At least in this part of Canada, where this story originates, search and rescue is all volunteer with government help for equipment and such.
Just read an article in a paper somewhat local to this story on the last weeks search and rescue missions. 6 IIRC, all easy trails with people slipping etc and getting injured and often having to be carried out on stretcher by the volunteers. The government does mostly pay for the ambulance that picks them up, last I saw, there was a $75 charge for the ambulance.

That's sex, not gender. And sex is not so simple either.

You studied language in biology? Perhaps the biology of ships and what makes them "she"

And yet now and again, stars do come close enough to be measured in AU's instead of light years. Couldn't find the last article I read, though this talks about it and kinda disproves one pass, https://www.sciencealert.com/d... and here's a more general article, https://www.astronomy.com/scie...
With stars, a close miss can still be bad and quite possibly when the solar system was young and still in its star forming nebula, close passes were common.

Monarchy vs Republic just describes the head of government, not the system. Shit, here we could get rid of the King, replace the Governor General with a President with exactly the same powers and bang, we've changed from monarchy to republic with almost no change in how government works, namely Parliament actually governs and consists of representatives of the people who voted them in.
Kim Jong Un is a weird case, officially a President of a republic but the Presidency is turning into a Monarchy. The worst type of Monarchy where the monarch exercises all power rather then being a figurehead.

It's what I was taught in school. Either Monarchy or Republic can be

Some can check multiple of the above like Saudi Arabia. There are grey areas like N. Korea where the presidency functions more like a monarchy.
Monarchy or Republic just describes the head of government, not the type.

Not in Canada, where it is part of sentencing. Often see stories where someone is put on the list for X years. In this case, if he got put on the list, he'll be taken off.

Sadly, hope is the right word.

Of course it is not useful. It all depends on who has the power. I have a King, Charles the III, King of Canada. In practice he has close to no power, simply the power to advise, warn, and counsel. Also kind of a referee. So yes there is a tendency to think republic bad, monarchy good, but that is a simplification. Trade our Governor General for a President with exactly the same powers and no difference besides now we're a republic instead of a monarchy.

True.

I've never thought of it as a republic until your comment, but as I was taught in school long ago, it is a binary, Monarchy or Republic, and the EU has a President, not a Monarch.
All governments have a tendency towards evolving towards totalitarianism, the trick is to control that tendency. In theory a democracy with involved voters can do that. The problem is the involved and knowledgeable voters, which there seems to be a shortage of.
What a democracy can do is change governments before they go to far towards totalitarianism. As the saying says, governments are like babies, they need their diapers changed otherwise they get too full of shit.

Yea, but the courts move slowly.

Yea. The problems are that total crash will pull in their neighbours and partners. And when countries with huge military crash, they use that military.

How? They have two choices, the extreme and the less extreme. Tariffs aren't going away, they need the money and even the less extreme party is pretty right wing and depend on the oligarchs money to get elected.
As Biden showed, he kept many of Trump's policies and fixing the things he did try to fix takes longer then 4 years when the voters want instant fixes.
As others pointed out, the voters just want cheap gas and cheap eggs and actually believe people like Trump when that is promised.

While you are mostly right, there are problems such as economic gravity. Here in Canada, our trade has been sucked into America and it is hard to replace that trade with trade further away. One of the things currently happening is businesses deciding survival takes moving production south to America. What do you do about that, businesses want to survive and depend on selling to the States and even if TACO happens, the uncertainty is hard on the smaller businesses.
We're dealing with someone so out of touch with reality that it is hard to figure out how to respond. Diversifying trade is a goal but that economic gravity has a lot of pull.

Well, it is a binary choice, republic or monarchy. If not a republic with something like a president as head of state, then it is a monarchy with a monarch as head of state. Seems to me that the EU has a President.
Here's a definition from the American Heritage Dictionary,

A political order whose head of state is not a monarch and in modern times is usually a president.

Yes, but there a variety of unions of Sovereign countries depending on how much sovereignty is given up by the individual entities. The EU is different from most unions in that not much sovereignty is given up in favour of the central government.