💔✨The Nexialist #0218

children’s ai manifesto | have fun | 2025 tech trends | panopticon aesthetics | | digital emotional | dictator questions | in search of a permanent gravity center | on a roll

Mar 27, 2025

welcome to your weekly content cyber-bouquet, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds you ~~well~~ on a roll. i need to share something here: this past week, i started getting dm’s from different friends calling my attention. my face (or capillary choices) had become some sort of a meme: all dj’s to have moustache and mullet by 2026, said the satire profile businesstechnoinstitute. i guess this photo of mine from 3 years ago hit the internet’s nerve, because it was also used last month on tiktok as the face of safe sleazy, “a subculture of white guys that live in bushwick, brooklyn and they all have asian girlfriends. they are either a dj or a podcaster.” i live in amsterdam and i’m gay, also, no asian boyfriends. i do dj though, and that’s the common thread. of course, no consent was asked from me to use this photo, and i have to say, part of me feels made fun of, but another part goes in the joke… i mean, i also made fun of man-buns with the internet when that happened. but what can i do if these guys are copying my style, which i started years ago 🤷‍♂️

i’ll leave you to it, but before, let’s just celebrate the fact bolsonaro will officially stand a trial for the coup attempt. this deserves to be celebrated! enjoy 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

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🪁children’s ai manifesto

the children’s manifesto for the future of ai was shared in the

Artificial Insights

community and it’s actually nice to see such a material being created. i mean, we need more of these. in february, 150 children and young people aged 8-18 from the uk took part in the first ever children’s ai summit, organized by the alan turing institute + queen mary university of london, and the insights were taken from there. the report is organized by three main areas: education, health, safety & wellbeing, and the environment (plus other “minor” areas).

As children and young people, our lives are already affected by AI, but we are hardly ever asked what we think about it. We feel that adults often don’t take our views seriously, but we have lots of ideas about the ways AI should and should not be developed or used. We want our voices to be heard. This manifesto sets out our priorities and what we want world leaders at the Paris AI Action Summit to know about children’s hopes and worries about AI.

brainsparks: play-full future (tn#121), ai homework (tn#151), risk zones in ethical operating systems (tn#168)

🏰have fun

i’ll sneak this zany video in here, by s10, a dutch singer, because of its kidcore aesthetics (would it air in nickelodeon or discovery kids? maybe more like adult swim). her new album just came out, mijn haar ruikt naar vuur, and this track was one of my favorites. the felt puppet/boyfriend is quite creepy in a fun way. i hadn’t checked the lyrics and posted it for my friend roel’s birthday, until warned me: the song is about toxic relationships.

brainsparks: don’t hug me, i’m scared (tn#168)

🤖2025 tech trends

cb insights released their tech trends 2025 report and working at envisioning i always keep an eye in these reports. i love cb insights’ panorama/players visualization of different categories, so it’s nice to get more specific trends like this. the 15 trends of this report are listed above in case you want to read more.

brainsparks: tech radar (tn#177)

👁️panopticon aesthetics

deathtostock

A post shared by @deathtostock

big brother is watching you (and that’s so dope!). it’s surveillance, but make it cool. this post from death to stock shows how we are embracing surveillance aesthetics in different ways: face recognition memes, meta selfies, the ai gaze, cctv video selfies. it relates directly to the ‘surveillance as a love language’ (tn#209) i shared weeks ago, in which we are celebrating surveillance, beyond a form of intimacy, as a form of visual language. i must admit i also find it quite cool, but it is disturbing.

brainsparks: surveillance as a love language (tn#209)

💿digital emotional

the new releases of kilo kish are so good: reprogram and digital emotional, which will be part of her new ep, negotiations, which is tickling something in my brain.

Kilo Kish's Negotiations explores the body and mind as interconnected systems, tracing the loops of error, adaptation, and reprogramming. Through shifting perspectives, the project considers how we navigate love and work and the possibility of transformation.

the lyrics are also timely, about this layer of technology between our relationships:

Ok, great, I met the boy of my dreams
Kind of hard to touch you with a screen in between
Can I order you with the prime delivery
Kind of hard to love you with the sea in between
Ok, now I feel in between
Artificial lover, now I'm seen and not seen
We could fit together algorithmically
If I'm the one get lost in me

brainsparks: artificial intimacy (tn#168), it’s algorithm baby (tn#33)

🫡dictator questions

for anyone needing a refresh in history classes, this is such a clarifying video from wired, easily explained. professor and authoritarianism scholar ruth ben-ghiat answers questions about dictators and dictatorships. i actually learned things i didn’t learn before and i just love this format

Fascism is a one-party state, classically, with an all-powerful dictator at its head, meaning no more separation of powers, no independent judiciary. […] Fascism is also classically expansionist. The conquest of territory, imperialism, is intrinsic to fascism. There is no sense of fascism without violence. Fascists truly believe, whether it's Hitler or Francisco Franco in Spain or Mussolini, that violence is the way you change the world. They declare one category of person as an enemy. Could be a racial enemy, as in Nazi Germany. It could be a political enemy, as it was in Italian fascism and for Francisco Franco in Spain. But that enemy must be exterminated. So the state organizes itself around the practice of violence, and regular people are trained to become vigilant and informers and use violence themselves. So violence is at the very core of fascism.

🟡in search of a permanent gravity center

i’ve been listening to rigoberta bandini’s new album jesucrista superstar (in love with this album title), so i need to share her new video. i’m such a fan, she is one of the few artists that can mix her comedy and quirkiness, with depth in the themes. for instance, i have cried and laughed listening to the same song (am i ok??).

when showing it to my friend giacomo, he made me aware it’s a reference to franco battiato’s 80s italian classic and it’s worth the listen/watch if you also have a thing for 80s gems.

brainsparks: humor as a tool (tn#9), soledad (tn#41)

💔on a roll

to celebrate miley’s announcement of a new album + movie, something beautiful, and the upcoming seventh season of black mirror, i wanted to bring one of my favorite black mirror episodes/fictional artist.

in a way it was telling the story of britney, even before the whole free britney came to the mainstream. and recently i learned this song was actually inspired by the nine inch nails’s song, head like a hole. the way this episode was a criticism to the pop industry’s tyranny, even preceding the whole discussion about image/voice rights of artists in the age of ai, and ironically the song became a hit. when i checked the lyrics of the original, it makes the whole thing even more evil/genius.

Head like a hole, black as your soul
I'd rather die than give you control (x2)
Bow down before the one you serve
You're going to get what you deserve (x2)

brainsparks: love death + robots (tn#17), the evolution of pop culture (tn#77)

see you next week, kids 🫀✨

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