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.
30 Jun 2024
Fun isn't something you can just add to an experience — dipping broccoli in chocolate doesn't make it dessert. Fun is inherent in how we relate to certain situations, and to find the play in everyday life we may need to take everyday practices more seriously, not less. An engaging, philoso
Read the note ↗30 Jun 2024
'My favourite form of entertainment is downloading PDFs.' A thoughtful reflection on the difference between capital-R Research and research as play — the latter 'directed by passions and instincts,' 'exuberantly undisciplined or antidisciplinary,' involving 'as much rigor as necessary,' an
Read the note ↗30 Jun 2024
A beautiful introduction to deep ecology through the body itself. 'You are akin to a planet. Within your body are different climates that give rise to different types of ecosystems.' The swampy atmosphere of your armpits hosts an entirely different cadre of life than the caverns of your gu
Read the note ↗30 Jun 2024
When the UK census first started recording people's occupations in the mid-1800s, some job titles — written down without context and handed to an outsider — sound completely ridiculous. A delightful gallery of them: bat printer, butt woman, cullet picker, maiden maker, piano puncher, thurl
Read the note ↗30 Jun 2024
A love letter to the original Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Day Out — and a melancholic lament for the loss of imagination, adventure and mystery. 'When Wallace suggests they go where there's cheese, it's a code for something wonderful. Let's go on an adventure, but let's never stray to
Read the note ↗16 Jun 2024
London mayor Sadiq Khan, one of the most-trolled politicians, discusses the real-world fallout — online and in the streets — from a viral deepfake audio clip of him. The host then speaks to someone who helped spread it ('I apologise, I made a big mistake. I wanted to believe it'), and trac
Read the note ↗16 Jun 2024
An in-depth look at what makes Tokyo's streetscapes so distinctive. Consider the restaurants: Greater Tokyo has 160,000, versus 25,000 in metropolitan New York. The piece credits three things — 'zakkyo' mixed-use buildings, pocket neighbourhoods of low-rise mazes, and lenient bottom-up reg
Read the note ↗16 Jun 2024
Satcat lets you explore real-time data on satellites, debris and space weather — and the globe view is a sobering reminder of just how much stuff is up there now. One of those delightfully executed projects designed for everyone from the space-curious to high-level industry professionals.
Read the note ↗16 Jun 2024
A statistician develops a baffling fondness for renting physical DVDs and turns his data-analysis tools on his own behaviour. 'This newfound ritual is mystifying, even to me… I know this practice is quantifiably foolish.' The real takeaway is about decommodifying the self: 'So much of my l
Read the note ↗16 Jun 2024
Born to artistic, off-grid parents, Althea Crome taught herself to make what she needed — and now knits sculptural garments at more than 80 stitches per inch. To achieve it she forges her own needles from thin surgical steel and works with fine silk thread, incorporating complex imagery an
Read the note ↗2 Jun 2024
A project to welcome newcomers to the climate movement and offer facts and encouragement to those already engaged but weary. Edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young-Lutunatabua, it gathers hopeful resources from the worldwide climate movement to change the story from despair to possibili
Read the note ↗2 Jun 2024
Lichens have long been used to argue for the symbiotic nature of life — that humans can't be thought of as individuals by any biological criteria. Following that thread, this scholarly piece asks: 'if we have never been human — if we are all composites like lichens — then what does this me
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