant house.

I had a quick re-read I think you might be right! I’m wondering if I picked it up from the movie instead.

Oh, I’ve read all of his stuff! It’s a red letter day for me when a new story is published. None since 2019, though.

My odd choice of his would be Seventy-Two Letters. I find him most interesting when he follows through in the consequences of an old disproven scientific theory or theological explanation of the universe, and he manages to fit two of them in here.