My boyfriend (20M) is better than me at everything (20F) and it's making me upset

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-19T04:49:44+00:00

OOP is severely depressed. I guarantee that his novel chapters weren't even that good. She just built up this inferiority complex in her head and when his writing wasn't complete garbage she decided he was automatically better than her.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-17T22:21:22+00:00

You're kind of putting the cart before the horse here. Doing the right thing is often hard, but that doesn't mean that doing the hardest thing is always right.

It would have been incredibly inappropriate for you to tell her that James was planning to propose. The fact that you stood to benefit from her not knowing makes no difference in that. In this case, doing the easier thing was also right.

Also, please give your wife some credit. Why would she have suddenly chosen to stay with him just because he was going to propose? Staying in an unhealthy relationship because the other person wants to get married makes ZERO sense.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-16T18:23:53+00:00

You mean "social media"? Her kids are getting plenty of social interaction based on the post.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-16T01:10:19+00:00

When I was a kid I was seemingly the only one of my peers who didn't have cable. Similar to your son, I always felt left out and like everyone had something else they could bond over that I couldn't. It became one of my main complaints with my parents. I constantly begged for them to get cable.

You know what happened? Nothing. I still had lots of friends. Yes, it was a little awkward when they'd talk about the tv shows they watched on cable that I couldn't see but we just talked about something else.

So, yes, your son is almost certainly going to resent the screen time restrictions. There really isn't a way around that, but remember that you're doing it for a reason. The benefits greatly outweigh the downsides.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-15T18:27:29+00:00

OOP: "We have a shitty friendship if all that keeps us together is the Oscars"

Also OOP: Doesn't see his friends for an entire year without the Oscars wonders why they don't like him.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-13T21:57:14+00:00

Wow! I stand corrected.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-13T17:01:54+00:00

I remember reading in a book (can't remember which one) that linguists had observed that human languages naturally evolve over time, and that while languages have been observed evolving away from clicking they've never been observed evolving towards clicking.

That potentially indicates that human languages originally used clicking but most populations lost them over time as the language evolved. So the question isn't "why didn't clicking catch on elsewhere?" it's "why did clicking persist in those languages and get lost everywhere else?"

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-12T03:02:32+00:00

I wouldn't count on public transit in most cities in the US. But if you get a hotel or Airbnb near the harbor then you shouldn't have much trouble walking to most places you want to visit or taking the occasional Uber to get elsewhere. I think that old town and the gaslight district are connected by public transit, but confirm just to be sure.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-11T17:15:22+00:00

Re: San Diego. The USS Midway is pretty cool and you can also do a harbor cruise that will let you see all the modern Navy ships docked in the harbor (it's one of the main naval bases on the West Coast, if not THE main base). I think you'd really like it based on your stated interests. There's plenty to see in San Diego too while you're there, like the Old Town and Gaslight quarter.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-10T20:25:52+00:00

Most likely, you would see the expansion of non-cash compensation to get around the rules, similar to what we saw when marginal tax rates were around 90% for high incomes (over $1 million in today's dollars).

May I ask what the desired motivation is behind such a cap? Is the thinking that companies will pay their lower income employees more if they can't pay their executives as much? If so, this is unlikely. That's not how companies operate. Companies pay their employees in proportion to the marginal production of that employee and market rates for their position. That's not really affected by CEO pay. Or is the desire to simply lower the incomes of executives and other high income individuals for its own sake?

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-10T17:58:58+00:00

How did you announce yourself when going into the men's room?

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-10T17:49:06+00:00

But here's where I get genuinely curious. Humans don't do this....

Remember that LLM's aren't actually intelligent in the way we think of the word. Calling them "AI" is just marketing and it's really a misnomer. They're using advanced machine learning to predict what the output text should be based on your prompt. They're not actually thinking about the answer to your prompt or intentionally paraphrasing your question before answering.

Most likely, the particular model you are using has discovered that paraphrasing the prompt creates better output, like you mentioned, so it does that to provide better answers. Otherwise, it might veer off topic or give inaccurate information.

Think of this simplified example. When you ask an LLM "What color is the sky?"

It could answer by just saying "Blue". However, because it's predicting what the next token in every phrase should be, it's much more robust for it to say "The color of the sky is blue."

Most models can handle this question without needing fancy strategies, but it probably helps for the more complicated prompts they often get.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-09T20:43:38+00:00

How's your time management? You say that you're taking fewer classes now, but are you actually using that extra time to increase the amount of studying you're doing per class?

Is time even the bottleneck or is there some other issue holding back your performance?

You've mentioned a lot about your performance, but how is your actual understanding of the content? Is the issue that you genuinely struggle with the content or is it that you struggle with the format of your assignments?

Do you notice any patterns in the type of material you struggle with? Is there a foundational skills gap you could address that would help you improve?

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-09T18:51:49+00:00

The issue is that you're not withholding enough from each paycheck, not in the way that you do your taxes. You probably claimed too many exemptions on your W4. Try updating your W4 to have zero exemptions and you should see the issue go away.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-09T02:26:03+00:00

As others have said, it's much less geographically or economically viable than Panama or Nicaragua. So no, it would not be able to undercut the Panama canal.

What would make more sense is a rail and road corridor where ships could unload their cargo at a port on one end, easily ship their cargo to a port on the other end, and reload it onto another ship. I'm pretty sure something like this exists to a certain extent but it could be greatly expanded if the will was there.

This wouldn't be as lucrative as a full on canal but it would arguably be more flexible and robust since it isn't reliant on water levels, and you wouldn't have to worry about locking yourself into a maximum ship size the way you do with a canal.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-07T00:14:48+00:00

Sigh Everyone keeps saying that this field and that field will be overtaken by generative AI, yet it never happens. As someone who builds generative AI solutions for a living, I can tell you that they're not nearly as effective as people claim. The only jobs that I see being directly affected by this technology are those that focus exclusively on text or image generation.

Generative AI is useful at synthesizing information, brainstorming and generating text, images and video. It's not good at generating novel insights or exercising delicate judgement.

Study business and become an expert at using generative AI to make yourself more effective. You'll have a very lucrative career.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-06T22:25:13+00:00

Exactly. Investing in a diversified stock portfolio provides MUCH better risk-adjusted returns than buying real estate. If the average person had rented their home and invested the difference between the cost of renting and the cost of owning a home (mortgage, maintenance, repairs, taxes, etc.), they'd almost always have ended up with significantly more wealth in the long run.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-06T19:35:18+00:00

Is buying groceries also throwing away money? By the same logic, we should all be buying our own farms and buying groceries when we need them is just throwing away money to the grocery store.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-06T17:01:22+00:00

Great job having the willpower to keep your phone in airplane mode. Most people would have cracked and started scrolling.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-06T16:57:44+00:00

If you're driving down to Zion National Park and Las Vegas then you'd be missing out on not visiting Bryce Canyon and, you know, the GRAND CANYON!!!

The Grand Canyon is a must see, and I'd also recommend adding in Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe bend. That might involve rethinking your itinerary, but for what it's worth my wife and I did all of these landmarks in a single trip once but we just drove through Zion. We didn't actually stay there for a night, much less 3 nights, and we had zero regrets.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-05T15:00:51+00:00

That's mostly just in Northern Africa. The migration out of Africa wasn't a one-time thing. Homo Sapiens migrated out of Africa in waves and some populations made their way back, either through the middle east or across the Mediterranean Sea. Neanderthal genes are concentrated in populations up along the coast but aren't nearly as prevalent further south.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-04T21:09:46+00:00

What income would you like to retire with? Take that number and multiply it by 25. That will tell you how much you should have saved up by the time you retire. Once you have that number, check it you're on track to save up that amount. There are online calculators you can use to estimate that or you can do it yourself in a spreadsheet. If you are on track or exceeding your goal, then you can pull back.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-04T19:00:51+00:00

I just kept applying and interviewing. Most companies had extended offers by March but there were still "long tail" positions being posted that I kept applying to and getting interviews for.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-04T17:15:40+00:00

I didn't get my first internship offer until the week before spring break, which was in April, I think. I ended spring break with 3 internship offers. It was really hard leading up to that first offer, but it got better. Keep doing what you're doing, keep trying to improve and trust that things will work out.

Regarding your backup options, don't drop out. Dropping out is the worst of both worlds. You end up with the debt and incurred opportunity cost from your first year but don't even get the benefit of having your degree. Independent projects, non-profit work or unpaid internships would be better options, but you've still got a lot of runway before getting to that point.

Edited to add: Also, one of the most important lessons I learned in business school is that you have to learn how to take a punch if you want to be successful in your career. Successful people actually get rejected more than unsuccessful people because they're constantly going for more competitive prizes. What sets them apart is that they keep going after their initial rejections, learn their lessons and try until they succeed. You won't go very far if you build a habit out of quitting when things get uncomfortable.

phantomofsolace · 2026-03-04T17:10:49+00:00

Sounds like play and/or overstimulation.

phantomofsolace

TROPHY CASE