"Venture Partner | ex-Google | Decoding AI • Motivational stories on innovation & resilience • Tesla/SpaceX insights" is the information Alvin Foo gives about himself on his X account. His pinned post is about Keanu Reeves, one of my favourite actors, yes, he of The Matrix fame. (Check out "The Matrix Blackout Poems" my blackout poems made from The Matrix screenplay). Alvin Foo lists Keanu's acts of kindness, including "After winning astronomical sums for the Matrix trilogy, the actor donated more than $ 50 million to the staff who handled the costumes and special effects - the true heroes of the trilogy, as he called them." I love the way Alvin Foo ends his post: "This man could buy everything, and instead every day he gets up and chooses one thing that cannot be bought: Be a good person."

It's wise to be a good person. Wahenga, the Swahili word for "the wise ones", left us with many sayings that point to this, many of which end up on lesos, including "Wema hauozi" - goodness does not decay. Khadija Salim explains more in her article "Swahili Proverbs and Kanga Sayings: Guide to East African Wisdom"

In "AI will deliver wisdom", Peter Diamandis shared that he had been thinking about wisdom:" The thing we used to reserve for grandparents, philosophers, and tribal elders who’d seen enough life to know which paths lead to ruin." He gives this example: "When you go to the village elders and ask, “Which direction should I take?”, they don’t run equations. They draw on decades of watching people make choices and living with the consequences. They say, “If you go this way, based on everything I’ve seen, it won’t end well. Go this other way, and you have a real chance.”

This reminded me of a short film I wrote in 2015 called "Short Cut" where one of the two characters was an old man who warned the other character, a young woman, not to go a certain way. Of course, the young woman did not listen. In 2020, I turned the script into an experimental short film, using stock footage. You can watch it here. Then five years later in 2025, as I was participating in the Fashionomics programme where I was developing Afrogoth, I collaborated with a creative from Botswana to create a video of an Afrogoth AI fashion show based on the Short Cut short film. I made the runway circular because going in circles is a key factor in the short film. You can watch it here. Later, with the help of Notebooklm, I created a cool pitch deck from the screenplay.

Also in 2020, I started the Mild and Red Podcast and in one episode, I revisited a paper I had written in university, in the late 90s, about developing a programme on Altruism in Nairobi. One of the research results that I quoted in that paper was that as countries become more industrialized, the level of altruism decreases. In 2024, after discovering the AI music tool Suno, I created several AI songs inspired by this particular podcast episode. You can listen to part 1 of the podcast episode here. List of songs:

2:04 – Nairobi Dreams

3:39 – Nairobi (version 1 - Lyrics from my poem)

4:43 – The Power of Selfless Love

6:42 – Nairobi (version 2 – Lyrics from my poem)

7:42 – Nairobi’s calling

9:04 – Heroes of Nairobi

10:20 – Channel Surfer

11:37 – Be the change

13:42 – All for one

The AI songs include: Heroes of Nairobi ("people come together, lending a helping hand") and Nairobi Dreams ("you're not defined by the cards you're holding). Alvin Foo lists some of the cards that Keanu Reeves was holding: "He was abandoned by his father at 3 years old and grew up with 3 different stepfathers. He is dyslexic. His dream of becoming a hockey player was shattered by a serious accident. His daughter died at birth. His wife died in a car accident. His best friend, River Phoenix, died of an overdose. His sister has leukemia." Yet in spite of all this (or maybe because of all this?), "Keanu Reeves never misses an opportunity to help people in need."

During the Fashionomics programme, I collaborated with a Kenyan author to bring to life some of the scenes from his novel "The Matatu Slasher", using AI and incorporating the Afrogoth look. You can watch a behind the scenes video "The Making of Afrogoth Matatu" (Part 1) here.

Another AI song inspired by the Altruism podcast episode was "Nairobi's calling", music and lyrics by Suno: ("Through the hustle and bustle the spirits rise, altruism rings like a bell...with love and compassion we'll light up the way").

To reiterate what the research says, as countries become more industrialized, the level of altruism decreases. Enter cottagecore.

I was born and raised in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, but I lived in Nakuru for five years and looking back, I realize that I loved those five years so much because I was living a rather cottagecore life.

Here's an old video of my backyard in Nakuru, blue sky, trees gently swaying in the wind and here's an old video "kenyan goth home" giving a tour of my Nakuru home. 

Afrogoth Cottagecore Runway is what I named my entries for the Nightcafe "Find your core quest" challenge, which on day 1 was "cottagecore". Here's one of my entries. Nightcafe's idea of cottagecore: "Think slow living and soft light. Gardens, baking, florals, cozy homes tucked into nature."

As the "wahenga" would say, Haraka haraka haina baraka. (Hurry, hurry has no blessings).

A 2021 Forbes magazine article titled "Gen Z is driving demand for cottagecore goods" noted that: "With more free time on their hands during the pandemic lockdown, people could invest in non-work activities, update their living spaces, and dress more comfortably. Together, those habits fueled the growth of cottagecore."

Slowing down is a big part of the cottagecore ethos and slowing down is quite conducive to kindness and wisdom. As Alvin Foo points out in his post about Keanu Reeves: "In 1997 some paparazzi found him walking one morning in the company of a homeless man in Los Angeles, listening to him and sharing his life for a few hours."

Wishing you a wise wick, I mean, week!