🏀✨The Nexialist #0207

the shape of dreams | fashion neurosis | seeing without eyes | good conversations have lots of doorknobs | scantily clad | f*ck me | mexe mexe | de maravisha | numa ilha

Jan 09, 2025

welcome to your weekly fresh content harvest, the nexialist

hey you, i hope this message finds you better than me. the year started with a stomach flu (and my new bike with a problem), but i’ll focus on the best news to cheer us up: fernanda torres winning the golden globes for best actress in a drama for i’m still here (tn#202). as you know, brazilians are the best cheerleaders and masters at parasocial relationships, so this has taken over all my feeds, which i’m beyond happy about. it’s such a powerful and symbolic story that serves as memory for what political extremism and paranoia during a military dictatorship can do to families and society. great moment to remember that.

then the zuckerberg/meta announcement, which is quite alarming: community moderation, muskisms, trumpisms, disguised as free speech… i will not go into details this week, maybe the next if i feel i have something to add/share. but it gave me such a weird realization: zuckerberg means sugar mountain in german, very approppriate villain name in a dopamine society (tn#164) dystopia. except it’s reality.

well… this week i guess we’ll get a bit scapist, then. enjoy 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

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🌸the shape of dreams

years ago, i had an idea (i might have shared it already, forgive me if that’s the case): an app to log in your dreams, even through audio, which would help people have a dream diary, but also measure if certain themes repeat on certain cultures, seasons or specific dates —this was before knowing how our data is sold to then sell things back to us, and dreams are among our most intimate things. last week we talked about arousal quantified (tn#206), this would be dreams quantified.

well, google already does that in a way, and this beautiful visual exploration by federica fragapane for google trends reveals some repeating themes, which is quite fascinating: snakes, teeth, babies, falling. i love how they separate in some languages (including english, portuguese, spanish and japanese). it’s interesting that, withing the 12 categories they created, nature and family are the most dreamt and sought after, quite telling in a society that is quite disconnected from nature (tn#137) and lonely.

Looking at the overall results, the categories with the highest number of of subjects are usually Animals and Insects, especially for English, Spanish and Portuguese. It’s usually followed by Family and relationships.

brainsparks: river of life (tn#146), the most common dreams (tn#146), why do we dream? (tn#72), animal dreamworlds (tn#138), scientists going into your dreams (tn#13), nature disconnection (tn#137), inner rewilding (tn#164), the life span of loneliness (tn#159)

🧠fashion neurosis

talking about dreams… did you know that bella freud is the great granddaughter of sigmund freud, the founder of psychoanalysis? she’s not only a fashion designer but also runs a podcast called fashion neurosis with a set up reminiscent of a psychoanalyst’s office, where she interviews people in the fashion industry. and it’s actually quite refreshing to watch such a calm and soothing and intimate conversation about fashion and life. (also quite unsettling to have kate moss looking at you nonstop through the camera).

brainsparks: collective consciousness (tn#194)

⏾seeing without eyes

this discovery came during my days off in brazil: despite wearing a very nice eye-cover in a room decently covered from the outside light, i would wake up knowing there was light in the room (even if i hadn’t yet had enough sleep). i had to google if other parts of our bodies can perceive light and it turns out that they can, with extraocular photoreceptors.

But scientists have discovered in recent decades that many animals – including human beings – do have specialized light-detecting molecules in unexpected places, outside of the eyes. These “extraocular photoreceptors” are usually found in the central nervous system or in the skin, but also frequently in internal organs. What are light-sensing molecules doing in places beyond the eyes?

brainsparks: after image (tn#197), pupil diversity (tn#134), thid eye(lid), eye floaters (tn#26)

🚪good conversations have lots of doorknobs

miriam_tinny

A post shared by @miriam_tinny

i love the content miriam shares, because she explains it and she is usually so excited to learn something new, that my nexialist self is vibing with her. this time, she shared how good conversations have lots of doorknobs by

Adam Mastroianni

and it’s actually such a helpful reframing around conversations.

adam draws from his experience with improv (and extensive academic research) to paint a picture of how conversations flow (or not), using givers and takers in that context:

Givers think that conversations unfold as a series of invitations; takers think conversations unfold as a series of declarations. When giver meets giver or taker meets taker, all is well. When giver meets taker, however, giver gives, taker takes, and giver gets resentful (“Why won’t he ask me a single question?”) while taker has a lovely time (“She must really think I’m interesting!”) or gets annoyed (“My job is so boring, why does she keep asking me about it?”).

it’s fascinating because i feel i’m more of a taker, and i know people who are givers, and i have fallen into giver propaganda: believing givers are the virtuous ones. but adam convinced me takers have their role, like taking off the pressure off questions, they work well in groups. (none of them are perfect, fyi).

When done well, both giving and taking create what psychologists call affordances: features of the environment that allow you to do something. Physical affordances are things like stairs and handles and benches. Conversational affordances are things like digressions and confessions and bold claims that beg for a rejoinder.

i will ask you go read it because there you’ll see what is holding us back (some biases and egocentrism) and what we can do to have better conversations.

brainsparks: fuel a conversation (tn#178), new rules of gathering (tn#37), how to speak so that people want to listen (tn#61)

🍑scantily clad

since haute & freddy appeared on my feed i’ve been obsessed, with the sound and aesthetics (i shared anti-superstar (tn#202) before). i loved the sound of the title until i realized i had no clue what they were singing about. the meaning made me love it even more.

scantily clad: wearing little clothing, almost naked.

one of the trends in the pinterest predicts (tn#203) report is castlecore, and i thought of that listening to very medieval lyrics: queen passed outs, king shocked, pope fleeing, knights going to war. got me thinking how the peak nostalgia keeps growing, now fishing references from other past centuries.

brainsparks: anti-superstar (tn#202), pink pony club (tn#198), how to feel better naked (tn#79)

🦆f*ck me

ok, you know i’m a sucker for these perfect collabs with artists i’m already obsessed about. shygirl got together with yseult, joining their powers, attitudes and sultry voices, while singing raunchy lyrics and sick beat in a park with the pigeons and ducks. what’s not to love?? this has been on repeat.

brainsparks: back to the office (tn#194)

👽mexe mexe

nicaraguan-american dj gordo (fka carnage) released an ep last month, no hay verano sin gordo, with 6 tracks, and i was impressed with the mix of artists: from spain, italy, argentina and brazil. this is one is my favorite, i’ll need to add it to my next set.

brainsparks: beat diaspora (tn#125)

🏀de maravisha

another collab that is just too good, with artists i love and have been appearing here on the nexialist. i just love the whole mix of 90s rap and latin, and the whole aesthetics of it. the tempo/style change is just orgasmic 🫠

brainsparks:

🏝️numa ilha

to close this edition, i choose a more chill song of marina sena, on an island. the vibes, the sexiness, the sun especially. these lyrics are also so hot:

Barefoot on an island, it's so magical
You saying you love me
The moon reflecting the sea, your scent
Us together in my sarong
Kissing my entire body, the wind in my hair
Taking me to go into the sea in the middle of the night
If this moon were mine
I would take you, love
To orbit the Earth while you love me

brainsparks: inherent vice (tn#119)

see you next week, maravishas 🫀✨

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