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28 Jul 2026

Life lessons

A Request, an Order and the Right to Refuse

Do not issue an instruction nobody intends to carry out. Every such order reduces the weight of the next one. The system learns fast: a formal demand can be ignored…

28 Jul 2026

Life lessons

Fact and the Novel in Your Head

Words have a literal sense and a function. The philosopher of language Paul Grice noticed that conversation works thanks to unspoken cooperation. We assume that the other person is telling…

28 Jul 2026

Fairy Tales

The Pull-Up Bar

Technical justification of stubbornness I have a younger daughter. If she wants something, she goes for it without seeing obstacles. Let me phrase that carefully: not overcoming obstacles — literally…

28 Jul 2026

Life lessons

The Body Is Not Transport for the Head

Intellectual culture is used to talking about thinking as if the body merely delivered consciousness to the desk. In fact sleep, movement, pain, food and hormonal state take part in…

27 Jul 2026

Life lessons

Asking After Your Own Attempt

A culture of self-reliance easily turns a request for help into an admission of incompetence. As a result, people spend weeks solving something a specialist would explain in five minutes,…

27 Jul 2026

Life lessons

Listening Without Bookkeeping

Communication advice often turns listening into a technology of influence: find out more than you told, and the other person will consider you pleasant. A conversation, however, is not obliged…