Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Gandhi’s 150th birthday. Specialized monuments and a custom Twitter emoji will be just a handful of the nationwide dedications to the iconic Indian leader, along with a digital recreation of his heartbeat at Delhi’s National Gandhi Museum.
Paris Fashion Week wraps up. Tuesday will end a politically charged run of shows, where models and designers alike played with fashion and gender stereotypes on the runway. Chanel, Miu Miu, and Louis Vuitton will wrap up the week with their Spring/Summer 2019 collections.
The EU votes on emissions targets. Lawmakers will consider a proposal to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 45% by 2030. Automakers are warning that tighter restrictions could hurt the industry and spur drastic job cuts.
While you were sleeping
General Electric fired its CEO, and investors swooned. John Flannery is out after just over a year at the helm of the struggling energy conglomerate, replaced by GE board member and former Danaher boss Larry Culp. The news sent GE stock up by as much as 15%, though it later gave back some gains to finish up 7% on the day.
Donald Trump bragged about his replacement for NAFTA. The US president lauded the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, calling his critics “babies” (paywall) and praising his own tariff-fueled pressure tactics. North American markets showed a measure of relief (paywall), but Trump’s trade demands likely won’t make things any less complicated for US car companies.
Netflix is going interactive. The streaming video company is creating a “choose-your-own-adventure”-style ending (paywall) to an episode of its popular sci-fi anthology Black Mirror, with plans to extend the gimmick to other programs. Bringing the narrative twists of video games to TV and movies is a big bet that could justify the billions of dollars Netflix has spent on original content.
Instagram named a new CEO. Facebook product chief Adam Mosseri will be promoted to Instagram’s top seat following last week’s departure of co-founders Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. Mosseri, the well-liked insider behind Facebook’s News Feed, is a trusted deputy of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
CERN suspended a sexist researcher. Italian physicist Alessandro Strumia triggered outrage after a bizarre presentation at the European nuclear research center, telling a mostly-female audience that physics was “invented and built by men.” Strumia also claimed women in the male-dominated field benefit from favoritism, receive outsized funding, and earn too many promotions.
Quartz Obsession interlude
Heather Timmons on the USMCA and the Trump trade doctrine: “It’s a familiar pattern for the Trump presidency. Call it ‘Speak Loudly and Carry a Tiny Stick,’ or Trump’s ‘madman’ negotiating style. What it boils down to is making a massive threat that would upend the global order, then walking that back, while declaring victory to loyal Trump fans at home, no matter what happened.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
We’ll all eventually love Mark Zuckerberg, despite Facebook’s current woes. Giving away billions erases most ills—just ask Bill Gates.
How much of humanity lives in cities? Estimates range from 55% to 85%, and the differences tell us a lot about the state of the world.
US car companies can’t win Trump’s trade war. Thanks to globalization, the industry’s supply chain reaches across dozens of countries who are all trading tit-for-tat tariffs.
Surprising discoveries
The US IPO market is drowning in red ink. More than 80% of newly listed companies this year are losing money (paywall).
The emperor of Japan is a marine biologist. Akihito, 84, recently co-authored a study on DNA analysis of two species of fish.
Google’s AI is making hamburgers look more appetizing. DeepMind’s algorithm is also quite good at generating non-existent dogs and butterflies.
Ginormous mosquitos are swarming North Carolina… Their eggs, which can lie dormant for years, hatched during the extreme flooding that followed Hurricane Florence.
…And giant moths are drinking the tears of sleeping songbirds. They siphon out the nutrient-rich liquid in a practice known as “lachryphagy.”
Our best wishes for a productive day. Please send any news, comments, AI-generated fast food, and captured mosquitos 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 and edited by Adam Pasick and McKinley Noble.