I usually like my espresso black, but lately I’ve been adding Peak evaporated full cream milk. Unlike most canned evaporated milk, which has added sugar and thickeners, Peak contains nothing but milk, minus a lot of the water. It tastes delicious, more so than half and half, and a little amount is all I need to lighten my coffee. — MF
Here is an uplifting, charming film that should not work, but does. It is a live-action film with a talking sea shell as the hero. Marcel-the-shell overcomes disabilities (he is just a sea shell!) to reunite his lost family. It’s adorable, strange, inventive, weird, and heartwarming. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On began real life as a YouTube short that went viral, and was turned into a feature film with expert stop-motion effects. It’s so odd, but joyful, you won’t forget it. Available for rental ($6) on all the commercial video streams. — KK
This new tool by the Clearer Thinking team helped me discover and build a list of my own guiding principles. Your principles are what guides you when making decisions and if you know what they are, you can have less anxiety surrounding decisions and make them faster. Here are a few questions and principles that influence my decisions:
Choose life-expanding choices over comfort.
Ask yourself how this serves your growth.
Can I accept the consequences of this choice? If I can, that is true freedom.
What would my fully-actualized self do?
When in doubt, opt for the natural path over the forced path.
— CD
If you’re not the type to make resolutions for the new year, you might like this list of 27 Life-Changing Micro Habits That Require Only A Few Minutes. Here are some of them: Vow to walk around for two minutes every hour you sit at your desk. Start each workday with five long and deep breaths to calm your mind and get ready for the day ahead. Practice gratitude while you’re in the shower. Write for two minutes in the morning as you drink your coffee. — CD
Last year I drew or painted one art piece each day. This year I chose one piece to display as a mural on our living room wall. It came out fantastic! I used Wallsauce to print it out as repositionable wallpaper. I uploaded my digital file after I up-rezed it. My huge picture was 65 x 50 inches ($140), and arrived as two perfectly matched strips. The print was easy to apply (no glue, no mess) and looks like a genuine mural. The paper is a canvas-y textured plastic film, with very dense coloring. We are now hunting for other walls to beautify. — KK
Most newer phones allow you to install an eSIM, which is like a SIM card without the physical card. I buy cheap eSIMs from Airalo to give my phone fast internet data when I travel to foreign countries. I can top up my eSIM when it runs out of data. — MF
A squid cable is a power cable that splits into multiple strands so that each arm can be connected at once to the same source. I carry one as my main charging cable while I travel. There are many generic no-name brand models that are very lightweight, efficient, and versatile. My Puxnoin Multi Charging Cable ($13) is an All-in-One deal; it can charge (but no data) up to 4 devices from one USB plug. The four-foot long cable divides into two lightning cables (iPhones), a Type C cable (IPads, tablets, Samsung, Pixel), and a MicroUSB (Android, Windows, headsets, controllers). One cord to rule them all. — KK
One of my resolutions for 2023 is to “play” more often, but also figuring out what kind of “play” works for me. My friend Camille described it best when she said play should have no consequences. That inspired me to start coloring before bed, which is very relaxing and seems to help unravel all the busyness I have in my head before I sleep. I’m currently coloring a book of sacred geometry designs by Martha Bartfeld, which is now of print but I found the newest edition here: Mandala Designs. — CD
I use a simple and free app called Soundly Sleeping to play brown noise while sleeping. It muffles the wheeze of my CPAP machine and other unwelcome nighttime noises. (Brown noise is mellower than white noise). — MF
On January 1, artistic works published in 1927 will enter the public domain, which means they can be downloaded, resold, and modified in the United States without copyright restriction. Duke University has a list of notable books, songs, movies that will become free to use in 2023. They include Metropolis by Thea von Harbou, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, “Trolley Troubles,“ starring Walt Disney’s Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century by Phillip Francis Nowlan, and Popeye by E.C. Segar. — MF
I’ve watched a lot of videos about people making their log cabin in the woods, but this one (I Spent 3 Years Alone Building a Log Cabin) by a Swedish kid is on a whole nother level. First the guy, Erik Grankvist, is 18 years old. Second the level of craftsmanship is unbelievable. He contours each log and splits humungous boulders by hand! Third he worked on it entirely alone, moving massive logs himself. Fourth he filmed himself, which is a huge chore. There is no narration for 1.5 hours, just mesmerizing old world craft at work. I watched the whole thing. Two weeks after posting it got 9 million views. — KK
“Any habit needs all its parts in order to function. If some parts are missing, the habit is disassembled.” — Carlos Castaneda
This short insight on the structure of a habit has helped me see my patterns differently. If there is something I want to stop doing, I just remove a “part” or step from the process. Lately, it’s been deleting apps and keeping my phone as far away from me as possible so that using it becomes an inconvenience. — CD
There’s a guy on YouTube who does the most thorough and insanely complete testing of tools I’ve ever seen. He test to the breaking point up to a dozen variants of one tool (say cordless chainsaws), including the cheapest and the most expensive, to see which one is actually best. His channel, Project Farm, is sort of a one-man Consumer Reports, only better. This year he rounded up his best results into one video he calls The Top 10 Products of 2022. — KK
Machine Pix is an Instagram account with mesmerizing videos of different machinery performing automated tasks, such as making nails, tying knots, loading pallets, pulling weeds, and peeling fruit. — MF
This live feed of a watering hole in the Nabib Desert streams live 24/7. I drop in a couple times a week and I’ve seen so many different animals sharing the waterhole. I’ve seen zebras, wildebeests, warthogs, ostriches and lot of different birds. The camera has a microphone and night vision, so you’re always connected to this magical and awesome wildlife. — CD
In addition to Recomendo, I write a newsletter called The Magnet. It’s difficult to describe because each issue is different. Sometimes I interview an interesting person like Jude Stewart, who wrote a catalog of smells. Sometimes I post photos and comments of unusual things I come across when travel. In one issue I wrote about the time I worked on a traveling carnival and met a remarkable man called The Human Blockhead. If you are looking for a last minute gift (even for yourself), consider getting them a gift subscription to The Magnet. — MF
The Manga Guide to Cryptography is a 190-page comic book that clearly explains the fundamentals of cryptography. You’ll learn about the foundations of encryption, symmetric-key algorithms, public-key encryption, practical applications of encryption, told in the form of a fun and engaging story. — MF
I’d like to shamelessly promote my 50-year project to document the remote parts of Asia that very few people have seen. I call it Vanishing Asia. These gigantic books have thousands of photos of exotic traditions, rituals, festivals, costumes and disappearing architecture. I not only put years and years into traveling to the end of the roads, but also I put my heart and soul into collecting these images for posterity. There are still some copies of this immense 3-volume set available on Amazon, and they are currently discounted. These are the last copies because there will not be any more printed. Amazon says they can be delivered by Christmas, for a tremendously wow gift. — KK
If you’re tired of your music algorithms try out campus-fm.com. You can click through stations quickly, add your favorites and play them at random. College stations always seem to play the coolest, chillest indie music and it’s a nice change for my ears. Right now my favorite stations to drop into are Chapel Hill’s WXYC 89.3 and New Mexico’s KUNM 89.9.— CD
Talking Points for Life has all the advice you could ever need for all kinds of uncomfortable conversations. Like exact wording on how to decline a request for money (“I’m sorry, I have a personal boundary of not mixing money and friends.”) or techniques on redirecting negative conversations by bridging (“However, the real issue here is…”). There is also a page on “How to encourage someone to answer your question instead of saying, ‘I don’t know’” which is kind of a pet peeve of mine. — CD