Good morning, Quartz readers!
I thought impeaching US president Donald Trump would be a waste of time.
It’s not that I didn’t agree his conduct on Jan. 6 was impeachable, just that the outcome was preordained. With little chance of finding 17 Republicans senators willing to convict their generalissimo, the process seemed at best a distraction from president Joe Biden’s agenda, and at worst another cause for Trump’s supporters to rally around.
The events of the last week have changed my mind. The outcome isn’t any more in doubt, but I have been reminded of the power of bearing witness.
We may have thought we knew what happened on Jan. 6, but the House impeachment managers assembled the fragments from the myriad accounts and videos of that day into a coherent whole that explained, contextualized, and fully revealed all the ghastly details. The account wasn’t delivered in a dry congressional report or PBS documentary released years from now, but live, on the floor of the Senate, scant weeks after it happened.
Many Republican senators, no doubt, would be happy to skip to the end. Most of them signaled from the beginning they had no interest in the affair, twice voting it unconstitutional (although, notably, senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana has been persuaded to change his vote). But they can’t cast their inevitable votes to acquit without first having to sit through the presentation of evidence. None will be able to claim they didn’t know how bad it was, and history will take note.
Though this impeachment will fail, not all failed efforts are wasted efforts. Dred Scott lost his case, but the Supreme Court ruling that even free Black people were not US citizens helped catalyze the anti-abolition movement. The Arab Spring didn’t overthrow oppressive governments in Egypt or Syria, but gave voice to millions. Rocky lost.
We may not learn the impact of Trump’s second trial, and second acquittal, for years or even decades. In the short term, it may have little impact. The trial doesn’t seem to be cooling his supporters’ ardor, or leading many Republican senators to find their political spines.
But the experience will tell future generations that we—the people and our elected representatives—were horrified by what happened Jan. 6, and that we cared enough to do something about it. —Oliver Staley
Five things from Quartz we especially liked
Chatting on borrowed time. China’s moment of unfettered, uncensored expression was over almost as soon as it arrived. But for a brief few days, Chinese users of Clubhouse, the audio-based social network, conversed freely on politically taboo topics like Hong Kong’s protests and Xinjiang. Jane Li describes what that short-lived speech haven was like—and how easily government censors can target users of the app. —Mary Hui, reporter
In appreciation of vaccines. Many people are understandably frustrated with the problems associated with the Covid-19 vaccines, from disorganized distribution to uncertainty over how well they protect against new virus variants. But as Katherine Foley writes, the history of smallpox and polio vaccines are a reminder that we will reach a new normal, slowly but surely. —Sarah Todd, senior reporter
We need to talk about the sofa. Stuck at home in 2020, style-conscious young adults dove into cottagecore, an aesthetic evoking nearly-off-the-grid life with quilted covers and rustic pies. But even people who missed that trend were rethinking any cool and hard-edged surroundings in their personal prisons homes, as Anne Quito reports in this fun feature about the design decisions people regretted most during the pandemic. —Lila MacLellan, senior reporter
Uganda’s election drama offers a glimpse into the internet’s future. Last month, Facebook and Twitter took down a network of accounts linked to the Ugandan government for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” to sway upcoming elections. Uganda responded by shutting off the internet. Odanga Madung explains how similar conflicts between Big Tech and Big Government may come to define the future of the internet on the continent, and whether authoritarian control over information can snuff out democracy. —Nicolás Rivero, tech reporter
Some of the best TV shows around are from France. In high school, I sometimes had to watch French movies in class. Many were slow and boring, especially to an inattentive 16-year-old. But some felt magnificent, like 1995’s La Haine. Its director, Mathieu Kassovitz, now stars in The Bureau, a French thriller among Annabelle Timsit’s streaming recommendations—a sign French TV’s fortunes are looking up. —Hasit Shah, news editor
One membership thing that made us 💬
The pandemic has fueled a burgeoning market for digital tools designed to help colleagues collaborate at a distance:
$500 billion: Anticipated value of the collaboration software market in 2027
115 million: Daily users of Microsoft Teams in 2020
40%: Proportion of a worker’s day spent multitasking between communications platforms and other tasks
44: Hours in an average work week in the US
10%-15%: Share of Slack activity that takes place outside typical working hours
6 minutes: Time elapsed between checking a chat app or email for the average knowledge worker
For more, check out our field guide on the future of the digital workplace.
✦ One digital tool we recommend is a Quartz membership. Get 50% off through Sunday with code QUARTZLOVE.
We’re obsessed with parasocial relationships
The feeling’s not mutual. If the isolation of the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s just how much we rely on our relationships to get through the day. Many have doubled down on the parasocial—a parallel world where one-way connections with celebrities or fictional characters have all the intensity of a reciprocal relationship. Recent research reveals parasocial relationships can shape everything from what we buy and who we vote for to how we feel on a daily basis. Make direct contact with the Quartz Weekly Obsession.
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Five things from elsewhere that made us smarter
Fighting for a better outcome. The stories of what happens after a private equity firm acquires a company often follow a similar pattern: consultants are brought in, investors are prioritized, valuable assets are sold off, people are laid off, corners are cut, costs still rise, and bankruptcy is filed a few years later. At Bloomberg Businessweek, Lauren Coleman-Lochner and Eliza Ronalds-Hannon take a comprehensive and compelling look at what happened to popular midwestern retailer Art Van Furniture, and how its workers demanded better treatment. —Karen K. Ho, global finance and economics reporter
A pulse oximeter for all. Over the course of the pandemic, a tiny medical device has played an integral role in monitoring the severity of the disease in patients: the lowly pulse oximeter, which measures a person’s blood-oxygen saturation. For decades, some US healthcare professionals suspected that pulse oximeters miss critically low levels of oxygen in patients with darker skin. Now, with the support of lawmakers, they’ve finally gotten the Food and Drug Administration to re-evaluate these devices to ensure accuracy for everyone, Erin Brodwin and Nicholas St. Fleur write for STAT. —Katherine Ellen Foley, health and science reporter
American dreams, desi politics. The journey of Priyanka Chopra Jonas is nothing short of amazing. A Miss World from a small town in India made films with some of the country’s biggest producers, then became the first Indian to headline an American television show, and then married an American pop star in a mega, multi-day wedding. While Chopra Jonas underplays her politics, Simon Hattenstone doggedly pursues that subject in an interview for the Guardian that is perhaps more revealing than her latest autobiography, Unfinished. —Manavi Kapur, Quartz India reporter
Asymmetrical warfare. The fraying threads of American democracy are under more stress than ever, but as Perry Bacon Jr. carefully details at FiveThirtyEight, it’s not a bipartisan problem. Republican officials are more likely to adopt anti-democratic positions, particularly at the state level, in response to Democratic efforts to raise the status of minorities through politics as usual. This dynamic makes calls for “unity” misguided—at least until the right acknowledges the legitimacy of popular elections. —Tim Fernholz, senior reporter
Mushrooms are upsetting. It isn’t just that they make me sick, or that they defy our categorization of the world so profoundly we resorted to giving them their own separate kingdom. It is, as perfectly captured by this spectacular meditation on fungal exuberance by Zoë Schlanger for the New York Times, the pornographic relentlessness of their bursting, the uncontainable force of their life. Read it. It’ll leave you shook—and in complete awe. —Annalisa Merelli, reporter
Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, digital tools that live up to the hype, and exuberant mushrooms to hi@qz.com. Get the most out of Quartz by downloading our app and becoming a member. Today’s Weekend Brief was brought to you by Oliver Staley and Liz Webber.