👸✨The Nexialist #0229

birthday effect | unsilence gaza | gaza sound man | decolonizing affection | the anti-social century | addison | princess of power

Jun 12, 2025

welcome to this week’s cyber-tapas, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds your braincells like the above gif. i’m back in amsterdam this week and i’m lowkey avoiding my birthday on sunday, which i’ll just softly celebrate this year. i’m still recovering from barcelona and primavera festival. we had a blast: we laughed watching performances (yes, rigoberta bandini), cried (yes, rigoberta bandini, chappell roan), screamed and danced, got tanned, drunk and even had fights with some of those who decide to sit on the floor in the middle of the crowd at night. emotions were emotioning. also the beach was amazing, i do miss that part here at mokum. well, enough of this, i’ll leave you with (what’s left) of my brain(sparks), enjoy 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

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🎂birthday effect

this sunday i’ll be celebrating my 36th spring, so i saved this other link from pudding.cool by russell samora: do more people die on their birthdays than expected? he does a study based on data from massachusetts (i just typed that without making a mistake) and walks us step by step on the rationale. i will not give you any spoilers about it.

Would you believe me if I told you that you’re actually more likely to die on your birthday than on other days of the year?
This statistical curiosity is called the birthday effect.
There have been a bunch of studies on different populations that have proven that it’s real.
But I was skeptical (maybe you are too?), so let’s run our own study to understand how–and if–it works.

brainsparks: how many humans (tn#65), everydoby dies (tn#37)

🇵🇸unsilence gaza

upon entering primavera sound, this installation was a reminder of how privilege we were to be there, having fun, enjoying artistic performances, nice weather and cold drinks. in unsilence gaza, palestinian sound engineer oussama rima brought to the festival a tunnel with sounds of war from gaza.

We have normalised seeing war, but not listening to it.
We live in a world saturated with violent images. Hypervisibility has anaesthetised us: we see, but we do not react. Sound, on the other hand, can still move us.
At Primavera Sound, sound is emotion, connection, pleasure. But sound can also be the opposite: it can become a weapon.
With this installation, we want to remind you that in Gaza and other parts of the world, sound is pain. It is fear. It is torture and trauma.
Bombings can reach up to 170 decibels. That is much more than the human body can withstand. This type of sound is acoustic violence and leaves irreversible physical and emotional scars.
Despite this, the opposite of the sound of bombs is not silence. Silence is what allows them.
Every day we see how wars and armed violence are multiplying. We have normalised increased military spending, warmongering rhetoric and attempts to criminalise and silence voices that defend peace. And this is no coincidence: the silence of the majority is a necessary condition for wars and genocides to be possible.

greta thunberg was seized this same weekend by israeli forces with other activists at the peace flotilla, and she had the same message: “the world’s silence is deadly.” also, during the festival, it was powerful to see artists using the stage against genocide, such as fontaines dc and idles.

i’m also proud to know the brazilian president has positioned himself so clearly about the genocide.

brainsparks: when space becomes sound (tn#228), green colonialism (tn#145), gaza, explained (tn#145), sonic weapon, audible enclaves (tn#219)

🎙️gaza sound man

Sound engineer Mohamed Yaghi works tirelessly to record sounds in the Gaza Strip, leading an auditory journey through four stories, each character reflecting the war's impact since October 7th. Through their voices and experiences, we witness how the sounds of this devastated region have been transformed. A fascinating and original perspective on how humanity endures horror and maintains hope against the odds.

the instalation above reminded me of this work by mohamed yaghi which uses sound design for activism. i have not watched it yet, but i get chills just with the trailer. as an asmr user, i think this such a powerful use of sound.

brainsparks: sonic healing (tn#11), asmr (tn#1)

🫀decolonizing affection

my friend raquel lent me a book that i finished on my way to barcelona and it touched me on so many different levels. if you understand portuguese, it’s a must-read. in “decolonizing affection: experimentations about other ways of loving,” geni nuñez explains how our idea and practice of love have been colonized, especially in brazil and the rest of latin america, as europe invaded and colonized the region.

she is an activist, psychologist and writer, and she is indigenous, so she brings insights from different indigenous communities, stating many times what should be obvious. i love how she writes clearly and finishes each section with a poem, which show her journey to decolonizing what she had also learned, which brings the message of deconstruction so much closer.

in the beginning, she says something quite radical that i can’t stop thinking about: statistically, monogamy is dangerous for women, since most violence against women is commited by their partners or ex-partners. also, if we’re made in (the catholic) god’s image and this god demands exclusivity, we learn that this is the way to love.

brainsparks: cosmophobia (tn#135), monogamy, explained (tn#6), relationship anarchy (tn#6), time for indigenous futurism (tn#65), decolonizing our temporality (tn#10), time for indigenous futurism (tn#65)

👤the anti-social century

derek thompson, co-author of abundance, just reframed things for me about the loneliness pandemic: we have passed the point of being lonely, and we’re becoming anti-social. who has never celebrated a plan being cancelled?

And so we say no, and instead we just go back to our phones. We are essentially dumping our dopamine, our drive, into our screens, rather than gifting it to other people. We're reserving our energy for glass rather than actual friendship. You can almost think about this as like a total life scale effect where
- teenagers, by record, have fewer friends and spend less time hanging out,
- 20-somethings are dating less,
- 30-somethings are marrying less,
- and 40-somethings half fewer kids.
Those are the social costs of the anti-social century.

he guides us through how technology (not only that, for the record) has brought us here (he focuses on the united states, but i think this is true in other places). in the 50s/60s cars privatized our lives. in the next decades, the television privatized our leisure. in the past two decades, smartphones privated our attention. what is ai privatizing?

he does end on a positive and hopeful note, saying we need to be more critical with our tech adoption. he surprisingly brings something i shared some time ago: having a more critical view on tech like the amish (tn#20)

and zuckerberg wants us to believe ai can help solve the loneliness pandemic. we’ve been saying social media is no longer social for a while a now. s we need to look at ai with a grain of salt when it comes to sociality.

brainsparks: recipe for loneliness (tn#202), the lifespan of loneliness (tn#159), nature disconnection (tn#137), fracking eyeballs (tn#150), social health (tn#179), dopamine economy (tn#164), culture of proximity (tn#6), amish tech (tn#21)

✨addison

the new album of addison came out and i’m loving it so much. i was even happier when i heard it’s produced entirely by women: elvira anderfjärd (swedish, of course) and luka kloser, both of whom also co-wrote some of the songs.

i’ve seen some critics giving it a lot of shit, but i think they’re missing the sarcasm of it all: imo addison is playing the part the outdated industry expects from her, a bombshell with a sexy airy voice and a bra, ~~shallow~~ easy lyrics… which is how madonna and other pop starts started. the production for me is spot on and just her brand. my favorites are new york, diet pepsi, aquamarine, fame is a gun and in the rain. the lyrics to money is everything she even mentions her references:

I drink on the nights that I wanna remember
And when I'm up dancing, please, DJ, play Madonna
Wanna roll one with Lana, get high with Gaga
And the girl I used to be is still the girl inside of me

brainsparks: madonna-ology (tn#211), aquamarine (tn#211), fame is a gun (tn#228), high fashion (tn#214)

👸princess of power

marina is an artist i’ve been following for so long, and i’m so happy with her fresh new album princess of power. it feels like an expansion of her sonic and visual universe, which is quite unique. there’s this pop overlay, with some disco vibes, so it’s delicious. my favorites: princess of power, butterfly, digital fantasy, i <3 you and final boss.

brainsparks: butterfly (tn#214)

see you next week, princesses 👸✨

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