“Best Book Club Ever,” read one sign inside Amazon Books at Seattle’s University Village this weekend. On the bookshelves below it were products including an electric 1.5-liter ceramic kettle, a sugar dispenser, and a marble cheese slicer.

Elsewhere in the store, shoppers browsed items as varied as a plush baby shark, a Lite Brite, Funko figurines, a USB mic, game consoles, a smart fitness scale, a WiFi router, and kitchen scissors.

There was not, as far as I could tell, a kitchen sink.

Yes, there were books in this bookstore. But they were surrounded by a cacophony of commerce. Looking around at the seemingly random array of products, it felt like a bookstore subsumed by a variety store — an experiment gone awry, or more likely, an approach influenced by two different executive regimes.

No wonder Amazon is pulling the plug, I thought to myself.

Listen to the full story on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, or read it here, as published on GeekWire on March 7, 2022: Amazon’s bizarre bazaar: Strange final chapter for tech giant’s first bricks-and-mortar bookstore

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have been gaining mainstream attention lately, but the big business of buying and selling them largely rests on the shoulders of one multibillion-dollar company, OpenSea. So how did OpenSea get into this position, and how well is it navigating these uncharted waters? Verge reporter Russell Brandom stopped by to give us the lowdown on the NFT marketplace.

Russell Brandom’s article: - - 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/2/22914081/open-sea-nft-marketplace-web3-fundraising-finzer-a16z

Today’s episode was produced by Jon Ehrens, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey and hosted by Adam Clark Estes. 

Support Recode Daily by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices