Strands of Genius: Hermit Crabs, Seinfeld Soundtrack, Nuclear Families
plus: our thoughts on formats and the voices in your head, seeing a bird sing
WRITING FROM | Beersheba Springs, TN
WORKING ON | SOSG, BIG TV
LOOKING AHEAD
Feb 17-28: Beersheba Springs, TN
Feb 29-March 15: Nashville, TN (Rosie)
March 1-15: London, UK (Faris)
March 4-6: London, UK | Big TV Festival
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
We celebrated V-Day with some lovely couples in Nashville and then moved to the Cumberland mountains for a couple weeks of work before heading back to the airport. (And we’ve got some weekend visitors coming in as well!)
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Jeffersonian Valentine dinners and diners, love letters, Kroger shopping service, clear roads, unpacking and organizing, fridge containers, beets and goat cheese, two dollar bills, heated mattress pads, tea organizers, shelf shelves, and Shake Shack.
:: THE LINKS ::
THE SEINFELD BASELINE WAS NEVER THE SAME
Jonathan Wolf wrote the theme for Seinfeld and explains exactly how it was created. The tempo was based on Jerry’s voice, the other sounds were also voices, and it was always different. (E! News)
THE NUCLEAR FAMILY WAS A MISTAKE
David Brooks wrote a piece for The Atlantic, and it really is worth the read. But we’re going with a video theme this week, so we’ve got him explaining that the normative idea of two parents and two point four kids was really a massive and ultimately brief shift away from extended families and today’s increasingly chosen ones. “It’s one of the more hopeful things I’ve seen in society.” (The Atlantic)
HERMIT CRABS LINE UP BY SIZE TO CHANGE SHELLS
Hermit crabs live in borrowed shells and they need new ones as they grow and getting one the right size is a social exercise. This was making the rounds on Twitter and y’all. It’s amazing. Also, have you ever wondered what the hidden half of a hermit crab looks like? (Whaaaaaat?!) (BBC Earth)
:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: FORMATS AND VOICES ::
Why are all the links in this edition of strands short videos? As we wrote last week, simply adding quantity can sometimes change something qualitatively. Media is made of formats, repeating patterns of content that create familiar structures of experience. Newsletters are a format, and have their own formats, as are television programs and articles of news. What is a quantum of news? One, single, new? How it is rendered modifies whatever information is being rendered because the medium has its own message.
Do you prefer to read or watch or listen to ideas? Would you eat them? Is it an overall preference or is it just contextually determined? When you remember ideas, are they specific to the medium you first or most recently encountered them? How does this sound in your head? It’s Faris and Rosie writing with a singular voice [that’s called heteroglossia], how does that resolve? Do lots of questions sound increasingly high pitched to you?
Before the internet, CD-ROMS were a thing and the encyclopedia on one promised to revolutionize how we absorb information by combining multiple media into a single package. Somehow it never really works, moving between different consumption modes, words to video. They operate on a different logic. This week there was a discussion on twitter about whether subtitles or dubbing was a better translation solution for television shows, with people coming down vociferously on either side. Written words are inherently more ambiguous than spoken ones because intonation collapses the superposition of different possible interpretations into a specific one. How this sounds is ultimately up to you.
:: AND NOW… SEE THE BIRD SING ::

If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Getting to meet like-minded folks is one of the best parts of living nomadically, so please let us know if you see if we'll be in a city near you :)
rockON,
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.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)
SPEAKING
We're currently booking speaking gigs for the year.
Check out full descriptions and key learnings from our talks on here:
http://bit.ly/TalkDescriptions2019