2026-07-20 00:00:00
Pixar has been in a slump, but their newest release is fun and has some of the old magic back. Hoppers (Disney+ or BluRay) carries a convoluted plot involving animals and animal robots, downloading avatars, and key species in wildlife ecology. And for the memes, lots of beavers. It’s a fully realized world, lighthearted and whimsical, with some interesting ideas, and not too predictable. — KK
This article introduced me to cognitive shuffling, a very simple word‑based visual exercise that helps the author fall asleep faster. You pick a random, emotionally neutral word like “duck,” picture it, then move to another unrelated word, and keep gently shuffling through these images until you drift off. I’ve been trying this for about a week now, and one of two things keeps happening: I either slip into a liminal hypnagogic state where the imagery shifts and takes over until I fall asleep, or my mind gets quickly bored by not getting to make associations with the non‑linear images and just shuts down into sleep. It might not be my favorite entry into sleep, but it did work and could be helpful to those struggling with insomnia. — CD
Sometimes I watch a show on my phone while flying. I’ve propped it against a wadded-up napkin on the tray table, watching it slide off every time the seat in front reclines. This small metal clamp from Ugreen grips the tray table (or a seatback lip, luggage handle, or kitchen cabinet — the jaw opens 8–25mm), and your phone snaps onto the magnetic head, holding it through turbulence. It folds flat, rotates for portrait or landscape, and works with any MagSafe case. It also works on a treadmill, nightstand, or car headrest. — MF
You can buy your kid a dumbphone, or purchase an app (with paid subscription!) to make a spare smartphone dumber, but Jeremy White at Wired figured out that you can also use the buried options in an iPhone to craft a perfect device for a kid. These options are somewhat hidden under the Accessibility menu, and seem to be designed for those with cognitive disabilities, but also work to constrain the access your child has. Full instructions in this Wired article, This Buried Apple Feature Turns an iPhone Into the Perfect Kids’ Dumb Phone. — KK
This week’s What’s in my NOW? is my own issue. As editor, I usually feature other people’s lists—and we’re always accepting submissions, so if you’d like to share yours, check out this Call for Submissions. But this time I shared six things shaping my life right now: three physical, two digital, and one invisible. They’re more intimate than what I’d normally recommend here—closer to my inner life and energy healing practice—like a full-body red light therapy mat that puts me into a euphoric state in about 10 minutes, AudioPen for transcribing my dreams, and the invisible one: Ubuntu, “I am because we are,” a reminder that my growth isn’t a solo path but happens in the uncomfortable, relational space between me and others. Read the full issue here. — CD
I run a newsletter called Book Freak, and I’ve started a paid feature I’m calling the Deep Cuts reading club. Each month I dig up a great book that time forgot — usually something out of print and not on Project Gutenberg — and produce a clean ebook edition of it in EPUB and PDF, with a cover and a short foreword explaining why it’s worth your time. Subscribers get a growing library plus a discussion thread for the monthly pick. The first one is H.G. Wells’s strange 1928 satire, Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island. — MF
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2026-07-18 00:00:00
The Magus is a labyrinthine novel about Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who takes a teaching post on a remote Greek island to escape a failed relationship. There he meets Maurice Conchis, a wealthy recluse who draws him into an elaborate, ever-shifting psychological game that blurs the line between performance and reality. As the game escalates, Nicholas is forced to confront uncomfortable truths about freedom, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves.
No guru, no teacher, no book can answer the questions that matter most. Others can create conditions for insight: they can confuse you, challenge you, strip away your illusions. But the actual seeing must be your own. The danger is spending your life waiting for someone else to tell you who you are.
“Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.” To live alone? “To live. With what you are.” Sometimes you need to be removed from your familiar environment, stripped of your usual distractions and self-deceptions, before you can see yourself clearly.
The self must not be betrayed. Millions lack the courage to be good, far more than the few who dare to be evil. Each compromise with your own integrity, each time you go along with what you know is wrong, is a small betrayal of yourself.
Throughout the novel, Nicholas keeps demanding explanations: who is real, what is staged, what the game actually is. Conchis never tells him. Eventually, Nicholas stops waiting for the rules and starts acting anyway. Most of life works the same way. You rarely get the full picture before you have to decide, and waiting for certainty often becomes a way to avoid deciding at all.
If you like Book Freak you might like the Deep Cuts Reading Club, a paid-subscriber benefit where each month I dig up a forgotten, public-domain book and turn it into a clean ebook edition, with a cover, a foreword, and a discussion thread. This month’s pick is Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island, H. G. Wells’s strangest and most overlooked novel. Join the club for $5/month or $45/year.
“The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.”
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.
2026-07-17 00:00:00
I knew I had a long flight back from Asia coming up this fall and didn’t want to face it in economy class. So last May I connected with MileMethod to get help with a strategy to earn enough frequent flyer miles to get back in lie-flat business class. Four credit card signup bonuses and 471,000 points later, we’ll now return in comfort all the way from Ho Chi Minh City to Mexico City via Seoul, then a quick hop in economy to my home in Guanajuato, Mexico. This $9,757 itinerary cost us $444 in taxes + 260,000 points. I doubt I could have pulled this off on my own, especially since it involved an Amex transfer bonus, a Chase transfer, and booking on an airline that wasn’t either one we’re flying with.
Since I travel so often, I don’t actually listen to many travel podcasts. The exception is the Zero To Travel Podcast hosted by Jason Moore. He always pulls the best travel and life lessons from his guests, whether it’s travel legends like Rick Steves and Samantha Brown or everyday people pursuing an unconventional life built around travel or living abroad. It highlights lesser-known destinations, travel trends that will save you time and money, and ideas to help you add more travel into your life. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or just search “Zero To Travel” in your preferred podcast app.
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You might not want to bring up this factoid at a family dinner in Germany, where only 6% of homes have air conditioning, but more people die from heat in Europe each year than from gun violence in the USA. This is partly because of global warming and partly due to historic cultural opposition to A/C—outside of Spain and Italy at least. The toll has been especially bad in France this year. Public Health France logged 8,973 deaths for the week of June 22, cautioning that the number was still only a partial count. The preliminary total was 6,948 deaths registered for the previous week of June 15 to June 21. Since then it has gotten even hotter. At least the Seine is clean enough to swim in now.
The World Travel and Tourism Council announced that it is starting the process to choose the 7 Contemporary Wonders of the World next year and nominations opened yesterday. This is meant to “identify and celebrate the landmarks and buildings created since 1801 that have had the greatest impact on Travel & Tourism, local communities and economic development, and continue to redefine the future of destinations around the world.” See more details and have your say here.
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.
2026-07-16 00:00:00
Hi! I’m Claudia Dawson, Editor of What’s in my NOW?, co‑writer of Recomendo, and writer of Many‑Worlds Vision, a newsletter of shamanic dreams, visions, and channelings.
I also write poetry, play with altered states, facilitate psychedelic and dream integration, and practice energy healing with sound and light touch.
Ubuntu Philosophy: “I am because we are”
Ubuntu is an African philosophy of relational personhood and shared humanity, often expressed as “I am because we are” or “a person is a person through other persons.” Ubuntu reminds me that my becoming is not a solo project—it happens in the space between myself and others. When I feel challenged in relation to someone, I remind myself of this, telling myself some variation like, “I become a person through other people.” This helps me remember that growth in this lifetime often means participating in uncomfortable relational dynamics, even when I’d rather detach or dissociate.
I don’t think I’ve ever been a fully embodied person, having spent most of my time in etheric realms and dreams. But now, in my forty-second year of life, I realize that spiritual growth doesn’t happen only in the higher realms or with the angels—it happens here, in the 3D, in the mundane, in the uncomfortable, in the relational.
I’ve learned to love sitting with people in shame, guilt, and fear, in the mud and in the hard stuff, because life is hard and it takes effort just to remain a hopeful, happy, loving person. If I can stay in that state while deepening my capacity to sit with sorrow, misunderstandings, and these human injury games we play, then I’m also deepening my capacity to love.
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2026-07-15 00:00:00
Humans of New York
by Brandon Stanton
St. Martin’s Press
2013, 304 pages, 7.4 x 9.4 x 0.9 inches
Brendon Stanton started photographing random strangers in New York City in 2010. He treated each of them like a celebrity, portraying them in a classy portrait on the street. He then added a little bit of their life story in their own words. These mini-autobiographies were the secret sauce that transformed random snapshots of strangers into a remarkable series of portraits of real people that you could connect with. Brandon posted his photos-plus-bio on his blog, Humans of New York, which quickly went viral on social media until he had millions of followers. The 400 best of his portraits were fan-funded into this printed book. – Kevin Kelly
Star Stuff: Carl Sagan and the Mysteries of the Cosmos
by Stephanie Roth Sisson
Roaring Brook Press
2014, 40 pages, 8.8 x 11.4 x 0.4 inches
A popular Internet meme pairs a photograph of astrophysicist and humanitarian Carl Sagan with that of reality show star and shrill media figure Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi. The caption states, “If you don’t know who this is… (referencing Sagan) …but you know who this is… (Snooki) …Congratulations! You’re what’s wrong with the world!” Certainly a bit harsh and overstated, leading another Internet blogger to modify the last part of the meme thusly: “That’s a real shame! Why not Google ‘Carl Sagan’ and learn all about him? Read his books, watch his shows and be inspired!”
Reading is one sure path to inspiration, which prompted Stephanie Roth Sisson to write her children’s biography of Carl Sagan. “Carl Sagan was able to ignite imagination and wonder and pull science out of the antiseptic staleness that existed in my classroom,” states Sisson on her website. “[He] made it relevant to me and millions of people around the globe.” Star Stuff covers everything from its subject’s Brooklyn boyhood and how his love for science began at the public library and the 1939 World’s Fair, to his work with NASA, the release of his seminal PBS series Cosmos and his role in founding the SETI Institute (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) to find life in the universe. The illustrations are playful and engaging, and the text is quite accessible. As a special education teacher, I shared the book with my class which led to their writing a paper about his life and work. The book has since become a student favorite and a staple of my regular curriculum.
Parents and teachers who want to get even more out of sharing this beautiful book with their kids might want to pair it with this video of the humble Dr. Sagan teaching a class of children at his elementary school alma mater here. Truly, a reminder of what an inspired intellect and great soul the man was. – Lee Hollman
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.
2026-07-14 00:00:00
Mind maps are a tool for thinking. Instead of arranging your ideas in a sequence — as a list of words — you draw them in an arboreal fashion, radiating out from one starting notion. Mind maps use pictures instead of words, radial branches instead of linear lists, starfish instead of ladders, and associations instead of priorities — and as a result you think different. The visual trees you generate as you mindmap mirror the dendritic nature of our brain, and seem to flow more organically and (after practice) with less effort than the rigid discipline of making 1,2,3 textual notes.
They are easy to doodle. Anyone can make them. Kids and CEOs as well as creative types. I’ve come to employ this style of radial association in my own note taking and personal brainstorming. You don’t need this book to do it, but the book will help you refine your style, and it will help you expend its use. The authors, who’ve been perfecting and evangelizing this technique for decades, offer advice on how to use mindmaps to teach, as a form of diary, and most importantly, as a group exercise, say in corporate brainstorming sessions.
There are software programs for mindmapping (which I have not tried), but for me the intensely kinetic mode of drawing ideas (if even on tiny scratch paper) is a great part of the technique’s ability to produce new and different perspectives.
— KK
How to Make a Journal of Your Life
Most people take journaling either way too serious, or not serious enough. For such a key life-skill it should be more like you — expressive, idiosyncratic, unique. This tiny chapbook is the best guide I know of to get you started in journaling, and keep you going. Hand drawn with inspiration, it properly emphasizes the value of graphic thinking in the examined life. It is wise, brief, and fun. I’ve given one copy to each of my kids. Although it does not mention blogging, and assumes you’ll use a notebook, I think every blogger and blogger-hopeful should read it. — 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.
