Grokkist Press
Reading Room
Snackables
Things we found elsewhere and pass on: a film, a tool, an essay, a corner of the old internet. A few lines on why, then off you go. New ones join the shelf as we find them, newest first.
8 Dec 2024
Melbourne's Urban Forest project started with a straightforward goal: assign email addresses to 70,000 city trees so residents could report damage. Instead it became a global love-letter exchange — thousands of musings, confessions and poems addressed to the trees. A reminder that even ami
Read the note ↗24 Nov 2024
How did a 19th-century medical wonder become the infamous illicit substance we know today? This traces cocaine's evolution from revolutionary local anaesthetic to social pariah — a time when it was sold over the counter in nasal sprays and syrups for 'Brain Fag.' Packed with surreal period
Read the note ↗24 Nov 2024
Ever wondered how filmmakers make colour feel so alive on screen? This video unravels how cinematographers manipulate colour to create mood and meaning — from lighting gels and white balance to Max Planck's work on blackbody radiation. It shows how colour shapes storytelling, with examples
Read the note ↗24 Nov 2024
For anyone who loves thinking about systems change, Donella Meadows' Leverage Points is a classic. Her core argument: systems are governed by interconnected structures, rules and feedback loops, and understanding these is crucial to finding where small, strategic interventions produce outs
Read the note ↗24 Nov 2024
Seismic Explorer visualises tectonic activity over time using earthquake data — magnitude, depth, location, time. You can watch earthquakes play out on a map, filter by magnitude, and overlay tectonic plate boundaries to see how everything connects. The standout is the 3D cross-section: dr
Read the note ↗24 Nov 2024
Jon Batiste is as multidimensional as musicians come — from second-line parades in New Orleans to scoring Pixar's Soul. Hearing Green Day's 'Holiday' for the first time (though he faintly recalls it from an elevator), he crafts an impromptu piano accompaniment, blending jazz sensibilities
Read the note ↗10 Nov 2024
Iulia Bochis is a Romanian illustrator whose art is inspired by the magic of life and the human spark of love and creativity. Her illustrated affirmations are a calming salve for your scrolling habit — gentle, tender images that might be exactly what your feed needs right now.
Read the note ↗10 Nov 2024
A perspective on productivity that shifts away from rigid, task-oriented approaches toward cultivating 'desire paths' that honour both process and purpose. Rather than 'grit it out' or 'wait for inspiration,' River Kenna proposes a 'soul-making' productivity that treats creativity as an ap
Read the note ↗10 Nov 2024
A fun, spiky challenge to our relationship with time and efficiency. Rory Sutherland's killer example: what if the brief for High Speed 2 had gone to Disney instead of engineering firms? 'They'd have said: the right question is how do we make the journey between London and Manchester so en
Read the note ↗10 Nov 2024
Terroir is the deep, unrepeatable alchemy between a place's soil, climate and culture that shapes what grows there into something unmistakably of that place. Usually associated with wine and coffee, but does it apply to food? The Food Chain looks at the science, speaking with a honey exper
Read the note ↗10 Nov 2024
In a world that is so loud, a little shrew searches for Hope as she makes her way across a bombed-out city. A four-minute animated film written, directed and scored by Kate Bush for a charity supporting children in war zones. If you're out there helplessly hoping and somewhat numb to your
Read the note ↗27 Oct 2024
'Complaining about the work ethic of the next generation is a time-worn tradition.' Anne Helen Petersen argues that the critique of younger generations is really a sublimated critique of a generation's own parenting: no one wants to admit that the decisions they made produced the workers t
Read the note ↗