🪖✨The Nexialist #0166

adoro DJs | global happiness | gish gallop | dragoon | macguffin | money dysmorphia | gira che ti gira | innocence of sound | vlammen

Mar 28, 2024

welcome to your weekly portion of cyber-smoothie, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds your beautiful eyes (or ears, if you use any text-to-speech apps). this week my whole body is in pain, since i went back to the gym last week, and i’m trying to be thankful for that. you might also notice this edition a bit more sad, inquisitive or even cynical, you’ll get why. oh well, i hope you enjoy it anyway (or even more). have a beautiful weekend! 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

Buy Me a Coffee? ☕️

🪩adoro DJs

last week, we received the sad news that liana padilha, the anti-diva vocalist/writer/poet behind noporn, passed away. noporn has made a few appearances in the nexialist, and for sure they’ve influenced my musical taste. i had the honor of knowing her and she also subscribed to the nexialist.

i’ve loved liana’s wordplay since the first time i heard their music and i still consider noporn to be one of the coolest brazilian electronic music projects. it perfectly embodies the nightlife of são paulo. last year they came to amsterdam and we met, and i juan, andrea and i had a blast at their performance. i’m sad liana left us, but i’m so thankful for who she was and the amazing work she left, always authentic and timeless. rest in power, liana!

brainsparks: tropikalismo dark (tn#160), electronic body music (tn#84)

😄global happiness

the world happiness report 2024 is out and boy, did i find it uncomfortable to read it. of course, i agree it’s a valid and relevant way to measure how a country is doing, much better than the usual gdp. but maybe because we’ve been talking about toxic positivity, inequality and #delulu, i couldn’t just sit still. also, it’s impossible not to think of the lasting effects of colonization: “the world’s second largest continent, africa, accounts for nine of the bottom 10 least happiest countries in the world.” and noticing which country is the happiest in the middle east (and 5th in the world), just made me think of movie “the zone of interest.”

🤥gish gallop

ahmedeldin

A post shared by @ahmedeldin

The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality. The term was coined in 1994 by anthropologist Eugenie Scott, who named it after American creationist Duane Gish and argued that Gish used the technique frequently when challenging the scientific fact of evolution.

this video appeared on my feed and i love learning this kind of rhetoric techniques and strategies in communication/manipulation. i went to advertising school and we learn some of these techniques (many of which originated in times of war), alongside biases and social behaviors (i just found this catalogue of bias). it got me thinking how amazing it would be to have an ai that detects and warns us of bias/rhetoric techniques on the spot.

brainsparks: ostrich effect (tn#80), hawthorn effect (tn#116), “what about me” effect (tn#140)

🪖dragoon

then this weird word appeared in my inbox this week, also with military origin.

When used with into, dragoon means "to force or convince someone to do something." Without into, dragoon means "to subjugate or persecute by harsh use of troops."
// Employees complained that they had been dragooned into working overtime without adequate compensation.

📺macguffin

a few weeks ago, this new word showed up in my inbox and i loved it. hitchcock defines it as “the thing that the characters on the screen worry about but the audience don’t care.”

A MacGuffin is an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance.
// The missing document is the MacGuffin that brings the two main characters together, but the real story centers on their tumultuous relationship.

brainsparks: figures of speech (tn#20), storytelling periodic table (tn#22)

💸money dysmorphia

this term jumped at me at the google news screen— a place i seldom go because i’ve noticed they push content i don’t want to see. so, apparently, “millennials and their Gen Z frenemies are admitting to having "money dysmorphia” — a feeling of insecurity around their financial situation even when the true picture reveals little cause for concern.”

i don’t know about you, but to me this sounds like a term to gaslight people into thinking the economy is doing fine and inequality is not worsening. “all is fine, go spend money.” maybe i’m wrong, but that’s the feeling i got.

brainsparks: the ultimate gaslighting (tn#22)

👁️gira che ti gira

i was hypnotized by the video of this italian artist, cosmo, gira che ti gira.

If, let's see if you can find me / Se, vediamo se mi trovi
And what will you discover about me / E cosa scoprirai di me
And catch me because I can't take it anymore / E catturami che non ne posso più
The song of the sirens / Il canto delle sirene
I want to throw myself into the sea / Voglio buttarmi in mare

brainspark: latin blood (tn#129)

❄️innocence of sound

i’ve been a fan of ionnalee for a while, but i hadn’t been listening to her work lately. then this appeared on my feed, and for some reason, this track touched me so deeply and had me in tears. the synchronicity is that they both appeared in the same week, singing about the song of sirens and holding on to inspiration. here is what she wrote in the description of the video.

The album is called CLOSE YOUR EYES is a sequel to BLUE (2014). It’s about how to dream in a dark time and how to be someone like me, an artist who feeds off of that ability for a living. How to get to a state of hopefulness, euphoria, sorrow in a time where the world seems less and less connected to other humans, to nature and to our future. I needed to make this album right now. How I find music, when made from the heart, still after working as an artist for 20 years, is a core element in my life. How crooked the view of music’s value is now even though it’s soundtracking our daily lives and can get us through the toughest of times.

🔥vlammen

maybe i shared this before, but eefje de visser was the tipping point for me. her lyrics allowed me to see beauty in the dutch language, and after that i started learning the language. her new song is super beautiful and touched me, once again.

brainsparks: eefje de visser (tn#76), dutch poetry (tn#2)

see you next week, sirens 🫀✨

🫀✨thank you for reading The Nexialist. This post is public, so feel free to share these brainsparks 🧠✨

🔎If you want to see what I’ve already posted, visit the archive and use the search engine. Even I do that a lot.

💌I want to know what you think/who you are! Your feedback is highly appreciated; you can e-mail me or fill in this short survey. Thank you! 🙏🏻

🔌Let’s Collab?

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.

I offer inspiration sessions called Brainsparks, creative desk research (Zeitgeist Boost), Plug’n’Play deals for workshops and sprints, and other bespoke formats. If you want to know more about this, send me an e-mail with your challenge(s) and we can figure something out together. Check out my website and some work I’ve done below:

thenexialist.xyz

The Nexialist