Health

The easiest way to build positive habits is by adding to the ones you already have

Use a bit of the ol’ “While I’m here I might as well” to work positive routines into your day.

We know the list by heart. Drink more water. Floss. Move your body. Be more present. The problem is not knowing what to do, it’s remembering to do it when life is already full.

As Erik Barnes reports, productivity experts say the workaround is surprisingly low effort. Instead of forcing brand new habits into your schedule, you quietly attach them to habits you already do every single day. Shower. Make coffee. Brush your teeth. Congratulations. You now have anchors.

Life coach Shelby Sacco calls this “habit stacking,” a concept rooted in behavioral psychology. The idea is simple: pair the thing you want to do with the thing you already do, until your brain treats them as one move.

It sounds almost too easy. But once you see how people are sneaking better habits into coffee routines, workouts, and even laundry night, you start to realize why this works so well.

Yesterday’s Results

Yesterday’s guest author wasn’t human. I gave ChatGPT5.2 a writing assignment and shared the results with you unedited.

How did the artificial scribe do? Shockingly well. Upsettingly well to those of us who carefully craft words into stories for a living. Over 80% of readers gave the work at least a passing grade, and over 40% gave it an A.

• A | I wouldn't have known it wasn't human (41.3%)

• B | It's getting good... scary good, but it's not there yet (22.7%)

• C | Maybe a good first draft, but it needs a lot of work (21.3%)

• D | If that's the state of the art, we've got nothing to worry about (9.3%)

• F | Garbage from a tech that will be nothing but trouble (5.3%)

GOOD reader JeanPyke gave the writing an A grade and asked me to ask the AI what it thought of her response. Regarding the high score, ChatGPT5.2 gave me a several-hundred-word response, but the bit that stood out to me was, “it is no longer a majority skepticism problem. It is a trust, taste, and stewardship problem.“

Culture

Young pianist can't hold back tears as she plays a Chopin piece from the heart

You may shed tears of your own listening to this transcendent performance.

Every fifth year since 1955, the International Fryderyk Chopin Institute has convened one of classical music’s most exacting competitions. The finest pianists in the world gather to be judged not just on precision, but on depth, restraint, and understanding.

This year, as Mark Wales reports, one performance quietly broke through the formality. While performing Chopin’s “Raindrop” prelude, 24-year-old Yumeka Nakagawa began to cry. Her face tightened. Tears fell. And still, the playing never wavered. What emerged was a rare convergence of discipline and vulnerability, the kind that can’t be rehearsed and can’t be manufactured.

You don’t need commentary to understand what’s happening. You just have to watch.

Science

34 dogs were lied to, every single one knew

Your dog might be judging your moral compass.

A study out of Kyoto University found that dogs can tell when you're full of it. Researchers pointed to containers, some with food, some without, and tracked how pups responded. When the same human lied twice (pointing to an empty container), every dog in the study refused to trust them the third time. That’s 34 out of 34 dogs calling BS.

Science calls it “sophisticated social intelligence.” We call it canine-level lie detection.

Even preschoolers weren’t that savvy. A similar study found 3-year-olds trusted liars just as much as truth-tellers. Dogs, meanwhile, were out here setting boundaries.

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775. Though her work would only span six novels, two published posthumously, and earn just £684, she left an indelible mark on literature. In Austen’s time, female authors were becoming more visible, though still tightly policed by societal norms. Her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, said on the title page that it was simply “By a Lady”, which was the norm at the time.

Austen’s biggest contribution to literature, other than the stories themselves, was a literary technique known as Free Indirect Discourse, or FID. She was quite delighted—how elegant he was! The effortless, unmarked transition into and out of a formal third-person voice for an exclamation or a bit of character reaction is a common occurrence today, but was unheard of at the time.

Austen fell ill in 1816, and on July 18th the next year, she died at just 41 years old. The exact cause remains debated, long labeled Addison’s disease, but later scholars have suggested Hodgkin lymphoma.

The work she left behind remains loved to this day. Countless films and other adaptations have been produced, including a Netflix series of Pride and Prejudice, which is under production, and a film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, releasing in September of next year.

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