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.
29 Sep 2024
The legend of Wally the Arctic Walrus, who began showing up around the British Isles in 2021 — a long way from home, leaving a wave of destruction by hanging off the backs of yachts and capsizing luxury launches. Nobody's quite sure how he got there, but he became a huge hit with locals, w
Read the note ↗8 Sep 2024
Producer and DJ Mark Ronson explores the cultural impact of the sampling era while demonstrating live examples. Sampling, he argues, isn't about 'hijacking nostalgia wholesale — it's about inserting yourself into the narrative of a song while also pushing that story forward.' A joyful, han
Read the note ↗8 Sep 2024
An estimated 1–4% of people lack a 'mind's eye' entirely — a phenomenon called aphantasia, better understood not as a disorder but as a different way of experiencing the world. Mental imagery runs on a spectrum, from vivid (hyperphantasia) to absent, with endless variations between. 'Aphan
Read the note ↗8 Sep 2024
A 60-second, remarkably information-dense explainer on the '-stans' and their linguistic origins — usually (but not always, e.g. Pakistan) meaning 'land of' a particular ethnicity — that also traces the Indo-European family resemblances to find the cognate of 'stan' hiding in English.
Read the note ↗8 Sep 2024
Photographer James Mollison's panoramic portraits of music fans before and after concerts — Madonna, Oasis, Katy Perry, 50 Cent, Dolly Parton, the Sex Pistols — reveal how a shared devotion shapes a look, a tribe, a self. (His other projects include passport-style photographs of great apes
Read the note ↗25 Aug 2024
A careful guided tour through the degrowth debate. 'Economic growth has pushed the planetary system to its limits, or past them' — and there is no growth on a dead planet. The idea that we could 'decouple' growth from emissions and biodiversity loss is, this argues, at best a distraction a
Read the note ↗25 Aug 2024
The techno-optimist counterpoint to degrowth. Ezra Klein interviews Hannah Ritchie of Our World in Data, who argues for a 'politics of transition' over a 'politics of sacrifice': 'It's only very recently that we have the technologies to generate large amounts of cheap energy without burnin
Read the note ↗25 Aug 2024
A clear, well-researched video essay on how France sustains an independent cinema 'that is bold in terms of market standards and cannot find its financial balance without public assistance.' It walks through how projects get funded, where revenue comes from, and the tensions involved — an
Read the note ↗25 Aug 2024
'The serpent uncoils, a whispering reminder that in the end, all must return to the earth.' A lyrical history of the snake's symbolism through human history — the Garden of Eden, Egyptian and Norse mythology, the Ouroboros, the Oracle at Delphi, the shapeshifting snake-women of Bollywood,
Read the note ↗25 Aug 2024
Illustrator Salma Price-Nell creates intricate ink drawings of trees and natural landscapes, harnessing their aesthetic and metaphorical qualities through delicate linework. In her words: 'I explore the patterns in the billions of years of evolution that have existed in order for us to be
Read the note ↗11 Aug 2024
Long after many considered skateboarding suffocated by corporate concerns, Canadian pro Andy Anderson is introducing the sport to a new generation — 'the essence of what skateboarding is.' This short film shows both his talents and his vulnerabilities: painful-looking crashes and feats of
Read the note ↗11 Aug 2024
Five years before Goethe's Theory of Colours, the English watercolourist Mary Gartside published her own challenge to Newton — modestly framed as a guidebook 'for the ladies I have been called upon to instruct in painting,' one of the few outlets where women's critical thought was tolerate
Read the note ↗