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I would say both New Orleans and Memphis should be in the East, since the US regions, as I learned them in school, would say both of those are in the Southeast while, for historical reasons, Minnesota is in the Midwest. Obviously, that would make the conferences unbalanced, so we could move Milwaukee or Chicago into the West.

If they sell you pay $5 for the drug and the next person in line pays $2k for the same drug, they are making $1k per patient. They are also writing off the $3k that they could be charging you as a charitable contribution, so they don't have to pay taxes on the income. They hope that if they keep you alive, some day you will make enough money to pay full retail price.

It would be a nice gesture, but I will believe those promises of support when they have teeth to them.

What happens if they stop doing it? Do I have to sue them for breach of contract, have to prove actual damages, and settle the class action lawsuit for $5 in store credit?

What happens if the company goes bankrupt or creates a new subsidiary to service the product and the subsidiary folds?

What level of support are they obligated to provide? What issues must be fixed and how promptly?

The National Labor Relations Board recently ruled that Amazon was illegally blocking delivery workers from unionizing. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/08/labor-board-confirms-amazon-drivers-are-employees-in-finding-hailed-by-union/

In regards to SSX, after the success of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater remake, I am surprised that EA did not counter with a remake of SSX Tricky. I love how accessible the SSX controls are while still offering plenty of depth for people who want to optimize their runs. It is too bad that EA Sports seems to be focused on simulationist sports games (and live services).

I would assume some of that is acqui-hiring. Google acquires a company and looks at which employees are the outstanding talent. The best employees are poached for projects Google cares about while the rest are left to keep the product going without the thought leaders who built it.

I thought that the uproar about horse armor was that it was the first pay-to-win DLC. The armor was not just cosmetic but actually provided a stat boost to your horse. The accusation was that the developers had made it too easy for enemies to kill your horse and decided to patch the game to fix it but made players pay for the patch.

I would go a step further and say that it should not be a stock purchase but partial nationalization. The government is not getting shares that will be sold later. The government is getting a right to appoint part of the board of directors. Every time the company issues a dividend, buys back stock, or engages in other activities to return value back to the shareholders, a proportional amount of money must be paid to the treasury. It only makes sense that if a company is so big that its failure is going to hurt society as a whole, it should be owned by society.

It is the same as the 5/5/2 variant for the original game, right?

Note with Stardew Valley: it is not unplayable without a controller, but if you have clumsy sausage fingers like me, the poor touch controls really took me out of the game.

Unfortunately, living in the US, I would not take a job with a pension because the (private) pension system cannot be trusted. I remember the 00s when many company pension accounts went bankrupt, because companies were no longer offering it as a benefit and it was easy enough to screw over retired past employees. Companies would take poorly performing divisions and their pension plans, spin them off as a new company that would quickly file for bankruptcy.

I would not trust a pension without it being insured by an organization like the FDIC. Even then, I would be afraid that my pension would not cover living costs due to inflation.

Luckily there are alternatives. I have a 401k, which should give me a steady flow of inflation proof dividends… until a market downturn wipes it out. If that happens, I can fall back to Social Security. Don't believe the baloney that the government will ever let Social Security go bankrupt. They will just cut down benefits.

That is why they make you lease the battery. You cannot swap out your old battery, just the battery you are leasing. Your lease payments include the cost of them replacing batteries.