🧉✨The Nexialist #0171

floribunda | taxa names after human genitals | lines of desire | funk generation | agathokakological | the roots of anti-woke | camp gaucho | patagonian giants

May 02, 2024

welcome to another batch of mind-shaking and abundant content, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds you wherever you’re hiding. welcome to may! the sun is inviting me out, so i’ll keep the intro short, but read until the end for some content about nature, urbanism, booty-shaking music, queer stuff and conspiracy. don’t ask me how i did it, just read it 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

Buy Me a Coffee? ☕️

🍑floribunda

this time of year, amsterdam becomes even more stunning with the lush flowering wisterias around the city (i took this photo last year!). the eternal 5th grader in me cannot get over the fact the scientific name of the japanese wisteria is wisteria floribunda. bunda is world-known word for butt in brazilian portuguese (originated from angola). i hope that like me, i make you not only notice the beauty of these flowers but also think of butts when you see these from now on.

brainsparks: flower bike man (tn#94), why do we have butts? (tn#27)

🌺taxa names after human genitals

messynessychic coincidently put on their weekly post, which i read religiously, a wikipedia page of taxa named after human genitals. plants, flowers, funghi and animals are not safe from our genital obsession, and i’m here for it.

Orchidaceae. The type genus is Orchis, whose name comes from the Ancient Greek ὄρχις (órkhis), literally meaning "testicle", because of the shape of the twin tubers in some species of Orchis.

brainsparks: occluplanida (tn#155)

👣lines of desire

some time ago i shared the reality of brasilia, an urbanism utopia (which is not a utopia). now the work of diego bresani appeared on my timeline: a series of photographs captured over the past 10 years, showing where pedestrians walk in a city planned for cars. the name is perfect: lines of desire, which is the name urbanists use for this phenomenon. this series should reach every city planner.

"If we are a modernist cultural heritage of humanity, it is in this city that the best experiments in promoting quality of life should be carried out. And, paradoxically, it is in this city that the best experiments in quality of life are not carried out" —Frederico Flósculo, Professor at the Architecture and Urbanism University in Brasilia.

brainsparks: brasilia: urbanism utopia (tn#83), curb-cut effect (tn#131), rurbanization (tn#114)

🇧🇷funk generation

anitta finally launched her new album, funk generation, which she is soon bringing in a world tour, a baile funk experience (i can’t wait!). yes, the album and the songs are short, but i’m having a blast listening to it. she’s been saying for years that her mission is to bring brazilian funk to the world stage, and imo she is being super successful. the sound, the samples, the dance moves, the booty ~~bunda~~ shake, the vibes, it’s all there. everytime i watch it, it gets better…

brainsaparks: beat diaspora (tn#125), funk rave (tn#128), mugler + funk carioca (tn#74)

☯️agathokakological

Our word worth knowing this week is agathokakological, defined as “composed of both good and evil.” This is a mouthful of a word, containing 8 syllables and bristling with awkward letters, but we are offering it to readers because it is so useful in so many settings. You needn’t say it out loud if you don’t feel like doing so; sometimes it’s enough to just shake your head and silently say to yourself ‘yep, that’s agathokakological, all right.’

no, it’s not a drag queen name (but should), but i loved this word from merriam-webster’s newsletter. a recurring theme in the nexialist are paradoxes and contradictions, so it’s nice to have another word to add to the mix.

brainsparks: thriving in paradox (tn#109), modern paradoxes (tn#49), paradoxical relationships (tn#44), first-rate intelligence in opposing ideas (tn#117)

💪🏼the roots of anti-woke

this piece by hannah gais for the forum reached me through the syllabus. it’s always fascinating to understand the way people’s minds work, especially when talking about something that is outrageous… how are people against equality and equity? do they really believe the absurdities they say? at first it’s entertaining, then daunting, then just absurd to understand the hollow arguments alt-right uses. and people buy it.

“Wokeness” and related bogeymen, whether they be “critical race theory” or “cultural Marxism,” fuel this vision of the left as an existential threat. For right-wing “culture warriors,” those terms aren’t labels for fixed concepts so much as thought-terminating cliches that can be used to explain away almost any problem within the modern American workforce, or politics, for that matter. For instance, if a white guy with high test scores isn’t accepted into Harvard, it’s much more convenient to blame “woke” conformity than, say, any tangible personal or professional shortcomings in their application.

brainsparks: žižek vs woke-ism (tn#141)

🧉camp gaucho

alex anwantder is a chilean artist and he did something remarkable with this song and video: transformed the (macho) gaucho culture (aka the cowboys of south america, present in the south of brazil, argentina, uruguay and southern chile) into a camp icon. i have to say i have some bombachas myself and since i got my first one (thank you, alex!) i always feel fabulous wearing them. is it the era of queer gauchos? (i’ll be hated for saying this by the traditionalists 🤷‍♂️

brainsparks: cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other (tn#169), achillean (tn#169)

🦴patagonian giants

also from this week’s messynessychic, the patagonian giants. this year i visited patagonia and learned the origin of the name was “big foot” which is how the portuguese and spanish called the indigenous people living in the region. what i didn’t know is that for centuries they were thought to be giants.

The Patagones or Patagonian giants were a race of giant humans rumoured to be living in Patagonia and described in early European accounts. They were said to have exceeded at least double normal human height, with some accounts giving heights of 13 to 15 feet (4 to 4.5 m) or more. Tales of these people would maintain a hold upon European conceptions of the region for nearly 300 years.

see you next week, floribundas🍑✨

🫀✨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