Category: article

Fish.

In the middle of the zebra crossing, where the rhythmic tapping of heels mixes with the soft hum of passing cars, lies a two-meter-long plastic herring – right on the white stripes. This very spot, where hundreds of people look across every day, is the best location for this work of art. Here the contrast is most striking, here the symbolism of tradition clashes with the modern rush, and here the fish gets the attention it deserves. In the brief moments of staying between red and green, this unusual scene invites amazement, a hidden smile, and a renewed appreciation for what we often pass by without a second thought.

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Shadow.

There’s nothing more intrusive than an uninvited shadow that nestles against your wall as if it lives there. A shadow that, without decorum, crosses everything—the carefully chosen matte paint, the subtle lines of a mid-century cabinet, the precision of a gallery wall—and then installs itself with the brazenness of a bad guest. But fear not: the shadow is not fate. It is merely the result of a bad conversation between light and object, and you are the conversation leader.

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Sandwich.

The Taste of Frustration on Rye Bread: A Sandwich from the Heart of a Flat Tire. Sometimes inspiration doesn’t come from a cookbook, but from a small disaster on a gray morning. Like the moment when you’re cycling and you notice your rear tire going flat, gently but relentlessly, while the drizzle has just stopped and a chilly wind is still playfully brushing your cheeks. From this state of mild desperation, this sandwich was born — a culinary translation of mixed emotions: irritation, nostalgia, resignation, and even a touch of poetry.

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Candy.

The relationship between the size of a candy and the taste experience is no coincidence. Although taste remains subjective, there are psychological, physiological and sensory explanations that prove why larger candies are perceived as tastier. Below we dive into three important pillars that support this statement.

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Roll.

The word trolley sounds convenient. Efficient. Functional. As if the object invented itself to make your life easier. But appearances can be deceiving. This seemingly practical companion turns out to be a treacherous symbol of misplaced innovation. Because let's be honest: if you really want to roll a suitcase, those built-in wheels are mainly in the way. Literally and figuratively. The problem starts with the name. A trolley suggests a fluid movement, an elegant dance across airport floors and train stations. But in reality, you bump into every curb, the gravel path blocks your journey, and the plastic creaks under your hands as if it is about to breathe its last breath. The wheels are rarely of decent quality. They are small, fragile, and unsuitable for anything but perfectly flat surfaces — a rarity in the everyday world. A trolley that no longer rolls is not only useless, but also a caricature of its own promise.

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Windows.

Enter an average elevator and you immediately experience the surreal nature of the space. One door, four metal walls, no windows, and as the only form of orientation a digital display that uses numbers to guide you up or down. We get in and blindly trust the technology. And that is literal: we have no idea where we are or how fast we are moving. Is that normal? Maybe. Is it ideal? Absolutely not. Anyone who has ever wondered why elevators are so closed off often comes across practical answers: safety, fire resistance, costs. But rarely is the passenger experience considered. What if we could improve that experience with something very simple — a window? Not a classic window in the side wall, which is not always feasible for technical and structural reasons, but a window in the floor or in the ceiling. Let's compare both options and see which one offers the best experience.

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A wooden chair.

There was a chair floating. An ordinary wooden chair. No wings or ropes, no tricks. A chair, somewhere between air and logic, above a zebra crossing. And yet I kept walking. What should I have done? Stop? Throw my head back, point, shout, alert people? Take pictures, like, post, hashtag? No. I chose something else: denial. An act in itself. Elegant in its simplicity. Celebrated in its absence.

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Reality.

There’s a comforting thought that connects us all: maybe nothing exists at all. Not you. Not me. Not this essay. The universe itself? Most likely a botched export from a failed simulation project, running on an overheated quantum server in the basement of a bored superintelligence. In this essay, which exists somewhere between a hallucination and a PowerPoint presentation, we deny reality the way a cat denies gravity: with flair and utter disinterest.

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Empty.

Ode to an Empty Mailbox O faithful box of rust and hope, you wait, you suffer, you hold your tongue. No card, no letter, not a single word—only advertising, unheard. Your flap, it clenches, but remains polite, though your insides are orphaned. Your mail is empty, your fate is silent—a monument to man's loss and will. Yet you remain standing, year in, year out, a border guard without a sound. You dream of mail, perhaps a card... but oh, that seems like something from another year.'

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Vinex.

There are mornings like this—and it’s always morning, as if existence refuses to evolve beyond the first stage of consciousness, when the sun hangs low over the identical rooflines of houses once bought with sincere hope—when, armed with a reusable coffee cup and a lingering existential cramp, I walk out into the neighborhood with no clear goal, except perhaps the sublimely vague longing for a glimpse of something that might have meaning, if only it would dare to show itself between the neatly arranged paving stones and the standard color schemes of front doors behind which live people I greet but never know. And as my feet move of their own accord — from playground to dog park to the spot where a tree once stood until it was declared “sick” by an official with a clipboard and has since been replaced by a pole that is supposed to represent something but no longer means anything — a sentence sprouts in my head that keeps splitting, expanding, branching out, just like the side streets here, all ending in the same dead-end reassurance that getting lost is only temporary when everything is designed to lead you back to yourself, although eventually you don’t know if that’s who you are anymore.

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Old Cheese.

The air was heavy with the sharp smell of old cheese, a smell that penetrates deep into the soul – an aroma that testifies to maturation, to time, to loss. Next to this monument to fermentation lay a worn leatherette watch strap. It no longer shone; it had lost all its glory to the years. And there, on that lab tray, lay the task: combine these two relics of human creation. Not mechanically, not superficially, but deeply, at the molecular level. As if in an alchemical marriage of two bygone eras.

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Pleasure.

An Exercise in Self-Deception After the End of Days Forget everything you think you know about games, about companionship, about meaning. Playing hide-and-seek alone isn’t just a companionless pastime—it’s an existential dance on the grave of human connection. It’s the last cry of entertainment in a world where no one comes looking anymore. It’s play, but in a place where the word “play” means nothing. Picture this: the sky is permanently gray, the internet has been dead for months, and the mailman hasn’t come in for 132 days. The city is empty. The streets are overgrown. The supermarkets smell faintly of rotting canned goods and once-frozen lasagnas. And you? You’re counting to twenty out loud in a deserted living room, complete with cracked picture frames and the soft hum of a broken refrigerator.

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Windowsill.

On a windowsill, somewhere between yellowed book spines and the ticking of a clock that doesn’t tick for me, there’s something that lives without haste. That’s me. Not a proud fern, not a theatrical orchid, but a simple plant, grown in silence, without a plan. One could say that my life is small. But what is small, if you’ve never known anything bigger? Outside the glass, a world plays out – fleeting, multicoloured, noisy. Yet that world doesn’t really enter. What I see are reflections. Movements that have no direction, colours that disappear as the sun turns. For me, everything outside is just a projection of light: a story told without a voice. And as that story continues, again and again, my focus is elsewhere.

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Fingers.

In a time when every move can be captured on camera, an original pose is worth its weight in gold. And let that pose be something unexpected: secretly looking through your fingers while sitting at the bar. It may sound playful or even a bit naughty, but it is a surprisingly powerful pose. Here are three convincing reasons why this pose is the winner in an atmospheric café:

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To put down.

It seems like a negligible detail, a matter of habit or convenience: where do you put your empty bottle on a square table? But upon closer inspection, this act is imbued with social cues, spatial awareness, and subtle logic. The placement of that innocent object affects the dynamics of the table, the interaction with others, and even your own sense of order or calm.

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Simple.

A space without walls, without direction indicators, without visible boundaries. Everything seems simple, soft, and still. The grass whispers beneath your feet, the light glides over the hills, and every step feels like you’re just going somewhere—like you’re free, like you don’t have to choose. But what if that lawn is a maze? Not the kind of maze of hedges and dead ends, but an invisible structure. No barriers of stone or shrub, but a landscape that forms as you move. No choices between left and right, but a subtle shift, a direction that makes itself felt in your pace, in the tilt of your gaze, in the slight slope of the hill. Every path you take is not there before you take it, but appears because you take it.

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Shopping lists.

Two seemingly random lists, left on crackling paper in an abandoned shopping cart, glistening with drizzle. Perhaps in haste, perhaps in forgetfulness, perhaps... intentionally. Yet this chance discovery arouses a certain unease, a curiosity about the lives marked by these objects...

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Begin.

In the endless ocean of numbers, there is no obligatory path, no imposed beginning. You can choose to start at 1, or at 7. Maybe you choose π, an irrational path full of decimals without end. Or you jump straight to 10,000, just because you can. In the abstract space of numbers, any number is equally suitable as a starting point. Yet people often seem to start in the same places. Why? Is it just a coincidence that we often start at 1, or at 0? Are these numbers really more special than all the others, or is it just habit, instilled by educational systems, conventions and culture? Zero and one have an almost mythical status in our systems. In computer science, for example, they form the binary foundation of everything. In mathematics, they are starting points for series, for counting, for definitions. Perhaps we are looking for something to hold on to in this infinity. The human brain, constantly seeking structure in chaos, longs for anchor points. What could be simpler than the number 1? What feels more logical than starting at the beginning, even if that beginning is arbitrarily chosen?

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Violin.

It always starts with a string. A soft vibration in the air that you only feel when you are close enough. The bus shelter stands there like a large, resting instrument, its sound box wide and shiny, its veins spreading across the wood like a score. Finding the opening—that is the first challenge. Because a violin has no clear entrance. Or maybe it is the other way around: maybe all the places where the wood opens up are a possible entrance. But which string do you have to touch to be allowed through? I move slowly along the wood, my fingers gliding over the smooth surface. A subtle resonance under my fingertips. The bridge vibrates as I brush against it; a vibration that travels through the shelter, as if it is trying to say itself: this is where you need to be. But as soon as I move towards the vibrating spot, the sound fades again, the opening disappears like a chord fading in the air.

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Pick up.

The act of picking up a pen from the floor seems at first glance to be a simple, routine activity—an act so deeply embedded in everyday automatism that it barely enters the realm of conscious thought. Yet behind this everyday act lies a complex network of cognitive, motor, phenomenological, and even existential processes that radically undermine its triviality. Picking up a pen raises questions about the relationship between the body and the world, about the intentionality of objects, and about the underlying dynamics of power, control, and resistance. But perhaps picking up the pen is not so much a simple act as a confrontation—a subtle power struggle between subject and object. What if the pen does not simply let itself be picked up? What if the pen resists human will, manifesting as a rebellious element within the seemingly smooth flow of everyday life?

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Disposable product.

Here I am. Cold, half full, at the back of the fridge, drops of condensation slowly sliding down my cardboard sides. My screw cap is crooked; the plastic ring that once sealed me is half torn off. I feel empty—not just physically, but existentially. It is not so much the passage of time that torments me, but the indifference, the lack of recognition, the carelessness with which I am treated by the man who calls himself the master of the house. I still remember the moment I arrived here, fresh off the shelf, straight from the supermarket. My body was taut, tightly filled with the purest, creamiest milk, chilled to a perfect temperature. I was new, fresh, ready to fulfill my destiny. The fridge door swung open, I was placed on the top shelf—the highest possible podium. I felt important, wanted even. The first few days went well; My cap was opened with precision, my milk was carefully poured into a glass, and I received the satisfying feeling of being part of something bigger — feeding and caring for the household. But then the signs of indifference began to show...

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Coat rack.

The act of hanging up a coat on a peg seems at first glance to be a simple, trivial activity—a routine reflex, an action performed at the edge of consciousness, barely worthy of notice. Yet, when we examine this seemingly banal action, a rich palette of philosophical, cognitive, and phenomenological implications open up that radically undermine its seemingly self-evident character. What really happens when someone hangs up their coat? What cognitive, motor, and existential processes are involved? And what does this apparent banality reveal about human experience, the interaction with objects, and the structure of everyday life?

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Garbage bag.

Every week the same ritual: you put your garbage bag neatly on the curb, and the garbage collector comes by to effortlessly take everything away. But isn’t it all a bit too easy? Sometimes it almost seems like an automatic action: grab, lift, away with it. Maybe it’s time to keep the garbage collector a little on his toes — by strategically hiding your garbage bag among the other bags.

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