🥭✨The Nexialist #0106

META trending trends: 2023 | tech trends | centaur mindset | enshittification lifecycle | mangoes as a propaganda tool | LLYLM | interlingua | santas almas benditas

Feb 02, 2023

welcome to another week of sweet, juicy brainsparking content, The Nexialist

hello, folks! i hope this e-mail finds you also sweet and juicy! this week the nexialist is a bit more reading-heavy, so take your time or save those articles/reports for later. read until the end for some delicious music. são paulo has been treating me well and just being here has been healing something inside me. i missed it and the people here more than i thought. now… enjoy this week’s content 🫀✨

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📈META trending trends: 2023

Matt Klein’s meta-trending trends report is one of these things i wait for the whole year, so it’s always an event when it comes out. in the midst of the flood of trend reports coming from every corner of the world, this report takes 50+ of the most relevant reports and checks for similarities, grouping them into 16 trends. it is great because it is cross-cutting, it has a clear methodology, and it lets us see where it’s coming from the past year and where it’s going.

also, the commentary on the number of reports that come out every year: what is original? what is the methodology behind these reports? what happened to last year’s trends? i keep it on my favorites, as it is a great starting point for my projects and my work: it’s a way to synthesize many reports while also inviting us to question what they are not showing from the fringe. read the whole thing, it’s worth it.

Read: The META Trending Trends: 2023 - by Matt Klein - ZINE

🦾tech trends

visual capitalist brought us a visualization from CB insights tech trends report, which is based on global tech investment and can be a great thermometer for what is going on in this segment. you can read more about it (and 3 more detailed trends) here.

🤖centaur mindset

michell zappa, one of the great minds behing envisioning (who i work with), wrote a thought piece on “using intelligent technologies responsibly.” it is a constructive and thoughtful gem in the middle of this generative-AI takeover discussion. some great questions are brought in an effort to help people and companies start with the right questions when developing AI strategies. it’s worth the read.

Generative AI tools took off like wildfire in 2022 and are likely to keep growing in relevance and disruptive potential in 2023. More organizations will dedicate resources towards developing in-house AI strategies, and more investment is likely to be allocated towards R&D than ever before. What does this mean for leaders who are responsible for acquiring human and technological resources towards innovative, sustainable projects?

read: Using intelligent technologies responsibly - Michell Zappa

💩enshittification lifecycle

cory doctorow’s got me with the new word: enshittification. not only because it’s funny and catchy but because we’ve seen this phenomenon happening enough times to know it is absolutely true. this is a must-read if you work with social media/content/marketing… in fact, if you just use social media you should read this. it’s been on my mind since i read it.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
…
This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.

read: tiktok’s enshittification by cory doctorow

🥭mangoes as a propaganda tool

one thing i was waiting for when i arrived in brazil: to eat mangoes. they are the sweetest and juiciest here. i guess my algorithm saw me shedding a tear when i ate the first one, because this showed up in my feed: how mangoes turned into a propaganda tool in china. i mean, i would have fallen for it. also, the animation is just so mesmerizing to watch.

Dig into the era of China’s Cultural Revolution, and how communist leader Mao Zedong used mangoes as a propaganda tool. In August 1968, factory workers overheard news of a mandatory meeting. Whispered rumors described shipments of a gift from the country’s Communist leader, Chairman Mao Zedong. And sure enough, managers soon distributed a gift to every factory worker– a glass box encasing a golden wax replica of a mango. What was the meaning behind this unusual offering? Vivian Jiang investigates. Lesson by Vivian Jiang, directed by Kayu Leung.

🌹LLYLM

rosalía’s new song is so touching and also quite representative of the post-truth era: lie like you love me, a story about faking (love) until you make it (or not). i love that it is carnaval in the song, and the spanish/english exchange. stream!

👅interlingua

thank you, juan, for sharing this. i had started following carlos, a linguist and interlingua expert a few weeks ago, and i was SO confused: what language was he speaking? because i could understand everything. well, turns out it’s called interlingua: a language created by scholars and linguists in the 50s, and mixes romance languages with english (and even german and russian), with the goal to create an easy universal language that a lot of people could understand. it has simple grammar, no gender and almost no irregular conjugations, for instance, which makes it easy to understand/learn. can you understand it?

🙏🏻santas almas benditas

just press play and you’ll thank me later. this has been on repeat in my spotify. luedji luna has appeared here with her latest album, and i’m very happy to hear her collab with french producer yuksek. the original song was immortalized by Leci Brandão in 1978. the lyrics are a gratitude prayer and deeply resonate with this time i’m enjoying in brazil. dance with me <3

see you next week, sweet mangoes 🥭✨

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