Google hosts one of the best virtual museums in the world. They’ve scanned many thousands of the world’s masterpieces at super high resolution. So from my home I can visit their “Arts and Culture” site and by scrolling get very very close to the art — much closer than I could in a physical museum. I’ve seen many of the originals in their home museums, and I feel I was seeing them for the first time here. — KK

Like magic, my 12-foot ladder will telescope down to less than 3 feet. I can throw this Telescoping Aluminum Ladder in the trunk of my car, but more importantly, I can effortlessly move it through our house under my arm when I need to reach high ceiling bulbs or skylights, etc. It collapses instantly when done and stores in a closet. It’s what a home ladder should be. There are a bunch of no-brand models, almost identical, for about $100. — KK

I just spent the last ten minutes on Window Swap staring out a window in Villalago, Italy, where I could see the mountains and hear birds chirping and church bells ringing. Anyone is welcome to submit video (and audio) of their window view, and with the click of a button you can bounce around all over the world. — CD

Last week I recommended The Nostalgia Machine, and some readers reported that it was glitchy and did not work on their browser. Reader Micael suggested if you have Spotify, try searching for “year:1992” to get song and artist results from that year, and @JMWander recommended Radiooooo.com which lets you customize a music stream based on decade, country, and slow, fast or weird music. Thanks! — CD

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