Good morning, Quartz readers!
Here’s what you need to know
Donald Trump was banned from doing business in New York. Before his civil fraud trial could even begin, a judge ruled that there was enough evidence of tax fraud to revoke his business licenses.
Lululemon and Peloton are becoming workout buddies. The fitness apparel company is getting out of the hardware business and partnering with Peloton.
SpaceX secured its first Pentagon contract for Starshield. Valued up to $70 million, the contract marks a milestone for the company’s military-specific satellite services.
ChatGPT can now be used to browse an up-to-date version of the web. OpenAI announced that its data no longer cuts off at September 2021.
X, formerly Twitter, removed a tool on the platform for reporting electoral misinformation. The feature is now only available in the EU, according to the research organization Reset.Tech Australia.
Welcome back, Hollywood writers
Get your remotes ready—the Hollywood writers strike against industry studios is ending after five long months.
The Writer’s Guild of America West announced its walkout is ending, after its leadership agreed to an “exceptional” new deal. Now we just have to wait for members to sign on the dotted line and then write us some content we desperately need, as Only Murders in the Building’s latest season is about to come to an end, and then that feels like pretty much it for awhile. Though we should point out that writing and producing new content takes time, and actors, as of this writing, are still on strike. In the meantime, let’s look at a few numbers:
11,500: Members needed to ratify the contract
12.5%: Increase in pay for writers over the three years of the deal, with an immediate 5% bump once ratified
$233 million: Estimated value of the new agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers
Julia Malleck has more, including what the studios ultimately agreed to regarding AI, which was one of the big sticking points over the original union contracts.
Since the start of the pandemic, what was once a steady trickle of nurses leaving their home countries to work in the US and Europe has become a flood. Quartz, with support from the Pulitzer Center and in partnership with Type Investigations, traveled to India, Nigeria, the Philippines, the UK, and the US to investigate the consequences of this global nursing migration.
What we found was an international bidding war for healthcare workers, offering some nurses opportunities while exposing others to exploitation—and leaving poorer health systems scrambling to cope.
Read the first in our new series, Merchants of Care, as Aurora Almendral takes us to the Philippines.
Green help wanted
Green jobs exist, but people with green skills don’t—or not enough of them, anyway, and the gap will only widen in coming years. That means employers in industries like climate tech will be hungry to find the right people to hire for the great transition to clean energy, so it could be time to start greening up your skills.
Quartz’s most popular
🧑‍⚕️ Rich countries are importing a solution to their nursing shortages—and poor countries are paying the price
✏️ AI companies are hiring creative writers—and here’s what they’re looking for
🔕 Apple may be quiet on AI, but it’s also the biggest buyer of AI companies
🤖 Luddites saw the problem of AI coming from two centuries away
🥤 Coke is launching a new drink “co-created” with AI
🎲 Young hackers are sticking up Las Vegas casinos for hefty ransoms
Surprising discoveries
Archaeologists discovered the remains of a 2,000-year-old cosmetics shop. We do not know at this time what their customer loyalty points system was like.
But don’t try to create new images of these 2,000-year-old men. Bing’s AI image generator mysteriously won’t allow users to make pictures from prompts of “Julius Caesar” or “Marcus Aurelius” (though just “Caesar” and “Aurelius” seem to work fine).
Find a fairy circle. It may seem magical to us, but the fairy circle is just a way plants organize themselves in difficult conditions—and now there’s an atlas to help you keep track of them all.
Stuffed cabbage is the new trendy dish. Honestly, it never should have gone away.
The Great British Bake Off hit peak viewership in 2016. But it’s hoping some tweaks this season can put the still massively popular baking competition—even low-performing seasons outrank popular reality shows like Love Island and The Bachelor—back on its cake stand. Find out what makes this little show so huge in our latest Quartz Weekly Obsession.
Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, bakewell tarts, and definitions of bakewell tarts to talk@qz.com. Reader support makes Quartz available to all—become a member. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Susan Howson and Julia Malleck.