Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Vladimir Putin visits Turkey for a summit on Syria. Russia’s president will meet with Turkish and Iranian presidents Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hassan Rouhani. Putin will also join Erdoğan for the official opening of a Russian-made nuclear power plant being built in Turkey.
Spotify goes public. The streaming music company has opted for an unusual IPO process that could lead to a volatile first day of trading. However, the direct listing will Spotify save millions in banking fees (paywall) and give insiders a chance to cash out their shares.
Google and Facebook bid for Indian cricket rights. The tech giants will compete against Reliance Jio, Star India, and Sony Pictures Network India in an online auction for broadcasting rights through 2023.
While you were sleeping
Trade war and tech dragged US stocks lower. The S&P 500 was down more than 2% as various woes knocked stocks for a loop. Amazon fell after another threatening tweet from Donald Trump, and manufacturing shares slumped on fears of a worsening US trade war with China.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela died at 81. The politician formerly married to Nelson Mandela was a fervent anti-apartheid activist who tirelessly campaigned for his release from prison. She is thought of as South Africa’s “Mother of the Nation,” (paywall) though she was later convicted of kidnapping and assaulting a 14-year-old informant.
Tesla fell short of its Model 3 production goal. Elon Musk claimed “mind-blowing progress” as the company ramped up to produce more than 2,000 Model 3s per week. But investors had been expecting at least 2,500 per week after a number of delays, and Musk reportedly has taken control of Model 3 manufacturing from Tesla’ senior VP of engineering (paywall).
Facebook has been keeping your never-posted videos. The social media company issued an apology, claiming a “bug” was responsible for the video hoarding, and promised to delete the stored content. A reporter for the SelectAll blog first reported on the video storage.
Apple plans to use its own chips in Macs by 2020. The move, reported by Bloomberg citing people familiar with the plans, would be a harsh blow to longtime supplier Intel, whose shares dropped 9.2% on the news. The goal is to make Macs work more seamlessly with iPhones and other Apple devices, which use processors designed by Apple using technology from SoftBank’s Arm Holdings.
Quartz obsession interlude
Abdi Latif Dahir on the crack in Kenya that may split Africa in two: “The East African Rift System (EARS), part of the Great Rift Valley … is an actively developing rift, a process that will slowly thin the earth’s lithosphere crust, spread the seafloor, stretch and break the topography through faulting, and eventually break the continent apart.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Women can’t win—even in the kitchen. Men who use weird and wonderful gadgets are heralded, but women with smart hacks are viewed as spoiled dilettantes.
Scatter plots are the world’s most powerful type of chart. Their superpower is to help us quickly understand complex relationships.
Private equity firms act like movie mobsters. With very little investment of their own, they suck vast sums of money out of healthy companies.
Surprising discoveries
A powerful hallucinogen makes people think they’ve seen aliens. Researchers are studying why users of DMT frequently report meeting “angels, demons, and even elves.”
#RiceBunny (🍚🐰) has replaced #MeToo in China. Chinese feminists are using the creative emoji combo to evade online censors.
A four-eyed lizard walked the earth nearly 50 million years ago. Saniwa ensidens fossils from what is now Wyoming revealed two additional eyes on top of the reptile’s head.
Makeup-wearing women are perceived as less competent. When participants of a new study viewed faces in heavy makeup, they were unlikely to see that individual as a “strong leader.”
The Easter Egg Roll is the White House’s most awkward event. Angry political rhetoric is a bad fit with chocolate-seeking children and oversize bunny rabbits.
Our best wishes for a productive day. Please send any news, comments, elves, and bunny rabbits to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter for updates throughout the day or download our apps for iPhone and Android. Today’s Daily Brief was written by Preeti Varathan and Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz, and edited by Adam Pasick.