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Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes. If you like this newsletter, please invite others to sign up.
I’m back after a couple weeks away. So, what’s new here in Delhi?
Sadly, and predictably, the talk of the town is the severe air pollution — or, as it’s been called on Twitter, #DelhiSmog and #Airpocalypse.
As I mentioned in the previous edition of NN, meteorological events and other factors this time of year mean the air gets quite soupy. This past week has been especially bad. Schools have been cancelled and the government has instituted restrictions of cars and trucks.
Here’s a shot video I shot on Wednesday afternoon showing what central Delhi was like. Fortunately, things have improved since then.
What I Wrote at Newley.com
- Starbucks Misspellings: Notable New One for the Collection — Nugal. The barista though my name was Nugal. I love it.
5 Cool Tech-ish Reads This Week
- 1. The Great Pyramid has…a secret room? Deep inside the structure sits a previously undiscovered space, the so-called “Big Void.” As a WSJ colleague wrote:
“It is the first discovery of a major structure within the pyramid since the 19th century, and augurs new potential uses for a decades-old imaging technique, according to researchers who described their findings in the journal Nature.”
- 2. An app you’ve never heard of was bought for up to $1 billion. Shanghai-based Musical.ly lets users — many are tweens and teens — create videos of themselves lip-syncing. It was snapped up by China’s Bytedance, maker of the news app Toutiao.
- 3. 2017, viewed through push alerts. What a year it’s been. You can relieve it all — should you wish — via this clever Slate piece, which shows how news events appeared on our smartphone screens.
- 4. Facebook’s founding president shared some candid views on the social media platform. “It’s a social-validation feedback loop,” Sean Parker told Axios’s Mike Allen, “…exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”
- 5. A useful site for finding streaming movies and TV:the new-to-me JustWatch.com. Simply search for a title, and it’ll show you were to find it.
1 Silly Thing
- 1. #AnimojiKaraoke: So, speaking of lip-syncing, iPhone X users have been making some pretty funny videos.
Quote of the week
“This is probably the most comprehensive review of one of the most underestimated tools of the modern technology world.”
That’s from “All you need to know about whiteboard markers,” Yuri Malishenko’s epic review of nine of the most popular brands on the market.
Thanks for reading, amigos. Please share this newsletter on Facebook or Twitter if you like it.
Fist bump from New Delhi,
Newley