#5SmartReads - February 16, 2022

The lie of “expired” food and the disastrous truth of America’s food waste problem (Vox)

Immigrants are the OG sustainability warriors.

“Expiration dates are a racket. Unless it smells bad or is visibly spoiled, ignore them.”

This is one of the first lessons I learned from my parents, along with washing out and reusing Ziplocs and yogurt containers for leftovers (I still admittedly do this), and to blend and freeze vegetables at the tail end of ripeness to save them and add to pappu (Telugu for dal) or chaaru (rasam).

I can’t believe there was a time I resented this wisdom, but I value it now. Even more so, after reading this article about the United States’ significant food waste problem.

This article does an excellent job of digging into the history and science of date labels on our food, and what we can do to be a little more sustainable.

Eileen Gu: Navigating two cultures, judged by both of them (Associated Press)

For as much as we’d like to put them in their own silos, sports and politics are deeply intertwined. And there’s no clearer example than the Olympics, and these Winter Games in particular.

But these politics overlook the personal experiences of the athletes who grow up in two worlds - worlds that can be harsh to their multicultural experiences.

Eileen Gu - a Chinese-American freestyle skier who’s competing on the Chinese team - expresses a sentiment that I can empathize with (one that the privilege we both were raised with certainly contributes to):

Gu treads a very delicate tightrope of speaking out selectively (almost deferentially towards the Chinese government’s wishes), and thus being celebrated by said government and the Chinese media.

It’s not uncommon for an athlete to compete on behalf of the country of their heritage, and not uncommon for the United States to have so many athletes of color.

I appreciate that this article delves into the nuance of this issue, verses trying to reduce it to a simple binary issue.

The Cricket Pitch as Battleground in Indian Cinema (The Juggernaut)

The messiness of politics and sports isn’t limited to the Olympics alone.

This article showed me how present it is in one of my favorite niche genres of movies - cricket films.

Lagaan is a classic. Dil Bole Hadippa (a Bollywood adaptation of another one of my favorite comfort films She’s The Man) is a joy. And I literally squealed when I caught the trailer of Chakda Xpress (a forthcoming film about Indian cricket icon Jhulan Goswami).

But these films do gloss over the religious strife and the modern tensions between Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent, both within India and with the India-Pakistan cricket rivalry (which puts American sports rivalries to shame, and I don’t mean this in a flattering light).

It’s a reminder that everything is political, but it’s a matter of politics you agree with vs. politics you find uncomfortable. And if it’s the latter, it’s worth sitting in that discomfort and unpacking why you feel that way.

Disclosure - I’m an investor in The Juggernaut.

The Equal Rights Amendment Is Ratified—Now What? (Ms. Magazine)

We’ve been able to shrink computers to fit in our pockets, developed life-saving medicines and vaccines, and reusable rockets.

But equal rights for women? Still not a legal reality, or an actual one for that matter.

You may remember the Equal Rights Amendment’s rocky journey that was derailed by Phyllis Schlafly decades ago, but the right for this amendment has never quite died.

In fact, by January 2020, the Act had been ratified by 38 states and obtained the necessary votes in Congress. But it still hasn’t been formally added to the Constitution as the 28th Amendment…

This article clearly explains the remaining legal work left to enshrine the ERA as law, and how its inclusion in the Constitution will affect…well, everything.

Washington wakes up to Beijing-Moscow alignment (Axios)

This may read like the plot to one of the spy thrillers I love so much, but let me assure you that the headline is slightly misleading.

In reality, Russia and China has been in a marriage of convenience for decades and Putin and Xi have a cozier relationship than their predecessors.

But when it comes to where they’re investing their money or sending their children to be educated…it’s not to each other’s country.

I would hope that our intelligence community heeds the recommendations from this article to enable more collaboration between Russian and Chinese intelligence experts, and that we see the same in academia.

Russia’s control of a significant amount of Europe’s natural gas supply will definitely affect NATO’s response in the Ukraine-Russia conflict at a standstill. It’s important to think what China wants - and could gain - in offering Russia more support, and to not be surprised if we see more global intervention.