Book Freak is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run Recomendo, the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Recomendo ...

Delta sent my Prague-bound suitcase full of ski clothing to Pittsburg instead on this trip and it took partner KLM 2.5 days to get it back in my hands, despite the bar code still being attached.

Intelligence is not elemental. Neither is artificial intelligence. Both are complex compounds composed of more primitive cognitive elements, some of which we are only now discovering. We don’t yet ...

I usually carry a bunch of pens in a leather pocket protector (a beautiful, inexpensive thing from John C. Robert’s Leather Works). My wife despairs when we go someplace nice and I’m carrying all this ...

BENEATH THE SURFACE OF DISNEY’S AMAZING AQUATIC ADVENTURE. The Art of Finding Dory by Disney and Pixar Studios (preface by ...

Trevor Paglen is a thorn in Uncle Sam’s side. Known for snapping telephoto candids of CIA planes and Area 51, the artist also gathers “patch intel,” which he’s collected in this provocative book (main ...

I’ve been to many tiki bars, but Smuggler’s Cove stands out. In the heart of San Francisco, Smuggler’s Cove is an oasis. From the outside it looks like a weird office building with blacked out windows ...

Oven pull – These are wood or silicone sticks with two notches. You grab your oven rack with it to get it in and out of the oven while putting some distance between yourself and a very hot metal box, ...

This is an edited, updated version of an essay I wrote in 2008 when this now popular idea was embryonic and ragged. I recently rewrote it to convey the core ideas, minus out-of-date details. This ...

Ted Kaczynski, the convicted bomber who blew up dozens of technophilic professionals, was right about one thing: technology has its own agenda. The technium is not, as most people think, a series of ...

Your dog wants to go outside. Your cat wants to be scratched. Birds want mates. Worms want moisture. Bacteria want food. The wants of a microscopic single-celled organism are less than the wants of ...