Physics degree, Caltech, then over thirty years designing airborne radars, including five years designing satellite radar & satellite communications networks (i.e., X- and Ku bands). At those wavelengths, signals transmitted by your phone (a critical part of all this) are not going more than 10-20-ish centimeters deep in the best conditions. So, from the perspective of mountains, RF signals are “line of sight” in that mountains are opaque to RF signals.

This is different from wireless signals getting through house or apartment walls, because they’re basically made of air. (And signals are aided by reflections from a myriad other surfaces around typical homes).

Apple didn’t patent “satellite phones;” it patented a satellite antenna switching system to reuse antenna components. Nothing is preventing other manufacturers from implementing general satellite phone communications.

He (Julian Sands) is lost on Mt Baldy. Mountains have crags and gullies and crevices. Radio signals operate line-of-sight, so they’re built where they’ll cover as much (but not all) area as possible.

Apple’s satellite feature uses a constellation of satellites, which orbit the earth and create a mesh pattern, giving essentially 100% coverage.

Prior to grocery shopping, you make a shopping list based on your needs and overall budget. When you go grocery shopping, you spend most of your time putting things in your cart, mentally keeping track of how much your total is. Then you go to the cashier and pay.

All of Congress spends the entire year writing legislation that commits the government to spending money (aka making the shopping list and putting groceries in the cart). Then they total it up in a spending bill at the end of the year (aka going to the cashier to pay).

It has long been argued that the portions of the spending bills to fund legislation that’s already been voted for shouldn’t even be necessary. To repeat: the spending bill shouldn’t even need to exist.

So in essence, everyone has already read 98% of the spending bill before it’s technically authored because they argued about (and read the text of) the individual bills that committed the government to spend this money before the individual votes.

The thing to actually complain about is that last bit of stuff they throw in specifically because they know the overall spending bill must pass (again, because everyone already committed to spending that money throughout the year).

The same reason renters pay rent to landlords: they owned it first. The native Americans have “leased” their lands to the United States via various treaties.