Dullness is often shown as an excuse for clarity. A dull statement has the clarity of mud.

Educational prose isn’t about sounding smart, it’s about connecting ideas. Writing to teach is difficult because we have to make constant decisions about how much our audience knows about a given subject. Do they know binomials? Basic algebra? Do they even know addition? Our understanding of the student starts from the base of their knowledge.

My prose attempts to make one statement about the audience; they want to be entertained.

Sentence Structures

Consider the nature of the binomial.

Binomials are not adversaries, instead compliments.

The intersection is exposed.

The variable is lost within.

A division of 2 to each side gives us freedom.

The like terms are combined as follows:

The FOIL method gives us a baseline for clarity.

The FOIL table gives us a structure for our thoughts and builds a simple solution out of an daunting problem.

The Pythagorean Theorem daunts us with complexity, but past it’s intimidating facade is a simple design. Just a little exposure, that’s all we need.

The 3x desires an aloneness which only multiplication can achieve.

X stands on both sides of the equation, algebraically torn.

X desires an isolation only division can fix. What shall we do?

Wilted, that’s how I felt up on first hearing of the Pythagorean Theorem.

FOIL can be represented as a table, where each term is multiplied in an isolative square. The product of any two terms is then put in the square. Setup, multiplication, that’s all we need to use FOIL effecively.

Peruse the following example:

FOIL is the expression of binomials, revealing their value. An improper expression would simply be dishonest to the binomial, FOIL shows them respect as an individual equation.

Writing for Branch

I’m on my path to start writing educational content for Branch, and I’m against the usage of AI for the content on the platform. The content alone should stand as strong, sexy, bold, courageous, and standoff-ish. Plain jane is for McGraw Hill. Branch takes risks.

Where did the icons go?

What happened to star power?

I can’t even name one celebrity who is an icon today. Olivia Rodrigo seems too much like a lost teenager, and Taylor Swift presents like a delusional middle aged cat lady. Male celebrities? Tom Holland seems weirdly performative in an unintentional way and far from iconic. I’m having a hard time thinking of any other largely relevant male celebrity. Jacob Elordi? He seems like a paper figurine who happened to become tall and handsome.

We live in a sexless, iconless, and powerless western world. So what can we do about? How can we refine ourselves to become iconic, and what can we learn from the icons of the past.

Some Icons

I’m terribly unread, so I’m just going off my own biases as to who I believe our icons are.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were icons. Gates the nerdier sure, but both self assertive and ambitious in the new world of modern personal computing. Check out this iconic interview with the both of them. The two were unapologetically passionate about complex ideas, meanwhile both spearheading their respective companies. Two leaders with hundreds of thousands of people working behind them. Iconic.

I think that rivalry could be a cornerstone of being an icon. When you give yourself a large enemy, and then you stand confidently against them, that is iconic. I’m writing here in an attempt to figure out what exactly defines an icon.

Tom Ford is an icon. He has perfected marketing, image, and he isn’t afraid to take risks. He completely transformed Gucci from bankrupt fast fashion company to fashion superpower in the early 2000s. He then left Gucci to start his own Tom Ford brand, expressing himself fully and eventually selling his brand for $2.8 billion dollars. Power, class, complete control of image, and I’m not sure I ever have heard Ford say “I’m sorry” for anyone who disagreed with his lifestyle or ideology. Great example of tone control and image awareness, probably one of the best.

Sasha Gray, or Grey? An original adult content actress. She stands out because I think I have seen only one of her videos, hardly remember, but she was so iconic in the online landscape that I’ve seen her name everywhere. The modern adult content actress has lost her star power it seems: what used to be a daring and jaw dropping act has turned into the exploitation of a vulnerable 18 year old with a missing father complex. Adult content is inherently exploitative sure, but the early days seemed to have a rawness that we don’t see much of nowadays (even in rougher categories). Not to mention the fact that taking your clothes off on camera has become rampant, and it has lost it’s edge. I see Sasha as an icon because she took risks in a newly developing internet, and that decisiveness and risk taking resembles the spark of an icon.

Just a couple of people for now, this post hopes to be more of the icons I see and how we are lacking of them currently.

Can We All Become Icons?

I think we all have the ability to become icons.

The anatomy of the icon seems to be:

1. unapologetic for personal ideas or pursuits

2. self image awareness (personal image or business image)

3. tonality aware

4. passionate

5. unique

6. confident

7. thoughtful

8. presentation (of both ideas and self, similar to image)

9. honesty (icons don’t front, they are)

This is just a start, and I may create some type of personal guide for the pursuit of becoming an icon. Speaking well, thinking well, and living passionately.

Verbal communication. The highest leverage skill one can have, and yet the most overlooked. People communicate every single day, so why practice it? I talk to people every single day, and I can tell they are unpracticed, anxious, and unsocialized.

An Overview

Below are a handful of sections relevant to this guide, give them a read.

Language Should Last

Do not say that a watch is a “flex”, instead mention that the watch is beautiful. Beautiful language lasts for hundreds of years, and the right people notice it.

Language is subject to context of course, but be careful of using slang in contexts that do not warrant it. Slang has an underlying tone of wanting to fit in with the common people, if you are uncommon then why force it? Be a put together individual, that is more attractive than fitting in. Slang does not last for hundreds of years, it’s true meaning becomes disfigured.

Common Phrases, Say Them Well

You greet people with “Good morning” and “Good afternoon” every single day, why would you decide to not practice them? An impressive greeting and an impressive exit can change your social skills entirely. It seems that lower class people always disagree with the idea of practicing social skills, sold on the lie that everything should be natural.

You end a phone call every single day, why not have a common exit? “Thank you for your call today.” “Thank you kindly.”. Every single call between business associates should consistently have one ending.

Take some phrases out of this guide, write them on a flashcard, and practice them daily. You will see the ease of your life once you have consistent openers, exits, and other phrases to easily turn to.

Separate Communication And Beliefs

Just because you’re disagreeable as a person doesn’t mean that you need to constantly signal this trait through your communication. Effective communication does not directly mean effective internal trait signaling. In a machiavellian way, why would you want to fully expose yourself to potential enemies? Keep yourself warm, charming, and welcoming. Save the hidden daggers for those who you learn deserve them.

Greetings

Exits

Disagreements

Disagree with someone? Try

• a asdf

Want to showcase thoughts that may be contrary to your conversation partner? Opt for showcasing ideas in a non threatening way. Remember that you aren’t static either, and it’s possible this person know something that you don’t about this topic that could change your mind. Harsh language such as “And I could never be convinced otherwise” is anti seductive, anti relationship, and anti friend. Be firm.

Want to exit a conversation? Such as backing off from a topic you’re not comfortable with. Try the following:

Pitch

Do not make your voice comically low. Do not force your voice down, instead attempt to focus on not letting your voice be in a constantly high state. Men have a deeper natural voice than they realize, but it is not incredibly deep.

With these steps you can easily find your natural tone in minutes:

1. Find a book to read, or blog post, preferably with complex language.

2. Start reading in your regular voice.

3. Adjust your speech so you talk at about a 70-80% speed compared to normal.

4. Attempt to keep reading at the same pace but with a lower tone.

5. As soon as you find yourself running out of breath or feeling too constrained, raise your tone in pitch just a tad. Reading with ease for at least 5 minutes? Lower it.

6. Keep doing this. Your nautral low tone should be a lowered tone that you are comfortable speaking with for a long period of time, at least 30 minutes straight.

7. You will find that your voice is not much deeper, for most people it’s only about 5-10% deeper. The depth generally comes from the slower speed of speech and the awareness of effective speech.

The three golden rules: Lower, slower, and comfortable. If you mess up any of those three rules, you’re going to have a less than optimized voice.

A note on pitch: don’t be a deadpan, tame, boring stick figurine. When doing an impression, feel free to go higher than normal, be expressive. Discussing a topic that you’re particularly passionate about? Use enhanced tonality to express this, with a lightly sped up language. This is a careful art which I will touch on more in the future.

Your standard lower pitch allows you to speak with a wider range of expression. If you’re constantly speaking with a high pitch, going lower feels strange and creepily seductive. You’re stuck in what I call “high pitch hell”. Going from a default low pitch to a quickly expressive high pitch during a story has a more natural feeling. It is enticing, sexy, and unpredictable. This dynamic is game changing, and the “contrast” can turn you from a OK communicator to an expert one.

One last note on tonality adjustments. Your

In the moment I thought I was doing the right thing, I was learning, I was “figuring it out”, when in the end I was more lost and broke than I had ever been in my life.

This is a personal failing in some parts, but I do think that the allure of self improvement culture results in spectators who stay stuck in careers they hate, businesses they hate, a financial situation they hate. When I was a YouTuber, I felt that I couldn’t have a normal job and that I needed to become this entrepreneurial idea of myself that did not exist yet. I just needed to “lock in”.

Some Things You Can’t “Improve” Out Of

Let’s use the example of a business you own. You hate the business, you hate working on it, you hate the people, and it stresses you out. If you “improve” the business by working on it, you are building more of what you hate. It’s an improvement… an improvement of hate.

For most of us who feel stuck, we don’t need improvement; we need change.

The change you need might go against what you want to hear. You might need to start working at McDonalds, living in a shitty apartment, delete the chicks phone number, and get rid of your leased Honda Civic.

The danger of self improvement culture is that it sells young men on the idea of a change that looks cool, that gets them the hot chick trophy with the italian two door vehicle. This change isn’t realistic; the hot chick has BPD and the italian car has been at the mechanic for weeks.

If you get anything out of this, know that changing for the better sometimes looks like losing yourself, giving up some of your time, or focusing on a new passion for just an hour each week. Don’t obsess over it, and definitely don’t watch bullshit content on improving yourself that ignores the roots of your problems. The ability to change generally comes from increased personal awareness. You need to view the patterns of your life for sometimes years at a time. It’s OK, when you’re young you have time to learn. Italian cars are beautiful, even they are in the shop sometimes.

To anyone who has a regret: Don’t judge yourself so harshly because you made a wrong decision, because that same judgement is going to force you to keep on making that wrong decision until it completely breaks you. Sometimes change can mean living the exact same life, but becoming more aware of that judgement.

Take a step back, right now. Look at the things in your life, and look at what needs to change. Write it down, and don’t obssess over fixing it instantly. Just become aware of it, chill out, and don’t let stupid podcasts get in the way of your understanding.

Don’t improve it, change it.

Money Matters (What Self Improvers Ignore)

Self improvement conveniently ignores the topic of money, except when they tell you how “easy” it is to make money once you just get the right “mindset”. I’m here to tell you that this is bullshit. We all come from different monetary backgrounds, some of us have broke parents, and homelessness or worse could genuinely happen if we take too significant of a risk.

Money matters. Money super fucking matters. For 99% of people, taking risks in business generally stems from being able to have enough cushion to make sure that you survive the fall. Burning the boats is a great mindset to have in general, and working hard should be your priority, but giving yourself ZERO cushion just results in a crash landing. Take risks, and if you need to then zero out, but don’t zero out in a way that causes massive debts, massive collapse, or massive poverty.

Part of the idea of Refined is discussing the idea of abundance alonside creative and financial success. I disagree with the idea of the broke entrepreneur. Money is an incredibly valuable thing, and even a small safety net of 6 months of expenses can allow you to pursue business in a more meaningful, unique, and financially rewarding way. Playing it safe isn’t fun, but I think more people getting into the game of life need to hear that YOU NEED MONEY. Venture capitalists, your parents, your friends, your brokerage account, your Pokemon collection…. you need to get money from somewhere.

Going to zero in your bank account sucks, let’s call it zeroing out. Zeroing out is not fun, zeroing out does not result in good business, zeroing out means that you will destroy industry connections. I’ve been there, I’ve been the guy with the connects and I betrayed their trust by asking for side gigs and other work during my rock bottom. My neediness only resulted in them thinking “what the hell happened to this guy?”. People can be a ruthless bunch, once they see your weakness they will quickly capitlize on it. If you’re getting in this game and this happens to you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Time Matters Too

Just gonna put this as a little aside: Time matters. It’s not that self improvement content has a bad message, it’s just that it takes time.

I’m not gonna ramble forever on this, but these self improvement dipshits take so much of your time it’s fucking ridiculous. 1 hour guides, join my Discord, 1:1 call, even a “Self Improvment Clips” channel for boring slop content, live streams, short form, email pipelines, dogshit SAAS products. They build entire content machines to take your TIME.

Side note: Reading books is a great way of not just getting information, but processing information. I honestly wish I read more books. So many people waste 2 hours per day on various media, but won’t pick up a book. Books let you sit with ideas, that’s important for humans. Reading books I think can be a good use of your time.

Realistic Expectations

Setting goals works, our brains are goal machines. Setting a goal won’t make you rich overnight, but it can give you a baseline to judge yourself fairly.

My personal lack of goals resulted in a constant inaccurate self judgement. I knew I was fucking up, and I knew I was probably a little distracted, but I didn’t know exactly where I was failing. Goals help us get a better idea of our progress in a realistic and healthy frame. Did I upload a video each week or did I not? There is no shame, just a yes or a no.

Goals point us to the present. True enlightment is knowing that the present is the only thing that exists. We are biological computers with a constant movie being shown to us, that’s it. All that really exists is you, your mind, your goals, your fears, your hopes, your memories, your insecurity, your dreams. It’s all right here. Goals are cool but their main benefit is to keep us present and give us good data to work with.

Realistic expectations could be defined as the average change in our outputs over time. If I make an extra $500 per month on average, and I’m currently at 10k per month, then I might be able to get to $16k per month in a year (an extra $500pm * 12 mo). That’s a realistic expectation. Most self improvement bros will just throw random numbers out of their ass, it’s not a good way to live.

Side note: exponential growth is possible, just don’t bet the house on it.

That’s all I really gotta say. Ngl this is a period in my life from a bit ago so I thought I’d write on it for anyone going through something similar. Long story short fuck these self improvment grifters, make your own money, your own dreams, and gtfo. Peace my guys.

– Cooper

To understand my imperfections, I thought I’d write the cliff notes of my life. Here goes:

• During the summer of 2020 I built the website DeskSpacing.com , amassing around 1,000,000 unique visitors. Revenue? Zero. I used it as an excuse to become an “entrepreneur” anyways.

• In early 2021 I dropped out of Washington State Univeristy, where I had studied Computer Science. I had some disagreements with the collegiate system, particularly student debt, so I left.

• During 2021 I started the early working of my Cooper Codes YouTube channel, which I worked on for around 3 years. I gained 13,000 subscribers, collaborated with top YouTubers, and eventually burnt out after developing a philosophy that was increasingly against content creation in isolation. This period of collapse is where my intrigue with learning systems and learning algorithims began.

• From 2021 to 2023 I worked a handful of software engineering internships, namely at Cigna, PagerDuty, and Microsoft.

• During early 2024 I began working on a website called CoderPrep, a game based learning system for learning how to code. It failed brilliantly, and honestly the product wasn’t that great. By the end of 2024 I was nearly $40,000 in debt and burnt nearly $25,000 in savings. If I were a venture capitalist I would have labeled myself an “inverse YCombinator”.

• Throughout 2025 I worked as a waiter at an old folks home, and for the most part I abandoned my entrepreneurial pursuits. I lived in my childhood bedroom and I worked dilligently to pay off my debts. By December 2025 I had paid nearly everything off, including going to court to settle a credit card debt. I didn’t talk much about Cooper Codes, I used this period to work on my social skills and developing personally outside of the chaotic online landscape.

• At the start of 2026 I went to work as a waiter on a high end cruise line going from New Orleans to Pensicola, but after one month of it I decided the job wasn’t for me. Rich people from Lousiana are miserable, that’s the lesson.

Now we get to the present! I came back from the cruise line and within 2 days I started working as a security guard for an office complex for 40 hours per week. I got my old waiter job back at the old folks home as well. My combined schedule is currently 72 hours per week.

I live in a shitty room for rent, $900 per month utilities included. Every single night I brandish a fly swatter to slay the random gnats tha fly into my room because of a leaky window. Not exactly your common “entrepreneur” story. The plus side? I save nearly $4,000 per month, and I just hit $20k in the bank with no debts. I’m gearing up for my next chapter, so that’s part of my why I decided to start writing now.

An MMORPG Based On Education?

CoderPrep failed, but I think the core loop of answering questions and building an adaptive learning system remained. I’ll talk more about the specifics of my projects in a different posts, but let me briefly mention Branch.

Branch is my current software project. I work on it during my commute on the bus, with homeless people making constant attempts to swipe my macbook, and software engineering nerds spying curiously over my shoulder. The goal is an MMORPG where users have skills, ranks, quests, regions, and more to make learning fun and also effective. I’ve been working on a combat / questing system for learning. It sounds pretty crazy but it’s getting close to an MVP, with my main first focus being on SAT preparation. I’m being vague here for the sake of conciseness, we can talk Branch later.

Ok, We Know You Now… But Why Refined?

Throughout my journey I find myself studying different archetypes, different ways of living, and I have found that the common “entrepreneur” hustle way of life wasn’t for me. I’m constantly refining my own ideas, and developing my own thining, so I thought I would make a blog about that process.

Some of the posts will be analysis of my own projects, some of them will be technical, some will be about design, and some will be about philosophy. I even want to write posts of my inspirations, how web designers can learn from Tom Ford, how fashion designers can learn from Steve Jobs. Anything in the pursuit of refinement, that is this space.

I hope that the ideas here are valuable to others, that maybe my little ramblings can expose some reality to the process of building great things. Or horrible things?

Who knows, I just hope to build.

Both a better life and better projects.

Cooper