Life Hacks – Spoken Edition

Do you ever feel like you’re being crushed by all your responsibilities? Sometimes it feels like there are a trillion little things you simply have to do: you have to go to work, pay the gas bill, get some exercise, call your grandmother. You have to walk the dog, pick up groceries, pay your taxes, floss—there are countless administrative tasks you perform each day that are necessary to simply maintaining a life.

If you or your kids play outdoor sports, you know how quickly uniforms can get covered in hard-to-remove dirt and grass stains. This trick can keep those uniforms looking their best. Sometimes a regular washing machine just won’t cut it—even if you use a bunch of different detergents. All you really need is a pressure washer and you’ll be ready to slide into home with a pair of baseball pants that look brand spankin’ new.

Climate change is real, and it’s impacting us far beyond just making the planet warmer. Researchers and economists at the Climate Impact Lab have created a map showing how climate change will affect different counties from now to 2099, with areas near oceans and the South being affected the most, reports NPR.

A few years ago, I left my job at a newspaper to stay home with my infant daughter full-time. Ten months later, I was ready—so freaking ready—to return to the workplace. So I opened up my résumé and prepared to send it off to people who might want to hire me. But there was that gap—a glaring, abyss-like space between the date of my most recent position and now.

To be frank, some hot dog brands are just better than others. Here are the brands The New York Times food department recommends. If there’s one food New Yorkers know very well it’s pizza. Oh, and also hot dogs! Yes, delicious all-beef franks.

Those who can, can’t always teach. When you’ve studied a skill for years, it can be hard to break down your steps and remember what new learners don’t know. Which is how you end up writing instructions like the above, which Reddit user kdesh titled “Step 1. Threaten the coconut with a machete” in a post on the subreddit /r/restofthefuckingowl.

If you've been buying microwave popcorn because of the convenience—or a belief that the bag has special popcorn enhancing powers—you'll want to check out this incredibly inexpensive way to make microwave popcorn at a sixth the cost of commercial bags. The writers at Squawkfox, a frugality-centered blog, were shocked when they did the math on how much they were paying for the convenience of pre-bagged popcorn. When they crunched the numbers they realized they were paying over $3.

You might want to keep a few teabags in your first aid kit. Besides being an extraordinarily healthy drink, tea applied to the skin can also be very healing. Redditor RhiannonMae, a nurse, says she uses a dry black tea bag to stop small wounds from bleeding. The caffeine in tea apparently shrinks the blood vessels, and all you have to do is apply a little pressure with the tea bag for a minute or two to stop even heavily bleeding wounds from continuing to bleed.

If you’re away from home and in need of WiFi, now Facebook can help you find it. Originally only available in a few countries, the social network’s “Find WiFi” feature is now available around the world. With it you can locate available hotspots and nearby businesses, so you can quickly find a spot near you.

Daily weblog on software and personal productivity recommends downloads, web sites and shortcuts that help you work smarter and save time. A SpokenEdition transforms written content into human-read audio you can listen to anywhere. It's perfect for times when you can't read - while driving, at the gym, doing chores, etc. Find more at www.spokenedition.com

Dairy is a big deal in America. We like our milks and cheeses. We like them so much that they continue to sell despite high levels of lactose intolerance among the general population.

iPhone: Apple’s default camera app is a multifaceted photo capture tool, and simple enough to use. From panoramas to videos to HDR pictures, you can capture a variety of images, but can’t reach that granularity you might want if you’re trying to frame that perfect shot. Photographers looking for more control should check out Halide ($4.99), a great app for dedicated photographers who want controls at their fingertips or amateurs who want to play with the principles of the medium.

If you’ve ever looked at someone’s selfie and thought “They are so vain,” you might be making an unfair assumption. A recent study suggests most selfie-takers aren’t into themselves any more than normal people. The study, led by Brigham Young University researchers and published in Visual Communication Quarterly, found that people take selfies for three primary reasons: they’re either taking them as communicators, as autobiographers, or as self-publicists.

“What’s a bad thing everyone should experience once?” asks Redditor tyga23. And /r/AskReddit users have some great answers. All of these experiences help build empathy, teach a lesson, or help you appreciate the good things in life. Nothing makes you appreciate life itself like a near-death experience, says _Mr_G_. “You wake up exhilarated.

The world of public intellectuals has been replaced by an inferior mob of “thought leaders,” says Daniel Drezner in his new book The Ideas Industry. These thinkers, rather than examining the world as it is, tend to push “big ideas” with unscientific bases that catch the public imagination.