Grokkist Newsletter #68
A steady rhythm of curiosity and care, delivered every two weeks.
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Grokkist Press
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Surprise meMaker's Forge
📰 Journalism After the Dream
A clear-eyed reflection on journalism's mythos and its limits. Sam Kahn grew up chasing the dream of the capital-J Journalist who could unearth injustice and spark reform by the force of well-crafted prose — but traces how that ideal folded into 'the view from nowhere,' the myth of the neu
GroundedSoma Isles
🌳 One Minute Park
Hundreds of one-minute, handheld videos of parks — just that. No narration, no viral hooks, just people showing up to record their local patch of grass and sky. A collective love letter to public space that feels like the kind of internet we once hoped for: idiosyncratic, heartfelt, deeply
WonderMaker's Forge
🐺 Warburg's Werewolf
Aby Warburg is best known as a boundary-breaking art historian who saw visual culture as a long memory across time. But in 1921, during a stay in a psychiatric hospital, he penned an extraordinary document — part confession, part cosmology — grappling with the idea that he might be a werew
Make senseEntangled Vale
🔄 A File Converter That Respects You
Most of us have needed to convert a file and ended up on some sketchy site full of ads, limits and upsells. VERT is different — open-source, private by default, and thoughtfully designed. It handles images, audio, documents and video, with most processing done locally in your browser. No a
ImagineSoma Isles
🦉 Owls in Towels
Another deeply good use of the internet. Wildlife rehabilitators wrap owls in fabric so they can be weighed, treated and fed — otherwise the owls get in a flap. The result: loads of pictures of owls in towels. 'We like to see owls in towels, because it means people are helping owls. No ads
Grokkist Newsletter #67
A steady rhythm of curiosity and care, delivered every two weeks.
Less aloneUnfolding Realm
🌊 Yalom on Approaching Meaning
Psychiatrist Irvin Yalom once suggested up to half of all depression might really be a crisis of meaning — an existential sickness. 'If nothing matters, it should not matter that nothing matters… and yet, somehow, it does.' This piece weaves through philosophers, psychotherapists and poets
Surprise meEntangled Vale
🛵 The Thief Who Became a Celebrity
Zhou Liqi was a poor rural kid who became an internet folk hero after stealing scooters and declaring, mid-arrest, 'It is impossible to work in this life!' — a line that struck a chord with overworked young people quietly 'lying flat.' He became a slacker icon, then tried to turn his accid
Make senseHearthlands
🧠 A Second Brain with a Soul
Most personal-knowledge-management tools feel like digital filing cabinets — efficient but uninspiring, and the workflows end up feeling like a second job. Sublime, created by Sari Azout, is less a filing cabinet than a playground-library-cosmos for your curiosities — somewhere between a p
GroundedSoma Isles
🍂 Land Art: Created, Then Carried Away
Dietmar Voorwold creates temporary outdoor mandalas and sculptural patterns using only what the land offers — stones, sticks, leaves, shells. Nothing added, nothing taken away, just what's already there rearranged with care. Made along the Scottish coastline and elsewhere, his land art is
ImagineMaker's Forge
🌳 Ice Cream Made from Trees
Justin Davies is a woodworker 'here to talk about trees and make stuff out of trees.' Here he steeps shagbark hickory in cream to make ice cream — 'I know cinnamon gets all the attention, but that's the inner bark' — and serves it in a bowl carved from the same tree. The result is a desser