Five years ago this month, in October 2017, the New York Times and the New Yorker published articles alleging that Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein had abused women for decades. Those revelations sparked the #MeToo movement, which exposed the pervasive sexual harassment of women in the workplace, including by men at the highest rungs of the corporate ladder.

Weinstein is back in the courthouse today in Los Angeles for his second trial over sex crimes. He was already convicted of rape and criminal sexual assault in New York in 2020, and has 21 years left on his prison sentence. But this summer a New York court cracked the door open for Weinstein’s conviction to get overturned, so this LA trial has taken on much greater significance than expected. Weinstein is facing four counts of rape and seven counts of sexual assault.

How have things changed since 2017?

The five-year anniversary of the initial Weinstein allegations has generated intense debate over how much the #MeToo movement has achieved for women in the workplace. Some victories:

• 22 states and Washington, DC, have passed more than 70 workplace anti-harassment bills, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
• Powerful men such as R. Kelly, Bill Cosby, and Jeffrey Epstein were put behind bars for their crimes.
• The movement led to a reckoning far beyond US borders. Over one-third of #MeToo tweets in its first year were posted in a language that wasn’t English, according to a Pew study.

Others argue that #MeToo hasn’t resulted in dramatic changes.

• The rampant online abuse directed at Amber Heard during her trial with Johnny Depp earlier this year was viewed as revealing the limited impact #MeToo had on stopping hostile behavior toward women.
• Time’s Up, a star-studded nonprofit that was launched in 2018 to combat sexual harassment in Hollywood, is essentially defunct.
• Other critics of #MeToo argue that it’s gone too far in “canceling” men whose actions were unjustly lumped in with those of Weinstein, Epstein, et al.

One final stat to go: In a new Pew survey, 70% of respondents said that people who commit sexual misconduct in the workplace are more likely to be held accountable now than compared to five years ago.

Deadly protests continue to engulf Iran. Demonstrations that began over the death of a woman who was detained by Iran’s morality police have now ballooned to the biggest rebuke of the clerical government in years. Students have joined the protests, chanting “death to the dictator” (referring to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) and anti-government protesters appeared to hack a state-run TV broadcast on Saturday. A human rights group said that at least 185 people have been killed over the three weeks of protests.

Social media companies clamp down on Kanye West after antisemitic posts. The rapper had his account restricted by Instagram for violating its policies, and then when he started posting on Twitter, that platform also locked him out. West, who now goes by “Ye,” has been posting antisemitic content, including a tweet that stated, “when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” Ye was also heavily criticized for wearing a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt at Paris Fashion Week.

Vermeer didn’t actually paint a Vermeer. The National Gallery of Art believed that it had four paintings by the famed Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. But after a team of researchers inspected the paintings during the pandemic, it discovered that one of them, “Girl with a Flute,” was not painted by Vermeer, but by someone else, perhaps an associate or a student. The finding, announced on Friday, challenges the long-held perception of Vermeer as a lone genius.

Just hours after Vladimir Putin blew out the candles on his 70th birthday cake, the Ukrainians gave him something he certainly didn’t wish for: a stunning attack on his beloved Kerch Bridge, which connects the Russian mainland to the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.

The details: Early Saturday morning a massive explosion rocked the bridge, which is the only physical connection between Russia and Crimea. The blast took out sections of two auto lanes, and ignited a nearby train that was carrying fuel. Russian officials are scrambling to make repairs and restore traffic.

Who or what actually caused the explosion isn’t 100% clear, but all signs point to Ukraine being responsible. While Ukraine hasn’t publicly taken credit for the attack, an anonymous senior Ukrainian official told the NYT that its intelligence services detonated a bomb on a truck that was traversing the bridge. Putin also blamed “Ukrainian secret services.”

Why it matters: The Kerch Bridge explosion is a significant blow to Russia both tactically and symbolically. On the tactical side, it will disrupt key transportation flows that supply Russia’s military in southern Ukraine. On the symbolic side, it’s another public embarrassment to Putin, who viewed the infrastructure project as a major step in his attempt to rebuild the Russian empire. Putin himself opened the bridge in 2018 by driving a truck across it.

Inflation data incoming. Thursday’s consumer price index release will show how much we got clobbered by inflation in September. Last month, inflation came in hotter than expected, leading to a market rout. Economists hope to see some cooling in “core CPI,” which strips out food and gas prices, this time around.

Earnings season is back. A stock market that’s already on edge could get another jolt of volatility this week as corporations begin to report their Q3 earnings, starting with PepsiCo on Wednesday. These reports will reveal how companies are coping with the Fed’s interest rate hikes.

Xi will get an extension. At China’s Communist Party congress on Saturday, President Xi Jinping is expected to receive a third five-year term in his position. The country he’s overseeing is in a serious economic slump right now.

Everything else…

• The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund will hold their annual meetings in Washington, DC, this week amid great macroeconomic uncertainty.
• Amazon is holding another Prime-linked sales event—just one of many early bird holiday discounts that retailers are unleashing right now.
• Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Stat: Have you tried the new $75 tasting menu at the San Francisco restaurant Dogue? Uh…hope not. It says it’s the first restaurant in the country to offer a tasting menu just for dogs. The three-course meal is made with locally sourced and organic ingredients, so your socially conscious pet can savor their chuck steak without feeling bad about harming the environment. Bone appetit.

Quote: “It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.”

In his new book, the actor William Shatner shares some goosebump-inducing reflections on his trip to space on a Blue Origin rocket. While Shatner had thought his space ride would be the “ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things,” he said it felt more like a funeral as he considered humanity’s destruction of organisms that took billions of years to evolve.

Read: Is the NBA ready for Victor Wembanyama? (The Ringer)

Dive back into the week.

• Shallow dive: A really good new country album
• Medium dive: Memes in real life
• Deep dive: The rise of sleep tourism
• Cannonball: How does the Russia–Ukraine war end?

Today is World Mental Health Day: Here is a list of resources to help you improve your mental wellness.

Turntable: Use the extra hours from your day off to set a PR on Turntable. Play it here.

Which one is bigger?

We’ll give you clues for two numbers, and you have to answer the simple question: “Which is greater?”

1. Distance from the International Space Station to Earth // Distance from Los Angeles to San Francisco
2. Calories in a McDonald’s Big Mac // Calories in a McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese
3. Average rating of Times Square on Google reviews // Average rating of the Taj Mahal on Google reviews
4. The number of Taylor Swift’s Instagram followers // The number of Beyoncé’s Instagram followers

Have you ever wondered why NFL teams are worth so much money? We explain what goes into team valuations. Watch now.

If you love to nerd out on all things Excel, we’ve got the merch for you. Shop the Freak in the Sheets Collection.

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1. San Francisco is 348 miles from Los Angeles, and the ISS orbits Earth at a distance of about 250 miles.

2. The Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese has 740 calories, and the Big Mac “only” has 550.

3. Times Square has 4.7 stars, and the Taj Mahal has 4.6.

4. Beyoncé has 277 million, and Taylor Swift has 226 million.