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Practical Life Competence The unglamorous competence that keeps a life running and that nobody teaches: insurance and contracts, dealing with institutions, the pay slip and the one-page budget, digital security and backups, the home and the car, cooking and food safety, first aid and the warning signs you never wait out, and the paperwork that protects the people you leave behind.
45 cards · space to flip · 1–4 to grade · d to go deeper
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Reading list The works this deck draws on, in the order worth reading them. Cards point to a specific chapter or paper where one fits.
01 Book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat · Samin Nosrat The one skill in this deck you use every day, taught as four levers instead of a thousand recipes. Part one is the theory; start here for the kitchen half of the deck. 02 Book The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated · Helaine Olen and Harold Pollack Ten rules that fit on a card, including the one on insurance. The accounts named are American; the reasoning about what to insure, what to avoid, and who to trust travels. 03 Book How to Keep House While Drowning · KC Davis Short and kind. For when the admin of a life has got away from you: care tasks are morally neutral, and good enough done beats perfect undone. 04 Book Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House · Cheryl Mendelson The reference for everything inside a home, from food storage and laundry to safety and what to keep. Use it as a reference to consult, not a book to read through. 05 Manual The current first-aid manual from your national Red Cross or St John body Pair it with a certified course. The manual is for refreshing what the course put in your hands; it does not replace the course. 06 Book The Checklist Manifesto · Atul Gawande Why written procedures beat memory under stress. The argument behind the emergency kit list, the move-in sheet, and the where-everything document. 07 Website Schneier on Security · Bruce Schneier Not a how-to. Decades of plain writing on why security fails at the human layer and how to think about threats, which makes the hygiene rules in this deck make sense rather than feel arbitrary. 08 Book How to Cook Everything · Mark Bittman The repertoire book: basic techniques with variations rather than fixed recipes. The one to cook from once the four levers are instinct. 