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.
4 Jun 2023
A 17-minute short film about the roughly 80,000 johatsu-sha — 'evaporated people' — who voluntarily disappear each year in Japan. A mix of interviews with the evaporated themselves ('I was sick of the world but didn't have the courage to die'), the people who care for them ('the lack of se
Read the note ↗4 Jun 2023
Data-journalism site FiveThirtyEight ran an entertainingly unnecessary statistical analysis of the complete works of Bob Ross — the iconic American painter and television host known for his soothing voice and 'happy little trees.' It includes conditional probability and clustering, e.g. on
Read the note ↗4 Jun 2023
An annotated inventory of the relationship between artist and machine that lends historical perspective to today's debates over generative AI — beginning with Ada Lovelace wondering, in the early 1800s, whether Babbage's Analytical Engine might one day produce creative work. There are gene
Read the note ↗4 Jun 2023
An introduction to Van Neistat, the 'Spirited Man' — a creator, fixer, re-tooler and designer who does things for the purity of form, idea or process. This video is about how to safely introduce kids to dangerous things so they can build resilience without having our own fears projected on
Read the note ↗12 May 2023
A gorgeously animated four-minute video on how Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung's frenetic friendship tore itself apart. The world of philosophy has seen its share of feuds — the same creative team made another on Sartre and Camus, once friends and collaborators, and their sharp falling-out ove
Read the note ↗12 May 2023
Until ChatGPT, Kenya had a booming 'contract cheating' industry, where academic writers could make $900–1,200 a month writing essays for US students and sometimes impersonating them in online discussions. That income has plummeted — though, on the plus side, contract cheaters can now save
Read the note ↗12 May 2023
A good rundown of the 'slip-box' note-taking method (I prefer its much cooler-sounding German name, Zettelkasten), designed to help you 'learn for the long run' by taking atomic notes and linking them into a network, so that eventually you build up a treasure of smart, interconnected ideas
Read the note ↗12 May 2023
A pretty, full-featured macOS menu-bar calendar app designed for people who work across multiple time zones. Multiple world clocks, easy-join events with various integrations, and lots of thoughtful niceties you wish came standard with default or third-party calendar apps. One-time purchas
Read the note ↗12 May 2023
A podcast I've been binge-listening to. Historians William Dalrymple and Anita Anand explore the stories, personalities and events of empire across history — lots of well-researched murder and mayhem, and thoughtful navigation of the challenges of colonial legacy today. To see if it's for
Read the note ↗20 Apr 2023
Rhythm is more than music. 'It connects us to the world. It plays a role in listening, in language, in understanding speech in noisy places, in walking, and even in our feelings toward one another.' Rhythm is universal — arguably a basis for consciousness itself. Neuroscientist Nina Kraus'
Read the note ↗20 Apr 2023
Worth bookmarking. School of Thought strives 'to teach the next generation how to think, rather than what to think' — connecting academia with the best of the creative industries, bypassing the bureaucracy of the education system to create engaging critical-thinking resources, free under C
Read the note ↗20 Apr 2023
'A car's interior defines the line between public and private space.' Phil Jung makes photographs of the American social landscape, exploring identity through personal space and habitation. In this collection he shoots through the windscreens of parked cars, reflecting something of 'who we
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