I'm thinking either he used it as a canteen to carry more water further, or as a rain barrel to capture it, not just as a cup to drink from at places where water was readily available.

Americans use any/all of bedrooms/bathrooms/square footage/lot size

I think he was trying to say Biden got more votes or higher vote share in swing states than Obama did. I don't know if that would be true or not, but that's the closest I can figure to something that might be a cognizant thought.

Palworld, rent a dedicated server, anyone can hop in or out as necessary. Guns, legally(?) distinct from pokemon monsters to catch. Cartoon violence. Tons of fun to be had.

While that's part of it, it's definitely not "just" that.

Sadly, part of it is that the game has released in a fairly stable/polished state, which is considered a positive in the world of broken releases. The multiplayer also just works with little issue as opposed to some problems of yesteryear.

There's also a perhaps surprising pent up demand for good co-op PvE focused games. They blow-up hard but tend to fade out depending on gameplay quality. Part of this is the streamer effect, streamers like to play group games with other streamers because it helps cross-pollinate their audiences. Sales are also improved due to group/peer-pressure, if someone can pull in their friend group, that's a lot of sale multiplication.

I also think that the developers tried to make a game that's fun. A lot of decisions seem to have followed the rule of cool for this type of game e.g. pal mounts, firearms, catching people, automation of survival elements via slavery.

It also manages to have both a clear and guided progression system while maintaining the freedom for the player to just fuck off and do whatever they want while still at least partially progressing.

My only honest gripes with the game are how world saves are handled (they should use the Grounded system in addition to having dedicated servers) and that I for some reason can't find the exit button on the title screen so to quit I need to alt-f4, for the rare times I need it.

How do you propose doing research other than through informed consent from willing volunteers? Let alone that this whole chain of events even stemmed from a research paper! How are they supposed to do the research you said they need to do, when they're actively punished for doing it?

While that's true, there's also a huge difference from like 20+ years ago when they more often than not released games as a complete functional product as opposed to a "we hit the date" buy-in beta test. Games just tend to release with less features and polish than they used to, for the most part companies will keep working on it and get it where it needs to be so the final product is comparable, but it makes for a murkier cycle, buy in at release and probably suffer or wait and try to time when it's actually ready.

It should probably just say "TBD - Court". But it wouldn't surprise me if their system just cannot handle putting letters in a field that typically uses numbers.

If you really want a caving incident that'll give you nightmares... Nutty Putty

In the US, lots of stores are doing free curbside pickup on your orders, their employees pick it and bring it out to your car, in-store prices, no additional fees.

The Kickstarter wasn't just selling "the book", it sold four things (we'll get back to this) and wasn't trying to "get back at Amazon". I believe the Kickstarter was an appropriate option, even without considering his inability to independently bankroll the final scope of the project.

The four things:

1. A Premium Hardcover of the novels. This is the first time that the initial print version of one of his novels was released as a Premium Hardcover (albeit they did glue the binding), demand was very much not predictable and using KS helped to ensure everyone who wanted the limited print hardcover could get one (over 90k of each were needed).

2. DRM-free ebook of the novels. This was entirely risk-free for the consumer, they already essentially existed. This was essentially a pre-order, it is really only justified on KS because of #1.

3. Audiobook of the novel. Similar to #2, however I guess there was some minor consumer risk in that the audio needed to be recorded still, but Brandon does have reliable narrators and though he tried and failed at getting special narrators, that wasn't part of the pitch.

4. Swag Boxes. This is the biggest item type to justify KS usage, they needed tools like they get from KS to be able to properly manage the monthly subscription box fulfillment. This did have some consumer risk, because it isn't what they normally do, Sanderson couldn't bank roll it himself (even after the $40M Kickstarter, he's only got a 6M$ net worth) and it was largely an unknown in the book publishing space.

Back to the Amazon bit, it wasn't a selling point to the KS, Amazon isn't mentioned at all. He did decide to support competition in the Audiobook space as part of his fulfillment. In fact, all 4 of the novels are available on Amazon as print and ebooks, published through deals with his traditional publishers.

The way in which he decided to sell these novels (bundled content types and subscriptions) wasn't something his traditional publishers were agreeable to and the KS was used as a proof of concept for that.

The KS raised $41M dollars, it's the largest KS campaign ever by double. There's a 0% chance the project would have been any where near remotely successful (and enjoyed by fans) if he'd tried to deliver it in a more traditional way. He didn't have support of his publishers for that, he couldn't afford it himself and the only other option would be a business loan, which we don't know if he could have received a large enough one. Regardless of funding, the demand smashed expectations, less people would have got what they wanted in a traditional purchase method.

Yeah, there are bad board game companies on KS, take your complaints up with them. Which reminds me, I need to see when my physical edition pledge of Z from 2013 is due...

Once the FL colleges accept it, watch for a push to only provide it in the high schools, then the average FL students end up only being able to apply in-state. The colleges get pushed more conservative, and FL ends up churning out "educated professionals" heavily and deliberately biased as conservatives.