Kevin Kelly's Blog, page 4

Radical Markets/Trim/Deal with difficult emotions

Alternative economic ideas

Crazy ideas sometimes become everyday and obvious. No book I’ve read has had more crazy economic ideas than Radical Markets by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl. Their ideas — which rethink the idea of property and taxes — are intriguing, and even if wrong, might be productively wrong. It is dense reading, but exhilarating. — KK

Hire a negotiator to lower your bills

Trim is an online service that negotiates with your phone, cable TV, and Internet providers to reduce your monthly bill by asking for a discount. Sure, I could do this myself, but I’m happy to pay someone else a 33% commission on the money they save me.  So far they’ve successfully reduced my annual bills by $543.24. — MF

How to deal with difficult emotions

Practicing mindfulness is easier said than done. This chart breaks it down into six easy steps to make sense of your difficult emotions. I find that visualizing my emotion as a little tangled mess that lives outside of my body makes it less likely I will react impulsively. — CD

Cooperative tabletop game

Most board games have a winner and a bunch of losers. But there are a number of games where users must work with each other to achieve a goal. One of the best is cooperative games is Forbidden Island ($18). The goal of this attractively designed card and token game is to recover four life-saving treasures from an island before it sinks into the ocean, drowning all the players. Achieving victory requires players to formulate plans, agree on strategies, and make sacrifices. — MF

Inspiring livelihood documentary

Shorebreak is a fast 60 minute doc on Amazon Prime about this surfer who found a special niche in photography. His thing is standing at the scary point where giant waves break onto the beach while he photographs whatever crazy surfers are in the wave, before he ducks under the pummeling mountain. The doc is well done, his photography is stunning. But what I love is the lesson of focus, enthusiasm, mastery, and foolish individualization. His relentless enthusiasm, going back to the shorebreak day after day to see if he could make something new again and again, has improbably earned him a living doing this. What a treat! — KK

Quotables

Below are some enlightening things I’ve read lately. — CD

“Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.” — Rupi Kaur

“When you say something unkind, when you do something in retaliation, your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and they try hard to say or do something back to make you suffer, and get relief from their suffering. That is how conflict escalates.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, Taming the Tiger Within

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.” — Isaac Asimov

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” — Henry David Thoreau

“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” — Charles Bukowski

Inside/SparkToro/Shortbooks.co

Insider industry news

I’ve become of a fan of Inside newsletters. Once a day I get a brief summary of what’s been reported in a narrow specialized field, like AI, or VR, or Space, or Robotics. Succinct, select, in depth, and free. Inside also offers newsletters focused on each of the big tech companies, like Amazon or Google. And they now offer inside industry news on fashionable sectors like Cannabis or Beer. – KK

Fake follower audit

None of us have as many followers as we think we do. Up to half may be bots or shills. Every now and then I give myself a reality check by seeing how many fake followers I have on Twitter. I enter my twitter handle into SparkToro. Ouch, 21% are fake. — KK

Find the shortest book on any subject

Shortbooks.co is a search engine for books that estimates reading time to help you find the shortest book on any subject. It’s not flawless, but you can never have too many book search tools. — CD

Quick unsubscribing

I get signed up for a lot of newsletters and PR lists without my consent. I used to take the time to scroll down to the bottom of each email newsletter and click the unsubscribe link (if there was one), but now I just use Gmail’s “Block” to send them forevermore to my spam folder. — MF

Savory meat marinade

My favorite marinade for meat is easy to make and savory. The original recipe is from America’s Test Kitchen and exists behind a paywall so I can’t share it, but the Southwestern Marinade ingredient list here is the exact same. I keep a printed copy in my kitchen. — CD

Card magic DVD

I’ve been interested in card magic for the last five years or so. The best way to learn is not by books (which are confusing), but by videos (which make the sleights and handlings clear). A great video collection for beginner and intermediate card magicians is the 7-DVD set called Complete Card Magic ($25). Get this and start amazing people. – MF

 

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Freeze dried taxidermy/TSA-proof knife/Python Tutorials

Freeze dried taxidermy

Occasionally a small bird strikes one of our windows and dies. Rather than bury it, I freeze dry it. I insert the whole bird into a baggie with a pack of desiccant to keep it dry. The desiccant gel slowly absorbs the moisture in the bird even after it freezes. After a year it is fully dried, and can be kept on a shelf or display indefinitely with all its feathers. This works on birds the size of a sparrow or smaller. — KK

TSA-proof knife

After decades of using a Utili-key as my choice of a small knife to pass through airport security, I lost it in the woods. I replaced it with Victorinox SwissCard. This tool is a mini-Swiss Army knife flattened into a plastic holder the size of credit card but thicker. It has a tiny (1.5 inch) sharp blade, scissors, tweezers, a pen, toothpick, and a pin. You can carry it in your wallet or bag. Goes through security. There is a knock-off version which remarkably adds a magnifier, a light, and four screwdriver heads in the same size card for half the price at $9 — but you’ll need to sharpen the flimsy blade. — KK

Python Tutorials

One of the things I miss about the 1980s was writing programs for fun in BASIC. A couple of years ago I started playing around with Python. It’s easy to learn, and powerful enough to do anything I would want to automate. Christian Thompson’s YouTube channel has wonderful Python tutorials for beginners. Check out the one on how to program a Pong clone. — MF

Advice book on Audible

At the behest of my best friend, I finally downloaded the Audible version of Tiny Beautiful Things, advice on life and love from Cheryl Strayed’s column Dear Sugar. The book is a collection of the most heartbreaking and honest letters seeking help and the advice given. Strayed’s thought-out responses pull from her own life experiences dealing with her mother’s death, drug addiction, divorce, and now as a happily married wife and mother. They are beautiful written and incredibly moving. This book elicits empathy, laughter and at times, lots of tears. There were a few times I was literally sitting in traffic and sobbing listening to her stories. I highly recommend. — CD

Read books in new languages

Parallettext.io is an online tool that helps you learn languages by reading a book in a foreign language with your native language side-by-side. You can click on any sentence to hear it out loud. I’m not sure how helpful it is to learn an entirely new language, but it’s useful for me to read in Spanish from time to time to remind myself of how sentences are structured differently. Right now, I spend a little time each day working my way through Alice in Wonderland. — CD

Cheap DVD Reader

No one in my family of four has a CD or DVD drive in their computer. That’s a good thing, because we rarely need one. When we do (usually to rip a movie or copy photos or music), I pull out this $15 USB CD/DVD drive and plug it into a laptop. — MF

 

 

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Theo Gray’s Mad Science

Theo Gray’s Mad Science ($17) is a rare home-chemistry book where the advice of “don’t try this at home” is, for once, appropriate. I usually complain about the scare mongering of home chemistry, but half of the experiments in this how-to book really are extremely dangerous. But the other half are pretty cool. There are no explicit step-by-step instructions given for any of the experiments, just guidelines of what to do. Gray, whose column appears in Popular Science, wants you to do some research and not just be a “script kiddie.” Stunning photos of what to expect from each project help. My son and I have done a few of these and they do work. The prime lesson engendered by this book is the sense that the material world is far more accessible to hacking than first appears.

Laura Cochrane, Content Strategist

Our guest this week is Laura Cochrane. Laura Cochrane is a content strategist living in Berkeley, California. She currently works at NEO.LIFE, a biotech publication. Before that, she was an editor at two different DIY project publications: MAKE magazine, where she worked alongside Mark, and Instructables. Her hobbies include rock climbing, drawing, dancing, and yoga.

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Tom Bihn Daylight Backpack

A couple years ago, before a trip to Europe, I was on the hunt for a new day backpack. The JanSport I had had since high school had holes in it. I wanted something with a clean, minimal design. It’s actually a challenge to find a backpack that doesn’t have a bunch of random zip compartments, pouches, folds, mesh details, and gratuitous textures added for seemingly no reason at all. So I was excited when I found the Tom Bihn Daylight Backpack. It’s got a simple rounded trapezoid shape with a single diagonal zip that provides access to the front pocket. I got it in this really nice French blue color that looks good with most everything I wear. It also shipped fast, and as I recall there was a handwritten note thanking me for my order. It’s made in Seattle, and the quality is solid. I’ve stuffed it until it’s quite full and the seams have held up for the past two years as I’ve used it as a work commuter backpack.

FoundPhotos.net

I’ve loved this website for a long time. It’s an online photo gallery born out of the era of peer-to-peer filesharing. It was started in 2004 when a musician named Rich Vogel was using a filesharing program to find music and instead stumbled on a folder of photos. It’s still getting updated periodically, though I’m not sure how often. The collection is thoughtfully curated, like an epic mix tape. Though I can’t always put my finger on why one photo works so well next to another that seems unrelated in every way. When I want to be reminded of how beautiful the imperfection of real life is, I go here. These photos are often the mistakes, the ones the photographer never intended. Some are blurry, poorly framed, or double exposed. People have been captured with weird expressions or unflattering angles, but that’s part of the appeal. They’re stills from the cutting room floor of life. I find humor, horror, love, and glory, in a way that feels rare.

Audio Dharma podcast

Audio Dharma is a regularly updated collection of all the talks and guided meditations given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. A massage therapist recommended it to me after a particularly emotional session a few years ago. I started out mostly listening to the guided meditations, but lately I’ve been more into listening to the talks. They work well for someone who is listening in short bursts, so I’ll put it on for my 15-minute work commutes in the morning and evening. In moments where I’m feeling particularly stressed or sad, these talks can have the effect of helping me change what feels like a less-than-ideal metaphorical posture: when I’m overly focused on the future or the past I have this sense of leaning forward, like my mind is two steps ahead of my body. Audio Dharma helps me realign to something closer to upright — a posture of gentle curiosity. My favorite talks are the ones where the teacher picks a simple human experience, like uncertainty, desire, grief, or generosity, and they explore it in a way that usually leaves me feeling like I have a new perspective on a very common human experience. Most of the podcasts or music I listen to feel like they fill my head with noise that requires additional processing or decompressing afterward, but this feels like the opposite. To use a computer analogy, Audio Dharma defragments my brain.

PocketDisc crocheted frisbee

I like throwing around a frisbee, but I enjoy it even more with my crocheted frisbee. I don’t remember how I came into possession of one of these, but I love it. The main things that make it awesome are that it never hurts if someone throws it at you hard, and it folds up and can fit easily in pockets, purses, and bags. Also: it flies quite well, it can be given as a gift to people of all ages, and it’s safer to use inside the house. When I’m feeling silly, I’ve been known to flip it inside out and wear it as a hat. The only places I wouldn’t recommend it are around dogs, because I imagine they would quickly chew it to shreds, and on beaches. On the beach, the lip of the disc picks up sand when it lands on the ground, and then the next time someone catches it next, the sand gets released into the catcher’s face. I’m sure I could brush up on my crocheting skills and make myself one from scratch, but I feel like these are a good deal, for the money. They also make great gifts.

 

 

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Can-Gun 1

Using your index finger to press and steer a can of spray paint gets old very quickly. If your paint job lasts more than a few minutes, you really should use a snap-on pistol grip($5). It saves your knuckle, keeps paint off your trigger finger, and gives you an easy way to guide the spray. For years I’ve used an earlier model of this grip (called simply Can-Gun), but that one was only operated with a single finger trigger. This new version uses your whole palm. It’s comfortable, quick-on and off, and the only way to spray. I had a 5-can job on a chain-link fence and the Can-Gun made it kind of fun. Even for small spray paint jobs, I slip one of these on.

Long conversations/Freewrite alternative/CloudConvert

Long conversations

A “long conversation” is a new format for a conference. Two speakers begin a conversation on stage. After 15 minutes one of the two speakers is replaced by a new speaker and the conversation continues, and every 15 minutes for the next 8 hours a speaker is swapped out. (Each speaker converses for 30 minutes.) The day is engaging, unpredictable, passionate, diverse, informative, and entertaining. It’s a format invented by Long Now Foundation that is worth stealing. For an example, here are highlights from a long conversation held at the Smithsonian. — KK

Cheap alternative to Freewrite

I’ve been coveting the Freewrite typewriter since the Kickstarter launched a few years back, but I can’t justify spending $500 on one. Thanks to this blogpost I discovered that the now discontinued Alphasmart Neo2 is a cheap alternative. I found one used on Amazon for $35 from a reputable seller who listed it in working condition and included the USB cord. I wasn’t sure if a distraction-free typewriter would actually help me write more, but the answer is yes, it does! — CD

Free file conversion

CloudConvert is a free conversion service that supports more than 200 file formats and you don’t have to download any software to use it. I mostly use it to convert Google WebP files into JPEGS so that the images are usable in WordPress and Adobe products. — CD

Bingeable British drama

Ever since the last season of Downton Abbey wrapped up, I’ve missed a good British historical drama. That itch has been satisfied by The Crown (on Netflix) a lovely, beautifully casted and acted drama about the life of the still living Queen of England. The series begins in the 1940s and runs till today. Remarkably, it’s far more entertaining than I would have thought. It has everything, including real drama, and actual history, and is more educational than most documentaries. With 20 episodes so far (and a 3rd season on the way), it is superbly bingeable. — KK

No show, no slip socks

I’ve tried a few different brands of low-cut “no show” socks and these are the lowest and best. They are super stretchy and they don’t slip off. Seven pairs cost $15. — MF

Download past Amazon purchases

As a freelancer, I need to keep track of office supplies and other items that are tax deductible. I buy almost everything on Amazon, and I recently learned that you can download your past purchases as spreadsheet files. This is going to save me a lot of time because I can filter out things like food, clothing, toys, etc. — MF

 

 

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Five quotables/Sleeping Dragon/WeCroak

Five quotables

These gems keep ringing in my head. — KK

Don’t be the best. Be the only. — Jerry Garcia

If you really want to learn how something works, try to change it. — Matt Mazur

For something to be beautiful it doesn’t have to be pretty. — Rei Kawakubo

If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere. — Frank A. Clark

Eighty percent of success is showing up. — Woody Allen

Ambient music generator

Sleeping Dragon is a generative music application, available for free on Mac and Windows. You adjust sliders, and the software creates a unique piece of never-ending music. I listen to it while I work. If you don’t want to download the software, you can just listen to the calming sounds it generates on its website. — MF

Death reminder app

WeCroak (iOS, Android) is a bit morbid but I love it. At random times throughout the day I get a notification banner that says “Don’t forget, you’re going to die,” with instructions to open the app for a quote. All the quotes are about dying. The app is inspired by Bhutanese culture where one is expected to think about death five times a day to achieve happiness. So far my favorite quote to contemplate is a question from Pema Chödrön: “Since death is certain, but the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?” — CD

Logo-free baseball cap

In my never-ending quest to wear clothes without logos, I found a great source of logo-less baseball caps (better than the discontinued Daiso hats). These hefty Falari caps are $9 and come in a refreshing variety of 34 solid colors. Mine are canary yellow. — KK

An honest book about motherhood

The Female Assumption is a raw and honest look at becoming a mother and the pressures on women to reproduce. I couldn’t put it down. Mother of 3, Melanie Holmes interviewed mothers from all over to accurately portray what happens behind the curtain of motherhood. She also includes the stories of women who have consciously chosen to not be mothers. This book is a well-balanced pros and cons list for either path, and a reminder that whatever you decide for yourself is the right choice. Every young woman should read this. — CD

Magnetic phone mount for cars

I’ve tried many different phone mounts, and this magnetic one ($7) is the best. It’s a rubberized magnet that attaches to a car vent. It comes with a metallic sticker to attach to the back of your phone. When I get in my car, I just hold the phone against the magnetic surface and the phone snaps against it. It is much more convenient than other phone mounts that use spring-loaded clips. — MF

 

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Buff

Recently Paul Saffo and Stewart Brand were raving about the Buff, the all-in-one garment. I am picky and a minimalist when it comes to clothing, but the Buff, in addition to being a shape-shifter, also weighs almost nothing, so I thought I should try it. It’s pretty neat, now part of my pack. — KK

Here is what Paul Saffo wrote:

Y’all probably have known about Buff forever, but in case not, this thing is way cool. Described as “the original multi-functional Seamless Wear”, it is a stretchy microfiber tube that can be a neckerchief/neck-scarf, headband, wristband, foulard, bandit-mask, hand-warmer, balaclava and more. I mostly use it as a neck-scarf when biking, and on hikes when it turns cool. Because it is microfiber, it has great thermal and wicking properties — and it is a great glasses-cleaner.

Stewart Brand adds:

Do see their online movies of the ways to rig a Buff.

Oblique Strategies

How to get unstuck. Pick a card at random and either 1) do what it says or 2) let it lead you to another idea. It’s amazingly effective. This handsomely boxed stack of cards was created by the lateral genius Brian Eno and good friend Pete Schmidt in 1975 to get themselves and other musicians unstuck in the studio. It’s been through four updated editions since.

I use this tool in any design situation to think differently. In life I’ve found it more productive than throwing the I-Ching or staring at the wall.

This fifth printed edition on heavy silky stock will pop your rut.

More than you wanted to know about Oblique Strategies in its various editions and forms, plus links to digital versions are available at this amazingly complete fan site: Oblique Strategies