Tip of the Day

Three Coffee & Email Tips

1) Never ask your wife to help you with the tip. 2) Sending email marked 'important' with a return receipt puts you at the bottom of the list. 3) If you make coffee with ground coffee (filter or French press), put a dash of salt on top of the grounds — it reduces bitterness (and brings prosperity to your family).

Herb-Flavored German Vinegar

Instead of dosing soda or water with apple cider vinegar for gut health or weight loss, use Hengstenberg 13 Fine Herbs flavored German vinegar seasoning. A tablespoon in water (like Topo Chico) is refreshing and delicious. Search 'herb flavored vinegar' on Amazon.

11 Labs AI Sound Effects

Try 11labs.io — an AI voice/sound-effects tool. Its new sound-effects section is fun to play with, especially for the hilarious hallucinations it produces when generating clips. You have to spell things phonetically because it can't pronounce words like 'douchebag'.

Take photos at meetups

Take photos for the memories at all of the No Agenda meetups and share them.

Donate to No Agenda

The only tip today is to donate to No Agenda.

Kimi AI (Chinese chatbot)

Use Kimi (kimi.com, spelled K-I-M-I), the Chinese AI, instead of Perplexity, Grok, or ChatGPT. It's neutral, doesn't inject politics, and is free for up to a year of credits. It can run complex multi-hour research tasks by cloning itself into multiple versions. You can also download it and run it locally on a Ryzen AMD PC. (Just don't ask it about Tiananmen Square or Chinese history.)

Mellbree Patio Misting System

Mellbree preassembled outdoor patio misting/cooling system with eight brass nozzles provides evaporative cooling. About $19 for a 30-footer, comes in various lengths; hook it up to an outside tap and string it wherever you want. Good for patio, backyard, garden, greenhouse, chicken coop, or doghouse.

Mother Wort Tea

Drink mother wort tea for calming and healing the heart.

Blueland Toilet Bowl Cleaner Tablets

Use Blueland toilet bowl cleaner tablets — three-in-one plastic-free tablets you drop in the toilet bowl; they foam/bubble up and, with a brush, do an amazing job cleaning, better than Ajax or Comet, with no microplastics down the drain. Especially handy in days of explosive diarrhea.

Kratax Rechargeable Lithium AAA Batteries

Buy Kratax 3700 milliwatt-hour AAA rechargeable lithium batteries with charger — an 8-pack for $23. Rated for up to 2000 recharge cycles, so after about four charges the per-battery cost matches a cheap alkaline and effectively becomes nearly free over the battery's life.

Electric Wax Seal Warmer

A knights-only tip: use an electric wax seal warmer kit (about $8.98 on Amazon) so you don't have to mess around with a lighter dripping and burning the wax. It comes with tweezers, a tool, a round pouring mold, and extra melting wax seal sticks and beads — great for stamping your knight's ring seal.

Magriffin RFID Blocking Card

The Magriffin RFID blocking card (Amazon's Choice) is a super-thin credit-card-sized card with RFID circuitry that blocks anyone trying to capture and steal your RFID information. It blocks for four inches in either direction, covering an entire wallet, and will also block a passport at the same RFID frequency. Three cards for about $15.

Ferrari-Carano Chardonnay at Costco

A well-made, unobtrusive 2024 Ferrari-Carano Sonoma County Chardonnay — a crisp, clean style good even for 'anything but Chardonnay' drinkers — available at Costco for $15.98.

AI Celebrity Voice Generator

Use elontalks.com to generate celebrity voice/video clips (Elon Musk, Trump, Zuckerberg, Tom Cruise, Snoop Dogg, etc.) for free with unlimited clips — make your own and share them to promote the show.

Pure Gas Stations

Before driving for July 4th, use pure-gas.org to find gas stations that sell ethanol-free gasoline. Ethanol (often 10% in blends) can be dangerous to certain hoses and is not good for some cars; pure gasoline is better for freaky gas people. Note that E85 flex-fuel cars can benefit from cheap 85% ethanol where available.

Probiotic Fiber Gummies

John recommends Totaria 9-in-1 probiotic fiber gummies (with 5 billion CFU bacillus coagulans, psyllium husk, inulin) for gut health and more regular, firmer poops. Available on Amazon. He also mentions Haribo Gold gummies as an alternative worth checking the reviews on.

Motorized Cardboard Box Cutter

A motorized cardboard box cutter (an assisted blade, not a saw) plows through cardboard fast. There are ~40 nearly identical Chinese versions ranging $9-$50 — get the cheapest one with the most powerful battery. John got the Keylan 3000/3300 milliamp hour version for ~$20. Takes a bit more force than the ads suggest, but works well for cutting boxes into strips.

Brilliant Green antiseptic

Instead of iodine, Mercurochrome, Neosporin or Bactine, use 'the green stuff' — a dye called Brilliant Green commonly used in Eastern Europe. It kills all gram-positive bacteria and funguses. The drawback is it's a green dye that takes about a month to wear off. Available on Amazon and elsewhere.

DuraSack contractor cleanup bags

Regular garbage bags tear and get poked through. Get DuraSack woven contractor cleanup bags instead — they're woven so things don't poke through, hold up to 110 pounds, and can be reused. A 16-pack box runs about $19.

Become an elevator mechanic

The highest-paid, always-in-demand skilled trade almost nobody talks about is elevator mechanic. Highest pay by far, always in demand no matter how the economy is doing. Elevator unions are run like mafia families and can be hard to get into, but outsiders do get in.

No Salt Badia Seasoning

Use the Badia 'no added salt' seasoning version (not the regular Badia, which is full of salt) — a clarification on a prior tip.

Freeze-Dried Blueberries Snack

Freeze-dried blueberries are the best snack John has found in a decade — crunchy like corn pops, low in sugar/sodium/potassium, high antioxidants. Get them at Trader Joe's or from ~30 vendors on Amazon (lots of freeze-dried fruit varieties available).

Badia Complete Seasoning

For people on a low/no salt diet, use Badia Sazón Completa (No Added Salt) as an all-purpose seasoning. Buy the biggest container you can find at a Mexican mercado. It has garlic, onion, cinnamon and other spices, and is kosher.

Screw Lube for Wood Screws

Use Screw Lube wood screw lubricant from Half Blind Rabbits (veteran-owned) — a 2-ounce container, better than beeswax or soap for driving long screws into wood. About $9 on Amazon.

Stirrup Hoe (Action Hoe)

Get a stirrup hoe, also called an action hoe — the greatest weeding tool you can imagine. Available at Home Depot and other big hardware stores. Husky makes a good 54-inch wood handle action hoe with grip. About $25 max.

Microsoft PowerToys

Microsoft PowerToys is a free bundle of Windows utilities including advanced cut and paste, color pickers, crop and lock, mouse without borders, host file editor, image resizer, keyboard manager (easy way to remap a keyboard), light switch (auto switch between light/dark themes), and PowerToys Run. Search Google for 'PowerToys from Microsoft' to find it.

Costco Pinot Grigio

Costco's Kirkland Signature Friuli Grave Pinot Grigio 2024 (product of Italy) is sold for $4.99 a bottle at some Costcos ($5.99 up north). Decant it into a carafe to hide the Kirkland label. Also recommended: Italo Cescon Pinot Grigio 2024 at Costco for $12, which comes with a piece of grape vine tied to the bottle.

Kirkland Signature Chablis

2023 Kirkland Signature Chablis from Costco — winemaker Pierre Brissy. A Chardonnay from the northernmost part of Burgundy. Not the typical flinty, steely, acidic Chablis — it's a soft, gorgeous wine. Recommended especially for people who hate California Chardonnays.

Ventoy bootable USB

Use Ventoy to create bootable USB drives — drop an ISO file on it and boot your whole system from USB on any computer. Handy for traveling or having a backup system.

Kirkland Bordeaux Blanc 2024

Kirkland 2024 Bordeaux Blanc from Costco — a refreshing, juicy white wine (Chateau Petite Freelon) perfect for the ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) crowd. About $6.99 at Costco, scored 91 points by one reviewer and 89 by the Costco wine blog.

Char-Griller Pro Deluxe Charcoal Grill

Buy the Char-Griller Pro Deluxe Charcoal Grill — 850 sq inch cooking surface with cast iron grates (not the cheesy wire ones). Can be used as a smoker by pushing coals to one side. Around $200 at Lowe's (supposedly exclusive). Home Depot has the equivalent called the Blazer (model ~2130) currently on sale for $149. If you order direct from Char-Griller's website, sign up for the newsletter to get free shipping.

McMaster.com for tools and supplies

McMaster.com is an enormous online catalog with everything from hand tools, vice grips, hard hats, plumbing supplies, toilets, urinals, filters, wires, and more — like Home Depot on steroids but on a website and easy to use.

Scrubbing Bubbles Foaming Bleach for Countertops

Mimi uses Scrubbing Bubbles foaming bleach bathroom and shower cleaner to clean countertops. Spray it on, let it sit for thirty minutes, then wipe off with a paper towel and rinse. It takes away all stains. Wear old clothing and kitchen gloves. Not recommended for marble (it would etch it), but good for tile and Corian. May take the color out of colored grout, but good for tough cleaning.

No Tip This Show

John's tip of the day was postponed — Mimi's usual cleaning-product tip got lost in email and wasn't provided, and John was busy having his fluids drained, so the tip is deferred to the next show.

Spatchcocked Turkey

Try cooking a spatchcocked turkey for Thanksgiving — the turkey is cut along the bottom and split open so it lies flat (butterflied), then cooked on a grill or in the oven.

Crash a predictive dialer

When you pick up a telemarketing/spam call and hear the few seconds of dead air before someone speaks, hit the pound key three times quickly (beep beep beep). It crashes the predictive dialer, knocks them offline, and it takes about twenty minutes to come back.

Propaganda by Jacques Ellul

Read Jacques Ellul's classic book 'Propaganda' — it explains how propaganda requires isolating people into cocoons where they only hear their own group's news, which is exactly what's happening today with algorithmic news feeds.

Pi-hole ad blocker

Install Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi to block ads and tracking at the network level — blocks about 30% of traffic and speeds up your web experience, especially with Google Chrome's upcoming extension API changes that will cripple third-party ad blockers.

Track Hillary's plane by call sign

You can track Hillary Clinton's campaign plane (operated by Extra Airways) on flight-tracker websites like FlightAware using its call sign. The call sign was changed mid-show from CXP881 (Charlie X-ray Papa 881) to EAL3003 (Echo Alpha Lima 3003).

Left-Foot Braking

Adam recommends left-foot braking when driving, especially in neighborhoods, for safety and quicker reaction.

Standing Desks for Kids

Consider standing desks (with a fidget bar) for classrooms and home — they help kids and adults stay active and focused; ask for one for Christmas.

Killing Ed Documentary

Watch Mark Hall's documentary 'Killing Ed' about charter schools in America and Fethullah Gulen's network of 500+ Gulen-run charter schools (including ~150 Harmony schools in Texas).