Fertilizer

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 177

How to utilize urine

Liquid Gold

Logically, we should recycle our urine to capture its many nutrients for growing new food. Here’s a fuller case for that argument, and if you buy it, how to practically accomplish this export on the small scale of a homestead. Most likely you’ll be the only person in your neighborhood mining “liquid gold,” but you may also be an outlaw, two issues this book anticipates. The small book is also chock full of urine lore, including the historical medical, cooking (!), chemical, and agricultural roles urine has had. This small booklet changed my mind. — KK

• According to sanitation researcher Caroline Schonning of the Swedish Institute of Infectious Disease Control, humans rarely excrete disease-causing organisms, orpathogens, in urine. Also, most pathogens die when they leave their hosts, either immediately or shortly thereafter. The only significant urine-transmitted diseases are leptospirosis (usually transmitted by infected animals), schistosoma, and salmonella. The first two are rare–usually found only in tropical aquatic environments–and the last is typically inactivated shortly after excretion. The more likely health risk is urine contaminated by feces that were misplaced in a urine-diverting toilet.
• There are other ways to use liquid gold. For small amounts of urine, you can make a urine planter. Layer shredded cardboard or paper with chunky sand or peastone. Add more material when the contents shrink as the paper decomposes. Plant hearty nutrient-loving plants, shrubs, or small trees. Urine also works well in hydroponic planter systems.
  Applying urine to leaves, not roots, is its most effective use, according to Paul William. “Foliar feeding is much more efficient at stimulating plant growth than fertilizing via the root system only,” he says. “The leaves respond within hours ofthe application.”
  
  To determine the best dilution to prevent the mis from getting too salty, he uses a TDS (total dissolved solids) meter available from hydroponic garden supply stores. “My tap water has 600 ppm (pars per million) as a result of the chlorine salts before I add any urine. I add urine until I get around 1,700 ppm.” He also adds a bit of soap so the spray better penetrates the leaves.
  
  “Urine foliar feeding is amazing,” he says. “My friends are having huge success growing all kinds of tropical plants doing it, and my temperate plants are so lushand green, it boggles the mind!”

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Amplified easy slicing

Fiskars PowerGear Bypass Pruner

This hand clipper is a really cool ergonomic innovation. It uses an ingenious gear design to easily slice off sticks that are 3/4 inch in diameter. As you squeeze, the bottom handle rolls slightly and this motion leverages the power in the scissor cut. I find I can now tackle stuff that ordinarily I would have had to run back to get the larger pruners for. Your Felco pruning clippers will last you a lifetime, but as my grip wanes, I find I this lightweight Fiskars pruner is the clipper I grab first. — KK

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Precise garden snip

Fiskars Softouch Micro-Tip Pruning Snip

Fiskars’ PowerGear Bypass Pruner, previously reviewed, is the handiest, most used tool in my vegetable garden, but it’s too big and clunky for precision cutting of young salad greens and herbs. For that task, the company’s Pruning Snip is an outstanding and inexpensive tool.

Snipping action requires little effort because the short blades are quite sharp and a spring in the center of the handle returns the shear to its open position after each cut. A small garden scissors could work almost as well as this tool, but the spring-activated light-action cutting makes a big difference for ease of use. Like the larger pruner mentioned above, this model gives a lot of cutting output with disproportionately little input. This shear is also useful for carefully thinning densely grouped seedlings by cutting the excess plants at their bases. — Elon Schoenholz

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Superb garden clippers

Felco Pruners

My garden includes roses, blackberry and ivy vines, five kinds of fruit trees — all plants that need constant pruning. So I carry my pruner on my belt. I probably use them a few dozen times every day. I have no idea why it took me so long to buy a pair of the best available — Felco. It’s got leverage! A handle shaped to the hand. If you prune a lot, you’ll know immediately by the feel that these are the best. You can buy models for small hands, ergonomic models for gardeners with arthritis, left-handed ones. Forty dollars seemed like a lot for clippers but after decades of using inferior pruners I get pleasure every time I snip the Felcos. — Howard Rheingold

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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.

02/16/26

Best Case Scenarios / Unloop / Craft Supply Bin

Recomendo - issue #501

Best case scenarios

Together with author Dan Pink, I have started a new podcast series called Best Case Scenarios. Each episode asks an expert to give us their best possible good news scenario in the next 25 years. What happens if everything goes right? What is the best case scenario for say, energy, transportation, biotechnology and brain science? Those are the subjects of our first four episodes, which are also available as YouTube videos, and are now available wherever you get your podcasts. These are not predictions, but visions of what we can aim for in order to make them real. — KK

A visual pattern mapper for behavior loops

Unloop is a visual pattern mapper that helps you catch yourself in the act of being you — to notice a familiar loop, lay it out on a map, and then play with small experiments that might shift the pattern instead of just shaming it. You don’t need to sign up or create an account to try it out, and the experience is guided by thoughtful prompts and questions that help you spot what’s really driving a loop so you can understand yourself better. It’s not therapy or coaching, but structured self‑discovery that treats your patterns as a story you can rewrite rather than a flaw you need to fix. — CD

Better drag-and-drop for Mac

Dropover ($7) is a tiny Mac utility that solves a problem I didn’t know I had. When you’re dragging a file to a folder that isn’t on your desktop, just shake your cursor, and a floating “shelf” appears to hold it. The shelf stays open so you can drop files, folders, images, and even text snippets onto it. Then go find your destination and unload everything at once. You can collect items from multiple folders into one shelf, which macOS can’t do natively. — MF

Substack without subs

I am a big fan of RSS feeds. I keep up with a long list of blogs and websites by reading the stream of their new stuff via an RSS reader app, negating the need to visit the website directly. (Out of habit I use Feedly, even though it may be outdated.) It is a bit old school, but a well-curated RSS feed is incredibly productive and enjoyable. I have been particularly delighted to discover that I can add Substack newsletters to my RSS feed. If the Substack is free I can read the full text even without subscribing. If it is a paid newsletter I’ll only see the full text of whatever free posts are offered, since most substacks usually offer some portion for free. To get the RSS feed, I just add the phrase /feed to any newsletter URL, or I can search for the newsletter title in my favorite RSS reader. (Meta: you can read Recomendo this way. You’ll get one less email in your box, but we lose the subscriber count bump, which ultimately pays the way for us to keep it free.) Happy reading! — KK

Notes to Self email folder

I read this Ask HN: thread hoping to find an alternative to my own messy digital note‑taking, and I’ve adopted the very promising “Note to Self” email folder suggestion. Skip all the second‑brain tools and just use your inbox: email yourself interesting links, thoughts, quotes, or questions, and file them into a dedicated Notes to Self folder. Every so often, skim that folder, delete what now feels worthless or obvious, and let the rest sit. As the commenter shared: “It’s more useful than you’d think—by reviewing those notes semi‑regularly, you’re indirectly memorizing their contents and refreshing their presence in your short‑term memory. And that, to me, is the benefit—not ‘copy this cool thing,’ but ‘feed my mind cool ideas until it has digested them and incorporated them into the larger gestalt.’” — CD

Craft supply bin with built-in cups

This Citylife 17-quart storage bin is the best way I’ve found to organize art supplies. It comes with six removable cups that keep markers, crayons, brushes, pencils, and other items separates. Remove only the cup you need, then drop it back in when you’re done. The clear plastic lets you see everything at a glance, the lid latches securely, and the bins stack. — MF

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02/15/26

Purification Bottles/Cheapest Flights From Each State/Next Eclipse

Nomadico issue #192

Water Bottles With Built-in Purification

There are a lot of countries where the tap water is risky to drink and most tourists take the easy but destructive route of buying water daily in throwaway plastic bottles. If you don’t want to carry a SteriPen (covered in issue #180), many water bottles have a built-in filtration or purification system. The three styles are a filter you suck through (like this Lifestraw one), a built-in filter you push down (from Grayl), or with a SteriPen-style UV light that’s built into the cap (from LARQ). I’ve used all three kinds and if you drink a gallon+ daily, the last option gives you the most liquid for the bottle size.

Cheapest Flight Destinations From Every U.S. State

Skyscanner crunched their booking numbers in an interesting way for this study, figuring out the cheapest domestic and international destination from every U.S. state in March ‘06. What makes this fun is how unpredictable and counter-intuitive the results are. Who would have thought that the cheapest place to fly from Wisconsin would be Madrid, that from Arkansas it would be Athens, from Georgia it would be Vancouver, or that from Los Angeles it would be San Salvador? If you want to take a vacation to Hawaii, it might be best to go to Antigua first: they found flights from Guatemala to Honolulu for $217 one way!

Reserve for the Next Eclipse

I was in Mazatlan a couple of years ago for the full solar eclipse that went through parts of North America. To see the next one, you’ll need to visit part of a narrow band of options in Europe. Make those reservations soon though: the Expedia group says searches are way up already in some destinations. “For 2026, Greenland (+55%), Iceland (+445%), and several cities in Northern Spain (+125%) are expected to have the best views. Much of the totality will be over the ocean, so northern Spain is going to have the most populated areas for viewing. Check apartment rentals here.

Where Electric Cars Are the Standard

Norway leads the world in a whole lot of civilized statistics, but they’ve really outdone themselves on the social engineering front with electric car adoption. “According to recent data from the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV), electric cars accounted for 95.9 percent of all new passenger vehicle registrations in 2025.” The next biggest category was hybrids. See the full story here.

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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.

02/12/26

What’s in my NOW? — Benoit

issue #241

I’m a data & product engineer (whatever that means). I’ve wandered through journalism, retail, professional sport, music, and software—always searching for the invisible threads between them. Sharing what we’ve lived through helps others find their path while reshaping our own. I love mixing ideas from distant places to build something new. French by blood, human by heart. Writing about engineering, data and design at From An Engineer Sight. Writing about life at Liminal Duality. — Benoit

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PHYSICAL

• STAUB Dutch oven/cocotte. Cooking is one of the most peaceful, human, and pleasant activities for me. This classic cocotte allows me to make any French classic, and waiting 3 hours to see that bourguignon come out dark, caramelized and ready for sharing within your family is the best emotion you can get from such a simple iron cocotte.
• Simple binder. As an avid reader of blog posts, I tried several things (Remarkable, iPad, Kindle, etc.). But in the end, printing sheets of paper and putting them in a simple transparent binder is the best I have found. Less screen, fewer notifications, and the feeling of true simple paper is inequitable.
• Hugo Boss Coat. It’s made from Italian fabric, it’s expensive, but as my mom says, “Quality stays, price vanishes” (a very bad motto when you go shopping…). Having a top-quality coat makes it easy to go outside when it’s cold. It’s also comforting when you go out at night—it’s almost like being in bed already. You don’t leave it on a random chair. You look for a coat rack nearby. You take care of it, as it takes care of you.

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DIGITAL

• TheNewPrinter: my vibe-coded project to print blog posts on paper with a basic template to make them look like a quality newspaper.
• The intro video of Dynamicland project. I hope the future of computing interface is taking this direction.

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INVISIBLE

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened”

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02/11/26

Things Organized Neatly / Sharks

Issue No. 104

THINGS ORGANIZED NEATLY: THE ART OF ARRANGING THE EVERYDAY

Things Organized Neatly: The Art of Arranging the Everyday
by Austin Radcliffe
Universe
2016, 104 pages, 7.8 x 10 x 0.8 inches

Buy on Amazon

Simply as advertised. Rows and rows of diverse things neatly organized. This process is often called knolling. The applied organizing logic varies: it can be by size, by color, by age; in rows, in grids, in fitted mosaics. The effect is always hypnotic. Seemingly meaningless collections gain intelligence and order which focuses attention on the parts. The book ranges wide and far in the type of things that are inspected. You will soon knoll your own. – Kevin Kelly

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SHARKS – TASCHEN’S HUGE, STUNNING NEW BOOK ABOUT OUR OCEAN’S MAJESTIC, ENDANGERED PREDATORS

Sharks. Face-to-Face With the Ocean’s Endangered Predator
by Michael Muller
Taschen
2016, 334 pages, 11.5 x 15 x 1.5 inches

Buy on Amazon

Sharks. The word alone conjures images of grey and white shadows, dorsal fins slicing through the water, row after row of fierce, terrifying, teeth. And we love them for it. Since Jaws first made us all afraid to go into the water, sharks have become our favorite bad guys. We paint them as the apex predators, devouring everything that dares enter their territory, including we frail, defenseless humans. And then we anthropomorphize them into relentless, driven killers, intent on feasting upon every last one of us. While this characterization makes for great entertainment, it has also lead to the idea that shark attacks are the result of killing machines stalking easy prey instead of the mistaken identity accidents that they are. This, combined with a pronounced market for shark fins, liver, and other body parts has lead to a severe decline in several shark species across the globe.

Sharks are magnificent animals. They are the undisputed kings of the sea, at home and graceful in the ocean, beautiful and awe inspiring to watch. This beautiful animal, while dangerous, is something to be respected rather than feared; they are animals that offer far more in their exotic beauty than ever they could cut up in rare dishes and cuisine. Which is exactly what underwater photographer Michael Muller shows us in Sharks. Face-to-Face with the Ocean’s Endangered Predator.

This book, Muller’s first, presents the culmination of over a decade’s worth of close encounters with sharks both small and gargantuan, both fierce and gentle, both rare and common. The photographs show incredible beauty at close range and in their natural habitats, all the better to help us overcome our fears, the better to see sharks for the graceful animals they are.

Presented by Taschen, this book is huge, beautiful, and comprehensive. Arranged geographically, the photos are printed on heavy, matte paper that allows a full range of colors and tones. The photos are also presented without context. Rather each photo is given its own page or two (or three or four in the gatefolds) and explanations and details are saved for the picture index in the final pages. Additional indices include essays by Philippe Cousteau, Jr. and Dr. Alison Kock detailing the need for conservation efforts as well as an overview of Muller’s work and technique by Arty Nelson. Perhaps the most important, or maybe just most interesting index is the Species Notes, written by Dr. Kock, which includes each species place on the Red List of Threatened Species.

This is an amazing, hefty (seriously, you’re gonna need a bigger boat, er, shelf) tome full of stunning photos of wildlife at its most majestic. Pick up a copy for the photographer and wildlife lover in your life and, next time you see a shark on the big screen in the role of bad guy, maybe try to see things from its point of view? – Joel Neff

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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.

02/10/26

Moving

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 176

Furniture cut-outs for visualizing

Lay-It-Out

Last time I moved I threw out my back repositioning Grandma’s china cabinet for the 10th time. My latest (and hopefully last) moving experience was a dream because of the Lay-It-Out furniture templates. These unique life-sized paper furniture templates are the shape of your bed, sofa, tables, chairs, rugs, billiard table. After trimming them to the appropriate size (measurements are in inches and centimeters), we placed them on the floor and — as I was directed to the appropriate location — continued moving them around with no effort. I had the whole house planned out before the moving truck arrived and it cost less than the physical therapy and pain killers I had to use before. They are a breeze to use. Measure, trim, position, then reposition and reposition and reposition again… You could buy a roll of something like cheap brown crate paper of course, but I liked that Lay-it-out was ready to go, sizes already measured, and in pretty colors. You can buy a “Total Home Package” or purchase smaller packages specific to the Living Room, Dining Room, Bedroom, Game room, Accessory Tables or Rugs packages. I purchased the whole house package and used most of the pieces, except the billiard table, which I kept pinned to the wall for two weeks as a piece of pop art. — Rick Sievering

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Recycled moving boxes

U-Haul Box Exchange

I have mixed feelings about U-Haul and their prices, but one thing they have done that is priceless is create and maintain a surprisingly helpful Box Exchange forum. It’s a standard web forum divided into geographical areas so people can request free used boxes or make theirs available for free or cheap. We just saved ourselves $250. After responding to two posts, we had something lined up in no time. We drove into the city (Manhattan) the next day from where we live in Jersey City and picked up a bunch of boxes in various sizes that were practically brand new — all for free. I basically ignored the “buy” forum as the “free” one was successful in under 24 hrs. We first tried Craigslist, but found that most people in our area at the time wanted money for boxes. From our experience, people on the U-Haul forum seemed willing to go a little out of their way to get rid of their boxes. Most of the posts are definitely from individuals, but interestingly, there were a couple of business disposing of boxes (we got ours from an electronics importer in Chinatown). We have not yet completed our big move to Wisconsin, but will be giving away our boxes the same way when we do. — Guil Barros

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Keeps your carpet clean

Carpet Film

Ever wanted to have friends over for a party at your house? Ever wanted to have a LOT of friends over for a party? Worried about spilled drinks staining your carpet? One solution is to cover it before the party with carpet film.

What is it? Picture a roll of Saran Wrap. Now imagine it thicker and more durable. Now imagine one side sticky. Voila! Carpet film.

I don’t cover every carpet, just the most highly trafficked areas where people will be drinking and spilling: outside the bathroom where there’s usually a line, up the stairs, by the entrance, in the coat room, and in the people-watching areas.

When the party’s over, it pulls up easily. Best of all, all of the traffic on the carpet film will have pushed the adhesive side down into the carpet’s nooks and crannies. When you pull the film, dirt will come out too. Free carpet cleaning!

Several companies make carpet film. You can get it at Home Depot, Lowes and Amazon for $10-20 per 2’x50′ roll. Wider widths and longer length rolls are also available. Make sure to buy it reverse wound (with the sticky side on the outside of the roll) to make the application process easier. — Joshua Keroes

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Clearest box labeling

Smart Move Tape

Two things smoothed out my family’s move a few years ago: designating Open First boxes for each room in our new home, so that on the first night after the move we wouldn’t be missing any essentials; and this Smart Move Tape.

The clearly marked and color-coded designations (Office, Bedroom, Bedroom #2, Kitchen, Storage, etc.) made unloading go quickly for our movers, and organizing our many cardboard moving boxes much easier for us later on. No doubt we could have accomplished something similar with a handful of colored Sharpies, but it would have taken a lot of consistently careful writing to even approach the same effect — at a time when we were looking to make less work, not more — and the colored tapes really help make sorting a breeze. —Elon Schoenholz

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Relocation advice

Moving Tips

Since I seem to move house every six months or so, I have ample opportunities to test new strategies. This time around I experimented by putting plastic storage totes through FedEx Ground, and for the items I moved myself I used cardboard boxes with the addition of nonadhesive strapping tape and tubular handles. Much quicker and easier, less effort, no breakages, big success. — Charles Platt

Plastic Totes via FedEx

Wal-Mart sells them for storing items such as bedding and clothes in the home, but their semi-rigid construction makes them ideal for moving fragile possessions such as dishes and stereo components. They are stackable, waterproof, easy to pick up (recessed handle at each end), reusable (can be nested during storage), and will pass unscathed through FedEx ground. Best of all they barely cost more than cardboard boxes! My local FedEx-Kinko’s was skeptical about accepting them for fear that the lids would pop off during transport. I allayed their fears by putting 2-inch tape around the perimeter of the lid and folding it under the rim. I had to make little notches in the tape so that it would seal properly either side of plastic strengthening ribs under the rim, but this was still much easier, quicker, and safer than using cardboard. Wal-Mart sells gray Sterilite brand totes (the type I prefer) through its stores, but not online. Models 1830 and 1835 are the ones I have tested through FedEx without any problems. You can pay a little more and get “latch totes” (models 1940 and 1945 with a flip-up latch at each end) but since you’ll still need to add tape, I feel the latches are unnecessary. (NOTE: One reader pointed out that plastic totes may buckle if they are stored in a very hot place with heavy objects on top of them. I haven’t encountered this problem myself, but I do follow the standard practice of filling each container to minimize empty space inside it)

Strapping Tape

If you still want to use cardboard boxes for items you move yourself, or if you are moving stacks of books secured with cling wrap (as I have suggested previously), consider adding half-inch nonadhesive plastic strapping tape. This is the stuff you sometimes see wrapped around boxes containing big items such as refrigerators being transported as freight. Often it’s yellow in color. Shipping departments have a tensioner that they use to pull the tape tight, but you don’t need that. You can get 3000 feet of half-inch strapping and a lot of little buckles, with a manual tensioner, for ~$45. You thread the tape through the buckle, pull up on it while bearing down on the box, and you have it as tight as you need it. You trim the tape near the buckle. The advantages are that it greatly strengthens the box while giving you something to grab it by, especially if you augment it with a handle (described below). Also you can link two or three boxes together so that you can carry them easily with one hand, especially up and down stairs. Much more efficient and secure than cradling boxes in your arms, less hazardous (you can see your feet and obstacles in your path), and less risk of back injury, since you don’t have to stoop to pick them up. Note that FedEx and UPS don’t like string or strapping that can snag their package processing machinery, so strapping is for transporting packages yourself or with assistance from movers.

DIY Box Handles

Make handles from half-inch plastic water pipe sawn into 5″ lengths. My local Lowe’s sold me six feet of pipe for around $3 and you can use any wood saw to cut it. You may feel this is a luxury, but if you want to protect your hands from the edges of the plastic tape, handles are nice to have.

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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.

02/9/26

What’s in my NOW? — Benoit