Scenarios for the next 9 months

High uncertainty ahead, for sure. There is no consensus on what will happen in the next 9 months. Every scientist, economist, sociologist, and futurist disagree on what might happen, but we still need to make plans as individuals and organizations. A very helpful tool in a reign of high uncertainty is to use scenario planning. The best set of near-term scenarios I’ve seen is this one, Scenarios for the Covid-19 Future, available as 45 slides, which include instructions on how to use scenarios. You can’t predict what will happen, but you can rehearse for four different possibilities. — KK

Completely improvised comedy special

Before I watched Middleditch and Schwartz, the very little improv I was exposed to was not enjoyable. I get anxious when jokes don’t land and then I sympathy laugh and the whole thing is awkward. But now I’m stuck at home, and in desperate need of laughs and this have been the best comedy special I’ve seen. It’s like they’ve harnessed the superpowers of a childlike imagination and then threw it into adult situations, and it’s hilarious and magical to watch. — CD

Cheap stock images and videos

Jumpstory is a royalty-free stock image and video service with millions of photos, videos, and illustrations that you can use for websites, books, presentations, and more. The images have been curated from public domain sources, and they’ve done a great job of tagging and organizing everything. I use Jumpstory images on my website, Boing Boing. A lifetime subscription is $99. — MF

VideoClaudia Dawson
Time travel in Asia

With shameless self-promotion I recommend you follow my new Vanishing Asia Instagram. Every day I post one amazing photo I have taken of an exotic part of Asia that is disappearing because of modernity. The images are a few of the many thousand that will appear in my Vanishing Asia book later this year. In the meantime enjoy this ride in a time machine. Also available on TumblrFacebookPinterest, and Twitter. — KK

Meet your future self

I tend to use meditation to help me slow down and ease into discomfort or when I feel my anxiety flaring up, but I came across this 30-minute Life Visioning meditation on my Aura app and felt completely transformed after it. At first the breathing exercises and noises felt hokey, but it helped to put me into an almost hypnotic relaxed state, and then the narrator took me down a dark tunnel to meet my “future self” and I was able to see her so clearly! I was so moved by this whole practice. I’ve done it three times since, and each time I discover some new desire or goal that is buried within me. — CD

MindClaudia Dawson
The story of my life

Story, by Robert McKee, is the best book written on how to construct a great story. McKee’s masterclass on story writing is well known in Hollywood. It is condensed into a 4-hour audiobook (better than the written book), performed by McKee himself. It is not just a manual for screenwriters; these short 4-hours turned me into a super fan, able to appreciate stories on whole new levels. Indeed, I found this book profound and realized that it is a useful guide to constructing an interesting life, which in the end is also a story. — KK

WritingClaudia Dawson
Sharpen your skills of deduction

One thing that has helped me unwind at the end of every day is trying to solve logic puzzles on my phone. Something I always loved doing as a kid. I found this free, no ads iPhone app ($2.99 on Google Play) called Logic Puzzles by Egghead Games. There are puzzles for different levels of experience that you have access to, so you can start off easy and work your way up, or alternate between quick and more challenging games. It’s been two months since I downloaded it, and I have solved 80+ games, and I still have 16 more to go before I in-app purchase more, which I will, because it really is fun! — CD

PlayClaudia Dawson
Keep your Mac clean

I’ve been using a utility called CleanMyMac X for a number of years. I use it to completely undelete applications (and all their associated files), locate and delete space-wasting unneeded files, and scan for malware. It has a lot of other features, all of which are presented in a simple interface. — MF

Correct USB plug orientation

You try to insert a USB plug and it doesn’t fit. You flip it over and it still doesn’t fit, so you flip it back to the original side and now it fits. Ugh! How many thousands of times has that happened? Just remember this: the topside of any USB plug will be smooth metal and the underside will have a groove down the center. Keep the smooth side up. — KK

GadgetsClaudia Dawson
9 Eyes

This blog is called 9-Eyes because the cameras on cars that take photos for Google’s Street View maps have 9 lenses. The anonymous curator of this site posts unusual photos they come across on Street View. Most of the photos are of people being people: acting silly, fighting, eating, pulling leashes attached to livestock, soliciting prostitutes, taking drugs, nursing their young, etc. Endlessly fascinating. — MF

Daily tours of historic sites

For the entire month of May, the National Trust for Historic Preservation is sending out a daily email unlocking one historical site that you can explore virtually. On Friday, I toured Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighey House in Virginia and fell in love with the Mayan-inspired motif and yesterday morning, the National Trust released a 27-minute concert video filmed at Nina Simone’s childhood home in North Carolina. There are still 29 more days to go. You can sign up here. — CD

Using your phone as webcam

Your phone is probably a better camera for streaming than your laptop or third-party webcam you are now using. To see how you can use your phone as a webcam, check out this technical video from Norm Chan at Tested. You’ll need two free open-source apps on your computer, and an inexpensive app on your phone. Following the instructions I got very high quality streams from my iPhone 8. This is good for YouTube, Facebook, Twitch streams but not for Zoom, Meet and other video conferencing yet.  — KK

VideoClaudia Dawson
Rechargeable 9-volts

I feel kinda dumb I had not figured this out earlier. We’ve managed to replace all the batteries in our household with rechargeable batteries, except for those 9-volt batteries. The ones with the two nipples on top that are in things like smoke alarms. But you can get rechargeable 9 volt batteries! Duh. As the current 9-volts die off, I’m swapping them out with these AmazonBasics 9-volt Rechargeables. I use this HTRC all-battery charger to charge them. — KK

Mesh Wifi to the rescue

We live in a house with walls that have chicken wire behind the plaster. They do a great job of blocking Wifi. To get around it, I installed a Frankensteinian hodgepodge of cables, powerline adapters, and wireless access points all around the house. They all had different SSIDs and the coverage was still spotty. It was frustrating. A decade later, I broke down and bought a Google Nest router and four wireless hubs. It set me back $500 but now we have great coverage throughout the house with no need to change SSIDs on our devices as we move from one room to the next. I expected my family to be grateful, Instead they are mad at me, “Why didn’t you get this sooner!?” — MF

Kevin Kelly's birthday advice

Personally I know Kevin to be effortlessly wise and warm and honest, and his way of life is something I’ve strived to copy, so I treasure these 68 bits of unsolicited advice. There are so many sparks of clarity here and great guiding principles to adopt. These are my favorite:

• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.

• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.

• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.

— CD

A self-cleaning litter box that works

The Litter-Robot is what it sounds like – a cat litter box that performs a self clean every time one of my three cats uses it. The manufacturer sent me one to try out, and  it’s changed an unpleasant twice-a-day cleaning routine into an easy once-every-two-days task of dumping a tray of litter clumps into the trash. It’s basically a rotating barrel with a screen. Your cat hops in and does her business, and a few minutes after she hops out the barrel slowly rotates, depositing the clumps into a tray, and returning the clean litter to the barrel. It comes with a smartphone app, which I initially thought was ridiculous, but turned out to be useful in alerting me when it’s time to empty the tray. This thing costs $500, which is a crazy amount of money for a litter box. But think of it on a two-year timeframe: is worth a dollar a day to eliminate an unpleasant chore? — MF

Pet StuffClaudia Dawson