Quince in sheep's clothing
I think the apple's rotten right to the core
Happy Monday! In today’s newsletter, I recommend a song that’s more about the music video than the song, a book that broke my heart given our current political climate, and unpack shady practices from Quince (how else did you think they kept their prices so low?). Behind the paywall you’ll find:
Big (Ultra-processed) Food’s response to Ozempic’s anti-hedonic effects
Updates on women’s health: Halle Berry’s pivot into the area, DTC insurance for IVF guarantees a baby or your money back, and a surge in sepsis rates after Texas banned abortion
Pharma Drama: Trump tries bullying Pharma to move drug development to the US (or else) and people are upset about Pfizer’s new Chief Medical Officer
For the culture, I unpack my four-hour meal at NYC Gjelina and share thoughts (from the eyes of an untrained ballerina) on the many City Ballet performances I watched this month
WHAT I’M INTO
Press Play: “Spectrum” by Florence + The Machine
I thought about linking Kanye West’s Runaway music video with the Czech ballerinas dressed in black, but I’m having a one-sided beef with him right now. Instead, you get this beautiful David LaChapelle-directed video in which Florence commands a flock of ballerina swans. It’s a more fitting choice, given that I watched City Ballet’s Swan Lake this Friday.
Borrow from your local public library: Into the War by Italo Calvino
Here’s a short read to balance the long book I recommended last time. Three separate but linked stories set in Italy during the summer of 1940 depict life as an Italian teenager at the onset of WWII. If Into the War reads like journal entries, it’s probably because it’s autobiographical fiction. We know at the outset that Il Duce’s ideals don’t pass Calvino’s moral vibes test. Yet, while Calvino is too young for Mussolini’s fascist army, he is old enough to be recruited into a Fascist Youth Brigade (which he joins mostly because his friends are members). Instead of frontline war stories, we get the periphery of war from the lens of teenagers who were just young enough to avoid direct violence. They care more about flirting and having a good summer with their friends than winning or losing the war. But they feed the war machine regardless. On a Youth Brigade trip to the newly annexed Menton (that he tags along for the adventure), he’s disappointed to find “a France that was dead.” What affected me most about Into the War is how people behaved amidst the threat of Fascism. I regret to inform you that there are some foreboding parallels to today. Calvino perfectly captures how the public appeased proto-fascists, and complacency paved the way for horror when he writes about laying eyes on the baby-faced Il Duce for the first time:
“What struck me was how young he was; a boy, he seemed, just a boy, as fit as a fiddle…The war was here, the war he had declared, and he was in a car with his generals…And as though it were some sort of a game, he sought only the complicity of other people—not too much to ask—so much so that people were tempted to allow him it, in order not to spoil his party: in fact one almost felt a sting of remorse at knowing that we were more adult than he was, in not wanting to play his game.”
Anti-algorithm news: “Buy All This, Look Rich” by Chantal Fernandez
If you listened to the first episode of The Worried Well, you know I don’t buy into the illusion of affordable luxury. Goods are usually either accessible or luxurious. Chantal Fernandez’s deep dive into Quince’s shady practices is the most recent proof point in my favor. Despite competing with brands like Gap, Everlane, and Aritzia, Quince has never hired a fashion designer; it’s a soul-less dupes venture. Where does Quince come out ahead of brands like Shein? Their attempt to use natural fibers. But the poor workmanship and quality unravel the seams to expose Quince’s rotten core: data-scraping, green-washing, exploiting the de minimis tax exemption, and renegotiating contracts with factories “to a point where they say, ‘If I give you a cost that’s any lower than this, I will not be able to sell it to you.’”
PULSE CHECK!
“Pulse Check” curates healthcare updates to complement the longer, more researched “On Health” pieces.