5SR - April 23, 2024
Hitha on space bacteria, half ideas, and the intimidating power of Amazon
A quick refresher - I’m Hitha Palepu, the founder of #5SmartReads. If you’d like to connect with me elsewhere, I’m most active on Instagram and write a weekly newsletter about smart, random things (check out the most recent issue).
Inside Amazon’s Secret Operation to Gather Intel on Rivals (Wall Street Journal)
link gifted via my subscription
With Facebook (now Meta), it was weakening of democracy around the world. With WeWork, it was near criminal mismanagement of funds.
With Amazon, it’s logistics. And perhaps it’s because logistics and supply chain is fairly boring that the enterprise figured they’d escape public scrutiny. Except when a company becomes as huge as Amazon has, with the lawsuits alleging everything from maintaining monopoly power to violating consumer protection law.
That’s when someone will write a whole book investigating the company, and that’s exactly what Dana Mattioli (a WSJ reporter who’s been on the Amazon beat for years) did, with The Everything War - a book I can’t wait to dive into.
On Pointe (Marie Claire)
Something I haven’t prioritized enough this year is the performing arts - especially those performed right in my neighborhood at Lincoln Center.
And when it comes to the arts, the ballet is one of my favorites. And I can’t believe I haven’t seen India Bradley perform, which I need to do soon.
Bradley is in the respected and stressful category of ‘the first but not the last’ as the first Black dancer cast as Dewdrop in NYCB’s George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, and later performed in Tiler Peck’s Concerto for Two Pianos.
Ballet dancers let their art speak for themselves, but I found myself connecting to India through this interview (her early dancing memories reminded me of my own). And the photo shoot accompanying this piece is so powerful and beautiful - I think I spent more time studying the pictures than I did reading (which is rare for me).
I get asked how I read so much, and the answer is “audiobooks, and whenever I have a chance.”
And because I don’t want to give a trillion dollar corporation more money than necessary, I purchase and listen my audiobooks from Libro.fm, where I can credit my purchases to my favorite indie bookstore.
Independent Bookstore Day is the only one of these random holidays I like to observe (and it’s this Saturday), so I hope you join me in reading more and supporting small businesses while you do so. Use code hitha to get 3 extra books when you start your Libro.fm membership.
(I’m a fan and an affiliate partner of Libro.fm - emphasis on the fan).
Crush of lawsuits over voting in multiple states creates a shadow war for the 2024 election (ABC News)
I’m really nervous about the upcoming election. And this reporting is a key reason for my nerves, and why I can’t look away.
“I worry about these lawsuits that are not designed to clarify the rules but instead to lay the groundwork for false claims that an election their side lost was stolen or rigged,” said David Becker, founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, which advises local election officials nationwide. “We saw this in 2020. We saw it in 2022. And we’re beginning to see the planting of seeds of doubt in the minds of the electorate again in 2024.”
And Lordy, are there lawsuits - the RNC has filed them in half of the swing states from the 2020 election, with voter roll maintenance suits filed recently in Nevada and Michigan.
The flurry of lawsuits is the point, both for messaging and to bombard election officials with additional work they certainly don’t need.
This is of the most important election stories that’s not getting nearly enough coverage. Please read, and please make your voting plan and help your loved ones do the same. Because this could very well be the last free and fair election we have in the United States…
I put a lot of pressure on myself to publish weekly newsletters that feel worth it - and I still second guess if the letter had any value in the hours after it’s gone live.
I really love Bethany Cantor’s exercise in half ideas, which felt like a lovingly detailed email from a close friend (and also has me wanting to grab drinks with her at a cozy bar and talking about anything and everything under the sun).
My own half thought - the enduring allure of school supplies. I believe that a new notebook can change my life, love the satisfyingly dark line from a new pen, and find refilling my stapler to be so satisfying. As I was putting down my younger son to sleep last night, he detailed every item in his stationery pouch at school - the blue handles of his scissors, that he had a glue stick AND squeezy glue, and how many pencils were in his pouch (3 1/2). He spoke about each item with adorable reverence that made my heart burst, and had me planning a visit to our neighborhood stationery store this weekend to treat ourselves to something small.
NASA discovered bacteria that wouldn't die. Now it's boosting sunscreen. (Mashable)
If you follow Charlotte Palermino on Instagram, you are well-versed in the many shortcomings in sunscreen available in the USA.
Basically, the FDA needs approve the new UV filters that have been authorized by other regulatory bodies all over the world so we can better protect our skin. But our own government agencies (NASA, in this case) might have discovered what could be a new protective sunscreen filter - bacillus lystrate.
Naturally, there’s a company already commercializing the filter in its starry-branded line (Delavie Sciences), but the story in how bacillus lystrate was discovered is a fascinating, fun one. And while new filters require approval from the FDA, bacillus lystrate is a raw material added to sunscreen products to boost solar protection factor by absorbing UV rays (rather than being categorized as a filter, and requiring approval).
Love the notion of sharing half ideas!