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The Grokkist letter Once a month. Danu's letter, what's alive in the community, the Snackables. The Press New writing as it's published, and letters from the editor.

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The Grokkist letter is Danu's monthly letter about the whole Grokkist community: what people are making and thinking about, gatherings coming up, and a handful of Snackables, small good things worth your time.

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Move meSoma IslesSnackables

🌳 A Requiem for a Live Oak

Artist Steve Parker's Funeral for a Tree, made after a 65-year-old live oak in his yard died of oak wilt. He cut the trunk into circular slices and turned them into playable records encoded with birdsong from the species that once roosted in its branches — a slow memorial where wood, air a

Danu Poyner

8 March 2026 · 1 minute

Artist Steve Parker's Funeral for a Tree, made after a 65-year-old live oak in his yard died of oak wilt. He cut the trunk into circular slices and turned them into playable records encoded with birdsong from the species that once roosted in its branches — a slow memorial where wood, air and memory continue the life of the tree in another form.

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Keep reading

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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