Sign up here to get Recomendo a week early in your inbox.

Pimple stars
I learned from my daughters that decorative pimple patches are popular with teenagers. They are tiny colorful stickers that cover pimples and dry them up. “People just wear them out in public now and it’s fashionable,” one daughter told me, She has a box of star-shaped pimple patches. They are also available in flower and heart shapes. There’s even a Hello Kitty brand. – MF

Wool clothes
For multi-day hiking, the best base garments are merino wool. They won’t ever stink, and even in warm weather, they breathe. They feel good against the skin, are machine washable, and surprisingly durable. I have been slowly migrating all my hiking base clothing, from toes to head, to Icebreaker brand merino garments, such as this Icebreaker short sleeve shirt. – KK

Find vintage clothing fast
Gem is a search engine for vintage and used clothing and jewelry. You can quickly search eBay, Etsy, Poshmark, TheRealReal, and more, and the results are displayed in a large gallery view with prices to save time. You can also set email alerts for hard-to-find items. — CD

Burning Man trailer
I’ve been a regular at Burning Man and this short video, called Above the Dust, is the best summation I’ve seen of the event’s energy. Burning Man is primarily a night city, and a leader in light innovation and urban experiences. – KK

Learn to visualize bird sounds
These interactive pages on earbirding.com will teach you how to create mental images of bird sounds according to their pitch pattern, speed, repetition, pauses, and tone quality. I love learning to connect with nature in a different way. — CD

Generate yourself with AI
Astria lets you make AI-generated images of yourself for a few bucks. I uploaded a few photos of my face. Several hours later, Astria had finished crunching the data, and I was able to generate art based on my likeness by entering prompts such as “man as young elven king long white hair beautiful face highly detailed face, portrait, made by Stanley Artgerm lau, wlop, rossdraws, james jean.” The results are both hilarious and incredible. This is the avatar I use on social media. Astria’s Twitter shows examples of how people are using it. – MF

— Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson

11/16/22