Credit-card-size e-reader / TV ads removal / The Invisible Encyclopedia

Recomendo - issue #538

Credit-card-size e-reader

I cracked my Kindle’s screen a month ago, and when I looked to replace it, I was surprised by how much prices had jumped. So I tried the XTEINK X4 Pro, a pocket-sized e-reader no bigger than a credit card. Its screen light adjusts from warm to cool, and it lasts for weeks on a charge. It reads EPUB, PDF, MOBI, and text files and holds 16GB of books. The drawback is that it can’t read Kindle books. A fan community has built a free replacement operating system called CrossPoint that adds features, including a way to read Libby library loans, but it takes some tinkering. At $99, it’s much cheaper than a Kindle, and it snaps magnetically onto my phone so I can take it everywhere. — MF

TV ads removal

The promise of coding AIs is that it is super easy to take control of your devices. You just ask Claude to write you a program to do what you want on demand. As an example, folks are vibe coding apps to remove all the ad clutter on their TVs. This article in TechCrunch reports on this guerrilla frontier with two vibe apps that do just that. Employing AIs to remove ads is almost sacrilegious, so it will be interesting to see how the media companies respond. — KK

The Invisible Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia of Invisibility is a collection of people, events, and ideas connected by invisibility—things that are deemed hidden or erased from history. The entries listed on this webpage are just a tiny sliver of what the artist Tavares Strachan compiled for the actual 2,400-page sculptural book. I think what makes it contemplative and “artful,” even as just a link dump, is how differently invisibility is measured. Some entries are literal, like dark matter and glasswing butterflies. Others inform us about the things that have been erased from cultural memory, or that have gone extinct or have been destroyed. — CD

Mesmerizing card shuffler

The Lotus ($89) is a cleverly designed card shuffler that can shuffle up to two decks at a time. It’s a black plastic box with a folding top. Place the deck in the center and touch a sensor; a pair of silicone rollers then divides the deck into two stacks on either side. Then you pick up the two stacks, put them back in the center, and repeat. Each pass takes about five seconds, and the site suggests repeating it three to seven times. It runs on a standard 9V battery, which is included and rated for more than 500 shuffles. It folds shut with the cards inside, which makes it easy to carry. It’s a joy to watch in action, and it would make a great gift for anyone who plays card games. — MF

Save Page Now

This is more of a public service announcement than a recommendation. I recently tried to load a page I’d bookmarked, but it was gone, and when I checked the Wayback Machine, I was so sad to see it had never been captured. So I finally downloaded the Internet Archive’s browser extension, which now auto-saves every page I bookmark. If you’d rather not give an extension access to your browser, you can paste any link into Save Page Now instead. — CD

Heritage scissors

I overpaid ($48) for a heavy duty scissors, but I think it is worth it because it will not only outlive me, but my great grandchildren as well. The Craighill Chroma is a heavy duty, stainless steel, super sharp, ergonomic, colorful, makes-me-happy-to-use-it 8-inch scissors. Most fine scissors have slightly curved blades to ensure a cut, but these are so hefty the blades are straighter, so have less friction, to make each cut effortless. I keep mine on my desk so I can see and enjoy its tri-colors. Makes a great gift, too. — KK

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Gar’s Tips & Tools – Issue #216

Access to tools, techniques, and shop tales from the diverse worlds of DIY

The Accessible Workshop

Adaptive Tools That Make Your Work Easier

Hex Key Handles

How did I go so long without one of these simple hex key T-handles? I’ve known about them for years and thought about them every time I was cursing my way through assembling flat-pack furniture, I finally got some, and they’re great. I got a pack of three cheap, chunky plastic ones and the size is perfect for confident gripping with arthritic hands. The handles are made to accept a variety of common hex sizes, and they’re designed to be used either in a T- or L-handle configuration. At under $2 each, you definitely want some of these around your home and shop.

Exploring Weird Tools Concepts and the Infimaker 5-Axis Desktop CNC

While this Laura Kampf video is basically a promotion for the forthcoming Infimaker 5-Axis Desktop CNC, it uses that opportunity to explore an “Is this crazy or clever?” idea. Laura wants to know if there’s any real value in a disk-shaped measuring tool that you keep in your pocket and roll across surfaces and material for rough measuring. She uses the Infimaker to go down the rabbit hole of the idea to see if it’s worth pursuing. Moving quickly (and cheaply) from idea to prototype is a real superpower in developing product ideas, so you can definitely see how a machine like this could be a serious asset. The Infimaker had a successful $4.7 million crowdfunding campaign in Sept. The machines are allegedly shipping in early 2027.

Marveling at Cheap Flat-Pack

My wife recently bought a “baker’s rack” to use as a microwave and coffee stand in her art studio. As soon as I saw it on our doorstep, I knew I had a job ahead of me. The heavy box (for a 21.7” x 14.6” x 49.4” shelving unit) was disturbingly small. I knew it was going to be filled with a TinkerToy collection of short box-tubing components and a big-ass bag o’ hardware. It was.

It took me two nights of after-dinner work to get it all put together. And those hours also became a kind of meditation on the mad genius of international consumer manufacturing and trade.

I don’t mean that as a hymn to global consumer capitalism. There are plenty of uncomfortable questions buried inside cheap imported goods: labor, environmental costs, shipping, disposability. But I couldn’t help marveling at the amount of mostly invisible intelligence embodied in this mundane under-$50 object.

Somebody had to design a nearly 50-inch-tall rack with four shelves, a built-in power strip, and enough strength to hold a microwave, coffee maker, etc. And design it so that it would fit into that alarmingly small shipping box.

Then there’s the manufacturing. There must have been 25 or 30 main components, plus a heavy sack of hardware. The tubing was nicely powder-coated, the shelves were decent, and dozens of holes drilled into dozens of different parts somehow had to line up perfectly. As I worked, I could imagine this deft balancing act of trade-offs around engineering, materials, and precision manufacturing, all within the reality of razor-thin margins.

Somebody designed it. Somebody sourced the tubing, shelving lumber, fasteners, electrical components, and packaging. Somebody worked out the manufacturing, assembly sequence, and instructions. Somebody figured out how to pack it into that tiny carton. Then it entered the vast global Rube Goldberg machinery of factories, warehouses, container ships, ports, trucks, and delivery networks before landing on our porch.

Again, you can’t help but feel like $49 is too cheap, and image the real costs are simply showing up somewhere else. But after two nights of cursing the thing, I found myself admiring it and the processes by which it had come to me. Human beings on the other side of the world had been handed a nearly absurd set of constraints: Make it sturdy. Make it useful. Make it decent-looking. Make all the holes line up. Make it fit into a tiny box. Ship it halfway around the world. And price the damned thing under fifty bucks. How the hell do they do that?

Still Sweet on It

Tools That Remain Favorites

Three years ago, when I got a new remote job that I knew would require a lot of weekly Zoom meetings, I knew I needed decent video lighting for my office. Not knowing what sorts of lights I would ultimately require, I went onto Amazon and ordered a cheap set of LED panel lights on adjustable stands to tide me over until I could figure out what a really needed. Three years later, and I still have the same lights and see no reason to upgrade. When I bought these UBessize lights on stands, they were only $30. Today, they’re even lower, at $25! The stands are a bit rickety, and everything smacks of cost-cutting and minimal amounts of material. But the lights work great, there are four brightness levels, and the stands are adjustable. They even come with five color filters. Honestly, when these eventually die, I’ll likely just get the same ones again. For my needs, they’re perfect. I even sometimes pair them with a USB power brick so I can move them around for close-up photography lighting.

Workshop Setup

In a recent Tools for Possibility on Cool Tools, the subject was workshop setup. There are a lot of really great ideas here, from creating a simple tabletop spray booth from a box and a fan, using PVC pipes for tool storage, and shopping carts as mobile workstations.

Turning a Broken Caulking Gun into a Vise

In this Taku Woodcraft Instagram video, Takurou shows how he cleverly constructed a useful bench top cutting vise using a discarded caulking gun mechanism.

Thanks to All My Subscribers!

I now have well over 10,000 subscribers to this humble little newsletter. And 50 paid subscribers. A million thanks to all of you. Doing this newsletters is a true joy for me and I especially like feeling like I’m connected to a community of fellow makers. Thanks to everyone who’s sent me an email, made a comment, shared a tip or tool. Let’s keep the ball rolling for another 200 issues!

If you want to financially support this work, please consider a paid subscription. It helps keep me in PB Swiss. I appreciate you.

A very special thanks to Hero of the Realm subscribers: Moses Hawk, Jim Coraci, Donobster, Peter Sugarman, and Will Phillips for your generous support.

Book Freak #229: The Social Construction of Reality

How everyday knowledge is built, maintained, and transformed through human interaction

Get The Social Construction of Reality

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality (1966) argues that the social world around us, and our understanding of it, is something people fabricated together. Even though we made it, it feels as solid and real as nature, and we usually don’t remember making it.

It reminds me of the “imagined orders” Yuval Noah Harari describes in Sapiens. Enough people believe in money, nations, companies, and human rights that we treat them as real things instead of agreements. The International Sociological Association named it the fifth most influential sociology book of the century.

Reality Is Made in Three Steps

People make the social world, then experience it as a fact outside themselves, then absorb it.

“It is important to keep in mind that the objectivity of the institutional world, however massive it may appear to the individual, is a humanly produced, constructed objectivity. The process by which the externalized products of human activity attain the character of objectivity is objectivation. The institutional world is objectivated human activity, and so is every single institution.”

“It is already possible, however, to see the fundamental relationship of these three dialectical moments in social reality. Each of them corresponds to an essential characterization of the social world. Society is a human product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product. It may also already be evident that an analysis of the social world that leaves out any one of these three moments will be distortive.”

Habits Become Institutions

It starts with routine.

“All human activity is subject to habitualization. Any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be reproduced with an economy of effort and which, ipso facto, is apprehended by its performer as that pattern. … Even the solitary individual on the proverbial desert island habitualizes his activity. When he wakes up in the morning and resumes his attempts to construct a canoe out of matchsticks, he may mumble to himself, ‘There I go again,’ as he starts on step one of an operating procedure consisting of, say, ten steps. In other words, even solitary man has at least the company of his operating procedures.”

Once people share habits and pass them down, they become institutions.

“The institutions, as historical and objective facticities, confront the individual as undeniable facts. The institutions are there, external to him, persistent in their reality, whether he likes it or not. He cannot wish them away. They resist his attempts to change or evade them.”

Language Builds the World

“In the early phases of socialization the child is quite incapable of distinguishing between the objectivity of natural phenomena and the objectivity of the social formations. To take the most important item of socialization, language appears to the child as inherent in the nature of things, and he cannot grasp the notion of its conventionality. A thing is what it is called, and it could not be called anything else. All institutions appear in the same way, as given, unalterable and self-evident.”

Teaching it to children makes it more real to the parents, too.

“The process of transmission simply strengthens the parents’ sense of reality, if only because, to put it crudely, if one says, ‘This is how these things are done,’ often enough one believes it oneself.”

Beware of Reification

“Reification is the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly supra-human terms. Another way of saying this is that reification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something else than human products—such as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will. Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world, and further, that the dialectic between man, the producer, and his products is lost to consciousness.”

“As soon as an objective social world is established, the possibility of reification is never far away. The objectivity of the social world means that it confronts man as something outside of himself. The decisive question is whether he still retains the awareness that, however objectivated, the social world was made by men—and, therefore, can be remade by them.”

Try It Now

1. Pick a rule you follow without thinking, like a workplace habit or a family ritual. Trace where it came from and who started it. Could work another way?
2. Notice the labels you use today, like “busy person,” “good neighborhood,” or “real job.” Try applying a different label. Does it feel different?
3. When someone says “that’s just how it works,” consider whether it’s a law of nature or something people built. What would it take to change it?

Quote

“Social order is not part of the ‘nature of things,’ and it cannot be derived from the ‘laws of nature.’ Social order exists only as a product of human activity.”

Book Freak is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run Recomendo, the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Recomendo Deals, Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper, and Book Freak.

Merino Polo/Best Rental Cars/Cheapest Domestic Flights

Nomadico issue #229

Inexpensive Merino Wool Polo Shirt

I left home with a carry-on suitcase full of clothing two months ago, which means heavy rotation for what I’m wearing. I’ve been especially happy with the Merino.Tech polo shirt I got as a birthday present earlier this year: it doesn’t get stinky, or wrinkled, or itchy and it still looks new. I’m a fan of more expensive brands like Ibex and Icebreaker, but at $60 on Amazon, this one is punching above its price tag.

Easier Hotel Point Redemptions Abroad

If you’ve been sitting on some hotel points that don’t seem to get you much in the USA, Canada, or Europe, you might want to plan your next vacation to some destination where you can do better. Since point requirements roughly track room rates for most programs now, you can find great deals in bargain destinations. I recently scored two nights at a Small Luxury Hotel of the World in Malaysia for 50K points total via Hilton. (Their Surpass card from Amex is a great deal.) The 50K cap on the free nights credits from a Marriott Bonvoy card was no problem: a Westin on a tropical island, with a terrific view, was only 35K points per night. Same with IHG in Saigon for my annual free night through their card. I’ve found similar points bargains from Mexico down to Santiago in the Americas.

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Highest-rated Rental Car Companies

If you’re renting a car frequently in the USA, you might want to lean toward Enterprise and their associated brands. The latest JD Power & Associates survey scored Enterprise at the top, with sister brand National scoring second and its leisure brand Alamo coming in at #4. The others to score above the industry average were Advantage, Sixt, and Hertz.

Countries With Cheap Domestic Flights

International flight prices are all over the map, but distance does play a big part in it: you’ll pay more to fly across an ocean usually than to go two hours away. For flights within a country though, it’s more about competition. Some countries have lots of cheap flights criss-crossing their nation, while others have one choice only. I just posted this article on countries with the cheapest domestic flights and found that distances and wealth have very little correlation. You will find great flight deals in India, Thailand, and Mexico, but also in Japan, Norway, Australia, and the USA.

* Editor’s note: We’re going to release The Best of Nomadico, the First 4 Years e-book in November and paid subscribers will get it for free. We’re also going to start restricting some content to subscribers only, so if you’ve just been lurking on the app, please join us for real as a free or paid subscriber if you like what you see here. We appreciate it!

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? — Rob van den Brand

issue #276

Rob van den Brand lives in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. He loves to read, think, take walks, cook meals with his wife, and travel. His main skill is optimizing systems, which he applies in his work as a bookkeeper and financial advisor. He also has many thoughts about societal systems and how to improve them. He might write them down one day.

I can be found on LinkedIn and Instagram.

PHYSICAL

• Schneider Slider Rave XB. This is my favourite pen. It feels comfortable and well balanced in my hand. It’s also inexpensive and just writes well. I have one pen and then buy refills whenever I need them.
• Nano tape. My wife recently discovered Nano tape. We used it for fixing a bunch of power strips to the wall. It’s amazing how well they hold, it feels (and is) very solid. For someone who doesn’t like to drill when not absolutely needed, this was a lifesaver.
• HP Smart Tank 7001. This is an anti-recommendation, can I do that? Not wanting to deal with ink cartridges any longer, I decided to try an ink tank printer and chose this HP model. The first one was “incontinent”, it spilled little yellow ink blots over the prints. I submitted it for repair but got a new one. On that one, the scanner didn’t work. I submitted it for repair but got a new one. That one had incontinence like the first one, but I decided to live with it, because I didn’t want to go through all the hassle again. Aside from the occasional yellow spots on my prints, I’ve been pretty satisfied for about a year. But now, it decided to stop printing blue. My favourite colour!! It’s all very frustrating, don’t buy this one!

DIGITAL

• Deep Questions (Cal Newport’s podcast). I love listening to podcasts doing chores around the house. This is one of my favorites, because it combines the topics of productivity, learning and (the conscious use of) technology. Recently, there have been a lot of episodes on AI. His perspective is critical and anti-hype which has helped ground my own stance about AI, which is enthusiastic (long term) and skeptical (short term) at the same time. All the other episodes are good as well and are about “cultivating the deep life”.
• Emotional Exploration Tool. I use writing to “process” my emotions. That sounds rather technical, I know, but it’s about discovering, feeling and releasing emotions that have been stuck somewhere. The thing is: I have no interest in saving these types of notes. The value is in the act of writing. That’s why I enjoy this tool. I just write freely or based on a prompt. Afterwards, the words disappear into the void. Wonderful!

INVISIBLE

Goals, plans, vision documents, mission statements…I get what they are about, but somehow these have never worked for me. I can write one, sure. But then I just go about my life and some things happen and others don’t. Still, I do like to reflect about my life and the direction it could take. That’s why I’m experimenting with this question:

What wants to happen?

My theory is that if I align with what the universe wants to happen, the actions/projects that come up in my mind can be completed with ease and flow, having the support of invisible but real forces. And that has been my experience so far. It does mean I have to bypass my rational thinking brain, but that’s working overtime anyway. It’s lovely to be able to trust this question.

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Big Kids / Pride & Preju-knits

Issue No. 141

A DARK, PSYCHEDELIC COMING-OF-AGE STORY BY AWARD-WINNING COMIC ARTIST MICHAEL DEFORGE

Big Kids
by Michael DeForge
Drawn & Quarterly
2016, 96 pages, 5 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches

Buy on Amazon

I have been fascinated by the work of Canadian comic artist Michael DeForge for a while now. If you like unvarnished explorations of the human psyche and the high weirdness that an unhinged mind and a free hand can render, check out Michael’s Lose series, Very Casual, and Dressing, all from Toronto-based comics publisher of note Koyama Press.

Big Kids is something of a departure for DeForge, or at least it starts off seeming that way. On the surface, Big Kids is a dark and mopey coming-of-age tale. It concerns a troubled teen boy who lives with his parents and a recalcitrant uncle in the basement and has awkward, restless sex with his best friend, in-between dangerous dares, bullying, bouts of petty vandalism, and other adolescent antics.

When the boy’s uncle gets kicked out of the house and a female college student moves in – a girl with a very different take on life who hangs with a group of more sophisticated, less juvenile delinquent friends – something extraordinary happens. Too many other reviews of this book spoil what comes next, which I think is a shame. I knew nothing of what was about to happen and was really stunned by the whole thing as a result. The book is obviously meant to be a meditation on the profound transformations we go through at different stages in our lives (especially in becoming a teen), and how strange, terrifying, and wondrous those changes can be. But this is done in a unique way that you could never guess is coming.

Michael DeForge’s work seems to be all about challenging our perceptions of identity, reality, and the comic form itself. Every time you delve into one of his pieces, you have no idea where you’re going to end up. Or just how splintered your mind will be by the time you get there. Big Kids manages to do all this while still delivering a touching, if somewhat disturbed, take on a classic tale of adolescent angst. – Gareth Branwyn

PRIDE & PREJU-KNITS: 12 GENTEEL KNITTING PROJECTS INSPIRED BY JANE AUSTEN

Pride & Preju-knits: Twelve Genteel Knitting Projects Inspired by Jane Austen
by Trixie von Purl
Harper Design
2015, 112 pages, 8.6 x 6.6 x 0.4 inches (paperback)

Buy on Amazon

What’s the perfect book for a crafty, British literature fan with a sense of humor? It’s Pride & Preju-Knits of course! “This book is my life!” my 20-year-old daughter exclaimed when she opened up this adorable do-it-yourself paperback. “I love the fact that they give you just a few simple figures to make, and then so, so many clothing options.”

Pride & Preju-Knits contains 12 knitting projects (scenes) based on Austen’s six novels. Every element in these scenes can be knit, including main characters, accessories, animals and furniture. There are detailed instructions on how to knit Regency ladies and gentlemen, how to knit Elizabeth Bennet’s dress and Mr. Darcy’s trousers from Pride and Prejudice, and even how to knit the pianoforte played by Anne Elliot in Persuasion. You can also learn to knit sheep from Sense and Sensibility and for Emma Woodhouse’s wedding dress from Emma. Instructions include the materials, the gauge and how to finish off the piece. Trixie von Purl (aka Geraldine Warner) briefly recaps each Austen novel as well. Although these are very intricate projects, anyone can appreciate the imaginative handiwork and enjoy this charming little book. – Carole Rosner

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.

What’s in my NOW? — Rob van den Brand