👙✨The Nexialist #0030
2031: A Future World Report | The State of Sustainability | Beyond Silicon Valley | Does Coolness Still Exist? | Skin Hunger | The Clothing Revolution | Classic Nudes | Nipples Poem | Lazy Eye
Welcome to my weekly virtual curiosity cabinet, The Nexialist
I cannot believe it’s already #30! Recently someone asked me why I don’t charge for The Nexialist since Substack offers that possibility. Honestly, I started this as an exercise for myself and ended up putting into practice my creativity, gaze, discipline, and critical thought. It is a commitment that I have with myself and with you, which I dedicate around 1 day of work weekly. And I don’t want to change that, at least for now. I will tell you something though: if you like what you have been seeing here and your project, brand or business needs some ideas or inspiration from outside your bubble, maybe you need a Nexialist to help you out 🙋🏻♂️ You can always send me an e-mail and I would love to offer that as a freelancer. Now, enough of self-promoting…
🌎2031: A Future World Report
Dazed released this beautiful report about the next 10 years, focusing on GenZ. When I say beautiful, I mean I would love to have the printed version that looks like a zine (which doesn’t seem to exist, so I’ll just fantasize about it). Even though I did not read the whole report just yet, the narrative and the insights are quite exciting. Below is the snapshot:
The study was made with desk research, “an online survey completed by 1,600 Gen Zs and millennials across the globe in May 2021, and leading international experts from the worlds of science, technology, art, sustainability, and more.” There are some pretty interesting insights already in the introduction, starting with current trends, cultural tensions, utopian and dystopian future timelines, and the biggest hopes and fears of this generation.
I’ll just leave you with something that confused (and worried) me a little bit: while the death of capitalism gives them hope for the future, Elon Musk appears as an entrepreneur leading our future world. I’m curious about how that future would work, maybe we figure out a more sophisticated tax system? 🤔
🧩The State of Sustainability
It’s the 5th edition of the State of Sustainability Report. At first, I felt it had a more positive outlook bringing relieving graphics and data (which was brow-raising, I must say), but as I progressed I saw that it’s actually filled with insights and urgency. Just the introduction already taught me a lot and I have to comment on the super easy-to-read format they made. You can navigate through the 6 chapters you see above or through topics: Net Zero, Nature, or Social Equity & Justice. You can even download different quotes and graphs in different formats to send/repost. Below, a little bit about where greenwashing is going:
The need for safeguards around sustainable investing is a key finding in this year's report. There are several different types of challenges. Consumers face misleading claims online. Many companies are setting long-dated commitments with limited short-term plans. Studies continue to find major flaws in carbon-offset markets. Combining two of these concerns in one, some companies are even using offsets to claim that fossil fuels are green.
With natural solutions gaining much attention, this is a particularly sensitive area. As one study this year has found, biodiversity markets are part of the solution and a powerful vehicle for change, but they also need to be carefully governed to avoid the risks around excessive financialisation. How to scale and innovate natural solutions — but with safeguards — is a central dilemma we need to solve.
🔭Beyond Silicon Valley
I will not stop sharing Rest of World stuff here because they keep making great content. Here, they focus on 6 tech hubs around the world: Lagos, Recife (Yes! Super proud!), Bengaluru, Shenzhen, Tel Aviv, and Medellín.
Around the world, tech hubs, modeled after Silicon Valley, are emerging. Talent in California is exorbitantly expensive, venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road are increasingly willing to look beyond an 80-kilometer circle for investments, and visa regulations are forcing companies to rethink their operations. Rest of World is taking a deeper look at six tech hubs from around the world that have been growing in power and prominence in recent years. Some have been called the “Silicon Valley of …” their respective countries, but to compare them directly does them an injustice. Each has its own story and a set of unique factors behind its rise. What they all do carry is a measure of the Silicon Valley myth: The idea that, if you want to make it in tech, you need to be there.
😂Does Coolness Still Exist?
The emoji was chosen on purpose, just FYI. As someone who took some coolhunting courses and uses some of these skills at work (and here), it always bugs me when I hear that cool doesn’t exist anymore. I mean, I read the same thing a decade ago and my impression is that coolness has become even more personal, fragmented, and diluted. Before corporations were deciding what’s cool, so diversity was killed. Happily, today, coolness can manifest in so many different ways. I’ll leave two quotes I found quite interesting:
[Gen Z’s] eclecticism is more far-reaching and complicated than ’90s or 2000s young people, even more omnivorous, so it’s harder for corporate executives to market a one-size-fits-all youth culture to, or for so-called cool hunters to narc on them.
In America, we have had 30 Under 30 lists, award shows, and an industry of so-called tastemakers for the same reason: to tell us who or what is objectively important and worthy of our attention and money, hierarchizing the tastes of full-grown adults. But now the “status-symbolic power” of cool that used to facilitate snobbery — as Carl Wilson, the author of Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Bad Taste, calls it — is in dwindling supply because of the internet’s democratization of ideas. The great American cool is nearly dead, slipping out of the grasp of Gen Z, who seem too busy being themselves to care.
🧠Skin Hunger
No, it’s not about cannibalism or zombies, but about “being deprived of even the slightest physical contact during lockdown. And there’s a name for it: skin hunger.” Just a reminder to appreciate and practice hugs more often.
Without touch, humans deteriorate physically and emotionally. “We know from the literature that lack of touch produces very negative consequences for our wellbeing,” says Alberto Gallace, a neuroscientist at the University of Milano-Bicocca. He explains that humans are inherently social creatures; studies have shown that depriving monkeys of physical contact leads to adverse health outcomes. Our brains and nervous systems are designed to make touch a pleasant experience, he says. “Nature designed this sensory modality to increase our feelings of wellbeing in social environments. It’s only present in social animals that need to be together to optimise their chances of survival.”
👙The Clothing Revolution
Ian Gilligan, author of Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory: Linking Evidence, Causes, and Effects brings in an idea I had never thought of before: “What if the need for fabric, not food, in the face of a changing climate is what first tipped humanity towards agriculture?”
🍑Classic Nudes (18+)
Some people think of museums as boring, stuffy or dull. But what if we told you they housed a collection of priceless porn? Welcome to Classic Nudes, Pornhub’s interactive guide to some of the sexiest scenes in history at the world’s most famous museums. Join us as we tour the most respected institutions in western art, guiding you past all the prude paintings and going to directly to the good stuff: representations of the naked body in all its artistic glory. Because porn may not be considered art, but some art can definitely be considered porn.
I definitely have mixed feelings about this one, but I’ll share it with you anyways. Pornhub took inspiration in some nude paintings and invited MySweetApple to turn them into, well, porn videos (they’re even getting sued for it). I will say the art direction and the copywriting are fun, but the sexualization of nudity in art bothers me a bit, especially when already everything is super sexualized. I have to say though, if anyone was going to do this, it would have been Pornhub.
🍐Nipples Poem (NSFW)
I remembered this gem from a few years ago by filmmaker Matt Lambert with a poem (manifesto maybe?) from Alex Holder.
When someone transitions gender
when does their nipple become obscene?
Pre or post-transition
or somewhere in between?
If a guy's move is bigger
than a woman's breast
why are her nipples the ones they protest?
🏋️Obsession
Put this on full screen and enjoy the delightful song and cute video. I have to say James Blake never really caught my attention, until this video that made me shed a tear, have goosebumps, and laugh. I feel old right now, because I just learned who FINNEAS is, and he’s Billie Eilish’s brother and often collaborates with her.
👁Lazy Eye
Lazy eyes, crossed eyes… I’m ashamed to say but I always have a hard time looking at people in the eyes, I never know where to look. This video from James Robinson really captivated me with its authenticity, as he explains exactly what happens and how he sees the world. He even uses his family as subjects, which I found so witty. He also found such a sensitive gaze, calling his eyes Whale Eyes.
[t]his video is also an essay on seeing, in the deeper sense of the word — seeing and being seen, recognition and understanding, sensitivity and compassion, the stuff of meaningful human connection.
In a society that does a lousy job of accommodating the disabled, Mr. Robinson appeals for more acceptance of people who are commonly perceived as different or not normal.
“I don’t have a problem with the way that I see,” he says. “My only problem is with the way that I’m seen.”
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