With prescriptions, it is not about what the customer wants, it is about what brands the insurance wants to cover (and getting a doctor that does not write a brand specific prescription). If an insurance company only covers a weird brand of a common (but expensive) medicine, the customer either has to hunt for a pharmacy that has it in stock, wait for their local pharmacy to order it (in either case delaying when the insurance company has to pay for it), or buy the in-stock brand without any insurance coverage. The insurance can still claim they cover the drug while paying less for it.

At one point, I was on a medicine that had a very high co-pay for the brand name and would not cover the generic. It was so high that it was cheaper for me to buy the generic uninsured instead of paying the co-pay.

Maybe it was not a defining moment for the world at large, but it was a defining moment for the US.

It broke the 90s economy. It created a lot of doubt in the US stock market about future terrorist attacks, causing an immediate run to pull out money, and starting a very quick, sudden recession.

As an immediate aftermath, all US airlines had to pause operation. When flights resumed, airlines had to find a way to make lost revenue, kicking off rapid enshitification. Though most airlines did not collapse, they hit hard times, further feeding into the collapsing market.

Prior to the attacks, the US was in a relatively peaceful period. In response to the attacks, the US started yet another war against the Middle East and has been at war with one country or another for almost 25 years.

It also justified the government to create a giant system to monitor people worldwide. The government set up secret courts to try Americans. People outside the country, were simply kidnapped and detained in Guantanamo Bay.

Now, many of these things are simply cyclic progressions or had been brewing long before September 2001, but the event creates a very clear border between before and after.

The issue is that you went to a fast food store location in a city. I have never gotten edible food at an urban location of a fast food chain, even in the 90’s.

The biggest issue with it was the branding. It should have been called the “Vision Dev Kit”. It was too expensive for most customers and did not have a killer app. They should have only been selling to industry partners or at least only to registered developers.

Then cut the price with the same (or even worse) specs and call that the initial public release.

I feel like many “cost of living” type laws need to be pinned together. For example the 401k yearly contribution limit and tax brackets should be defined as a multiple of minimum wage and not raised automatically each year without it.

I don’t understand why they are going to give the three worst teams worse odds? To stop tanking? Giving the 10 worst teams the same odds will solve it. At this point, they are just making it harder for terrible teams to improve.

There could be a big impact on the series from Jokic confronting McDaniels for running up the score with a buzzer beater. Jokic may be slapped with a suspension, but so could some of the guys on the Wolves bench since the fight was so close and there is not much space between “stood up to see what was going on” and “ran into the fight going on a foot away”.

I am not a lawyer, but I imagine the people bringing the lawsuit are going to have some problems in court. First of all, they will have to prove how much of the tariff paid directly by Nintendo of America was passed to the consumer. All they know is that at the same time as the tariff was announced, Nintendo launched a new system for a higher than expected price and increased the MSRP on a couple hardware SKUs. They could have raised prices due to non-tariff costs (AI gobbling up hardware, inflation). They could have raised the price due to indirect tariffs that they will not get refunded (increasing cost of parts for delivery trucks). They could have raised prices for no reason at all, knowing that people would just blame the tariff while they pad their profits.

Even if they show that tariff costs were directly passed on to the consumer, why do the consumers have a right to Nintendo’s refund? If Nintendo gets an income tax refund, they don’t send the money to customers. When a game is an unexpected hit, they don’t have to give everyone back money because the fixed development cost was spread across more copies.

And what about items that Nintendo paid tariffs on but did not raise the price? Presumably, the settlement that Nintendo gets from the government is going to be less than what Nintendo could have made if instead of tariffs that money could have gone into developing more games. If they lose the trial, can they turn around and demand consumers pay them 10¢ for every physical game they bought in the last 12 months?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Bulls don’t have a front office. Presumably, Donovan saw the job requirements for the new front office and decided to move on. I assume that those requirements included things like “trading talent for picks” and “ability to draft well”.

According to the article he declined an extension and let his contact expire. The Bulls are saying that they really wanted him to stay with the team but he was not interested.

A Short Hike lives up to its name. It is a sandbox platformer about a kid exploring a mountain to try to find the one place with cellphone reception. The story seems a bit shallow at the start, but the ending is quite touching.

I beat it in one morning, while stuck in an endless conference call. I did not 100% all of the mini games or complete all of the side quests, but I did finish the main story and (I think) I explored the whole mountain.

Sex crimes can be very much a grey area going as far as to convict the victim. For example people that got convicted of child molestation because they were in a teen in a physical relationship with a partner their own age and got caught by their partner’s parents who ran to the police yelling that “my child is pure, innocent, and would never consent to such things!”

Or the person charged with indecent exposure because they were cooking naked not realizing that someone was taking a short cut through the back yard with a child who liked to peak into windows. If I recall correctly, the person was able to get the conviction overturned because they had a very good lawyer who argued the room was only visible from the land the home was on and the homeowner had clearly marked the area as private property. Even then, it was only an appeals court that listened.

I am not saying that most (or even many) sex crime convictions are not justified, but I would at least let someone explain themselves before I totally cast them off.

If Porzingis has a good day, he is hard to stop. If Curry locks in, it is pointless to defend him because his aimbot will curve the ball into the hoop. The Warriors will have a chance to win some games. It is likely that they will get 1 or 2 wins in series and might even win more.

Also, you cannot discount Playoff Fouls Draymond Green. It is possible that he goes off and has a Lamello Ball type game.

Ace Attorney (a.k.a. Phoenix Wright)

It peaked in the first trilogy. Each game built on what was good about the previous game while adding a new mechanism that flashed out another part of the game.

The second trilogy of games collapsed trying to follow it up. Both the writing and gameplay show the same issue. The games are trying to be a clean break with new characters and powers but the game designers were afraid that they might scare away fans of previous games, so the old characters and gameplay all come back to make an appearance. None of it works. The returning characters and gameplay are all very brief and shallow without the progression they got in their original games, but they take up so much space that the new characters and mechanics don’t have room to build up over the course of 4-5 cases in a game.

I am now trudging through the two prequel games. The game designers finally had the determination to make a clean break, but it seems that they lost the magic of the initial games. There are new characters and new gameplay. There is too much plot, not enough game. There is too much (bad) writing between player interactions and when they happen, the game is more hand holdy to make sure the player is given a bucket of clues about what to do next. And there is no reason to make the game easier, since there is a new easy mode that plays the game for a player if they ever get stuck.

In my opinion, Pokemon peaked in gen 2. Why? Because every game after added new gimmicks that distract from the core gameplay instead of adding to it. What is the core gameplay? As the motto goes “Gotta Catch 'Em All”. Gen 1 had 150 monsters for the player to find and catch. Gen 2 added time of day specific spawn rates and Pokemon that you could only get by breeding. And that is it. None of the further games made the monster collection any more interesting until Legends Arceus, a spinoff title. The future games added fashion shows and secret tunnels (at least, I don’t think so. I have not played all of them).

Pokemon Home is, obviously, a game changer, but it is something outside the game and too little, too late for someone like me who fell off the franchise.

That statistic does not show that AAA games are not dominating. It could just mean that there are more than 20 AAA games selling well. From the article, they note that “the top 79 games to account for 80% of total PC playtime”.

Oh boy does that headline have nothing to do with the article. The article does a good job of explaining all the hard work Magyar did, but it is a bit silly to suggest that it is a temple for what could be done in Russia. For example, it does not lay out how a candidate can avoid all the tripping hazard windowsills that litter the Russian halls of power.

If the Celtics win or the Knicks lose tonight, the Celtics still secure the 2nd seed and can sit the playoff rotation against the Magic on Sunday.

If the Celtics drop both games and Knicks win both of their remaining, the Knicks will get the 2nd seed and push the Celtics to 3rd.

I would, if given the opportunity. I assume that by preordering, the game is automatically added to my account and maybe even installed on my system on release. That way, if I see an interesting game, I can mark to play it when it comes out without worring about release dates or forgetting about the game while waiting for it to release. Unlike a paid game, I am not out any money if the game is not as good as advertised.

Coincidentally, Thinking Basketball just posted a video about players playing fewer games. He thinks it is because players are running around the court more and having to make more sudden changes in direction, putting too much wear on their legs.