2026-11-01 18:01:33
Here’s a link to our first Destinations issue.
Our subscriber base has grown so much since we first started ten years ago that most of you have missed all our earliest recommendations. The best of these are still valid and useful, so we’re trying out something new — Retro Recomendo. Once every 6 weeks, we’ll send out a throwback issue of evergreen recommendations focused on one theme from the past 10 years.
I just completed a six-day walk across the island of Bali. We carried only day packs and our luggage was forwarded each day. We walked roughly 77 km from Ubud, up to the volcanoes in the center of the island, and then finished on the north coast. We had two guides to lead the way through the rice terraces, and we slept in local villages, Balinese style along the way. I highly recommend the organizers, who charge only $500 for the whole trip, including all the vegetarian meals along the way. This is miles off the tourist, or even backpacker, tracks. The hosts, Astungkara Way, also offer a 10-day version which goes coast to coast. — KK
Close.city is an interactive map designed to help you find neighborhoods in the United States that are within a short walking distance of amenities like supermarkets, public transportation, cafes, co-working spaces, bookstores, and other facilities. It's useful when searching for a hotel, Airbnb, or apartment that's near the kinds of places that are important to you — MF
I didn’t know about the tree seeds that flew around the Moon in 1971 and were planted upon return until I read this article in The Atlantic: We Almost Forgot About the Moon Trees. All of the locations of these Moon Trees are kept here and up-to-date, including the ones no longer alive. Visiting as many of these trees as possible is now on my travel bucket list. — CD
Whenever I travel I search for my destination at the Atlas Obscura website. It will yield dozens of very obscure, very offbeat attractions in the area. How else can you find a nearby museum of parasites, or trail of doll heads, or a restaurant of robots, underground tunnels, or a store for time travel? — KK
Visit AirPano to watch 360 videos of beautiful places on Earth, from Tokyo’s Shibuya Scramble pedestrian crossing (the busiest in the world), to a village of the Warao Indigenous people on the Orinoco River in Venezuela. My travel bucket list grew after watching some of these videos. — MF
I try to coordinate my travel to exotic places with local festivals that occur at the same time. Trouble is, there’s been no easy way to find out which festivals are happening where. For example many traditional celebrations run on a lunar cycle. So I built a calendar that will show me all the festivals in Asia that are happening on a particular day. Or I can look at the map and see what festivals occur nearby and when. My site is called Festivo. It provides the local festivals of Asia—which are crammed with color, costumes, and traditions—in calendar format. It’s open and free to all, no ads. If enough people (besides myself) find it useful I will expand it to Europe, Africa, and the rest of the world. — KK
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Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others. Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper and Book Freak.
2026-10-25 17:00:53
I cracked my Kindle’s screen a month ago, and when I looked to replace it, I was surprised by how much prices had jumped. So I tried the XTEINK X4 Pro, a pocket-sized e-reader no bigger than a credit card. Its screen light adjusts from warm to cool, and it lasts for weeks on a charge. It reads EPUB, PDF, MOBI, and text files and holds 16GB of books. The drawback is that it can’t read Kindle books. A fan community has built a free replacement operating system called CrossPoint that adds features, including a way to read Libby library loans, but it takes some tinkering. At $99, it’s much cheaper than a Kindle, and it snaps magnetically onto my phone so I can take it everywhere. — MF
The promise of coding AIs is that it is super easy to take control of your devices. You just ask Claude to write you a program to do what you want on demand. As an example, folks are vibe coding apps to remove all the ad clutter on their TVs. This article in TechCrunch reports on this guerrilla frontier with two vibe apps that do just that. Employing AIs to remove ads is almost sacrilegious, so it will be interesting to see how the media companies respond. — KK
The Encyclopedia of Invisibility is a collection of people, events, and ideas connected by invisibility—things that are deemed hidden or erased from history. The entries listed on this webpage are just a tiny sliver of what the artist Tavares Strachan compiled for the actual 2,400-page sculptural book. I think what makes it contemplative and “artful,” even as just a link dump, is how differently invisibility is measured. Some entries are literal, like dark matter and glasswing butterflies. Others inform us about the things that have been erased from cultural memory, or that have gone extinct or have been destroyed. — CD
The Lotus ($89) is a cleverly designed card shuffler that can shuffle up to two decks at a time. It’s a black plastic box with a folding top. Place the deck in the center and touch a sensor; a pair of silicone rollers then divides the deck into two stacks on either side. Then you pick up the two stacks, put them back in the center, and repeat. Each pass takes about five seconds, and the site suggests repeating it three to seven times. It runs on a standard 9V battery, which is included and rated for more than 500 shuffles. It folds shut with the cards inside, which makes it easy to carry. It’s a joy to watch in action, and it would make a great gift for anyone who plays card games. — MF
This is more of a public service announcement than a recommendation. I recently tried to load a page I’d bookmarked, but it was gone, and when I checked the Wayback Machine, I was so sad to see it had never been captured. So I finally downloaded the Internet Archive’s browser extension, which now auto-saves every page I bookmark. If you’d rather not give an extension access to your browser, you can paste any link into Save Page Now instead. — CD
I overpaid ($48) for a heavy duty scissors, but I think it is worth it because it will not only outlive me, but my great grandchildren as well. The Craighill Chroma is a heavy duty, stainless steel, super sharp, ergonomic, colorful, makes-me-happy-to-use-it 8-inch scissors. Most fine scissors have slightly curved blades to ensure a cut, but these are so hefty the blades are straighter, so have less friction, to make each cut effortless. I keep mine on my desk so I can see and enjoy its tri-colors. Makes a great gift, too. — KK
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Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Please consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others.
Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run 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, Cool Tools Weekly Newsletter, and Book Freak.
2026-10-18 17:02:28
The key premise of Recomendo is that everything we have suggested weekly in the past 10 years has been a personal recommendation based on our own experiences. It is something we have seen, heard, visited, or used ourselves. For this Christmas, we’d like to deviate from that principle slightly (and temporarily) to provide you with a dozen of recommendations from our subscribers. That is you. For our brand new Annual Christmas Reader Recommendations issue we will select the best personal recommendations submitted within the next 2 weeks by October 25. To keep it sane, just one recommendation per subscriber. Keep it short and personal. Suggest a product, tool, app, place, book, documentary, podcast, follow—anything—that you genuinely love, and few know about. No self-promotion. Beyond the dozen we share in the newsletter, we will post all of the vetted submissions on our website.
I needed a new bedside clock, so I got this Hotmoon Cocoon Pro 3 sound machine. Besides the dimmable clock display, it has 117 sounds, including 3 kinds of brown noise, my favorite. If you don’t like brown noise, try white, pink, green, blue, red, or gray. Once you set it up with the phone app, you don’t need the app unless you want to stream some of its regularly updated sounds. No subscription is required. It also has a night-light ring with adjustable color and brightness, works as a Bluetooth speaker, and has clearly labeled buttons on top. — MF
Recreate the entire ritual of online shopping on Dopamine Shop, or on Food Never Comes: You search for products, compare reviews, add items to your cart, enter a shipping address, place an order, and even track your delivery. That was fun! Then … nothing happens. No package arrives. No money changes hands. The food never comes. Nothing to return or clean up. You consumed nothing, yet you are an ace shopper. If shopping is your comfort scroll, this is very satisfying late at night. (This trend is big in Korea.) — KK
I recently attended an in-person event with visionary Alana Fairchild, where she led us through a guided imagery meditation to meet Great Mother archetypes like the Black Madonna and Kuan Yin. I was especially moved by her chanting and singing. I own many of her oracle decks, but this recommendation is for her voice. You can experience her meditations and sacred music for free on Spotify. — CD
Gossip Goblin is an Instagram channel of short AI-generated films set in a world that looks like a combination of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Mad Max. It explores themes of artificial intelligence, biohacking, and the merging of humans and machines. The artwork is incredible, as are the acting, stories, and characters. It’s the first time I’ve watched an AI video without thinking “this is AI slop. The Hollywood Reporter interviewed the creator, Zack London. His feature-length film, Gods Don’t Give Gifts, opens in US theaters October 30. — MF
Kids Trends is a directory of more than 100 million children’s drawings and paintings that you can search by any keyword. Exploring how children picture the world opens up imaginal portals in my mind. — CD
AI-musicals are becoming memes – and the new way to debate ideas. Not a normal debate highlights the debate about whether AI is a “normal technology” which has been spun into overdrive with AI-generated musicals defending each side. One musical refutes two academics scholarly paper arguing that AI is a normal technology, and the other AI musical by the two scholars refutes the first musical. Both musicals are astoundingly good, and even better if you follow the references. — KK
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Discover the podcast Time Sensitive, where creative leaders across the cultural spectrum—artists, writers, fashion designers, architects, chefs, philosophers, and others—talk about time and how pivotal moments have shaped who they are today.
Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Please consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others.
Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run 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, Cool Tools Weekly Newsletter, and Book Freak.
2026-10-11 17:02:18
The key premise of Recomendo is that everything we have suggested weekly in the past 10 years has been a personal recommendation based on our own experiences. It is something we have seen, heard, visited, or used ourselves. For this Christmas, we’d like to deviate from that principle slightly (and temporarily) to provide you with a dozen of recommendations from our subscribers. That is you. For our brand new Annual Christmas Reader Recommendations issue we will select the best personal recommendations submitted within the next 2 weeks by October 25. To keep it sane, just one recommendation per subscriber. Keep it short and personal. Suggest a product, tool, app, place, book, documentary, podcast, follow—anything—that you genuinely love, and few know about. No self-promotion. Beyond the dozen we share in the newsletter, we will post all of the vetted submissions on our website.
Most weather apps don’t show you yesterday’s weather. Who cares, right? But it’s useful information if you want to know whether today will be warmer or colder than yesterday. Yesterday is a free iPhone app that shows a chart of the hour-by-hour temperatures for yesterday and today. If it’s late in the day, you can see how tomorrow’s weather will differ from today’s. It also gives you a simple one-sentence summary, like “Today will be noticeably hotter and sunnier” or “Daytime high noticeably warmer and rain unlikely.” It was created by Matt Webb, who publishes Interconnected, one of my favorite newsletters. It’s a great example of vibe coding. — MF
Eighteen years ago Gary Wolf and I started the Quantified Self movement – the idea that you could use technology to track yourself. Gary hosted thousands of meetups where people shared what they were tracking and what they learned, and from this vast experience over decades, he finally wrote up the results of what we know about self-tracking in a new book, The Quantified Self. The book is fabulous, perceptive, useful, and illuminating. Turns out self-tracking is more about observing and having the right questions, than it is about wearable technology. Self-tracking can be a form of what Gary calls “personal science” – you are doing experiments on yourself (N=1), and the methods, criteria, protocols are different than what you would do for N=millions. I highly recommend The Quantified Self for everyone; we are all doing personal science on ourselves, and this will help you do it better. — KK
This short guide by Tricycle Day gathers practical advice from licensed psilocybin facilitators on working with the inner child, critic, protector, people-pleaser, and all the other parts that can pull us in conflicting and confusing directions. I think this advice is useful with or without psychedelics. I found it helpful to learn that our inner inhabitants don’t always speak in words: “Our parts can show up through emotions, memories, body sensations, images, or inner dialogue, offering information about what they need and what they’ve been carrying.” — CD
I often take an AeroPress coffee maker when traveling, especially if I’m staying at a hotel or Airbnb. When I arrive, the first thing I do is buy ground coffee at a local market. I’ve streamlined my setup by using this stainless steel filter instead of bringing a sack of paper filters. It does a great job filtering the coffee, and I think it tastes better than coffee pressed through paper. It’s easy to clean with a rinse under the faucet, and Altura says it will replace the filter if you lose it, break it, or even have it stolen, no questions asked. — MF
It feels a little meta to share a newsletter’s list of other newsletters worth your time, but I’ve recommended Wonder Tools before and trust Jeremy Caplan’s curation. His list includes 17 newsletters covering useful tools, technology, AI, news, journalism, and practical wisdom. I’ve already added a few to my Feedly. Worth checking out if your inbox could use some new sources. — CD
There are many reasons to live somewhere else, or to have the option to live somewhere else. The Nomad Capitalist is a YouTube channel that takes a market approach to the question of where you can live. It researches, compares, evaluates how much it costs to purchase a passport, or a residency card, or buy real estate around the world, and gives advice on what are the best bargains for “citizenship through investment” and so on. What is the cheapest price for a passport and what do you get? Where are taxes minimal? Many of the options he examines are not cheap, but for some, it can still be worth it. It’s good to know what your options are. — KK
Recomendo Unclassified Ads work! Reach over 131,000+ subscribers for just $350.
Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Please consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others.
Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run 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, Cool Tools Weekly Newsletter, and Book Freak.
2026-10-04 17:01:47
Scientists have reconstructed what a Jurassic forest might have sounded like 165 million years ago, and the one-minute audio is a really cool soundscape to imaginatively step into. They created it by analyzing and modeling the sound-producing structures preserved in 20 fossil insect wings from nine species that lived together in what is now Inner Mongolia. It’s a diverse chorus of low trills and high-pitched chirps, and I wish I could loop it all day as background noise. — CD
If I'm doing vigorous exercise, my earbuds fall out. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a second pair, so I bought these inexpensive Joywise Bluetooth headphones. They are wireless, have loops that fit around the ear, and are connected to each other with a wire. Unlike most small earbuds, they charge via USB-C directly rather than in a case. The sound quality is great for the sub-$20 price, and the batteries last up to 16 hours before needing a recharge. — MF
For mathematical nerds, Henry Segerman is your channel. Segerman 3D-prints weird mathematical shapes, invents curious mathematical toys, constructs intricate mathematical models, and turns math into analog things you can 3D-print yourself. His YouTube channel demos all this with expert explanations of the math behind it. — KK
Normal Tools is a free collection of 193 single-purpose tools for all kinds of random small tasks, including calculators, color pickers, image resizing, and file conversion. It has more tools than I will ever need, but useful to bookmark. Most tools are private by default and process everything locally in your browser, with no account or download required. — CD
I am traveling in China again and I am reminded that the best way for foreigners to book hotels, trains, and flights anywhere within China is to use Trip.com. It is easy to use, comprehensive, accurate, and reliable. — KK
Besides Recomendo, Cool Tools publishes a newsletter about books called Book Freak. I've been doing it for quite a few years, and I recently started finding old out-of-print books, scanning them, and turning them into ebooks with a new foreword and cover. This is a benefit for paid subscribers, and so far the library includes four books, with a new one coming every month. The latest is The White Rose by B. Traven, who also wrote The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It was translated into English in 1979 but is out of print, so I used AI to translate the German version. It's very readable and a fantastic book. You can read about it here. —MF
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Recomendo Unclassified Ads work! Reach over 131,000+ subscribers for just $350.
Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Please consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others.
Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run 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, Cool Tools Weekly Newsletter, and Book Freak.
2026-09-27 17:02:43
The key premise of Recomendo is that everything we have suggested weekly in the past 10 years has been a personal recommendation based on our own experiences. It is something we have seen, heard, visited, or used ourselves. For this Christmas, we’d like to deviate from that principle slightly (and temporarily) to provide you with a dozen of recommendations from our subscribers. That is you. For our brand new Annual Christmas Reader Recommendations issue we will select the best personal recommendations submitted within the next 4 weeks by October 25. To keep it sane, just one recommendation per subscriber. Keep it short and personal. Suggest a product, tool, app, place, book, documentary, podcast, follow—anything—that you genuinely love, and few know about. No self-promotion. Beyond the dozen we share in the newsletter, we will post all of the vetted submissions on our website.
Recently I wrote a short piece on my Substack that got a lot of attention. Many found it helpful, and to some it was news: Six Selfish Reasons to Have Kids. A better title might have been Six Selfish Reasons Why I Had Kids. — KK
On Verticality is an architect’s research blog devoted to his theory of verticality and how our innate desire to ascend developed through human evolution and found expression in architecture, flight, religion, art, and stories. It’s a vast visual archive organized around one question: “Why do humans have an innate need to escape the surface of the earth?” This has definitely been an existential crisis for me, so I’m fascinated by this entire body of research and will take my time exploring it. — CD
Zoom’s Timer app is a countdown clock you can keep private or make visible to everyone in the meeting. You can silence the alarm, choose a sound, and set one timer or queue up several for different speakers or parts of a meeting. I facilitate online groups, and this spares me from using my phone timer, which is distracting when I need to stay present and on screen. — CD
Whenever I get a new phone, I buy a case and a screen protector. But attaching a screen protector is finicky and nerve-racking: one tiny bubble or dust speck can ruin it. This screen protector from TOCOL comes with a plastic frame that prevents misalignment, plus wet wipes, dust-remover stickers, and a squeegee to remove bubbles. Tip: buy it before you get your phone, then use it as soon as you remove the plastic sheet the manufacturer puts on the screen, so you don’t have to deal with dust and smudges. Wearing nitrile gloves is a good idea, too. A kit costs about $10 and comes with two protectors. — MF
Apple released OS 27 for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac, and it comes with an AI version of Siri. It’s a vast improvement over the earlier versions, which were almost unusable. The new Siri works with all of the Apple apps, including Mail, Messages, Notes, Calendar, Photos, and Music. Your personal data stays on your phone, and even Apple can’t access it.
In David Pogue’s latest newsletter, he shows you 125 different things you can tell Siri to do. I’m using a lot of them already. Here are a few examples:
(Highlight a folder of files on the Mac, right-click:) What’s the total of these invoices? What’s the average? (“The total for the six invoices found in your Receipts folder is $4,692.79. The average amount is $782.13.”)
What are people waiting on me for? (Generates list from Mail, Messages, and Reminders. Incredible. Everything I did for this column was supposed to be for testing purposes only, but this one actually found stuff I’d forgotten I was supposed to do!)
(Running late to a party:) What’s the apartment number!? (“The apartment number for the Bynum party tonight is 10-F.” Note: I never said what party or what day!)
Change pickle to nickel. (You can use this when you’ve dictated a text message, and realize that there’s a mistranscription. Now you can correct it by voice! So much simpler than fussing around with the insertion-point cursor.)
— MF
I’ve been keeping a sketchbook journal, where I visually record each day’s events, moods, or environment – as a way of making a diary. For inspiration on Instagram I follow a bunch of artists who are also prolific sketchbook creators. A few I return to:
Pep Carrio – Each page could be a framed artwork
Adam Koford – Cartoony, doodles
Austin Kleon – Collages
Danny Gregory – High diversity of styles
If you shy from Instagram and want the appropriate analog, Danny Gregory also wrote/edited the best printed book on private sketchbook journaling. An Illustrated Life showcases the pages of 50 different sketchbook artists. You are allowed to do whatever you want on your pages. — KK
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Ten years of good recommendations, all in one place. Recomendo’s product picks — tools, books, gadgets, and ideas we’ve actually used and loved. Browse the archive
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A rechargeable air duster that never runs out of cans. The WOLFBOX MF200 cleans keyboards, dries cars streak-free, and clears dust from vents and shades. Get it here
Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Please consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others.
Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run 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, Cool Tools Weekly Newsletter, and Book Freak.