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Newsletter Stack is a directory of newsletters grouped by learning topics like COVID-19, Philosophy, Design, Wellness, etc. The website seems to be updated frequently. I signed up for all the Creativity topic newsletters, my favorite one is The Creative Independent, which explores the emotional facets of “creating” with a different working artist each weekday. — CD

Home vision test
About six months ago I bought an EyeQue Personal Vision Tracker for $25. It looks a bit like a microscope and attaches to a smartphone. After installing the app I was able to check my vision with it. The app gave me the same information as an optometrist’s prescription, which I used to buy inexpensive prescription eyeglasses online. I still plan to get eye health exams from  an ophthalmologist from time to time, but this is a cheap and convenient way to find out what kind of lenses you need, especially in the middle of a pandemic when going into an optometrist’s office poses an infection risk. — MF

Plant-based burgers
I don’t eat beef, pork or lamb, but I still miss a good burger. I’m a big fan of veggie Impossible Burgers, but I like Beyond Meat’s burgers, cooked at home, even more. They are really delicious in flavor and texture. You can get patties of Beyond Burgers at Target, Walmart, and Costco, among other retailers. The rest of my family, who do eat beef, love these plant-based burgers too. — KK

Working from home tips
This may be a new thing for you. Working from Home Temporarily is a free 72-page ebook that offers extremely practical advice on how to set up this new lifestyle. Some of the stuff is obvious, but there’s a lot of great tips such as how to upgrade to good connectivity, how set office hours, how to share your home with others who are also working, etc. Available in 3 ebook formats, all free. — KK

Revisiting Standard Ebooks
A year or two ago I recommended Standard Ebooks as a resource for free reading. They have since updated their catalog with a lot of new titles, so I thought it was time to re-recommend them. They take public domain texts (by authors such as Robert E. Howard, Edith Wharton, Sarah Orne Jewett, Bertrand Russell), scour them for typographical errors, add excellent cover art, and format them for Kindle and other e-readers. The online catalog is a pleasure to browse, and includes a synopsis for each book. The latest entries include The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Time Traders by Andre Norton, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, A Tangled Tale by Lewis Carroll, The Marvelous Land of Oz by L Frank Baum, and Villette by Charlotte Brontë. Join the mailing list or subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on new books added to the catalog. — MF

Another musical time machine
Last week I recommended The Nostalgia Machine, and some readers reported that it was glitchy and did not work on their browser. Reader Micael suggested if you have Spotify, try searching for “year:1992” to get song and artist results from that year, and @JMWander recommended Radiooooo.com which lets you customize a music stream based on decade, country, and slow, fast or weird music. Thanks! — CD

07/12/20