Brook's law

Brook's law is an observation in software development that states:

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

The analogy of "9 women can't make a baby in one month" illustrates the same core idea as Brook's law: certain processes have inherent dependencies and time requirements that cannot be shortened simply by adding more people.

Commonplace book

A commonplace book is a personal collection of knowledge, quotes, observations, and ideas that people compile over time.

Commonplace books help to reinforce knowledge and can contain a variety of entries, including quotes from literature, insights from lectures, snippets of philosophy, or notes on personal thoughts.

Creeping normality

Creeping normality is a term that describes the way a major change can be accepted as a normal situation if it happens slowly, through unnoticeable increments of change.

For example, a company might slowly reduce product quality or increase prices, with each small change going relatively unnoticed by customers. Similarly, environmental damage like deforestation can happen so slowly that people don’t realize its seriousness until it's too late.

Hostile architecture

Hostile architecture (also known as defensive architecture or anti-homeless architecture) is an intentional design strategy used in public spaces to discourage certain activities like sleeping, loitering, or skateboarding, with the goal of keeping public spaces orderly.

For example, some buildings or sidewalks use metal spikes to prevent people from lying down, and benches may have dividers or armrests to stop people from resting across them.

Occam's razor

The idea is often oversimplified in popular culture as "the simplest solution is most likely the correct one", but there’s actually more to Occam's razor. It proposes that, when presented with competing hypotheses that predict the same outcome, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.