🤸♀️✨The Nexialist #0266
inside the gay tech mafia | sweaty naked men | sauna effect | what tech takes | authoritarian stack | to fight authoritarianism |have you considered? | canoodle | somersaults | everybody’s gonna cheat
welcome to your hebdomadal cyber-listicle, the nexialist
hey, you! i hope this message finds you well. this week, i’m finally seeing my beautiful boyfriend juan here in são paulo, after about 5 weeks of being apart. as my body (and liver) are recovering from carnaval, i’m still in the afterglow of carnaval and i hope it lasts for a while. oh well… i hope you enjoy this week’s nexialist 🫀✨
⏮️ time-machine: best brainsparks on this day over the past years:
laboratory planet, cloud capitalism, mono-capital to poly-capital, cheekiest potter, zaftig (tn#214), citizen tourist, microdose movement, this is how you listen to music (tn#162), carnaval of the invisible, artificial carnavals (tn#110), stolen focus, channel drift, kiss your brain, is everything trauma now? (tn#60), dance like an idiot, memes, emojis and the rosetta stone, humor as a tool, telenovelas are hell (tn#9)
🤦♂️inside the gay tech mafia
wow… this viral story from wired feels like some kind of a joke. Leo Herrera writes about it and he’s spot on: you gotta be kidding me. “ReHeated Rivalry Nachos."
back in december i wrote for floatvibes about gays trambiqueiras (something like gay swindlers): what started as a meme years ago, where people desired shadier and more complex gay characters, tired of the “poor underdog” archetype, has manifested itself not only in pop culture but in real life. the examples i used were names in the big tech such as palantir’s peter thiel and open ai’s sam altman: perhaps these are the shadiest gays ever.
from this to zoë bernard’s “gay tech mafia” there is a big difference. this coming out/going viral while we have the paypal mafia and the epstein files does feel like a smoke screen. look over there!
After reading it, I can tell ya the illustrations are more offensive than the text itself. The article has a weird, gossipy vibe which treats Gays as an exotic species yet manages to be boring. The piece’s biggest takeaway? Rich, white, fit, horny Gays hang out with one another. No shit, Zoe. Ya coulda just gone to a circuit party.
The same piece could have been written about restaurants, nightlife, the arts, or music. What was missing for me (other than a mature voice and sharper editing) was true historical context, such as: maybe Gay men still form tight networks because we’re still recovering from a generation of lost mentors due to AIDS? Or really explore how homophobia is still the root of many of these networks. That kind of thing seems less interesting to the author, who at one point considers dressing up as a man to infiltrate power gays in “their natural habitat.” Embarrassing.
brainsparks: seedless fruit: futureless tech (tn#198), data-driven DEI (tn#179)
💦 sweaty naked men
well, since we’re at it with all the gay sex imagination in pop culture, i thought of slipping this here. stabilinda (what an amazing name) is italy’s techno diva, and here she’s singing about naked sweaty men, as one does.
brainsparks: male objectification through the ages (tn#127), slut techno (tn#139), com carinho (tn#242), ADORO (tn#29), señoras bien (tn#119), his sweat (tn#159), nipples poem (tn#30), why are some people so horny? (tn#79)
🧖🏻♂️sauna effect
the weekend before coming to brazil, juan and i got an amazing gift from our dear friend hayley: a day at one our favorite spa’s in amsterdam: spa zuiver. it was so good and relaxing. then this video appeared in my feed. i didn’t know exactly how saunas affect my body, and now i know a little bit.
in the heat, the senses, the mind, the heart, the body, all told a different tale - lp hartley, the go-between
brainsparks: how to feel better naked (tn#79), nakedness: deeply human (tn#79), the bidet (tn#182)
🤳what tech takes
Patrick Tanguay recommened this piece by rebecca solnit last week: What technology takes from us – and how to take it back. it echoes/condenses many other pieces i’ve shared here, like the attachment economy (tn#261), friction-maxxing (tn#259), self-outsourcing age (tn#17). it reminded me of the british series years and years, which showed the social and cultural effects of technology within 15 years in a specific family. it shows so well what is happening and reminds us how to reclaim what silicon valley is taking from us.
Having convinced a lot of us that we don’t want to go out and have unmediated contact with other people, Silicon Valley is now telling us we do not want to do our own thinking, creating or communicating with other humans. “You’ll never think alone again,” said one advertisement for an AI product called Cluely. The ad seemed confused about what thinking is and oblivious to why we might want to do it ourselves. These companies often suggest that things we have always done are too hard to do.
brainsparks: agentic sages (tn#225), a frictionless life is boring as f*ck” (tn#163), curated coping mechanism (tn#224), artificial intimacy (tn#168), the comfortable life is killing you (tn#224), independence x autonomy (tn#67), neural media (tn#217), crossing the chasm (tn#107), godgpt (tn#232), schizo-fication of the online world (tn#217)
🫡authoritarian stack
The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next. if it was difficult to understand what has been happening with tech+govt in the us, this interactive map is quite helpful, mapping people and their roles, moves, events, financial flows and infrastructure.
Under the banner of “patriotic tech“, this new bloc is building the infrastructure of control—clouds, AI, finance, drones, satellites—an integrated system we call the Authoritarian Stack. It is faster, ideological, and fully privatized: a regime where corporate boards, not public law, set the rules.
Our investigation shows how these firms now operate as state-like powers—writing the rules, winning the tenders, and exporting their model to Europe, where it poses a direct challenge to democratic governance.
brainsparks: post-naive internet era (tn#252), public digital infrastructure (tn#157), digital coup (tn#221), cloud capitalism (tn#214), technocracy incorporated (tn#213), headed for technofascism (tn#213), technofeudalism (tn#143), netocracy vs. consumtariat (tn#18), digital feudalism (tn#136), capitalists killed the internet (tn#212)
🇧🇷to fight authoritarianism
whenever i see this kind of content, it brightens up my day. brazil’s political situation is far from perfect, but sometimes we have this sort of win that does boost our brazilian morale. here, they lay out the similarities and differences in the brazilian and the us systems.
But the aftermath could not be more different. Jair Bolsonaro is now serving a 27-year prison sentence, while Donald Trump is president, again.
So how did two democracies, facing similar threats, end up with such different outcomes? This video explains how Brazil’s democratic system worked to hold “the Trump of the Tropics” accountable and what the US could learn from the aftermath.
brainsparks: brazilian renaissance (tn#265), escalation in brazil (tn#103), dictator questions (tn#218), the brazilianization of the world (tn#35), amazonize the world (tn#153), apocalypse in the tropics (tn#236), the edge of democracy (tn#23)
🌎have you considered?
Where’d you go? / Did they carry you into confusion? / Disconnected by design
it’s so lovely to see such amazing artists collaborating. pattie gonia is a superstar dragqueen and activist, and imogen heap is known for pushing boundaries with music and technology. the lyrics resonate exactly what the last 2 posts brought.
Pattie Gonia, Imogen Heap and BANDALOOP believe that social justice and environmental justice are inextricably linked and require action now.
The artists teamed up to create ‘Have You Considered?’ - a song and music video about what we take for granted. Have we considered if we couldn’t have each other?…If we couldn’t have our planet? The artists met in The Eastern Sierra (land of the Kootzaduka’a people) to create the music video using sounds found in the Sierra throughout the song to feature nature as an artist.
brainsparks: hide & seek (tn#236), why make art atm (tn#264), cyborg art (tn#179), neil harbisson, vibration cyborg (tn#11)
💕canoodle
canoodle (verb) : ca·noo·dle / kə-ˈnü-dᵊl
: to engage in amorous embracing, caressing, and kissing : pet, fondle
another words to add to my english vocab of cute words, alongside kerfuffle (tn#193), hornswaggle (tn#263), lollygag (tn#40) and interrobang (tn#188)
brainsparks: cafuné (tn#3)
🤸♀️somersaults
kah-lo is a nigerian artist who i will need to immerse myself in. i’ve been listening to this on loop, and i just love the uplifting blasé vibe she brings. is this the new boundary anthem?
It's not like me to take things quiet
And you lost the plot when you tried it
And my girlfriends said, allow it
So I′m givin′ you one last warning
Watch your tone with me
'Cause I never give this love for free, usually
I′m simple, let me see
But all you're doin′ is vexin' me
I no agree
i didn’t know but somersault in portuguese is one of my favorite words: cambalhota.
brainsparks: haha (tn#102)
🫦everybody’s gonna cheat
froukje has appeared a few times here, and her new song is delicious and the video quite funny, i was giggling by the end. i don’t think you need to understand dutch to get it.
brainsparks: no more regrets (tn#93), monogamy, explained (tn#57), non-monogamy (tn#57), relationship anarchy (tn#6), decolonizing affection (tn#229)
see you next week,
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