š Fond farewell, BuzzFeed News
Good morning, Quartz readers!
Hereās what you need to know
BuzzFeed News is shutting down. Itās the end of an era for the brand that steered internet newsāits parent company is going to focus on HuffPost instead.
Ikea wants to paint the American furniture market blue and yellow. Itās making a $2.2 billion push to compete with the likes of Walmart and Wayfair.
Seagate Technology agreed to a record settlement for selling hard drives to Huawei. The Dublin-based data storage company will pay $300 million to the US government for acting against sanctions.
Suga is poised to make K-pop history. The BTS frontmanās solo album D-DAY and his forthcoming world tour could break records in an already record-breaking genre.
Elon Musk has had an extremely busy week
Elon Musk is known for writing down everything he has to do and getting those tasks done in time blocks, but even the most organized CEO would balk at the billionaireās duties this past week. It went a little something like this:
š Test launch the most powerful rocket ever built
Why Virgin Orbit went bankrupt
The prospects of Virgin Orbit, the now bankrupt rocket maker that was spun out of Richard Bransonās space tourism company Virgin Galactic, are being closely watched by the space industry. But the real question here is whether anyone could have rescued Virgin Orbit. (Elon Musk, as weāve established, was too busy.)
There were two things standing between Virgin and successācould they have been resolved?
Liam Gallagher likes his new song that isnāt his
āItās better than all the other snizzle out there.ā
āLiam Gallagher, lead singer of Oasis, praising an AI revival of his voice featured on a new album released by āAISIS.ā Weāll see if AISISās The Lost Tapes / Vol. 1 will meet the same fate as the fake Drake-Weeknd track.
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Surprising discoveries
Fossilized pee can tell us about ancient climates. Rock hyrax urine hardens quickly, capturing pollen and wildfire residue from different eras.
A former fiscal officer in Ohio used public funds to stock his private zoo. A $4,116 wildebeest, a snow cone machine, and hot tubs were among the purchases.
Tokyo added an over-80 division to its āSoccer For Lifeā league. The oldest player is 93 years old.
Will AI agents one day pay taxes? We donāt charge honey bees for all the work they do, but then again, theyāre not after our jobs.
Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, taxpayer snow cones, and Lion King songs to [email protected]. Reader support makes Quartz available to allābecome a member. Todayās Daily Brief was brought to you by Morgan Haefner.