👁✨The Nexialist #0026

Discriminator | Cyberpunk in Brazil | Third Eye(lid) | Eye Floaters | Distorted Light Beam | Shygirl's BLU | Sad and Horny | More Rita Lee

Welcome to the second half of 2021 (yes, it is today):

I need to share with you something that has been happening to me. I somehow feel that I’m more aware of the colors around me (I cannot find a name for that, but I would love to learn). After an Artist’s Way task, I noticed that green is one of my favorite colors, the same green from my grandmother’s house in São Paulo. So last Friday I made my first-ever visit to the manicure and got my nails done with that same color, as an experiment (which I loved). It turns out that only this week I noticed that the door of my house and my partner’s house are exactly that same tone. Maybe this means nothing, but I decided to accept it as a message that I’m on the right track, you know?

“The opposite of life is not death, but disenchantment”

- Flecha no Tempo, Luiz Rufino and Luiz Antonio Simas

I was questioning whether I should share this here or not, and this quote appeared somewhere. So maybe that’s what I’m feeling these days, enchanted.

Now, some quickie Nexialinks for you…

🐶Discriminator

If you are going to click on one thing this week, this is what I recommend. Brett Gaylor directed this interactive documentary about facial recognition databases, called Discriminator. In 15 minutes, he manages to explain to us how millions of photos put on Creative Commons on Flickr were used to train Artificial Intelligence programs, many of them used on surveillance. What we saw as a possibility of sharing and remixing, was used for things we couldn’t even imagine at the time. I won’t give you any more spoilers, just press play and get ready for a disturbing and necessary piece of content.

🧛‍♀️Cyberpunk in Brazil

OK, so this just happened, another incredible video coming from Brazil that I’m so proud to share. Duda Beat, from Recife, is our “suffering music” pop queen and I’m in love with the tropical-cyberpunk-vampire-set-in-Chromatica storyline/aesthetics we got here. The title translates as “not even a little bit” talking about someone who is not worth a penny, but still she’s still obsessed about. The production is from Alaska Films, the same from my beloved MODO TURBO, mentioned on the very first Nexialist.

👁Third Eye(lid)

The funny thing is, earlier this week I randomly clicked on this video and it talks exactly about the sideways-closing eye that Duda has in the video above. So, it turns out that that little skin in the corner of our eyes is another vestigial structure from eras ago, an evolutionary residue from that protective skin we see in reptiles. The name: plica semilunaris. Why do we still have them though?

Evolution is an imperfect process. Human beings are the result of millions of years of trial, error, and random chance—and we’re full of evolutionary relics to remind us of that.

🪰Eye Floaters

I remember posting this on Facebook a looong time ago, and I thought I would share it here as well. There’s a name for those things that you (might) see floating in your eyes: Moscas Volantes (Flying Flies). Looks like the name of a cool band if you ask me.

Floaters or eye floaters are sometimes visible deposits within the eye’s vitreous humour ("the vitreous"), which is normally transparent, or between the vitreous and retina. They are also called muscae volitantes (Latin for 'flying flies'), or mouches volantes (from the same phrase in French). Floaters are visible either because of the shadows imperfections cast on the retina, or because of the refraction of light that passes through them and can appear alone or together with several others as a clump in one's visual field. They may appear as spots, threads, or fragments of "cobwebs", which float slowly before the observer's eyes, and move especially in the direction the eyes move. As these objects exist within the eye itself, they are not optical but are entoptic phenomena (caused by the eye itself).

💭Distorted Light Beam

Isn’t it super cool when not only the video but also the lyrics tell some kind of sci-fi story? I have a Youtube playlist with my favorites. As I understand, Bastille’s new song talks about the struggle of people who would rather live their virtual life rather than real life. Sci-fi or sci-fact?

🚙Shygirl’s BLU

Shygirl is one of those artists that feel perfect and powerful in their weirdness. This livestream is such a simple and effective idea and I love the glitchy aesthetics popping up (they’re appearing in quite a few videos I’m sharing today, for some reason.)

Read: Sex-positive pop star Shygirl: ‘I want to affect your equilibrium’ - The Guardian

😢Sad and Horny

Pabllo Vittar did not let us down again and released a super fun album, Batidão Tropical, and a video sequel to the first single Ama Sofre Chora (Love Suffer Cry). Another delightful pride-month present. I need to explain the title: Triste com T. Sad with T. T is Tesão, which I would translate as horniness, which made me think of Emotional Plurality from Nexialist #0015. To my surprise, closed captions are available for you.

🕶More Rita Lee

I am so excited about these remix albums from Rita Lee, as I have mentioned in the Nexialist #0015. Now, there’s a third volume and they keep getting better. Pega Rapaz takes this song from the 80s and makes it even more fabulous. Below is the original video from 87 where she even has a drag-king moment.

See you next week!

❤️If anything made your brain tingle, click like and don't hesitate to share it with the world. It helps The Nexialist to reach more curious minds. See you next week!🦦

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