The increased price is not the result of tariffs, neither for the games nor console. That’s pretty much confirmed by them costing the same amount (converted + sales tax) in Europe. The console is (was, before tariffs) fairly priced imo, it is comparable to the steam deck + dock.

Is 80$ Mario Kart price gouging? Eh. The edit maniac in the comments here is right that video games have become cheap, maybe even too cheap, and that a price increase at some point was inevitable. 60$ was set as the AAA price before the smartphone existed, and was not always profitable as we’ve seen with the recent lay-offs.

My own 2 cents: I’m glad some company broke that unspoken rule (we ignore skull and bones for obvious reasons), so big releases have more options in pricing, too long have we accepted 60$ games with 20$ DLC, I’m glad if this means devs can just charge 80$ for a full game. Oh, and it’s good for indie games too. People may actually buy the shorter games with worse graphics they wanted so badly a few months ago.

Why would you use Ukraine as the example word instead of uniform?

I’m pretty sure I’ve heard “the Ukraine” been pronounced both ways often enough.

I’ve seen a good 15 minute essay-video about this:

https://youtu.be/nCe7Fj8-ZnQ

TLDW: English speakers increasingly use the consonant versions of “a(n)”, “the” and “to” for anything in casual conversation, just with a glottal stop to separate vowel sounds. This is then found more and more in written and formal language.

I believe it is at least partially the same hatred for cosmetic surgery, just amped up because it’s more impactful and they don’t understand why being trans would make a difference.

It was socially acceptable to make fun of “fake” people for years. Everyone knew what a Botox face looked like. Celebrities are ridiculed for not ageing gracefully and clinging to an image with 21 surgeries a year. And now these people are changing their entire gender and pointing at these people for being fake is supposedly wrong? Because it’s “necessary”, the same as the cosmetic freaks claimed? Why should it?

In their mind, trans people just need a reality check the same way they dealt with cosmetic surgery addicts, but society seems to protect and pamper them instead of pointing out that they are loved in their natural look. And instead of trying to understand, they double down on what they’ve done for years. Sunk cost.

Smokers have the most opportunities to litter.

I imagine few people create garbage multiple times a day while outside. The people who do only litter if they can’t be bothered to find a bin, so they probably rarely visit that particular place. So smokers, teenagers and truckers just have more opportunities to litter, leaving butts, wrappers and cans.

And once you’re used to littering when there’s no bin, you do it when there are bins as well.