I bought a 2-pack of these battery-powered MCGOR motion-sensor lights to use as kitchen counter lighting. They snap magnetically onto adhesive metal plates you stick under your cabinets. They turn on automatically when you get near; step away, and they shut off after 20 seconds. Five brightness levels let you dial in exactly the right amount of light. They are USB-C rechargeable, and one charge lasts days. — MF

This week I came across two book-finding tools worth sharing. NPR’s Books We Love is an interactive guide that lets you filter more than 4,000 staff and critic picks first by year and then by genre and other tags, like length or mood. If you prefer something not on a bestseller list, you can also try Whichbook, a search engine that lets you find books by emotion or by character, or click on a world map to find books set in specific countries. — CD

The tiniest portable board game I know about is Iota ($30 used). It fits into a small container the size of an AirPods case, and so can be slipped into any day bag, purse or pocket. It’s perfect for travels. To play you keep arranging its tiny little cards on a table into nesting sets, sort of like dominos, but with more dimensions. The game rewards pattern matching. Even small kids can play, and it is challenging enough for adults. Also no language is needed – another plus for travel. — KK

When a company stonewalls you on a refund or dispute, head over to the Elliott Report’s Company Contacts database. Journalist Christopher Elliott has compiled direct phone numbers and email addresses for customer service executives at hundreds of companies — airlines, hotels, car rentals, banks, cable providers, and more. Skip the front-line customer service maze and go straight to someone with actual authority. The site also rates each company’s responsiveness to consumers. Free to use, no signup required. — MF

Still Here is a visualization tool for mapping your time and shared space with a loved one (animal or human) after they have passed. It was created by someone grieving the death of his dogs, and it feels very personal and tender. My fur baby is 7 years old now, and he has taught me so much about how grief and love are two sides of the same coin, so I am often thinking about his death. This feels like a kind of exposure therapy for my heart. — CD

A podcast I am enjoying is Articles of Interest, which is a spinoff of the legendary 99% Invisible podcast. It has the same nerdy fascination with things we tend to take for granted. In this case, clothing. It dives deep into the origins, and meaning of common articles of clothing such as blue jeans, school uniforms, outdoor wear, even pockets, zippers, and clerical collars. Each episode is a delicious rabbit hole. It’s a blast. There’s a very satisfying archive of back episodes. — KK

The free online game Color revealed how terrible I am at colors. It shows you a color for a few seconds, then asks you to recreate it from memory using sliding color and shade pickers. It sounds easy — it's not. I swore I nailed that shade of green, only to see my guess was way off. Play solo or challenge friends in multiplayer mode. — MF

There are two types of list articles I will always click on: best book cover roundups and bookshelf “shelfies.” This Zillow list of 12 home library ideas scratches my book‑voyeur itch, and now I have names for all the little libraries scattered around my house, most of which fall into the “strategic library” category, but the dream is still a library in every room. — CD

Car seats keep kids safe, but are surely a pain to travel with. For kids 2-3 years old or older, there is a legitimate alternative, which is a DOT-approved vest that the child wears as a harness. The child + harness is then strapped into a regular seat belt. The pioneering safety vest is Ridesafer. It comes in different sizes, for larger kids too. When not worn, the vest shrinks to a small, easy to pack lump about the size of a folded jacket, fitting into your bag. This makes it perfect for taxis, ubers and rental cars. It also makes it perfect for grandparents, who may not want to keep their back seats perpetually occupied with car seats. We’ve found the Ridesafer easy enough to put on and off, and with some patience to buckle in – but still faster than loading a kid into a car seat. (I would lean toward getting a size larger, it will still work as well.) — KK

Scrub Daddy sponges have replaced every other sponge in our kitchen. They have a rough, grippy texture that removes stuck-on food, but they won’t scratch nonstick cookware. My favorite feature: you can squeeze nearly all the water out of them, so they dry fast and don’t develop that funky sponge smell. — MF

Protocolcards.com is a digital deck of evidence‑backed nervous system “protocols” you can pull up when you don’t know what to do with yourself. They’re not magic quick fixes, but if you follow the short guided practices and prompts, your system will start to feel more regulated over time. Cards are organized into five categories: Emergency (for when you need instant regulation), Focus (to upshift into more alertness), Recover (to downshift from activation or transition into more chill), Sleep (for evening wind‑down), and Feel (for when you want to be with and process your emotions), and you unlock the full library by signing up with your email. — CD

I’ve taken several tours with Young Pioneer Tours. Their motto is “leading group tours for people who hate group tours to destinations your mother would rather you stay away from and at budget prices.” They deliver all that, famously taking small tours to restricted places like North Korea, Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, and to “Unrecognized Countries” in Africa. They just started offering a new tour to Least Visited Countries, which happen to mostly be Pacific island “countries” which are normally very hard or expensive to reach. While these tours may sound dangerous, they don’t go where it is actually dangerous. Rather they are contrarian, and an affordable travel adventure. — KK

I wanted to watch the Superbowl live and the Olympics but I don’t have cable and I don’t subscribe to Peacock. A friend tipped me off to the solution which is a $15 digital antenna. There are tons of no-name generic models. I used the URIIU Digital HDTV Antenna which is cucumber-sized stick with a long cable that plugs into my big LG screen. I now get all the over-the-air commercial-saturated channels for free, including NBC, which is streaming the sports. — KK

I bought the Therabody TheraFace Depuffing Wand as a Christmas gift to myself. At first I thought of it as a fancy, possibly overpriced ice roller — battery-powered so that it stays consistently cold—but then I realized the real benefit for me is the heat function with its three temperature levels. I give my face a heat massage when my head hurts or I’m feeling anxious, and it helps relax my facial muscles and myself. I keep it at my work desk to soothe my tired eyes from too much screen time. — CD

I've tried dozens of mechanical pencils over the years, and my new favorite is the Staedtler Triplus Micro 0.5mm. The triangular barrel feels natural in your hand and doesn't roll off the table. The twist-up eraser is full-size, and the retractable tip means they won't stab everything when loose in a bag. Best of all, the lead stays tight in the barrel while writing or drawing. At about $3 each, they're an easy upgrade from whatever pencil you're using now. — MF

This list of 26 Useful Concepts for 2026 is offered as lenses or perspective shifts for staying afloat in this new age of “slop.” Each one has a short definition—some expose the invisible forces trying to hijack your attention or distort your perception of reality, while others help you stay aligned with your own truth and meaning. I especially loved Cammarata’s Razor: If you want more agency, ask yourself what you’d do if you had ten times more agency — then do it, and The Shower Test: “We’re socially conditioned to chase what we think everyone else wants. But your true heart’s desire can often be found in the thoughts you gravitate to while undistracted, such as in the shower. As Walt Whitman said, ‘If you want to know where your heart is, look to where your mind goes when it wanders.’” I wish I could remember where I first came across this to give credit, but it’s absolutely worth passing around. — CD

People can be helped meaningfully by reading books that know nothing about them. If you tell a reputable AI chatbot a lot about yourself, it can help you far more than a book or lecture can. In a 20-minute video Dan Pink crafted a dozen prompts that will enable an AI to give you helpful feedback of a type you may not get from your family and friends. It is a partner in honesty. This kind of prompt therapy is just a first step towards a whole new avenue of self-help that will only expand quickly from now on. I’ve done some of Dan’s prompts and they really will stir up something important in you and for you. — KK

We built a companion page for Recomendo that tracks live Amazon prices on every product we’ve ever recommended since 2020 — over 2,500 items from both Recomendo and Cool Tools. Prices update nightly. Sort by biggest discount to find the best deals, filter by price range, or search for a specific product. Each listing links back to the original review. It’s like a permanent, always-updating clearance rack for our recommendations. Bookmark it and check back next time you are ready to buy. — MF

Together with author Dan Pink, I have started a new podcast series called Best Case Scenarios. Each episode asks an expert to give us their best possible good news scenario in the next 25 years. What happens if everything goes right? What is the best case scenario for say, energy, transportation, biotechnology and brain science? Those are the subjects of our first four episodes, which are also available as YouTube videos, and are now available wherever you get your podcasts. These are not predictions, but visions of what we can aim for in order to make them real. — KK

Unloop is a visual pattern mapper that helps you catch yourself in the act of being you — to notice a familiar loop, lay it out on a map, and then play with small experiments that might shift the pattern instead of just shaming it. You don’t need to sign up or create an account to try it out, and the experience is guided by thoughtful prompts and questions that help you spot what’s really driving a loop so you can understand yourself better. It’s not therapy or coaching, but structured self‑discovery that treats your patterns as a story you can rewrite rather than a flaw you need to fix. — CD