5SR - February 6, 2024

Hitha on the sun's flip, Yemen's new prime minister, and the key role OTs play in Los Angeles County

Author

Hitha Palepu
February 06, 2024

Today’s curator is the founder of #5SmartReads, Hitha Palepu. She’s a consummate multihyphenate - CEO of Rhoshan Pharmaceuticals, author of WE’RE SPEAKING: The Life Lessons of Kamala Harris and How to Pack: Travel Smart for Any Trip, and professional speaker. Hitha is an unabashed fan of Taco Bell, Philadelphia sports teams & F1, romance novels, and is a mediocre crafter. She lives in NYC with her husband and two sons.

I confess that I never thought a lot about how difficult the transition would be for an unhomed person would feel when transitioning to living in a home.

“Living indoors has been difficult: Brown still thinks of grabbing her tent and returning outside for a few nights. She compares leaving the street to breaking an addiction.

“It’s like stopping smoking. Sooner or later, you need that hit,” she said.”

For Carla Brown, she has a support that most don’t. Julian Prado, an occupational therapist working with Los Angeles' County’s OT team helping newly housed individuals, visits regularly to help her re-learn how to care for her home and herself. And he does so with compassion and care.

In learning about this program, I found out how little I know about substantive policies that actually help resolve issues like this one. It also fortified my belief that investing in our care economy - at the public and private levels - is one of the best investments we can make in our communities and countries. I hope LA County continues to invest in this program, and Mayor Adams takes note to pilot something similar in New York.

If men refuse to be called a “boy boss” or seeking their “soft man era”, then I categorically reject being called a girl boss or leaning into my soft girl era.

I’ll accept “boss” or “embracing my soft era.” And I think virtually everyone would agree with me. So why do we default to infantilizing language when it comes to describing women-led trends?

And what is the impact of doing so at work?

I’d love to get away from genderized language as a whole, and the specific tactics that Susan MacKenty Brady introduces in this piece are a necessary first step.

There is so much wisdom in this advice, both as an employee and as a leader. I am proud of the “best self” culture we’ve nurtured in both of my companies, but I could do a much better job of modeling my own humanness in talking about the challenges we’re facing.

Yemen has a new prime minister - Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, who had served as the country’s Foreign Minister (and before that, ambassador to the United States, envoy to the United Nations, and presidential chief of staff).

It was in the latter role where he was also kidnapped by the Houthis. His ascension to Prime Minister, with the support of Saudi Arabia, will further escalate tensions between the Houthis and the internationally-recognized presidential council (and their Saudi allies), who appointed bin Mubarak to the role.

What will this mean for the region as a whole? It’s too soon to tell. But I feel incredibly sad for the Yemeni people (and all people) who deserve to live with safety and dignity.

High school superlatives have been on my mind during these past few days, mostly due to Kate Kennedy’s One in a Millennial.

Apparently I’m not alone. It turns out Lily Gladstone’s classmates felt the same about her, voting her the Most Likely to Win an Oscar 20 years ago.

Gladstone’s grace jumps off the screen when you read this interview - she’s not only a phenomenal artists, but it’s clear she’s a wonderful person who wears the mantle of “the first (American indigenous actress to be nominated for Best Actress) but not the last.”

I hope to see her accept the Oscar - and can’t wait to see what she does next.

Did you know the sun’s poles flip every decade or so?

I didn’t. And I don’t know whether to be fascinated or slightly terrified of that fact (even though it’s happened 3 times in my life and I never noticed).

Here’s why it’s important - and what we can learn from this flip:

“But in the eyes of scientists, this active time in the solar cycle doesn’t represent peril — it presents ample opportunity. An active period of solar activity gives researchers an opportunity to study the sun in greater detail to serve two big goals: One, they want to better predict when a solar storm might wreak havoc on Earth and on spacecraft. Scientists want to take the progress meteorologists have made in predicting weather on Earth, and forecast space weather. Doing so could allow for safer space travel as interest in crewed missions to the moon and Mars gain momentum.

And two, they want to better understand the mysterious interior of the sun, which generates such awe-inspiring shows and could help us understand countless other stars in the universe, and eventually a clue to the ultimate mystery: Why are we here?”

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