{"id":44709,"date":"2025-08-24T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=44709"},"modified":"2025-08-20T16:34:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T23:34:00","slug":"portable-standing-desk-wplace-the-daily-grail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/portable-standing-desk-wplace-the-daily-grail\/","title":{"rendered":"Portable standing desk\/Wplace\/The Daily Grail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Portable standing desk that fits in a laptop bag<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I use a standing desk at home, and I miss it when I travel because my body aches from sitting so long. This portable sit-stand laptop desk<\/a> made by Moft weighs just a hair over two pounds and folds to a 0.5-inch thick rectangle that easily fits into my computer bag. Unfolded, it lifts my laptop 9.75 inches above the table, and is surprisingly stable. The fiberglass and PU leather construction feels premium and durable. Recommended for anyone who spends long hours on their laptop away from home. \u2014 MF<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Global youth folk art<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Check out the website Wplace<\/a>. It\u2019s a zany collaborative futuristic art project happening around the world, mostly created by young people. Like its predecessor r\/place, Wplace lets people paint a single pixel at a time. But everyone layers the art over Google maps and most folks start with painting over their neighborhood. And like r\/place, you can repaint over other art. So in order to make any kind of a picture large requires an incredible amount of coordination and collaboration with others \u2013 and any art produced must be fiercely maintained in order to remain. The ambience is true folk art \u2013 the lowest common denominator of anime characters, memes, sports brands, political flags, logos, graffiti, and creative patterns. Surprisingly the parts of the globe most densely painted in its first month are not silicon valley but Brazil and Germany. And you may have trouble getting a chance to paint pixels because its servers are overwhelmed. This weird global emergent collab happening feels like a hint of art from the future. \u2014 KK<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fringe news feed<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Daily Grail<\/a> front page is my news source for all things weird and fringe science\u2014from papers on consciousness studies and paranormal research to new discoveries in neuroscience, quantum physics, and strange archaeological finds. Most briefs come from mainstream, credible outlets, but the curation makes me feel like a kid reading Weekly World News<\/em> in the checkout line or living inside an episode of The X-Files. Its editorial approach is described as maintaining an appropriate level of skepticism while remaining open to paradigm-shifting ideas. I check it religiously via my Feedly<\/a>, but daily news items are also posted to Bluesky<\/a> if you prefer to follow there. \u2014 CD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stream of collective imagination<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Midjourney TV<\/a> is a continuous stream of AI-generated short video art, created by the user community with Midjourney\u2019s recently launched video model. The stream is a hypnotic, mind-expanding glimpse into how humans are using creative AI\u2014and into the collective imagination. I\u2019ve been a Midjourney user since day one and still prefer it for creating imagery from dreams<\/a> and psychedelic therapy visions. \u2014 CD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-publishing advice<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Because I\u2019ve published a lot of books, both by mainstream publishers and in self-published bestsellers, I frequently get asked for advice by wannabe authors. So I have written up Everything I Know About Publishing and Self-Publishing<\/a> into a blog post and also packaged in a tidy free 16-page PDF<\/a>. I end with a flow-chart to navigate through the expanding variety of publishing options available today. \u2014 KK<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find books and movies on a map<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

StoryTerra<\/a> is a interactive map that links to over 120,000 books, movies, TV shows, and games with their real-world locations and time periods. You can slide through centuries on the timeline, zoom into cities on the map, and discover what stories took place when and where. \u2014 MF<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sign up here<\/a>\u00a0to get Recomendo a week early in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recomendo – issue #476<\/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\/44709"}],"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=44709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44710,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44709\/revisions\/44710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}