Strands of Genius: Juneteenth Recipes, Secret Life Words, Modern Day Brand Building
Plus: Spambots & APAC
WRITING FROM | Albuquerque, NM
WORKING ON | workshop run of show, creative effectiveness discussion guide, a whole lot of house things
LOOKING AHEAD
June 19-25 | Albuquerque, NM
June 26-June 30 | Chattanooga, TN
June 30-July 2 | Beersheba Springs, TN for a family reunion & 100 YEAR CELEBRATION of the family house!
July 2- 9 | Nashville, TN
July 10-27 | Worcester Park, UK
July 28-Aug ? | Sydney, AUS
Aug-Oct | APAC Adventures
Nov | Mexico
Dec | Mexico / Tennessee
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
This week we’re in Albuquerque, visiting Faris’ BFF and old roommate who is an awesome artist that uses technology. One of his latest projects was called spambots - “a little army of 4-key literal Spambots (bots in Spam cans) that collaborate with each other and a deep learning AI to type out an altered version of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.” More on that below!
This week is our final week of the west coast tour, and we’re soaking up all the sun! It’s been such a blast getting to see friends on this side of the country :)
Yesterday was Juneteenth, a very recently made Federal Holiday here in the USA, which celebrates the day in 1865 (June 19) in which enslaved people were finally free. The Emancipation Proclamation was introduced in 1863, but it took another two years before it would be enforced in the South. We’re celebrating Juneteenth with some recipes from Black chefs below — and if you haven’t tried a hot wilted salad, you are truly in for a treat.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
heat, waves, west coast touring, realtors, Bergen, randomly finding and being briefly obsessed by Reigns, Her Majesty, on an Apple TV, hikes, trivia contest, waterfalls, Athletic Brewing, Sam, Noel’s, the Reno Rodeo, time to decompress & YOU.
:: THE LINKS ::
53 JUNETEENTH RECIPES FROM BLACK CHEFS
Food is culture, or culture is food, or those two things are intimately intertwined. Faris became obsessed with Southern Food when he moved to USA, as there’s nothing like it in the UK. And, of course, Southern Food is Black Food. “To embrace the reminders of slavery and poverty — including the gastronomic vestiges like red soda water, catfish and the sweet treats of childhood — can be hard, but to do so is to honor the suffering and affirm the contributions made by generations of freed African Americans.” And, of course, it’s delicious. (Today)
THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS
Dictionaries are descriptive not prescriptive. The meaning of words is inherently ambiguous because words can mean different things and those meanings are constantly shifting and blurring at the edges. “The fit between words and meanings is much fuzzier and more unstable than we are led to suppose by the static majesty of the dictionary and its tidy definitions. What a word means today is a Polaroid snapshot of its lexical life, long-lived and frequently under transformation.” The meaning of words is always changing to suit the needs of the culture of the time. “To think of language as a list of words with set meanings is like thinking of the position of the clouds right now as somehow fundamental rather than as a passing moment.” (NY Times Gift Link)
THE UNLOVED CHILD OF MODERN BRAND BUILDING
Gavin May put together a great presentation around brand personality for an audience of strategists at Wolff Olins and this is your sign to dive in. Gavin points out that most modern brand building tools fall within two main areas: the guiding idea (purpose, mission, positioning, value prop, brand idea, etc) and distinct expression (logo, visual identity, ad campaigns, product experience, etc.) Of course how creative agencies conceive brands is not necessarily how people conceive of brands. In focus groups, rarely if ever do consumers replay anything related to the guiding ideas — instead, it’s all about the vibe (the image, personality, tone, energy, etc.) It’s a great presentation, and absolutely worth reading. (LinkedIn)
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:: SPAM BOTS ::
From Neil:
“AI is increasingly used to generate spam content. Spambots explores what would happen if, instead, machine learning was used to empower a group of robotic Spam cans to tell their tales. Their porcine prose is generated by a deep learning based large language model fine tuned on a specially altered piggy version of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In this novel each character is born into a caste in much the same way industrial farm animals, such as those that end up in Spam, are born into their fate. Each Spambot has a small keyboard with four letters on it and when they collaborate they are able type the whole alphabet along with some punctuation.”
If you’re in the APAC market and fancy collaborating with us, let us know! We’ll be in Australia at the end of July and are planning to hang out in the APAC region through October.
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
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 in Tennessee where our company is registered, our admin extraordinaire is based in Playa del Carmen, 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 :)