2026-08-01 00:00:00
The Mind’s I, edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, collects 27 stories and essays that explore three questions: “What is the mind?” “Who am I?” and “Can machines think?”
It has pieces by Jorge Luis Borges, with a man dreamed into existence in “The Circular Ruins” and the vertiginous “Borges and I.” Stanisław Lem contributes “The Seventh Sally,” about tiny beings who beg their maker not to switch off their world. Alan Turing asks whether a machine can think; Richard Dawkins writes on selfish genes and memes; and Thomas Nagel wonders what it is like to be a bat. Dennett narrates his own brain being separated from his body in “Where Am I?” After each piece, the two editors add a “Reflection.” This is one of my favorite books, and one I have returned to for over 40 years. Sadly, all the essays were written by men.
Thomas Nagel’s famous essay asks: “What is it like to be a bat?” His answer: we can’t know, because consciousness has an irreducibly subjective character. There is “something it is like” to be a conscious creature — and that something can’t be fully captured from the outside. The same mystery applies to every other mind, including the person sitting next to you.
Who is the “I” that thinks your thoughts? Hofstadter suggests the self is a kind of strange loop — a pattern that refers back to itself, emerging from the brain’s physical processes but not reducible to them. You are not your neurons, but you are not separate from them either. The self is something the brain does.
Can a computer think? Could you be a brain in a vat? What if you were teleported —would the person who arrives still be you? These questions expose hidden assumptions we carry about mind, soul, and identity. The book uses fiction and fantasy to crack open questions that dry philosophy can’t reach.
Science seeks objectivity — a “view from nowhere.” But when applied to the mind, this approach leaves out something essential: the view from somewhere, the fact that experience is always someone’s experience. Any complete account of reality must include the subjective, not just the objective.
“An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism. — Thomas Nagel’”
Book Freak is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run Recomendo, the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Recomendo Deals, Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper, and Book Freak.
2026-07-31 00:00:00
A visit to Japan is going to hit you harder when you arrive and harder when you leave. The price of a single-entry visa jumped from around US$19 to $93 this month and a multi-entry one went from $37 to $185. Then you get hit up again with a “Sayonara Tax” when you depart and that one just went from $6 to $19. The additional millions they collect will supposedly go toward travel infrastructure and trying to spread travelers beyond the overcrowded selfie spots. The exit tax should be included in your flight ticket, along with hundreds of dollars of fuel surcharges added recently due to price hikes from the Iran war.
If you’re trying to get away from tourists and mix it up with the people who actually live there, you’d better avoid Monaco and Malta. According to this chart, the first has 9 tourists for every local, while the second has 6.3 to 1. Naturally there are a lot of islands and tiny nations on the list, but some that I found rather surprising were low-population countries in Europe like Albania (4.8 to 1), Croatia (4 to 1), Austria (2.9 to 1), and Portugal (2.7 to 1).
One of the most popular cities for remote workers and digital nomads in South America is Medellin, Colombia and the people I’ve interviewed over the years that lived there have tended to stick around longer than they had initially planned. The temperature barely budges throughout the year, the infrastructure is good, and Colombia has a functioning digital nomad visa that self-employed people can acquire. On the downside, it does rain a good bit, the U.S. dollar has tanked badly against the peso this year, and street crime can be an issue. See my Medellin rundown here and chime in with a comment if you’ve got recent experience.
Sometimes I’ll be scrolling through travel headlines and be surprised by something I didn’t know existed, like this solar train through historic villages in the northern desert area of Argentina. “They have trains in Argentina?” you might be wondering and the answer is, “Not many for passengers.” This solar-powered one is not exactly an epic journey: only 26 miles (42 kilometers), but you can choose a round-trip option with stops that turns it into a 10-hour affair. It is in the province of Jujuy and the closest city is Salta.
A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.
2026-07-30 00:00:00
Retired after a varied career of programming, writing, and teaching, I live now in British Columbia and have the daily joy of following my interests, some of which are reflected in the list below. I enjoy cooking a whole-food, non-animal diet (for health).
To help Esperanto beginners find resources (and to share some lessons I learned from experience), I have a blog post that I frequently update: “If you want to learn Esperanto”.
I wanted to experience what it is like to be fluent in another language: see my brief essay, “Learning to Learn a Language”. Partly to minimize effort, I chose Esperanto, the learning of which involves patience more than effort.
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2026-07-29 00:00:00
Patterns in Nature
by Philip Ball
University of Chicago Press
2016, 288 pages, 8.5 x 10 x 1.1 inches
Step outside, look in any direction, and you’re sure to spot some exquisite designs in nature: the vivid jewel-like symmetry found on the wings of a butterfly, the fractal branching of trees, the pointillist patterns sported by a snake, or the hexagonal nest of a wasp, just to name a few. And science writer Philip Ball has captured some of this beauty with over 300 stunning photographs that he includes in his latest book, Patterns in Nature.
Categorized in chapters such as Symmetry, Fractals, Spirals, Cracks, and Flow and Chaos, Ball explains with both images and an accessible narrative how the most magnificent designs on the planet come from math, physics and chemistry, not human beings. He describes the various mathematics that create various patterns, and also points out parallels between similar patterns with seemingly unrelated sources. For example, the spots on a butterfly mimic the face of an owl. The “spots” on a giraffe look similar to cracked mud. Ball turns complex science into a fascinating read, and his gorgeous coffee table book is perfect for both the science and art minded alike. – Carla Sinclair
Secret Hero Society: Study Hall of Justice
by Derek Fridolfs (author) and Dustin Nguyen (illustrator)
Scholastic Inc.
2016, 176 pages, 5.7 x 8.5 x 0.7 inches
Secret Hero Society: Study Hall of Justice is Batman for the Diary of a Wimpy Kid crowd. Ostensibly a graphic novel, Study Hall of Justice adds to the format with pages drawn like diary entries, or web chats between the heroes. Some pages are flyers for school events and some are progress reports or official school documents that Bruce annotates. Most of the plot is in traditional comic panels, but the real clues of the central mystery unfold in these unique pages.
The story is about a young Bruce Wayne enrolling in a Gotham prep school called Ducard. Immediately he feels something is off about the school, as everyone there seems more interested in misbehaving than studying, and the faculty appears supportive of this misconduct. Sharp readers will notice many Batman villains both as staff and students, and you’ll quickly figure out what is going on behind the scenes. Bruce makes it his mission to get to the bottom of it and expose whoever is at the top running this nefarious school. Helping him are a young Clark Kent and Diana Prince, which sets up a cool origin for the future crime team. Humor in the story comes from Bruce’s repeated attempts to be a good detective, training for his later moniker as “world’s greatest detective.”
While the story is fun and enjoyable and kids should get a lot out of it, my major gripe with the book is that you probably can’t introduce Batman this way because of the ending. This book is definitely meant for someone already familiar with at least the top villains in Batman’s Rogues Gallery. Most of the references won’t interrupt your reading, but the plot hinges on a couple of references that I’m not sure would have the same impact on someone newer to the character. To keep it vague, some character identities are revealed that feel inconsequential in context, but are meaningful if you understand their place in Batman’s larger story.
But that’s a small problem overall, and I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from sharing the book with the young Batman fan in their life. Kids will surely eat this up, and adults could knock it out in an hour or less. There’s a lot to like here, both in terms of story and even the design of it. Pages are in black and white and the art style feels like a sketchbook, with an almost unfinished look that can be somewhat off putting at first, but quickly finds its place. It fits the tone of the world, as if Bruce himself had gotten bored in class and sketched a comic story about his own heroism. Study Hall of Justice is likely the first book in a series, and I for one am interested to see the continuing adventures of a young Bruce Wayne. – Alex Strine
Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.
2026-07-28 00:00:00
101 American Geo-Sites You’ve Gotta See
This will change your vacation plans. Visit your home planet! Geology is a force so huge we don’t see it. Yet evenly spread across the US (at least one in each state) are spots where our planetary behavior is made visible, erupting in either grand spectacle or in tiny gems on the ground. I was briefly a geology major in school, so call me geeky: but what bigger vacation can one imagine that inspecting 101 sites where you can see inside the Earth? A surprising number of US national, state, and county parks are dedicated to geologic power points. Other spots may be roadcuts or river beds. Use this guide to find them and interpret their incredible hidden significance. — KK
Fossil Collecting in the Mid-Atlantic States
The only thing wrong with this field guide is that it is restricted to the Mid-Atlantic States. It gives very specific driving directions (alas, no GPS coordinates) to easily accessible sites where one can collect small fossils. And each site and its ancient bounty is depicted in lovely sketches. I wish all guides books were like this. — KK
Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.
2026-07-27 00:00:00
Like the podcast 99% Invisible, the newsletter/blog Inconspicuous Consumption pays obsessive attention to minor details that most people don’t even see. For instance: long essays on whether the final button holes on shirts should be vertical or horizontal, or Where Should the Apostrophe Go on a Vertically Lettered Sign?. More on ashtray designs, the colors of butter, security envelope patterns. The less significant the details are, the more attention they get. Entire worlds can be glimpsed at the end of an office stapler. The tagline for the site is Big Enthusiasm for Small Details. Few who descend down these rabbit holes return the same. — KK
I love the core question this piece “Navigating by aliveness” offers when wondering if you’re on the right track: “Does this feel like it’s taking me in the direction of greater aliveness?” Aliveness here means fully inhabiting an experience and shifting your attention away from what you’re feeling and toward the depth and clarity with which you’re feeling it, whether it’s painful, dull, or joyful. The author goes on to explore why this matters in an AI‑shaped future, and suggests we relate to technology a bit like the Amish do: only adopting tools if they clearly serve our deepest values, rather than assuming they’re automatically good. For me, this definition alone feels like a daily way to check my own presence, and how fully I’m actually here in my life, moment to moment. — CD
I bought this tiny Mbzoey Electric Foil Shaver to take on trips, but it’s become my everyday razor. It’s rechargeable via USB-C and lasts at least a few weeks of daily shaving on a single charge, with an LED display that shows how much charge is left. No more shaving cream — I just run it over my face dry. I can do an early-evening touch-up before going out in under a minute. — MF
I love this mashup of electronic music plus French medieval instrumentation, sometimes called Bardcore. A good example of bardcore is the French group Courseval doing Daft Punk’s cover song Veridis Quo. As one commenter said “Proof that we could have had Daft Peasant any time in the last 500 years.” — KK
Text as Music is a simple browser tool where you paste your writing and it colors every sentence by length, so you can literally see the rhythm on the page. Micro sentences turn one color, short another, and medium and long each have their own. It’s inspired by Gary Provost’s line, “Don’t just write words. Write music.” — CD
My friend Seth Godin — author of Purple Cow, Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip, and This Is Marketing — writes a daily email full of excellent short ideas about life and business. But it turns out he has even shorter ideas that don’t make it into the daily email, and he’s collected them on a page called Seth’s Riffs. Each one is a sentence or two. You can vote for your favorites, which sorts the best to the top. A few of mine:
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