Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Ireland braces for tropical storm Ophelia. Although the storm has dropped from hurricane-strength, it is expected to batter the Atlantic coast with 100 mph winds. Schools have been closed as a precaution.
The Pope speaks for the hungry. In honor of World Food Day 2017, Pope Francis will join world leaders to call on the international community to invest in food security and rural development in order to change the future of migration. It will be the first time the head of the Catholic Church attends the UN event in person.
Netflix reports third-quarter earnings. Analysts are looking for signs that the video-streaming company’s investment in original content is paying off. Netflix bumped up prices on some of its US subscriptions earlier this month, citing a need to invest in more movies and exclusive TV shows.
Over the weekend
Catalonia defied Spain’s deadline. Catalan president Carles Puigdemont refused to clarify by Monday morning whether or not the region would declare independence, saying he wants talks with Madrid before he makes a decision. Spain’s central government threatened to impose direct control if Puigdemont moves forward with secession.
The Motion Picture Academy gave Harvey Weinstein the boot. Its board voted on Saturday to remove Weinstein, effective immediately. The expulsion sends “a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior… in our industry is over,” the Academy said. Authorities in the UK said Sunday that they are looking into three fresh allegations of sexual assault against Weinstein, and five in total.
Austria turned right. The right-leaning People’s Party notched a strong win in Sunday’s election, with its 31-year-old leader, Sebastian Kurz, set to become chancellor and the world’s youngest leader. Kurz—nicknamed “Wunderwuzzi” for his whizz-kid persona—took a hard-line on immigration while serving as foreign minister.
Wildfires continued to rage in California. Firefighters made progress but the infernos in Northern California are still far from under control. The death toll hit 40 and is expected to rise, and at least 5,700 homes and businesses have been destroyed. Winds from the southwest should help put an end to the disaster this week.
Truck bombings in Mogadishu killed 300. No group has yet claimed responsibility for what is believed to be the single deadliest attack in Somalia, though officials blamed the al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab. The Saturday night blast in a busy area also injured hundreds.
Quartz obsession interlude
Youyou Zhou analyzed 141 hours of cable news to figure out how mass killers are really portrayed. “Are there ingrained racial biases that surface when TV news outlets report these tragedies? Is this double standard persistent, or merely anecdotal? Quartz reviewed the language used to describe the killers of 27 mass shootings in the US, beginning with the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
When it comes to making good decisions, bad options can help. We often hold off on sharing ideas until we’re sure they’re worthwhile, but bad ideas are valuable and even essential.
We are so immersed in immorality that we can be entirely unaware of it. A philosopher’s moral crisis over eating meat offers a master class on questioning your instincts.
Dollar diplomacy is dead. The geopolitical alliances that propped up the US dollar’s global dominance are fraying badly.
Surprising discoveries
Amazon can’t beat dollar stores. Only a handful of businesses are safe from the e-commerce giant.
A woman got a VW for a packet of McDonald’s sauce. The car was exchanged for a single serving of Szechuan sauce, which achieved cult status from the TV show Rick and Morty.
Most countries are named for one of four things. Turns out we’re really uncreative when it comes to what we call home.
You can thank a murderer for the Oxford English Dictionary. William C. Minor did much of the research for the dictionary from his insane asylum.
Tropical forests are climate change baddies. In 2016, they caused the largest atmospheric CO2 increase in 2,000 years.
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