Beeswax / Chompy ice on demand / Price history alert

Recomendo - issue #528

Two-minute spelling bee

Beeswax is a daily spelling bee that only takes two minutes. You hear each word spoken aloud, spell it, and one wrong letter ends your run. The words start easy and get progressively harder. Everyone gets the same five words each day, and you can share your result. I don’t play games on my phone, but I’ve been playing this one on my desktop, and it’s extra fun because I’m competing daily with a friend who is a much better speller than me. If you’re competitive too, join my 10-day challenge. — CD

Chompy ice on demand

We have our neighbors over for dinner a lot, and whenever they ask what to bring, I give the same answer: ice. Our fridge has no ice maker, so we’re always short. That problem has been solved with the Pearl L1 Max nugget ice maker. About the size of a large toaster, it cranks out tiny cubes of what my sister calls “chompy ice.” They are fun to chew (even though I know it’s probably not good for my teeth). It’s fast, too: pour in water, press the button, and nuggets start dropping into the basket within minutes. No more begging guests to bring their own ice. — MF

Price history alert

Amazon has introduced a very useful feature. Right next to the price on an item is a blue “Price history” button. Clicking on that gives you a chart of the item’s price over time. Most inexpensive items don’t change, but more expensive items (like a power tool) can show drastic variations in price. If an item has had a lower price in the past you might want to wait to see if it drops again. So Amazon gives you the option to set up a price alert to get notified when it drops to your target price. If you are sure you want it at that price and are willing to wait, you can also set it to automatically purchase it at that price so you don’t miss it. I used to use CamelCamelCamel to do all this with Amazon, but this native function is much slicker and easier. In my experience, if you are willing to wait, an item will usually return to its lowest price sooner or later, and that can be a good bargain. — KK

Concepts by women philosophers

The Encyclopedia of Concise Concepts by Women Philosophers is a free, peer-reviewed archive of philosophical concepts originated or advanced by women, from antiquity to the 21st century. You can browse the archive’s 100–300-word entries by concept, keyword, or philosopher. Reading the entries on Love, I fell down a rabbit hole into Karoline von Günderrode, a German Romantic who saw love not as romance or private emotion but as an elemental force. In her metaphysics, we’re made of imperishable elements that join and separate into ever-changing forms, all reaching for a perfect identity between form and essence—which, to me, is sublimely romantic. — CD

Phone entertainment

Ok, this is a 2-minute TikTok video, but it is worth two minutes. It’s a rollercoaster for phones. You watch your phone depart from you. The phone watches the ride. You watch the recording of what the phone saw. We watch what you watched. It is entertainment for machines. Could be the future. Or just art. There’s a big lesson here, but not sure what. — KK

Cheap gadget unboxing videos

You’ve no doubt seen ads for cheap toys and gadgets from China that look almost magical — the videos show things like a serrated knife that effortlessly shreds vegetables, or a tiny drone that flies way up in the air and shoots cinematic video. I’ll admit I’ve been tricked into buying these kinds of things only to discover they are junk. There’s an Instagram influencer named KYD who has amassed an audience of 13 million followers by unboxing items from these ads and testing whether they work as promised. Most are worthless, but about one in ten actually perform as promised. The videos are short and addictive. I watched for an hour straight. — MF

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