This is the most important book I have read in a long while. Humankind: A Hopeful History overturns a belief I held most of my life: that society was a thin veneer that kept bad behavior at bay and had to work hard to elevate good behavior. Humankind brings abundant evidence to show the opposite is true. When left to themselves, in their most elemental state such as in catastrophes and emergencies, humans inherently will do good, and only with effort can be led to the bad. It’s very contrarian, but persuasive, and should be the basis for how we run things. — KK
My 18-year-old daughter bought an Oculus Quest 2 VR system but didn’t like it. It sat in the box for a few months before I gave it a try. I got a trial subscription to a boxing fitness program called Supernatural. I’m hooked. It’s so much fun that I don’t notice that my heart is beating fast and I’m panting as I’m dodging, ducking, and jabbing. With over 500 workouts, I look forward to the beautiful settings and enthusiastic coaches every time I work out. — MF
Here is a long scroll through milestones in human evolution, sourced from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and BBC, and put together by a Professor in Ecology. At the end of the page there is a note of Ages: that rescales the timeline to a calendar year which is really interesting. The Big Bang begins on January 1, the Sun forming on September 1, earliest signs of life appear on September 13, and just 2 hours before the year’s end appears us — humans. — CD
Half of our climate goals can be achieved by electrifying everything. This free book, Electrifying Everything in Your Home (PDF download), gives very explicit and useful instructions on how you can electrify your own home and life, even if you are a renter. Covers heat pumps, solar panels, electric vehicles, electric appliances, and more. It’s thorough. I found the section on electric heat pumps (which replace furnaces and air conditioners) particularly helpful because I could not find this kind of reliable actionable info anywhere else. — KK
Wandermap is a website with thousands of user-submitted hikes (and bike routes) all over the world. My favorite feature lets me draw a route on the map to see how far it is and the change in elevation along the route. The desktop website generates a QR code of my route so I can easily transfer it to my phone. — MF
The latest version of the Chrome browser enables you to link to a specific word/phrase/sentence within a web page, rather than just linking the entire page. You can focus attention on just the right text. Right click on the desired text section while in Chrome and select “Copy Link to Highlight. More details here. You need Chrome to create a deep link or to view one. — KK
If ever there is a time that you need to identify or find a symbol, shape or character, this Shapecatcher tool will help you do that. Just sketch it into the drawbox using your mouse and click “Recognize” to get a list of possibilities that you can copy and paste, along with their names and unicode codes. — CD
Dream by WOMBO is an AI art machine that is fun to play with. All you have to do is enter a text prompt and pick an art style to create something weird. This is great for bringing to life imagery from dreams and or designing your own oracle deck. Here are a few I made: Dimension of Play, Guardian Tree Spirits and Frog Shaman. — CD
Foam core is super versatile making stuff. Together with hot glue you can make almost anything – doll houses, organizers, quick prototypes, kid’s constructions, models, displays, etc. The boards can be expensive at stationary stores. The cheapest source of foam board I know about are 20 x 30 x 3/16 inch sheets from the Dollar Tree store, at $1.25 per board. They are thin but sufficient and cheap. — KK
Tile’s new line of Bluetooth trackers includes the Pro, which has a 400-foot range and a replaceable battery. Tiles are currently on my car key fob, wallet, and AirPod case, and I just bought a couple more to put on my water bottle and Nintendo Switch case, which I misplace all the time. Tiles now work with Alexa and Hey Google, too. — MF
There is a movie you saw, a song you remember, a book you once read but now you can’t recall the title. You can hold it in your mind’s eye, but it’s name escapes you. A long online search turns up nothing. For an answer turn to the crowd-sourced answer machine that is Reddit. On the subreddit r/Tip of my Tongue over 1.8 million redditors might be able to identify your target from your written description. They succeed about 1 out of four times. — KK
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