Stay organised in your hotel room with this one weird tip. When arriving at a hotel room clear the desk and fold a bathroom towel or flannel to make a little square space and use it as a store for all your useful stuff.

OK, so it actually does seem a little unusual, but having tested it on all hotel stays over the last few years I can say that it genuinely helps me not lose key things, like room keys, around my hotel room. It also reduces the chances that I'll leave without something important like a passport. Maybe give it a try.

This tip I learned from Dan Pink's Pinkcast episode where he calls it his hotel inbox — the place to leave everything when he walks into the room.

Hotel HQ

While each volcano is unique they can largely be divided into red volcanoes and grey volcanoes.

Red volcanoes typically have effusive eruptions dominated by the classic red-glowing lava flow or lava lake. The constant mild eruptions of lava let gases escape reducing the chances of gas build-up and larger explosions. A classic red volcano is Kīlauea in Hawaii.

Grey volcanoes are known for explosive eruptions. Trapped gases and heat can build up within the volcano releasing explosive eruptions that can shoot ashes and rock high into the sky and cause fast-moving pyroclastic flows of solidified lava and ash. Grey volcanoes are typically much more destructive than red volcanoes and can exhibit some behaviours like their red counterparts. A classic grey volcano is Mt St Helens.

I learned this distinction from the remarkable film Fire of love.

Order of adjectives (came to mind as I wrote 'classic red-glowing lava flow' - try the adjectives in other orders =) )

Red volcano, grey volcano

A Pyrrhic victory is one where your own losses or damage make it nearly as costly as defeat.

Perhaps that business rival finally went out of business after you lowered prices so much that you can now barely get by. Maybe you managed to prove you were right at the cost of ruining a relationship. Or it could be that the kids did in fact get in the car and go out on that blasted walk only for everyone to have a miserable time, angry at each other for the rest of the day.

Or maybe, as King Pyrrhus of Epirus found in 279 BCE, you won several battles against the Romans while losing so many of your best warriors as to make you wonder at the worth of the whole campaign.

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Pyrrhic victory