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.
5 May 2024
The BBC gathered vox pops from the public about why they love David Attenborough, then handed them to Aardman Animations, who put the sentiments in the mouths of the animals who appear in his nature documentaries. Very cute — a small, warm tribute to a life spent helping us love the living
Read the note ↗21 Apr 2024
'In the roots of words we find a portal to the mycelial web of invisible connections undergirding our emotional lives' — the way 'sadness' shares a Latin root with 'sated' and once meant a fullness of experience; the way 'holy' shares a root with 'whole.' The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Read the note ↗21 Apr 2024
Pyongyang is a planned city where ideology and architecture are fused — every detail in service to the Kim dynasty. Kim Jong-il is even credited with a treatise, On the Art of Architecture: architects must reject bourgeois ideas; buildings must remain revolutionary. 'It is as if the people
Read the note ↗21 Apr 2024
Atlantic staff writer Jerusalem Demsas and economist Tyler Cowen have a lively, good-faith discussion of three books — Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and Reeves's Of Boys and Men. Much of it circles what kind of society The Dispossessed actually prefers: the anarch
Read the note ↗21 Apr 2024
An appreciative video-essay analysis of the UK comedy classic Peep Show — how it refreshes the 'odd couple' format with its signature inner monologue, how that technique is complemented by its visual style, and how airtight character writing leads to the funniest possible conclusions. Mild
Read the note ↗21 Apr 2024
Exactly what it says: a thread of people who stumbled across their own accidental lookalike in a museum painting or sculpture. Some of them are really, uncannily good — a small, joyful reminder that we've all been here before, in a way.
Read the note ↗7 Apr 2024
Vincent van Gogh and Frida Kahlo receive client feedback on their paintings: 'The client's super happy with the overall direction — they just have a few small suggestions.' Sharp, funny commentary on modern content strategy (ironically made for an advertising competition). 'I'd love to hea
Read the note ↗7 Apr 2024
What makes something mutual aid or collective care rather than capitalist charity? If we ever find ourselves in post-capitalist societies, what could care actually look like there? A tour of radical ideas: 'Believing in people, believing in care amid human conflict and messiness, is crucia
Read the note ↗7 Apr 2024
'Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.' A gentle, example-led walk through Iris Murdoch's idea that attention — not action — is the real path to moral progress. 'Cultivating the right kind of attention builds up structures of value around us
Read the note ↗7 Apr 2024
Using real mortality records from London's Dreadful Visitation, see what you might have died from in 1665 — Flux, Rickets, or Griping in the Guts, perhaps. One of dozens of charmingly silly time-wasters on the Whimsical Vole website, which also offers a Celeb Clock, a British Seaside Simul
Read the note ↗24 Mar 2024
A short animated compilation of people talking about their biggest regrets. Nothing in it will surprise you — but timeless truths stay fresh even when they're not surprising. A small, quietly affecting reminder to live now, made by animation student Amanda Duckworth for a class project.
Read the note ↗24 Mar 2024
'Companies are doing mass layoffs while complaining they can't find enough employees; some workers are min-maxing the system by working multiple full-time jobs at once; others need hours of unpaid overtime at just one…' A How Money Works video essay on the history of the 9-to-5 since its c
Read the note ↗