tomato vs potato europe | latam-gpt | ai dreams | taste is the new intelligence | is cool dead? | humiliation rituals | fetishizing friction | japan’s 72 microseasons | gen z stare | trumpery

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Subscribe here for more ☣️✨The Nexialist #0235 tomato vs potato europe | latam-gpt | ai dreams | taste is the new intelligence | is cool dead? | humiliation rituals | fetishizing friction | japan’s 72 microseasons | gen z stare | trumpery Rodrigo Turra Jul 24   READ IN APP   welcome to your weekly cyber-aperitivo, the nexialist hello, you! i hope this message finds you well. i find myself in amsterdam atm, getting used to reality after these beautiful vacations. i was able to do a whole lot of nothing, but also reading, chatting (a lot), tanning, watching the sunset, diving in the sea, sleeping in, and watching classics at night (wait… was i actually doing nothing at any moment?). together with juan and giacomo, we watched Barbarella (1968), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) —what a fever dream—we also got started on twin peaks and finally watched m3gan. so yeah, some catching up was also done. in fact, today’s nexialist is a bit long because i was catching up on links i needed to read, so you’ll hoepgully enjoy it 🫀✨ —Rodrigo Turra 🙏🏻the nexialist is a free newsletter, but consider going paid (or a one-time contribution) if you find this content useful for your life, soul or work. or invite me for a collab. read more at the bottom of this e-mail ✨ Upgrade to paid 1 year ago » 🫂✨The Nexialist #0183 : hey homie | envisioning cities | arqueology of the future | starlinking the amazon | gen-gen | the most creative time ever | image | angel of my dreams | skullfu*ker 2 years ago » 🦼✨The Nexialist #0131 : perfumed garden | saudi arabia buys the world | climate violence | more-than-human rights | de-zombifying people | thanatosis | climate storytelling toolkit | amsterdam’s green standards | curb-cut 3 years ago » 👴🏻✨The Nexialist #0080 : Retrospective Aging | Old Hollywood Bloopers | Predicting the Past | Funny Business | Ostrich Effect | Missing You | Where Do You Search? | Five Cs Research Routine| Missing You | Bedtime Stories 4 years ago » 👙✨The Nexialist #0030 : 2031: A Future World Report | The State of Sustainability | Beyond Silicon Valley | Does Coolness Still Exist? | Skin Hunger | The Clothing Revolution | Classic Nudes | Nipples Poem | Lazy Eye Buy Me a Coffee? ☕️ 🇪🇺tomato vs potato europe until a few weeks ago i had not heard about this way to divide europe and now i feel like i see it everywhere (and also it is so true). since i just came back from tomato europe to potato europe, i have to bring this here. this is one of the many maps presented by yanko tsvetkov in his atlas of prejudice series. i have to say most of them feel pretty accurate (sunny x cloudy europe, wine x beer x vodka europe) and some might be problematic, but hey, stereotypes are like that. what is interesting about this one specifically is that both foods are from the new world, and have been part of their culinary for centuries. brainsparks: history of popcorn (tn#137), warmer climate, spiciers food (tn#145), snobbery vs. spicy (tn#193) 🌎latam-gpt i was waiting for this to happen, as we see relevant llm’s popping up beyond the united states: “fed up with ChatGPT, Latin America is building its own - dozens of organizations in the region have partnered to develop a large language model that better understands Latin America’s cultural and linguistic nuances.” it’s great to see latin america organizing to be more independent and offer localized solutions. meanwhile, the environmental impact needs to be considered. Latam-GPT is being designed for deep multilingualism and includes Indigenous languages, such as Nahuatl, Quechua, and Mapudungun, as well as dialect variants, including some from the Caribbean, said Bravo. brainsparks: rest vs west (tn#143), beyond tech epicenters (tn#1), time for indigenous futurism (tn#65), indigenous thinking for troubled times (tn#32), native languages map, language keepers, indigenous knowledge and ai (tn#20) 💭ai dreams Matt Klein, did it again, a finger-licking good analysis that escapes the obvious and is full of brainsparks. together with dr. emily cook and will cady, they merged two two themes i keep bringing here, unconsciously: ai and dreams. they analysed 5k publicly shared ai-related dreams over the past 15 years, showing how this tech has already infiltrated our unconscious. the 5 main themes are: a new god, a conscious companion, intrusive instruments, dissolution of reality and merging with machine. even before it starts, there is already a fascinating observation regarding the curve of volume of dreams, which had a dip before going back up in 2017, when the public discourse picked up the theme: It's as if the more AI became part of our conscious reality, the less our unconscious needed to process it symbolically. A declining frequency suggests dreams may serve as an unconscious early warning system, most active when processing emergent threats or changes, which we haven't yet addressed consciously. This further supports the value of such research. brainsparks: godgpt (tn#232), why do we dream? (tn#72), the most common dreams (tn#146), scientists going into your dreams? (tn#13), the shape of dreams (tn#207), weird dreams are made of what? (tn#21), digital esoterism (tn#116) 👅taste is the new intelligence stepfanie tyler wrote what feels like a manifesto, for people, but also for brands, a life buoy for the drowning sea of content we’re submitted to everyday. “Taste Is the New Intelligence - Why curation, discernment, and restraint matter more than ever.” i caught myself highlighting so many parts of it, but i’ll stick to the beginning and please, go read this. In an age where AI can generate anything, the question is no longer "can it be made?" but "is it worth making?" The frontier isn’t volume—it’s discernment. And in that shift, taste has become a survival skill. Not taste in the superficial sense—not trend-chasing, not aesthetic mimicry, not expensive minimalism for the sake of status. Real taste. The kind that signals coherence. Clarity. The ability to choose what matters in a world drowning in what doesn’t. to get you curious, if you’re still not, the subtitles are: taste as literacy; the feed is a mirror; timeless > trending; curation is an act of self-respect; throughlines, not niches; taste delays gratification. brainspark: methexis in darkness (tn#85), the banality of online recommendation culture (tn#198), knowledge curatorship(tn#14), online culture curators (tn#177), reworking, referencing, releasing (tn#125), design threads (tn#88), four c-words (tn#45), curation and synthesis (tn#5), five c’s research routine (tn#80), content diet (tn#2) 🎺is cool dead? thank you, Dimas Henkes, for sharing this link from a dazed studio insights live. since i started my comms uni more than a decade ago, i had a fascination for understanding culture and coolness. my first course in the trends realm was about coolhunting and i was so excited about it. the fact is, ‘cool’ is a moving target, and in the past years, with the fragmentation of our media, and the blurring between on and offline, it feels like it’s harder than ever to understand what is cool and what is not. this article has some important insights but it hooked me to learn that the term ‘cool’ has its origins in africa (like so much of our cultures): Cool began as a quiet resistance birthed by the African diaspora. Its earliest roots trace back to West African traditions, where concepts like “itutu” (Yoruba for “coolness”) symbolised spiritual composure, grace under pressure, and quiet strength. This evolved in the U.S., where African Americans adopted coolness as a coded survival mechanism - a way to maintain dignity, expression, and inner sovereignty under oppressive conditions. some themes mentioned to make you go read it: "cool" has moved from aspirational to relatable; cool is fleeting, but community lasts; authenticity isn't instant; Dare to be irrelevant; Begin with brand substance and purpose; Real-world connection isn't just cool, it's a necessity. The bottom line: the death of clout, the rise of meaning brainsparks: how to study culture (tn#232), dark forest theory (tn#10), oralitura (tn#147), does coolness still exist? (tn#30), counterculture x counter futures (tn#10), anatomy of hype (tn#217) ✝️humiliation rituals another seed from protein which immediately caught my eyes. in this one, it reframes our relationship to “social” media and content and it feels like a punch in the stomach. it’s based on P.E. Moskowitz’s recent GQ essay, “Is Everything a Humiliation Ritual?” — “an idea has been gaining momentum: that social media has turned everyday life into one long, rolling series of self-inflicted embarrassments. Humiliation has become the currency of our digital age.” Moskowitz blames techno-capitalism’s monetisation of human emotion. Social platforms, they argue, create environments in which users willingly contort themselves into ever more extreme versions of themselves – louder, cringier, more exposed – just to be seen. It’s the natural byproduct of systems that reward emotional spectacle and penalise silence or nuance. Every post is a content hook. The algorithm is optimised to reward outrage, irony and visibility at all costs. it counterposes perfectly with the “taste is the new intelligence” manifesto and dazed’s “is cool dead” piece. if our social media promotes outrage, irony and visibility, that is the opposite of being cool and chill, and it exacerbates the content flood we live in, making taste more important than ever. brainsparks: rituals of suffering (tn#59), rethinking rituals (tn#11), rituals x routine (tn#76), financialization of you (tn#47), schizo-fication of the online world (tn#217), surveilance as love language (tn#209), panopticon aesthetics (tn#218) 🇯🇵japan’s 72 microseasons down2forage A post shared by @down2forage i had heard before about japan’s 72 microseasons but never went further into understanding it. recently, i saw emily smith’s instagram, where she is sharing each season directly from japan (and other things about her life there), and i understood how poetic and specific each microseason is, and how this invites us to pay attention around us. then, i found a beautiful text about that by ligaya mishan for nyt: “Why Japan Counts 72 Microseasons.” while it’s a delicious reading, it brushes on a bitter reality that lately these seasons are drifting due to climate change. Although the Japanese government officially adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1873, the spirit of the traditional Japanese calendar persists. Modeled after the lunisolar Chinese calendar introduced in the early seventh century by a Buddhist priest from the Korean Peninsula, it divides the year into 72 ko, or microseasons, each no more than a handful of days long, with evocations like “fish emerge from the ice” (mid-February), “rotten grass becomes fireflies” (mid-June) and “rainbows hide” (late November). brainsparks: mono no aware (tn#212), eco poetry (tn#65), bugs like jewels (tn#234), umwelt (tn#86), nature disconnection, shinrin-yoku (tn#137) ❤️‍🔥fetishizing friction ANU released her trend radar #1 and i’m such a fan already. in this edition, the focus is “on signals relating to the Human drivers space in the framework, which includes three macrotrends: Analog Soul, Spiritual Healing, and Hyper Pleasure.” beyond the trend mapping and all the signals, i love how transparent she is about her process. as an independent worker sometimes i can get insecure about following a more qualitative approach, forgetting that it’s exactly that aspect that is needed. I want to first share some numbers, but please keep in mind that this is not objective data by any stretch of the imagination. I’m curating these signals via my personal media diet, and tagging criteria based on my own subjective opinions, so there is inherent bias in this information. Also, note that percentages will not add up to 100 because many signals are influenced by intersections of two drivers spaces and may relate to multiple macrotrends. It’s all very unscientific. Still, I think it’s interesting to observe that… and what got me more brainsparks was the half-baked thought (as she defined it): I have this feeling that we’re sort of fetishizing friction — curating and stylizing it while ignoring the structural breakdown Kyla describes. I also wonder how (younger) Gen Zs really feel about all this, considering evidence from The Akin’s recent Quarantine Cohort report re: Digital Primacy Syndrome suggests an intense aversion to friction brainsparks: a frictionless world is boring as fuck (tn#163), rebranding trend research? (tn#193), self-outsourcing age (tn#17), randomize your research (tn#72) 😑the gen z stare as kate lindsay put it: the girls (generations) are fighting again. after millennials being called cringe, using the wrong emoji, the millennial pause, and whatever else has been said, now it’s gen z turn to be clocked about a certain habit. the gen z stare, where they’re unable to engage in small talk when working in service, so they just stare at you. i don’t subscribe to the paid tier of her newsletter, but this quote was enough to make me wince. Because while millennials may not be fully socialized online, on TikTok, the new consensus seems to be that Gen Z is not native to real life. brainsparks: the anti-social century (tn#229), lil nas x’s digital fluency (tn#28), cringe (tn#14), 😭 or 😭 (tn#27) ☣️trumpery trumpery (noun) a: worthless nonsense b: trivial or useless articles : junk a wagon loaded with household trumpery —Washington Irving i know, this has been a long nexialist, but i just learned this is an actual word and it has the perfect meaning… see you next week, nexialists 🫀✨ 🫀✨thank you for reading The Nexialist. This post is public, so feel free to share these brainsparks 🧠✨ Share ❓Wait, what is a Nexialist? 🔎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 You're currently a free subscriber to The Nexialist. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. Upgrade to paid   Share     Like Comment Restack   © 2025 Rodrigo Turra Amsterdam Unsubscribe