Weekend edition—Trump’s 100 days, history of Kannada, disrupting drugs

[Quartz - qz.com]() Good morning, Quartz readers! The New York Times published its [collection of page-one headlines]( for the first 100 days of the Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush presidencies. They make instructive reading. Bush’s are a melange of domestic and foreign stories. Obama’s have slightly more narrative, since many are about his battle with the US’s financial meltdown. And Trump’s are a seat-of-the-pants psychodrama. Day 1: “Trump, Sworn In, Issues a Call: ‘This American Carnage Stops.’” Day 2: “Defiant Voices Flood Nation’s Cities.” The headlines on days 5-10 are full of the travel ban, legal challenges, chaos at airports. On days 17-22 the White House tussles with the courts. On days 24-27 the Russia scandal breaks open. Day 28: “Trump Delivers Heated Defense of First Month.” The chaos accelerates, as freewheeling policymaking meets angry resistance from all quarters. Day 39: “Trump Concedes Health Overhaul Is a Thorny Task.” Day 55: “Federal Judge Blocks New Ban.” Day 57: “Britain Furious as Trump Pushes Claim of Spying.” Day 65: “Trump Becomes Ensnared in Fiery G.O.P. Civil War.” Day 72: “Divide in G.O.P. Now Threatens Trump Tax Plan.” On days 75-85, the president who wanted to stop being the world’s policeman gets embroiled in Syria, North Korea, and Afghanistan. Day 95: “Trump Rejects 100-Day Test, Yet Seeks an ‘A’.” Two things stand out. One is the febrile atmosphere of those early days, when Trump’s blitzkrieg of executive orders amplified liberals’ fears of an impending dictatorship. The other is how quickly the blitzkrieg ran into quicksand. Since then, the sense has been of a White House desperately trying to break out of the quicksand, no matter in which direction—to create, in one pundit’s words, “[an illusion of progress]( With the first 100 days behind him, Trump’s need for visible, quick successes may diminish. Many in his circle surely must know that to win in Washington you must persistently chip away at resistance, not change course each time you meet it. The question is, how many more days in office will it take for the president to learn that himself?—Gideon Lichfield Some things on Quartz we especially liked An anatomy of “Modern Love”. Emma Pierson and Alex Albright analyzed every “Modern Love” column from The New York Times for a decade and found that the messy process of dating leads to the best stories. [Here’s]( else they learned. The rise and fall of corporations. One of Japan’s former tech giants is in the emergency room and struggling to stay alive. [Josh Horwitz traces]( the the journey of Toshiba, and what led to its fall. The struggle to fit in. Women who wear sizes 16 and up often complain of having difficulty finding clothes in their size, especially those that fit well. [Marc Bain looks]( into why designers continue to make clothes in larger sizes that are frequently so ill-fitted. Living history. Kannada—the dominant language of Karnataka, spoken by 40 million people and one of India’s oldest languages—has transformed. [Nikhil Sonnad travels]( to Bengaluru to meet Ganjam Venkatasubbaiah, a scholar who has been observing and writing about the language for nearly a century. How to cope with grief. A few years ago Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg tragically lost her husband. Jenny Anderson [reviews Sandberg’s new book]( about dealing with loss, and reflects on how it could have helped her face her own brother’s death. Fighting for their own. Keith Collins, Dave Gershgorn, and Alison Griswold [analysed 2,000 lobbying reports]( going back to 2008 for six of the biggest technology companies in the US. Only one, they found, has ramped up immigration lobbying under the Trump administration: Alphabet. Why you should all be communist. Helen Razer, an Australian writer, argues that not only has communism never been truly tried as a system of social organization, but these days it is not very well understood. She [maps out the basics](. Where in the world is Joseph Kony? The leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army has eluded Western governments and NGOs for years. David Gauvey Herbert [travels to Uganda]( to find that the billions spent on tracking him, has had little benefit for his victims. Financial reports, emoji-style. Eshe Nelson, Jason Karaian, and Mike Murphy read 40 earnings reports for companies across oil to gadgets, pharma to food—so you don’t have to. They summarized their analysis into [an emoji-based briefing]( can digest in just two minutes. Five things elsewhere that made us smarter When a guerrilla enters the modern world. The Western Hemisphere’s longest war ever ended last year when Colombia’s FARC rebels signed a peace treaty with the government. Rebels are now coming out, some after decades in the jungle. In the New Yorker, John Lee Anderson follows a 56-year-old former commander who’s learning to use Facebook, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn as he gets ready to be a civilian for the first time. François Hollande’s fateful interview. Some 30 years ago, Pierre Briançon [turned down the future president of France]( for a job as a reporter at a French newspaper. In Politico, Briançon recalls that fateful encounter by way of describing the “casting error” of Hollande’s eventual rise to the presidency. The deeply unpopular leader’s tenure doomed his party to political oblivion in this year’s election, and probably many more to come. His only mistake: disrupting drugs instead of taxis. Ross Ulbricht, creator of the illicit drugs marketplace Silk Road, helped popularize bitcoin and turned illegal substances into a bona fide e-commerce product. He [has much in common]( with Silicon Valley’s celebrated moguls, says Nick Bilton in a Vanity Fair excerpt of a forthcoming book. The only difference is that Ulbricht picked drugs instead taxis, hotels, dating, or friendship. The US media’s geographic bubble is only worsening. As American newspapers wither, media jobs are clustering in Democrat-leaning coastal cities. Politico crunched the numbers: [almost 90%]( of internet publishing employees work in counties won by Hillary Clinton in the last election. No wonder the media missed Trump’s presidential victory. Gun violence seen up close. “If people had been shown the autopsy photos of the kids” gunned down at Sandy Hook in 2012, “the gun debate would have been transformed.” So Amy Goldberg, a trauma surgeon in Philadelphia who treated 450 gunshot wounds last year, tells Jason Fagone in this profile for Huffington Post. There are no autopsy photos, but Fagone’s [searing descriptions of Goldberg’s work]( leave plenty for the mind’s eye to fill in. Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, financial reports in emoji, and Hollande anecdotes to hi@qz.com. You can follow us [on Twitter here]( for updates throughout the day, or download[our apps for iPhone]( and[Android](. Want to receive the Daily Brief at a different time? [Click here]( to change your edition. To unsubscribe entirely, [click here](. Enjoying the Daily Brief? [Click here]( to pass it along to a friend. Like us on [Facebook]( and follow us on [Twitter](. Quartz | 675 Avenue of the Americas, 4th Fl | New York, NY 10011 | United States