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Make senseSoma IslesSnackables

🐦 Merlin Bird ID

A delightful free app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for identifying birds. Take a picture, record birdsong, or simply answer a few questions, and — based on your location and the date — Merlin taps hundreds of millions of records in the eBird citizen-science database to work out whic

Grokkist Press

12 August 2023 · 1 minute

A surprisingly good free app for identifying and appreciating birds

allaboutbirds.org

A delightful free app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for identifying birds. Take a picture, record birdsong, or simply answer a few questions, and — based on your location and the date — Merlin taps hundreds of millions of records in the eBird citizen-science database to work out which bird you most likely encountered. It works worldwide and did a lovely job of identifying one of my favourite New Zealand birds from the trees outside my home: the tui.

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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

Grokkist Press · 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

Grokkist Press · 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

Grokkist Press · 1 min