Hi. My name is Magnus Carlsen.

BREAKING! Fressinet Laurent claims that “it’s very acceptable to lie at a press conference” around 23:50 of the latest Chicken Chess Club 🐔 episode. Release your tax returns, Laurent!

Meanwhile in Kemerovo, the heart of Russia's coalmining country, an opera/bodybuilding mash-up like you've never seen before

There's an opportunity to attack with the black pieces in today's Daily Puzzle! ♜ Do you see it? 🤔 chess.com/daily-chess-pu…

С утра пораньше МТС начал гасить shadowsocks. Поднял другой сервер — пока работает. Вообще, все эти игры страшно утомляют

I've started reading Meditations for Mortals (which I keep calling Meditations for Humans) by Oliver Burkeman, whose previous book I'm a big fan of. The book is divided into 28 chapters, which are supposed to be read one by one over a span of 2 weeks. I'll be giving my daily log

D1. "You understand that the plane has already crashed. (It crashed, for you, the moment you were born.)" Oliver mentions Mel Weitsman who gives a wonderful zazen refresher here: youtube.com/watch?v=BfNQ7y… #meditationsformortals

D2. "Almost nobody wants to hear the real answer to the question of how to spend more of your finite time doing things that matter to you, which involves no system." The chapter ends with a nice touch on building intrinsic motivation #meditationsformortals

D3. "He left. It *was* awful. But life moved on." It has happened to me to talk people into the idea of *not* being free. I did not realise, I was probably making them feel least free, which let them feel most free in the end (see Hōun Jiyu-Kennett, D1). #meditationsformortals

D4. "You just do exist, and that has to be sufficient." I've proved my best theorems so far under the feeling of guilt. The deadline for my PhD was approaching. The grant report was due yesterday. Now I wish the next one will be a product of joy. #meditationsformortals

D5. "Yet none of us seems remotely bothered that we'll never make it through the 13.5 million books currently held by the British Library." Tsundoku in Japanese means to acquire books at let them sit in a pile. I have quite a few of them... #meditationsformortals

D6. "It was that they'd started 'living inside the news'." For some reason I keep falling into the same trap. Indeed, the whole world is fighting for my attention. It is fighting for yours as much as for mine. We need to control what we give and to whom. #meditationsformortals

D7. "The trouble is that today we live in what's been called a 'delayed-return environment', in which it can take weeks or months to discover if a potential problem is real or not." How does it relate to instant gratification? Lightning speed communication? #meditationsformortals

D8. "Baby steps are fine; they just have to be real ones." There is an interesting duality happening here. Actions without decisions are meaningless. There should be an act of making a decision. Yet, decisions without actions are worthless. #meditationsformortals

D9. "The trick to finishing things when the prospect seems overwhelming is simply to redefine what counts as finished." If only I could send one of those paper drafts to a journal... #meditationsformortals

D10. "As for the question of whether this isn't all just woolly, unscientific therapy-talk, the answer is that I don't think it matters." Richard Brody on Coppola's "Megalopolis": "So don’t push, as only a malicious child would do." #meditationsformortals

D11. "By contrast, to befriend a rat is to defuse the anxiety you feel by transforming the kind of relationship you have with it." An acquaintance kept two pet rats. They learnt that a rat is a "rare" pet, so each vet visit was at least 70 euros... #meditationsformortals

D12. "We yearn for such a rule, not generally because we’re lazy, but because we don’t fully trust ourselves to get the right things done without one." Every time I've tried doing something daily, I've failed miserably. Including writing love letters. #meditationsformortals

D13. "The mathematician Henri Poincaré focused intensely from ten to twelve in the morning, and from five to seven in the evening, then called it a day." Fields medalist Vladimir Voyevodsky worked every other day, and eventually had to pay the price... #meditationsformortals

D14. "Anyone, or a piece of software, could do her job, if it weren't for the problems." When you learn an instrument, you play scales, so that when you learn a piece, you can concentrate on the hard bits, which make music music. …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/222-automati… #meditationsformortals