Big History

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 146

Compact timeline of global history

Histomap of World History

Not a map really, but a 5-foot-high chart showing in one glance 4,000 years of human history on a global scale. Thirty years ago I saw this on the wall of someone’s dorm room and it flipped me out then, and every time I’ve seen it since. Its beauty is how Mr. Sparks divies up world power (somewhat crudely) into its main factions graphed in each increment of fifty years since 2000 B.C.E. Different civilizations are color-coded so one can easily trace the flow and ebb of culture over the centuries.

It has three uses for me: whenever I am reading about some historical event I can instantly see what else was going on in the world at that time (for instance, what was happening in France during the Ming Dynasty). I also get a very intuitive sense of the rises and falls of civilizations, a pattern that no other chart or book has been able to give me. And hanging on the wall, it never fails to elicit gaps of shock when visitors recognize our modern place in the chart. At ten bucks, it’s a bargain education.— KK

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Understanding geological and biological time

Correlated History of Earth

The long view. Or rather, views. Geological time and biological time run at such different paces that the two perspectives are not easily brought together. This crisp chart joins them with extraordinary clarity. It lays out the chronologies of continents skittering around the globe, of comet and asteroid impacts, and of life’s increasingly diverse groups of living creatures and how they fit into geological time. And more. Ordinarily, combining such staggering amounts of information would yield mush and muddle. But this exquisitely printed, laminated poster manages to present 4.5 billion years of geology and biology as the unified whole that it is. Like a good map it teaches something at two feet away, or you can get out a magnifying glass and read down for details. — KK

• From the chart’s Web site:
  “Included are plate tectonic maps, mountain building events (orogenies), major volcanic episodes, glacial epochs, all known craters from asteroid and comet impacts, over 100 classic fossil localities from around the world, fossil ranges of plants, invertebrates and vertebrate life forms, and major extinction events as revealed by the fossil record. Also evident on this chart are the “Cambrian explosion” of animal phyla and the juxtaposition of reptiles and mammals across the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary. Hundreds of illustrations add a striking visual dimension to the data.”

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5,000 years of history in one square meter

Diagrammatic Chart of World History

Simply the best overview of the — long now — I am aware of. Displays with utmost intelligence 50 centuries of civilization, as revealed in the complex rise and fall of ancient powers. Because it is not as linear as the famous, previously-reviewed Histomap, it is not as handy for quickly locating a fact in time, but its extra dimensions make this diagram the one I keep returning to to grok the past 5,000 years.— 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.

07/14/25

Retro Recomendo: Household Tips

Recomendo - issue #470

Our subscriber base has grown so much since we first started nine years ago, that most of you have missed all our earliest recommendations. The best of these are still valid and useful, so we’re trying out something new — Retro Recomendo. Once every 6 weeks, we’ll send out a throwback issue of evergreen recommendations focused on one theme from the past 9 years.

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Unclog sewer drains

We live in an old house and the sewer pipes get clogged a lot. I got tired of paying a plumber $150 to clear the pipe every time it clogged, so I bought this $27 hose attachment, called a Drain King. It’s a rubber bladder that you insert into the sewer line opening. When you turn the hose on, the bladder expands, forcing the water to push the clog out. It has never failed me. Read the glowing testimonials on Amazon for this thing. — MF

Bathroom phone shelf

You are sitting on the toilet but there is no place to park your phone safely. This is an everywhere-in-the-world problem, with a first-world solution: this hefty, heavy solid metal, toilet roll shelf. The shelf is flat, dry, and stable. The roll holder underneath is easy to use. It can also store books, wet wipes, etc. As a courtesy I replaced our guest bathroom roll holder with this, and I like it so much I may do the rest of the bathrooms. — KK

Smudge-free surfaces

I bought a 10-pack of these extra-large microfiber cloths ($12), and now I keep them everywhere—home drawers, office, car, purse. They leave every surface spotless in seconds. I spend at least 10 hours a day staring at a screen or wearing glasses. I never knew I needed something so much in my life. — CD

This vacuum cleaner really sucks

The Bissell Zing Canister (model 2156A) was only $50 and it exceeded my expectations. It is bagless, quieter than any other vacuum cleaner I’ve owned, and has powerful suction. It’s great for hardwood floors (I don’t know how well it works on carpeting since we don’t have any). — MF

Best stain remover

Tipped off by the comprehensive research at America’s Test Kitchen, I’ve found that the best — really the only — stain remover for laundry that really works is sodium percarbonate, which is a powder you need to mix in water before each use. (No liquid spray works nearly as well.) You then soak garments for 6 hours and wash. It completely removes just about any food stain, even stale ones. There are generic versions available but a proven brand of percarbonate is OxiClean Versatile Stain Remover. — KK

Simple strategy for cleaning

The next time you have a big mess to clean up, try the “pile method.” Gather everything that needs to be put away into one giant pile, then sort the items—like with like—into smaller piles. Put those piles away one by one. This way, you avoid getting sidetracked as you put things away. At first, it felt counterintuitive to make one big mess, but it really does speed up the process, and it’s so satisfying to be efficient and tidy. — CD

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07/13/25

Free Bag Checks/San Miguel de Allende/Travel Gear Sales

Nomadico issue #162

Which Credit Cards Score Free Bag Checks?

My flight on Southwest last week may be my last one for a while since they’re heading downhill to join the rest at the bottom, but as long as I keep paying the annual fee for their credit card, one bag will still fly free. While the Chase Sapphire and Amex cards with Membership Rewards are popular for their multi-program transfer options, you need a branded airline card if you fly a U.S. carrier frequently and want to get around baggage charges. The United Explorer, Alaska Airlines, Southwest, and JetBlue cards are the best since the bag fee is waived for all flights, but you’ll get a domestic checked bag included if you pay for one with a card from Delta or American. The annual fee on these is $150 or less and for JetBlue and Alaska, the bag perk extends to companions on the same reservation.

The Complicated Story of San Miguel de Allende

My base in Mexico is an hour and a half from San Miguel de Allende and I’ve probably been there at least 20 times now. I’m usually ready to leave after a couple of days, but there’s a reason it has been named best city or best small city in the world in glossy travel magazines’ polls: it’s a gorgeous place. But what about all those gringos taking over? I like this article about the city for its balanced look at the rising prices, Airbnb boom, and gentrification. They rightly point out that the city gets more domestic visitors than foreigners and many of those expensive mansions are vacation homes for Mexico City residents. (Via the Travel Wire from Nomadic Notes.)

Holiday Gear Sales

Friday is Independence Day in the USA, which provides a good excuse for companies to bombard you with e-mails to implore you to buy something. This is a good weekend to find travel gear and clothing on sale though since the online retailers want to get the slow summer sellers moving and clear out more of the items from past seasons. I gather a bunch of these discount links in once place a few times a year when the markdowns are deepest and you can see the current version that went out yesterday at this link.

The Life of Chuck Movie

I often judge a movie by a) how much it surprises me and b) how long I keep thinking about it in the days after. The Life of Chuck may not be tearing up the summer box office amidst all the reboots and sequels for teens, but it’s getting mostly good reviews from critics and viewers. This pairing of two creators best known for horror (Mike Flanagan and Stephen King) is a trippy, heart-warming tale with lots of twists and turns. Worth seeing in a theater, but it should work on small screens too when it makes its way to airplanes and streaming later.

07/10/25

Book Freak 185: Die with Zero

An approach to personal finance that emphasize maximizing life experiences over wealth accumulation.

Get Die With Zero

This approach to personal finance focuses on maximizing life experiences rather than wealth accumulation. Perkins challenges conventional wisdom about saving and retirement, showing how delaying gratification too long leads to wasted life energy and missed opportunities for meaningful experiences. Die With Zero provides a framework for balancing present enjoyment with future needs.

Core Principles

Strategic Timing of Experiences

Certain life experiences have optimal timing windows based on your health, wealth, and time availability. Rather than indefinitely delaying gratification, invest in peak experiences when you have the physical ability and mental capacity to fully enjoy them.

Memory Dividend

Experiences provide both immediate enjoyment and ongoing returns through memories that can be relived and shared. Unlike material possessions, positive experiences appreciate in value over time through the “memory dividend” of recollection and storytelling.

Peak Net Worth Planning

Rather than maximizing wealth until death, identify your optimal “net worth peak” —s the point when you should start spending down assets to maximize lifetime fulfillment. This typically occurs between ages 45-60 when you still have good health to enjoy experiences.

Try It Now

1. Calculate your annual baseline cost of living to determine your minimum survival needs
2. List key experiences you want to have and map them to specific time periods in your life
3. Take an inventory of your health, time and money to identify your current optimal balance between earning and spending
4. Start tracking your “fulfillment curve” by rating experiences on a numerical scale

Quotes

“The business of life is the acquisition of memories. In the end that’s all there is.”

“If you spend hours and hours of your life acquiring money and then die without spending all of that money, then you’ve needlessly wasted too many precious hours of your life.”

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07/9/25

Drinky Crow Drinks Again / Daytripper

Issue No. 74

MORE SEAFARING, SUICIDAL BIRD BOOZING AS DRINKY CROW DRINKS AGAIN

Drinky Crow Drinks Again
by Tony Millionaire
Fantagraphics
2016, 128 pages, 10.8 x 8.8 x 0.7 inches (hardcover)

Buy on Amazon

Captain Maak (captain of the ship), Uncle Gabby (the Irish monkey), Gunslinger Jesus, Phoebe Bird, and everyone’s favorite violent, binge-drinking, suicidal avian anti-hero, Drinky Crow, are all back and more beautifully bizarre than ever in Maakies: Drinky Crow Drinks Again. From the confident, well informed, but often fevered hand of well-known American weekly comic strip artist Tony Millionaire, comes this new Fantagraphics landscape hardback collecting recent syndicated strips (along with some additional material). The book is as handsome as you’d expect, coming from this artist and this publisher (even if it’s the first Maakies collection not designed by Chip Kidd).

You never know what you’re going to get from Tony Millionaire, but you know it will never be boring and it will always be beautifully rendered. Even more so than most, Millionaire’s comic strips feel like you’re mainlining the author’s own insane membrane, watching him think out loud and exorcising his demons with pen and ink on paper.

The incredibly meticulous old-school draftsmanship, the many allusions to old comic strips and classic art, lots of clever twists and brilliant pay-offs, strips that dead end, and ones that go completely off the rails, often ending in violence or suicide – it’s not always the smoothest ride, but it’s one you’re compelled to take, even if just for the gorgeous scenery. Luckily, Tony Millionaire, Maakies, and Drinky Crow have far more riches to offer than that. – Gareth Branwyn

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MOON AND BÁ’S DAYTRIPPER IS A MASTERFUL NOVEL BY ANY METRIC

Daytripper
by Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon
Vertigo
2011, 256 pages, 6.7 x 10.2 x 0.5 inches (softcover)

Buy on Amazon

I don’t think it would be too hyperbolic of me to say Daytripper is one of the best graphic novels I’ve ever read. It’s a big story told in small moments. The epic, emotional core is powerful and life affirming, but brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá get there through the lightest touch of character.

Without giving too much away (because there is so much to discover), the story is about Brás de Oliva Domingos, an aspiring novelist stuck writing newspaper obituaries. His life is both unique and unremarkable, and we meet Brás at a different age in each chapter. Theses ages are told in a non-linear fashion, and mostly feature life-changing moments. The twist is that these moments rarely seem life changing as they are happening, as is usually the case in real life. We live each day as if it is any other, only noting the important bits later.

For Moon and Bá, recognizing the personal is a matter of life or death. Brás spends most of the book pining for more in his life, always dissatisfied with where he is. It’s as if he’s constantly waiting for his “real life” to begin. Moon and Bá suggest that life isn’t the point when you finally find the success you’ve been craving, or when you finally meet the love of your life, or any number of other things. Your life is now, today, in whatever situation you happen to be in. Life is happening all around you, and it’s crucial that you not miss it.

The storytelling alone is incredible, but the art pushes the novel to even greater heights. Moon and Bá employ a realistic style that makes their São Paulo feel like the real city. This is crucial considering the more fantastic elements they periodically introduce into the book; they tiptoe across magical realism, and the art helps to keep you grounded. Their work is incredibly rich in detail, while the color has an almost sun bleached quality to it that appears lifelike. This is a masterful novel by any metric. – Alex Strine

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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.

07/8/25

Outdoor Wear

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 145

Cop shirts

5.11 Tactical Shirts

I have five now and plan to get more. The 5.11 does everything I want in terms of comfort and pockets and yet looks dignified enough to serve as duty shirts for police, who are its primary market.

The 5.11 Tactical shirt is based on Royal Robbins’ excellent Expedition Shirt (which I’ve praised elsewhere in Cool Tools); the main difference is that it’s 100% cotton. The most appealing functional features for me are: 1) large document pockets hidden on each side of the shirt front (my cell phone/PDA lives in one, my Levenger notepad in the other); 2) a subtle vent on the back, with non-cotton wicking lining for the back and shoulders (which makes it a four-season shirt, good with or without a T-shirt underneath); and 3) the best keepers for rolled shirtsleeves (also a help for four-season use or variable weather).

Appearance features: 1) nifty upper-sleeve pen pocket, an improvement on noising up your chest with metal in a breast pocket; 2) shirt buttons that are colored to blend in with the fabric color, so you’re not a row of dots; 3) velcro pocket closures, less conspicuous and handier than buttons; 4) sensible colors. There are optional features of interest to cops but not to me—hidden button-down for collar, sew-on epaulets, sew-on badge holder.

The shirt is available for women as well as men. Also comes in a short-sleeve version. Colors are white, sage, khaki, olive green, charcoal, navy blue, and black; I most like the green and black. (There is a variation of the 5.11 shirt called “A/B” which I suggest avoiding. It’s too coppy—sewn-in pleats, epaulets, and badge-holder, and an unpleasant synthetic material emphasizing rayon. Get the cotton.) — Stewart Brand

The 5.11 tactical shirt is simply the best field/hiking shirt I have owned. If you are the kind of person who juggles maps and notebooks while outdoors, this is the only shirt to wear. At first glance, it looks like a typical hiking shirt, but the difference is in the details.

For example, the “Napolean” pockets ( large horizontal velcro-closed slash pockets behind the visible breast pockets) are huge –7-inches by 8-inches. Large enough to comfortably hold a folded topo map and notepad in the field or a wallet and and a PDA in town. The pockets were originally designed to hold pistols for cops, so one can comfortably carry heavy objects in them. Other details include pen slots on the left pocket and the upper left sleeve. The right pocket has a hidden zipper to securely store small items, and the sleeves have the first practical roll-up keepers I have found.

This is a truly versatile shirt, that fits in anywhere from the Sierra to casual business meetings. I was grateful to have all those pockets recently while standing on a wilderness ridge in a driving rain at midnight, juggling a radio and map and scribbling on a rite-in-the-rain pad. But I also wear my navy blue version of the shirt (I own five) as my standard casual business dress. It goes nicely with khaki dockers and lets me carry my wallet and other junk without resort to the usual pants-pocket bulge. — Paul Saffo

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Utilitarian daily-wear vest

Filson Mackinaw Wool Vest

My Filson Mackinaw Vest is the single most utilitarian piece of clothing I own. And during the fall, winter, and early spring I wear it nearly every day. We’ve reviewed Filson in the past. They have a legendary reputation among hunters and outdoorsman for wool clothing that stays warm when wet, and holds up over time. This holds true for this vest, but I love it because it’s just as functional at home or in an office as it is in the field.

It also features two chest pockets; the right easily fits a notepad, while the left is designed for holding writing instruments, or other tools (I keep a Maratac AAA flashlight, and a few pens and pencils).

Most vests are NOT built for daily wear. Stitching comes undone, fabric begins to tear or pill, and in general they become limp and lifeless after just a few months. The beauty of the Filson is that its heavyweight felted wool and heavy-duty stitching make it near bulletproof. It doesn’t shed, pill, or wrinkle, and it looks good day in and day out. And because it’s a vest made of thick felted wool it can be worn over three seasons and across a really wide temperature range. — Oliver Hulland

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Ultralight windbreaker

Montane FeatherliteSmock

When folded into its stuff sack, this Pertex windshirt is the size of a small apple and weighs only about 100g. Unlike a “real” coat, the smock can disappear into a jacket pocket or cargo pocket of your combat pants or it can lurk, weightlessly, for weeks in a backpack until needed. Other than being a carry-all-the-time item allowing minimal bulk, it’s extremely versatile. It blocks the wind, preventing windchill, while still feeling as breathable as a lightweight cotton t-shirt. Pull up the neck zip and the smock will trap a layer of air around your body. Because the smock keeps this air dry instead of letting it saturate with sweat, it’s a superb insulator: the ground outside has been white with frost recently, but I’ve been quite happy walking around with the smock over my sweater (about 0 Centigrade). Shower resistant, but not waterproof, it’s much more breathable than anything I’ve tried that is waterproof — while Goretex may transmit about 25% of water vapour in even ideal circumstances, Pertex scores closer to 100%. As such, the windshirt is a great outer layer for hikers, cyclists and runners to wear in all conditions where real rain wear isn’t essential. It’s also terrific for commuting and tourism, especially when added to a light umbrella, which allows you to leave heavier-to-carry and sweatier-to-wear just-in-case clothes at home. — Jonathan Coupe

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Maximum movement with maximum comfort

Schoeller Softshell Fabrics

My latest revelation in gear: all the new outdoor clothes I really like share this common thread, that they are made of hi-tech softshell fabrics produced by the same Swiss company, Schoeller. Softshell outdoor clothes are more than just stretchy. They mark a better way of constructing the clothes that you wear while exerting energy. Essentially the Schoeller fabrics are similar to GoreTex but they are more permeable and they stretch. This allows much more free motion, more breathability, and allows the clothes to fit tighter saving material weight.

Softshells shed moister/heat/sweat *much* faster than GoreTex and they are super comfy at the end of the day around camp or even in your sleeping bag. However my favorite characteristic of these new fabrics is that they act similar to fleece so that they keep their ability to insulate and feel good against the skin even if they are saturated with water, whereas hardshell fabrics just feel like wet plastic bag against your body. These Schoeller fabrics are super good for cycling, climbing, and mountaineering… basically sports where you sweat. I still like hardshell garments for sailing and snowboarding where for the most part you are being eaten by the wind and weather.

The best softshell clothing companies I have found:

• Cloudveil: Excellent pants and tops
• Arcteryx: Bad web site, amazing gear all around. They also have hybrid soft/hardshell clothes that I have yet to try but look very promising.
• Beyond Fleece: Allows you to customize the gear you order. Add pockets, hoods, waterproof zippers etc…

Much of this gear is prohibitively expensive, like $300 for a jacket. I usually go to local dealers and figure out the sizing and then shop around on the outlets. — Alexander Rose

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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.

07/7/25

What’s in my NOW? — Steven Ovadia