Sapere Aude #3
Third edition of Quizarc's "week in review" newsletter
This is business!
🔍 A Russian court fined Google $20 decillion — that’s 20 with 33 zeros— for removing Russian TV channels from YouTube.
Quizarc Insight
The largely symbolic penalty, more than the world’s total GDP, shows how courts around the world are becoming more nationalistic, with global companies caught in the crosshairs.
✈️ Southwest Airlines has named IndiGo co-founder Rakesh Gangwal as Chairman.
Quizarc Insight
When Southwest Airlines first launched, it had implemented a love-themed marketing campaign, which then became the origin of its LUV ticker symbol.
☢️ Meta's plans to build a nuclear power plant to power AI was blocked by discovery of a rare bee species on location.
Quizarc Insight
Constellation Energy and Microsoft recently signed a power deal to help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, the location of USA’s biggest nuclear accident.
֎ OpenAI’s transcription tool Whisper has a bit of a lying problem. Experts say the AI-powered feature frequently hallucinates, fabricating entire sentences when transcribing interviews and generating text.
Quizarc Insight
Mira Murati, who worked as chief technology officer of OpenAI from May 2022 to September 2024 left the organization and is currently fundraising for a new AI startup.
👜 The US Federal Trade Commission blocked an $8.5B merger between Tapestry (Coach, Kate Spade, and Stuart Weitzman) and Capri (Versace, Michael Kors, and Jimmy Choo), claiming it would have given the former a “dominant share of the ‘accessible luxury’ handbag market.”
Quizarc Insight
The Versace logo is inspired by Medusa while the logo of Coach is a man on a carriage with two horses (not to be confused with the Wells Fargo logo).
👟 Bad Bunny and Lionel Messi have teamed up for a new Adidas collection.
Quizarc Insight
Bad Bunny’s album Un Verano Sin Ti is the most streamed album on Spotify with over 17 billion streams.
🤖 Tesla's "We, Robot" event showcased innovations that included the much-anticipated Robovan, the stylish Robotaxi and the humanoid Optimus robot.
Quizarc Insight
The director of the 2004 movie I, Robot, Alex Proyas, accused Elon Musk of copying his designs for Tesla's Optimus robots and Cybercab.
🍔 Wendy’s, in collaboration with Spongebob Squarepants has brought The Krabby Patty Kollab Burger as a limited-time menu item.
Quizarc Insight
The Krusty Krab is the fictional fast food restaurant in which The Krabby Patty is served in Spongebob.
🍻 TGI Fridays, the well-known restaurant chain, filed for bankruptcy protection due to financial challenges from COVID-19 and changing dining preferences.
Quizarc Insight
In 1965, Alan Stillman opened the first TGI Fridays restaurant in Manhattan in the hopes that opening a bar would help him meet women. He named it TGI Fridays after the expression "Thank God it's Friday!" from his years at Bucknell University.
TGI Fridays said its bartenders trained Tom Cruise for his role in the 1988 movie Cocktail.
📈 Elcid's 66,92,535% surge from Rs 3.53 to Rs 2,36,250 makes it India's most expensive stock, surpassing MRF.
Quizarc Insight
Elcid Investments is a non-banking financial company with a strong connection to Asian Paints.
On a historical note, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar was a Castilian knight, who earned the Arabic honorific as-Sayyid ("the Lord" or "the Master"), which evolved into El Çid!
🐱 Although she is only five apples tall, Hello Kitty has just turned 50!
Quizarc Insight
Hello Kitty, whose full name is Kitty White, lives with her family in London’s suburbs and is a girl – not a cat, as many had believed – and has a twin sister, Mimmy.
Sanrio, the Japanese company that owns the character, makes almost $4bn in Hello Kitty sales annually.
🏍️ Royal Enfield revealed its first EV brand Flying Flea-C6.
Quizarc Insight
Licensed from the original English Royal Enfield by the indigenous Indian Madras Motors, Royal Enfield is now a subsidiary of Eicher Motors, an Indian automaker.
🥬 Aldi mocked designer brand Moschino’s 'celery bag' with 75p real-life bargain.
Quizarc Insight
Aldi’s co-founder Theo Albrecht was kidnapped in 1974 and a ransom of seven million German marks (approximately US$2 million at the time) was paid for his release. Albrecht later unsuccessfully claimed the ransom as a tax-deductible business expense in court.
₿ Switzerland unveiled a statue of Bitcoin’s mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Quizarc Insight
A new HBO documentary, Money Electric: “The Bitcoin Mystery” suggested that Canadian developer Peter Todd is Satoshi, a claim he vehemently denies.
🌐 Billy Boy, a German condom brand launched a digital condom: the 'Camdom App'.
Quizarc Insight
The app promises to protect users from recording non-consensual content by blocking recording features on phones with the app.
♪ TikTok founder Zhang Yiming has become China’s richest man.
Quizarc Insight
TikTok’s Chinese counterpart is called Douyin and was launched by ByteDance in September 2016, originally under the name A.me.
📦 Dropbox has laid off 20% of its workforce.
Quizarc Insight
Dropbox founder Drew Houston conceived the Dropbox concept after repeatedly forgetting his USB flash drive while he was a student at MIT.
MELA
🎵 Legendary music producer Quincy Jones, an influential figure in music for over seven decades passed away.
Quizarc Insight
With 28 Grammy awards, Jones is third in the list of most Grammy wins, behind Beyoncé’s 32 and Georg Solti’s 31.
🌻 Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know, a Kannada short film has qualified for the 2025 Oscars in the live action short film category.
Quizarc Insight
Inspired by folk stories and traditions, this short film directed by Chidananda S Naik and produced by the Film and Television Institute of India won first prize earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival’s La Cinef Selection.
📿 Kim Kardashian was seen wearing Princess Diana’s famed cross necklace.
Quizarc Insight
Kim also wore Marilyn Monroe’s famous glittering dress (which Monroe wore while singing “Happy Birthday” to US President John F. Kennedy) during the 2022 Met Gala.
🤵 Timothée Chalamet showed up to his own look-alike contest and didn’t win.
Quizarc Insight
There is a similar story about Charlie Chaplin, which claims that Chaplin came third in his own lookalike contest.
🍼 Deepika and Ranveer name their daughter Dua.
Quizarc Insight
According to the couple, she is the answer to their prayers.
🎸 Maroon-5 is performing for the first time in India in December.
Quizarc Insight
Maroon-5 originally started as Kara’s flowers and according to the band's frontman, Adam Levine, the true story behind the name Maroon-5 is "too embarrassing" to share publicly.
It’s in the game
⚾ Oakland Athletics are no more, replaced temporarily by a bare-boned Athletics moniker until the move to Las Vegas.
Quizarc Insight
The book and the movie Moneyball were based on Oakland Athletics baseball team's 2002 season and their general manager Billy Beane's attempts to assemble a competitive team with substantially less money compared to his rivals.
🏃🏿♀️ Kenyan runner Ruth Chepngetich set new world record at 2024 Chicago Marathon.
Quizarc Insight
She completed the race in 2:09:56, becoming the first woman to run under 2:10 eclipsing the previous world record of 2:11:53 set by Ethiopian Tigst Assefa at the 2023 Berlin Marathon.
🏏 Arshdeep Singh removed all PBKS-related Instagram posts after being released ahead of IPL 2025 auction.
Quizarc Insight
PBKS are set for yet another complete overhaul, with uncapped Indian players Shashank Singh (₹5.5 crore) and Prabhsimran Singh (₹4 crore) being their only retentions.
🥇 The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) has submitted a ‘Letter of Intent’, expressing the country’s desire to host the 2036 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Quizarc Insight
Indian athletes have won 41 medals, at the Summer Olympics, wrestler K. D. Jadhav being the first individual medal winner for independent India.
🥊 Paris Olympics gold medalist Imane Khelif is taking legal action over leaked gender reports.
Quizarc Insight
Khelif won a gold medal in women’s boxing for Algeria. Recently published reports claimed that Khelif has XY, or male, chromosomes.
♞ Anish Sarkar at age 3 is the youngest player to have a FIDE rating.
Quizarc Insight
He has surpassed the previous record set by Tejas Tiwari at the age of 5.
General
🩸 More than 4 centuries after her death, historians are offering new information about the mysterious “Blood Countess” — a Hungarian woman “alleged to have been the most prolific female serial killer of all time.”
Quizarc Insight
From her castle atop a rugged peak in what is today Čachtice in Slovakia, Elizabeth Báthory was alleged to have tortured and killed up to 650 young women and girls, sparking gruesome legends that she delighted in bathing in the blood of her victims in the belief it would help her retain her youth.
🚀 Three Chinese astronauts including the country's only woman spaceflight engineer blasted off on a "dream" mission to the Tiangong space station.
Quizarc Insight
Tiangong, literally meaning Sky Palace in Mandarin, is a third-generation modular space station. China intends to keep the space station, which is roughly 20% as massive as the International Space Station, permanently occupied and operational for at least a decade.
🌋 At least 10 people were killed after Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki erupted in eastern Indonesia.
Quizarc Insight
Barren Island, located in the Andaman Sea is the only confirmed active volcano in the Indian subcontinent.
🗽 George Washington’s lock of hair and Abraham Lincoln’ funeral train flag to feature in historic auction.
Quizarc Insight
Washington's false teeth were made of a combination of ivory, human teeth, and metal.
💼25 Million applications have been received for PM Vishwakarma Scheme.
Quizarc Insight
Launched in September 2023, the PM Vishwakarma Scheme focuses on empowering traditional artisans and to enhance their skills and improve livelihoods.
⚖︎ The Supreme Court unveiled a redesigned 'Lady Justice' statue, removing the blindfold and replacing the sword with the Constitution.
Quizarc Insight
The original Lady Justice originates from the personification of Justice in Ancient Roman art known as Justitia, who is equivalent to the Greek goddess Thémis.
😷 Tuberculosis is once again the world’s leading cause of death from infectious disease, overtaking COVID-19 after three years.
Quizarc Insight
Around 1.25 million people died from TB in 2023, according to the World Health Organization.
🧑🏫 Former Niti Aayog member, economist Bibek Debroy passed away.
Quizarc Insight
Debroy translated the unabridged version of the Mahabharata into English, in a series of 10 volumes. He also anchored Itihasa, a show delving into India’s history and culture on Sansad TV.
🗳 Bengali was the only Indian language on New York’s ballot papers.
Quizarc Insight
Bengali was announced as an official language in the west African nation of Sierra Leone to recognise the contributions of the Bangladeshi peacekeeping forces.
⛩️ The Japanese government announced plans for a “conveyor belt road” between Tokyo and Osaka that would ferry large, wheeled boxes down a three-lane corridor alongside a highway.
Quizarc Insight
The project is Japan’s solution to its shrinking labor force, which has led to a shortage of truck drivers.
💊 India’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) flagged over 50 drugs, including Paracetamol and PAN-D, as 'not of standard quality'.
Quizarc Insight
Harmon Northrop Morse was the first to make Paracetamol, in the year 1878.
🐕 Kukur Tihar was celebrated in Nepal, coinciding with Diwali.
Quizarc Insight
On this day, people worship dogs to please Yama, the god of death, as dogs are considered to be his messengers.
🧈 During Dhanteras, RBI announced that it has transported an additional 102 Tonnes of gold from the Bank of England's vaults in London to secure storage facilities within India.
Quizarc Insight
Head over to this Quizarc post to know why RBI keeps gold in foreign countries.
Brand in focus!
✈︎ Joby
Toyota and Joby completed the first air taxi flight in Japan.
Joby Aviation is a United States venture-backed aviation company, developing an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircrafts.
After accepting a $500 million investment from Toyota last month, Joby announced plans to establish a “manufacturing alliance” with Toyota.
Joby is also supported by global partners like Uber, Delta Air Lines, and ANA and it is planning to commercially launch next year.
AD in focus
🛒Tesco
Tesco's ICONS campaign replaces the letters of its name with various produce items in a bold reimagining of the classic logo.
Pop culture recommendation:
💉The Dropout
The Dropout dramatizes the rise and fall of Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, brilliantly portrayed by Amanda Seyfried. The series moves at a blistering pace, with things becoming more and more unhinged with every episode.
superb and highly resourceful!
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