The Hitcher (1986)
In 1994, soon after Jeff Bezos incorporated what would become Amazon, the entrepreneur briefly contemplated changing the company’s name. The nascent firm had been dubbed “Cadabra,” but Bezos wanted a less playful, more accurate alternative: “Relentless.” (Relentless.com redirects to Amazon.com to this day.) Twenty-four years later, perhaps no adjective better describes Bezos’ empire than the name he once wanted to give it.
The company is known as the “everything store,” but in its dogged pursuit of growth, Amazon has come to dominate more than just ecommerce. It’s now the largest provider of cloud computing servicesand a maker of home security systems. Amazon is a fashion designer, advertising business, television and movie producer, book publisher, and the owner of a sprawling platform for crowdsourced micro-labor tasks. The company now occupies roughly as much space worldwide as 38 Pentagons. It has grown so large that Amazon’s many subsidiaries are difficult to track—so we catalogued them all for you. This is our exhaustive map of the Kingdom of Amazon.
You might be wondering, why Amazon? After all, other tech firms, including Google and Facebook, have also expanded outside their core businesses in recent years. But few other companies can claim leadership in sectors as disparate as videogame streaming, online fabric sales, and facial recognition. Amazon also employs far more people than its competitors. Roughly 613,000 people work at Amazon, more than twice as many as work at Alphabet (94,000), Facebook (33,000), and Microsoft (135,000) combined. Most of those workers labor in one of Amazon’s more than 100 North American logistics centers, or at one of over 450 Whole Foods stores.
Amazon employees are paid far less than other tech workers. In its annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in February, Amazon said its median worker earned $28,446 in 2017 (it says that number jumps to $34,123 for full-time US workers). Facebook’s median salary in 2017, by contrast, was over $240,000.
A bit of context: It helps to know how Amazon makes money. While its retail business is the most visible to consumers, the cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, is the cash cow. AWS has significantly higher profit margins than other parts of the company. In the third quarter, Amazon generated $3.7 billion in operating income (before taxes). More than half of the total, $2.1 billon, came from AWS, on just 12 percent of Amazon’s total revenue. Amazon can use its cloud cash to subsidize the goods it ships to customers, helping to undercut retail competitors who don’t have similar adjunct revenue streams.
Books
Amazon began as an online bookseller in 1994, and although it quickly expanded into other ventures, it still owns and operates multiple publishers and online bookselling subsidiaries. Nowadays, most of these fall under the umbrella of Amazon Publishing, which is both a publisher and the owner of imprints for specific genres, languages and locales.
Amazon imprint Thomas & Mercer publishes mysteries, thrillers, and true crime novels; Little A handles literary fiction and nonfiction; AmazonCrossing is responsible for translated texts; 47North does science fiction and fantasy; Skyscape is for teen and young adult books; there’s Two Lionsfor children’s books; Jet City Comics for, well, comics; Montlake Romance handles—you guessed it—romance; Waterfall Press publishes Christian fiction; Grand Harbor Press is responsible for a category Amazon describes only as “inspirational;” Lake Union Publishing handles “book club fiction;” Amazon Original Fiction publishes short stories and fiction; AmazonEncore is for “rediscovered works;” and TOPPLE Books spotlights works selected by Jill Soloway. Amazon also has acquired Avalon Books, The Book Depository, and AbeBooks.
In 2005, Amazon acquired BookSurge, an on-demand self-publishing service, and CustomFlix, an on-demand video publishing service, which was later renamed CreateSpace. Two years later it bought independent audiobook producer, Brilliance Audio, and launched its own e-book publisher, Kindle Direct Publishing, concurrently with the first Amazon Kindle e-reader. Soon after, the company paid $300 million to acquire audiobook seller Audible. It also owns ACX, an audiobook publishing company. In 2009, Amazon merged BookSurge and CreateSpace to provide more on-demand options for publishers; the merged company did business under the name CreateSpace, but was officially named On-Demand Publishing. Four years later, Amazon purchased the book-review site GoodReads. In 2014, the company acquired digital comics distribution platform ComiXology. The following year, it launched Amazon Rapids, a subscription-based app that presents short children’s stories in the form of fake text messages. In 2018, CreateSpace was merged with Kindle Direct Publishing, which now handles all e-book and paperback publishing services, while all media services were transferred to another new company, called Amazon Media on Demand, which is responsible for manufacturing and shipping disc content. Amazon also operates a digital Kindle Store, where customers can purchase ebooks and other content for the Kindle, and more than a dozen physical Amazon Booksstores.
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npr:
A third woman has crossed the threshold into the sacred Hindu Sabarimala temple in southern India, defying a centuries-old ban on women of menstruating age — between the ages of 10 and 50 — from entering the shrine, according to Reuters.
The act comes just days after two other women were able to get in, which threw the state of Kerala into violent protests for two days.
The woman, a 46-year-old Sri Lankan national identified by NDTV as Sasikala, entered the temple with her husband on Thursday, reports NPR’s Mumbai correspondent Lauren Frayer. “According to ancient tradition, the Sabarimala Temple doesn’t admit women old enough to menstruate. The temple is dedicated to a celibate deity,” she said.
The India Supreme Court in September ruled the ban violated gender discrimination laws, and ordered the temple to admit women of all ages immediately. After the ruling, hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out to block women from entering the temple, NPR has reported. Some even blocked roads to the temple, checking cars for anyone female.
3rd Woman Enters Sacred Hindu Temple In Southern India Amid Protests
Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images
Neo-Assyrian Carnelian Apotropaic Pazuzu Amulet, 8th-7th Century BC
In Assyrian and Babylonian mythology, Pazuzu was the king of the demons of the wind, brother of Humbaba and son of the god Hanbi. He also represented the southwestern wind, the bearer of storms and drought. Pazuzu was invoked in apotropaic amulets, which combat the powers of his rival, the malicious goddess/demon Lamashtu, who was believed to cause harm to mother and child during childbirth. Although Pazuzu is, himself, considered to be an evil spirit, he drives and frightens away other evil spirits, therefore protecting humans against plagues and misfortunes.
Pazuzu is often depicted as a combination of diverse animal and human parts. He has the body of a man, the head of a lion or dog, talons of an eagle, two pairs of wings, a scorpion’s tail, and a serpentine penis.
Scientists T Griffith Taylor and Charles S Wright in the grotto of an iceberg during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913
via reddit
