🍗✨The Nexialist #0232

chatgpt won’t make you dumb | godgpt | protesting under surveillance | messiah | kfc santeria | neoperreo | ney matogrosso | how to study culture | the end of strategy as we know it

Jul 03, 2025

welcome to your weekly cyber-crunchy combo, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds you well. this week it’s finally summer in amsterdam, with the thermometers reaching above 30 degrees, but as i write to you we just had a relieving summer storm after so many dry days. last weekend, i deejayed at tropikali and i had such a blast with juan, our friends, sun and nice music. also it’s the time of the year to enjoy the lakes, be naked and swim. and in case you haven’t realized, we are now in the second half of 2025, which is a reminder that time does not stop, it runs. i’ll leave you to it so i can go enjoy some sun, enjoy! 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

Buy Me a Coffee? ☕️

🧐chatgpt won’t make you dumb

Alberto Romero

read the 200-page mit study about how using llms like chatgpt affects our brains and shared his learnings with us (so we don’t have to read the whole thing). the satisfaction of reading something so well explained and didactic makes it worth reading it: how the study was done, the pros and limitations, plus the nuanced findings —which are necessary when it’s such a polarized topic. their focus was in an educational setting, more specifically writing an essay, and had both a linguistic analysis (what is being written) and an eeg analysis, measuring brain activity. the title sums it up, but i recommend reading it. if you are questioning how much chatgpt you should use for work/learning/other things, it’s quite an insightful study. here are the general conclusions titles to get you curious:

Brain-to-LLM >>> LLM-to-Brain:
Using AI alters brain engagement not just task performance:
If you rely heavily on AI, you’ll get dumber:
There might be an optimal sequence of tool use:
You should avoid incurring cognitive debt:

brainsparks:

📿godgpt

Taylor Lorenz

took us on a bonkers deep dive: a bunch of people are attributing spiritual meaning to artificial intelligence, more specifically llms like chatgpt, and this movement only seems to be growing. she starts with a very important reminder: humans have done this (worshipping tech) for millenia, and the examples are plentiful. but now the potential of scaling is much greater.

I think what we're witnessing right now is the emergence of a new individualized form of religion that's being deployed at scale. […] To me, this isn't a story just about technology. It's about loneliness, identity, and the way modern life leaves all of us searching for significance in an increasingly dystopian world.

brainsparks: what will replace religion? (tn#81), crypto as ritual and religion (tn#58), smartphones and rosaries (tn#44), an apocalyptic meditation on doomscrolling (tn#145), whisperverse (tn#194), syncretism (tn#44), hallucinationship (tn#194), invisible epidemic (tn#202), (post-)apocalyptic imaginary (tn#97), digital esoterism (tn#116)

✊🏻protesting under surveillance

this post appeared in my inbox and i had to click on it. i felt dystopic, and for a second i was in disbelief that that is where we are: How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance. recently i finished the mr. robot series and many of the recommendations in the post are exactly what they did there: full-face masks to avoid facial recognition, leaving your main phone at home and have a burner phone or a second phone without your apps, encrypted messaging apps like signal or even a faraday pouch to keep your phone from being automatically connected. the most impressive thing that i learned (or was reminded of) is the amount of cameras around us, which are only getting better and smarter. big brother is watching you.

brainsparks: mr. robot (tn#221), surveilance as love language (tn#209), panopticon aesthetics (tn#218)

🙏🏻messiah

well, since we’re talking about god, i have to sneak sevdaliza’s new single here, messiah. the blasphemy of it all makes it even better. like, why do i love the choice of a white jesus so much, especially coming from an iranian-dutch artist.

brainsparks: sevdaliza (tn#5), alibi (tn#180), olympic outrage (tn#184), madonna-ology (tn#211)

🍗kfc santeria

i saw cain culto for the first time on the colors show and loved his dark queer country style. things got even better when i went to look him up and learned about his past: he used to be a teen pastor and was part of a christian band called ecclesia (which left fans not very happy with his coming out —plus the ‘satanic’ brand.) more reasons to like him, i guess?

brainsparks: polygendered brazilian music (tn#24)

🍑neoperreo

deathtostock

A post shared by @deathtostock

maybe i was living under a rock, but i didn’t know about the term neoperreo, this movement that “pushes reggaeton into an experimental, hype-stylized territory.” you’ve probably seen it, especially if you follow this newsletter. artists like cain culto (above), bad gyal, arca and many others are blurring the lines between genre. i’m here for it.

brainsparks: beat diaspora (tn#125), amplified roots: tecnobrega (tn#213), the new rules of youth culture (tn#212), scenius aka communal genius scenius (tn#31)

👁️ney matogrosso

in case you haven’t yet, do yourself a favour and watch this biopic about one of brazil’s queer icons, ney matogrosso. homem com h (or in english ‘latin blood: the ballad of ney matogrosso’) lets us in ney’s emotional story starting in his childhood, youth, serving in the military, standing up against the dictatorship with art and being unapollogetically himself. it made me feel a lot of feelings, plus the awe at the outfits and musical numbers.

brainsparks: invisible city, latin blood (tn#129), the edge of democracy (tn#23), i’m still here (tn#202), the brazilianization of the world (tn#35), queering the future (tn#24), the queer code (tn#92)

💧naturträne

i love it when my algorithm brings me these gems. i had never heard about the german artist nina hagen and this punk-opera performance just made me a fan. the vocal techniques, the facial expressions, the styling, it all got me in this state of being impressed, confused, giggly and hypnotized.

brainsparks: electronic body music (tn#84), post-punk (tn#84), weird world (tn#161)

📖how to study culture

i’ve been saving this text by

Matt Klein

for some time and i guess it’s the time to share this guide with you: so you want to study culture? as someone whose work i deeply admire, i savoured every tip. below, the titles to get you curious for matt’s tips of +10 years of experience:

01. Consume. With. Caution.
It’s (Mostly) All Subjective, Relative or BS.
02. Hone & Disrupt Your POV.
Seek diverse inputs.
03. Use Your Words.
Learn to write.
04.A. Train Your Eye.
Practice paying attention.
04.B. Train Your Eye (cont.)
Learn when to NOT pay attention.
05. Network. Network. Network.
This is a people game.

brainsparks: cultural concept frameworks (tn#63), second brain (tn#132), culture is not an industry (tn#203)

📌the end of strategy as we know it

Zoe Scaman

shared a presentation that is being shared in different groups i’m in, and rightfully so. she lays out how the strategy department/profession has been hollowed out to become some sort of play pretend. i haven’t finished it yet, as it’s +100 slides with a complex structure, but i’m sharing it because maybe you need to see this full class about how to rethink strategy.

brainsparks: strategy in the era of ai (tn#165), centaur intelligence (tn#106), community building (tn#64)

see you next week, nexialindas🫀✨

🫀✨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