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ImagineSoma IslesSnackables

☠️ 17th-Century Death Roulette

Using real mortality records from London's Dreadful Visitation, see what you might have died from in 1665 — Flux, Rickets, or Griping in the Guts, perhaps. One of dozens of charmingly silly time-wasters on the Whimsical Vole website, which also offers a Celeb Clock, a British Seaside Simul

Danu Poyner

7 April 2024 · 1 minute

17th century death roulette

vole.wtf

Using real mortality records from London's Dreadful Visitation, see what you might have died from in 1665 — Flux, Rickets, or Griping in the Guts, perhaps. One of dozens of charmingly silly time-wasters on the Whimsical Vole website, which also offers a Celeb Clock, a British Seaside Simulator, and a circle-swallowing game about bokeh.

In good company

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Nearby on the shelf.

Surprise meWild Margin

🗞️ The Myth of the Informed Citizen

Nicholas Carr traces a recurring fantasy of modern life: that each new communication technology, from the telegraph to the internet, would produce wiser citizens and healthier democracies — and how each expansion of information instead bred new forms of confusion and overload. At its centr

Danu Poyner · 1 min

GroundedSoma Isles

🎨 Sculpting with Tree Sap and Time

A 15-minute documentary following Kyoto artist Mine Tanigawa as she creates sculptures from urushi lacquer, a material used in Japan for over 7,000 years. Less a 'making of' than a portrait of attention: raw tree sap transformed through layer upon layer of colour, polishing and curing, eac

Danu Poyner · 1 min

GroundedEntangled Vale

👁️ Iris Murdoch and Love as a Way of Seeing

Matthew Crawford revisits Iris Murdoch as a philosopher pushing back against thin, hyper-rational models of human life. For Murdoch, morality isn't mainly abstract reasoning but attention — the difficult practice of seeing the world, other people and oneself more clearly. Her radical claim

Danu Poyner · 1 min