Nick Douglas

Performing small acts of kindness—such as letting someone go first, buying coffee, or giving a compliment—may improve a bad mood by redirecting attention toward helping others. The advice is supported by studies suggesting that altruistic actions and memories of gift-giving can produce personal pleasure, even when the motivation is partly self-serving.

A broad guide to discovering new music recommends combining acclaimed album and song lists with review sites, editorial playlists, streaming-service features, music blogs, podcasts, soundtracks, online communities, and live or local radio. It emphasizes exploratory tools such as Bandcamp tag surfing, SoundCloud, custom-radio services, curated playlists, and recommendations from artists, producers, labels, friends, and venue staff. The central conclusion is that human curation and deliberate exploration often produce better discoveries than relying solely on algorithmic recommendations.

The renewed popularity of sea shanties on TikTok, especially complex versions of “Wellerman,” has brought attention to an older Lifehacker playlist. Created by Jamison Hermann, the Spotify playlist “Music for Seaports” contains more than 60 a cappella sea songs, emphasizing the genre’s original function as work music that coordinated sailors’ physical labor. The playlist favors unaccompanied vocals over polished, heavily instrumented folk recordings and includes tracks from artists such as Rick Spencer and Stan Rogers, along with “Randy Dandy Oh” from Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Readers are encouraged to listen and contribute additional a cappella shanties.

Restaurants and food chains across the United States offered free meals, beverages, desserts, discounts, and vouchers to veterans, active-duty service members, reservists, retirees, and, in some cases, military families for Veterans Day 2020 and throughout November. Most promotions required military identification or other proof of service and were limited to participating locations. The piece also highlights a year-round Crisis Text Line resource for veterans experiencing a mental health crisis.

Flirting remains valuable in long-term relationships because it helps partners maintain attraction and rediscover one another. Suggested approaches include offering compliments, sending playful texts, using affectionate touch, revisiting romantic memories, and looking at a partner with the excitement of a first date, while respecting preferences and boundaries and avoiding excessive public displays.

The Color Our Collections program, led by the New York Academy of Medicine, offers 509 printable PDF coloring books drawn from the public-domain collections of more than 100 museums and libraries worldwide. The updated Lifehacker post highlights several books and artworks, notes that the materials vary in length and complexity while generally remaining kid-friendly, and recommends them as a creative activity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article argues that reusable “family cloth” toilet wipes are an impractical and unappealing response to the cost and environmental impact of toilet paper. Although cloth wipes may use less water and energy than conventional toilet paper, they require storing and washing soiled fabric and create problems for guests. Recycled toilet paper and bidets are presented as more effective alternatives for reducing waste, with bidets using little water and potentially eliminating most toilet-paper use. The piece concludes that cloth wipes risk making environmentalism and frugality appear performative and eccentric.

A July 4th playlist is recommended for listeners with conflicted feelings about the United States. It combines accessible pop and rock songs with politically charged tracks such as “Fight the Power,” “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and “Killing in the Name,” presenting critical engagement with America as compatible with patriotism. The playlist is available on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube, and was updated on June 29, 2020 while retaining the original 2019 song selections.

The Reichenbergerstr 121 microsite, available at imisstheoffice.eu and created by the Swiss-German creative agency kids, simulates the ambient sounds of an office or coffee shop. Users can trigger sounds such as typing, conversations, phones, water pouring and office ping-pong, with optional muffled German chatter. The simulator is recommended as a playful way for remote workers to recreate workplace atmosphere, alongside practical strategies for sharing space, schedules and childcare while working from home.

Liquid bandages can be a convenient alternative to traditional Band-Aids for small cuts, bug bites, blisters, and hand wounds. They form a thin protective layer that stays in place, is less obtrusive, and allows touchscreen use, though it can interfere with Touch ID and does not conceal the wound. The article recommends choosing liquid bandage for areas where conventional bandages tend to fall off, while noting that visible or more serious wounds may be better covered or treated differently.

The article offers ten methods for identifying Twitter bots and deceptive accounts, beginning with checking an account’s creation date, followers, and earliest tweets through Twitter’s advanced search. More advanced techniques involve comparing activity across social media platforms and conducting data analysis. It notes that bots make up a significant share of Twitter accounts and recommends choosing verification methods based on the user’s goals, while adding the humorous suggestion of insulting an account to see how it responds.

Cats tend to be wary because they have undergone far less domestication and selective breeding than dogs. To gain a cat’s trust, visitors should avoid eye contact, direct approaches, loud noises, looming, and premature touching, instead allowing the cat to approach gradually and offering a finger to sniff. Interactive play, treats, and feeding can build confidence, although experts differ on whether play can bypass a cat’s instinctive caution. Cat owners can prepare visitors, reserve special treats for guests, and protect cats from stressful interactions. Long-term friendliness is most strongly associated with early socialization, gentle handling during the first weeks of life, and remaining with the mother for roughly 12–16 weeks.

Nick Douglas’s farewell argues that people learn new skills more effectively by consulting multiple teachers, books, apps, and tutorials rather than relying on a single method. Different explanations can make difficult concepts clearer, sustain motivation through frustration or boredom, fill gaps and expose biases, and help learners develop independent perspectives and a distinctive voice.

A roundup of practical, low-effort life hacks published by Lifehacker in 2019. The suggestions cover replacing uncomfortable underwear, cleaning cast iron with aluminum foil, using separate blankets in shared beds, choosing museums for first dates, ordering Starbucks’s smaller Short size, shopping more selectively, obtaining the Disney+ bundle through ad-free Hulu, making a temporary bib from Press’n Seal, fitting sheets, checking pay stubs, managing children’s transition warnings, subscribing to Amazon Prime only when useful, and reaching Marmite more easily.

Lifehacker compiles selected 2019 installments of its “How I Work” interview series, featuring academics, entertainers, journalists, entrepreneurs, executives, authors, artists and public figures. The excerpts highlight their workspaces, productivity routines, creative processes, reporting practices and career experiences, with profiles of figures including Richard Garriott, Phoebe Judge, Jad Abumrad, Will Shortz, Jim Cantore and former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

Lifehacker staff members share the music they used while working or cooking in 2019. Recommendations range from the Succession soundtrack, classical and minimalist piano, and cinematic electronic albums to folk, jazz, post-rock, and ambient noise. Contributors emphasize music that creates atmosphere without becoming distracting, while acknowledging that some people work best in silence.

Lifehacker staff members recommend their favorite podcast episodes from 2019 across true crime, comedy, fiction, music, health, journalism, and culture. Highlights include Criminal’s story of a cruise-ship stowaway, Reply All’s investigation of feral hogs, a Dolly Parton’s America episode about celebrity politics, and episodes examining the Kitty Genovese case, multi-level marketing, athletic weight cutting, medical misdiagnosis, and rideshare safety. The selections emphasize compelling storytelling, surprising factual corrections, personal candor, and thoughtful criticism.

The piece humorously commemorates apps and services discontinued or scheduled for shutdown in 2019. It highlights Google’s closure of Inbox and Google+, the planned shutdown of Google Hangouts, Microsoft’s migration of Wunderlist users to To Do, and the demise of services including the Wii Shopping Channel, iTunes, and MoviePass. The author considers Microsoft To Do an inferior successor to Wunderlist and recommends Todoist instead.

A more efficient method for loading a case of soda, beer, or water into a refrigerator involves opening both ends of the box, placing it on the shelf with the cans upright, and pulling the cardboard sleeve away around the cans. This keeps the cans accessible without repeatedly transferring them individually or rummaging through the box.

A collection of mental-math shortcuts covers percentages, subtraction without borrowing, divisibility tests, multiplication, squares, temperature conversions, and estimating annual salary from an hourly wage. The techniques emphasize simplifying calculations, memorizing basic arithmetic, and combining shortcuts to solve problems quickly without a calculator.

The article lists National Donut Day promotions available on June 7, 2019, including free donuts from Krispy Kreme, Walmart, Hardee’s, Salvation Army locations, and numerous regional chains. It also covers free-donut-with-purchase deals, discounts, cash-back offers through Coupons.com, sweepstakes, and limited-edition products from other retailers. Availability and eligibility vary by location, purchase, coupon, app, or membership requirements.