So, apparently something fell from the sky in Zagreb, Croatia, parts of a plane, or parts of a rocket / bomb. No full confirmation yet.

News outlets reporting that it “allegedly” has Russian signage.

That would be a bit unfortunate, given that Croatia is in the NATO….😬 We will probably know more tomorrow what it actually is.

But it is definitely a very unusual event, during a sensitive time. 😕

Having grown up in Yugoslavian war as a child, many things I see play out in Ukraine, are almost the same pattern in terms of behaviour.

Here are some things to expect & what I remember doing and would do again if ever faced with war. 🧵👇 1. When there are talks about a potential war, start thinking of places outside of country you could go to.

Wars start quick ⏰ & escalations usually are followed by a key event. In that moment, don't hesitate - leave.

My hunch is Putin does NOT plan to stop with Ukraine. Ukraine is the test. Trump probably gave Putin info he needed over those years to restart this.

I also have a hunch US troops left Afghanistan because they had intel about larger conflict coming up soon. In addition, what we need to keep an eye on is - who will side with Russia?

Will China align? Or someone else? Will it be Turkey? Or even Hungary? Serbia?

It could flip some countries due to (mentally) unstable leadership.

I’ve recently came to terms that as you improve your well-being, you will have to leave some, if not all friendships that you built earlier in life prior to change. 😕

This feels in particular true if you are changing class position & have less of a scarcity approach to life. I used to think that if you invest time, money & effort in people, it would motivate for becoming more proactive & change outlooks + outcomes. And to some level it does.
But unless systems they are in support that change, majority just reverts back.

Today, we have decided that Chunkie as a company will not seek or take any investments.
We will not make any investor pitch decks anymore, & I will not meet with investors in the future.

Here is my why 🧵👇 1. Let's start with the basics - women do not get funding.

The statistics are so bad that the issue won't change during my life, as it is much worse than this industry is willing to talk about.

It is an issue of class, wealth, racism & sexism.

tech.eu/features/37864…

Let’s talk boundaries. 👌
Few years ago had a collegue I decided to distance from as the friendship ran its course. They kept texting me every few months despite me telling them that at this moment I need time to focus on family stuff. 🧵 As I gave 2 instances of explanations where I said that I can’t give attention & taking time to focus on family matters, they persisted to contact me from text to Linkedin. I was short in initial answers and reiterating the same msg that at this time I am focusing on family.

Sexist white men who believe & state that they are allies, but still do opressive actions and say opressive things - are the most damaging group to women. Hiding behind a role of a “good guy”, “not like the others” while invalidating feelings of women the moment they are targeted in discussions, expecting woment to comform to their fragility & not “cause a scene”. We are not allowed to feel, to love, to hate. To release our trauma.

In his 20s, my partner had an opportunity to invest some money in 2 startups. He wasn't born wealthy, so he only had 1-2k Euros to put into it. Both investments made him around 30k each. We often think about what his life would be like if he had 10k-20k to invest instead. In my journey, I have never been presented opportunities to invest, to begin with, despite working in startups. It's the barrier of location, gender, class.
Both of us think about how this affects our long-term security.

Spoke to my cousin today. She said her only regret is not going to Uni for Kinesiology, because if she did it, she would open a gym. She studied accounting instead but is a fitness head.

This is a barrier I keep seeing - the belief you need a certain degree to run a business. The lack of confidence to be able to learn something new, unless you get a diploma “as a stamp of approval” stops so many people from starting.

Schooling is failing so many, and rigid ideas of knowledge validation.

My first culture shock when I moved to the US was to discover that people ask friends to pay gas money for giving them a ride, even the shortest destinations, even if they are going somewhere together. I was shook. Where I’m from, you usually split the bill on other things, or things even out as the friendship goes. Only payments that are split around the car is if you go for a long distance trip, and by long distance I mean 4/5h+. Nobody would ever ask you for gas money for 15min drive.

"Successful people, especially those in sports, focus more on learning what they don't know how to do well, instead of improving what they already know or what they are comfortable with."

This changed my life, because I realised that in my own journey I did the opposite. I wondered why did I not allow myself to focus on things that were hard? They involved constant failure, and in my case, I grew up in a very toxic household that didn't allow for that. This situation made me focus heavily on perfecting what I knew well & what felt safe.

Who else is at the 6 months mark into this pandemic & just now “landing” into realisation that our world has changed, things won’t go back to normal anytime soon & there is no way to plan our future at the moment?

It really hit me yesterday. As some of you know, I grew up doing war time, and what is common with both situations is lack of ability to “plan the future”. Also, the opportunities shrink tied to this inability to plan the future.

I am nota hateful person but honestly I hate how a lot of men constantly assume women don’t know shit about topics they talk about.

How difficult is it to hold a discussion without telling a woman she “needs to learn more” about a topic she fucking studied? I am short fused due to covid cabin fever & this crappy year overall, and I absolutely have no patience anymore for “smart-ass” non contextual men coming into any space I am in, to “educate me”.

Been working on the final Chunkie branding for a few weeks now. Experimentation, exploration, wordmark, colours, shapes, systems etc.

And last night, I realised I accidentily built: Chobani.

Take in mind I didn't see their rebrand prior since we don't even have it here.

😭 When building visual identity this happens more often than you think. If you get inspired by current trends & observe your demographic well, you will find yourself landing into similar "storylines" and visual sentiments. Design is a language after all.

There should be a stronger push to get all Europeans to learn multiple languages of the continent, not only English. Maybe subsidize learning of different "language groups" so that the individual can easily pick up on others within the same "family". It could gamechange movement. At the moment, to move between European countries (EU in specific) while you can do that freely as an EU citizen, there are still issues of integration. Language is deeply important & creates serious barriers for EU citizens when they move around.

How to lower anxiety? Delete social media & work on stop comparing yourself to others. Create things with hands, and go for walks in nature often. Eat when hungry, & don’t stress over it. Try to make good chunk of it green. Drink water. Meet friends. Read. Allow yourself to nap. I read a thread on Twitter about anxiety & how one should “master their body”, master this master that. Basically stressing a person out with perfectionistic agenda.

It’s about getting those small progressions, slowing down, taking things at a less tense pace - not a triathlon.

We built our app but last bits started to get confusing. Cognition wise it was too much on the plate causing a blockage in decision.

So we decided to strip everything away. Start with the most important part, and re-introduce elements back to edit our thought process. The most challenging part of this journey has been to 1. understand the problem, 2. align it with how we work as a team & 3. find a way to bring everything together. We are now on phase three of this process.

I wish, so deeply wish, we would stop paying close attention to entertainment celebrities to the degree that we do as a global society. It seriously makes us more stupid. I was someone seriously invested in the media / entertainment business. My work still requires me to be in touch with it, but I swear, 00s, reality shows, celeb blogs & paparazzi culture has sucked dry our time & brain cells.

One takeaway I have from being around tech world leadership these last 10 years is:

“Why are so many people in tech exercising & eating as if they are prepping for the Olympics?”

I did not encounter this in the ad / creative world (at this level).

It’s very peculiar. Hyper focus on sleep, stats, eating optimisation, exercising to the levels that remind me of professional athletes, but yet without having to compete at that level physically.

There is heavy glamourisation of athlete life (which if you know athletes, most of them are broken).

Took a long walk today. Focused on the next 6 months. Been feeling the imposter syndrom (I let it just pass). Working to somehow nest myself into London. Moving here just before Covid displaced us, with entry points into society closed off. It will pass, it’s just different. We moved here to meet people, land into a vibrant society, get our business really going, because Sweden was too closed off & limited. Upon arrival here we were so overwhelmed that we took a bit of a break to settle in. Then Covid happened.

I’m absolutely impressed by confidence of Gen Z-ers on “manifesting” their wants.

Being very positive about reaching your goals is something that would have been so beneficial in my youth.

We had vision boards. They *manifest* out loud for the world to hear, w no fear. 🥰 And trust me, most of our vision boards were in private, behind closed doors, far away from the judgmental eyes of the public 😂