{"id":42404,"date":"2024-07-14T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-14T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=42404"},"modified":"2024-07-08T15:25:50","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T22:25:50","slug":"papers-please-will-we-ever-get-fusion-power-magic-color-picker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/papers-please-will-we-ever-get-fusion-power-magic-color-picker\/","title":{"rendered":"Papers, Please\/Will We Ever Get Fusion Power\/Magic Color Picker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sign up here<\/a>\u00a0to get Recomendo a week early in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers, Please<\/strong>
Over the weekend, my daughter and I played an unusual video game called Papers, Please<\/a><\/em>. In this single-player game (which came out in 2013), you work as a border checkpoint inspector for Arstotzka, a fictional country resembling a 1980s Soviet state. Your job is to examine the documents of people attempting to enter the country and decide whether to grant them entry. The game presents moral dilemmas as your daily pay is usually insufficient to cover rent, food, and heat. Your family constantly faces the risk of starvation and illness. This raises the question: Should you start accepting bribes and other dubious offers from spies and smugglers to make ends meet? Despite its intentionally crude graphics, reminiscent of 1980s video games, I found myself completely engrossed in the gameplay. \u2014 MF<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prospects of fusion energy<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The arrival of reliable cheap fusion energy on Earth would be a revolution nearly as important as AI. Fusion is a synthetic sun, with relatively benign byproducts. For 70 years, experts have predicted it to be \u201c20 years away;\u201d  It is still 20 years away. This excellent summary of the state of the art in fusion energy explains why progress has been so slow and why it may speed up now. Or not! Easy to read and smartly informative, Will We Ever Get Fusion Power<\/a> is the best thing I\u2019ve read on fusion, a brief and succinct article, highly recommended. \u2014 KK<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Magic Color Picker<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Here’s a fun new way to explore and pick out colors. The Magic Color Picker<\/a> converts your text descriptions into precise color codes. For example, here is the color generated for \u201csunny day but overcast<\/a>\u201d. \u2014 CD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-sharpening pencil<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I like this hi-tech mechanical pencil from Japan because it sharpens itself so that it produces a very consistent line, no matter how long you use it. The Uni Kurutoga Advance<\/a> ($9) contains a novel mechanism that rotates the pencil lead each time it touches the paper, so that it wears evenly and maintains a uniform point. So clever! It currently is only available for very fine 0.5mm lead. \u2014 KK<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email like a boss<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is a useful guide to emailing like a \u201cboss\u201d<\/a> that I found on Reddit. It lists the most positive and effective way to rewrite your messages based on the intention. Here are some examples I want to adopt: If your intention is to say \u201cYou\u2019re welcome,\u201d instead of saying \u201cNo problem\/No worries\u201d say, \u201cAlways happy to help.\u201d If you want to know if the recipient understands something, instead of asking \u201cDoes that make sense?\u201d say \u201cLet me know if you have any questions.\u201d When you want to convey that you know what your doing, instead of saying \u201cI think maybe we should \u2026\u201d say \u201cIt would be best if we \u2026\u201d. \u2014 CD <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virtual city walks<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

City Walks<\/a> is a website of videos taken by people walking along the sidewalks of cities from around the world. Just click on a city from the list and the video starts playing. Most cities have more than one video, so you can click the city name to load a new one. Make sure to click the sound toggle on, too. I found the video of a busy open-air market street in Rawalpindi, Pakistan to be especially interesting. \u2014 MF<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recomendo – issue #418<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2323],"tags":[2324],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42404"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42405,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42404\/revisions\/42405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}