Lifestyle
Can The Great British Bake Off get back to basics?The beloved baking competition, which premieres its 14th season this week, hopes it can right a leaning cake.
Updated September 29, 20234 min read
The beloved baking competition, which premieres its 14th season this week, hopes it can right a leaning cake.
On your marks, get set, bake!
The reality competition that took over the world
The spotless baby giraffe is unusual—but they all are.
Plus: Big Oil v. a medium-sized whale.
Plus: Big Oil v. a medium-sized whale.
Plus: Big Oil v. a medium-sized whale.
The spicy business of the world's most recognizable hot sauce
The commercial history of a boundary-defying genre, from Adidas to Apple
Good morning, Quartz readers!
How much do you really know about the world? As you gather with family and friends, and momentarily escape the news cycle this holiday season, it’s a perfect time to test your trivia chops. We’ve gleaned surprising facts and weird bits of intellectual flotsam from the past year of the Quartz Daily Obsession and created a trivia generator just for you.
The answer is no—despite our obsession with them, sharks don’t really care all that much about humans. But for businesses in Cape Town, South Africa and on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, it’s starting to feel like they are deliberately trying to throw us humans off their game.
A new round of US tariffs on Chinese-made goods went into effect today, on Sept. 1. It remains to be seen how much and how soon retailers will pass on the 15% tariff on goods like Apple Watches, sneakers, and furniture to customers. But according to analysis by economists Kirill Borusyak from University College London and Xavier Jaravel from the London School of Economics, the costs of US president Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with China are starting to add up in a way that most consumers will notice.
A new season of The Great British Baking Show debuted on Netflix this week in a form unusual for the streaming service—it’s being released one episode per week. “Collection Seven” marks the first time US and UK viewers have been able to watch the show at the same time, or almost at the same time. Each episode is available on Netflix three days after it first airs in the UK. (There have been 10 seasons of the show in the UK, where it’s called The Great British Bake Off, whereas the US is just now getting its seventh.)
A lawsuit filed earlier this week in the US shows it in chilling detail: The dehumanization of asylum seekers and migrants is routine in detention camps—and it doesn’t spare children. According to these children, guards shout at and threaten toddlers and babies; there is often not enough to eat, and clean water is harshly rationed. Children are crammed in sleeping areas too small for everyone to lie down, without blankets, in cold rooms where lights blare 24 hours a day, and frequent check-ins interrupt what little sleep they manage. Girls receive one sanitary pad per day during their periods, left to bleed through their pants and wear soiled clothes.
The New York Times has declared the Aperol spritz a bad drink. And boy, are spritz lovers mad.
Meghan Markle made headlines, and perhaps started a new etiquette trend, when she declined to open gifts at her baby shower. As a mom to two small children though, I want to advocate for an even more radical change to expectant culture—I’ve stopped giving baby shower gifts altogether.