Michal Till

After 13 years, I can distill all parenting advice to one variable: your kid’s closest friends.

🇵🇹 If you have ever dealt with any Portuguese business (and I have with many in my 5 years here) you know why Portuguese in Portugal simply do not care about work, some foreigners find that refreshing, but it results in a country where you can't find anyone to do work because nobody wants to work And when they do work, the work is generally bad, like imagine stepping into a time machine back to 1970s bad, they also can't follow the spec you agreed upon beforehand, and then when it's 60% done they disappear and ghost you When we did home renovatiom, you hire ppl, they arrive late at 9am (you agreed 8am), they then drive away to get materials, come back 11am, do actual work for an hour, then at 12noon announce they go for lunch, come back around 2.30pm, walk around a bit, do some work, and then leave early at 4pm It's not just construction workers, it's almost every interaction you have here with a Portuguese business, the quality is just low, the service non-existent or customer-hostile, and it's not the language, I speak fluent Portuguese, I'm respectful and friendly which is why I never ever had this amount of issues elsewhere in the world And I know it's not just my experience, it's everyone I know here, even Portuguese complain about Portuguese! It's not completely their fault though, the hostile tax system for both people and businesses literally gives you an incentive to never ever scale your business beyond I believe around €150,000/year, because you end up in a completely different category and tax tier that decimates you with more taxes and more bookkeeping So every business tries to stay small, and doesn't want more customers (how many times have I walked into a Portuguese cafe or shop and the staff or owner *sighed* "not another customer") Add decades of socialist governments that hand out free money to 50% of the country (and even the right wing parties here are socialist btw, they have to be or they don't get votes) and you don't have any incentive to work left Why work when you don't need to work? The majority of the young smart Portuguese people with actual ambitions understandably move elsewhere, because if there's no incentive to grow a business, there's also no jobs for them, and the whole thing becomes a vicious cycle of increasing poverty Which is why I said Portuguese in Portugal at the beginning of this tweet, because Portuguese outside of Portugal are ambitious, want to work, want to improve their lives! Bringing in lots of foreigners like me by the government as a way to pump money into the system, we spend a lot and it pays for the welfare, healthcare and retirements of Portuguese now, but it's not a structural solution (and we also instantly became the scapegoat for the government's decades of mismanagement) It'd be relatively easy to fix this though if people in Portugal would put on their thinking hat: 💡 Make Portugal a great place to start and run a business, model yourself after Singapore but with extremely low taxes (maybe 5-10%) for companies/startups and make it easy for them to hire (and fire) people, the money you lose in taxes you will get back in increased economic activity over time (but it will hurt for a little bit) Because even the foreigners who move here and start businesses get caught up in the reverse incentive spiral of Portugal: Why even work?

The whole Anglosphere is rotting from the inside out.

Co dělají čeští dolaroví milionáři s nemovitostmi jinak: → nekupují na páku – kupují za cash → nerozšiřují portfolio – konsolidují (prodej 10 bytů v regionu → 1 činžák v Praze) → nemovitosti nepovažují za investici, když tvoří 90 % majetku – přiznávají si, že je to byznys → zahraniční nemovitosti na pronájem nechtějí – chtějí si život zjednodušovat, ne komplikovat → nejdůležitější rozhodnutí není „co koupit" – je to „kdy přestat hromadit" Jeden z nich má 50+ bytů v menších městech. Správce majetku mu řekl: „Pojďme se na to dívat jako na tvůj byznys, ne jako na investici." Celý rozhovor s Jiřím Cimpelem na YT ↓

The following is a true story from my life, which is related to the contents of this article in The Guardian: In July 2009, I hiked part of the Grand Canyon with an ex-girlfriend, who I will call Sara. Sara and I were both in our 20s, and we were accompanied by four high school-aged relatives/friends. The plan was to head off early in the AM to hike the 10 miles down, stay over night at the bottom, and then hike the 10 miles up the next day. During the hike down, Sara's walking was slow, and she was pre-occupied with taking nature photos at every possible opportunity. Her slow walking was a problem because, although we started early, it was July and the sun was starting to beat down on us--something that would only becoming progressively worse with more time on the trail. As I recall, everyone in the group recognised Sara's slow walking as a problem. Everyone but Sara understood that we needed to get to the bottom of the Canyon sooner rather than later, because we were in the sun doing strenuous exercise, and we didn't have endless supplies of water. It was also the first time any of us had hiked the Grand Canyon. Sara continued her slow walking and picture taking. At multiple points, we offered to carry Sara's bag for her so that her load would be lighter and she could walk more easily. Sara refused to give up her bag. She wanted to prove that she could do the hike without help. If my memory is correct, around the 5 mile mark, the group decided to split up. I stayed with Sara, and the high schoolers went on ahead of us, walking at their "fast" (i.e., appropriate) pace. Sara continued to walk slow, and signs of extreme fatigue / heat exhaustion were setting in. Sara became unwell physically and mentally. Again, I offered to carry her bag for her. Again, she refused. Though I was fit, I was also starting to feel unwell. In fact, I don't think I've ever felt that close to health exhaustion in my life. I was also not in a good place. Making matters worse, we ran out of water, and there were no water stations for the remainder of the hike. The key reason that why we ran out of water was Sara's slow walking, which continued to expose to the sun. Moreover, when we ran out of water, we weren't even close to the end. As I recall, we were still about 2-3 miles away from the end when we ran out of water, and we didn't even know where the end was because we were unfamiliar with the trail. Also, by that time, there wasn't a single soul left on the trail--no one walking down or up. We were alone. It was an awful experience. At one point, Sara had basically given up; she sat down in the middle of the path and wouldn't move. Eventually, perhaps through motivational efforts, Sara continued walking and we got to the end. When we got to the bottom, the high schoolers told us that they were so worried about us that were thinking about calling a rescue party to look for us. We slept over night at the bottom and then hiked the 10 miles back up the next day. Remarkably, after all that, Sara still would not allow anyone to carry her bag on the way up. Sneakily, when she was not looking, we would take things out of her bag to lighten her load. Bottom line: Sara's stubbornness, her desire to prove how strong and independent she was, her lack of adequate fitness, and her unwillingness to listen to people who understood nature, physiology, and physical fitness better than her, almost killed her...and me. She caused the high schoolers significant distress, and had they stayed with us, she might have also put them at increased health risk. During the hike, Sara exhibited a set of behaviors that I wanted nothing to do with moving forward. The "alpine divorce" can work in both directions but for different reasons.

If we’re forced to choose between Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims in today’s geopolitical landscape, then as a former Sunni, I can tell you, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second: I would choose the Shia every single time. Hezbollah has devastated Lebanon for over 30 years. They’ve hijacked the country’s sovereignty, dragged it into needless wars with Israel, dealt drugs across continents, and trained militias from Syria to Yemen. Iran’s regime has exported chaos to the entire region. I am not here to sanitize the destruction caused by Shia Islam. But there is no comparison, none, between Sunni jihad and Shia jihad when it comes to the barbarity, monstrosity, and nihilism at their core. Shia wilāya is a political-theological project rooted in eschatological hope, the belief in a coming world of justice, peace, and divine order under the awaited Mahdi. This doesn’t make their actions justifiable, but it does mean their violence is directed, however twistedly, against what they interpret as tyrannical regimes or ideological threats. When they target civilians, it’s typically selective, an assassination of a perceived enemy of the movement, not wholesale slaughter for religious cleansing. This vision stems from their Muʿtazila-influenced theology, which still gives weight to human reason and moral evaluation alongside the sacred text. Sunni jihad, by contrast, is a black hole. It recognizes no moral hierarchy, no ethical filter, no gradation of violence. There is no distinction between soldier and child, between combatant and teacher, between state and street. Any non-Muslim, or even any “wrong” kind of Muslim, is a legitimate target. Bombing a wedding, beheading an aid worker, enslaving Yazidi girls, torching churches, shooting up schools, this is not collateral damage. It is the goal. Sunni Islam’s dominant theological school, Ashʿarism, rejects reason as a tool for understanding good and evil. Morality, in this view, is whatever Allah commands, even if it contradicts logic, conscience, or compassion. If the Qur’an says to kill the unbeliever, then killing is not just allowed, it is good. Period. This is why Sunni jihadis can burn people alive, blow up their own children, or massacre entire villages, because they believe Allah said so, and that’s the end of the story. Shia Islam, for all its flaws, is still institutional, hierarchical, and clerically mediated. You don’t see Shia suicide bombers popping up in random countries every week because violence is still (relatively) controlled from above. But Sunni jihad is chaotic, decentralized, and viral. Sunni theology is deontological, Shia theology is teleological. Sunni terrorism is a Frankenstein of Wahhabism, Deobandism, Salafism, and Muslim Brotherhood ideology that teaches followers to reject all modernity, all compromise, and all mercy.