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.
9 Nov 2025
Kumiko is the centuries-old Japanese craft of assembling wooden lattice patterns using nothing but precisely cut joints — no nails, no glue, just care and tension. We follow Kurozu Tetsuo, one of the few remaining artisans keeping the tradition alive; as his hands move with practiced calm,
Read the note ↗9 Nov 2025
'All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind.' This piece reimagines deliberative democracy through the ancient Buddhist sangha — an egalitarian monastic community governed by consensus, duty and deep listening. Democracy, in this light, becomes less about aggregating int
Read the note ↗9 Nov 2025
What we repress doesn't disappear; it waits for a stage. Hi Ren is a nine-minute tour de force of performance art that lays bare the inner negotiations of identity and mental health — a dance between breakdown and breakthrough, less about triumph over darkness than intimacy with it. Ren de
Read the note ↗9 Nov 2025
Dylan has built a career on confounding expectations, meeting every uproar with the same unnerving calm — including responding to his Nobel Prize with weeks of silence and a belated speech delivered by a stand-in. Ron Rosenbaum digs into that moment via Dylan's brutal meditation on All Qui
Read the note ↗9 Nov 2025
High-speed photos of dogs trying to catch treats. Some nail it. Others… don't. German photographer Christian Vieler freezes these moments with crisp detail and plenty of character — expressions ranging from focused to confused, delighted to outraged. Pure, uncomplicated joy.
Read the note ↗26 Oct 2025
'People are creatures that rot if they are alone. To be human is to be an animal that needs witnesses.' Friendship, this piece insists, is not natural — it's ritual, risk and occasional miracle. With mordant wit and sacred tenderness it reframes friendship as the art of being interrupted:
Read the note ↗26 Oct 2025
Feel the soft, mournful hum of the Irish pipes — quieter and gentler than their better-known Highland cousins — as a series of players bring them to life. Fragments of performance and tradition are intercut to form a conversation with the instrument itself: its history, its design, and the
Read the note ↗26 Oct 2025
'We refuse to see human remains in the biomedical archive as research objects.' This essay re-maps what we call 'collections' and 'objects', surfacing how many were born in violence and extractive logics — and how access can itself replicate harm. The authors propose refusal as an ethical
Read the note ↗26 Oct 2025
What happens when priceless jewels vanish from one of the world's most visited museums? This piece traces a history of art theft at the Louvre, centred on the 1911 disappearance of the Mona Lisa — a theft that turned a modestly appreciated portrait into the world's most famous painting. It
Read the note ↗26 Oct 2025
It's his birthday. His friends aren't coming. The messages are cheerful, but the room is still empty — until a small creature enters and changes the texture of the day. This earnest little short says a lot with very little: about loneliness, low expectations, and the unexpected warmth of b
Read the note ↗12 Oct 2025
Climate change may be a shared reality, but the stories people tell about it pull in sharply different directions. danah boyd traces how climate discourse has mutated beyond simple denial and despair, fracturing into five worldviews — and how fringe ideologies (end-times prophecy, national
Read the note ↗12 Oct 2025
A podcast hosted by three Mennonite librarians unpacking how Amish, Mennonite and other 'plain' communities are portrayed in pop culture — from bestselling Amish romance novels to reality TV and film. Smart, specific and often funny, their critiques interweave theology, gender, representat
Read the note ↗