Category: Newley’s Notes

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

If you like NN, please share this link so others can subscribe.

☀️ Image of the week, above: A recent sunset here in Hong Kong, seen from a ferry.

I’m happy to resume weekly delivery of Newley’s Notes after a brief break. If you’ve taken time off this summer, I hope your getaway was restful. If you haven’t yet, I hope you’re able to get some downtime. Onward!

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🧪 A remarkable development yesterday in the trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes: she may argue she was being abused psychologically, emotionally and sexually by then Theranos President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.

2) 😔 RIP Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts.

3) 👉 As the twentieth anniversary of September 11th approaches, a moving longread: “What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind.”

4) 🚶‍♀️Why great thinkers are serious about walking.

5) 💬 A look at why Google has failed to build a successful messaging app.

6) 🧬 A list of the 50 best sci-fi and fantasy books of the last decade.

7) ❓Did mega-bestselling thriller author Dan Brown write, under a pen name, a humorous 1995 dating guide called “187 Men to Avoid”?

8) 🇨🇷 What’s the secret to Costa Ricans’ longevity?

9) 🎧 Podcast of the week: sociologist Stephanie Jaros on the always-excellent Cool Tools.

10) 💯 I love this gallery of beautiful old cassette tapes.

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Hopping into the weekend”

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📖 What I’ve been reading

I’m nearly finished with the riveting “Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman’s Ruthless Quest for Global Power,” the 2020 book by Bradley Hope (co-author of the smash hit “Billion Dollar Whale”) and my WSJ colleague Justin Scheck. If you care about the Middle East, geopolitics, oil and energy, or just how power is wielded, you have to read this book.

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💡 Quote of the week:

“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding.” – Cheryl Strayed

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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

If you like NN, please share this link so others can subscribe.

👉 Image of the week, above: a personalized license plate spotted here in Hong Kong. (Thanks, A!)

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🆕 My latest: an exclusive out Monday. The lede:

Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have privately warned the Hong Kong government that they could stop offering their services in the city if authorities proceed with planned changes to data-protection laws that could make them liable for the malicious sharing of individuals’ information online.

The story was followed by The New York Times, Reuters, The Guardian, the South China Morning Post, and others. It was also mentioned in newsletters like Axios AM and CNN’s Reliable Sources.

And for the latest, see a follow-up I wrote on Tuesday: Hong Kong Tries to Ease Big Tech’s Concerns Over Data Law.

2) 💰 An important investigation by my WSJ colleagues Melissa Korn and Andrea Fuller: ‘Financially Hobbled for Life’: The Elite Master’s Degrees That Don’t Pay Off.

3) 👉 A statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee has been taken down in Charlottesville, Virginia.

4) ⚖️ Longread of the week: On Britney Spears’s life under a conservatorship.

5) ☕ Michael Pollan: Should we quit caffeine?

6) ⭐ Why Houston, Texas is better than Austin.

7) 📖 Fourteen-year-old Zaila Avant-garde became the first Black American to triumph in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

8) 👖 Jorts – jean shorts – are cool now.

9) 💬 On Twitter addiction.

10) 🐶 Elmo is adopting a puppy named Tango. (Thanks, PB)

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

🐕 Happiness.

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💡 Quote of the week:

“My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing." – Ernest Hemingway

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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

If you like NN, please share this link so others can subscribe.

👉 Image of the week, above: yours truly on an epic hike – up to Kowloon Peak – with friends recently.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇺🇸 Happy Fourth of July! Here is an oral history of “Independence Day,” released 25 years ago this weekend. [Hollywood Reporter]

2) 💰 The Trump Organization and its chief financial officer were charged with tax-related crimes. [WSJ]

3) ✉️ Facebook launched a newsletter service (think Substack) called Bulletin. [The Verge]

4) 🪑 Want something nicer than Ikea, but don’t want to pay for designer furniture? “Ikea hacking” may be for you. [The Hustle]

5) 📺 The long tail is for real: big TV hits are going away. [Washington Post]

6) 🍴 QR code menus are the worst. [Slate]

7) 💻 “The Internet is rotting” [The Atlantic]

8) 🌏 Maps of countries’ colors, based on satellite images. [Data Stuff]

9) 🧨 Enjoy these English-language advertisements for Japanese fireworks from the 19th century. [Public Domain Review]

10) 🤖 AI-generated art is getting super interesting. [Charlie Snell]

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

🐶 “Nice and easy now” [Imgur]

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💡 Quote of the week:

“Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear…When a sage sees this great Unity and his Self has become all beings, what delusion and what sorry can ever be near him?” – Upanishads

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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as a newsletter on June 13, 2021. Want in? Join my email list.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

👉 Image of the week, above: a watercolor, done from a photo I took on a recent trip to Hong Kong’s Lamma Island.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 💰 “ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth – sometimes, even nothing.” [ProPublica]

2) 🦠 A Covid–19 report from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California says the Chinese lableak hypothesis is plausable. [WSJ]

3) 🚀 Jeff Bezos will be on his space company Blue Origin’s first flight carrying people to the edge of space. [TechCrunch]

4) 🍎 New Apple updates are coming this fall: FaceTime gets Zoom-like features, Macs get a low-power mode, Safari gets tab grouping, and more. [WSJ]

5) 💬 Authorities around the world busted hundreds of suspected criminals by secretly gaining access to an encrypted messaging platform used on mobile devices. [WSJ]

6) ⚽ Euro 2020 – that is, the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship, being played a year late due to Covid – has kicked off! Favorites include Belgium, Italy, Portugal and – my pick to win – France. [Wikipedia]

7) 👀 End-times-related video of the week: a tour of a survivalist community living in underground bunkers in South Dakota. [Laughing Squid]

8) 🌲 Now out: winners of the BigPicture natural world photography contest; my favorite is number five, “Facing Reality.” [The Atlantic]

9) 💊 Longread of the week, by Erika Fry: “How Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway took on America’s health care system – and lost.” [Fortune]

10) 😢 Dog-related tearjerker of the week: An eight-year-old-boy in Virginia set up a stand to sell his Pokemon cards to fund treatment for his sick puppy, Bruce. Once word got out, people all over the country pitched in – and Bruce is now on the mend. [Washington Post]

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

🏀 “This dog can dunk.” [Reddit]

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💡 Quote of the week:

“No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbor, if you would live for yourself.” – Seneca

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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as a newsletter on June 6,2021. Didn’t arrive in your inbox? Join my email list.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

👉 Image of the week, above: another amazing Hong Kong vanity plate. Spotted by A.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇭🇰 Thousands of people here in Hong Kong marked the anniversary Friday of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre despite massive numbers of police on the streets [WSJ]

2) 🚨 Facebook said its suspension of Donald Trump’s accounts will run at least until January 2023. [WSJ]

3) 💻 Facing the prospect returning to the office, some workers in the U.S. are quitting instead. [Bloomberg]

4) 👀 Bigger pupils = higher intelligence? [Scientific American]

5) 🗣 Eunoia is a new website cataloging more than 500 untranslatable words from various languages. [Eunoia dot world]

6) 🌋 Mario David García Mansilla bakes a special kind of pizza: cooked on a volcano in Guatemala. [Atlas Obscura]

7) #️⃣ #Hashtags were cool, then they were uncool, and now young influencers are bringing ’em back. [LA Times]

8) ❓ Ask Reddit: “What is a simple, painful fact that people need to just get over and accept?” [Reddit]

9) 📹 Please enjoy this compendium of the best dumb internet videos of all time. [Polygon]

10) 🍴 “Roadrunner” is a new documentary about Anthony Bourdain out July 16. [YouTube]

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

🐕 “A hug is worth a thousand words.” [YouTube]

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📺 What I’ve Been Reading:

I’ve had a copy of Jonathan Haidt’s “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom” kicking around the house for some time, but had never opened it. I’m so glad I finally did. I’m not even finished and it already ranks among my favorite books about happiness – and what makes for a fulfilling life – that I’ve encountered. It is beautifully written, deeply researched, sharply argued, and highly comforting. More soon on its lessons, I’m sure.

💡 Quote of the week:

“Well done is better than well said.” – Benjamin Franklin

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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as a newsletter on May 30,2021. Didn’t arrive in your inbox? Join my email list.

👋 Hi friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.

🎨 Image of the week, above: a recent watercolor from a Hong Kong waterfront.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🆕 I had three stories out this week. On Tuesday: Indian Police Visit Twitter’s Office After Politician’s Tweet Is Labeled as Misleading. The lede:

Indian police visited Twitter Inc.’s office in New Delhi to investigate the company’s labeling of tweets from a ruling party spokesman as misleading, the government’s latest move against U.S. tech platforms amid criticism over its handling of the pandemic.

2) 💬 On Wednesday: WhatsApp Says It Filed Suit in India to Prevent Tracing of Encrypted Messages. It began:

Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp said it filed a lawsuit in India to stop new government rules that would require the company to trace users’ encrypted messages, escalating a battle over online speech between American tech firms and the South Asian nation’s ruling party.

3) 🦠 And on Thursday: Facebook Ends Ban on Posts Asserting Covid–19 Was Man-Made. The lede:

Facebook Inc. has ended its ban on posts asserting Covid–19 was man-made or manufactured, a policy shift that reflects a deepening debate over the origins of the pandemic that was first identified in Wuhan, China, almost 18 months ago.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report.

4) 🇨🇳 Separately, a Covid-related must-read from my WSJ colleagues that contains deep and powerful reporting: The Wuhan Lab Leak Question: A Disused Chinese Mine Takes Center Stage.

5) 👉 People gathered Tuesday to mark one year since George Floyd died. [AP]

6) 🎬 In a move likely to strengthen its Prime Video service, Amazon is acquiring Hollywood studio MGM in a roughly $8.5 billion deal, its second-biggest acquisition after Whole Foods. [WSJ]

7) ⚽ Chelsea beat Manchester City in the Champion’s League final – and Hershey, Pennsylvania native Christian Pulisic became the first American man to play in and win the world’s most prestigious club tournament. [CBS Sports]

8) 📺 The 90s called, part 1: Here are the best parts of “Friends: The Reunion.” [AV Club]

9) 💥 The 90s called, part 2: “Johnny Knoxville’s Last Rodeo.” [GQ]

10) 🌝 Enjoy a collection of the best “super blood moon” photos. [The Guardian]

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

♥️ “Dog asks for dance with owner at his own wedding!” [Reddit/aww]

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📺 What I’ve Been Watching:

We recently went to a screening of “Minari,” an acclaimed film out last year about a Korean family that moves to Arkansas. Highly recommended. The trailer is here.

💡 Quote of the week:

“Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.” – William Shakespeare, “Troilus and Cressida.”

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🤗 What’s new with you? Hit reply to send me tips, queries, random comments, and videos of sweet dogs who just wanna join in dances.

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley