Allo Mechanisms/tv.garden/Best condiment

Recomendo - issue #456

Alternative funding designs

Kickstarter uses a clever financing model where every backer’s money is returned if the full funding goal is not met. But this innovation is only one of many dozens of possible funding models, and dozen more ways of collaborating, or governing projects. Allo Mechanisms is a handy gallery of 60 different possible “capital allotment” mechanisms, already invented, that might work for your particular needs. Some of them already have implementations. — KK

Live TV streams from around the world

Tv.garden lets you spin a globe and watch live TV streams from around the world — no subscription needed. While channel surfing, I got caught up in watching Christian music videos in Senegal, Algerian news, and TV psychic readings in Bulgaria. It’s utterly captivating and transportive. — CD

Best condiment

I finally tried Fly By Jing’s Sichuan Chili Crisp and now I understand the hype. This umami-rich oil is packed with crunchy bits of crushed chili pepper, garlic, shallots and preserved black beans that add intense flavor and mild heat to everything from eggs to ice cream. The tingly numbing Sichuan peppercorn is what makes it addictive. While some may balk at the price for 6 ounces, a little goes a long way. — MF

Best coffee ice cream

Now that there are over 600 Trader Joe’s stores in the US, I feel okay to recommend a favorite item from there. I think their Coffee Bean Blast Ice Cream is the best grocery store ice cream you can buy, or at the very least, as Trader Joe’s claims, “it’s the very best coffee ice cream available anywhere on planet Earth.” I’m going to fight for that. — KK

Discover your attachment style

This NPR LIFE KIT interview features Dr. Amir Levine, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, discussing attachment theory in relationships and includes a short quiz adapted from his book to help listeners discover their own attachment style. Dr. Levine emphasizes that attachment is a biological need and that the four attachment styles — secure, anxious, avoidant, and anxious-avoidant — are normal variations in human behavior rather than pathologies. I had heard of attachment theory before and even worked on my own attachment issues before getting married, but what I learned from this interview that I didn’t fully understand before is that addressing attachment issues is a two-person process, not just an individual responsibility, and that becoming more secure often involves surrounding oneself with secure individuals. I took the quiz, and it reported that in relationships, I’m 100% secure, 25% avoidant, and 13% anxious. — CD

Guide to understanding why things work (or don’t)

This collection of Hacker Laws is aimed at software developers, but it provides insights for anyone trying to build or change things. Here are three:

Gall’s Law says grand reinventions usually fail — working complex systems can only evolve from working simple systems, never from scratch.

Chesterton’s Fence warns against eliminating an old policy or process that seems pointless, before first learning why it exists.

The Principle of Least Astonishment says that systems and processes should match users’ expectations and mental models — the path of least surprise is usually the path to success. — MF

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Book Freak 176: Understanding Potentially Sentient Non-Human Beings

Insights from Jonathan Birch's "The Edge of Sentience"

Get The Edge of Sentience

Imagine a patient in a vegetative state who can actually feel everything happening to them but can’t communicate it. Picture an octopus being boiled alive, experiencing every second of agony. Consider an AI system that might be developing genuine feelings while we treat it as just another tool. These are the ethical questions that keep Jonathan Birch up at night.

As a philosopher and ethicist at the London School of Economics, Birch has spent years grappling with one of science’s most perplexing questions: how do we know if another being is conscious and capable of suffering? His book, The Edge of Sentience, argues that we’ve been asking the wrong question all along. Instead of demanding absolute proof of consciousness — which may be impossible to obtain — we should focus on identifying “sentience candidates” and taking practical steps to protect them from harm.

This isn’t just academic theory. Birch’s work has already influenced real-world policy — he led the team whose research convinced the UK government to legally recognize lobsters and octopuses as sentient beings. Now he’s turning his attention to an even broader range of cases, from human patients with brain injuries to the possibility of conscious AI.

Here are four key insights from the book:

“Assume Sentient” When Lives Are at Stake

“A patient [with a prolonged disorder of consciousness] should not be assumed incapable of experience when an important clinical decision is made. All clinical decisions should consider the patient’s best interests as comprehensively as possible, working on the precautionary assumption that there is a realistic possibility of valenced experience and a continuing interest in avoiding suffering and in achieving a state of well-­being, but without taking this assumption to have implications regarding prognosis.”

Look Beyond Brain Size and Intelligence

“Sentience is neither intelligence nor brain size. We should be aware of the possibility of decouplings between intelligence, brain size, and sentience in the animal kingdom. Precautions to safeguard animal welfare should be driven by markers of sentience, not by markers of intelligence or by brain size.”

On the Hidden Nature of Experience

“At least in principle, there can be phenomenal consciousness without valence: experiences that feel like something but feel neither bad nor good. It is not clear that humans can have such experiences (our overall conscious state arguably always contains an element of mood). But we can conceive of a being that has a subjective point of view on the world in which non-­valenced states feature (it consciously experiences shapes, colours, sounds, odours, etc.) but in which everything is evaluatively neutral. Such a being would be technically non-­sentient according to the definition we have been using, though it would be sentient in a broader sense. Would such a being have the same moral standing as a being with valenced experiences?”

On Future AI Risk

“As these models get larger and larger, we have no sense of the upper limit on the sophistication of the algorithms they could implicitly learn… The point at which this judgement shifts from correct to dangerously incorrect will be very hard for us to see. There is a real risk that we will continue to regard these systems as our tools and playthings long after they become sentient.”

Happiest Countries/Free Checked Bag/Cheap Electronic Basics

Nomadico issue #149

Who is Feeling Happiest These Days?

The latest worldwide survey on happiness is out and if you thought the mood wasn’t so hot in the USA or UK, you were right. The countries with high taxes, strong social services, and low inequality are still the places making people smile. “When it comes to happiness, the Nordic countries are clearly doing a lot of things right. For the eighth year in a row, Finland is the world’s happiest country, with its neighbors clustered close behind.” The USA dropped again, to #24. Two countries Americans are flocking to—Mexico and Costa Rica—scored #6 and #10.

Frontier Will Take Your Free Luggage Instead

In a canny marketing move from an airline that has been a lot more attuned to customer sentiment than most, Frontier is taking advantage of Southwest’s backing off its long-running “Bags Fly Free” tagline by offering a free checked bag promotion. It won’t last, but they announced “a free checked bag for flights departing May 28 through August 18 when travelers use promo code FREEBAG.” See more about this and their other opportunistic changes here.

A Downgrade for United Credit Cards

Speaking of airlines, United just raised the annual fee of its most popular Chase credit card by more than half, from $99 to $150, and you’ll have to jump through an almost comical number of hoops to make up the difference with the new perks they’re touting. I still think it’s worth keeping if you fly with them more than three times a year because you get a free checked bag on all flights (not just domestic ones) and two lounge passes each year when you renew. Plus if you don’t have it already, $150 up front for 80,000 miles after meeting the spending requirement is a sweet intro offer. Otherwise, you might want to put this on your “replace list.”

Discount Stores for Electronics Basics

I spend most of my time in Mexico or abroad, so when I’m back in the USA I’m like a Soviet defector walking around gaping at the rampant consumerism all around me. The plus side of all that obsessive shopping is the staggering amount of choice and competition, which certainly keeps prices low for commodity items. I’m reminded of that when I need anything basic and electronic, like a charger, an adapter plug, or a pair of earbuds for the plane ride when I’ve lost one or both. If you lose something while traveling in the USA, just head to 5 Below or a dollar store and you’ll be out the door just a few bucks lighter. This also applies to reading glasses, cheap sunglasses, water bottles, travel mugs, soft coolers, and other items cranked out by the millions.

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? — Dave Crumbine

issue #207

I try to live in the now. Control is mostly an illusion—what we really have is influence.

Who am I? Still unfolding. Not my past, not my future. Just someone who values presence, connection, and contrast—e-bike rides and quiet writing, clean meals and surprise desserts.

I love dogs. My last one reminded me to be who they think I am—loyal, present, kind.

I chase balance, but stay anchored in what matters: family, wellbeing, curiosity, and rest.

PHYSICAL

• Phase 10: This card game is my favorite for casual gatherings. It blends strategy and simplicity, working well with any group size. The sequential phase challenges keep everyone engaged without the complexity of other games, making it perfect for game nights or spur-of-the-moment play.
• Under-desk Footrest: After discovering the comfort of pull-down footrests on a luxury bus, I realized our workspaces were missing a key ergonomic feature. This small addition makes sitting at your desk that much more comfortable.
• Remarkable Tablet: My Remarkable has replaced stacks of notebooks while keeping the feel of real paper with the convenience of digital. I use it daily for morning journaling, built my Bullet Journal system in it, and grab it as scratch paper or to take notes I can actually find later.

DIGITAL

• Things 3: The task app Things 3 is beautifully designed—it’s no surprise it’s won multiple awards. And the Bullet Journal method by Ryder Carroll has a cult following for a reason. I’m grateful I combined the two: the app and the system.That’s how I built my digital Bullet Journal. And it transformed how I manage my time, my tasks, and my sanity.
• Hey Email: This email service redefined my relationship with email and my inbox, treating it like a closed door instead of an open invitation for clutter. Every new sender needs approval before reaching my Imbox (yes “Imbox,” the “important” inbox), cutting out the usual email chaos and putting me back in control. I no longer despise email.

INVISIBLE

“You are not in the present moment. You are the present moment”

Ray from the Dualistic Unity podcast. This reframing perfectly explains why Dualistic Unity resonates with me. Ray’s elegant way of dissolving the observer/observed divide has become a daily touchstone, changing how I experience life.

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Make: Props / Cabinet of Natural Curiosities

Issue No. 60

MASTER PROP FANATIC SHAWN THORSSON SHARES HIS SHOP SECRETS

Make: Props and Costume Armor
Shawn Thorsson
Maker Media
2016, 296 pages, 8 x 9.7 x o.5 inches (softcover)

Buy on Amazon

While at Make: for many years, I had the pleasure of working with and getting to know Shawn Thorsson, author of Make: Props and Costume Armor. Shawn was one of the first serious amateur prop builders that we featured. He and one of his Space Marine costumes even made it onto the cover of the magazine. When Shawn launches a project, he’s like a torpedo in the water. You either get out of the way or you prepare for impact. You can feel this passion for what he does (and how he does it), in person, on his project blog, and thankfully, in the pages of this wonderful new book from Make:.

I love the way Make: Props and Costume Armor is organized. There is an amazing set of sci-fi costume armor and a prop gun (from a comic book called The Final Hunt) on the front cover and a Wolf Warrior costume on the back. The bulk of the book is taken up with each chapter detailing one of the elements of each costume. If you make all of the projects from the book, you will end up with these two very different types of weapons and armor, one sci-fi, one fantasy.

Each chapter examines a different prop-making technique, from vaccumforming to 3D modeling using Pepakura software, to working with EVA foam, and finally, finishing, painting, and weathering. While the book is an amazing introduction and beginner’s guide to prop construction, the text is peppered throughout with enough expert tips and tricks to make this relevant to prop makers and cosplayers of any level of expertise. And Shawn’s trademark snarky and quick-witted sense of humor perfectly leavens the writing, making this book as fun to read as it is educational. – Gareth Branwyn

CABINET OF NATURAL CURIOSITIES – A TREASURE TROVE OF EXQUISITE BOTANICAL IMAGES, COPYRIGHT FREE

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
by Albertus Seba
Taschen
2011, 416 pages, 9.7 x 13.3 x 1.5 inches (hardcover)

Buy on Amazon

Albertus Seba was a Dutch pharmacist working in the early 1700s who collected exotic plants and animals samples that may or may not have medicinal purposes. He crammed his Amsterdam shop with 700 jars of unusual specimens. He then commissioned a dozen artists to make engravings based on his collection, which were published in hand-colored volumes. This huge oversized reproduction by Taschen is the meta-collection of those volumes. It’s a treasure trove of many thousands of exquisite botanical images, in large format, drawn with obsessive detail, in great diversity, copyright free. Perfect if you need a logo based on a squid, or a blue snake. – Kevin Kelly

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.

Sleep

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 131

Best tips for naps

Take a Nap! Change Your Life

Napping is a evolutionarily habit that still works wonders today. I can get by with several hours less sleep per night by adding a 20-minute nap in the afternoon. But I work at home where napping is easily done. The point of this book is to persuade you that the benefits of napping, scientifically derived, are so great you should do everything you can to make napping a habit whatever your schedule. As this concise guide makes clear the benefits to nappers are significant: smarter, more productive, healthier. For those who have tried napping without success, this book offers several different methods to try. It is hard to imagine the siesta returning in full force in the workplace, but it should be resurrected in some fashion. Start here. This is the best practical book on naps yet. — KK

• It’s free, it’s nontoxic and it has no dangerous side effects. Hard to believe, with these powerful selling points, that people have to be convinced to nap. But alas, for way too long, napping has been given a bad rap.
• I’m often asked if a nap during the day will interfere with nocturnal sleep. The answer is a definite no. Unfortunately, many information sources on sleep hygiene encourage people to avoid napping if they’re having trouble sleeping at night. Not only is there not a shred of evidence to support this advice, but much of the data coming out of sleep research demonstrates quite the opposite. In studies across all age ranges, nocturnal sleep duration has been proven to be unaffected by midday napping. As a matter of fact, studies indicate that in a number of cases napping actually improves the ability to sleep at night.
• As a rule of thumb, you can count on naps earlier in the day to be richer in REM, while late afternoon naps tend to be higher in SWS. If you take particular interest in your dreams, waking up during or right after a heavy REM episode will allow you the greatest recall of your dream imagery. If you feel like one of “the walking tired,” a heavy SWS does will take care of that.
• It bears repeating: There’s no such thing as a bad nap. Any time you spend in midday sleep will reduce the effects of fatigue and bestow benefits. But our nap needs differ across populations and will change over the course of our lives. A mother’s requirement is not the same as that of her three-year-old toddler. The sleep profile of a middle-aged football coach had little in common with that of a teenage beauty contestant.
• “Who’s got time to nap?” is a common complaint among non-nappers. The short answer is: just about everyone. if you spend 20 minutes or more at Starbucks getting an afternoon mocha latte, couldn’t you just stay where you are and take a nap instead? So, before you conclude that napping doesn’t fit into your busy life, take out your day planner and examine your schedule. By carefully reviewing the activities of your day and the time it takes to do them, you can assess which time expenditures are unnecessary and where a nap can be substituted. How long is your lunch? A paralegal with an hour lunch break reports that she can eat in half an hour and keep the second half for her nap. Or do what I do and pencil in 20 to 40 minutes as soon as your get home for a transition nap between work and leisure.Once you’ve carved out these precious minutes, you need to make this nap time a regular feature of your day. Just as we’ve developed a detailed trail of cues for our minds and bodies to recognize that it’s time for nighttime sleep, we need to fashion a similar set of cues that will indicate that it’s nap time. Consistent scheduling allows the body to associate that hour with the nap and all other concerns to more easily fade away.
• “If I nap I’m being lazy.”
  Some of the most hardworking figures in history–national leaders, scientists, CEOs, movie stars–have used napping as a tool to get more out of each day. As demonstrated by the latest brain imaging technology, your mind is still at work even if your body is at rest.
  Replace with: “Napping makes me more productive.”
  “I’m too busy to nap.”
  Just look around your office at 3 p.m. More than likely, instead of a hive of industrious activity, you’ll see a bunch of bleary-eyed workers checking and rechecking their e-mail. As the great napper Winston Churchill said, “Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one… well, at least one and half.” The latest scientific research has proven him correct.
  Replace with: “I’m so busy, I need to nap.”
  “I haven’t done enough to deserve a nap.”
  Do you deserve to eat? To breathe? No natural function–including napping!–should be regarded as a privilege. Stop cheating yourself.
  Replace with: “I’m exercising my inalienable right to nap.”
  “I can’t get anything out of a 20-minute nap, so why bother?”
  You can reap benefits in as little as five minutes. Naps under 20 minutes can increase alertness, improve physical dexterity, boost stamina and lower stress. Post-lunch naps of 15 minutes have been shown in university studies to increase alertness and performance.
  Replace with: “In less than 20 minutes, I will restore my alertness for the rest of the day.”

Brain wave sleep tracker

Zeo Personal Sleep Coach

You know nothing about nearly a third of your life. Sure, you think you have some sense of how you sleep, but you really don’t. We’re notoriously inaccurate in estimating how long it takes us to fall asleep, how long we’re awake in the middle of the night, how long we dream and how much deep sleep we get. And the total hours you sleep are only one factor of many in determining the quality of that sleep and the restorative effect it will have on you. Even worse, if you want to improve the quality of your sleep, all you’ve got to go on is general advice, while the one thing we know about sleep is that we’re all different.

What you need is data. That’s what Zeo provides. It’s a clock-radio-sized device that sits on your bedside table, with a comfortable wireless headband that you wear while you sleep. The headband measures electrical signals from your brain and can distinguish between four states: awake, light sleep, REM sleep and deep sleep. The base station records all this, and displays all the data in easy to understand charts, as well as recording it on a SD card that you can plug into a computer to upload to a very good website for tracking and analysis.

(It’s also a great alarm clock, which can wake you at the time when you’re most ready to wake, which may be some minutes before the set time)

I was given a Zeo when it first came out last year, and I’m hooked. I knew I was a poor sleeper who is plagued by too-vivid dreams, but here’s what I found out with Zeo: 1) I get very little deep sleep (often less than 10%), which is the most restorative type. My wife, meanwhile, usually gets more than 25% deep sleep over the same period. 2) When I think I’m tossing and turning all night, I’m usually not. The wake periods are typically short, and I am actually asleep between them. 3) There are simple things I can do to improve my sleep, even if I’m not sleeping any more hours.

To that last point, Zeo is all about running experiments on yourself. Take a couple weeks of baseline data to measure day-of-week cyclicality, and then start changing things. For me, the difference between one glass of wine and two a night is an average of five points of “ZQ” score (I average around 80). Cutting off screens (email, web, even reading on the iPad) a half-hour before bed and turning to a paper book also adds about five points. I’d hoped that exercise would add to my score, but it didn’t. Three milligrams of melatonin before bed has a small but positive impact, which may well just be the placebo effect. 11:30 is better for me than 12:00, but 11:00 is no better than 11:30. And so on.

If you’d like better sleep and want to be smart about how you go about it, Zeo is the perfect tool. And even if you don’t have one, subscribe to the Zeo blog, which is full of smart data- and science-driven advice and discussion about sleep quality and how to improve it. — Chris Anderson

Quantifying mental ability

Mind Metrics

One of the self-tracking projects that I always wanted to do was to determine the impact of sleep, diet and exercise regimen on my mental and cognitive abilities. I needed an app to measure my cognitive or mental skills/abilities — rather than training or improving them. I also wanted measurement methods to be as close to scientific as possible. And of course the tests should take as little time as possible (preferably under 5 min), and run off portable devices. I settled on Mind Metrics — it’s an awesome phone app that lets me measure alertness, higher cognitive abilities such as attention and memory, and their combination.

For instance, in the alertness test you are asked to tap the sun as soon as it appears in the same part of the screen randomly every few seconds. You can control the number of trials and timing for both tests. After completing a preset number of trials, you get both average reaction time and average attention/memory score. You can see all your current and previous scores on the screen, and also e-mail them to yourself in comma separated format.

I’ve been using Mind Metrics to measure mental alertness in a couple of experiments, including finding the optimal time to go to bed (my finding was that going to bed between 11 and 11:15 leads to higher alertness next morning and better sleep), and validating orthostatic heart rate test (difference between standing and resting heart rate right after waking up reasonably well predicts mental and physical performance later in the day). I am currently using Mind Metrics to track my cognitive well-being on a daily basis. — Konstantin Augemberg

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.

What’s in my NOW? — Dave Crumbine