Africa has over 50 countries. Test your geography knowledge with a quiz, You Don’t Know Africa, that presents you with a blank map of Africa. It then displays a country name, and you have to click on the right country to increase your score by one. You can also test your knowledge of the flags of Africa. — MF

OneZoom is an interactive tree of life that allows you to zoom in and out and explore the connections between 2.2 million living species. It’s a lot to visualize and process, but fun to explore. I felt really small and grateful realizing what a tiny little branch of life we are as humans. — CD

You might not know that we publish a few other newsletters besides Recomendo. One of them is Book Freak. Each issue offers four short pieces of advice found in useful books. Here are two quotes BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits, which is the subject of issue 61. — MF

Before making a decision, ask yourself these two questions

“Will it help you do what you already want to do? Will it help you feel successful? The answers to those questions is freeing because if the change program doesn’t satisfy these two requirements, it’s not worth your time. ”

Form habits through emotion, not repetition

“In my own research, I found that habits can form very quickly, often in just a few days, as long as people have a strong positive emotion connected to the behavior… When I teach people about human behavior, I boil it down to three words to make the point crystal clear: emotions create habits. Not repetition. Not frequency. Not fairy dust. Emotions.”

The Internet Dungeon of Unexplained Phenomena is a website of AI-generated images and text depicting paranormal occurrences — like Dimensional rift at Scholastic Book Fair and The spooky locked door in the public library. It reminds me of a visual “Welcome to Night Vale”. It’s creepy and poetic and just scrolling through the blog excites my imagination. — CD

I used small squares of Gorilla Heavy Duty Double Sided Mounting Tape to attach panels of plywood together as part of an art project. To test the strength of the adhesive, I pried the panels apart with a screwdriver. The wood broke before the tape did. — MF

Researchers at UC San Diego created a 7-question survey that can determine your level of wisdom called the Jeste-Thomas Wisdom Index. You can take the 5-minute test here. The questions relate to 7 components of wisdom: Acceptance of Divergent Perspectives, Decisiveness, Emotional Regulation, Pro-Social Behaviors, Self-Reflection, Social Advising and Spirituality. Wisdom scores range from 1-5 with a score of 3 being considered neutral. My highest score was a 5 in Spirituality and my lowest score was 3.75 in Social Advising, which is kind of ironic because this is a recommendation. I posted my scores here. — CD

I’ve never had much success with sharpening kitchen knives to a razor’s edge by hand using traditional sharpening stones. But I now get razor sharp knives very fast using a small motorized sharpening belt made for the purpose. The Work Sharp MK2 requires little skill, it’s small, and relatively inexpensive ($80) for a sharpening system. Sharpening takes maybe 5 minutes per knife even when very dull, and is pretty foolproof. It also sharpens scissors, axes, and other tools. I now sharpen our knives much more frequently. — KK

You may remember the story of the Thai boys stranded in a deep cave years ago. There was an international effort to get them out that lasted weeks. But the story of how they actually rescued the kids is so unbelievable, so amazing, so insane, and so crazy that it is definitely worth watching The Rescue, the thrilling National Geographic documentary about this unlikely feat. The heroes of The Rescue are unexpected and unlikely themselves. I call this the best documentary of the year. (Streaming on Disney+) — KK

Grammarly is a super grammar helper that is much smarter than the default ones in most applications. I use it all the time. I’ve quickly come to depend on its artificial intelligence to improve my grammar and find more than the obvious typos. It seems context aware. And it runs at the OS level, so it works in most apps such as Slack, email, Discord, Evernote, Twitter, Facebook, etc. (It does not work in Google Docs for me.) Right now the basic model is free. — KK

I love these Roasted White Sesame Seeds by Shirakiku. There’s no salt or any other ingredient. Everything tastes better with a generous shake of the container – scrambled eggs, salads, ice cream, blueberries. Sometimes I’ll have a spoonful of the plain seeds as a snack. — MF

Someone processed billions of comments to find the books most mentioned on reddit, and I am very grateful. Here are the most mentioned books in 2021 — the top one being “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” They are also grouped by subreddit which is super helpful. — CD

This 1-minute video by John Cleese is all you need to know about how to have productive (vs unproductive) meetings. One minute! Applies to zoom meetings, too. — KK

The Six Spokes Theory, described here as a “strategy for an optimal life” is a great way to draw out a snapshot of your life and see what areas might need more attention. This is also called a Life Pie, which I first read about in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. You start by drawing a circle and dividing it into 6 slices. Each slice is assigned to an aspect of your life. You then draw a dot on the dividing line to the degree that you feel fulfilled. After connecting the dots, you’ll be able to spot in what areas you are lopsided. I made a short YouTube video outlining my process here. — CD

If a website allows Google to crawl its articles, it shouldn’t then hide its articles behind a paywall. The website 12ft.io bypasses paywalls by displaying the Google cache of articles. You can either go to the 12ft site and enter the URL of a paywalled article or prepend 12ft.io/ to the URL of any paywalled page — MF

We have a small all-electric car (Chevy Bolt) that does not carry a spare tire. Instead it is outfitted with Michelin Selfseal Tires. I was a little dubious these would work, but recently I had a tire puncture from a large screw in the tread, and the system worked well. The self-healing goo inside the tire kept the air in despite the puncture. But the screw was too big to remain. So in my garage at home, I pulled the screw out with pliers, which initially let some air out. Overnight the tire half-deflated. Next day I pumped it up again, let it sit for a few hours and it was as good as new. No issues. While this won’t work for gashes or huge punctures, I’d certainly consider Selfsealing tires for my next car. — KK

I’m a die-hard Google Calendar user, but my wife swears by Lett’s Classic Weekly/Monthly Planner. It’s about the size of a smartphone and each two-page spread displays seven days of the week plus a small monthly calendar for reference. She keeps it in her purse (along with a pencil). — MF

My favorite out-of-this-world twitter account to follow is the Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity. It keeps me up to date on Rover’s findings and images, like this picture postcard posted recently. It’s a dose of awe in my timeline. The most recent raw images of Mars can be found here: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/ — CD

This year I focused my Cool Tools Holiday Gift list on golden oldie products that I still use. Stuff that I have recommended in the past and still love and use now. But none of these seven are really gift items, so ignore the title. These are just proven good stuff I recommend. — KK

Here is a case for talking to yourself more often. Ethan Kross, experimental psychologist and neuroscientist, suggests that a key strategy for controlling negative thought loops and ruminating is “distanced self-talk” — talking to youself as if you were another person. This involves calling yourself by name and using non-first pronouns like “you”. This interview on Nauti.lus goes further into the technique. I like to talk to myself out loud while I’m driving alone. It’s a sacred time when I get to ask myself questions, spew out my fragmented thinking and work problems out. I feel confident and safe doing this in the car, because no one can hear me and if anyone sees me they’ll just assume I’m on the phone. — CD

Go to Typatone, tap out a few characters on your keyboard, then click the on-screen button with the musical note. It will play an original piece of music. Each time you click the button, it plays a different style of music. This could be useful for podcasts or videos. — MF