One Time Secret/After Life Experience/The Edge of All We Know
Recomendo: issue no. 259
Sign up here to get Recomendo a week early in your inbox.
Share a secret
One Time Secret offers an alternative to sharing passwords or credit card numbers via text message with your friends or family. To use it, enter the text you want to into the form and click “Create a secret link.” The site will create a unique link, like this: https://onetimesecret.com/secret/h5mwuomihrdz7ptv3qrphkdv6s8rag4. Share that link with your friend. Once it is viewed, it gets deleted, so you can’t share it with a group of friends. If no one visits the link in seven days, it gets deleted. Of course, you have to trust the people behind One Time Secret, which has been in operation for 8 years. — MF
Listen to people’s “forever” memories
The After Life Experience is an interactive website that will walk you through the process of figuring out which memory from your life to date you would choose to spend eternity reliving. The “Facilitation” process will ask you a series of questions like, “When was a moment you felt your most authentic self?” or “on a brilliant adventure?” or “in awe of something so much bigger than you?” or “knew you were in love?” and on and on until you’ve decided on your forever memory. You can then choose to record it and share it on the website. I spent thirty minutes listening to a stream of stranger’s share the moments in which they chose to spend eternity. I cried a lot. There was a woman who lost her son seconds after giving birth and spent the night holding him in a hospital bed. She said it was her event horizon and in that moment there was no past or future. This was the moment she realized that the question of “Where do we go to when we die?” is actually the same question as “Where were we before we came into being?” — CD
Marvelous science documentary
Science documentaries are hard to make right. They are either too boring, or too superficial. This new science documentary is just perfect: The Edge of All We Know is the astounding story of trying to take a picture of a black hole, which is inherently unseeable. The doc takes the most abstract subject possible and makes it thrilling by following groups competing to create the best image and then negotiating to merge all their results together into one picture. Along the way you get a pretty good idea of what we think black holes are. It streams on Netflix. — KK
Gifting a paid article
All paying New York Times subscribers can gift an article behind the Times’ paywall to others so they can read it for free. Subscribers can gift up to 10 articles per month. This includes posting gifted articles on Twitter or Facebook, so followers are not blocked when you share a great piece. The gifted article does not count against reader’s free monthly allotment. To gift an article, look for the “wrapped gift package” button in the row of badges at the top and bottom of an article to get the link. I wish all paid publications would do this. — KK
Inexpensive, but stylish sunglasses
I recently found myself at a mall trying on $100+ sunglasses when I had the realization that I did not want to be doing that or spending that much money on sunglasses ever again. My husband had been raving about Carfia’s $20 and below polarized sunglasses, so I bought myself a women’s pair for $13 and I love they way they look on me, and how the polarized lenses make the outside world look clear and sharp. — CD
Excellent dartboard
My wife bought me a dartboard for Christmas last year and we play darts a few times a week now. She got a high quality dartboard — a Winmau Diamond Plus Tournament Bristle Dartboard — and it’s much better than the cheap dartboards I had as a kid. The darts rarely bounce out, and the board has held up well, showing little signs of use. — MF
