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Here’s what you need to know
Moderators can mute Trump and Biden on Thursday. The debate commission is allowing the presidential candidates’ microphones to be silenced if necessary, hopefully avoiding the chaos of the first debate. But cutting a powerful old man off mid-sentence could also spell trouble.
UBS nearly doubled its third-quarter profit. The Swiss bank, which is the world’s largest wealth manager, performed strongly in its investment division and saw an unexpected rise in wealth management earnings. Profits were up 99% to $2.1 billion.
A murdered teacher will receive France’s highest honor. Thousands of people have been attending vigils in support of Samuel Paty, a schoolteacher killed near Paris last week by a suspected Islamist militant after showing students caricatures of the prophet Mohammad in a class on freedom of expression.
The World Series begins. The Los Angeles Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays, a storied franchise with big stars vs a relative newcomer packed with unknowns, compete for baseball’s biggest prize. There’s a hint of regional pride at stake: the Tampa Bay Lightning already won hockey’s Stanley Cup and the LA Lakers took the NBA finals.
The Dude has cancer. 70-year-old actor Jeff Bridges, a cult favorite in the movie The Big Lebowski, announced he’s undergoing treatment for lymphoma. “Although it is a serious disease, I feel fortunate that I have a great team of doctors and the prognosis is good,” he said. Bridges won a best actor Oscar in 2010 for his role in Crazy Heart.
Learning to live with Covid-19
Months of living with the new pandemic normal—and months more of it ahead—have forced us all to adapt to new realities. Here are some of the transitions we’re tracking:
- 🍽 Restaurants are paying to boost the air change rate in their space.
- đź“Ş US post office workers are filing more than 500 workplace complaints per day.
- 👴🏼 Alzheimer’s and dementia patients have seen more indirect deaths than we thought.
For everything you need to know about how the world is managing the pandemic, sign up for our Coronavirus: Need to Know email below:
Charting Elon Musk’s charity
Tesla’s CEO spent more than $80 billion to roll out the electric carmaker’s first three models, according to public financial filings. But when it comes to giving money away, the billionaire and head of the Musk Foundation is in a bit less of a hurry.
Quartz assembled nearly two decades of the foundation’s IRS filings to find that, so far, Musk has handed at least $257 million to the foundation, most of it in Tesla stock. Between 2016 and 2018, the Musk Foundation distributed $65 million, somewhat more than the minimum the foundation must disburse annually to avoid IRS penalties.
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Making it work in India
It’s almost like the Covid-19 lockdown never happened for Flock, an office team communication software firm in Bangalore. During a time when most businesses struggled to cope with shutdowns, Flock’s revenue grew 40% for three consecutive quarters.
While India’s economy plummeted to record lows during lockdowns, stars still shine in the country’s bright startup space. Four Indian tech startups became unicorns, or private companies valued at over $1 billion, in the middle of the pandemic. Still, more than half of Indian startups are struggling to raise funds.
Visit Quartz India for more daily coverage of the country for India and its far-flung diaspora.
ALL PRAISE THE HUMBLE RSS FEED
Many tech enthusiasts were first introduced to the word “podcast” in 2005 when Steve Jobs enthusiastically welcomed the medium into the Apple universe.
But to understand podcasting today, you have to start further back, with the technology used to get the shows onto devices: the RSS feed. Very much a product of the pro-decentralization late 1990s, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary, depending on whom you ask. It’s a type of file websites used to automatically transmit updates to their audience. Users subscribe to feeds and receive the latest information delivered through an RSS reader tool.
Social media has more or less replaced the RSS feed—except for podcasting. Find out why, and how it’s informing the podcast business today, in our latest field guide.
✦ The best way to really simply sign up for a Quartz membership today is with the promo code QZTWENTY to unlock a 20% discount.
Surprising discoveries
South Korea is facing a kimchi catastrophe. Typhoons this summer wiped out fields of cabbages, the main ingredient in the fermented national dish.
The Canadian town of Asbestos has a new name. It’s dropping the moniker synonymous with a carcinogenic mineral and rebranding as Val-des-Sources.
The moon is getting 4G. NASA announced that it was giving Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia $14.1 million to establish a mobile network up there.
Dutch scientists may have found a new human organ. It would be the first new discovery inside homo sapiens for hundreds of years.
Awkward seating arrangements could slow viral spread. A supercomputer simulation found that sitting diagonally from your fellow diner exposes you to 75% less gross droplets.
Our best wishes for a productive day. Please send any news, comments, a reliable 4G signal on Earth, and some kimchi 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 Hasit Shah, Susan Howson, and Max Lockie.