The 2017 kottke.org Holiday Gift Guide
For the past few years, I’ve featured the season’s best gift guides from other sites and pulled out a few things from each that I think you might be interested in. Like I wrote in 2016, this year has not been the easiest for many, making it difficult to muster a festive mood. But if you’re determined to give to your loved ones and to those in need, maybe this guide will help you. Let’s get to it!
Giving to charity and those in need is always first on the list here. Personally, this past year I’ve spread my giving out across the year with monthly recurring donations…mostly local stuff but also the ACLU and other national orgs that are fighting for the rights of women, people of color, and immigrants. If you’re looking for opportunities to give, you can check GiveWell and Charity Navigator so that you don’t end up sending your money down a hole (e.g. The Red Cross). VolunteerMatch has extensive listings of holiday volunteer opportunities in the US and you can directly help those in your community by donating your time and money to the local food shelf or contributing to holiday toy drives. This weekend, the kids and I are heading to the store to select some items for Toys for Tots.
Hands down, the best gift guide for kids is from the excellent The Kid Should See This. Like last year, I had my kids scroll through the list to look for favorites. My 10-year-old son selected this 20g sample of gallium and Space Racers: Make Your Own Paper Rockets. My 8-year-old daughter chose the littleBits Star Wars Droid Inventor Kit and the Kano Pixel Kit. Me? The Kano Computer Kit looks cool as hell.
The Accidental Shop is a collection of products I’ve previously linked to on kottke.org. Lots and lots and lots of good stuff there.
If someone in your life somehow doesn’t have an Instant Pot or an Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker, now is your chance. I used my Instant Pot just the other day (in saute mode) to make this delicious chili. Or if those boxes are already checked, perhaps this small-but-powerful portable pizza oven from Uuni…it’s capable of heating to 932°F and can cook a pizza in 60 seconds!
The sequel to the awesome Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls is out: Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls 2, “featuring the adventures of extraordinary women from Nefertiti to Beyoncé”.
My pal Austin Kleon recommends buying his books (Show Your Work! & Steal Like an Artist) but also this waterproof notepad for taking notes when in-shower inspiration strikes.
Whenever I need to buy something for my home, Wirecutter is always my first (and often only) stop. Their collection of gift guides is characteristically helpful. A couple of things that stood out to me: Tokaido, a Japanese board game with a relaxing concept: “whoever has the chillest vacation wins”, this wireless phone charger from Samsung (which works just fine with my iPhone X), and this Nickelodeon slime-making kit. Oh, and I’m coveting their pick for the best 4K TV…I really want to watch Dunkirk, Blade Runner 2049, Planet Earth II, and Blue Planet II in all their 4K glory at home.
Pixelated tea towels designed by the legendary Susan Kare? Ok, yes. More available here.
The 2017 Engineering Gift Guide from the engineering department at Purdue University is the only guide I’ve found that lists the research papers used when preparing the list (like “Gender Bias in the Purchase of STEM-Related Toys”, a paper presented at the 2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition in Seattle). They recommend Coding Farmers (a board game that teaches kids programming concepts) and Circuit Maze (a puzzle game using electric logic circuits).
From them, a list of gift recommendations from 12 queer influencers. Actress Ali Stroker recommends Bronx Greenmarket Hot Sauce and journalist Jenna Wortham recommends these pennants from goods with positive intent.
No further comment necessary: A Die Hard Christmas, “a delightful Christmas storybook for adults based on the action-packed Die Hard movie” and the Night Before Christmas poem. Pairs well with the authorized Die Hard coloring book.
Some use the holiday as an excuse to let their gifting freak flag fly. The Hidden Valley Ranch mini keg of ranch dressing is out of stock for the holidays but many other Hidden Valley products are available. Someone in your life needs an 8-foot-long gummy python…27 pounds of gummy goodness. And it wouldn’t be the holiday season without a 55-gallon drum of personal lubricant. Buy in bulk and share with friends! Or get a ranch keg and a lube barrel and have a Dip-N-Slide party…just don’t get them mixed up!
One of the things I’m most thankful for this year is that I got to meet Jodi Ettenberg of Legal Nomads in person and get to know her better (instead of just through email and her site). If you follow her site at all, you’ll already know that it’s been on hiatus for the past few months as she deals with a personal health crisis. As expenses related to her medical care mount (there’s a GoFundMe!), if you want to help Jodi out and get a cool gift for someone, check out the Legal Nomads store. I am particularly a fan of these food map posters.
It’s always worth paying attention to what the gadget-loving weirdos at Boing Boing put in their gift guide. This year, they’re featuring this airbag for motorcycle riders, miniature game system Arduboy, and an LP replica of the Voyager Golden Record. And OMG, the Intellivision Flashback console!
Beverage of the year: Male Tears flavored La Croix. Print by Kate Bingaman-Burt via Erika Hall’s gift list.
This holiday season’s worst gift is this fake surveillance camera that “reports bad behavior to Santa”. Santa knowing when you’re naughty or nice was always creepy, but this is some next-level BS. I posted this to Twitter last week though, and I should have not been surprised at how many people were into the idea of making their kids feel watched in order to keep them in line.
I have pals who do/make cool things for sale…like This Book is a Planetarium, Fat Gold, Tattly, Tinybop, Food52, SDR Traveller, Stowaway Cosmetics, Colossal, Google’s AIY Vision Kit, Kingston Stockade FC, Storyworth, Chris Piascik, Hoefler & Co, Wait But Why, Hella Cocktail Co, Storq maternity wear, 20x200, and Field Notes.
Life Haaaaaack: use these baby food freezer storage containers to make big cocktail ice cubes.
Quick hitters: The Millions has a gift guide for readers and writers that (mostly) aren’t books (licorice pipes). The Cup of Jo 2017 Holiday Gift Guide (kids’ knives). Engadget’s guide (NBA Connected Jersey, which interacts with your phone to push you exclusive info and deals, and the 20th anniversary Tamagotchi).
Books! There are tons of gift ideas in my best books of 2017 post. On her gift guide Erika Hall recommends Behave, which she’s been evangelizing all year. One of The Gannet’s top recs is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. National Geographic has a gift list for maps lovers, including The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World. Fast Company recommends Made in North Korea. Master designers Jessica Helfand & Michael Bierut share a list of design and design-ish books at Design Observer (Arbitrary Stupid Goal by Tamara Shopsin).
And gosh if that’s not enough, you can look back at the lists for 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.
Update: A few more guides to add to the mix.
For the 2017 Good Gift Games list on The Morning News, Matthew Baldwin picks some recent board games that make good gifts, like The Fox in the Forest and game-of-the-year winner Kingdomino.
The Christmas Catalog from Tools & Toys is always worth a look. This year’s installment includes The Complete Calvin and Hobbes Box Set, the Teenage Engineering OP-1 Mini Synthesizer, and this cool duct tape keychain (a keychain that dispenses duct tape, not a keychain made out of duct tape).
Quartzy, which is associated with Quartz in a way I do not understand, has a couple of gift guides going. In The Ultimate Gift Guide for True TV Fanatics, they offer gift suggestions based on your favorite TV shows. So, fans of Breaking Bad might like Heisenberg’s Breaking Bad Crystal Meth Bath Salts while GoT viewers might find this Dinner is Coming cutting board amusing. And the other is Five Gift-Giving Philosophies to Help You Find the Perfect Gift. I’m personally a fan of The Fancy Candle Philosophy and The Pasta Class Theory strategies.
Dude, if your loved ones are into weed, The Cannabist has you covered.
The unofficial Goldman Sachs holiday gift guide for 2017 includes a complete Triceratops skull fossil, a $3.5 million Ferrari, and a $1 million global safari to visit some of the most endangered species on the planet.
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