Quartz

My story on rage-bait chefs for The Verge got a shout out in the Quartz weekly brief newsletter

In January, four of China’s biggest online tutoring platforms made an embarrassing gaffe. They aired ads all featuring the same actress to promote their new online courses.

Words, beyond their basic function of communication, signal intent and outline ways of thinking. But in an age of “alternative facts,” we know too well that words can obscure as much as they clarify. Words can also be weapons. As the sociologist Celine-Marie Pascale puts it, “Authoritarian governments weaponize language …

The future for Yemi, a Nigerian former student, was laid out in a contract written in Arabic which she signed in an office in Lagos in June 2019 to enable a recruitment agency bring her to work in Lebanon.

There is perhaps no better measure of a place’s quality of life than how long its residents are expected to live. Life expectancy reflects a neighborhood’s safety, the quality of its health care, its environment, and the wealth and mental health of the people who live there. With that in …

Popular music is shrinking. From 2013 to 2018, the average song on the Billboard Hot 100 fell from 3 minutes and 50 seconds to about 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Six percent of hit songs were 2 minutes 30 seconds or shorter in 2018, up from just 1% five years …

The job market, according to elementary economics, is like any other market. It works best if wages are set by supply and demand, not by any other factor, like government rules. Just as the government doesn’t set a minimum price for shirts or avocados, so they should not be telling …

Football Manager is one of the most popular sports video games in the world. The 2019 version was a chart-topping hit in the UK, where the game is most widely played. Previous versions of the game have consistently sold more than a million copies each. Football Manager allows fans to …

As Hong Kong’s protest movement passed the six-month mark and the year drew to a close, the question of what name to give a movement that began in June 2019 becomes a vexed one for editors and reporters, academics, and commentators.

Boko Haram, poverty and lack of prospects force many Nigerians to flee – especially in the Lake Chad area. Climate change is driving the crisis further.

The soundtrack of this year's Hong Kong protests marks a somber turn from the Umbrella Movement

Americans are fixated with the Republican-Democrat divide. But Republicans are a significantly smaller group.

O'Rourke's whole campaign against Ted Cruz in Texas is about subverting the stereotypes that have polarized America.

More than 60% of undocumented immigrants have been living in the US for 10 years or more.

The rising numbers of people caught at the border are a sign of a bureaucratic crisis, not an immigration "invasion."

The "good guys" are not necessarily those who are democratically elected. Post Cold War dictatorships have donned new clothes.

Venezuela is not at war, yet it’s starting to look like Syria based on the exodus of people fleeing the country.

Who knew a unibrow could be such a popular look?

Genaro López's plan was to cross the Rio Grande and to find work in an American farm. He was caught and deported, but he is thankful for that. He now lives in Monterrey, Mexico, an industrial hub some 150 miles from the US border. He earns less than what he …

Seemingly simple tasks, like buying a bicycle chain, are still incredibly difficult to achieve on the island.

A fledgling political movement called Platforma za progres, Bosnian for “Platform for Progress,” is trying to fix Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political deadlock using computer modeling and data analytics, a toolbox that decision-makers around the world are increasingly experimenting with.

As Colombia's civil war draws near its end, pot farmers in poor regions are afraid of losing their livelihoods.

That's a good thing: It's a much friendlier and happier place than 15 years ago.

If Jorge Guevara worked as a doctor in the US, he’d likely have a six-figure salary. But this is Cuba, and as a drummer hammering out tropical standards for sunburned tourists in the resort town of Varadero, Guevara earns several times more than he once made practicing medicine. “In Cuba, …

Newly affluent Cubans want middle-class services, from pet grooming to tattoo removal.

From France to Mexico, conservatives are using the same coded words to fight progress.

There are two ways of looking at Laredo, Texas, a border city at the southern edge of the US. One is as barren outpost of the US economy, condemned by geographic misfortune to a marginal existence. The other is as part of one of the most dynamic economies in North …

We collected years of data for every state and province in North America, and the conclusion is clear: US president Donald Trump’s belief that manufacturing equals prosperity doesn’t hold up.

While Monterrey has proved to be a master at racking up NAFTA winnings, it's been pretty incompetent at administering them.

Free your mind before freeing free trade.