A year or two ago I recommended Standard Ebooks as a resource for free reading. They have since updated their catalog with a lot of new titles, so I thought it was time to re-recommend them. They take public domain texts (by authors such as Robert E. Howard, Edith Wharton, Sarah Orne Jewett, Bertrand Russell), scour them for typographical errors, add excellent cover art, and format them for Kindle and other e-readers. The online catalog is a pleasure to browse, and includes a synopsis for each book. The latest entries include The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Time Traders by Andre Norton, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, A Tangled Tale by Lewis Carroll, The Marvelous Land of Oz by L Frank Baum, and Villette by Charlotte Brontë. Join the mailing list or subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on new books added to the catalog. — MF

This may be a new thing for you. Working from Home Temporarily is a free 72-page ebook that offers extremely practical advice on how to set up this new lifestyle. Some of the stuff is obvious, but there’s a lot of great tips such as how to upgrade to good connectivity, how set office hours, how to share your home with others who are also working, etc. Available in 3 ebook formats, all free. — KK

I don’t eat beef, pork or lamb, but I still miss a good burger. I’m a big fan of veggie Impossible Burgers, but I like Beyond Meat’s burgers, cooked at home, even more. They are really delicious in flavor and texture. You can get patties of Beyond Burgers at Target, Walmart, and Costco, among other retailers. The rest of my family, who do eat beef, love these plant-based burgers too. — KK

About six months ago I bought an EyeQue Personal Vision Tracker for $25. It looks a bit like a microscope and attaches to a smartphone. After installing the app I was able to check my vision with it. The app gave me the same information as an optometrist’s prescription, which I used to buy inexpensive prescription eyeglasses online. I still plan to get eye health exams from  an ophthalmologist from time to time, but this is a cheap and convenient way to find out what kind of lenses you need, especially in the middle of a pandemic when going into an optometrist’s office poses an infection risk. — MF

Newsletter Stack is a directory of newsletters grouped by learning topics like COVID-19, Philosophy, Design, Wellness, etc. The website seems to be updated frequently. I signed up for all the Creativity topic newsletters, my favorite one is The Creative Independent, which explores the emotional facets of “creating” with a different working artist each weekday. — CD

For sheer summer-movie enjoyment, we really liked Knives Out. This is a fun murder mystery, constructed with fantastic, vivid characters, great acting, with clever plotting and pitch-perfect editing. It’s a real page turner, if you know what I mean. Now streaming on Amazon Prime. — KK

If you pick a year from your past (1951-2015), The Nostalgia Machine will warp you back musically and link you to videos of the top Billboard Hits of that time. 1996 takes me back to sixth grade and TLC and Alanis Morissette and a lot of weekend nights spent at the rollerskating rink. (Note: Some readers replied that this website did not work for them. One reader suggested that that if you type in "year:1992" in Spotify, you'll get hits from that year.) — CD

Sometimes a recipe will call for me to “drizzle” olive oil on chicken or a vegetable before putting it in the oven or grill. I’ve been drizzling for years, and got resigned to the fact that most of the olive oil would end up on the bottom of the pan and not on the food. Recently I found a silicone basting brush in a kitchen drawer, which my wife bought a couple of years ago when she made a pastry and it has turned out to be a game-changer. Now I just pour a little olive oil, or other sauce, into a small bowl and use the brush to paint it on the meat or vegetable before cooking. This brush gives me much more control, and there’s less waste. My drizzling days are over. — MF

The best way to untangle a knotty tangle is to not to “untie” the knots, but to keep pulling the loops apart wider and wider. Just make the mess as big, loose and open as possible. As you open up the knots they will unravel themselves. Works on cords, strings, hoses, yarns, or electronic cables. — KK

Black Imagination is a collection of voices curated by conceptual artist Natasha Marin, who sought out Black individuals, including youth, LGBTQ+, incarcerated, and unsheltered people and asked them three questions: What is your origin story? How do you heal yourself? and Describe a world where you are loved, safe and valued. The result of which are these deeply moving testimonies/prose/dreams/poetry. This book has cracked my heart wide open and I’m honored to experience this literary space that expands beyond its bound pages. Here are three excerpts or three possible worlds from Black Imagination. — CD

I started using Burner Mail a couple of months ago and bought a premium subscription because I find it so useful. The basic concept is simple: it’s a service that generates unique email addresses that get forwarded to your regular email inbox. You can use a burner email address to sign up for newsletters or register a new online account. If you decide you don’t want email from a burner address (or if you start getting spam), it’s a simple matter of flipping a switch and you will never get email from that address again. Best of all, it has a browser extension so you can generate a new burner from the dashboard with one click and it will appear in the email field of any web site form. You can also use Burner Mail to send email anonymously.  — MF

I had a spare MacBook Air that was running the Linux OS. My daughter suddenly needed a laptop to replace her recently broken one, and so I had to reinstall the Mac OS on the Air. I had difficulty figuring out how to do it until I came across this Apple website that explained how to create a bootable installer for MacOS on a flash drive. Now I have an emergency USB drive and I’m sure will come in handy again. — MF

I was delighted to come across this repository of paper airplane designs on Foldnfly.com. I didn’t know so many possibilities existed! We had a fun family tournament in the backyard this weekend. There seems to be quick, video tutorials for all of the designs. — CD

College students can get Amazon Prime (free shipping, streaming, cheap music) for free their first 6 months of being a student and 50% off thereafter. Check out Prime Student. — KK

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been teaching myself to touch-type, but my progress has been slow and frustrating. I tried Apple’s built-in speech-to-text feature, but it has a bad habit of shutting off while I’m speaking. I recently discovered Dictanote (which runs in Google Chrome), and I really like its accuracy and the way it doesn’t shut off while I’m using it. It has a number of other features too, such as custom voice commands, which will paste text snippets triggered by a spoken phrase. I use it to write blog posts, reports, a novel I’m working on, and this newsletter. I now consider it to be a mission-critical tool. A lifetime subscription to Dictanote is $19. — MF

Something cool I just learned is if you have a supported smartphone, you can search for an animal on Google and view them in 3D! Here’s instruction on how to do it and a list of all the animals currently available at this time. — CD

Honey is an online coupon service much like the website Retailmenot. But instead of going to Retailmenot to get a discount code for an online shop (which works very well), Honey lives as an extension in your web browser and automatically pops up on the page when you go to a shopping site. It can also track prices. In my experience about 1 in 10 times Honey has a code I can actually use, but since it costs no money and zero effort to use, it is very much worth it. — KK

A surprisingly workable alternative to a Teflon frying pan is a ceramic coated pan. We use a GreenPan (it’s actually white ceramic inside) that unsticks as well as old Teflon. The cheap Teflon pans we use only last about 4 years. Our GreenPan is 5 years old and shows no wear. The 10 inch GreenPan is $25. — KK

I’m sure I’m afflicted by a lot of cognitive biases, but I like this list of 9 common biases, because of the short advice on how to overcome them. I’ll admit that I struggle with the halo effect — “when your overall impression of someone is influenced by one part of their character” — but I’m working on it and trying to appreciate humans in all their complexities. — CD

Dig CC Mixter is a library of music you can use for free in videos, performances, podcasts, video games, or other projects. It’s well organized and it’s easy to listen to samples of the music. — MF