I’ve found another way to keep up with what’s happening in the world, that doesn’t involve “doomscrolling,” and that is signing up for The Weeklypedia. Once a week, I’ll get an email summarizing the top 20 Wikipedia articles with the most changes, the 10 most actively edited articles created in the past week and most active discussions on Wikipedia (No. 5 last week was Kamala Harris citizenship conspiracy theories). Here is the most recent issue. — CD

By the early 1990s television cartoons had hit a depressing nadir. The stories, art, characters, and animation were terrible, and the cartoons existed for the sole reason of selling toys and merchandise. Then along came Ren & Stimpy, a hyperkinetic, rubbery, explosive, hilarious, and beautifully animated cartoon that harked back to the era when Bob Clampett and Tex Avery were producing insanely great work for Looney Tunes. Ren & Stimpy changed the course of animation. The documentary Happy Happy Joy Joy recounts the tragic history of Ren & Stimpy and features extensive interviews with everyone involved, including its creator, John Kricfalusi, a supremely talented animator, a sadistic tyrannical boss, and sexual predator of teenage girls.  — MF

If you are a “person of influence,” particularly when it comes to books, and you’d like to read books before they are published (so you can rave about them when they are), you can sign up at NetGalley and get digital “advance reader copies (ARC)” of upcoming books. This is an early ebook edition used to promote the book. Most titles are available to all members, but some books need to be requested. For avid readers who like to talk about what they are reading, NetGalley is a handy service. — KK

Just a gathering of advice and ideas that I have come across in the last few months and has stayed with me since. — CD

Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne.

“I have been alive for a very long time, haven’t I?”

Totally impossible to translate, but the nuance is something like: I have been caused to live by the deep conditions of the universe to which I a humbly and deeply grateful. P. Arai calls it the “gratitude tense,” and says the beauty of this grammatical construction is that “there is no finger pointing to a source.” She also says, “It is impossible to feel angry when using this tense.” — Ruth Ozeki (found in the Social Social Distance Club)

“To realize your existence, do the things you know you should do — the duties that echo from deep below. Stop avoiding your life.” — u/TheEmployedMoth1 on Reddit

“When you are making plans, you are actually not making plans but you are creating reality…” — Somewhere on Reddit

“A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are. … Ask for what you want. You usually won’t get it, and often the rejection will be painful. But when this works, it works surprisingly well.” — Sam Altman, How To Be Successful

A few years ago a reader turned me onto a nifty variation of my favorite Pilot G2 gel pen, which is a mini pocket version of the same pen. Same liquid black, same fine tip, same profile, just a lot shorter to better fit into my pocket. The Pilot G2 Mini is my everyday carry. — KK

Two Minute Papers is a YouTube channel featuring short videos (sometimes 5 minutes long) created by a professor who reviews new research papers in visual programming, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer graphics, simulations, and other state-of-the-art computer science. He explains the research’s significance, while running very cool graphics demo-ing the results. I find it a painless way to keep up in this fast moving field.  — KK

For years, my family has been using Le Creuset cast iron pans. The large one is almost too heavy for my wife to deal with. Also, they take a long time to heat up. While we are not ready to get rid of them, I recently discovered Carote non-stick frying pans. They’re coated with some kind of natural Granite material and they have a bakelite handle that stays cool (unlike the Le Creuset handles that get extremely hot). The aluminum Carote heats up quickly, and it is the best non-stick frying pan I’ve ever had. Everything just slides right out of it and it’s very easy to clean with water and a paper towel. you can try out the 8-inch frying pan, which costs under $15 to see if you like it before buying a larger pan. — MF

The most recent “drop” of MSCHF (which deserves it’s own deep dive) is masterWiki. They claim to have stolen MasterClass’ content and paired it up with wikiHow’s iconic visuals. I’m not sure how accurate or effective these summaries are, but as someone who prefers to read rather than watch video tutorials, I appreciate this little unauthorized sneak peak into the MasterClass series. I’m not sure how long this website will be up, so I’ve taken screen captures of the ones that interest me. My favorite is RuPaul’s How to Be Your True Self. — CD 

If you like Recomendo, I think you’ll like the new longer-form newsletter I just launched. Every week in The Magnet I write about tips I find useful, things that interest me, what I’ve learned, interviews, recipes, quotations, and more. I also include excerpts from my favorite newsletters. — MF

I’ve been a contact wearer for 20+ years and have always bought the cheapest, store brand cleaning solution on the shelf thinking they were all the same. I was forced to buy Opti-Free Puremoist with HydraGlyde ($10, 10 fl oz) while I was on vacation and it was the only option, and I’m so happy I did, because they make my contacts feel like silk! The Puremoist Rewetting Drops also help keep my contacts comfortable to wear for longer periods of time. — CD

The secret sauce for successful film- and video-making is the audio. The easiest way to add a musical score and sound effects to home-made video, particularly if you will be uploading it to YouTube, is to use the large collection of license-free music and effects in the YouTube Audio library. It’s free. Many tracks are pretty good. And the music is guaranteed to be “clear” and not cause copyright or monetization issues on YouTube. I’ve been using them on my videos. — KK

I rarely drive anywhere these days, and aside from taking walks a couple of times a day in the neighborhood, I’m sheltering in place. I decided to give my feet a break and I’m wearing slippers instead of shoes around the house. These $15 memory foam slippers from RockDove have an open back that makes them easy to slip on and kick-off, and the memory foam insoles are incredibly comfortable. Importantly they have a thick waterproof sole, so I can wear them in the backyard. — MF

I think being able to make someone feel better is a superpower and one that I often fail at when I go into problem-solving mode too soon. This article outlines “The Four States of Distress” — 1. Shocked. 2. Feeling bad and not wanting to feel better. 3. Ready to feel better. 4. Feeling better and needing solutions. — and suggests the most helpful actions you can take to comfort someone at each state. It also shines a light on “comfort languages,” and after some thought, I recognized my comfort language is having someone help me explore and understand my feelings (and distraction helps too!). — CD

My friend Bob sent me this video about using super glue and baking soda to fix broken plastic parts. When it cures it is rock hard. I used this material to repair a broken dimmer switch knob and it didn’t break when I intentionally tried to snap it between my hands. — MF

As someone who makes things, I am very interested in new materials, cool ways to hack off-the-shelf products, and innovative techniques for constructing stuff. All these subjects are covered in an occasional free newsletter, Wheelhouse, written for nerdy makers. Wheelhouse also hosts a Discord community whose discussions generate content for the newsletter. — KK

In my workshop and studio, I label boxes, shelves, drawers, cases, bins, and parts with a very dense white “ink” which is really white correction fluid in a stubby pen. White is usually much more legible than black, but white ink is much more difficult to apply heavy enough to cover any surface. These Pentel Presto Jumbo Correction Pens do a fantastic job applying thick non-drippy white paint via a fine point tip, and are small enough to carry in my workshop apron. They draw perfectly opaque white on any surface, instantly, even vertical surfaces. I have not found anything else that will do that. — KK

If you’re in the newsletter business, Really Good Emails has a huge database of marketing emails and newsletters that you can search for inspiration. You can “collect” designs that you like, view code, and see examples of how it looks across different email clients and devices. I was not surprised to see Food52 emails on there, because I always feel compelled to click (and sometimes buy) whatever they send me. — CD 

One of my favorite things about Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was listening to clips of 93 KHJ, a radio station that pioneered the “boss radio” sound in the 1960s. The DJs were all vocal virtuosos, and the most talented of the bunch was a guy by the name of “The Real Don Steele.” Almost all of these broadcasts have been lost to time, but fortunately, some people recorded KHJ on their tape recorders in the 1960s, and the recordings found their way to the Internet. The Internet Archive has a couple of recordings from the 1960s of Steele’s show on KHJ. Here’s another, and another (with other KHJ DJs, too). If this kind of thing interests you, you can dig up more by searching “khj airchecks.” — MF 

I recommended Dictanote a few weeks ago. It’s a Chrome-based application that converts speech to text. It’s faster and less buggy than my Mac’s built-in dictation. Recently, Dictanote released a Google Chrome extension that lets you use Dictanote within almost any website. Now I’m using it to answer emails in Gmail, which has been a big time saver. It doesn’t work with Google Docs, which is unfortunate, but for longer form speech-to-text writing I use Dictanote’s notebook and copy and paste the text (in fact, I’m using the notebook to write this recommendation). It’s $19, and because I’m such a terrible typist, it paid for itself within the first day or two. — MF

This cool website, Drive & Listen, pulls dashboard cam videos from YouTube and pairs them up with local music channels so that you can feel like you’re cruising around in a foreign city, blasting the radio, all while sitting at your desk. — CD