5SR - July 28, 2023

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.

Millions of Americans are stranded on "heat islands" (Axios)

There are a number of factors contributing to the more-extreme-than-usual heat waves we’ve been experiencing of late.

The sun reaching the peak of its 11 year solar cycle is far from our control. But everything else?

It’s us. Hi. We’re the climate problem, it’s us.

Heat islands (urban areas where the local temperature is higher by 8+ degrees C) are an underreported story in the climate crisis, affection 41M Americans.

That’s over 10% of our population. And this is a problem of our own making, given that the trees that naturally cool our land were cut down and never replanting during urbanization.

This is also an equity issue - most urban heat islands are in lower-income neighborhoods, lacking energy efficient infrastructure and technologies that higher income neighborhoods take for granted.

Some of the solutions to address this aspect of the climate crisis are simple ones we should’ve been doing all along - planting more trees. There’s also new paint developed that reflect heat instead of absorbing it, thus shielding the buildings more efficiently from the heat. And the bipartisan infrastructure bill has allocated significant funds to these neighborhoods to rebuild and reinforce them.

And while these will help, we need to get our carbon release under control to blunt the rising global temperatures.

The Other Side (The Line of Best Fit)

If I ever get invited to a PowerPoint party, I will dedicate my deck and time to Carly Rae Jepsen deserving far more recognition than she’s received.

I purposefully didn’t say fame, and that’s because of this interview. Her own words on how she defines success is something I’ve been thinking about since reading it:

With record-shattering sales comes a level of fame that leaves millions of fans feeling like they’re entitled to you, as we’ve seen with Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez (both who’ve openly shared that dark side in their respective documentaries).

In choosing her definition of success over her label’s, Jepsen has paved her own road on what being a recording artist and performer is. Her music is personal and vulnerable, but very inviting and comforting. I feel very safe when I’m listening to her, either on my own or watching her perform live (which is an incredible experience - catch her on tour if you can!).

I’ll be listening to The Loveliest Time on repeat all day today. If you haven’t spent much time listening to Jepsen’s albums, I highly encourage you do. Emotion is still one of my favorites, and The Loneliest Time got me through an emotional roller coaster that was the second half of 2022.

Proposed Ohio abortion amendment will be on the November ballot (WOSU)

Ohio has a major election coming up next week, on ballot measures.

Issue 1 has been rightfully taking up a lot of attention (to raise the threshold of passing future constitutional amendments to 60% of the votes, and to raise the number of counties from 44 to 88 that petition signatures need to be from).

If Issue 1 passes, it will make it incredibly difficult to amend Ohio’s constitution through ballot measures, including the ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. This measure will be on November’s ballot, with the petitions certified by the Secretary of State (though the language of the ballot measure has yet to be determined by the state’s ballot board).

OHIO - please, please, please make your voting plan for this special August election and please plan to vote NO. Brian Derrick’s got the details in this post:

Shay Mitchell Knows You’re Skeptical of Celebrity Brands (The Cut)

Game recognize game, and I deeply respect Shay Mitchell as a fellow travel-loving, life-documenting, seize the moment multi-hyphenate.

I can also vouch for BEIS, having tested their toiletry bag after receiving it during last week’s Expedia event.

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It’s chef’s kiss and I’ll be purchasing and testing some of their other products as well.

I digress. I’ve long admired Shay (since the early days of Pretty Little Liars and her Shaycations series on YouTube), and I love that what you see online is exactly who she is in person. She’s funny and chill, but has built a hell of a company (one that’s profitable and on track to hit $200M in revenue next fiscal year). And the way she shouts out her team is equally important and rare - none of us builds or does anything alone, but a lot of leaders fail to acknowledge the people that help make things happen.

I also want to give Bindu (the writer of this piece) her flowers because this installment of “How I Get It Done” is so detailed and specific, which I love. It’s a testament to both Mitchell’s openness and Bansinath’s interviewing skills.

The ‘Dopamine Detox’ Is Having a Moment (TIME)

That urge to pick up your phone and start scrolling (even though you just put it down?)

The way your brain lights up when you bite into something delicious?

That’s dopamine. And that rush feels so, so, so good…until you realize you’ve lost hours because you’ve been chasing that first rush of it.

Dopamine is an important neurochemical contributes to our happiness. But modern things like social media, foods we associate with as treats, or entertainment tend to release dopamine in the reward pathway. The more we engage in these activities (especially in a short period of time), the more dopamine is released into this center that we don’t want to live without.

This piece does a really smart job of explaining dopamine’s role in our mental and emotional health, and it’s helped me connect the little actions that I habitually do (scroll Instagram, browse LTK, have reality television playing in the background) as a dopamine spike trigger. Recognizing it has helped me make different choices that offer a more gentle dopamine boost - reading, crafting, journaling, or playing with my kids’ abandoned Legos and MagnaTiles when they’re at camp.

And credit goes to Haley Weiss for rightfully reframing this conversation away from the “detox” and in dopamine recalibration, and creating new habits