Wrote Kottke: "The gang at Present & Correct found a cache of pre-World War II tourist maps of Japan while rummaging around in Tokyo's Jinbōchō used book district.
They photographed them for a new self-published book called 'Paper Trails.'"
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Over 2,000 sanctioned uses for WD-40
They're all here.
Pictured above, page 1 of 13.
Jennifer Williams wrote an entertaining story for the Wall Street Journal about how few people are privy to the actual formula for WD-40.
"The handwritten formula is kept in a lockbox at an undisclosed Bank of America location in San Diego. It's only left a bank vault three times in the past 30 years."
"The notebook in the vault — which holds not only the 40th attempt at a formula, resulting in the product's name, but also the 39 failed attempts to get it right — is the only version that has the full makeup of the original formula, which accounted for nearly 80% of WD-40's revenue as of August 2025."
More WD-40 FunFacts here.
WD stands for "Water displacement."
bookofjoe's Favorite Thing: Kraft Mac & Cheese
I can't recall exactly when was the last time I had this old stand-by (it came out in 1936!) but for sure it was when I was a boy back in the 20th century.
The first ad for it (above) appeared on November 11, 1937.
I'd completely forgotten about it until a saw a TV commercial recently during one of the NFL playoff games.
Just for lulz I ordered a box from Amazon: it was great! Really good!
I've since stocked up.
The only thing I don't like is how much of a mess there is to clean up afterwards:
• Pot
• Fork
• Bowl
• Spoon
• Strainer
• Butter knife
• Measuring cup
Plus you have to set a timer for 6-8 minutes to let you know when the noodles are ready and occasionally stir them while they're cooking.
That's a lot more effort and time than that required for my Gold Standard food: Nissin Cup Noodles.
You peel of the paper top, add water to the fill line, put it in the microwave and nuke it for 2:15 and Bob's your uncle — plus, the only thing you have to deal with afterwards is your fork, which once rinsed is all set for a second round.
But wait: it gets better!
12 boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese cost $11.49: 96 cents/box.
Monday, February 2, 2026
What feels strange about the people in Seurat's painting 'Bathers at Asnières?'
YouTube description:
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George Seurat's painting "Bathers at Asnières" is a simple picture of men and boys relaxing by the River Seine and yet there is something unsettling about this scene.
The people seem to be both present and absent — there and not there.
Art historian Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen explores Seurat's figures to explain how, by painting them in this way, he undid centuries-old beliefs about how people should appear in art.
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Once upon a time on Google
I'm not happy that every time I update Chrome now there's more unwanted junk and clutter and options on the homepage.
Sure, I can make it go away but it's very complicated and time consuming and it all reappears with the next update.
I think this is called "scope creep."
Once upon a time in America:
Sunday, February 1, 2026
Notes on using Blogger for bookofjoe — 4 months in
Longtime/constant readers will know that after a mostly happy run of 21+ years, Typepad closed up shop on September 30, 2025.
All those posts — over 40,000 of them — gone ... like tears in the rain.
But I digress.
The many thousands of boj posts simply vanished, like a Philip K. Dick simulacrum.
As I think about it, maybe they were a PKD simulacrum....
Anyhoo, once I got the word from Typepad last September 1, I wasted no time directing my Crack Research Team©®™ to find boj a nice new home.
They investigated many potential blog hosts, none of which were simple enough for me, a card-carrying Technodolt©®™, to use.
The least bad of them all was/is Blogger, Google's ancient, free blog hosting platform.
And so that's where I publish, 3x daily/, 7 days/week, 365 days/year, just like before.
As before, I believe I'm the only blogger still doing that.
Life on Blogger isn't easy: it's really janky in that stuff when published looks way different from the previews:
• Typeface size and font seem to morph randomly
• Posting images and videos takes many more steps
• Image sizes vary wildly and must fit into predetermined templates
• Inaccurate spacing requires many revisions by me to get even a minimally readable result
I could go on.
Long story short: It takes anywhere from 3-10 preview revisions to get a finished post, which means each post takes 3-10 times as long to create as in the old Typepad days — and the resulting posts and blog look nowhere near as good as they did back then.
Sic transit gloria
Experts' Experts: How to safely peel oddly-shaped vegetables
Do you have any tips for peeling turnips and rutabaga [above]? They've always been hard for me to peel, so much so that I gave up buying them. Especially with rutabaga, I feel I'm going to slice off a digit trying to slice off the wax coating and rind.
A. As someone who has experienced her fair share of nicks and cuts from vegetable prep, I can empathize with this question. Before I get into specific recommendations, I have a few across-the-board tips. First, slow down. Rushing while trying to peel vegetables will only end badly. (There’s a reason your mom told you not to run with scissors.) Second, make sure your peeler is sharp. A dull blade on a peeler is just as potentially dangerous as a dull knife, so if it's several years old and you find yourself struggling to use it, invest the few dollars to buy a new one.
The last overall piece of advice dovetails nicely with what my colleague and chat co-host Aaron Hutcherson suggested for this reader: Create a flat surface (or two) to stabilize whatever you're cutting. "For these types of thick peels, I use a sharp chef's knife," Aaron said. "Start by lopping off the top and the bottom. Then set it flat on your cutting board and use your knife to cut away the outer layer in strips, top to bottom."
This is also the strategy I use for all kinds of round(ed) produce, including such fruits as pineapple, oranges, and melons. And remember, many vegetables don't even need to be peeled, including young, thin-skinned turnips from the garden or farmers market. You’ll save yourself the effort and reduce food waste. A good scrub and wash — only water, no soap, please! — is sufficient.
But sometimes, you're still going to want or need to remove that outer layer. Here's a quick guide to peeling other tricky vegetables, as desired: Butternut or other winter squash. Prick the squash in several spots with a fork, then microwave for a few minutes. The exterior will soften enough to make getting the peel off easier without necessarily cooking the inside.
Tomatoes. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Have ready a bowl of ice water. Cut an "X" in the bottom of each tomato and remove the stem. Place in the boiling water for 10 or 15 seconds, then use a slotted spoon to quickly transfer to the ice water. The skin should slip off.
Beets. You don’t necessarily have to peel beets, but if you want to, it's easiest after they've been roasted. Use your fingers, a paring knife or even the foil they may have been wrapped in to remove the exterior.
Travel the Roads of the Roman Empire
Computer simulation of what it was like to use Roman roads in different parts of the Empire, with a particular focus on the variety of surfaces.
Saturday, January 31, 2026
bookofjoe's Favorite Thing — Or, how to walk on ice without breaking your neck
Here's a particularly timely video, what with ERs around the country being swamped by people with skull fractures and broken hips incurred after falling on the recent snow-turned-into-rock-hard-ice.
You can find these superb lifesaving ice spikes — which strap on over your shoes — on Amazon, priced from around $38 and up depending on how rugged you need them to be.
The ones I'm using in the video up top are here: I bought them at least 10 years ago and they're fantastic.
Note: mine are Gen 1; there are many more recent variations.
LEGO Brick Clog
Finally.
Get on the Wait List here for the February 16 release.
These will go fast only to appear on Vestiare Collective and The RealReal at 10x the original $149.99 price.
Above, what came in a minute after I joined the Wait List.
[via Taylor Troesh, who only joined my Crack Research Team©®™last year but has already eclipsed the performance of 99% of that Mötley Crüe.]
'The Amateur' — Robert Littell
Robert Littell's superb 1981 espionage novel was finally made into a film (excellent by the way) last year.
It only took 44 years.
I read the book the year it came out, and at least twice since: it's that good.
I just happened on the 2025 movie — starring Rami Malek and Rachel Brosnahan — recently.
FunFact: Littell turned 91 earlier this month.
You could look it up.
Friday, January 30, 2026
I said be careful his BIC pen is really a lamp
From The Verge:
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Seletti, an Italian design brand known for everything from furniture to tableware, has debuted an unusual tribute to an icon of design: the Bic Cristal pen.
To celebrate its 75th anniversary, Seletti has supersized the pen and replaced its ink cartridge with a long LED-filled tube to illuminate your living room, office, or that closet where they keep all the stationery at work.
The Bic Lamp, as it’s simply called, was introduced at the 2026 Maison & Object show in Paris – think CES, but for interior designers.
Seletti says it was created at a 12:1 scale, which makes it just shy of six feet long given the Bic Cristal pen typically measures around 5.8 inches with its cap.
Aside from its larger dimensions and the LED tube producing up 2,400 lumens of light, the Bic Lamp is a near identical clone, in red, black, or blue color options.
You can hang it from a ceiling as a pendant lamp, but Mario Paroli also designed the Bic Lamp to mount to a wall or stand alone as a floor lamp.
It will launch in the US later this year where it's expected to cost $350.
'Balance Out of Life': 'Koyaanisqatsi' In Five Minutes
From Kottke:
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Wyatt Hodgson took Godfrey Reggio's landmark 1982 film "Koyaanisqatsi" and sped it up 1552% so you can watch the whole movie in about five minutes.
Time-lapse is used to great effect — you notice different things at different playback speeds — and Hodgson's clever use of the technique reveals the overall structure of the film more more than watching it in realtime (86 minutes)... but the emotion of the film is removed completely.
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Again: click here to watch the compressed version.
More here.
Fair warning: there goes the day.
68,000-Year-Old Hand Stencil is the Oldest Cave Art Ever Found
[Handprints reveal sharpened fingertips on a wall in the Maros region of Sulawesi, Indonesia.]
From NBC News:
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The world’s oldest known example of cave art, dating back at least 67,800 years, has been discovered by researchers studying handprints in Indonesia.
The find, along with others recently made in the Southeast Asian country, helps scientists trying to determine when and where early humans first learned to make art and at what point their art became more complex.
The reddish hand stencils, though faded and barely visible, were found in the Liang Metanduno limestone cave on Muna, an island off the larger eastern Indonesian island of Sulawesi. One of them was found to be at least 67,800 years old.
Indonesian and Australian researchers said the stencils were made by blowing pigment onto a hand pressed against the rock surface, leaving an outline. Fingertips reshaped to appear more pointed suggest that the hands were those of humans, possibly connected to the ancestors of the first Australians.
The paintings were dated by analyzing mineral crusts that had gradually formed on top of them.
The finding "is pretty extraordinary, because usually rock art is very difficult to date and it doesn't date back to anywhere near that old," said Adam Brumm, a professor of archaeology at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and a co-author of the study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The hand stencil is more than 15,000 years older than a painting in another cave on Sulawesi that the same team dated in 2024. That painting, which depicted three humanlike figures interacting with a pig, is thought to be about 51,200 years old.
"I thought we were doing pretty well then, but this one image just completely blew that other one away," Brumm said.
"It really just shows how long people have been making rock art in that part of the world," he said. "It's a very long time."
Researchers hope to find even older art, including storytelling art, in and around Indonesia, much of which remains archaeologically unexplored, he added.
Liang Metanduno is a well-known site for cave art that is open to tourists. But most of the art found so far is paintings depicting chickens and other domesticated animals that are thought to be much more recent, about 4,000 years old.
In 2015, Indonesian rock art specialist Adhi Oktaviana, the paper's lead author, noticed faint images behind more recent ones that he thought could be hand stencils.
"No one had ever observed them before. No one even knew that they were there," Brumm said. "But Adhi spotted them."
For generations, researchers studying Ice Age cave paintings in places like France and Spain, which are about 30,000 to 40,000 years old, "thought, wow, this is really where true art began, true modern human artistic culture," Brumm said.
Recent discoveries in Indonesia, he said, show that humans outside Europe were making "incredibly sophisticated" cave art tens of thousands of years earlier, "before our species ever even set foot in that part of the world."
Brumm said the discovery was also interesting because it may shed light on when the first humans arrived in his home country, Australia.
Though Aboriginal peoples are widely accepted as having been in Australia for at least 50,000 years, one archaeological site in the country is said to be 65,000 years old.
"Now that we’re finding rock art dating to 67-68,000 years ago on the island of Sulawesi, which is essentially on Australia's doorstep, it does make it considerably more likely that modern humans indeed were in Australia at least 65,000 years ago," Brumm said.
Thursday, January 29, 2026
A note on graciousness
When someone sends me an article or story or news about this or that via email or text, I ALWAYS thank them — even if I've already seen it.
I have yet to meet or know someone besides myself who does that.
Every single person I know/have ever known, upon receipt from me of something they've seen or read, if they're going to get back to me (seldom), starts their response with "I saw that."
That's like a slap in the face.
Why would I want to send that person more stuff if there's a good chance I'll get that kind of response?
That's a thinly veiled way of saying "I knew that already, I know more than you. I'm more knowledgable than you."
That may be — but why rub my nose in it?
Who wants to get that in return for having taken the time and trouble to personally forward something of potential interest?
I would say I send 100x more stuff than I receive, but I'm fine with that if I can make someone happy or more successful in their endeavors by informing them of something that might improve their life.
It's not as if people are recipients of group emails from me: I never ever email a bunch of people or use cc but rather stick to one addressee at a time, even if that means taking the time to do that.
Related: When someone gives you something, say "Thank you" — not "Where did you get that?" or its ilk.
Sheesh.
It's not rocket surgery.
FunFact: I've been saying "It's not rocket surgery" for decades but only heard it spoken by someone else — I think on TV — for the first time a couple years ago.
Never since.
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
The Only Thing Taylor Swift and I Have in Common
Pictured above, it's Starbucks Cold Brew Coffee.
About halfway through Episode 6 (of 6) of her superb "Eras Tour" docuseries chronicling the record-breaking tour from beginning to end, I spotted her taking one out of her dressing room fridge backstage.
FunFacts: The tour began in Glendale, Arizona on March 17, 2023, and concluded in Vancouver, B.C. on December 24, 2024.
It spanned 149 shows in 51 cities across five continents and became the highest-grossing tour of all time, reporting revenue over $2 billion.
But I digressed.
You too can drink what Taylor Swift drinks: Starbucks Cold Brew is available at grocery stores everywhere.
A 40 oz. container costs around $6.99.
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Oakley Meta Glasses Lens Removal Hack
Back story: I bought a pair of Oakley Meta HSTN glasses last summer: I paid $499 for a pair of the first limited edition, with a camera and AI but no display.
There were NO options: you had to get the ones with white frames and bright orange polarized sunglass lenses.
A couple months later they released a range of styles, including one with clear lenses and normal looking black frames, for $399.
Oh well.
My neighbor says they make me look like I'm imitating Elton John but hey what can I do?
Then yesterday it occurred to me that perhaps I can remove the lenses and keep all the rest of the functionality: they've excellent for hands-free video when I'm out running, way better than holding my phone.
I looked online but the only advice I could find for removing the lenses said to grip the frame above and below the lens opening and pull in opposite directions.
After about 30 minutes of screaming and cursing and frustration and tired fingers and wrists, I conceded failure.
I came back the next day, full of resolve and coffee, and after more struggle finally succeeded in removing the lenses.
Sure enough, the glasses are MUCH better without lenses: lighter, but most importantly I can now see stuff clearly and in dim light, and I can wear them over my reading glasses and still see clearly.
Today I decided to revisit this hack, so much to my trepidation I reinserted the lenses (much easier than removing them) and made two videos (Part 1 above, Part 2 below)
demonstrating a technique I discovered in this video.
Long story short: you exert force upwards and outwards at the upper outside corner of the lens enclosure: without much time and trouble, out pops out that portion of the lens followed by the rest of it (intact).
If you're not completely satisfied with this hack or if it results in damage to your glasses, let me know and I will turn your problem over to my Crack Customer Satisfaction Team©®™.
identifont
"Look up a typeface by name and see a sample."
Ingenious.
What could be easier or more useful?
Well, how about the reverse search feature where you if you don't know the name of a font the site can identify it by having you answer a series of questions.
Font information from over 200 publishers.
All here, free — the way we like it.
Are You Dead?
Long story short: Are You Dead? is a new iPhone app that has quickly gone viral in China before spreading worldwide.
It's dead... simple: click on the green button daily (up to every two days) to automatically send an email to your chosen emergency contact that indicates you're still alive.
From the app (top):
"If you haven't checked in for 2 days, the system will send an email to your emergency contact in your name on the next day."
Way better than those stupid red buttons old people wear around their necks that they're supposed to press if there's an emergency.
How about a disabling stroke or heart attack — good luck with that.
What I like is that Are You Dead is literally is built around the concept of the Dead man's switch: if action isn't taken, stuff happens.
This BBC article has more about this app, originally developed for young people living alone but now undergoing a redesign specifically aimed at the elderly in a country where over one-fifth of its population is over 60.
From the app's company website: "We would like to call on more people to pay attention to the elderly who are living at home, to give them more care and understanding. They have dreams, strive to live, and deserve to be seen, respected, and protected."
Find it on the U.S. app store listed as Demumu in Utilities.
99 cents — cheap at twice the price.
Monday, January 26, 2026
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