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Surprise meMaker's ForgeSnackables

👁️ To Be There but Not to Be Seen

A former New York City pickpocket, Wilfred Rose, returns to the subway where he worked, narrating how he did it and what it cost him — how to read a crowd, choreograph attention, pass without notice. Alongside the craft is the other side: arrests, family, loss, and a habit he describes as

Danu Poyner

22 March 2026 · 1 minute

To be there but not to be seen

vimeo.com

A former New York City pickpocket, Wilfred Rose, returns to the subway where he worked, narrating how he did it and what it cost him — how to read a crowd, choreograph attention, pass without notice. Alongside the craft is the other side: arrests, family, loss, and a habit he describes as an addiction.

In good company

Replies from signed-in readers. They open in their own space, so you can sit with the piece first.

Keep reading

Nearby on the shelf.

Surprise meWild Margin

🗞️ The Myth of the Informed Citizen

Nicholas Carr traces a recurring fantasy of modern life: that each new communication technology, from the telegraph to the internet, would produce wiser citizens and healthier democracies — and how each expansion of information instead bred new forms of confusion and overload. At its centr

Danu Poyner · 1 min

GroundedSoma Isles

🎨 Sculpting with Tree Sap and Time

A 15-minute documentary following Kyoto artist Mine Tanigawa as she creates sculptures from urushi lacquer, a material used in Japan for over 7,000 years. Less a 'making of' than a portrait of attention: raw tree sap transformed through layer upon layer of colour, polishing and curing, eac

Danu Poyner · 1 min

GroundedEntangled Vale

👁️ Iris Murdoch and Love as a Way of Seeing

Matthew Crawford revisits Iris Murdoch as a philosopher pushing back against thin, hyper-rational models of human life. For Murdoch, morality isn't mainly abstract reasoning but attention — the difficult practice of seeing the world, other people and oneself more clearly. Her radical claim

Danu Poyner · 1 min