About the trash police - is there anything stopping a neighbour planting plastic in the garbage and then calling the authorities? Or just saying that the plastic isn't theirs, and perhaps the neighbour planted it? It just seems hard to prove either way.
I enjoyed The Incredible Machine as a kid, the modern equivalent (though still 10 years old) is 'Contraption Maker' - https://store.steampowered.com/app/241240/Contraption_Maker/ - which was designed by the same person. Glad to see he's still going all these years later!
This is not 'Incredible Machine' related, but while I'm here, I'm working on an engineering-adjacent game where you build and automate a zoo full of spooky monsters. Might be of interest to some! https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zooke...
I very much enjoyed RPS in the days of the original four writers, and also when Quinns was contributing, though I haven't kept up so much in the last eight years or so.
Eurogamer seems to cover the games news and reviews in the way I like best right now, and Digital Foundary's writing and videos that lean on the more technical side of games are just excellent. (I believe DF also have an arrangement to do some content for RPS, so it's probably being shared around as it should.)
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesliga#List_of_champions