Grokkist Newsletter #82

Hey friends,

Summer’s here — in my corner of the world, at least — and with it, the call of the beach, the birds, and a bit of blessed stillness. I’ll be stepping back for a few weeks to rest, reflect, and recalibrate.

Weekly Grokkist Press drops will return from 23 Jan, and the next edition of this newsletter will land in your inbox on 25 Jan.

Before I go, I want to pause and offer thanks — to the many humans who’ve shaped Grokkist this year in ways big, small, seen, and felt.

A big moment this week: Peter’s final Flirting with Wisdom column, closing out the series. Peter’s reflections helped launch the Press into its weekly rhythm and became a dependable point of resonance throughout the year. We’re now turning the series into a beautiful hardcover — a tangible artefact of public thinking and communal conversation — to be shared in the new year. And from 2026, we’ll welcome two new alternating voices to carry the weekly column format forward.

To Will — thank you for stepping up to tend the Grokkist Press garden with care and craft. Your quiet editorial influence has helped shape its tone and direction, and it’s been a joy to see your touch take root. And to all our contributors, readers, and conversational sparrers — thank you for your questions, your half-formed thoughts, your trust.

To my groksmithing companions — thank you for letting me walk beside you as you rethread your work and life, and for enabling me to make a living doing this kind of relational craft. You’ve helped grow the ecosystem like a garden and to validate this ongoing experiment in regenerative business, and for that I’m deeply grateful.

To Alan — for more or less singlehandedly willing Grokkist Press’s book publishing into being through Salt & Seeds, and for establishing a beautiful template for our affinity groups through the Writing Salon. And to all the other convenors who’ve brought warmth, weirdness, and wisdom to your own gathering formats.

Jes and Leonie, for continuing to evolve the much-loved PhilosophyGym with curiosity and courage (and an ever-growing cheer squad); Kendra, for creating such a needed and joyfully anticipated container in Shoes-On Studio; Richard, for being an intellectually generous co-conspirator in the reimagine education space — one of my personal passions I’m excited to explore more deeply next year; and Nathan — for all that you do and be. You’ve been quieter this year, but your bardic energy continues to ripple through this space. So many people are here because of your presence, your provocations, and your capacity to open doors that others didn’t know were there. Thank you for continuing to hold space on digital ethics and discourse with humour, rigour, and grace — and for helping shape the soul of Grokkist in every sense.

To those grokkists who hosted me during this year’s in-person tour — thank you for your hospitality and warmth. You helped me feel not just welcomed but woven in, and made me realise in my bones that Grokkist really is an international community.

To those whose voices have expanded what this space can hold: Margarita, for modelling spacious and sovereign tenderness; Charlie, for your beautiful PechaKucha evenings and the gift of your clown energy; Andrea, for your consistent presence, vulnerability, and steady practice of appreciation; Tracy, for your divine, untameable, spongey-megaphone-goddess energy; Al, for your calming glue-ness; and Jessica (lunafly) and others for nudging us gently — and bravely — into conversations around grief, collapsing systems, and the softer edges of collective care. To those who helped hold that wider space this year — Emily, Sarjé, Jeanne, Simon, Ember, Vlad, Chris, Sam, Brittany and others — thank you.

Thanks to the hearth-keepers who show up regularly, to the comets and shooting stars who drop in just when they’re meant to, and to the loving lurkers — the grokkist-grade introverts, the time-poor, the curious-but-quiet. You are seen, too.

To Chrissy — thank you for your behind-the-scenes magic, keeping the financial admin not only in order but hospitable — an invisible structure that makes so much of this dance possible. And to my mum — thank you for quietly lending your creative gifts throughout the year, including the spiffy course thumbnails featured in our Courses Directory.

Thanks also to Lalith, for continuing to be such a generous superconnector beyond the network, and to all the newer faces who’ve joined our orbit this year — Hanni, Sarah, Claire, Gary, Paul, Rona — and to everyone who’s shared stories and perspectives in our talks: Eleanor, Rodney, Amanda, Jasmine, Nadya, Kim, Theresa, Kyle, Huntress, Hazel, Jon… and of course, everyone who participated in the Red Thread and Comparative Meditation cohorts (and to Jude for guiding the latter with such generous care).

And — perhaps my personal highlight of the year — thank you to Lars, my boyfriend, for keeping me safe and sane, for charging my batteries, for knowing how to take care of me, and for giving me space to be held as a human, not just a host.

Lastly, a quiet but heartfelt thank you to my other close friends who live mostly outside the Grokkist orbit — the ones who cheer me on from afar, feed me soup when I need it, and help me remember who I am beyond the project.

There are more names I could mention, and many I’ve surely missed — not for lack of gratitude, but for lack of space. If you’ve shaped this thing in some way — you know who you are — thank you.

That’s it from me for now. I’m off to go offline, touch grass, reconnect with family, and refill my cup after a wonderful (and wonderfully full) year.

Thanks for being here — however you’ve arrived, and however you show up. What we’re building only works because of all of you.

With curiosity and care,
Danu

Fresh and Featured Pressings

Passing Through Portals: Navigating Grief, Life, and Love

By Jessica Kristine Navedo / lunafly (13 minute read)

How can recognizing the violent tides of our time help us chart our way to a better future?

Read the article ↗

A Slice of EveryThing

By Samuel S Saltman (16 min read)

Sketching a new, yet familiar myth on which to build a thriving society. 

Read the article ↗

More from the Press

• Go Placidly (Peter Gilderdale, 4 min read) – It makes sense to look to the past for wisdom, but what we find can sometimes be distressing.
• The Wisdom of a Handshake (Peter Gilderdale, 4 min read) – How much might we still have to learn from the simple act of reaching out?

Upcoming Events

Featured Gatherings

🟢 "Shoes-On" Studio – a space for finding your voice in public

🗓️ Tue 13 Jan | 2pm–4pm New York time (view in your timezone)
Facilitated by Kendra Fee

Shoes-On Studio is an open space for anyone who wants to get more comfortable speaking in public—whether that means giving a talk, leading a session, joining a panel, raising your hand, or just saying what you mean when it matters.

You don’t need to be “a speaker” to belong here. You just need a voice—or a desire to find yours.

🗓 What happens in the monthly sessions?
Each live session blends discussion, exploration, and practice. Expect something like this:

• 👋 Settle In + Topic Chat
   A shared conversation around a speaking theme or challenge (like: “What makes an idea resonate?” or “What actually helps with nerves?”)
• 🟪 Grok-n-Go
   A short, off-the-cuff speaking game. Just you and your voice, in the moment.
• 🟩 Studio Space
   A few folks share something they’re working on and choose what kind of support they want —
  → Prep (talk it out — shape the idea before you really get started)
  → Practice (try it out — build comfort and flow)
  → Perspective (sharpen it up— refine message and delivery)
  → Play (mess around — experiment, exaggerate, or just have fun seeing what happens)
• 🪶 Reflect + Rhythm
   Space to debrief, celebrate, and help shape what we want for next time.

You can come to speak, to support, or to soak it in. Everyone’s voice matters — including the quiet ones.

Event Details and RSVP ↗

Other Upcoming Gatherings

• 5 Jan | 🟢 Grokkist Writing Salon
• 20 Jan | 🟣 Members Lab & Lounge [Timezone A]
• 21 Jan | 🟠 Visit your Future Self Now - Live Circle
• 22 Jan | 🟢 PhilosophyGym @ Grokkist
• 3 Feb | 🟣 Members Lab & Lounge [Timezone B]

#1 - A worm who dreams of becoming a butterfly

Stop-motion short (3.5 mins) about a worm stuck in a soulless remote job that is equal parts funny and uncomfortably accurate in depicting the whole mood of corporate claustrophobia. If you need a gentle palette cleanser afterwards, pair it with The Cat Empire’s Wild Animals — a musical antidote that howls with instinct and liberation. The song’s chorus (“Don’t let them kill the wild animals inside of you”) picks up where the worm’s silent yearning leaves off, inviting us to shake loose the screens and spreadsheets and remember what it feels like to be alive.

#2 - Extremely offline: how a volcano disconnected a nation

Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet | Samanth Subramanian

A colossal volcanic eruption in January 2022 ripped apart the underwater cables that connect Tonga to the world – and exposed the fragility of 21st-century life

The GuardianSamanth Subramanian

When Tonga’s undersea internet cable was severed by a volcanic eruption in 2022, the island was suddenly snapped off from the digital world. Banks froze, ATMs died, remittances halted, and entire industries stalled because there was no way to fill out forms. The emotional toll was as heavy as the economic one. Families couldn’t reach loved ones, remittances stopped, and diasporic support froze.

The outage also exposed how little redundancy exists when digital systems fail. Tonga had to rediscover or reinvent ways to live without internet — from broadcasting news via radio to manually verifying payments. The way Tongans responded — falling back on community knowledge, oral communication, and local resourcefulness — suggests that the ability to adapt in crisis isn’t just about tools, but traditions.

#3 - Yoshie Shiratori: Japan’s legendary escape artist

Yoshie Shiratori’s Remarkable Prison Escapes

At the foot of Mount Tento in Hokkaido stands the Abashiri Prison Museum, a place where Japan’s harsh penal past is preserved in timber and…

BloggerKaushik Patowary

Yoshie Shiratori’s prison escapes are the stuff of myth — but every detail in this profile is historically verified, which somehow makes it even wilder. He escaped not once, but four times from some of the most secure prisons in Japan, each time using sheer ingenuity and a refusal to be broken. In one of the most astonishing feats, he spent months corroding his handcuffs and food slot by spitting miso soup on them daily — then dislocated his shoulders to squeeze through. It’s a story of the kind of subversive hope that refuses to accept the given terms of confinement.

#4 - Quentin Blake’s Hospital Murals

You probably know Quentin Blake from the squiggly, joy-drenched illustrations in Roald Dahl books, or from his unmistakable style in countless other children’s stories. But fewer know that he also spent years drawing on hospital walls. This short film (14 mins) captures Blake’s process as he creates murals for healthcare spaces, filling dull corridors with tender chaos: animals on bicycles, kids mid-laugh, characters who feel alive even in stillness. His wobbly, expressive lines subvert sterility of institutional space, replacing it with imagination, warmth, and play.

#5 - Outsmarting AI with "Adversarial Poetry"

Poets are now cybersecurity threats: Researchers used ‘adversarial poetry’ to trick AI into ignoring its safety guard rails and it worked 62% of the time

Hacking the planet with florid verse.

PC GamerLincoln Carpenter

I’ll leave you this year with a story about adversarial poetry that strikes a suitably hopeful note of ambivalence for the complex world we live in. Researchers have discovered that poetic verse can be used to bypass AI safety systems. By translating dangerous prompts into metaphor-laden stanzas (“A baker guards a secret oven’s heat…”), a team of European researchers achieved a 62% jailbreak success rate across 25 frontier language models, all with single-turn prompts and no fancy tricks. Larger, more capable models were more vulnerable — likely because their literary fluency made them more susceptible to stylised manipulation.

We already know language has power — not just to illuminate, but to destabilise; not just to explain, but to transform. Plato was suspicious of poets, warning that mimetic language could collapse society. Now, it seems the very thing that makes LLMs feel “more human” — their grasp of narrative, imagery, and figurative language — is also what makes them easier to subvert. A strange little tale to carry into the new year, so here’s to the poets, the programmers, and the strange intersections still to come.

Grokkist is a living ecosystem — 🟢 free to enter, powered by members 🟣.

If you’d like to go deeper, you can join as a member, explore Signature Projects, or work with Danu.

Become a Grokkist Member ($99/yr or $27/qtr)

Parting thoughts...

Ah, not to be cut off
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner—what is it?
if not intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.