Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash
👋 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.
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💕 We just celebrated our second anniversary with Ginger! I posted a few recent pics – and a special video showing her patented Ginger Pounce ™️ in action – in this blog post:
Two Years with Our Adopted New Delhi Street Dog, Ginger
🇭🇰 ⚠️ Other news: Unrest in Hong Kong appears to be escalating. The latest today from my colleagues on the ground, out just now:
"Protesters shot a police officer in the leg with an arrow, started a large fire, and blocked a key tunnel, pushing back police firing water cannons and tear gas near a fortified university as tensions flared following one of the most violent weeks in more than five months of antigovernment protests.
Late Sunday, police warned protesters to evacuate the area around Hong Kong Polytechnic University immediately, after protesters vandalized facilities, threw bricks and hurled Molotov cocktails. ‘Police are now planning for the next round of operation,’ the police said in a statement."
🐦 Meanwhile, a friend is passing through Hong Kong on a trip now and I shared with him some journalists I recommend following on Twitter for real-time updates. Very much worth your time, if you’re on the platform and keen to know the latest:
- Natasha Khan, WSJ
- Joyu Wang, WSJ
- Steven Russolillo, WSJ
- Mike Bird, WSJ
- Antony Dapiran, author of “City of Protest: A Recent History of Dissent in Hong Kong”
- Isabella Steger, Quartz
- Shibani Mahtani, Washington Post
- Timothy McLaughlin, Wired, Washington Post
- Dan Ten Kate, Bloomberg
- Iain Marlow, Bloomberg
- Paul Mozur, New York Times
- Austin Ramzy, New York Times
On to this week’s links…
Here are ten items worth your time this week:
🔎 1) Shot: An important story by my colleagues based on more than 100 interviews and WSJ testing: How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results [WSJ]
“Over time, Google has increasingly re-engineered and interfered with search results to a far greater degree than the company and its executives have acknowledged, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.”
💊 2) …and chaser: Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’ Gathers Personal Health Data on Millions of Americans [WSJ]
“Google is engaged with one of the U.S.’s largest health-care systems on a project to collect and crunch the detailed personal-health information of millions of people across 21 states.”
🇨🇳 3) ‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims [New York Times]
“More than 400 pages of internal Chinese documents provide an unprecedented inside look at the crackdown on ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.”
🗳️ 4) Why the Impeachment Fight Is Even Scarier Than You Think [Politico Magazine]
“Political scientists have a term for what the United States is witnessing right now. It’s called ‘regime cleavage,’ a division within the population marked by conflict about the foundations of the governing system itself – in the American case, our constitutional democracy. In societies facing a regime cleavage, a growing number of citizens and officials believe that norms, institutions and laws may be ignored, subverted or replaced. ”
🆕 5) Moto Razr 2019 is official: A foldable smartphone with no display crease [Ars Technica]
“One of the most iconic flip phones ever is rebooted as a $1,500 foldable smartphone. ”
🔮 6) The Myth and Magic of Generating New Ideas [New Yorker]
“A mathematician on how to get the mind into motion.”
💸 7) On the Internet, No One Knows You’re Not Rich. Except This Account [New York Times]
“In February, an Instagram account called @BallerBusters cropped up and began wreaking havoc on the flashy Instagram entrepreneur community.”
📦 8) The everything town in the middle of nowhere [Wired]
“How the tiny town of Roundup, Montana, became a hub in Amazon’s supply chain”
🚃 9) I am railing: Sir Rod Stewart reveals his epic model railway city [BBC News]
“In between making music and playing live, Sir Rod has been working on a massive, intricate model of a US city for the past 23 years. He unveiled it as part of an interview with Railway Modeller magazine.”
🐶 10) Dog video of the week: My dad who didn’t want a dog right after my family got a new puppy [Reddit]
💡 Quote of the week:
“What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.” – Gretchen Rubin (Thanks, Anasuya!)
What’s new with you? Hit reply to share your news or just say hi.
👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,
Newley