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🫆✨The Nexialist #0241

deforestation kills | rock doido | unmasking minimalism | how supermarkets rewired the planet | data center dystopia

Rodrigo Turra

Sep 4

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welcome to your weekly cyber-scratch for your brain’s nooks and crannies, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message doesn’t find you in a well (?). this week, i’ve been in the vibe or organizing: giving clothes away, making space in my wardrobe, reorganizing the kitchen drawers and cupboards. i guess my body is feeling the end of summer and the new cycle starting soon, so i’m just succumbing to the marie kondo in me and enjoy it. now, i’ll leave you to this week’s nexialist! enjoy 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

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☠️deforestation kills

i mentioned sumaúma here some time ago, and their journalism from the center of the world. and they’ve been doing such a great job at covering the urgent issues in the amazon, directly from the front line of this war against nature. this week, jonathan watts released this article, deforestation kills, and it brings another argument and data against deforestation and for conservation/regeneration. as cop30 approaches and it’s hosted in belém, in the amazon, we need to pay attention and talk about this.

Deforestation kills. Not just trees, insects, birds, monkeys and other wildlife who die from chainsaws or fires, but also local human residents, who suffer from a sharp increase in heat exposure when the cooling forest canopy is removed.
Now for the first time, we know just how murderous that can be thanks to a groundbreaking new study that estimates more than half a million people lost their lives in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related diseases connected to forest clearance.

brainsparks: sumaúma, natural capital, biophilia paradox (tn#122), amazonize the world (tn#74), inner rewilding (tn#164), how to be a good ancestor (tn#18), indigenous futurism (tn#65), more than human rights (tn#131), factory planet to laboratory planet (tn#214), eco-development (tn#210)

🎸rock doido

do yourself a ~~flavor~~ favor and play this: gaby amarantos’ new visual album, rock doido (crazy rock, in my translation), the purest and freshest cold-pressed brazil juice. it’s a 22 minute-long-take, fully shot with a phone, involving around 250 people, so many outfit changes and it gave me (latin) chills. it was shot in the outskirts of belém (where cop30 will he hosted), in the historic neighborhood of bairro do condor and it epitomizes the joy, richness, power and talent of the northern brazilian culture, with tecnobrega and the aparelhagens (recently i shared a short documentary about this: amplified roots: tecnobrega (tn#213))

it’s a masterclass in authenticity: in a time ai is taking over with its hyperreal/perfect/ultraprocessed textures, rock doido brings the imperfection/friction of reality and that is so engaging and impressive. the fact it was shot with a phone, and so many people in the community got involved, shows the true brazilian resourcefulness and creativity. the maximal aesthetics, the humor, samples, parodies, pop-culture references, even bringing her religion to the work, made it a masterpiece for me and brought me so much joy. it reminded me of the scenius (aka communal genius): so many other artists from the region (and other regions/rhythms) are either featured or doing cameo appearances, magnifying the local scene.

brainsparks: amplified roots: tecnobrega (tn#213), scenius aka communal genius (tn#31), beat diaspora (tn#125), amazonize the world (tn#153), solarpunk (tn#88), polyfuturism (tn#158), time for indigenous futurism (tn#65), syncretism (tn#44), the most creative time ever (tn#183)

🫆unmasking minimalism

hannainaiah

A post shared by @hannainaiah

while watching gaby amarantos’ visual album i remembered this image i saw earlier this year: too latina to be a minimalist. and it resonated with a lot of people, because it’s true. it also stuck with me.

at the beginning of the year, basics boom was pointed as a 2025 fashion/style trend, in response to trendcore and the weekly change of cores/styles. and the clean girl aesthetics refuses to die. so i saw someone talking how minimalism is a colonial/imperialist force “in a systematic process of cultural homogenization.” now the phrase feels more like resistance. i found an excellent text by aradhya jha talking about it. yet another layer to the age of average (tn#115) and hyper-optimization (tn#210)

Adolf Loos, an Austrian architect known for his contributions to modern design theory, more or less introduced the concept of minimalism in the 1900s. In his essay “Ornament and Crime,” he proposes that ornaments are a remnant of primitive culture, and should be abandoned entirely in favour of clean, functional design. Suggesting that excessive ornamentation is detrimental to modern society, he advocates for a new aesthetic based on honesty, simplicity, and efficiency. His controversial and provocative beliefs align with the White man’s burden of civilizing the East, and further highlight the undeniable fascist origins of minimalism.

brainsparks: the age of average (tn#115), moodboard effect (tn#66), namecore (tn#71), less colorful (tn#123), snobbery vs. spicy (tn#193), hyper-optimization (tn#210), decolonize forsesight (tn#21)

🛒how supermarkets rewired the planet

now, this has been on my mind since i watched it a couple of weeks ago. how could something so mundane and harmless as your local supermarket have such power? i guess i never stopped to think about this (and it now seems so obvious). supermarkets are a relatively new invention, and suddenly we get used to the convenience of having everything available, all year long. but for that to happen there is a huge environtmental toll and modern-day slavery.

In this episode of Human Footprint, Shane Campbell-Staton embarks on a global investigation into the supermarket’s origins, revealing how they transformed the world and grappling with what the future may bring. He explores how innovations in food production, packaging, transportation, advertising, and retail design revolutionized how we buy our food.
Today, supermarkets offer endless choices and low prices, but behind the shelves lies a darker truth. In pursuit of efficiency, we’ve surrendered control of our food system to vast corporations, promoted global supply chains that hide labor and environmental abuses, and flooded our diets with ultra-processed foods.
Shane travels from surreal supermarket art installations to apple orchards, commercial film sets, shrimp farms, urban food co-ops, and beyond, connecting with people whose lives are intertwined with this system. What he uncovers is a complex story of the modern grocery store, the true cost of convenience, and the urgent need to reimagine the way we feed ourselves

brainsparks: failures of globalization (tn#236), hypernormalization (tn#210), hypernormative (tn#200), normosis: the pathology of normality (tn#38), a frictionless world is boring as f*ck (tn#163), the bitter reality (tn#4), super industry of the imaginary (tn#28), hyperindustry of the artificial imaginary (tn#118), self-outsourcing age (tn#17)

💿data center dystopia

i’ve been binging to vanessa wingårdh’s video with juan (he’s the one who started it this time) and we are crushing on her video essays “exploring the dark side of tech.” the latest one connects perfectly here, because if don’t think about the whole supply-chain behind a supermarket, which (most us) visit frequently, imagine the infrastructure to support all the data-centers required for our power-hungry technologies.

Electricity bills are skyrocketing and water reserves are dwindling, yet Big Tech giants like OpenAI, Meta, and Amazon are thriving. They’ve secured billions in tax breaks while you foot the bill through higher rates and taxes to power their AI servers. ChatGPT's true cost goes far beyond its $20 monthly subscription: consumers are shouldering $9.3 billion in increased electricity costs. Multi-trillion dollar companies are receiving billions in tax breaks, consuming more than 463 million gallons of water during droughts, and signing secret NDAs with city officials. We are subsidizing the very tech billionaires who are actively working to replace human workers.

brainsparks: digital plastic (tn#236), capitalists killed the internet (tn#212), critic of technology (tn#121), data as the new soil, not oil (tn#78)

see you next week, maximalists 🫀✨

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