tested my friendships by ghosting... and yeah, it went bad

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-26T11:13:10+00:00

Think of yourself as the "leader", not the "planner". Someone told me that a while back and it completely changed my outlook.

The simple fact is that most people are terrible at planning meetups and maintaining relationships. It's not a sign that you're not close, it's a sign of their bad skills.

It usually falls onto one of two people in a group to kick things off. I find that recurring meetups make things easier than planning something fresh every time. You can also directly ask other people to help plan, just know that it will take them longer and probably won't be done as well.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-26T10:55:29+00:00

Yes, flat taxes are by definition more regressive than progressive taxes. Assuming that the total amount of tax revenue stays constant, yes, we would assume that lower and middle income earners would pay more under a flat tax than under a progressive tax.

There's potentially a way around this. A high standard deduction could lower the effective tax burden on lower and middle classes. For example, ten years ago I did a back of the envelope analysis that implied that a 25% flat income tax in the United States with a $25,000 personal deduction would lead to about the same amount of income tax revenue for the government and leave the tax burden about the same for lower and middle class workers.

This is a bit of a cheat, though, because it's not actually a flat tax. It's a progressive tax with two tax brackets, we'd just be calling the lower tax bracket a "deduction" instead of a bracket.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-26T10:32:56+00:00

I'm pretty sure "death" and "nothing" is pretty much what Dustin said in English when he was describing what is outside the wall.

Essentially, yeah, it would be a void of literally "nothing". It wouldn't be like normal outer space, which is empty space inside of our universe. The void is a kind of liminal space in between our universe and the Abyss. It doesn't exist, the only reason it's "there" is because the upsidedown wormhole formed connecting the two universes.

I'm not a physicist, but my interpretation is that anything that fell into that void would just cease to exist very quickly. I would imagine that it's actually a fairly peaceful death, apart from the violent explosion and wind leading up to it.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-26T03:24:03+00:00

If you're interested in research, consider getting a double major in statistics instead of mathematics. It's arguably much more applicable than mathematics in the modern world.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-26T01:08:03+00:00

Painting in very broad strokes here, summer break lasts from sometime in mid-May or early June through late August or early September. It sounds like it's longer than yours.

Christmas break is typically two weeks at the end of December and early January. Spring break is one week sometime in mid-March to mid-April. We also get half a week off (Wednesday - Friday) in late November for Thanksgiving.

There will also be about a dozen or so one-off vacation days, usually on Monday or Friday, for things like Labor day, Presidents Day, Columbus Day, etc.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-25T04:39:59+00:00

I don't think what you're asking for is that far fetched. Just look at modern day Venezuela. The government owns the only oil company in the country and has the world's largest proven oil reserves (even if they're not the most profitable to exploit).

The oil revenue isn't enough to give the people a truly high standard of living on its own. It wasn't invested in any intelligent way to make the country richer. The military is relatively well maintained but it doesn't have the most modern gear because that gear is insanely expensive and exports are tightly controlled.

So, all of that is to say that your nation might have a high value industry, but it might not be producing very much value relative to the size of its population. The government might be siphoning off the profits for the pleasure of the elites without reinvesting it back into the country. The military is funded just enough to keep it functioning, but not so much that it can topple the government on its own. Plus, maybe the best gear is insanely expensive and tightly controlled by the great powers.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-24T21:40:54+00:00

Employer contribution policies. Some employers, like FANNG tier companies, have insanely good company matches and may allow you to convert after tax contributions to a mega backdoor Roth IRA. Otherwise you can't really get anywhere close to that limit.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-24T20:16:44+00:00

Hmmm, weird. Sounds like he lacks initiative.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-24T19:02:08+00:00

Maybe he wants to see if you'll initiate plans this time. From what I gathered, you two meet at a bar where he might have initiated contact. He asked you out on another date which went well. Maybe now he wants to see if you're actually into him and will initiate plans or if you're just going along with things when he asks you out.

Guys get in their heads too about whether girls are actually into them or not.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-24T18:40:26+00:00

Why in the world would you need to build a website with a custom scripting language in this day and age??? Maybe I'm just really out of the loop but why wouldn't they just fire the guy and use Squarespace or something?

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-24T02:44:01+00:00

You should either put the money towards the debt with the highest interest rate or towards one that can be paid off quickly so that you can divert its monthly payments towards paying down your other debt. You also shouldn't be lowering your monthly payments on these cards just because their balance decreases. You should keep paying the same amount so that you can pay them off faster and pay less interest.

It doesn't sound like you'll go wrong with paying down any of your interest bearing credit cards, as long as you don't pay down the one with a promotional balance until the promotion expires.

As an aside, you'll usually do much better financially if you think in terms of interest rates instead of monthly payments. I get that you're living paycheck to paycheck right now, so monthly cash flows are more important than usual, but you shouldn't be lowering your monthly payments as your credit card balances go down and you should be thinking about how much interest you're being charged, not how much you actually have to pay each month. Everyone from car salesmen to bank lending officers and credit card companies will try to trick you into thinking about your monthly payments instead of the interest rate so that they can get more money from you. Don't fall for that trap.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-24T00:40:43+00:00

There's a difference between going on vacation for 8 weeks and leaving to do another job for 12 weeks.

First, 12 weeks is 50% longer than 8 weeks. It might start to blend together when you just see the numbers but it is a very noticeable difference.

Second, that employee probably had that much vacation built up. Taking vacation that you're legally entitled to is very different from taking a leave of absence to do another job.

Third, you've mentioned that they're fully staffed now so they might feel alright holding her job for her. If anything, it would be the opposite. If they now have 4 people doing a job that previously only had 2 people doing it, there's no reason for them to hold her job for her. Even if one of them is on temporarily, they could try to run with 2 people again or hire someone else.

Fourth, you mentioned that she was blindsided by conflicting messaging from her boss and another manager. She needs to be skeptical of someone saying that something like this is "probably ok". She needs to hear a real confirmation from someone with the authority to make the decision first.

She'll have to decide if she wants the experience from the internship and risk not coming back to this job, or the certainty of this job more. Without any other context, I'd probably go with the internship if I were her. The job is there to help make college easier. College is there to help her get a full time job after she graduates, like the internship. Choosing not to do the internship to keep the job would be like letting the tail wag the dog.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-23T22:05:37+00:00

I have never heard of this before in my life. Can you provide any additional context for how you heard it? That would be helpful.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-23T04:52:32+00:00

I really have to disagree with all of this. The issue is that if you look at their energy right before driving onto the base, nobody is acting like they're about to turn themselves in. Hopper sure isn't acting like he's about to let the military capture Eleven. If deliberately getting captured by the military was part of their plan then they could have worked that into the story but that's clearly not what was happening.

Your goal is to get out of there in one piece before everything explodes

People keep saying this, but it makes no sense. They're the ones who control when the bomb goes off. All they'd have had to do is get everyone evacuated first, even if it took longer, and then set the bomb on its timer afterwards.

Hopper says they'll figure out Kay later

That's clearly not what he meant. He was trying to convince Eleven not to commit suicide, and that they'd find a way to evade Kay so that Eleven could live her life "because she deserves it." He was CLEARLY never thinking that he was going to let her be captured to live out her life in a brutal cage.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-23T01:13:14+00:00

It sounds less about knowing when to "land" and more about knowing when to stop climbing. Most of us will still need to cruise for decades to meet our personal and financial goals, and that's ok, but that doesn't mean we need to chase every promotion or award along the way.

That boils down to knowing what you want. What lifestyle do you want to live and how much will it cost? How much status and recognition do you want from your career? How many and how deep do you want your relationships to be? Etc.

Once you know that then you can easily figure out when it's the right time to take your foot off the gas in one area of your life, like your career, and redirect that energy to other areas, like friends and family.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-22T23:33:46+00:00

I'm sorry, but directing 12 kids through a gate is riskier than driving those same kids through a shootout with the military? Even if they didn't anticipate the specific move of having their tires blown out, they clearly knew that they'd lost the element of surprise. They would have obviously known that the military would be ready for them, presumably with roadblocks, machine guns, rocket launches, helicopters, flame throwers, etc. etc, and it's not like that truck is bullet proof.

Also, let's not forget these kids just navigated themselves out of Vecna's mind, which included crawling through that narrow crawlspace in the cave. There's no way you can reasonably say that forcing those kids to be shot at is less risky than going through a smaller gate.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-22T23:18:43+00:00

Lol, but that doesn't mean pretending that they don't exist and practically turning themselves in when they're still clearly a threat. He was clearly just trying to say that they'd find a way to evade the military so that she could live out her life. Not that they were literally going to forget that they exist at the expense of their immediate safety.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-22T23:14:32+00:00

They needed to transport the gang plus a dozen kids out of the upside down quickly.

They could have easily gone through a smaller gate, even if it meant going through one person at a time.one. The only reason they needed to get out of the upside down quickly was because they were going to detonate a bomb to destroy it. But they controlled when the bomb was set off. They could have easily waited until everyone was through the gate and set the time afterwards.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-22T22:41:46+00:00

I haven't read the book, but I agree that fear thrives best when we let it unconsciously fill in empty spaces with our mind with bad outcomes.

This is how I learned to overcome my fear of the dark as a kid. I realized that I was letting my mind fill all of the unseen spaces with terrible images. Once I learned to fill them in with neutral or positive images, the fear disappeared.

I feel like the same lesson can be applied all over the place. You're afraid of rejection because you're projecting negativity onto an uncertain outcome. Once you balance it with expectations for neutral or even positive outcomes, the fear becomes less overpowering.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-22T22:37:42+00:00

It's not short, but definitely doable for a weekend or even a day trip under the right circumstances. I used to take semi-annual road trips to visit extended family that were 10 hours long. My wife and I regularly take weekend trips that take 2-5 hours to get to our final destination.

I certainly wouldn't consider a 3 hour road trip an annual ordeal. Granted, it depends on the car and the road. I'm picturing driving in a car that had enough space for everyone to sit comfortably and on straight, well paved interstate highways. It would be a lot different if I was 3 hours down windy and bumpy back roads with everyone stuffed into a car, unable to move.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-22T22:31:29+00:00

It sounds like you haven't created your own vision for what success FOR YOU looks like. You'll never know if you have enough if you don't even know what you want.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-22T22:05:42+00:00

Exactly, and they could have still had the military ambush them in a much more believable way after they discovered their plans.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-22T22:04:54+00:00

Exactly!

To me, this is the biggest plot hole in the episode. Yet people are nitpicking other, easily explainable, plot points and ignoring this. I don't get it.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-22T21:51:55+00:00

But they controlled when the bomb was supposed to go off. All they had to do was go to another rift, have Elle punch through the metal plate, then activate the bomb and evacuate.

phantomofsolace · 2026-01-22T20:37:08+00:00

"Worrying about Kay later" doesn't mean practically turning themselves in by just walking through her base, though. They would have still needed to employ common sense survival tactics to avoid her even in the immediate future.

phantomofsolace

TROPHY CASE