S1_37: How wonder transforms, Marilyn Monroe's library, and when it rains diamonds

Welcome to Tiny Wonderful Things, Issue #37. Today's featured image is of Krista Kim's large-scale meditative art experience in Times Square in New York that ran all February, where 90 billboards were the temporary home of a slowly shifting gradient of colour. Here's the video version for the full experience.

How wonder can transform us

I used to wear productivity and practicality as a badge of honour, but things have really shifted for me over the past year. Tiny Wonderful Thing is an exercise and experiment in the wholly un-useful. This wonderful essay by professional philosopher Helen De Cruz blew my mind a bit, helping me see why I've become so attached to the impractical—and why you might want to, too. Although...I have a feeling that if you're already here, you were looking for wonder already.

To wonder is to assume an as-if stance, the stance where we cease to take the object we wonder at for granted, and in this way “wonder works to transform the ordinary, which is already recognised, into the extraordinary.” (Ahmed 2014, 179).

Learn how to tell stories with Pixar

Pixar partnered with Khan Academy to create an online course that takes you through all the basics of how their artists make movies. And if that's not up your alley, it still might be fun to go through the first part all about storytelling because as they say, it all starts with a good story.

400+ books from Marilyn Monroe's library

Speaking of stories, it's a little-known but well-documented fact that Marilyn Monroe loves to read (and write: here's some of her unpublished poetry). Here's a book list of the over 400 books found in her personal library.

What do we leave behind when we're gone?

The Nest is an in-person experience that's billed as part immersive theatre, part live video game—and it's built by two Disney Imagineers (the folks who engineer the theme parks). You enter a house that's fully designed and staged, and your goal is to uncover the story of Josie, a dead woman whose life triumphs and tragedies are out on full display. It's happening in Los Angeles so if you're there and looking for something new to do...

A virtual ramen shop? Nope, a personal website!

Jesse Zhou is a management consultant by day and a data scientist at night who just launched a portfolio website that looks like a ramen shop in 3D. Need I say more?