14 March 2024

Safer in the Air/Dead Bodies in Museums/Worldschooling Take 2

Nomadico issue #95

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.

A Record Year for Airline Safety

This may be the shortest report we’ve ever linked to but for a good reason: 2023 was officially the safest year for jet travel since… we’ve had jet travel. According to the IATA, “In a significant achievement, 2023 saw no fatal accidents or hull losses for jet aircraft, leading to a record-low fatality risk rate of 0.03 rate per million sectors.” There was one turbo-prop fatal crash, a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that went down with 72 people on it, but considering how many planes take off and land each day, this is a remarkable achievement. “Overall, there was an average of one accident for every 880,293 flights.”

The History and Fascination With Dead Bodies on Display

I live in a historic Mexican city that’s a UNESCO World Heritage place, but what’s the #1 tourist attraction? The Mummy Museum of Guanajuato. This BBC article looks into the fascination with bones and bodies and investigates the sordid past and the economic incentives behind the relics displays. The sinister history behind the world’s first tourist sites.

Mexican Rental Cars, Minus the Scams

As a Mexpat without a car, I often need to rent one when going on vacation or taking a road trip. After too many incidents of facing inflated insurance rate scams at the counter with the likes of Budget and Europcar, so far my streak is up to 3 rentals in 3 cities without this hassle with Mex Rent a Car. Their site has this refreshing bit on it: “All of our rates within Mexico include third-party liability up to 750,000.00 MXN and coverage for the vehicle rented in case of an accident or total theft, with a 10% deductible (CDW).” Any good credit card should cover the rest. Their sister company Mas offers the same deal.

A Complete Guide to Worldschooling

A while back we referenced a good article on “worldschooling,” the idea of educating your child in different ways in foreign countries, and reader Jake S. sent us a tip that there’s a whole book on the subject if you want a deep dive. See more here – Wonder Year: A Guide to Long-Term Family Travel and Worldschooling.

03/14/24

13 March 2024

What’s in my NOW? — Michael A. Denner

issue #170

Sign up here to get What’s in my NOW? a week early in your inbox.

I’m a professor of Russian literature at Stetson University. I am the editor of Tolstoy Studies Journal. I’ve written a cookbook on Georgian (Black Sea!) cooking. I am a fairly competitive powerlifter. I was attacked by a rabid raccoon recently. I’ve lived in places and done things that most people can’t imagine. I restore used cowboy boots. — Michael A. Denner

Restored boots.

PHYSICAL

  • My knife/awl/scraper, prybar, handmade from a lawnmower blade cut in half and wrapped with leather bootlace, and absolutely necessary for restoring old boots.
  • Good tape. Never skimp on tape. Use it exorbitantly. One minute on job prep means saving 10 minutes on cleanup. Like everyone else, I use FROGTAPE.
  • baker’s bench knife. It should always be on the counter when you’re cooking. I use it for everything.

DIGITAL

  • Take a few minutes and turn off everything that makes noise, vibrates, flashes lights, whistles, blows bubbles on your phone. Then, throw your phone away.
  • I have become somewhat addicted to Soft White Underbelly on YouTube. “Soft White Underbelly interviews and portraits of the human condition by photographer, Mark Laita.” If you want to understand the human condition, watch it.

INVISIBLE

  • Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. (Annie Dillard)

What’s in your NOW?

We want to know what’s in your now — a list of 6 things that are significant to you now — 3 physical, 2 digital and 1 invisible. 

If you’re interested in contributing an issue, use this form to submit: https://forms.gle/Pf9BMuombeg1gCid9

If we run your submission in our newsletter and blog, we’ll paypal you $25.

03/13/24

12 March 2024

Josephine Baker / Lucy & Andy Neanderthal

Books That Belong On Paper Issue No. 5

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.


A VICTIM OF RACISM THROUGHOUT HER LIFE, JOSEPHINE BAKER WOULD SING OF LOVE AND LIBERTY UNTIL THE DAY SHE DIED

Josephine Baker
by Jose-Luis Bocquet, Catel Muller (Illustrator)
SelfMadeHero
2017, 496 pages, 6.7 x 2.0 x 9.4 inches, Paperback

Buy on Amazon

Josephine Baker, the graphic novel biography, is so thorough and so thoroughly good. I knew almost nothing about the artist’s life and did not grasp the seemingly non-stop trajectory and reach of her career before reading this. Baker’s confidence and poise in the face of rampant personal and institutional racism, her deep and joyful affection for her animals and her friends, and her unrelenting devotion to her family and her adopted country are narrated in nearly 500 pages of vividly matter-of-fact black and white.

After the story, there’s still more. It doesn’t feel right to simply call the appendices in this book “further reading.” The Timeline of Baker’s life and Biographical Notes character sketches are incredibly comprehensive, the former giving clarity and the latter giving context to the fullness of the artist’s life and the scope of her career. This biography is beautifully executed, with art and text that are so on-point, the only person you see is Josephine.

Mk Smith Despres


A HILARIOUS GRAPHIC NOVEL SERIES ABOUT TWO YOUNG CAVE KIDS LIVING 40,000 YEARS AGO

Lucy & Andy Neanderthal
by Jeffrey Brown
Crown Books for Young Readers
2016, 224 pages, 6.6 x 0.8 x 8.6 inches, Hardcover

Buy on Amazon

Lucy & Andy are two Neanderthal kids. They learn about different Stone Age animals, fashion spears and hand axes, go on a mammoth hunt, and create cave art. After some unexplained occurrences, such as odd noises in the woods and some of their mammoth meal going missing, they meet some strangers. Meanwhile, two modern-day paleontologists narrate, explaining Neanderthal biology, the methods of determining the age of archeological discoveries, and the use of various Stone Age tools.

A humorous, educational, and dialogue-driven graphic novel filled with sibling rivalries, Lucy & Andy Neanderthal explores what life might have been like 40,000 years ago through many cleverly-drawn black-and-white panels. Lucy is creative but self-conscious, Andy is eager to hunt, but is squeamish. Eric and Pam, two modern-day paleontologists, reveal the science behind our understanding of Neanderthal civilization.

Did you know that most Neanderthals, like modern humans, were right handed? Science! They also chewed animal hides to soften them for use as clothing. More science!

Featuring a funny sequence where the family debates and critiques their cave art, a timeline of Neanderthal evolution, and a brief history of cavemen in fiction, Lucy & Andy Neanderthal is a comic and educational graphic novel.

– SD

03/12/24

11 March 2024

Genesis 

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 77

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.


Underground Bible

The Book of Genesis Illustrated

As literature, the biblical book of Genesis has it all: sex, violence, angels, war, murder, heroes, incest, world-wide disasters, spooky mystery, and a timeless story. All it needed was illustrations by the comic genius R. Crumb and you’d have a underground manga hit. And that’s what this book is. Crumb brilliantly did not alter or omit any words from the scriptural text, and even toned down his drawings to a PG-13 rating. But man, is this strong drink. It will burn your eyelashes. Like it must have done 2,000 years ago. Now you have absolutely no excuse not to read the first book of the Bible. — KK

03/11/24

10 March 2024

Blue lasers/Camera pocket guide/Earth in real time

Recomendo - issue #400

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Blue lasers

I spend too many hours a day watching YouTubes. Many of the channels I subscribe to produce content as good as or better than anything produced by PBS, cable TV, and your average documentary. For free. For a fantastic example of world class content on YouTube watch this Veritasium episode on Blue Lasers. Turns out blue lasers were “impossible” to create, but after decades of an insane amount of work by one crazy guy in Japan, they are now possible and all the cheap screens we have in our lives now are due to him. Veritasium tells this amazing human story, with heaps of illuminating technical detail on why blue lasers were nearly impossible and how they work, all in a brilliant 33 minutes. — KK

Pocket guide to understanding a camera

I gave my wife a camera for Christmas. It has an auto-setting, but she wanted to learn how to operate it manually. We were initially puzzled by terms like ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. Then I stumbled upon a PDF guide from Humburger Fotospots that demystifies these concepts with simple icons and explanations. I printed it out and stored it in the camera case. — MF

View images of Earth in real time

The GOES Image Viewer hosts the most up-to-date real time images of Earth available to the public. You can view and download satellite images that capture the entire visible disk of Earth and are updated every 10 to 15 minutes. I don’t know much about meteorology or geoscience, but I am an Earth lover, and it’s fascinating to be able to visualize weather patterns on a global scale. — CD 

Galactic compass

If you train yourself to pay attention to your surroundings you should be able to immediately point north without too much thinking. The next-level awareness is to point to the center of the galaxy at any time. Because the earth rotates during the day and orbits during the year, this direction changes constantly. You’ll need an app to help you. Galactic Compass is a free iPhone app that does only one thing: points toward the center of the galaxy. — KK

Typography Guide 

If you’re like me and would like to know more about fonts than just serif and san-serif, here is a cool guide to check out: The Logo Company’s Guide to Typography and Fonts. It breaks down the entire anatomy of fonts. — CD 

Ryan Holiday’s career wisdom

Writer and entrepreneur Ryan Holiday has had a varied career, from Hollywood agent assistant to marketing director for American Apparel. He’s put together a list of 37 pieces of hard-fought career advice that’s useful for anyone who works. Examples:

  • Find what nobody else wants to do and do it. Find inefficiency and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas. Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away.
  • Always say less than necessary. Saying less than necessary, not interjecting at every chance we get — this is actually the mark not just of a self-disciplined person, but also a very smart and wise person.
  • Your creative output, your personal relationships, and your social life—balancing all three is impossible. You can excel in two if you say no to one. If you can’t, you’ll have none.
  • When people compete, somebody loses. So go where you’re the only one. Do what only you can do. Run a race with yourself.

— MF


03/10/24

08 March 2024

Mia Coots, Student

Show and Tell #403: Mia Coots

Mia Coots is a Senior at Nokomis Regional High in central Maine and an amazing presenter for the Student Leadership Ambassadors of Maine for the Department of Education.

LINKS:
http://SLAMShow.org

TOOLS:
0:00 – Intro
0:53 – ATEM Mini Switcher
7:50 – Rode Wireless II Mics
15:22 – MuteSync
18:50 – Canva

To sign up to be a guest on the show, please fill out this form.

03/8/24

EDITOR'S FAVORITES

img 10/21/11

The Wirecutter

Meta-review site for gadgets

img 12/31/04

T-reamer

Hole expander

img 05/1/20

Tweezerman Tweezers

Never-fail sharp tweezers

img 09/5/05

Inflatable Life Jacket

Comfortable water safety

img 07/5/18

GustBuster Umbrella

Unflippable umbrella

img 01/1/09

Elance

Personal outsourcing

See all the favorites

COOL TOOLS SHOW PODCAST

03/8/24

Show and Tell #403: Mia Coots

Picks and shownotes
03/1/24

Show and Tell #402: Josué Moreno

Picks and shownotes
02/16/24

Show and Tell #401: Kern Kelley

Picks and shownotes

ABOUT COOL TOOLS

Cool Tools is a web site which recommends the best/cheapest tools available. Tools are defined broadly as anything that can be useful. This includes hand tools, machines, books, software, gadgets, websites, maps, and even ideas. All reviews are positive raves written by real users. We don’t bother with negative reviews because our intent is to only offer the best.

One new tool is posted each weekday. Cool Tools does NOT sell anything. The site provides prices and convenient sources for readers to purchase items.

When Amazon.com is listed as a source (which it often is because of its prices and convenience) Cool Tools receives a fractional fee from Amazon if items are purchased at Amazon on that visit. Cool Tools also earns revenue from Google ads, although we have no foreknowledge nor much control of which ads will appear.

We recently posted a short history of Cool Tools which included current stats as of April 2008. This explains both the genesis of this site, and the tools we use to operate it.

13632766_602152159944472_101382480_oKevin Kelly started Cool Tools in 2000 as an email list, then as a blog since 2003. He edited all reviews through 2006. He writes the occasional review, oversees the design and editorial direction of this site, and made a book version of Cool Tools. If you have a question about the website in general his email is kk {at} kk.org.

13918651_603790483113973_1799207977_oMark Frauenfelder edits Cool Tools and develops editorial projects for Cool Tools Lab, LLC. If you’d like to submit a review, email him at editor {at} cool-tools.org (or use the Submit a Tool form).

13898183_602421513250870_1391167760_oClaudia Dawson runs the Cool Tool website, posting items daily, maintaining software, measuring analytics, managing ads, and in general keeping the site alive. If you have a concern about the operation or status of this site contact her email is claudia {at} cool-tools.org.

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