This website offers a helpful collection of tools for managing anxiety, including breathing exercises, sensory techniques, calming visualizations, and sound therapy. Each exercise is just a few minutes long and requires no special equipment. I appreciate that the site also explains the science behind each technique, along with advice on when to use them and what you might notice. — CD

I’ve been replacing some of my necklace clasps with these magnetic closures, and they’re such a time- and hassle-saver. The magnets are strong enough to hold the weight of my heaviest pendant. — CD

I installed my first trail cameras in the early 1990s hoping to capture the elusive mountain lion in the hills behind our house. Back then trail cams were cumbersome film cameras with only 36 shots before you had to change rolls. It was expensive to develop and a chore to constantly replenish and keep the film and batteries replaced. Today you can get solar powered digital trail cams that have cell connections and display the images from remote locations instantly on your phone. (These are outlawed for hunting purposes in some states.) There is a whole range of intermediate, inexpensive digital trail cams that will pair with your nearby phone. I use a solar powered Vidvis 4K trail cam ($49) in my pursuit of wild animals passing through our neighborhood. It also works at night with invisible infrared flash. Every once in a while I walk up to it and wirelessly download its stored images. It’s always charged, and I can fit a year of still photos on one card. I’ve caught lots of critters passing through, but alas, still no mountain lion. — KK

The timer app on a phone is not helpful in the kitchen. You have to prop it up to see the time, the screen goes dark after a few minutes, and if your hands are wet, it makes the app unresponsive to your finger. I use a battery-powered 60-minute Searon Kitchen Timer. The visual analog display is easy to read from a distance. It can be set on the counter, attached to the refrigerator, or mounted on the wall. It also has a mute button — when the time is up, an LED blinks until you tap the top of the timer. — MF

My friend gifted me this infinity travel pillow, and while I haven’t traveled with it yet, I use it daily. It’s super snuggly and soft, and no matter how I wrap it around myself, I feel supported and comfy. In bed, when I hug it and tangle my arms into it, I drift off to sleep faster. It’s definitely worthy of being called an emotional support pillow. — CD

I have a lot of trouble trying to describe what modern China feels like to those who have not been there in the last decade. Now I can just point to this tiktok-ish Instagram that spins out a steady parade of crazy innovation, brilliant art, amazing skills, stupid tricks, astounding architecture, crass consumerism, that is the urban China that I know and love. It's called Its China Baby. It feels like China today. (And careful, there are tons of similar sounding ripoff counterfeit accounts—it’s China baby!) — KK

I bought the $9 wireless doorbell from BN-Link for a friend whose old doorbell stopped working. The button unit comes with double-sided foam tape and uses a coin battery. The ringer plugs into a wall outlet. Installation took 60 seconds; deciding on which of 58 different chimes to use took 10 minutes and was a lot more fun. I wanted "Rage Over a Lost Penny" based on the title, but my friend decided on "Westminster Chimes." — MF

Recently, some Redditors shared their best real-life “cheat codes.” Here are the top-voted pieces of advice that stuck with me (some paraphrased):

• Treat everyone with sincere kindness and gratitude, especially those who rarely get thanks—like custodians, admin staff, or customer service folks.

• When your inner critic pipes up, just announce, “Oh look, the asshole is here.” Giving that negative voice a name can help you laugh it off and move on.

• If you get stuck on a problem, take a break—go for a walk or sleep on it—then try explaining it out loud, even to a rubber duck. Sometimes, just voicing the issue is enough to spark a solution.

• Clean your house before you go on vacation.

— CD

I've consulted numerous videos and written guides on how to fold elastic-rimmed fitted sheets correctly, but nothing compares to Dave Gauer's illustrated guide. It's got two things going for it that other guides don't: 1) hand-drawn illustrations of sheets depicted as googly-eyed muppet creatures, and 2) instructions that make sense. Even if you’re committed to rolling your fitted sheet into an ugly ball shape and stuffing it in the closet for the rest of your life, Gauer’s guide is worth reading for the entertainment value alone. — MF

Listers is a must-see, quirky, charming, homemade documentary about two brothers competing to spot the most number of birds in a year – the list. To make it more challenging, they know zero birds on day one, and they have no money so they sleep in their car as they travel the country for a year, and of course they film everything and it turns out they are remarkable nature photographers. The bird footage is award-worthy, but the rest of the film has the vibe of a shaky punk skate video. They constantly mock birdwatching and the obsessiveness of listers, while they become deeply obsessed themselves. This is not about birds; it’s about extreme bird-watchers, and it’s funny, entertaining 2 hours is a master class in obsession and what is possible to learn in one year. This doc has a lot of heart. Streaming on YouTube for free. — KK

The Wolfbox MF100 battery-powered air duster produces a stream of air more powerful than a can of pressurized air. I've been using it to blow debris out of keyboards, dust from windowsills, cobwebs out of corners, and dirt lodged in cracks in my backyard wooden stairs. I wear ear protection when using it on the highest setting. It comes with four nozzle attachments and a USB-C charging cable. — MF

Finding a reliable local guide in a far away destination is not easy, but made a bit easier with GetYourGuide.com. This is a clearinghouse for local ebike tours, street food tours, museum tours, and city walking tours around the world. GetYourGuide does not run any of the tours; these are all staffed and run by local entrepreneurs so the quality will vary. But this site and app make hyper local guides easy to find, easy to schedule, and easy to pay. In my own experience, they are reliable and deliver what they promise. — KK

I usually put very little effort into taking photos, but this tip makes me want to snap more—especially of my Chocolate Lab. It makes him look extra handsome. — CD

• Turn your phone upside down so the lens is on the bottom.

• Set the camera to 2x zoom.

• Step back from your subject.

• This setup helps create more natural human proportions and reduces facial distortion.

Whether or not you like the music of U2, you should watch the video memoir of its lead singer Bono. The format of Bono: Stories of Surrender, streaming on Apple+, is peculiar. Like an autobiography, this is an auto-documentary, a documentary made by Bono about himself. It begins with spoken-word monologues by Bono, mixes in music, dips in and out of him telling his Irish family story on stage, personal confessions of his own journey, punctuated by lyrics of well-known songs to fill out his biography. It is a performance, but also a record, an oral history. It’s a film version of his mammoth book autobiography, Surrender, but I appreciated this cinematic novella for its innovative approach to a memoir. — KK

This website generates random adjective–noun combinations and then pulls up corresponding Wikipedia and Google results. Some exist as entries, while others don’t because they’re too nonsensical. Either way, it feeds my curiosity and sparks new creativity. — CD

Richard Sharpe Shaver (1907–1975) was a pulp science fiction writer, best known for his articles that ran in Amazing Stories in the 1940s about an evil race of humanoids living beneath the Earth’s surface. Shaver insisted the stories were non-fiction. Later in life, Shaver came to realize that the patterns in rocks were messages written by intelligent beings of antiquity, and he devoted the remainder of his life to sharing his discovery with his small cadre of admirers. Richard Sharpe Shaver: Some Stones Are Ancient Books is a book of Shaver’s “rokfogos” research, complete with photos and typewritten rock-book translations. It was published by a delightful small press called The Further Reading Library. — MF

Every year, Tim Leffel, who runs our sister newsletter Nomadico (a Recomendo for travel) researches the cheapest places to travel round the world. His 2025 Cheapest Destinations report is brief, but very current. Inexpensive regions can extend how long you travel, or raise the level of quality, or both. Cheaper places also make the most difference if you are attempting to work for a while as a nomad. His survey takes that into account. — KK

This search tool helps you generate playlists based on your favorite music. Just input a song, and it finds similar tracks based on energy, instrumentation, acoustics, and danceability. You can also adjust your preferences. I’ve been discovering artists I never would have found — and songs I instantly love. — CD

This handheld vacuum from HRYCF is a handy helper for small messes. I use it to clean coffee grounds near my espresso station and crumbs on countertops. It offers strong suction and comes with versatile attachments, even converting into an air blower. Its compact design makes it easy to grab. The USB-C rechargeable battery runs for up to 40 minutes. — MF

Martha Stewart, now 82, was the original lifestyle influencer. She built a media empire beginning in the 1970s around herself making stuff, from gardening, baking, to crafts, to home improvement. She was the first woman to become a self-made billionaire. Like many geniuses, she was a bit of a jerk. (I had a chance to interview her mid-career.) What I really like about Martha, the new documentary about her surprising life, is that it reinforces the power of being the only, of being a category of one. Instead of trying to overcome her oddities, her unconventionality, her character weaknesses, she leaned into them hard so that she was unique and had no competition, until she herself was the brand. This later became the goal of many others: “the brand of YOU.” The documentary is extremely well done, a lot of fun because Martha Stewart can’t hide her flaws, and is streaming on Netflix. — KK