Hi, Quartz members!
This week, we kept our eyes on the US economy. Despite continued tech layoffs—and if 2024 rates continue, this year could be an even more brutal one for tech workers than last year was—Americans have a fair amount to be optimistic about.
But it’s Sunday, and you’ve got some reading to do. Here are our favorite reads from last week, to get your next week started off right.
5 things we especially liked on Quartz
Bitcoin’s back, baby—right? The US government made it easier for people to buy Bitcoin, and investors were jacked. Someone even hacked the Securities and Exchange Commission’s X account to scoop the news. But that hype hasn’t translated to higher prices for the cryptocurrency, as Melvin Backman explains.
Toxic train spills could affect a lot more Americans. Remember that toxic chemical spill last year in East Palestine, Ohio, that forced residents to evacuate? A train derailment of that nature—were it to involve vinyl chloride again—could affect another three million people in cities on the railway’s route. Quartz’s Laura Bratton explains who is most at risk.
The US housing market is boomering. Not only are young Americans finding it hard to purchase a house because of high prices and interest rates, part of the supply is being hoarded by baby boomers who don’t intend on moving out anytime soon. Oh, and forget about renos—boomers are leaving those to the next buyer.
Musicians are turning up the heat on Hollywood. The unionized American Federation of Musicians wants studios to provide pay and consent for using AI in music creation. With recent wins among writer and actor unions, the odds are looking good for AFM. But there’s one comparison the union doesn’t want to draw to their requests: The Luddites.
Beyond Hollywood, the king of cinema is rising. It’s Bollywood’s Shah Rukh Khan, arguably the world’s biggest movie star, and he’s back with a bang. SRK, as he’s widely known, has had a banner year. Ananya Bhattacharya explains that this past year’s success is an indicator that, far from diminishing over his 33-year career, his starpower is brighter than ever. Read all about him in our latest Obsession email, and if you like what you see, you can always sign up for the free weekly newsletter here.
5 great stories from elsewhere
👩🍳 The chef’s special. To forecast the year’s dining trends, nobody would begrudge you for consulting the usual suspects—top restaurateurs, head chefs, and (literal) tastemakers. But The New York Times takes a decidedly more anthropological tack: by asking their menus. Gathering 121 printouts from restaurants around the US, this feature slices and dices where the food scene is headed—from dishes flavors to presentation and personality.
💉 Et tu, flu-ers? One would think that an upswing in flu vaccine getters would mean a similar trend for the latest covid boosters. But in the US at least, that hasn’t been the case. Politics, safety concerns, and the perception that one disease is worse than the other are complicating the case. Writing for STAT, Helen Branswell tries to sort it all out.
🛵 Getting around gigging. The strained relationship between the apps New Yorkers use to order their takeout and the delivery worker who brings it to them has been further put to the test by a new law that mandates a minimum pay. The apps, say the workers, are already maneuvering around it. In Fast Company, Pavithra Mohan looks at the latest example of how the gig economy highlights age-old labor issues it purported to solve.
📝 Wee-tah-kah-loo-loo. If you never had a Furby—that adorable, late-90s toy that talked, sang, danced (sort of), and spoke its cute alien language with other Furbies until it “learned” English—you either missed out, or were you acting out of an abundance of caution. The National Security Agency would have chosen the latter. 404’s Jason Koebler recounts how 60 pages of information showed up on the doorstep of the US citizen who was curious enough to submit a FOIA request for the fabled “FURBIE ALERT” (sic) memo, which does, in fact, exist.
⚒️ Boring read. Tunneling is no joke. This exhaustive, but fascinating, history of what had to go into getting the English Channel Tunnel made—before it was even made!—is a lesson in politics and diplomacy at home and abroad. Complete with diagrams, maps, and political cartoons from the 19th century, Peter Keeling’s essay “Liberal Visions and Boring Machines: The Early History of the Channel Tunnel”, published in the Public Domain Review, will make you feel like you’ve just watched an entire season of a historical drama.
🗓️ What to watch for this week
Here’s what our newsroom will be keeping an eye on:
- Sunday: Finland holds its presidential election.
- Monday: Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian is making a visit to Pakistan amid tough tensions between the two countries.
- Tuesday: Tech heavyweights Microsoft and Alphabet report earnings, and investors will wash it all down with Starbucks’s latest financials.
- Wednesday: Investors will be listening to what Boeing has to say about its latest Max fiasco in its earnings call.
- Thursday: More big earnings from Apple, Amazon, and Meta will hit the market.
- Friday: Oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron will close out the week with their latest quarterly financial reports.
Thanks for reading! Here’s to the week ahead, and don’t hesitate to reach out with comments, questions, feedback, menus, and Furby names. Sunday Reads was brought to you by Susan Howson, Gabriela Riccardi, and Morgan Haefner.