🌁✨The Nexialist #0154

2023, in 7 minutes | flying river | photo-multigraphs | 24 universal character strength | femenine | the boy and the heron | fallen leaves

Jan 04, 2024

welcome to the fourth year of weekly ~~brainsparkling~~ brainsparking compilations, the nexialist

hello, and i hope this e-mail finds you beyond any hangover. in brazil, 24 is the gay number (tn#24), so i can’t help but hope for a gay and fabulous 2024.

these holidays i’ve been resting but also going a bit insane organizing my digital life and trying to organize my stuff using tiago forte’s second brain/PARA method (tn#132) —if you’re interested, i’m following thomas frank’s free masterclass, and adapting it to my reality. i had to sort thousands of files and bookmarks, and found some old diaries. i even found a file from 2020 with “where i see myself in the next 5 years”, and i was emotional seeing that some things i already accomplished in 2023 (participating in a podcast and learning a new language— even if my dutch is still beginner level). i really recommend doing this. my goal with this note-taking and organization is to optimize these things online so i can spend more time offline and doing things in the concrete world. fingers crossed!

today’s nexialist might seem a bit random (and it is), and each piece of content has a reminder that may set the tone for the year to come. enjoy! 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

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🎆2023, in 7 minutes

at this point, it became a tradition to start the year with vox’s year look back. it was a tough year with horrible wars and frustrating news, but also with some positive things to give us a bit of hope.

brainsparks: 2020, in 7 minutes (tn#1), 2021, in 6 minutes (tn#52), 2022, in 7 minutes (tn#102)

🌁flying river

i had briefly mentioned this originary knowledge of flying rivers, mentioned in ailton krenak’s book ancestral future (tn#112), so i was so happy when this video appeared on my feed (actually on juan’s feed). when i read about this, and other intelligent river behaviors, i was in awe.

this is a reminder to keep ourselves interested in natural systems, even if they seem invisible, and defend their conservation before it’s too late.

Dubbed “flying rivers” by a Brazilian climatologist, these aerial waterways carry about 20 billion tons of water through the air per day. This is more than the Amazon River’s daily output into the ocean. Along the equator, the trade winds blow from east to west. Caught in these winds, flying rivers flow in the same direction before encountering the Andes. The mountains act like a giant barrier, causing the winds and rivers to redirect southwards. When flying rivers meet the masses of cold air, they grow heavier and release torrents of water. In this way, they bring rain, cooler temperatures, and humidity to much of South America. But these waterways are under threat.

brainsparks: ideas to postpone the end of the world (tn#19), the lungs of the world (tn#3)

🪞photo-multigraphs

this is such a cool technology from the 19th century. it’s kind of a vintage ~~spider-man meme~~ multiverse tool and a way to look at ourselves as other people see us. if this was in one of these “insta museums” it would be a hit today. this one is a reminder for us to access our multiverses and learn from our own reflections we see in others.

The method of using mirrors to produce a photograph with five simultaneous images of the sitter was first published in Scientific American in the 1890s. It was soon shared in the Encylopaedic Dictionary of Photography and in Photographic Amusements. The subject was photographed facing into two mirrors which were placed at seventy-five degrees to each other. The resulting reflections and reflections of reflections produced a set of five equally spaced images. The “photo-multigraph” was promoted as a unique way to “see ourselves as others see us.” In the coming decades the photo-multigraph was a common novelty attraction at seaside and other tourist destination photo studios throughout the United States and Europe, but the method and production of these souvenir images had all but disappeared by the 1950s.

via messy nessy chic

brainsparks: speak-o-phones (tn#147), predicting the past (tn#80), everything, everywhere, all at once (tn#78)

🫀24 universal character strength

i had to share this, not only because it’s a cute visualization but also because it’s that time of the year we set our goals/areas of improvement. for a second, i caught myself thinking: how can i improve these TWENTY FOUR characteristics and immediately felt overwhelmed. that’s not the point, i think, but to understand the ones you’re already good at, and maybe choose a couple that we can improve/exercise at a time.

The above strengths were also shown to be broadly stable in individuals over time. However, the most malleable strengths were humor, prudence, and spirituality.
Increasing hope, zest, love, and curiosity was found to have the strongest impact on boosting life-satisfaction, based on a study of almost 16,000 people.
Separately, studies showed that curiosity and perseverance are shown to be the most predictive for goal-attainment over time, while self-regulation in parents is associated with higher life satisfaction in their children—but not among themselves.

brainsparks: inner development goals (tn#67)

💅🏾femenine

last year i got to see empress of live in amsterdam, opening for kelela. and she is super sweet and talented. i’m listening a lot to her new hit and i love the play with gender: she mixes binary and nonbinary, the guy she wants should be feminine and she calls herself daddy. also the i feel love + vogue vibes are on point.

this one is a reminder to be less binary about things, be more fluid, and play with the different versions of ourselves in this new year.

🪶the boy and the heron

i went to the movies with juan, my brother and hayley and was so touched by the beauty of the new hayao miyazaki / studio ghibli film. it’s a magical and dark fever dream, about a son mourning the death of his mother. the imagery and the narrative are completely unexpected and created new imaginaries in my head. it is incredible!

this one is a reminder to allow ourselves to be reenchanted, even in times of distress and pain.

🍂fallen leaves

i went to the movies with my friend françois to watch aki kaurismaki’s movie (we didn’t check the subtitles and it was time to put my dutch to the test —luckily for me, the deadpan, awkward finnish vibe and simple yet effective dialogues helped me get most of the movie.)

the new york times called it a rare rom-com that makes sense in dark times, and they are right. the news are all about wars, for instance, and they have their own set of problems: money is short and alcoholism, for instance. the movie is actually set in the near future (a calendar shows 2024) however, it felt anachronous: the style of the movie, the environments, the technology they use and how much of it they use, it all felt like the past. i think that’s what made it so contemporary.

also, very important, one of the musical acts of the movie, maustetytöt, which translates from finnish to spice girls, was a great musical discovery.

i think the reminder here is that even in dark times, there is space for romance and synchronicities.

see you next week, femenines 💅🏾✨

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Cynthia Hansen

Jan 5, 2024

Eu também estou nesse processo de organizar minhas referências com base no método do Tiago Forte!!! Dá um trabalhão juntar as coisas que ficam espalhadas em vários lugares, mas me parece que vai valer a pena :)

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