I usually listen to binaural beats as focus music, but lately I've preferred listening to the Slow Radio BBC podcast while I work. Each episode is an immersive soundscape of nature, animals and people. You can be transported to a fishing port in a foreign land or hear a choir singing in Harlem on a Sunday or listen to elephants wallowing in the mud in Zimbabwe. It is the sounds of life slowed down and it's incredibly soothing. — CD

EVs, like Teslas, are fantastic! But there are a lot of other electric cars besides Teslas. We love our small Chevy Bolt all electric. We’ve not been to a gas station for 5 years. (One unexpected benefit, no smog testing needed!) To give you an idea of the variety of EVs now available, Wired has a helpful roundup of 17 brand new EVs being introduced in 2023. The choices will continue to deepen. — KK

Insteading of poring over dozens or hundreds of Tripadvisor reviews of a hotel, copy the Tripadvisor URL of the hotel into this website and it will generate a summary of the general sentiment of the hotel. You can select from different summary styles, like Personal Travel Advisor, Detail Orientated, Sarcastic, or Super Critical. — MF

Claudia is too modest to mention it, but every night she records her dreams and uses the summary of her dream as a prompt to help an AI paint her daily dream. She calls it her Dream Stream on Instagram. I think this combination is a brilliant new genre, and a fabulous use of the new tools. Plus her summary dreams are sometimes profound. — KK

The Subjective Effect Index currently has 235 descriptions of sensory, cognitive and physical effects that may occur under the influence of psychedelics. There's also a really cool and appropriately trippy replications gallery that has artistic representations of hallucinatory effects. Whether you're trying to find a name for something you've experienced in a drug trip or just curious, this website is informative and invaluable. — CD

OpenCulture is a clearing house directory for thousands of free movies to watch, thousands of free audio books, free ebooks, free textbooks, free online courses, and all media free and open. — KK

Reco•mind•o: Mindful Recomendos for Life and Work is now available as a downloadable PDF with clickable links for $2.99. It is a collection of my personal tips distilled from more than 300 issues of Recomendo. It has less product recommendations and more invisible tools to improve the inner and outer aspects of life. The full-color paperback is still available on Amazon. — CD

If you have high-speed internet service and want a cheap landline, try Voiply. We’re paying $9 a month for service. They’ll send you an adapter in the mail. It connects to your cable modem’s ethernet port. You connect your phone line to the adapter. It required no other setup or configuration. — MF

As an alternative to Google I've been asking Perplexity.ai all my questions, because it provides more than just a list of results. It searches a wide range of sources, including academic papers, and writes up a quick summary with cited sources I can click on for further research. It also guesses my follow-up questions. It feels more like a conversation than just search results. — CD

Creep Mart is one of my new favorite Instagram accounts. The feed consists of AI-generated images of imaginary monster toys, complete with retro boxes. I think some of these would make excellent real toys, like the Scary Patch Machine or the Spooky Slime. — MF

I have some legacy devices (like hefty flashlights) that use the old large D and C size batteries. I am done buying batteries. But I wondered if I could get one last round in rechargeable big batteries? Yes, indeed! They make rechargeable Ds and Cs! But you’ll also need a versatile charger. While I was at it, I also upgraded my Maglite flashlights to 10 times brighter LED bulbs. Brilliant! — KK

My friend Jean told me about The Cabinet of Wikipedian Curiosities, a web page of interesting bits, lists, and links culled from the open source encyclopedia. 

Samples:

• In 1897, Indiana nearly legally declared pi to be equal to 3.2. It would have passed were it not for the intervention of a mathematician passing by.

• On 19th January 2038, all 32-bit computer systems will crash, and no one is prepared for it.

• Michael Lotito: the man who literally ate an entire plane.

— MF

The Dutch painter Vemeer is in the news because the few paintings he did in his life are all being gathered into one exhibit. Many scholars contend that his paintings are anachronistically photo-realistic because he was using optical devices to help him paint, centuries before cameras. To prove this theory, a crazy inventor named Tim Jenison spent five years recreating Vermeer’s favorite room including replicating all the furniture, and then figured out a way Vermeer could have used two mirrors (one concave) to project the image. Tim then spent one year using optics to precisely recreate Vermeer’s painting stroke by stroke – even though he had never painted before. It’s an epic journey of ingenuity and utterly mad obsessiveness. The whole story is told in an amazing 2014 documentary Tim’s Vermeer. (On YouTube for free, or on paid streaming services.) — KK

HistoryMaps uses interactive maps as a timeline so that as you read (and scroll) you can visualize where events in time took place. There’s also a Timelines Game that you can play, and according to the creator of the website there are hidden features and puzzles for added fun. — CD

Apple has a built-in "background remover" for images on Macs and iPhones. It’ll blank out backgrounds behind portraits, people and figures. Open a photo on a Mac in Preview, then > Tools > Remove Background. Bingo! You can also do it in the finder by right clicking on the image file, then >Quick Actions > Remove Background. The same trick works on photos on the iPhone. Just press your finger on the figure and you get the option to share a backgroundless version. Great for isolating products, making a headshot photo, or green-screening things to blend into a collage. Just 5 years ago this magic would be considered "AI." Maybe it is. (Let us know if there is built-in mode for windows/android.) — KK

I took this mini-quiz to find out if I'm living my life in the "fast lane." The quiz is based on research of how fast pedestrians walk along a 60-foot stretch of pavement in different cities, and how that affects pacing in other aspects of life. Turns out I am somewhere in the middle. I scored a 37. — CD

Instead of having something sweet after dinner every night, I’m eating a small bowl of chia seed pudding. I like its consistency and texture. Here’s a simple recipe. I use the Trader Joe’s brand of chia seeds and oat milk and I add cinnamon, vanilla extract, and roasted sesame seeds. — MF

My favorite food science guru, Adam Ragusea, explains what science currently knows about lactose tolerance and lactose intolerance. It’s way more complicated than it appears, but given how prevalent lactose food is, you’ll want to watch/listen to this video/podcast on “Why some people can eat dairy and others can’t.” — KK

I’m a big proponent of learning to interpret your own dreams (and I like to write about it), but this Dream Interpreter AI is fun to play with. I’ve been feeding my dream accounts to it and I’ve noticed that it’s pretty good at translating the emotional tone in my writing. It mirrors back my feelings using different words, and that helps to give my dreams a new perspective. — CD

I recently purchased the Chopula spatula after reading Yitah Wu’s review about it on our website, Cool Tools. Yitah had praised its flexibility and unique shape, which makes it easier to flip and cut food in the pan. After trying it out for myself, I agree with Yitah’s assessment. The spatula's design allows me to easily maneuver food while cooking, and I appreciate the fact that I can set it down on the counter without the business end touching the surface. It has quickly become my go-to spatula. — MF