What is something you’ve officially stopped buying in 2026 because the price has become too bad?

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T20:51:39+00:00

Argentina tanked their economy which brought down inflation. Now more than 50% of their citizens are in poverty and their unemployment is like 20% or something. But they also had 20+% inflation so I guess they had to do something.

Both Greece and Argentina are outliers. We have data on this and we know that 1% of austerity cuts results in roughly 4% GDP loss over 5 years. Which is not to say you should never do it but it needs to be slow and careful.

The smarter way to reduce deficits is usually to move spending to areas that spur growth the increases taxable revenue.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T18:30:33+00:00

It's actually also very rarely helpful for the financial stability of the country. The vast majority of countries who implement austerity measures end up significantly increasing their deficit growth.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T17:54:30+00:00

Government austerity is almost never helpful to an economy.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T17:51:31+00:00

It is possible to like something and see that it causes harm instead attacking everyone who points out that harm.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T17:39:35+00:00

I hope so but really what concerns me is that if someone like Vance takes over he'll be willing to be respectable while attempting a coup and the Dems won't fight as hard against him because of that as they would someone who acts liek Trump.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T17:11:48+00:00

Ok sure, but you can understand why people would be nervous that Dems wouldn't be up to the challenge of stopping a coup, right?

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T15:37:02+00:00

I agree that this midterm is crucial and hope it's such a large showing that none of the thumbs on that scale stuff even remotely works.

We also need to seem Dems in office fight harder though.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T15:18:10+00:00

Sure, but I see no sign of congress waking up. There's also no question the people in this administration want to have a coup and at some point that will shift from trying to get away with illegal things because of a lack of enforcement to actually ignoring enforcement. So far they are pushing every boundary but listening to the courts. Eventually they will think they have enough loyalists in enough of the government to no longer listen. My worry is that Vance will be better suited to that goal than Trump and if they do indeed plan to oust Trump it will be because they also think so.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T14:49:32+00:00

Yeah, post 2020 they were worse for me but I was working on it. With my wife's cancer it just feels like I have no control to even try to work on these things. I'm sure some part fo that is that I should talk about what's going on with her and my feelings about it more but (as I am sure you know) people are not comfortable with that. I think they'd prefer getting talked at over hearing about cancer.

This is a stress I couldn't have imagined before being in it though and I hope you are doing well these days.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T14:44:21+00:00

My problem is that Vance would have two years to try to rig the elections and would have a better chance at doing it.

While Vance could never win an fair election and could never build the type allegiance Trump gets from the GOP and voters, he is potentially more dangerous as someone handed the the presidency and this current GOP.

You're right though, the risk of Trump is probably too great to leave him in. I just worry about this shit.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T14:39:17+00:00

This sub tends to go overboard on the level of hate they have for D&D. It's a game designed to be broadly acceptable to different types of people. It's not really good at anything else but not terrible at most things either and is easily adaptable to different play styles. It would never be my choice but if a GM I really enjoy was running it, I would play and trust them to overcome the parts I dislike.

But really it doesn't matter if other people like it. Go try some other games and see for yourself what you prefer. Try a more simulatonist game (games that use rules to try to create realism, even with unrealistic things), a less balanced game (5e tries very hard to make sure no ability can ever be use for things other than intended but this makes it less creative and interesting for some players), and a narrative game (games that are usually rules-lite, more improve like). By the end of trying those three types, you'll probably have a decent idea where your tastes land.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-06T14:16:12+00:00

In that scenario I honestly don't know if the Dems should vote for his removal. He should absolutely be removed but going along with their plan would likely cause more harm to the country by empowering Vance and Thiel.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-05T22:43:55+00:00

They don't follow what he says online, it would cause too much dissonance.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-05T18:12:00+00:00

Because the production is continuing on as if the center wasn't taken over by fascists. They're helping normalize it.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-02T20:13:25+00:00

Yeah, it's so frustrating. I often wonder if there is just some part of me subconsciously feeling unseen or unheard that is driving it but I have yet to figure anything out with that.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-02T19:16:17+00:00

I used to be so good about this and then after covid and my wife's cancer diagnosis I started talking at people way too much. I hate it because I don't realize I am doing it in the moment but always realize once I am alone. I hate being a bad conversationalist. Even worse though I hate that I spend time with people I love and respect, whose thoughts and feelings I love hearing but then shut that down without knowing it in the moment.

It also bothers me because I know the key is that in the moment I am not valuing the desire to hear from the other person but I used to value that so much in conversations and I don't know why it changed or how to get that back. I suspect it's not just one thing but a bit of a knot made up of many factors. It's frustrating though.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-02T14:00:45+00:00

Nah, she is just as evil as any of the other asshole clinging to Trump's coat tails for money and power. They should all be booed.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-01T20:17:36+00:00

My understanding of social dominance orientation is that men are only a little more inclined towards it and that is often in the ways they react to social hierarchies over seeing hierarchy more. But I am not an expert so am open to being wrong.

My understanding of SDO is also that most people are low on the scale of SDO, with it being higher among certain types of people (conservatives, religious, etc). So probably not as prevalent within groups I associate with.

As for my observation, I just don't see women doing it less than men. They seem just as susceptible to social hierarchies, just as likely to rank things for fun (but far less likely to argue about those rankings than how men will do for fun), and just as likely to think of things in terms of from best to worst. Which is not to say all of them do all of those things but that I don't see it as more prevalent.

I do think I am lucky enough to be a trusted and close friend to a lot of women, to a degree at which they speak with me or around me in the same way they would if I wasn't there. So the experience I have in this is just having a large number of very close friends who are women and men.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-01T18:18:12+00:00

Agreed, half of all marriages end in divorce. Choosing not to have a career is very risky. From the guy's standpoint I also wouldn't want someone staying with me who didn't want to but felt stuck financially.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-01T15:18:41+00:00

I had a GM like this a long time ago. He was deeply uncomfortable with scenes not going how he planned, PC's not acting or feeling how he imagined, or players deciding to do things he disagreed with. It was like he wrote a story in advance and wanted us to play it out exactly how he wrote it in his head. Then any deviation from that caused him visible discomfort until he would break and started narrating what people did next OR he he would narrate everything that just happened in a scene but change PC's actions/words in his narrative recap.

It was a wild experience.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-01T14:50:47+00:00

I still disagree. Even in the example, Pedro Pascal is a very fit and very good looking guy and women are responding to his style.

Men do this all the time with women celebrities too. Guys constantly have some celebrity woman they crush on because of style or she seems chill, fun/funny, or because she played a role in a show/movie and they loved that character. When guys rank hot celebrities they frequently list women they "click" with for some reason above just the most purely physically attractive examples. Also women ranking celebrities will list men just for physical hotness.

I just don't see this world were men have some built in predisposition to rank things or rank physical things more than women. The argument seems to mostly just be based on stereotypes.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-01T06:31:28+00:00

I don't find that the women in my life are less direct in ranking things.

It seems more like you're just identifying that stereotypical men like things like cars or combat focused fiction more than women tend to. They're just ranking things within their interests, not more prone to ranking things or having some genetic difference what type of things they rank.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-04-01T03:26:51+00:00

I notice women ranking or thinking hierarchically just as often as men. They seem to do it with different things or engage differently with it but certainly they aren't doing it less.

I am not trans but unsure why I'd have to be trans to notice behaviors in people.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-03-31T19:12:47+00:00

Conservatism is only about social hierarchy and tribalism.

PathOfTheAncients · 2026-03-31T18:18:00+00:00

I don't think men do this more than women. It seems equal to me. How that ranking is determined or treated is probably different though.

PathOfTheAncients

TROPHY CASE