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Find out your food disgust triggers

I took this Food Disgust Test which gave me a series of scenarios to gauge how grossed out I would be in different situations. The test is short and the insights are interesting. Turns out my food disgust is average at 47%, and my biggest triggers for disgust is poor hygiene and human contamination. However, I am least grossed out by animal flesh and have little issue with insect contaminants — I don’t know why but a bug in my drink has never bothered me. I also have little to no issues with mold or decaying fruit, but the thought of eating a soggy salad makes me gag. — CD 

Laptop friendly spots

If you’re traveling and need to find a place to use your laptop for a couple of hours, check out Laptop Friendly. It’s a directory of coffee shops and hotel lobbies around the world, offering free Wi-Fi, an abundance of power outlets, and comfortable seating arrangements. — MF

Guilty pleasures

The guy behind the LookNowTV youtube channel collects all the weird, bizzare, unusual video clips he can find each week. A lot of the video is provided by security cameras which record happy accidents, unlucky accidents, astounding fails, mysterious unexplable happenings, animals doing amazing things, people being stupid, or being extraordinarily skilled. It’s all trivial, and entertaining, but it reminds me that the improbable happens all the time. — KK

Greener shipping

Uline dominates the shipping supply business, with speedy delivery of a vast selection of boxes, tubes, envelopes, etc. In our shop we’ve been exploring EcoEnclose as an alternative source. They offer paper-based packaging, recycled plastic mailers, and reusable packages to cut down on the amount of plastic shipping materials. Prices are reasonable. — KK

Better used book finder

I can’t believe I never heard of BookFinder.com until just this week. You can search and compare prices from more than 100,000 booksellers all over the world to find cheap, used and out-of-print books. Search results are sorted by lowest price first. I’ve been on the hunt for an out-of-print and rare Yona Wallach poetry book for years but didn’t want to spend $100+ for it. Through this website, I found the cheapest copy available at a Goodwill in Tucson, Arizona. I heard about BookFinder.com from Joel Rosenberg on the most recent episode of Cool Tools Show and Tell. — CD

Water bottle sling

Before discovering the water bottle sling from Chicobag, I used to shove a water bottle into the back pocket of my pants. However, this wasn’t an ideal solution as it would stretch the pocket, and the bottle would easily fall out. This sling comes with a pouch that perfectly fits a water bottle, along with an additional pocket for storing items like a phone, money, or other small objects. It’s convenient to have both hands free and still have easy access to water. It’s simple to adjust the position of the bottle to the front, side, or back of your body, and it stays in place. If it swung around and banged against my body with each step, I would not use it. — MF

— Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson

05/21/23