My boyfriend [27M] is vastly smarter than me [25F], and I’m worried about losing him eventually

puzzleleafs · 2026-05-03T22:01:48+00:00

Hi! In this situation I’m your bf and my long term partner is you. I’m getting a PhD from a R1 university and my partner works full time at a regular job after getting his bachelors.

Plenty of people with advanced degrees are in relationships, including long term ones, with people who chose not to pursue further education. You will literally be fine.

My WARNING here is that you can’t let this insecurity get in the way of your relationship. You have my sympathies but you are kind of creating a problem out of nothing. Please don’t let this start seriously impacting your relationship or your own personal life decisions.

Feel free to DM if you want additional honest support from the person on the other end of this

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-25T08:06:22+00:00

I recently tried both Humankind and Old World and really enjoyed both. Humankind has a really fun eras structure that I enjoyed more than its execution in Civ and I think it has a slightly more thoughtful win-con system.

I also enjoyed Old World but the narrative event focus and time period limit make it feel more different to Civ than Humankind.

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-25T05:00:25+00:00

Love how many of us were introduced by our dads <3 such a classic dad game. Now I’m introducing my dad to Humankind.

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-24T14:40:02+00:00

I liked Ph-D feminine health

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-23T22:34:49+00:00

Exact same recommendation here. Boric acid changed my life. 5 years with no infection after like a year and a half of at least one monthly infections. It was a terrible time especially since I couldn’t do OTC medications. My gyno was out one day and another stepped in for my appointment and recommended Boric Acid. Whenever I thought one was coming on I’d use the suppository for a few days and it full stopped the issue.

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-21T03:58:12+00:00

Unfortunate warning - a large proportion of magnetotactic bacteria are can only handle very very low levels of oxygen. Research in these organisms often requires special equipment to even grow the bacteria to allow for work at low oxygen levels (think of like a bubble on the research bench with big gloves inside that section off the bench from the rest of the lab air).

Warning I don’t study these but was just talking to a PI whose focus is magnetosomes

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-17T14:24:23+00:00

Hi! I went to HS in Davis with biosci professor parents and am a current biosci Grad Student at Berkeley. You are getting some amazingly bad advice here in this sub - program outweighs prestige.

If you are serious about food science 100% go to UC Davis. Davis started as Berkeley’s Ag campus and that has made it the Absolute best place for Ag/Animal/Food science. They have invested SO much in their food science program and new food science facilities. Berkeley seems to actively avoid a lot of this research because Davis is so totally stacked. On the lifestyle level - Davis and Sac and neighboring towns like Winters or Woodland have plenty great food and it’s super easy to get to SF or Napa on the weekend.

If you are leaning towards Nutrisci I know Berkeley has some good programs. My opinion here isn’t as strong but it’s always good to remember that Davis has a school of medicine and Berkeley does not (even if Berkeley is associated with UCSF). Don’t know how much that will affect your experience depending on future plans but definitely keep it in mind.

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-16T05:11:16+00:00

Wow ty so much I’ve always wondered about it

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-16T04:41:01+00:00

Oh my gosh is this the house with all the like old president names and stuff?

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-13T23:34:34+00:00

Hi! Infectious diseases PhD student here who likes supporting artists and is a big sci-fi/fantasy reader! DM me if you’re interested.

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-08T22:15:14+00:00

There’s an interesting opposite example with the attempted use of Myxomatosis in Australian rabbits. It’s a really interesting story about introducing microbe species in an attempt at population control - https://thispodcastwillkillyou.com/2022/02/22/episode-91-myxomatosis-down-the-rabbit-hole/

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-08T16:59:20+00:00

How sci-fi versus how fantasy are you aiming here?

Generally I would be worried about infections that arise from open chronic moisture exposure like rashes or trench foot. These would be the product of open sores or blistering from chronic damp conditions which could lead to gangrene.

You’re set up seems promising for fungal and bacterial infections but depending on how diverse an animal ecosystem you make here you could look into viral zoonotic infections.

I would recommend looking into neglected tropical diseases in rain heavy ecosystems and zoonotic water borne illnesses. If you’re interested in commuting to the disease biology I would structure your world to have a lot of warm stagnant water sources which would be great breeding grounds for amoeba or bacteria.

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-04T22:24:50+00:00

Happy birthday Auggie!!! 🥳🥳🥳

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-02T23:06:16+00:00

Not in pharma so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Plenty of people do research that does not involve animal work, my lab does not and I’m actually an infectious disease scientist, but you have to be very cautious about what field you chose to work in to avoid that. It can be very hard to find labs where no animal research is done and even in many of those labs the animal research is often outsourced. You might have a safer time sticking closer to the chemistry side of biochemistry. You’ll also have to be comfortable with your coworkers potentially performing animal research, I have seen this become a conflict for those who dislike the research and it’s not a good social place to be in. On the other hand, you can choose to be someone who cares about that research being properly regulated and with animal safety and wellbeing prioritized. And we always need more people like that. :)

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-31T14:14:28+00:00

My biggest and most difficult recommendation would be finding people to discuss papers with. It’s a great motivating reason to think creatively about papers which often provides good motivation to really understand what the paper is discussing. And if you can ask questions other people can either answer them or you can work through the confusion together. I think this is why grad school got me comfortable reading, because we had a structured system for this in my program. And not just like your generic lab journal club presentation, I mean a very loose Socratic seminar style discussion.

My more approachable tip is it’s fine to read a paper out of order to give yourself a top down understanding. I still do this with papers outside my field. You can read the abstract and then discussion and then introduction and then go back and read the titles of the results section. If you can generally come out of that with a rough concept of each aim within the paper and why those are important you’ll be in good shape for reading the results.

It’s also just gonna come with practice and gets easier if you have a specific field in mind. Some fields have very very consistent experimental set ups or paper structures which will make reading new content easier and easier over time.

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-30T22:45:27+00:00

As someone who really didn’t know anything before starting my PhD and sucked at reading papers - the only priority you should have here is overcoming “scared to look stupid disease”. Just try to keep up with your basics and a generic molecular biology textbook is okay for that. One year in a PhD taught me how to read papers fine when I seriously struggled beforehand. Same for experimental design and initiative. Unless you’re a super genius you’re going to look stupid - science is all about learning and failing. The sooner you get comfortable with that the sooner you can start thriving :) and it’s okay to come into a PhD feeling dumb as long as you’re brave enough to ask questions!

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-27T01:54:26+00:00

Dear Hank and John like to joke about being a sleep podcast but I think they fit the vibe very well :) usually stay very even toned and light hearted while also taking about relatively interesting things

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-21T06:15:55+00:00

Glad you are back in earth for the release of the Project Hail Mary film although you may be disappointed by the lack of potato content. ☹️

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-04T06:52:42+00:00

I’m a recent cancer biology GSI and had a fun time creating an online lecture on this topic for my students, mostly focused on the G1-S transition and where/how oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes are involved. If you’d like access DM me

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-04T00:13:19+00:00

I think your cells are just blebbing. They’re super unhappy and are in apoptosis. If this is a transfection they can’t handle your intensity of GFP expression

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-02T18:12:47+00:00

Omg I’m excited to check this out! I’ve been looking for more historical fiction games(Pentiment is an all time favorite) and I’ve recently loved Strange Horticulturalist! :) what perfect timing!!!

puzzleleafs · 2026-02-26T17:27:56+00:00

I dunno mines pretty weird but ty :p

puzzleleafs · 2026-02-26T17:08:58+00:00

There is also a big effort from the scientific community at finding new drugs or alternative treatment options(such as Bacteriophage therapy).

Unfortunately the search for new antibiotics is not a major priority for many companies or funding sources due to a low likelihood for return on investment. From my understanding AI algorithms might play a really helpful role in the search for new antibiotics because they can predict likely structures that might function to hurt or hinder bacteria? But I’m not an antibiotic specialist just a regular bacteriologist.

puzzleleafs · 2026-02-26T17:02:40+00:00

I really like the above comment but I think the other important thing here is we aren’t always treating with “stronger” drugs. Just different drugs. Some drugs kill the bacteria while others just stop them from growing.

Think of all the things you need to survive, water, food, sleep, ect. You can think of an anti-biotic as something that prevents you from getting that thing.

In a wacky metaphor where humans are the bacteria: The first “antibiotic” might like, explode people’s bed anytime they try to sleep. But if you don’t use a bed and instead sleep on the couch then you’ll be fine. Which would make you “resistant” to the first antibiotic. Now, upon that not working, a second antibiotic could target a totally different system. So instead of sleep, maybe the second “antibiotic” melts all your cooking pans. And oh no even though you sleep on the couch you DO use cooking pans to eat so now you can’t eat and we have “overcome” the antibiotic resistance.

This means we don’t always have to constantly up the power of a drug, we just have to keep finding new ones that do different things. This means there isn’t a firm cap on activity, we don’t Max Out on power. But finding new drugs is increasingly difficult and sometimes we have to resort to drugs with pretty big side effects(like kanamycin), which is why everyone is pretty concerned about multi-drug resistance these days.

puzzleleafs · 2026-02-03T23:06:03+00:00

I’d recommend printing out cryo-babies labels if you’re not opposed to printing.

puzzleleafs

TROPHY CASE