This isn't new, at all. They're just being more transparent about it. It feels shitty that transparency is met by outrage stemming from ignorance. Just buy from GoG.
As with pretty much any staple food. It's used as a filler. The reason you might not understand is that it can be expensive to eat only meat, veggies, etc. A cheap staple like rice, noodles, or bread is a good way not to die of starvation or at the least keep some money in your pocket.
If a staple food isn't part of your daily diet, that speaks a bit of privilege on your economic position.
Also I enjoy rice. It's neutral tasting but with a tiny bit of seasoning it's good.
I didn't grow up in a city, but currently live in one. I see teens take public transit to the mall and such. Wish I could have done that instead of relying on parents to drive me everywhere.
Honestly not that stupid. I have seen SD cards break. And for certain applications, like professional photography, having a more physically reliable medium is a good thing.
But I think cameras with dual SD cards for redundancy are more important.
Aspartame has about the same amount of calories as sugar (4kcal per gram). But it's much more sweet so you need very little of it. So there is a very tiny amount of sweetener which does contain calories but it's rounded down to 0.
Any Paradox game. Oxygen Not Included. Factorio. Civilization. Rimworld. Dwarf Fortress. The list goes on.
For me I think it's about having non-stop and parallel mini problems/puzzles/goals. By the time one task is finished. There's two more to take its place.
Wind? And binary cycle geothermal plants but not sure how common they are.