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Recomendos, organized
Good news. We’ve rounded up the best recomendos from the past four years of this newsletter and have organized 1,000 of them by subject, and illustrated most of them, in a 217-page book. This book, Recomendo: The Expanded Edition, is a better way to search for past recommendations, browse for cool stuff you missed, or catch up if you are a new subscriber. This hefty paperback is available in two flavors: a $13 B&W version, and $30 for a color version. It makes a great gift, too, with neat, uncommon, and useful things for almost anyone. — KK

My happy list
Every year for the last seven years, Cool Tools has published an annual holiday gift guide (you can check them out here). This year, we decided to make lists of things that made us happy in the year 2020. You can read my list here. Kevin and Claudia’s lists will run in the following weeks — MF

Diagram beauty
I find a deep beauty in stylized diagrams required for patents. The clarity of the designs is a magical misdirection because the patent’s function is usually mysterious. Each week, the illustrations accompanying the patents filed the previous week at the US Patent office are featured in the blog Impeccable IP.  It’s pure design eye candy. Enjoy! — KK

Fridge magnet poetry
For the past week I’ve been visiting frij.io to play with word magnets. Every day the word bank is swapped out with new nouns and verbs and emojis you can use to create poetry or funny phrases. Linking words and images in a fun and weird way works as a mental palette cleanser during my workday. — CD

Improve your language listening skills
I’ve been listening to Japanese stories on Beelinguapp, a smartphone app that reads stories in 14 different languages. I set the speed at 50% so I can read along as a native speaker tells a simple story. Beelinguapp is free for iPhone and Android, and you can get the premium version (which has more stories and other useful features) for $40. — MF

An illustration of Happiness
I had a very happy aha moment when I came across this illustrated insight of happiness in the More to That newsletter. “Happiness is the difference between what you have, and your definition of enough.” — CD

-- Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson 12/13/20