Dental Care

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 180

Mirrored flashlight for oral & mechanical work

GUM Oral Care Kit

Two incredibly handy tools seldom used for their intended uses are dental mirrors (a.k.a. “inspection” mirrors) and dental picks. The one problem with most inspection mirrors is that when you have to look into awkward electronic or mechanical crevices where you need a mirror, you also need a flashlight for illumination and a spare hand to hold the light. This kit (#832) has a dental mirror with a bright flashlight integrated into the handle and a switch in the grip, freeing up your other hand. The other neat thing is that for less than $10 you get two dental picks — great for nudging or extracting small inaccessible components from assemblies. Recently, I was upgrading a friend’s computer. The motherboard was mounted in a “baby ATX” case which was a very tight fit. To locate the CMOS reset jumper or check to see if the memory socket catch was engaged, I needed the use of the lighted mirror to negotiate the dark spots where those components were hidden. In the same manner the picks were handy to snag small cables within the case. — Stephen A. Kupiec

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Superior dental tool

Reach Access Flosser

The civilized way to floss. A tiny, easily replaceable harp on the end of a stick. More hygienic (no fingers in your mouth), more effective at flossing the hard parts, more comfortable, easier to use. Our kids love ’em. I floss much more often myself since I started using one. A really cool tool more folks should use. — KK

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Essential mouth tool

Dental Mirror

I got mine — made of surgical stainless steel — from a set of used dental tools at a garage sale for 25 cents. It’s incredibly handy for inspecting missing fillings, infections, gum complaints, particularly in kids. And you can look for sharp edges on dental braces. There really is no other way to look deep inside the mouth. The key is to get a proper front-surface mirror, which some drugstore plastic versions don’t have. Otherwise at close range there is a slight double image which confuses the image. — KK

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Emergency teeth fillings

Dentemp

Dentemp is a traditional dental combination of zinc oxide and eugenol (clove oil) mixed when needed to make a temporary tooth patch for lost cavity filling, or to re-cement a cap or inlaid on a tooth. It’s strong enough that you’ll need to have a dentist remove it later. Since an emergency Dentemp kit weighs less than an ounce, it should be part of your traveling or backpacking kit. You can get it at almost any drug store. — KK

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Floss alternative

Brush Picks

I hate flossing. I hate how the floss cuts into my fingers and lips, and how it gets wet and slimy and impossible to manipulate. I’ve tried those little flossers with handles but they’re not much better than regular floss. I’ve used interdental brushes (they’re like itty-bitty bottle brushes with handles) but they’re not flexible and don’t fit between normally-spaced teeth. After years of ignoring my dentist’s suggestion to just floss the teeth I want to keep, I think BrushPicks are my solution.

Each disposable plastic pick has a pick end and a brush end. The pick end has tiny ridges that help to scrape harder material from between your teeth. But it’s the brush end that’s a real innovation. It looks kind of like a feathery antenna, with a flat row of tiny bristles extending on either side of a thin, flexible pick. This brush end is stiff enough and thin enough to poke easily between your teeth, but flexible enough that it readily bends so that you’re not jabbing painfully into your gums. This flexibility also allows for cleaning behind rear molars. Rotating the brush end as you clean helps to loosen and remove gunk from otherwise impossible-to-reach areas.

BrushPicks are so effective that they’re actually kind of fun to use–in a “look what I just dug out of my own head” sort of way. I’ve taken to using one every 2 or 3 days and I’m anxious to see if my dental hygienist notices the difference during my next cleaning. — Rhodora Collins

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Emergency dentistry

Where there is no dentist

There is very little chance you’ll ever be beyond the reach of a dentist most of your life. However, like its companion Where There is No Doctor, the true audience for this free PDF (and for-sale printed book) is care-givers in the developing world. But this tome also works as a short course in emergency care. Real dental first aid that is useful for anyone to know. — KK

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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.

03/9/26

Maverick tours / Protocol cards / Kitchen sponge

Recomendo - issue #504

Maverick tours

I’ve taken several tours with Young Pioneer Tours. Their motto is “leading group tours for people who hate group tours to destinations your mother would rather you stay away from and at budget prices.” They deliver all that, famously taking small tours to restricted places like North Korea, Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, and to “Unrecognized Countries” in Africa. They just started offering a new tour to Least Visited Countries, which happen to mostly be Pacific island “countries” which are normally very hard or expensive to reach. While these tours may sound dangerous, they don’t go where it is actually dangerous. Rather they are contrarian, and an affordable travel adventure. — KK

Protocol cards for nervous system regulation

Protocolcards.com is a digital deck of evidence‑backed nervous system “protocols” you can pull up when you don’t know what to do with yourself. They’re not magic quick fixes, but if you follow the short guided practices and prompts, your system will start to feel more regulated over time. Cards are organized into five categories: Emergency (for when you need instant regulation), Focus (to upshift into more alertness), Recover (to downshift from activation or transition into more chill), Sleep (for evening wind‑down), and Feel (for when you want to be with and process your emotions), and you unlock the full library by signing up with your email. — CD

Best kitchen sponge

Scrub Daddy sponges have replaced every other sponge in our kitchen. They have a rough, grippy texture that removes stuck-on food, but they won’t scratch nonstick cookware. My favorite feature: you can squeeze nearly all the water out of them, so they dry fast and don’t develop that funky sponge smell. — MF

Shrinkable child car seat

Car seats keep kids safe, but are surely a pain to travel with. For kids 2-3 years old or older, there is a legitimate alternative, which is a DOT-approved vest that the child wears as a harness. The child + harness is then strapped into a regular seat belt. The pioneering safety vest is Ridesafer. It comes in different sizes, for larger kids too. When not worn, the vest shrinks to a small, easy to pack lump about the size of a folded jacket, fitting into your bag. This makes it perfect for taxis, ubers and rental cars. It also makes it perfect for grandparents, who may not want to keep their back seats perpetually occupied with car seats. We’ve found the Ridesafer easy enough to put on and off, and with some patience to buckle in – but still faster than loading a kid into a car seat. (I would lean toward getting a size larger, it will still work as well.) — KK

12 Home Library Ideas

There are two types of list articles I will always click on: best book cover roundups and bookshelf “shelfies.” This Zillow list of 12 home library ideas scratches my book‑voyeur itch, and now I have names for all the little libraries scattered around my house, most of which fall into the “strategic library” category, but the dream is still a library in every room. — CD

How well do you remember colors?

The free online game Color revealed how terrible I am at colors. It shows you a color for a few seconds, then asks you to recreate it from memory using sliding color and shade pickers. It sounds easy — it’s not. I swore I nailed that shade of green, only to see my guess was way off. Play solo or challenge friends in multiplayer mode. — MF

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03/8/26

Book Freak #199: Thinking in Systems

A Powerful Framework for Understanding Complexity

Get Thinking in Systems

From the lead author of the landmark Limits to Growth report, Thinking in Systems offers a powerful framework for understanding complexity — revealing that war, hunger, poverty, and environmental destruction aren’t isolated problems but system failures that can’t be solved by fixing one piece in isolation.

Core Principles

Systems Generate Their Own Behavior

A system is a set of interconnected elements that produces its own pattern of behavior over time. The behavior emerges from the structure — the feedback loops, delays, and connections — not from external events. Stop looking for who’s to blame; instead, ask “What’s the system?” The system itself causes its own behavior.

Stocks and Flows Drive Dynamics

Every system has stocks (accumulations like water in a bathtub, money in an account, or carbon in the atmosphere) and flows (the rates at which stocks change). Understanding which stocks are critical and what controls their flows reveals why systems behave as they do — and why they often resist our attempts to change them.

Feedback Loops Create Stability or Growth

Balancing feedback loops push toward equilibrium (a thermostat maintaining temperature). Reinforcing feedback loops amplify change (compound interest, viral spread, erosion of trust). Most real-world systems contain both types interacting in complex ways. Finding and understanding these loops is key to understanding any system.

Find the Leverage Points

Not all interventions are equal. The highest leverage often lies not in pushing harder but in changing the system’s goals, rules, or underlying paradigms. A small shift in the right place — like changing what gets measured, or who has information — can produce large changes in behavior.

Try It Now

1. Pick a problem you’re struggling with. Instead of asking “Who caused this?”, ask “What’s the system that’s producing this outcome?”
2. Identify the stocks involved (what’s accumulating or depleting?) and the flows (what’s increasing or decreasing those stocks?).
3. Look for feedback loops: Is there a balancing loop keeping things stuck? A reinforcing loop making things worse?
4. Ask: Where is information missing? Often system malfunctions stem from key players not having access to the right information.
5. Consider: What would happen if you changed the goal or what gets measured, rather than just pushing harder on the current approach?

Quote

“Let’s face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic. It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity, not uniformity. That’s what makes the world interesting, that’s what makes it beautiful, and that’s what makes it work.”

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Book Freak is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run Recomendo, 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, and Book Freak.

03/6/26

Ski Coat Sales/Delayed Luggage Tactics/Another United Devaluation

Nomadico issue #196

Buy That Ski Coat on Sale

I’m currently leading a group ski trip around Jasna, Slovakia, and one of the participants said, “Here’s a game for when you’re waiting in the lift line. Try to spot two jackets that are the same. It almost never happens.” I looked all day and he was right. That tells me that a) the market is very fragmented and b) the brand doesn’t matter as much as they would like you to believe as long as it’s well-made. I’ve personally used ones from Hi-Tec, Adidas, and Kuhl the past few trips and all have performed great. So buy when the best sales are going on and just make sure it has a left breast pocket or sleeve pocket for today’s digital lift tickets.

Preparing for Delayed Luggage

Delta sent my Prague-bound suitcase full of ski clothing to Pittsburg instead on this trip and it took partner KLM 2.5 days to get it back in my hands, despite the bar code still being attached. That’s a new record for me, with things normally resolved in a day at most. Thankfully I had enough essentials in my laptop bag that it was an annoyance, not a catastrophe, but it’s a reminder that you have to anticipate this scenario and say, “What if?” In most cases the airline will compensate for reasonable purchases, but any good travel insurance policy will kick in if that doesn’t work.

United Will Penalize Fliers Who Don’t Carry Their Credit Card

United just devalued their loyalty program again, which is nothing new, but this time they took it an extra step. They basically said, “Pay up for one of our credit cards or you’re not going to get the same benefits.” In case you were wondering what your airline loyalty is really worth, apparently the answer is “a $150 or more annual subscription fee.” If you don’t have their card, your loyalty status won’t matter: you will get penalized on both the earnings and redemptions. See more info here.

Fake Travel Confirmations

I have seen a slew of articles lately about travelers getting scammed by fake confirmations or change notifications that look just like the official ones from your airline, hotel company, or OTA. In most cases, the aim is to get as much of your personal information as possible. They can be very convincing, but never click on the link and start entering info: go to the official website or app. If your password manager doesn’t fill in your log-in info automatically, that’s the first sign you’re not in the right place. A legit e-mail will tell you to do the same and if you have the app, you’ll get an alert about real flight changes or problems.

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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.

03/5/26

What’s in my NOW? — Amanda McClendon

issue #244

I’m a librarian, but I don’t do whatever you think of when you think of what librarians do. I also host trivia on Monday nights at a local Tex-Mex restaurant, work on a master’s degree in theology, and listen to too many podcasts during whatever free time I have left. — Amanda McClendon

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PHYSICAL

• Oven pull – These are wood or silicone sticks with two notches. You grab your oven rack with it to get it in and out of the oven while putting some distance between yourself and a very hot metal box, so you’re less likely to burn yourself.
• Keats & Co. Evensong Chai – Caffeine free (it’s rooibos), plus all the profits go to tuberculosis treatment. Good.store, which runs the brand, is a great company run by internet celebrities John and Hank Green and they have all kinds of other good products as well.
• Public libraries! – Listen, I work at an academic library, and I still hit up my local public library all the time, because they have items for checkout that my workplace doesn’t have, and they’re one of the last places in American society where you can hang out and they won’t ask you for money (save for maybe late fees). Plus they may have programs and items you weren’t expecting, like board games, odd kitchen equipment, tax prep help, passport services, free museum passes, or makerspaces.

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DIGITAL

• Kung Fu Grandpa in the Food Lion parking lot! – The narration combined with the absurdity of the guy messing with nunchucks in the grocery store parking lot is pure gold.
• Worlds Beyond Number – If you had asked me a year ago if I would be interested in a podcast of four people playing DND together, I would have said no. Past me would have been wrong. Some of the best audio storytelling, and a lot of that is due to the friendship between the four players, all with improv backgrounds. (But also: The editing and sound design are pretty killer as well.)

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INVISIBLE

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it” — Pirkei Avot, 2:16

Especially helpful in these times!

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03/4/26

Smuggler’s Cove / Hieronymous Bosch

Issue No. 107

SMUGGLER’S COVE – DRINK YOUR WAY THROUGH TIKI HISTORY WITH EXOTIC RECIPES EVERY STEP OF THE WAY

Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki
by Martin Cate and Rebecca Cate
Ten Speed Press
2016, 352 pages, 7.7 x 9.3 x 1.3 inches

Buy on Amazon

There are good bars, bad ones, and then there are destinations. I’ve been to many tiki bars, but Smuggler’s Cove stands out. In the heart of San Francisco, Smuggler’s Cove is an oasis. From the outside it looks like a weird office building with blacked out windows. Yet when you step inside you are teleported to paradise. It’s small, warm, and since I left the Bay Area, I dream about their drinks. Without question this is one of my favorite places in the world, and this book manages to capture that.

The book has you drinking your way through tiki history, starting with the birth of tiki and moving to the modern tiki revival, with recipes at every step of the way. Topics include the importance of rum, getting the right tiki look and feel, and the creation of the Smuggler’s Cove bar itself. And then there are the drinks.

If you like a good cocktail you’re going to find something here that interests you. Grog, Scorpion Bowls, Mai Tais, punch, and Zombies all filled with fresh juice and booze. One thing you’ll learn from reading this book and trying their drinks is that a tiki cocktail doesn’t have to be sickeningly sweet. They’re balanced, delicious, and complex. If you’re into tiki, cocktail culture, or just delicious fancy drinks, you should get this book. No question. Beautiful photography, in-depth recipes, the book’s amazing. But… (pause for effect) they left out my favorite Smuggler’s Cove drink.

On various occasions I’ve worked my way through their menu, trying dozens of their signature cocktails. The one that always stood out was their Painkiller. It’s a coconutty, sour, sweet, spicy concoction that cures all ailments. It was the first recipe I looked for when I picked up my copy, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I wanted to cry. Buy this book for every other recipe, but until they unveil their secret formula, here’s the closest I’ve been able to get to replicating it.

1oz Smuggler’s Cove Coconut Cream (recipe found in book)
1oz Fresh squeezed orange juice
4oz Pineapple juice
2, 3, or 4 oz of Pusser’s Navy rum (depending on how much pain you’re in)
Top with fresh grated nutmeg
Serve in your favorite tiki mug filled with crushed ice – JP LeRoux

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HIERONYMOUS BOSCH: COMPLETE WORKS – A VISUAL MARVEL, AN ENLIGHTENING READ

Hieronymous Bosch: Complete Works
by Stefan Fischer (author) and Hieronymus Bosch (artist)
Taschen
2016, 300 pages, 9.7 x 13.1 x 1.2 inches

Buy on Amazon

It is, perhaps, fitting that we know the date of Heironymous Bosch’s death while his date of birth remains unclear. We know that Bosch died 500 years ago and so much of what he left us is directly concerned with the afterlife or at least the spiritual journeys that humanity takes to the endpoint of life. The artwork of Bosch is wholly concerned with Christian allegory of the most human, inhuman, and superhuman variety. When one comes to behold a Bosch masterpiece, the lives of saints and the woes of sinners are the subject matter, and sometimes they are one and the same. There is a complexity that is easily identified in any one Bosch piece, but unravelling the intertwined religious and cultural allegories is beyond most. In Heironymous Bosch, The Complete Works, we are offered a unique opportunity, not only to demystify singular works of Bosch, but to take in the entire life and progression of this artist’s journey.

Bosch is a subject of his particular epoch and circumstance, as well as an innovator that transcends both. Granted access to the scholarly resources of the Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in the late-medieval and Netherlandish-provincial town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the layman Heironymous was given a unique perspective that very few outside the clergy enjoyed in this period. To look upon his works, from The Garden of Earthly Delights to The Last Judgement, one is not just witnessing the depiction of an event from scripture but rather a studied worldview, laid out in full, of a transitional moment between the late Gothic and early Renaissance.

Heironymous Bosch, The Complete Works may be primarily an art book at which one can visually marvel for hours, but it is well worth noting that the textual journey is equal to the imagery on display. It is genuinely surprising that this book is so very enlightening in the text by Stefan Fischer that accompanies the works themselves. While our modern tendency might be to shallowly interpret the many impish grotesques that populate Bosch’s work as overt evil by their displeasing appearance alone, in doing so we would miss the deeper religious allegory, the intertextual allusions to a tradition of religious artwork, and the genius of the original hybrid drolleries that Bosch uses to symbolize, in sometimes quite elaborate visual metaphors, the vices of humankind. Fischer guides the reader through these works, adeptly identifying not just what is being displayed, but why these creatures exist on the canvas. As a result, Fischer’s text becomes profoundly useful for navigating and better appreciating the meticulous detail of Bosch’s overwhelmingly busy scene-scapes.

Take, for example, from The Temptation of St. Anthony the creature on skates with a note pierced by its beak and a funnel for a hat from which extrudes a branch with a red ball tied to it by a string. Whereas I would simply be perplexed by this odd monstrosity, Fischer explains these details fully. The devil messenger bears a letter of indictment for St. Anthony’s sins and he skates to invoke from the local vernacular an adage similar to “skating on thin ice” in relation to the saint’s carelessness in his prior ways. As for the hat, it is the manifestation of these past sins with the funnel representing drunkenness just as the red ball tied to the twig represents carnal desire linked to the withering of the soul. One quickly gains an extraordinary appreciation for the complexity of Bosch’s oeuvre and it is thanks in great part to Fischer’s guidance of the readers through this fraught terrain.

This volume has been thoughtfully compiled as it includes the complete works of Bosch lavishly reproduced in both their entirety and with detailed closeups of particular portions of each work. Moreover, there are inclusions of near-contemporaneous works that inspired or were inspired by Bosch, as well as his sketches and even works created by his workshop followers. The sheer number of visual reproductions in this volume is staggering, and the physical book is a hefty object. While this review concerns the 2016 new edition, due to the timeliness of the 500-year span from Bosch’s death, Taschen has also just released a size-reduced edition with an increased page count. Whichever format one chooses to take in the magnificently bizarre works of Bosch, these releases by Taschen with the meticulous guidance by Fischer are more than collectors’ pieces. Just as Bosch’s works sought to entertain the eye while also teaching the soul, so too do these editions of Heironymous Bosch, The Complete Works seek to reproduce the spectacle of Bosch’s genius and provide the explanatory text necessary to truly appreciate the power of these otherworldly delights. – Stephen Webb

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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.

03/3/26

What’s in my NOW? — Amanda McClendon