Good Morning Quartz readers!
The closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in South Korea will take place on Sunday. Aside from providing the usual entertainment, the games this year served another purpose: They gave the world a breather from worrying about North Korea.
But, sadly, there’s little reason to think the saber-rattling and weapons tests won’t resume. North Korea, judging by past behavior, is overdue to launch at least four missile tests in the first quarter of this year.
The Trump administration yesterday announced its largest sanctions package yet against the rogue nation. Next month, the US and South Korea will announce the dates of military exercises that were delayed out of respect for the Olympics. Either of those announcements could give Pyongyang another excuse to act—last September it threatened to detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.
Or, its weapons tests could be timed more randomly, to keep the world on its toes. Either way, the Trump administration will respond with stony faces and fiery rhetoric, even as its North Korea policy remains incoherent (paywall).
Meanwhile, members of the North Korean delegation sent to the Olympics will no doubt be given performance reviews on their conduct. That includes cheerleaders who briefly giggled at a Kim Jong-un impersonator, and one who momentarily clapped for US athletes. Such spontaneous acts could have grave consequences back home, where the slightest offense to the Kim regime can result in merciless punishment.
North Korea did use the occasion of the Olympics to invite South Korean president Moon Jae-in to a summit. Such trips are rare, but not unprecedented. Two such visits, in 2000 and 2007, each led to North Korea receiving significant aid and investment from the South (paywall). But they did little to slow its weapons programs.
Moon seems inclined to accept the invitation, and if he does, he might again delay (paywall) the joint military exercises, prompting Pyongyang to limit or delay its weapons tests. Such a summit could be the best thing to come out of these Olympics, and lead to future plans for talks or cooperation that could reduce future provocations.
Until that happens though, the Kim regime will be busily improving its missile and nuclear technology, with the ability to obliterate US cities very much in mind. And we’ll be back to stressing out about the next unpredictable move from either side.—Steve Mollman
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The future of a 16th century Scottish sport is in Asia. Curling: that stone-and-broom game that captivates audiences every four years, was invented by burly Scottish men on frozen lake beds. But as Echo Huang, Tripti Lahiri, and Isabella Steger explain, women’s teams from Asian countries, including South Korea’s “Garlic Girls,” have seized the broom with gusto—to clean up on medal counts.
Why do today’s feminists think I’m oppressed? All the recent talk of gender equality only indicates we are a long way from being woke. As Ephrat Livni argues, the cultural conversation about #MeToo perpetuates sexism, reinforces dated gender stereotypes, and circumscribes women’s liberation, all while titillating a society already enthralled by sex, violence, money, and power. And it undermines women who are already operating as equals.
An impromptu review of the politics of “Black Panther.” Quartz Africa reporters Yomi Kazeem, Lynsey Chutel, and Abdi Latif Dahir took to Slack, Quartz’s internal chat system, to look into the politics and economics of the fictional Wakanda empire. After initial rave reviews, some questions arose about depictions of inequality, access to technology, and the power dynamics of the country’s ruling family, leading to reflections that the movie painted a less-optimistic view of Africa than initial impressions had left them with.
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Ever since Columbine, one teacher looks out for the lonely. Glennon Doyle Melton, at Reader’s Digest, writes about her son’s 5th grade teacher, who runs a few simple exercises every Friday to figure out which students aren’t fitting in, so she can help them: “All outward violence begins as inner loneliness. Who are our next mass shooters and how do we stop them? She watched [Columbine] knowing that children who aren’t being noticed may eventually resort to being noticed by any means necessary. And so she decided to start fighting violence early and often in the world within her reach.”
It’s time to save Google—by suing it. “Google has succeeded where Genghis Khan, communism and Esperanto all failed,” writes Charles Duhigg for the New York Times magazine. “It dominates the globe.” And that is its problem. When megacompanies control so many aspects of daily life, when should the government step in? The answer may lie in the story of Foundem.com, a seemingly superior competitor to Google’s online shopping tools that relied on Google search results to drive its traffic—until the search giant turned off the spigot.
Infrastructure choices built American inequality. “Hidden behind the oak-lined streets” of residential Detroit, writes Johnny Miller in the Guardian, “is an insidious piece of history that most Detroiters, let alone Americans, don’t even know exists: a half mile-long, 5 foot-tall concrete barrier that locals simply call ‘the wall.’” It was built to divide white neighborhoods from black ones. It didn’t work as intended, but its story, and that of other communities, explains how government policy played its part in the economic deprivation of minority communities across the country.
A sweatshirt company is trying to save American manufacturing. The story of American Giant, written by Meredith Haggerty in Racked, is the story of a specific American supply chain and a national history of making things that is in a steep, but possibly reversible decline. “We believe the invisible hand is making businesses behave soullessly; that under capitalism, especially late-stage capitalism, there’s an inevitability to every sad-but-profitable situation,” she writes. But it’s not necessarily so.
The Brexit walls are closing in. UK prime minister Theresa May is losing control of the process of leaving the EU, writes Rafael Behr in the Guardian. Not only is Brussels’ negotiating position strengthening on a daily basis (with Donald Tusk calling May’s hope for a trade deal “pure illusion”) but the fallout, according to Nic Robertson at CNN, could unravel the agreements that brought four countries under one government, and end the United Kingdom as the world knows it.
Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, American Giant sweatshirts (size medium), and Wakandan tech to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter here for updates throughout the day, or download our apps for iPhone and Android. Today’s Weekend Brief was edited by Paul Smalera.