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Awesome unsweetened chocolate bar
I’ve long been a fan of Montezuma’s Absolute Black chocolate bars, which are made from 100% chocolate and cocoa nibs and no sweeteners of any kind. (The best way to enjoy unsweetened chocolate is not by chewing them, but by letting a square melt in your mouth.) Recently, Montezuma’s introduced a version with sea salt and almonds and it is even better. I buy mine at Trader Joe’s for $3 a bar. — MF

AI writing prompts
After reading this post on How to begin a novel using AI, I’ve been having fun using this neural network, Talk to Transformer, to come up with prompts for new poems. I’ll just type in a few lines or start with an image that haunts me, and I’m always surprised by the seemingly original imagery that it gives back to me like this one (prompted by my aunt’s back tattoo of a phoenix): The days passed like smoke under my feet. “That should be enough for now.” She paused and sighed again. But still the phoenix kept going.— CD

My holiday gift guide
I went through all this past year’s recommendations from Recomendo and picked out a dozen items I think would make good inexpensive gifts. I posted my holiday gift list on our Cool Tools site, so many of my gift suggestions are somewhat toolish. — KK

A month of curiosities
It’s December, which means it’s time for blinry’s Advent Calendar of Curiosities. Every day this month, Sebastian “blinry” Morr will post interesting bit of little-known history, culture, or trivia. You can browse earlier years by altering the URL (it goes back to 2011). — MF

Stop the bleeding
When I first started shaving in high school my dad gave me a stytptic pencil. When this chalky stick is touched to razor nicks and cuts, it immediately stops the bleeding. One stick seems to last forever. Two new stytptic pencils cost $3.50. — KK

Budgeting tip
I appreciate this r/personalfinance tip to control impulse purchases by adding things to a wishlist first. I sort of already doing this by “saving for later” a lot items on Amazon, but I will definitely practice this more intently and wait a week before I buy anything that is not necessary. — CD

-- Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson 12/15/19