Average Americans don’t care about the sanctions on Cuba. The biggest pro-sanctions constituency is Cuban-Americans living in Florida. That’s why both parties have held the line. No one wants to risk losing Florida in an election.

Loads of Cubans living in Miami would like to have a word!

Probably just doing it for the money. Not exactly a lot of economic opportunities in Cuba!

Soldiers carry a TON of stuff. Physical fitness and strength are a big part of the job.

The main reason soldiers carry so much ammo is that suppressing fire is so critical to modern infantry tactics. Without suppressing fire of your own you’re going to get pinned down by enemy suppressing fire. An immobilized unit is a dead unit.

Greed has nothing to do with it. Even mom and pop bakeries will give you a discount if you buy a dozen bagels instead of just one. Are you going to start shouting at them? Why am I wasting my time talking to you? Blocked.

Yes I know Bezos owns Wapo. That’s why I don’t read it anymore.

Do you think it’s his personal charity? I doubt it! Even if he doesn’t need the money he’ll see it as a matter of pride to make the paper profitable. Anything otherwise would be like a gardener letting all his plants die: embarrassing.

Economics 101: if you charge a trillion dollars for a newspaper and nobody buys it, your profit is zero. If you give your paper away for free and everyone in the world accepts a free copy, your profit is also zero. Somewhere in between the two extremes is a price where profit is maximized. This is the equilibrium or market-clearing price since either raising or lowering the price from this point will reduce profits.

Again, maybe you don’t understand, but $7 < $26 < $29. If you only need the paper for 1 day (or anywhere up to 1 week), it’s cheaper to pay $7 for the 1 week subscription than it is to pay $26 (50 cents per week) for the whole year. There is no option to pay 50 cents for one week and then cancel it.

If no one’s buying it then they’re not maximizing profit. Profit is maximized at the market-clearing price.

And no, it’s not “worth 50 cents.” That’s a temporary price for the first year. The price goes up after that. At 50 cents per week they’re almost certainly losing money. The goal is to lose money the first year and make money the next year when the price goes up. It could backfire and people just cancel after the first year. But that’s still more money than not getting the 50 cents per week.

If they’re overcharging you then don’t buy. If they set a price and nobody buys it then they’ll lower it.

No one’s forcing you to subscribe to the Wapo.

Volume discounts are everywhere. Ever seen “buy X get one free” deals at the grocery store? That’s all this is.

The $7 option is good if you only need the paper for 1 week. The other options probably lock you into a 1 year contract.

Gorgeous colour! A real beauty!

What’s stopping Russia from importing gray market gaming devices and repurposing them for drones? How are these embargoes even supposed to work?

It’s a cognitive dissonance thing for collectors. They want the preserved, playable copy but they don’t ever want to break the seal because that lowers the value.

I bet there are a bunch of collectors out there in possession of empty game boxes (with placebo weights) that have been expertly resealed and then submitted to grading companies for a seal of approval.

Yes, though then we’ll have to test your blood to make sure.

This really baffles me. What does Germany want with a bunch of obsolete Leopard 1s anyway? I guess they could break them down for parts and then send parts they already had to Ukraine, allowing Ukraine to repair some of their damaged Leopard 1s.

Most of the games I buy today are less than $10 anyway. What I want from games has really changed, and a lot of the time I’m just playing free Roguelikes rather than commercial games.

We didn’t buy most games when I was a kid, we rented them. There were countless games we paid $5 to rent for a week and that was plenty of time to finish the whole game and return it.

I only had one rich friend who had like a hundred games he owned. He let me borrow some of them but most of them I had already rented and finished myself. There were only a few games I ended up owning myself, such as Tecmo Super Bowl and the Legend of Zelda.

Some games could also be bought used for a lot less than full price (at stores such as The Games Exchange). They also bought games back from you when you were done with them!

If I could time travel to live back then as an adult I would rent everything and only buy a game if I foresaw wanting to play it long after a week was up.

They’re never going to capture Russia on foot. The way they win the war is by destroying Russian oil and gas infrastructure, their weapons facilities, and their command and control infrastructure. They win when Russia can no longer continue the fight, not by occupying Moscow (which they don’t want anyway).

Do you have computer or electronics skills? Ukraine needs tons of people with those skills to help build and set up drones. That’s what is winning them this war.

I love Zelda 2’s map. It’s quite large but doesn’t take too long to traverse due to the overworld movement. The forced encounter zones as you get further away from Hyrule Castle make it feel very epic though and getting to the Great Palace feels like a big achievement!