Manuscriptions

🎓 Why Redistribution Alone Doesn't Move People Between Social Classes

What Treasure Island, Swedish lottery winners, Communist revolutions, and Zimbabwe’s farms show about social status across generations.

Nov 4 • Eleanor Konik

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October 2026

🤖 Muse Was My Gateway Drug to Grok Bot

Tips & tricks for using “always-on” agentic bots on somebody else’s computer, for normal-person tasks, without spending a jillion dollars.

Oct 12 • Eleanor Konik

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September 2026

📗 REVIEW: Mailman by Stephen Starring Grant

On the difference between work and service, or: how the US Postal Service sucks at taking care of its people.

Sep 16 • Eleanor Konik

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4

5

August 2026

🎓 On the Harem Origin Story of Turkish Coffee Reading

How women use "fortunes" in their cups as a safe mechanism for gossip, venting, and discussion of taboo subjects without ending up socially ruined.

Aug 12 • Eleanor Konik

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4

2

🎓 On Mammals With the Social Structure of Ants

Reflections on seeing naked mole rats on my last trip to the National Zoo.

Aug 5 • Eleanor Konik

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8

2

May 2026

🌲 How to Take Notes on Physical Library Books

Sometimes you have to read a physical book you can't write in. What then? Bullet Journal Pocket Editions to the rescue!

May 28 • Eleanor Konik

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13

4

🎓 Why Successful Empires Preserve Divisions Instead of Erasing Them

How empires from Assyria to the Soviets maintained local differences as a tool of control, and what happened when they stopped.

May 20 • Eleanor Konik

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12

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📗 Harpers Ferry during the Civil War

A review of Six Years of Hell by Chester G. Hearn, which ranges from its founding to Brown's raid, to the poor bastard stuck untangling the property…

May 14 • Eleanor Konik

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6

📚 Neat Stuff I Read in April 2026

On "doing your own research" in the AI age, messy economics in fiction, & what funerals do to African households. Also: the airline wars…

May 7 • Eleanor Konik

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11

5

April 2026

🥘 The Konik Method for Making Delicious Food

Five recipes I cook pretty regularly, that don’t stress me out, that are reasonably healthy and maximally efficient. Also, tasty!

Apr 30 • Eleanor Konik

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13

3

🎓 How Organisms Rewrite Bodies Without Changing Genes

On phenotype plasticity, facultative neoteny, RNA editing, and metamorphosis, focused on locusts, maize, octopuses, dogs and holly trees respond to…

Apr 22 • Eleanor Konik

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5

💰 Some stuff I'm surprisingly happy I bought in 2025

Every year at tax time I go over the pervious year's purchases for things I can expense. This year, I'm sharing a list of the stuff I don't regret…

Apr 16 • Eleanor Konik

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