{"id":44004,"date":"2025-04-20T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=44004"},"modified":"2025-04-17T12:57:56","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T19:57:56","slug":"retro-recomendo-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/retro-recomendo-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"Retro Recomendo: Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our subscriber base has grown so much since we first started eight years ago, that most of you have missed all our earliest recommendations. The best of these are still valid and useful, so we\u2019re trying out something new \u2014\u00a0Retro Recomendo<\/strong>. Once every 6 weeks, we\u2019ll send out a throwback issue of evergreen recommendations focused on one theme from the past 9 years.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learn from Nature<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Asknature.org<\/a> is a free online tool where you can search thousands of nature’s solutions to various challenges. Like how a decentralized society helps ants to recover from a food shortage<\/a> or how maple tree seeds twirl in a tornado-like vortex to increase the reach of where their seeds are planted<\/a>. Just ten minutes a day exploring this website will get you thinking differently. \u2014 CD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amphibian love songs<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A few years ago I took an unforgettable night time tour in a Costa Rican jungle to listen to frog calls, and discovered that humans aren\u2019t the only musicians on Earth. This playlist titled Amphibian Love Songs and Soundscapes<\/a> took me back to that magical evening. \u2014 MF<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Star gazing navigation<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Stargazing apps on your phone are magic. They work like AR-augmented reality \u2014 overlaying the night sky with outlines of constellations, star and planet names, paths of the moon, and even satellite, comet and asteroid sightings. The apps are uncannily accurate, and easy to understand. There are free apps and expensive subscriptions, but I use Star Walk 2<\/a> which cost $3. It\u2019s the best $3 space investment I\u2019ve ever made. \u2014 KK<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Namibia live stream<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This live feed of a watering hole in the Namib Desert<\/a> streams live 24\/7. I drop in a couple times a week and I’ve seen so many different animals sharing the waterhole. I’ve seen zebras, wildebeests, warthogs, ostriches and lot of different birds. The camera has a microphone and night vision, so you’re always connected to this magical and awesome wildlife. \u2014 CD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nature live cams<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For a dose of awe and wonder head over to Explore. org<\/a> and choose from almost 100 live nature cams available at any time. There\u2019s ocean cams, bears, gorillas, puppies and kittens and other animal sanctuaries (this sheep barn<\/a> can be pretty mesmerizing to watch when they\u2019re in for the night). \u2014 CD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Identify nature app<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There is utility and pleasure in being able to identify wild creatures and plants. But it\u2019s a steep learning curve. The fastest way I found to learn is via the iOS app Seek<\/a>, which will identify flowers, plants, fungi, animals, bugs instantly. It\u2019s kind of magical. You point your phone at the specimen and it tells you the species about 95% of the time (in North America). The other 5% it can often identify the family. Someone called it Shazam for nature. The app is patient; you can keep asking it to ID the same thing you asked about before and it will will answer again with no judgement. Seek is free; it was developed by folks who did iNaturalist, an app that uses crowdsourcing to identify species, but Seek uses machine learning to render the ID instantly. I\u2019ve been impressed by how well this magic works. Kids and teachers love it. It gives them a superpower to name everything around them. \u2014 KK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recomendo – issue #458<\/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\/44004"}],"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=44004"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44006,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44004\/revisions\/44006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}