🧜♂️✨The Nexialist #0129
merpeople | sereia | latin blood | blue mind theory | water slide | dirty words: community
welcome to another week of cyber-neural interweaving (?), the nexialist
shello! i hope this e-mail finds you well fintastic. i’m back from my delicious break, but as you’ll see, part of my brain is still in vacation mode. waking up and seeing the sea, writing, swimming, sunbathing, reading, being with friends, scrolling, eating delicious food, aperitivo and sleeping. repeat. needless to say, i’m feeling recharged and also happy to be back. this nexialist is an ode to some of the inspiring moments i had during the past week, so i hope you enjoy it. from documentary to pop culture, to goosebump-inducing music, to pleasures, to a dirty words report, it’s all very nexialist for you today.
1 year ago » 🍩✨The Nexialist #0078 : Deep Space | Everything, Everywhere, All at Once | Transitional Space | Meta Morphism | Sophistry | El Dorado | Data as The New Soil, not Oil
2 years ago » 🥚✨The Nexialist #0028 : Lil Nas X's Digital Fluency | Social Constructs | Men in the Media | Relearning Fertilization | Spiral Sperm | Super Industry of the Imaginary | Creative Effectiveness | Mafiosa
🧜♂️merpeople
this was the perfect vacation entertainment, especially in the summer in front of the sea (thank you juan, giacomo and aleks). i have to say we started watching it ironically, and then we were immediately hooked. from the moment i watched the trailer to the fourth and final episode, i was struggling to believe that it was real. i was impressed with the merpeople lingo (shello! fintastic! and merverts, for instance) and their stories, the diversity in their universe (there are even cute older mermaids that have been doing it since the 70s!), and the number of skills one needs to have to be a professional merperson.
brainsparks: community building (tn#64), decoding community (tn#121), never niche enough (#105)
🧜♀️sereia
escalating very quickly, the new song and video from lia clark and pabllo vittar also came out during these vacations, and it’s called sereia (siren, or mermaid). i haven’t watched the new little mermaid yet, but the mermaid content is on fire. both lia and pabllo look amazing, and i was giggling with the lyrics: “if he doesn’t want me a mermaid, now i’ve turned into a piranha.” (piranha, in brazilian slang, is a slut.)
🥲latin blood
of course, all this mermaid talking made me think of this beautiful scene from the netflix series, invisible city, where brazilian folklore is brought to a contemporary plot. camila is an iara (in tupi/brazilian folklore, a beautiful siren that seduces and kill men). covered by marina froes, this version of sangue latino by secos e molhados (1973) gave me chills and teary eyes.
by the way, i just have to share this because it’s perfectly suitable for this edition: in portuguese, we say teary-eyes as olhos marejados. marejar is the sea (mar) as a verb. there’s not a more beautiful way to say your eyes are tearing up.
According to the oral tradition of Brazilian folklore, Iara was a beautiful young indigenous woman in a tribe of patriarchal customs, who developed a talent for warfare and gaining admiration from all of her tribe and respect from her father, the chief of the tribe, but stirred up the envy of her brothers, who decided to sabotage her by murdering her during the night. The legend says Iara knew how to defend herself from the attacks of her brothers and accidentally killed them. Discovered by her father, she took refuge in the woods but was captured and punished for the murders of her brothers by being drowned in the river (some versions orals claim they killed her and dumped her body in the river, blaming the night goddess, Jaci, for her disappearance). Turned into a mermaid upon being saved by the nearby fish on the night of a full moon or by Jaci in some versions, she decided to take revenge on all men by seducing them and drowning them in the river. According to some folkloric accounts, those who survive end up going crazy, or survive with teeth marks on their neck.
🌊blue mind theory
also, this post from atmos appeared in my feed last week. in merpeople, there are a few stories of people finding solace and healing for traumas, addiction or other disorders through swimming. last week i had the privilege to swim every day and enjoy that state of mind.
blue mind refers to the meditative state we fall into when we’re in, under, on or near water. benefits include: elevated feeling of happiness, lower stress and anxiety, lower heart rate, boost in creativity, a feeling of calm. it’s an antidote for our modern world’s stresses and constant overstimulation. a reminder to disconnect from our tech-filled existence and reconnect with nature.
it is based on a 2014 bestseller by marine biologist wallace j. nichols.
💦water slide
adrienne maree brown’s pleasure activism was the perfect reading for this vacation. reading those essays, interviews and poems from different people, exploring topics like sex, love, self-care, drugs, non-monogamy, etc., got me thinking and feeling all sorts of things. among these things, it made me think of janelle' monáe’s new era, the age of pleasure (tn#123), as the embodiment of the book, which is a delight to see. it’s just so inspiring to see subjects that are explored by thinkers, ancestors, theorists and thinkers taking shape as culture, even if somehow fabricated. it shows this was not created in a vacuum, but it resonates with different ideas from different times.
🪢dirty words: community
protein agency’s dirty words reports are always so exciting. i just love the concept of taking these buzzwords that become overused and see
As the “DIRTY WORD” is used and its new meaning proliferates, it gathers cultural baggage and becomes increasingly narrow in definition. We want to take a step back and re-focus on the usage of these words. The intention is not to reach an objective definition of each “DIRTY WORD,” but to explore concept and context to build a foundation for discussion.
in this community issue, there are 40 stunning pages and it’s not heavy on text but quite powerful on the statements. i recommend browsing through it. it is focused on brands (including case studies), but the core of it is about people and how we relate.
REPORT INTENTIONS: As a Community and Agency working in collaboration, we collectively established the following intentions to guide us in the research and production of this report:
[1]To provide tangible advice and resources for building healthier communities and how to actively support them.
[2]To suggest a new (evolving) definition of community that prioritises belonging and co-ownership
[3] To create a space for members to share mutual perspectives and learnings between different communities.
see you next week, piranhas 🐟
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I truly believe innovation comes from bringing improbable areas together, and that’s why I called this project The Nexialist. Some sectors are known to be self-referencing and hermetic. Sometimes teams are on autopilot mode, focused on the daily grind, which hinders innovation. As a Nexialist, I like to burst these bubbles, bringing references from different areas, and maintaining teams inspired and connected to the Zeitgeist.
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