Lazyweb: Tools newsletters?

Is there anyone out there doing a tools recommendations newsletter or site that doesn't feel like a lazy affiliate link skimming operation?

Where I am coming from: I learned about the Leatherman back when the Leatherman company made one product, and you called it "a Leatherman," from a blurb in Whole Earth Review, which was a magazine you would go buy from a newsstand or subscribe to and that did not receive revenue from saying "a Leatherman is this handy folding pliers/knife/screw driver thing." They had other ways of making money to tell you that, and thanks to that arrangement you knew they were probably being sincere about the Leatherman, especially because they didn't seem to be running Leatherman ads. 

(Someone's going to tell me those were paid placements, which will break my heart. For now, though, and because I worked in old school media for a bit, I am comfortable saying it wasn't all payola and advertorial.) 

There are a few web publishing concerns out there that are sort of lineally descended from the Whole Earth Review scene, rinsing-and-repeating the basic "friendly recommendation delivered in a Northern California voice" thing. It is surely only  coincidentally true that they also don't like anything you can get anywhere besides Amazon, and that they must have a small warehouse in the back yard where they can keep the things they feel compelled to laconically suggest might improve your life, because I cannot imagine having a home with so much interesting, useful stuff in it that I could spend the next 40 years sending out a newsletter about it every three or four days. 

Which might have helped me answer my own question, by causing me to wonder for how long a useful tools-n-stuff newsletter could even last without lapsing into some sort of self-parodic affiliate farm. 

Anyhow, any pointers to interesting or useful tool influencers welcome.