Recomendo

April 24 · Issue #303 · View online

A weekly newsletter that gives you 6 brief personal recommendations of cool stuff. For a searchable archive of past issues check out https://archive.recomendo.com/.

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Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We run the Cool Tools website, a ouTube channel, and a couple other newsletters, including Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales, What’s in my …? and Book Freak. We hope you’ll check them out.

Free sound samples from NASA

Would you like to hear what lightning on Jupiter sounds like? How about the beeping sound transmitted by Sputnik in 1957, or the first sound recording taken on Mars? Head over to NASA’s Audio and Ringtones page, where you can listen to dozens of recordings. My favorite is Juno’s 2021 flyby of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, which sounds like an old science fiction radio play. — MF

Change your view on productivity

I could read a hundred blog posts on how to be more productive and still find ways to procrastinate, but these productivity visuals (Twitter thread by @elliottaleksndr ) anchor themselves in my brain and inspire me to reframe whatever is blocking me. This one is my favorite. — CD

Mindfulness exercises

I’m slowly trying out the odd little experiments suggested in this odd, used book I found, Astonish Yourself. The exercises are trivial, maybe even silly, such as following an ant for as long you can, or counting to 1,000, or listening to a recording of your own voice. It shifts your perspective for a small aha. The book offers 101 of these mindfulness moments. It prompted me to invent my own ways to astonish myself. — KK

Find your personal style

I like to feel comfortable in whatever I’m wearing and have never considered what my personal style might be. For the past two years, it’s been loungewear, but this comic strip by NPR Life Kit inspired me to change that. It’s a cute, visual guide that will walk you through cultivating your personal style and developing a shopping philosophy. — CD

A puzzling book

I’m a big fan of author A.J. Jacobs. He embarks on crazy self-experiments — like reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, or living according the the rules in the Bible for a year — and writing books about them. His latest book is called The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life. Jacobs entered puzzle competitions, explored the psychology of puzzles, and visited with famous puzzle designers. As part of the book launch, Jacobs created a puzzle contest with a $10,000 prize. I can’t wait to win. — MF

Tutorials on maker components

The inventor Tim Hunkin released another season of his fantastic video tutorials introducing The Secret Life of Components, as in the motors, linkages, sensors and other parts you might use to build things. His hands-on knowledge is vast, and his BBC-perfected presentation skills are perfect for walking you through the plus and minuses of any part you ever might use. As fundamental as this information is, it is very hard to find, even on YouTube. — KK

— Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson

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