Hi Quartz members!
This is your last Weekend Brief of 2021, so to close out the year we’re offering up a rundown of everything you might have missed. Here are some of the headlines, charts, ideas, objects, and discoveries that captured Quartz’s attention over the past 12 months.
PS: If you like this email format, let us know at the end! We might make it a weekly thing. Either way, we’ll be back with your regular Weekend Brief on Jan. 1, 2022.
In case you missed it
- The US used-car bubble burst
- The last country using leaded gasoline finished its supply
- A luxury titan was briefly the world’s richest person
- American workers quit at the highest rate in decades
- Even Toyota seemed to know the Taliban would take Kabul
- India’s vaccine czar fled the country over threats
- Chinese internet users rejected Beijing’s three-child policy
- Chip makers threatened to scrap future US factories
- GM sped up the depreciation of everything it owns
- Quartz sold the first-ever NFT news article for $1,800
Charts we’re still thinking about
1️⃣ From: Silicon Valley is losing its grip on the US social media market
2️⃣ From: Experts are terrible at predicting the cost of clean energy
3️⃣ From: Amazon’s service sales are about to eclipse its product sales
4️⃣ From: One US stock has done better than Amazon since 1997
We got a little obsessed with…
🧬 mRNA. Moderna’s founder says mRNA technology could power new therapeutic drugs within a decade.
💸 DeFi. Decentralized finance is an amalgam of cryptography, finance, and software development—and an increasingly big business.
🤠 The bullwhip effect. The same economic phenomenon that snarled the semiconductor supply chain also led to shortages of toilet paper.
🪑 Office chairs. Ever since Charles Darwin added wheels to his armchair, we’ve been searching for the perfect butt perch for work.
🚢 Maersk. Among other, newer ventures, century-old Mærsk handles one out of every five containers shipped by sea.
🥽 The metaverse. Depending on who you ask, the metaverse is either a meaningless buzzword or the next big digital platform.
💖 Empathetic bosses. For workplace purposes, it’s important to have “cognitive empathy,” while emotional empathy can be less useful.
🛰️ Space debris. At orbital velocity, a piece of junk as small as a paint chip could destroy a satellite or threaten the lives of astronauts.
2021’s most-read stories
🚩 Decoding the flags at the Capitol Hill insurrection
🚚 There is no shortage of US truck drivers
🧯 What part of the US is safest from climate change?
👀 Our Instagram analysis calls BS on fashion’s BLM reckoning
🏘️ The boom in US home sales is not a bubble
🇳🇬 Why Puma canceled a $2.7 million deal with Nigeria
🇨🇳 Could China’s economy collapse?
🖤 Psychologists say a good life doesn’t have to be happy
🤔 How to respond to “Tell me about yourself” in an interview
🎵 These 700 songs are known to give people chills
One quote we ❤️
“We make this binary choice between sober and not, and nothing is that black and white. I say that there’s sober-curious and sober-serious, and wherever people fall along that line is okay. And even ‘sometimes sober’ is a real point on that spectrum.” —Chris Marshall, founder of an alcohol-free bar, in our report on the new sobriety movement
Best of surprising discoveries
🧠 Zebrafish brains light up when they listen to MC Hammer
📛 People in Taiwan are changing their names to Salmon
🐸 Female frogs tune out the mating calls of other species
✉️ MIT engineers taught spinach to send emails
💍 An ancient amethyst ring was used to treat hangovers
🌌 Something in the galaxy’s center is sending out weird radio waves
🍝 A dedicated pasta fanatic created a new shape
This year we also…
🙈 Read Trillions (on the rise of index funds), Red Capitalism (on the rise of China), The Infinite Machine (on the rise of ethereum), r/wallstreetbets, books we already had lying around, and the exact requirements of the US vaccine mandate for large employers
🙉 Watched the Tokyo Olympics, Black Widow (at home), Squid Game (for the subtitles), The Mandalorian (for the effects), Grey’s Anatomy, My Octopus Teacher, Extraction, TikTok stars Khaby Lame and Kat Norton, and the Ever Given saga
🙊 Consumed oat milk, canned food, Japanese whisky, Jollof rice, affordable wine, a McDonald’s chicken sandwich, and mmm cookies
Thanks for reading! Would you be into a weekly version of this email?
Have an informed end to your year,
—All of us here at Quartz