🔎✨The Nexialist #0156

pixo | orquídeas | to own the future, read shakespeare | breakthrough techs 2024 | ferreting out | learning pyramid | learning pyramid | mental gym

Jan 18, 2024

welcome to your weekly zine of bytes and synapses, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds you well. this week (and the next few) i’ll be writing to you from huge são paulo. it’s only been a couple of days and the jet lag is real, even more so with the weather difference: i left amsterdam with snow falling from the sky, and here i feel like i have to be shirtless the whole day. i’ve been catching up with my grandmother in between tasks and soon i’ll meet other friends and family who i miss (and the food, very important). this week you’ll get some urban latino vibes as starters, to some delicious content about interdisciplinarity and learning. enjoy! 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

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🇧🇷pixo

keu shared on ~~twitter~~ x her studies of traditional urban typography from são paulo (and other parts of brazil). i had never seen it in such a neat format, or the different version of each letter, and i could picture that in my house. also, seeing it right before coming to são paulo warmed my heart. if you’re not familiar with this cultural movement, it’s worth getting to know it in the 2010 documentary by joão wainer and roberto t. oliveira, pixo (it has english subtitles).

brainsparks: grey city, reclaiming the concrete jungle (tn#7), the dystopia of são paulo (tn#83)

🙏🏻orquídeas

kali uchis released her new album, orquídeas, and i’ve been obsessed. it’s latin, it’s chic, it’s nostalgic but also in the future. also, this video seems like an ode to her pregnancy, to motherhood and just a reminder of how powerful it is that she is creating life (while releasing this masterpiece). something happened in me seeing her so radiant and divine. i think it made me feel like that because it is more common to see artists taking some time off during their pregnancy, so i’m happy she still wanted to share this moment and make it part of her art.

(i also can’t help but think of her iconic impromptu lullaby, what a lucky baby!)

brainsparks: the devil of your story (tn#144), moonlight (tn#119)

🎓to own the future, read shakespeare

what a delicious read for a nexialist! paul ford talks about his story of being in the middle of the two cultures (art x tech— or whatever disciplines we draw a boundary in between) and how this debate is a tale as old as time. now the antagonist/protagonist is ai. enter interdisciplinarianism:

When stuff gets out of hand, we don’t open disciplinary borders. We craft new disciplines: digital humanities, human geography, and yes, computer science (note that “science” glued to the end, to differentiate it from mere “engineering”). In time, these great new territories get their own boundaries, their own defenders. The interdisciplinarian is essentially an exile. Someone who respects no borders enjoys no citizenship.

via patrick tanguay’s sentiers

brainsparks: linear opposites or closely related? (tn#126), thriving in paradox (tn#109), modern paradoxes (tn#49), paradoxical relationships (tn#44), first-rate intelligence in opposing ideas (tn#117)

💾breakthrough techs 2024

ai has been taking over the news and our lives, so i was happy to read about other promising technologies, some of which i did not know much about: ai for everything, super-efficient solar cells, apple vision pro, weight loss drugs (?), enhanced geothermal systems, chiplets, the first gene-editing treatment, heat pumps and exascale computers. also, i learned the latter “can now perform more than an exaflop’s worth of calculations (that’s a 1 followed by 18 zeros).” exaflops made my day, really.

via

Michell Zappa

brainsparks: best inventions of 2023 (tn#147), critical of technology (tn#121), centaur mindset (tn#106)

🔎ferreting out

ferret (fer·ret ˈfer-ət) — verb.
To ferret means to find something, such as information, by careful searching. It is usually followed by the word out.
// We love having her in our study group because she's good at ferreting out the answers to the study guide.
adjective — ferrety (ˈfer-ə-tē)

could i add this to my list of skills on linkedin (or at least on skills i want to work more on?). such a cute word which i didn’t know and that represents me when i’m obsessed with something.

brainsparks: knowledge curatorship (tn#14), content curation approaches (tn#54)

👓learning pyramid

gustavo (temporality lab) shared this with me months ago and it stayed with me. william glasser’s learning pyramid is a way to measure learning retention. for people that live a lot in their minds, like me, this is a ~~wake up call~~ reminder to practice more active learning. i can tell you that just by writing the nexialist every week it’s a way of doing more active learning, than just taking content in, but i know there are many things that just stay on the first layer.

the image in spanish was much cuter than the others i could find, so if you want to read it in english, here it is.

Brainsparks: content diet (tn#2)

🧠mental gym

anne-laure le cunff shares some tips on building your mental gym. we all know these things are great for learning, but it’s nice to see them all in one place, completing each other. personally, it made me realise that the more of these pillars i have aligned, the easier it is to put my thoughts together and even to write the nexialist.

brainsparks: liveware (tn#56)

see you next week, ferrets 🔎✨

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