Strands of Genius: How Covid Vaccines Work, Brain Fog, Green Pr0no
plus our thoughts on: nature!
WRITING FROM | Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
WORKING ON | four workshops & two presentations before Thursday!
LOOKING AHEAD
Feb 21-April 26: Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
April 26-May 9: Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic
May 9-May 31: Nashville, TN (vaccine trip!)
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
This week is looking a bit hectic, but it’s because we’re officially taking vacation beginning on Friday! We’ll be traveling to Santo Domingo on Monday, where we’ll stay for a little over a week, before flying back to the US to snag a vaccine. Even though we’re constantly out-of-office, we still take time to actually turn on an out-of-office message, turn off our computers, and take some time off. We’ll be topping up on inspiration, and rest and relaxation, before flying back to the US. And then…. back to that TBC life ;)
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
so many turtles, our new friends from diving, Sean & Leah, TikToks from the family, Google calendar (ok, a stretch, but we’re migrating a house from The Vacation Calendar to Google, and whew, so much better), bulgar (love this grain!), our upcoming vacation, Leffe Blonde, garlic shrimp pasta with Megan and Bogie, walks & talks, zoom dates (Happy Birthday, Jason!), NOT to Chase for irreversibly closing our atm cards even though we haven’t activated the new ones they sent because we haven’t been in the US for a couple months, (#nomadproblems), having a back up account and card, playing pig (simple, excellent dice game), and the new boutique little bodega that just opened up down the street (it’s the only shop within an hour or so walking from where we are staying).
S C H O O L O F S T O L E N G E N I U S >> H I G H L I G H T S
//SOSG x Sean Choi | Community Meet Up//
Starts Apr 21, 2021 at 12:00 PM EDT
Making Sense of Cultural Relevance
Consumers thirst for it, marketers rave about it, and brands are behind on it. How do YOU define culture? If you stumbled in your response, you’ll leave this workshop with the clarity, confidence, and purpose you didn’t realize you needed. Let’s get cultural! About Sean Choi: Brought up by a global family, Sean Choi is now a Brooklyn-based strategist who values culture, relationships, and a good story.
//SOSG April Yoga | Community Meetup//
Starts Apr 22, 2021 at 12:00 PM EDT
We hope you'll join us for our third community yoga session! Our instructor will be Elea Soler, and she'll be leading us in a practice designed for all levels -- meaning you're most welcome whether you're new to yoga, or have years of experience.
Enroll at http://schoolofstolengeni.us
:: THE LINKS ::
HOW THE COVID VACCINES WORK
We were having a Zoom date with our friends yesterday when one said, “I’m almost embarrassed to say this, but my mom is thinking she won’t get the COVID vaccine. Does anyone have any resources that could convince non-believers?” She went on to say that her mom was worried the vaccine would change her DNA. Our friend Troy, who works for the New York Times, quickly jumped in and shared this link, which explains how nine of the vaccines that are available around the world work. While we weren’t in need of additional evidence, the easy-to-follow explanations with graphics were awesome and it was interesting to really dive into the science. (NY Times)
BRAIN FOG: HOW TRAUMA, UNCERTAINTY & ISOLATION AFFECT YOUR MIND
Have you found it hard to concentrate of late? Us too, everyone too. Our brains don’t deal well with ongoing open-ended trauma and people are experiencing ‘brain fog’ as a consequence. It can affect “everything from our memory, our attention and our ability to problem-solve to our capacity to be creative” and is likely an intersectional function of the situation, both the stress and the lack of changes to anchor memories to. “One powerful factor could be the fact that everything is so samey - the brain is stimulated by the new, the different, this is known as the orienting response." How can you change things up, whilst staying locked-down? (Guardian)
ISABELLA ROSSELINNI’s GREEN PORNO
Remember how Rosie wrote about cats last week? It turns out that we had *quite* the week, with one male cat running into our apartment, peeing on our couch, and then running out. (Thanks, dude.) We thought that the cats were having fights, but it turns out that cats mating sounds like young kids screaming. We witnessed at least two copulations, and it wasn’t like Animal Planet where it seemed beautiful, it kinda felt a bit predatory. Kittens can go into heat from as little as 4 months old, and go into heat every few weeks until they get pregnant. Anyway, all this got us thinking about Isabella Rossellini and we may have shared Green Porno before, but here it is again, for your viewing pleasure. The wonderful actor investigates the sex life of animals, and shares her learnings through short films. Read more about the series from Vanity Fair, or head over to YouTube to watch all of the videos. (Youtube)
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:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: NATURE ::
Watching these cats going through heat germinated a lot of thoughts about nature and how removed we are from it day to day, in some senses. We have friends who are pet parents and have plenty of experience cohabiting with furry family members, allergies notwithstanding, but pets are neutered. Neuter, from the Latin means “neither sex” - apparently (wikipedia says, citation needed) vets use the term “de-sexing” now.
Either way, it reminds us how in modern life even when we are in the presence of other parts of the animal kingdom, it’s not how they would be ‘in nature’. Of course, this idea presents a host of even more complex confusions. Firstly, there are of course good reasons to neuter pets, which is why many countries require it when you adopt one. If they keep breeding there would be even more abandoned, unwanted animals in the rescue system than there already are.
Secondly, it’s extremely hard not to think of animals from within our own frame of thinking, a kind of cognitive anthropomorphism. Wherever you think consciousness begins, dogs and cats certainly seem conscious, (but are usually assumed to not be self-conscious"). As people, we mostly wouldn’t want to be neutered, one assumes, but is that projection relevant to our pets? Might they have much happier lives, should such a thing be measurable, having been neutered, even if their genes aren’t being passed on?
Equally, watching the *ahem* courting process ongoing between a young female cat and three larger males, triggers all kinds of feelings about consent and predatory behavior. Animals seem pretty aggressive in their mating in general. Ducks are extremely non-consensual in their mating practices, as per the Green Porno about ducks linked to above. That’s just how duck life works and the females evolve physical mechanisms to manage that process, to make sure their eggs get fertilized by the drake they believe to be the fittest.
Even more broadly, we have this tendency to think about ourselves as of nature, and yet distinct from it. We intuitively seem to understand we are animals and yet we are also clearly somewhat different. There is a tendency to project a prelapsarian fantasy on the untouched state of nature, which, left to its own devices is red in tooth and claw. We have certainly changed, or destroyed, vast amounts of what was oreviously run be nature. That’s a key part of humans, we don’t tend to adapt to our environment so much as change it to suit our needs. This obviously has consequences. Cognitively, we tend to we carve up the modern world into civilization and nature, as two opposing states, as different places. You can see it reflected in getting back to nature, or nature walks, or spending the weekend in nature etc.
But nature is everything and everything is natural since it exists. But natural means something quite different when we use it, it often comes loaded with biases about what is considered currently acceptable in human behavior. It also gets used on product packaging, where it implies a lot but legally means absolutely nothing, because it’s not a regulated term under FDA rules.
All of which is to say, binaries are naive, things are probably more complex than we think, and thinking about things is a very human thing to do. And a walk out in nature really does do you a lot of good. You know what we mean! Research shows it makes you happier, less stressed and more creative! And, hilariously, because we are so messed up in our understanding of the world, and especially in relation to healthcare (extra esp in the USA, where for lots of essentially commercial reasons there is a strong tendency to prescribe pills rather than prophylactic behavior or integrative solutions), scientists have started prescribing 20 mins outside as “nature pills” so people take them for their health. Nature, now in pill form!
:: AND NOW… WE’RE IDEA INCUBATORS ::
A very Genius Steals passage, from the novel XX (HT Reuben for the reading reco)
If we can ever be of help to you, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We’d love to collaborate on something awesome.
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 :)