Strands of Genius: Eating While Politicking, The Waste From Medical Operations, What Comes After Ambition
Plus, our thoughts on: Interesting 2022 and Having Fun
WRITING FROM | Worcester Park, UK
WORKING ON | Wrapping up a strategic sprint, trying out loads of new recipes, fall/winter travel planning
LOOKING AHEAD
Aug 27-Sept 15 | Worcester Park, UK
Sept 14-21 | Provence, FR
Oct 25-28 | Athens, Greece
Dec 1-7 | Nashville, TN
Dec 7-15 | Beersheba Springs, TN
Dec 15-19 | Atlanta, GA
Dec 19-21 | Athens, GA
Dec 21-Dec 31 | Nashville, TN
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
It’s the final month of Q3, and the weather has already started to taunt us with leaves falling and temperatures dropping. It’s a transitional month before we creep into October, and start thinking about winding down for the year.
While it’s not over yet, it’s crazy how this year has flown by. We’re already in the midst of planning for our annual whiskey weekend in December, and talking through final dates and deliverables for the year with clients — and at the same time trying to remind ourselves that it’s only September, and it’s important to live in the moment as well. (We’re planning on doing more of that whole living in the moment thing once this project with a west coast team wraps, and evenings aren’t occupied by calls.)
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Everything But The Bagel seasoning (which Rosie brought back from the USA on her last trip), Russell Davies for all his organization and tech support skills, Interesting 2022 and all the speakers, Anna Rose & Nishita & Mel - the lunch crew brought to you by Kim, celebrating Dave’s birthday and making new friends, Secret Cinema and the excuse to get dressed up like cosmic-seeking-ravagers, Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy, dinner parties, Polly & Dave & Cordelia & Louie, getting to have a cute dog sleepover, Caesar salad, blackberry crisp, chats with our neighbors, fresh peppers from the garden, rhubarb&pears&apples from Polly, & YOU.
:: THE LINKS ::
EATING WHILE POLITICKING IS HARDER THAN IT’S EVER BEEN. HERE’S WHY.
Apparently food has long been a way of signaling “I’m just like you!” for politicians. But it can also signal the opposite, like when then President Ford ate a tamale but without stripping it of the corn husk first. His explanation, that he had eaten tamales but that they were always pre-peeled, made him seem even more out of touch. In this essay, Lyz Lenz writes about how food has always been a tool and a reflection of culture, and what that looks like today. (Politico)
WHAT COMES AFTER AMBITION
It turns out I’m not the only one thinking about waning ambition and quiet quitting! In the weeks since writing about the two topics, people have been sharing more and more around these themes. I particularly enjoyed reading this Elle magazine take specifically on why women are losing ambition. To sum it up: we’ve been told to hustle, but no matter how much we hustle, or lean in, or whatever… we still hit the glass ceiling. So why then would we continue to give our all to employers when they clearly aren’t giving their all back to us and our lives? Take for example this quote: “Then there’s the bigger picture: Are we failing future generations of women when we don’t throw ourselves wholeheartedly against the glass ceiling? Even the question is a bit of a trap, says Mukhopadhyay, placing an individual burden on women when it should be a collective one. It’s not on each of us, as workers, to better the world for all women. The gains of previous generations of social-justice movements teach us the truth: Collective progress isn’t gained through one exceptional individual’s achievements.” (Elle)
THIS IS THE WASTE FROM ONE BREAST RECONSTRUCTION SURGERY
I’ll leave this with simply the statement from the artist:
In this film you see me, Maria Koijck, lay in the middle of an incredible amount of waste from just one surgery, my surgery. In August 2019 I got diagnosed with breast cancer. They had to remove my entire left breast. After a successful recovery, I recently got a deep lap surgery where they gave me an entire new breast of my own bodily materials. I am so grateful for their craftsmanship and the chance to feel beautiful again, but during this process I discovered that 60% of the surgery materials used for this operation is disposable. For example: the stainless steal scissors that are flown in from Japan, are used for one cut before they end up in the bin. I asked the doctors to collect all of the surgery materials used for my operation, to get a clear idea of how much it really was. I was in shock when I saw 6 bags full of plastic waste. I am incredibly grateful for my recovery but I am also in disbelief when I see the waste that’s been used for just one operation, my operation. As an artist I’ve spend years on shedding light on the current situation considering plastic waste. It raises a question: Humans always seek to ‘get better’, but what is the cost to our environment?(Dense Discovery/YouTube)
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:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: INTERESTING 2022 ::
When you’re a millennial and you first start dating someone, it’s natural to google someone. And when Faris and I first started dating, he had just spoken at a conference called Interesting NY, and the video featured prominently in the search results. It was the link I shared with friends — “THIS is who I’m dating! This cute and lively and pigtailed super smart dude with a British accent!” (You, too, can watch this blast from the past video here - so much of what Faris talks about here ultimately became the foundation for our company and thinking still today! And, which expresses Faris’ intense love of jungle, which also still exists to this day, lol.)
The event had been organized by Russell Davies (who Faris has said significantly inspired his career as a strategist) and unlike most conferences it didn’t seem to have a work-related theme. It was a series of short presentations about things people found, well, interesting. He went on to organize others, but we went on to live nomadically and we just never happened to overlap with the locations on the dates of any of the events.
And then we did! On Saturday, Russell hosted Interesting 2022, for the first time in four years, at Conway Hall in London. Faris asked me to block my calendar for Saturday weeks and weeks ago, and then last week he filled me in that it was so that we could go to the event. Y’all. I was beyond thrilled. I mean it wasn’t a Tom Cruise jumping on the couch Oprah moment, but I have been wanting to go for like… 14 years at this point!
On Saturday we hitched a ride into London with our friend and her super cute dog (thanks, Cordelia!) and we listened to people talk about the following things, though not necessarily in this order:
soil saving lives
labels and how we use them to communicate about ourselves and others
trains and how they’re the best form of traveling
bikes with printing presses
how Oxford was the Detroit of England
William Shackleton and the night watch
about crispy onions and trademark infringements
lawn bowling
long grief
queer culture in James Bond (see: License to Queer)
confronting fears
story-creating
about rave culture and what we can learn from it today
and chartreuse
It was refreshing and fun and, yes, absolutely interesting. (The talk on soil even inspired me to order a composter for Faris’s dad!)
So much of my learning and even non-fiction reading is focused around the work that we do for our clients. Which is why it was so nice to get to be taken on a learning adventure but without work at the core. And the energy at the event was delightful - we sung along to “The Final Countdown” before the first speaker stepped on stage, and everyone clapped enthusiastically for each and every speaker. A joyful way to spend a Saturday, indeed!
:: OH, AND: MORE THOUGHTS ON HAVING FUN ::
For those of you who follow me (Rosie) on Instagram, you’ll know that I’ve been wild foraging blackberries like crazy. Before I left for the USA and Portugal, I was harvesting 1.5lbs a day!! EACH DAY, Y’ALL!! I have made many blackberry crisps and even blackberry jam! (Apparently jelly involves only fruit juice whereas jam includes fruit itself, or at least that’s what I got when I googled the difference.) I’ve also given away pints of berries to neighbors and friends, and also frozen berries and blackberry pulp.
And while all the things I’ve made are delicious, what I enjoy most is the act of picking them. I even invested in a step stool and goat skin gloves for a better blackberry picking experience. Faris even asked me the other day “What is it that you think you like the most about foraging?” I rambled on about not wanting berries to go to waste, and getting to have these delicious and normally expensive fruits for free, but also… it’s just fun!
So when I saw blackberry picking featured in this illustrated essay of “How To Have Fun Again” (yes you should definitely check it out), I had to include the link.
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faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co
@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob hangs out on instagram
@ashley also writes for deaf, tattooed & employed
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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
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