The Boring Work

The Military Sleep Method and Its Missing Six Weeks

Roman Kalugin — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:05:18 +0000

TL;DR In 1942 the US Navy had a problem it could not train its way out of. Pilots at the Del Monte Naval Pre-Flight School near Monterey were making fatal errors, and the pattern pointed at exhaustion rather than incompetence. Tired men fly badly, and there was no shortage of reasons to be tired. The […]

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Cold Showers and Cold Plunges: Every Claim, Ranked

Roman Kalugin — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:50:10 +0000

Every claim on this site gets a grade, a date and a list of the papers behind it. This one sits in the registry of checked claims. TL;DR Somewhere in your feed right now, someone is lowering themselves into a barrel of ice water and telling you it will fix your immune system, your hormones, […]

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Thinking, Fast and Slow: Kahneman Retracted a Chapter. Here Is What Else Moved

Roman Kalugin — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:50:09 +0000

TL;DR Verdict Read it — with one chapter mentally marked in red. The book is really two books in one. The first is Kahneman’s own life’s work, which has since been retested on a massive scale and passed. The second is a thin layer of other researchers’ flashy experiments that he trusted too much — […]

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Does Brown Noise Help You Focus? Zero Studies Have Tested It

Roman Kalugin — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:50:08 +0000

TL;DR Somewhere around 2022, TikTok discovered brown noise. Millions of people pressed play on a deep, waterfall-like rumble and reported the same thing: «my brain finally went quiet». Videos got tens of millions of views. Apps appeared. Spotify playlists exploded. And all of it rests on a question almost nobody thought to ask: has anyone […]

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The Let Them Theory: What the «Backed by Science» Label Actually Covers

Roman Kalugin — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:50:07 +0000

TL;DR Verdict Worth reading for the notes — with one warning attached. The «let me» half of the formula has real science behind it. The «let them» half is an old idea wearing a new name. And the «backed by science» sticker? We went looking for the science it points to, and nobody involved in […]

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Does Emotional Intelligence Predict Success?

Roman Kalugin — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 19:39:27 +0000

TL;DR The claim that emotional intelligence matters more than IQ has had thirty years of unusually good publicity, and it is one of the few popular psychology claims where the specialist literature contains a clean, quantitative answer. That answer is not a dismissal. Most of what the popular measures capture is already measured by things […]

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Are You the Average of the Five People You Spend the Most Time With?

Roman Kalugin — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 20:14:44 +0000

Every claim on this site gets a grade, a date and a list of the papers behind it. This one sits in the registry of checked claims. TL;DR You have probably been told to make the list. Write down the five people you spend the most time with, look at what they earn, how they […]

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Does Eating Sugar Restore Your Willpower?

Roman Kalugin — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 06:18:39 +0000

TL;DR Where did the “willpower runs on sugar” idea come from? In 2007, Matthew Gailliot, Roy Baumeister and colleagues published a study with a clean, almost elegant logic. Suppose willpower draws on a limited resource, the way a muscle draws on glucose. Then holding yourself back should lower your blood sugar. And topping the sugar […]

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