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.
10 Feb 2023
Philippa Hardman is someone to follow for anyone interested in instructional design or designing learning experiences more broadly. She gets right to the point, proposes thought-provoking solutions, and shares lots of useful resources. Here she finds that 'a whopping 98.8% of the learning
Read the note ↗27 Jan 2023
Jeremy Caplan's friendly, no-nonsense Wonder Tools newsletter lets you know about the most interesting and useful tools around the internet, with a warm introduction and suggestions for how to get the most out of each. Great examples include his rundowns of Google's Pinpoint toolkit for jo
Read the note ↗27 Jan 2023
A thoughtful read exploring the philosophy and social history of hospitality, and what it means today. Hospitality matters — it's why bread and salt drove so much of the story in Game of Thrones. What restaurants, and the rest of us, can learn from Homer about the sacred bond between host
Read the note ↗27 Jan 2023
As she was getting ready for work, brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor's arm suddenly became paralysed. Then she realised, 'Oh my gosh, I'm having a stroke!' — and her next reaction was, 'This is so cool. How many brain scientists have the chance to study their own brain from the inside out?
Read the note ↗27 Jan 2023
Noclip makes high-quality video-game documentaries, and this one is a fun and loving deep-dive into the history of the RollerCoaster Tycoon series — its creators, its commercial mishaps, its legacy, and why so many people still play the 20-year-old original today.
Read the note ↗13 Jan 2023
If you replace every part of an object piece by piece, is it still the same object? That's the famous Ship of Theseus thought experiment — and in this video, boatbuilder Leo actually restores a 1910 gaff cutter plank by plank, musing on the paradox as he goes. Come for the restoration, sta
Read the note ↗13 Jan 2023
Finish Minecraft — the most popular video game of all time — by defeating the Ender Dragon, and you're rewarded with the End Poem, a quirky, uplifting piece of writing that means a great deal to many people. The story of how it came to be, and who owns it, is even quirkier and, depending o
Read the note ↗13 Jan 2023
A podcast exploring 'purpose-washing' — the gap between what companies say and what they actually do. Each episode reviews a particular company, product or service in depth, scores it on the bullshit meter, then convenes a panel to discuss how the gap could be closed. The episodes on Noom
Read the note ↗13 Jan 2023
CGP Grey makes thoughtful explainer videos on the interaction between humans and systems. His video on how machines learn genuinely helped me understand machine learning, but I have a particular soft spot for his obsessively-prepared deep dives into extremely obscure topics — like this one
Read the note ↗13 Jan 2023
HistoryMaps is a gorgeous mash-up of Wikipedia, maps and timelines: pick an era and watch where and when things actually happened, through 3D maps, images and short videos. Everything from the spread of Buddhism across Asia to a blow-by-blow of WWII. A rabbit hole for the incurably curious
Read the note ↗9 Dec 2022
You might remember deadpan darling Aubrey Plaza from Parks & Recreation, The White Lotus, and all manner of voiceover work. Here she is being delightful while responding to people on social media — worth it just to hear her describe her three types of fans.
Read the note ↗9 Dec 2022
Was it a car or a cat I saw? Neither — it was a palindrome. Master palindromist Barry Duncan creates works of art that run paragraphs long and read the same forward and backward. The secret, he says, is finding the middle: 'the letter on which the palindrome is going to pivot and turn.'
Read the note ↗