Good morning!
Here’s what you need to know
The UK unveils new business relief measures. Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s new “winter plan” may include a salary top-up scheme modeled on France and Germany, an extension of business loan schemes, and a package of employment support.
Two police officers were shot during protests in Louisville. Protests broke out in the Kentucky city after a grand jury decided not to charge any of the three police officers with the killing of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, in her apartment in March. One officer was charged with “wanton endangerment” for firing into a neighboring apartment.
Donald Trump refused to promise a peaceful transfer of power. The US president said he would have to “see what happens” if he loses the November election. In addition, he called the election “a scam,” and that he believed it would end up in the Supreme Court.
China is still building camps in Xinjiang. An Australian think tank found that almost 400 camps have been built since 2017 and at least 14 are under construction, despite Beijing’s claim that most inmates have “returned to society” after undergoing “vocational training.”
A South Korean official was shot dead while defecting to North Korea. The fisheries official, who went missing on Monday near the two countries’ maritime border, is believed to have been killed and later cremated by North Korean troops under coronavirus-related orders.
Why did Quibi fail?
The bite-sized streaming platform underestimated, well, a lot.
😴 Content: The shows just aren’t good enough. No video platform—no matter how innovative the technology or elaborate the marketing—will work without stuff viewers want to watch.
😰 Competition: Quibi thought it would corner “in-between moments,” but turns out social media already has. So by trying to sidestep competition with the big streaming services, it simply put itself up against other big platforms—TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.
🤐 Shareability: At first, Quibi didn’t allow sharing content or even taking screenshots. You know what tends to be a show’s best free marketing? A viral meme.
And that’s not all. Adam Epstein details the missteps of the little streaming engine that couldn’t.
Charting Africa’s bitcoin activity
In August 2018, a report on the state of cryptocurrency regulation across Africa came back with one obvious conclusion: most countries were undecided on what to do. But, in what represents a major shift, Nigeria and South Africa—two of the continent’s largest economies—are stepping up regulatory plans.
Local users and cryptocurrency startups across the continent are not exactly waiting for regulation to catch up. Cryptocurrency trading has taken off, partly powered by homegrown exchanges which continue to operate in regulatory gray areas. Yomi Kazeem follows how the regulators of Africa’s big economies are trying to stay on top of a cryptocurrency trading spike.
Get news and analysis on African business, tech, and innovation in your inbox by signing up for the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief.
The history of the home office
Working from home is a revival of an old idea. Before the Industrial Revolution, the template for residential architecture included a space for doing business. English “workhouses” combined a workshop with the family’s living quarters, “longhouses” gave shelter to farmers and their animals, and merchants often lived above their workshops and storefronts. In the US, middle-class homes typically had a “den” or “gentleman’s study” close to the front door where the master of the house received clients.
What changed with the Industrial Revolution is now seeing another big shift. In 1967, US broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite concluded his report on the home office by predicting, correctly, that “with equipment like this in the home of the future, we may not have to go to work—the work will come to us.” Our latest field guide offers guidance on how to make the most of that shift.
✦ Not yet a member? Unwrap this special gift from us to you. It’s Quartz’s birthday, but you’re getting the treat—50% off a year of Quartz membership with code BIRTHDAY. Keep digging, because underneath all that tissue paper is another surprise—two free Quartz presentations on the future of sleep and cash. Both pair nicely with a celebratory glass of champagne.
Obsession interlude: Future of work
The gig economy has opened up a wave of flexible work options, but in doing so risks eroding hard-won worker protections. Companies whose business model rests on gig work are often criticized for exploiting workers and fighting attempts at organizing or worker reclassification.
In Hustle and Gig, sociologist Alexandrea Ravenelle interviewed 80 gig workers in the US to put their experiences in the context of America’s employment history. She concluded that for all its app-enabled modernity, the sharing economy “is truly a movement forward to the past.”
In a cruel irony, workers in the sharing economy—hailed as the height of the modern workplace—find themselves without any of the worker protections enjoyed by their great-grandparents. Although workplace protections still exist for full-time and part-time employees, gig workers as independent contractors, are outside the social safety net of basic workplace protections.
Keep up with the rest of our Future of Work obsession.
We’re obsessed with the Everglades
“There are no other Everglades in the world.” Conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas used these words to describe the vast sheet of slow-moving water that blankets South Florida, a unique wetland ecosystem unlike any other on Earth. In the 20th century, Floridians turned millions of acres of swamp into real estate, one of the grandest water engineering projects in human history—and one of mankind’s most ecologically destructive acts. Now, the state’s Everglades damage control could become a global model for environmental (and self-)preservation. The Quartz Weekly Obsession takes you on an airboat ride into the swamp.
Get our latest deep dive sent straight to your inbox every week by signing up below.
Surprising discoveries
A cannabis giant was told to grow less weed. After the share price of Canada’s Aurora plunged this year, an anxious analyst advised the firm to chill with the growing.
Something smelled fishy at a Utah angler contest. A two-year-long meticulous scientific investigation hooked two fraudulent fishermen with felonies.
The rich are giving Amazon more room. The 2020 e-commerce explosion has wealthy homebuyers seeking out “Amazon rooms” to house their mountains of Bezos boxes.
WiFi password: MTFUJI. Japanese national parks have beefed up their broadband to encourage “workations” that mix business and pastoral pleasures.
Robots are killing coronavirus at a London train station. The rolling droids emit ultraviolet light to disinfect St. Pancras International, one of the country’s busiest transport hubs.
Our best wishes for a productive day. Please send any news, comments, workation recommendations, and fishing trophies to hi@qz.com. Get the most out of Quartz by downloading our iOS app and becoming a member. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Jane Li, Isabella Steger, Susan Howson and Max Lockie.