👘✨The Nexialist #0222

necromemetics | ancient jungle cities | sounds right | Mō Āke Tonu | sígueme | jorge ben | autoestima

Apr 24, 2025

welcome to my weekly cyberflaneuring musings, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds you well. before we start, let’s just take a moment to celebrate this monodigit/repdigit nexialist (tn#222), which will only happen again in a couple of years. also, i’d like to invite you (a bit last minute) for

Michell Zappa

’s demo of envisioning.io signal generation ai-powered tool. there will be two sessions: 10 CET in English and 14 BRT in Portuguese. i’ve been seeing the development of this tool up close and the results are quite impressive, and the more people getting their hands on it, the better.

last week, i taught an online class at the denver ad school and it went very well, thank you, nicole ingra for the invitation. this week, juan and i started taking cuban salsa lessons, which i’m excited (and scared) about. and today i deejay at the maxima latina party at prik, one of amsterdam’s staple gay bars. saturday, the dutch celebrate king’s day, the closest this country has to carnaval, and on sunday my parents arrive from brazil. so yes, quite a busy and fun schedule in the next days. maybe i see you around, or at next week’s nexialist! enjoy! 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

Buy Me a Coffee? ☕️

☠necromemetics

necromemetics by ruby thelot is a great read i had this week. the way ruby writes is quite captivating and inviting, not very conventional as it feels fragmented, while also allowing us to make connections ourselves. thelot expands on the concept of necropolitics by political theorist Achille Mbembe, bringing it to our hyper-digitalized society of the spectable. the trans (and other minorities) hunt is just one example that comes to mind while reading.

Necromemetics is the process by which symbolic death is enacted on individuals or groups through the repetitive circulation of digital images, memes, or videos. These images, through their widespread reproduction and reinterpretation, strip the subject of agency, dignity, or humanity, reducing them to objects of ridicule, adoration, moral condemnation or martyrdom in the digital sphere.

brainsparks: amusing ourselves to death (tn#208), program or be programmed (tn#200), critic of technology (tn#121), social media x cults (tn#74), smartphones and rosaries (tn#44), deep doubt era (tn#193)

🛖ancient jungle cities

the recent boom in high-tech archeology is something that excites me so much, especially in the american continent (my algorithm from google news picked up on that and i love it). i shared recently about archeology of the future (tn#183), telling you about a project in northern brazil that is using the same method to map parts of the amazon. in this video they are so didactive in the explanations and animations of how this is done that i needed to share it with you. this once expensive tech is now small enough to fit on our phones, and when put on planes or drones, they can tell us so much history about these ancient cities’ fabric, in a non-invasive way. they invited researchers that are working in the field, and i finally understand how that magic works, and the best part: it’s forcing the world to rewrite history how the mayas were more developed than previsouly thought.

brainsparks: ancestral future (tn#112), el dorado (tn#78), 5000 years of coexistence (tn#170)

👘sericulture

i did not know there was so much to know about silk. silk and sericulture, the cultivation of silkworms to produce silk, has been around for centuries. it’s fascinating how it’s made by insects and the whole process to weave it, as well as its light and strong properties.

i need to mention the audiovisual experience of this video: we need more of this type of material! calm, meditative (i mean, notice the asmr with the sounds of weaving machines), educative and inspiring.

brainsparks: what’s this insect? (tn#138), imaginals vs. imagination (tn#19), ASMArt (tn#23)

🏔️sounds right

“sounds right is a music initiative to recognise the value of NATURE and inspire millions of fans to take environmental action. For the first time, NATURE can generate royalties from its own sounds to support its own conservation.”

this is the second time UN is doing this for earth day (22/april), and i love the concept (and the whole visual id of the project). of course, at this point we all know artists don’t make a lot of money through streaming, so it does feel anti-climactic —perfect word i guess. isn’t it bad that at this point i feel suspicious of any climate marketing like this, as it smells like greenwashing? still, you can listen to the feat. NATURE playlist on Spotify.

brainspark: more-than-human rights (tn#131), more-than-human aesthetics (tn#200), the ghosts in the machine (tn#208), ask nature (tn#86)

🌏Mō Āke Tonu

despite some bad news we are getting these days, one positive one was annihilation of that “treaty principles bill” in new zealand, after public outrage and the iconic haka by mp Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke. this video appeared in my feed and gave me chills. to my surprise Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke is featured in the song/video by stan walker, australian artist. it is so beautiful to see the māori culture celebrated in this anthem of reindigenization and decolonization.

brainsparks: Zealandia, the 8th continent (tn#39), reindigenisation x decolonisation (tn#140), new zealand reparations (tn#102)

🌺sígueme

Xiuhtezcatl is a north american activist and hip hop artist, and renata flores is a peruvian singer, and i got chills watching their collaboration, honoring their indigenous land, ancestry and cultures. i’m so happy we are seeing more and more of this.

brainsparks: time for indigenous futurism (tn#65), ecopoetry (tn#65), indigenous histories (tn#161), indigenous thinking for troubled times (tn#32), lido pimienta, kunumi mc, jaloo (tn#32), native language map (tn#20), ancestral future (tn#112), pop andino (tn#189)

🇧🇷jorge ben

rachel reis released a new delicious album, divina casca, and i’m sharing so you can take a sonic trip to brazil, or a cold-pressed brazil juice.

brainsparks: brazilianness (tn#23), brazil map (tn#170), monobloc (tn#213), salve-se (tn#216)

🇦🇷autoestima

marilina bertoldi, from argentina, appeared on my feed and i love this kind of rebelious sound + attitude, and it seems this florishes in bleak moments like this.

All day long this shit
And more
May our self-esteem save us

brainsparks: crisis (tn#211), post-punk (tn#84), countercultures x counter-futures (tn#10)

see you next week, nexialists 🫀✨

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