Grokkist Press
Reading Room
Contributors · Writer
The house byline of Grokkist Press: Snackables, the Grokkist letter, and the things we make together.
You'll get the Press emails only when Grokkist Press publishes. Add Danu's monthly letter too if you like.
Make senseHearthlands
An in-depth look at what makes Tokyo's streetscapes so distinctive. Consider the restaurants: Greater Tokyo has 160,000, versus 25,000 in metropolitan New York. The piece credits three things — 'zakkyo' mixed-use buildings, pocket neighbourhoods of low-rise mazes, and lenient bottom-up reg
WonderEntangled Vale
Satcat lets you explore real-time data on satellites, debris and space weather — and the globe view is a sobering reminder of just how much stuff is up there now. One of those delightfully executed projects designed for everyone from the space-curious to high-level industry professionals.
Less aloneHearthlands
A statistician develops a baffling fondness for renting physical DVDs and turns his data-analysis tools on his own behaviour. 'This newfound ritual is mystifying, even to me… I know this practice is quantifiably foolish.' The real takeaway is about decommodifying the self: 'So much of my l
WonderMaker's Forge
Born to artistic, off-grid parents, Althea Crome taught herself to make what she needed — and now knits sculptural garments at more than 80 stitches per inch. To achieve it she forges her own needles from thin surgical steel and works with fine silk thread, incorporating complex imagery an
Bi-weekly newsletter for grokkists who insist on relating to the world with curiosity and care. Each edition contains the latest from the Grokkist Press, events and highlights from our community, and a care package of snackable outside links selected to nurture your curiosity.
Make senseWild Margin
A project to welcome newcomers to the climate movement and offer facts and encouragement to those already engaged but weary. Edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young-Lutunatabua, it gathers hopeful resources from the worldwide climate movement to change the story from despair to possibili
Surprise meSoma Isles
Lichens have long been used to argue for the symbiotic nature of life — that humans can't be thought of as individuals by any biological criteria. Following that thread, this scholarly piece asks: 'if we have never been human — if we are all composites like lichens — then what does this me
Less aloneEntangled Vale
A relatable mini-memoir on how following the news went from a mark of the respectable adult to self-destructive behaviour — 'like pressing a button that caused one to get punched in the face over and over again by a cartoon glove marked DREAD.' Casey Plett suggests anxious people may be se
Make senseEntangled Vale
The History of the 90s podcast traces the invention of the travelling music festival, from Lollapalooza to Lilith Fair — a circus that would roll into town and leave the local consciousness forever altered. An optimistic moment in music that aimed to expand minds, tastes and possibilities,
ImagineMaker's Forge
A juggling enthusiast's deep dive into how juggling has been depicted in animation over the last century — and the question that really fascinates him: not why it's animated unrealistically, but why it's been so consistently unrealistic for 100 years. What starts as mild frustration morphs
Bi-weekly newsletter for grokkists who insist on relating to the world with curiosity and care. Each edition contains the latest from the Grokkist Press, events and highlights from our community, and a care package of snackable outside links selected to nurture your curiosity.
GroundedMaker's Forge
'You have to listen to the metal as you're hitting it, and enjoy the rhythm of the making.' A short tour of Manchester silversmith Ndidi Ekubia's studio and the process and meaning behind her fluid, functional silverware — where craft becomes a kind of dialogue between hand, hammer and mat