Four Neat Things

Friday, March 27, 2026

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. I haven't had a library card in years, but I might get one after learning about two apps that use them for identification: Libby grants temporary, free (as in beer) access to ebooks and audiobooks, and Kanopy does the same for "classic cinema, indie film, and top documentaries."

2. Speaking of libraries, a German engineer would appear to have seen this hidden basement model railroad and raised it by 70,000 (!) books in his own hidden home library.

3. Every once in a while, I come across a list of highly-rated gadgets that I end up ratifying with my wallet. The latest is "65 Weird Things With Near-Perfect Reviews That Are Truly Life-Changing"

While I wouldn't exactly call any of these "life-changing," I like the car charger with the retractable cable, and I see two things my wife would appreciate, looking at it again.

One item I won't get, but which is neat are the "finger chopsticks" for snacking without getting dirty fingers.

I came up with the similar idea years ago of using plastic kiddie chopsticks for that very purpose, and told my kids to do that with Chee-tos and the like.

The item I see appears to require more effort than I'd like to completely free the hand of the chopstick.

4. Although I suspect that the kinds of jobs created by AI will mainly be of the non-obvious, things unseen type, not all of them will be -- or are.

You can go to Rentahuman right now and "get paid when agents need someone in the real world."

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Luddites!

-- CAV

No comments: