What’s in my NOW? — David Stackleather

issue #204

I’m an independent consultant based in Austin, Texas, who helps teams and organizations become better. Better in the sense of increased teamwork, increased flow, increased learning, and increased passion for their mission. — David Stackleather

PHYSICAL

• Clever Coffee Dripper: After years of settling for mediocre Nespresso Americanos (you know, the kind where cream and sugar are less “optional” and more “mandatory”), I discovered the Clever Dripper. Five minutes to coffee nirvana with cleanup so simple you’ll wonder why you ever put up with those tiny capsules. Perfect for when you want coffee that you can reliably drink black.
• Tidbyt: This retro LCD display has absolutely zero productive purpose, and that’s precisely why it’s terrific! It’s become the unexpected star of my video calls (hanging out behind me). Visitors inevitably ask, “What’s that thing?” which is precisely the point. Sometimes, the best gadgets are the ones that make you smile.
• Baronfig Mastermind Desk Pad: As a dot-grid enthusiast (yes, I’ve collected the entire Baronfig lineup–don’t judge), the Mastermind Desk Pad is my canvas for everything from concept diagrams to… well, mostly doodles during meetings that should have been emails.

DIGITAL

• NotePlan: I’ve been a heavy Obsidian user for years, but I always struggle with keeping notes together for meetings. NotePlan, which also relies on simple text files like Obsidian, is tailor-made to collect notes for meetings, tasks, and your communication with individuals or companies. It makes it super easy to reference back discussions in previous meetings I’ve had with someone and keep track of tasks across a busy day. And best of all, since the data is just in text files, it’s easy to migrate later, so you’re not locked into a specific tool.
• DevonThink Pro: DevonThink Pro is my all-purpose storage for any documents I need. This includes mundane stuff like medical records, car maintenance documents, or the manual for my refrigerator, as well as reference material I may need to review later. It indexes everything, including the contest of PDF files, and is backed by a pretty fantastic search function. It’s also an excellent PDF reader on the iPad (where you can highlight and notate, which will sync across all your devices).

INVISIBLE

You are always wrong; it’s just a question of degree.

Food Anatomy / Kaijumax Season One

Issue No. 57

FOOD ANATOMY – A CROSS BETWEEN A VISUAL ENCYCLOPEDIA AND A FOUND SERIES OF FIELD NOTES

Food Anatomy: The Curious Parts and Pieces of our Edible World
Julia Rothman
Storey Publishing
2016, 224 pages, 6.5 x 9 x 0.6 inches (softcover)

Buy on Amazon

Leafing through The Julia Rothman Collection, which includes the author/illustrator’s Farm Anatomy, Nature Anatomy, and, her newest book in this illustrated exploration of the natural world, Food Anatomy, the reader feels as though she has discovered a cross between a visual encyclopedia set and a found series of field notes. Each book dissects its subject into its endless parts (plant, animal, environment, implement), then further dissects those parts into their uses, histories, and, in some cases, their actual parts. Rothman does this through multiple taxonomies, both written and drawn. Not surprisingly, there is often overlap throughout the books, but there is not often redundancy. For example, mushrooms are featured in both Nature and Food, and chickens appear in both Farm and Food, but the focus on fungi and fowl is different in each book.

I can’t help wishing my grade school science books showed the anatomy of a landform, a storm, or a leaf in the way that Rothman does. Perhaps the clear hand of the artist in each image would help to create more of a connection between reader and subject, a kind of unwritten note from the illustrator that says, “Look! I saw this thing. I held it. I knew it. I drew it. It’s real, just like you.”

These books are packed with information but are structured in easily digestible chapters and are perfectly suited for flipping through to whatever page or picture grabs your interest. Each one has recipes, facts, how-tos, lists, and micro essays on context and culture, making them perfect books for the nightstand, the coffee table, and even the kitchen. And, of course, they are full of drawings that are just plain fun to look at, which is made that much easier thanks to the 10 prints included in this set and the beautifully illustrated book box that’s sturdy enough to withstand the inevitable frequency with which it will be taken off the shelf. – Mk Smith Despres

KAIJUMAX – LIKE ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, BUT THE PRISONERS ARE MONSTERS STRAIGHT FROM GODZILLA

Kaijumax Season One
by Zander Cannon
Oni Press
2016, 168 pages, 6.6 x 10.1 x 0.4 inches (softcover)

Buy on Amazon

Kaijumax is a fun comic that will make you get all the feels for giant city-destroying monsters. It’s like Oz or Orange Is the New Black, only the prisoners in this case are monsters straight from your favorite Godzilla movies. The monsters are kept in check by guards who have Ultraman-like power suits, allowing them to grow to skyscraper size and lay down their own form of justice.

The story follows Electrogor, a monster and father who was apprehended for chewing on power cables in order to feed his children. As the new monster at Kaijumax, you follow him as he learns the ins and outs of how the prison works. There’s everything you could possibly hope for in a facility that houses the world’s deadliest creatures: corrupt guards, drugs, gangs, and a cult of mecha-monsters.

The artwork’s incredible. It brings a lightness to the otherwise surprisingly heavy subject matter. If you’re a fan of Godzilla, Power Rangers, Ultraman, or any other Kaiju movie or show, you’ll see some familiar characters hidden throughout. This is one of the weirdest comics that I’ve read in a while, but I loved every minute of it. Give giant monsters a chance, and check this one out. – JP LeRoux

 Mushrooms

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 128

Introduction to edibles

Mushrooming Without Fear

Can you tell the difference between a head of cabbage and a head of lettuce? Then you can safely pick and eat some wild mushrooms. The key is to learn to identify a few easily identifiable delicious species, and then stick with these easy ones for a while. This book does a fantastic job of holding your hand every step of the way. It gives you reliable rules for learning 10 or so yummy and safe mushrooms. I wish I had this book when I was first starting out. It is a great substitute for going out with an expert. — KK

Portable mushroom guru

All That the Rain Promises and More…

The best mushroom hunting book ever. Delivers amazing lore, practical tips, and the most concise (yet reliable) bullet points for identification of fruiting fungus. The seasons and species are biased to the west coast but this back-pocket-sized book is perfectly useable anywhere in the country. It’s inspiring and delightful. Puts the fun back in fungi. — KK

• Mining for MushroomsIt was a long time ago, in my hippie days. I was living on a commune, and I was sick and tried of all the bickering and brown rice. I really needed some space, so I split for Arizona, where I heard that there was nothing but, to see the spring wildflowers. So get this: we’re driving down this crusty, dusty desert road on the way to a scenic overlook — the most unlikely place in the world for mushrooms — and I see this glimmer of white in the ditch by the road. We stop for a look and, sure enough, it’s an old Agaricus bitorquis. Jade says it must be the only shroom in the state of Arizona, and I’m about to agree when I start noticing all these cracks everywhere in the hard red clay along the road. It was shroom city. There were hundreds, big clumps of them, veins of them , but all underground! Most were several inches under, some more that a foot. “Dig this!” I said to Jade. “With what?” she wanted to know. We used our hands, making piles of them on the road as we walked along.Of course we were noticed. An RV stopped, and this older couple from Long Beach got out and wanted to know what we were doing. “We’re mining for mushrooms,” I said, pausing for effect, “and we’ve just struck the mother lode.” We could tell they really wanted to try their hand at it. They sold life insurance and had been traveling for three months, visiting every national park in the country and this was their final stop, their last scenic overlook, and they were so burned out, they really wanted to do something exciting. But duty called, they just had to go on to the overlook.Five minutes later they were back for some fun. Along with everything else in the world they had brand new shovels with them which they’d been wanting to use for months, and they started pulling giant buttons out of the ground like clams. Boy were they stoked! Mushrooms, edible mushrooms, under the sun-baked desert crust! It was totally incredible to them. It wasn’t in their tourist guides or on their itinerary, the auto club hadn’t said anything about it, it had never occurred to them to eat wild mushrooms, so they just got more and more excited and started scurrying around yelping and babbling like kids, “Look at this sonofagun over here!”; “Mine’s ever bigger than yours!”; “Holy Cow, it’s hard as a rock!”, I can’t believe I’m doing this!”Another RV pulled over to see what all the commotion was about. One of them also sold insurance and of course they had shovels, so they dug right in. Then another RV joined us, a Mormon family from Moab, a bicyclist bound for Lubbock, and two local Navajo. We must have pulled up a couple hundred pounds, and we left lodes behind. Talk about “overlook” — we wouldn’t have gotten any if that one old cap hadn’t made it above the ground!There was only one campground in the area and we were all staying there, so that night we had this incredible spontaneous mushroom feast with gourmet foods and drinks they’d stashed away in their RV’s for that one really special occasion, and what could be more special than this? We ate fabulously and got along famously, and the couple from Long Beach wanted to know if this was what it was like to live communally and I said: “Sure, we do this every night.”I guess you could say we made their day. In fact, they said it was the best thing that happened to them on their whole trip! We had more for breakfast the next morning, and sun-dried the rest, and that one couple just couldn’t stop taking about how excited they were. I kept getting letters from them afterwards, and I bet they’re still talking about it, twelve years later, telling their grandchildren about the mighty once-in-a-blue-moon shroom bloom beneath the Arizona desert. Me, I’m not much of a talker, but I’m sure tempted to go back — I never did make it to that scenic overlook.

The mushroom bible

Mushrooms Demystified

Veterans of wild mushrooming quickly graduate to author David Arora’s masterpiece, Mushrooms Demystified, which is the undisputed bible of mushroom knowledge in North America. Where All That the Rain Promises and More… is breezy and succinct, Demystified is encyclopedic and exhaustive. You take Rains out to the mushrooms in the woods; you bring the mysterious ones back to the heavy Demystified tome at your kitchen table. — KK

• LBM’s: Little Brown MushroomsThe cap is brown, the stem a shade browner, the gills browner still. This can be said of nearly one half of all the mushrooms you find. On even the most casual jaunt through the woods, you’ll find dozens and dozens of Little Brown Mushrooms sprouting at your feet, and very likely under them as well. The fact is, Little Brown Mushrooms (“LBM’s”) are so overwhelmingly abundant and uncompromisingly undistinguished that it is more than just futile for the beginner to attempt to identify them — it is downright foolish.

Whisk/Burning Man/Bracket City

Recomendo - issue #452

Cool Tools Omnilist

I created a searchable archive of every product we’ve recommended in Recomendo and our other newsletters since 2020. The database includes thousands of items (with photos) that you can filter by category, date, or keyword. Want to see all the knives we’ve reviewed? Just type “knife” in the search field. This makes it easy to browse our entire review history or find specific recommendations. The site is ready to explore, though I’m open to suggestions for improvements. — MF

Imagery playground

I still regularly create AI imagery of my dreams using Midjourney, and I recently discovered Whisk, a Google lab tool for blending different visual elements into something entirely new. I just drag and drop the images, and I’m able to merge styles, subjects, and scenes. I can provide some visual guidance with text, but you don’t need to be an expert at writing prompts to have fun with it. It feels like a playground for creative visualization. — CD

Unforgettable experience

Like the Grand Canyon, or the Pyramids, I believe Burning Man is something you should experience at least once in your life, no matter who you are. This year is a good time to go, because it is no longer cool and you can easily get tickets. It is still a spectacle of art and creativity, a wonder of urban design, a singular example of a miraculous gift economy, and the best bicycle city on Earth. The cliches about it are all true, yet it will astonish you. I will make this guarantee: If you have never been to Burning Man, and you go this year and are bored, I will personally refund your ticket price. The festival erupts north of Reno, Nevada from August 24 to September 1, 2025 and the easiest way to attend it is in an RV. — KK

Clever Word Game: Bracket City

I discovered a delightful five-minute word puzzle game called Bracket City. The gameplay is simple — you just start typing words to solve crossword-like clues in brackets that are nested within other clues. What makes it addictive is how the clues build on each other, with each solution revealing new parts of connected puzzles. Here’s the tutorial example: [where [opposite of clean] dishes pile up] or [exercise in a [game played with a cue ball]]. You can peek at the first letter of any clue if you’re stuck. I’ll bet the NY Times will end up buying it. — MF

Top-rated things to do

Things.in is useful for creating a travel guide and a curated list of the top sights, restaurants, and places to stay in a city. I’m currently planning a trip to London and feeling overwhelmed by all the history and important sights to see. This tool is helpful in narrowing down my itinerary. — CD

Electrician’s magic wand

I noticed several professional electricians using this thing: The Klein Non-Contact Voltage Tester is a small magic wand that beeps when it detects a live current in a wire, or a switch or a cable or anything electronic. The cool thing is that you don’t need to bare the wire or contact, you just wave this near the wire. That is both much safer and way quicker. It can detect voltages between 12 and 1,000 which will be enough for most uses. For me it has replaced several devices in my toolbox I used to use to detect a live current. — KK

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Packable Duffel/RentRemote/Easiest 2nd Passports

Nomadico issue #145

Packable Duffel Bag for Travel Expansion

Several times I’ve protested the onerous baggage policies of budget airlines by taking everything in an underseat bag and on my body, like I did when I went to Costa Rica and Guatemala on Volaris (video with the duffel featured here). My secret was taking along a tiny pouch that expanded into a duffel bag on the other end. This also works well when you know you’ll be coming back with more than you flew there with. I like my water-resistant and rugged Sea to Summit one, but it seems to be discontinued so check out these alternatives from Eagle Creek and Bago.

Beyond Airbnb for Monthly Rentals

If you know a lot of nomads who have used Airbnb, you surely know a few disgruntled renters who ran into problems and had trouble getting support help. Some more service-oriented platforms have sprung up for remote workers who have a heftier budget and need a guaranteed workspace. One that has long gotten me drooling is HousingAnywhere (in 150 cities) and Nomadico partner Mark Frauenfelder sent this newer RentRemote one that looks enticing too. Some of the prices seem inflated even for highly paid software developers, but rents are more reasonable in Mexico City than they are in Paris. Expect to see more of these agencies popping up since Airbnb is such an easy and visible target as a housing problem scapegoat.

“Sketchplanations” of Key Concepts

I love finding an offbeat niche site that does one thing well and sticks with it. Sketchplanations.com is dedicated to explaining concepts with a sketch or cartoon instead of just text, which makes learning something more fun. Some examples include Chihuahua Syndrome (alternate spellings can render data useless), Survivorship Bias (the dead/failed/gone are forgotten), and The B.S. Asymmetry Problem (why simple b.s. beats out more complicated facts).

Easiest Second Passports

I know two people who have had a baby in a country they don’t intend to live in so they would have a path to a second passport for the family. If you don’t want to go to that extreme, here’s a list of countries where you can get a second passport by other means. The three main categories are by ancestry, by naturalization, or by investment. The article from International Living is geared to U.S. citizens, but in many cases the same programs are open to other nationalities as well.

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.

What’s in my NOW? — Asmus Helms

issue #203

Asmus Helms is an artist from Copenhagen. He paints on everything and has self-published two zines and two books. His works draw on autobiographical material, portraying people and places from his daily life. They range from everyday absurdities to themes like identity, addiction, and sexuality. Find him on Instagram @asmushelms.

PHYSICAL

• Custom Built-in Shelving Unit – My wife and I just moved into a new apartment, and a home isn’t complete without books and art, so one of our bigger upgrades to the space was a built-in shelving unit in the living room. It was build by Made By Baden and we love it.
• How To Be An Artist by Jerry Saltz – A no-nonsense, inspiring guide to making art. It’s packed with blunt advice, humor, and practical steps that cut through the usual artistic self-doubt.
• Montana Foldable RPET Bag – Holds all of the groceries, a bunch of spray cans, folds up small, and looks cool. Made from recycled plastic, it’s tough, portable, and the perfect mix of function and aesthetics.

DIGITAL

• The Art Career Academy – Making a living as an artist is hard. I am not there yet, but this has helped me get much closer. It’s practical, community-driven, and filled with real strategies instead of vague motivational nonsense.
• Struthless’ YouTube Channel – Funny, smart, and useful. Self-help often gives me the ick, but Struthless is both brutally honest and very funny. His videos offer real insights on creativity, self-discipline, and making things that actually matter.

INVISIBLE

“Whatever you like it all fits in. It doesn’t matter how different those things are that you like. They all fit into this world of shit you like.”

— El-P (On the “What Had Happened Was..” podcast)

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What’s in my NOW? — David Stackleather