Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash
Sent as an email newsletter November 24, 2019
👋 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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Two. Hundred.
Two hundred!
🏆 This is the two hundredth edition of Newley’s notes. I can hardly believe it. The first one went out on February 15, 2015 – four years and nine months ago. As I described it then:
This is a regular email newsletter where I’ll share my stories, blog posts, and various links about technology,
journalism, culture and more.
The formatting has changed slightly, but NN is still pretty much that!
Thanks for reading, friends. I always relish your feedback, whether it’s just your latest news or suggestions on items to feature in upcoming editions.
On to this week’s links…
Here are ten items worth your time this week:
⚾ 1) Tesla Unveiled a Bulletproof Pickup. Then the Window Broke [WSJ]
“But when it came to demonstrating the Cybertruck’s toughness, things went ominously off script. Mr. Musk asked his head of design to throw a small metal ball at the vehicle’s side window. The resulting crack of the window surprised the audience, including Mr. Musk. ‘Oh my f-ing god,’ Tesla’s chief said. ‘Maybe that was a little too hard.’”
🤔 Related, speculative Twitter thread: “Have you noticed that Elon Musk is driving development of at least 4 technologies needed for easier living in a failed state?” [@futurepundit]
🧙♂️ 2) How a Facebook Employee Helped Trump Win – But Switched Sides for 2020 [WSJ]
“After the 2016 presidential election, Republican Party officials credited Facebook Inc. with helping Donald Trump win the White House. One senior official singled out a then–28-year-old Facebook employee embedded with the Trump campaign, calling him an ‘MVP.’ Now that key player is working for the other side…”
👑 3) India-related longread of the week: The Jungle Prince of Delhi [New York Times]
“For 40 years, journalists chronicled the eccentric royal family of Oudh, deposed aristocrats who lived in a ruined palace in the Indian capital. It was a tragic, astonishing story. But was it true?”
📹 4) This Japanese hotel room costs $1 a night. The catch? You have to livestream your stay [CNN]
“And while the $1 rooms are clearly a loss leader, Inoue is thinking beyond the cost of a single night’s stay. The YouTube channel has already passed 1,000 subscribers. Once it accumulates more than 4,000 view hours, he will be able to put ads on the channel and monetize it.”
☎️ 5) Dial Up! How the Hmong diaspora uses the world’s most boring technology to make something weird and wonderful [The Verge]
“The shows weren’t the traditional kinds you’d find by tuning to an AM or FM band; they were operated independently from media companies by ordinary Hmong citizens, aired live all-day, every day and were free to call into for as long as you’d like. They used free conference call software to do it, a network that is still in place to this day.”
🌐 6) Firefox’s fight for the future of the web [The Guardian]
“In the early days, we thought all companies and social networks cared about us and cared for us…And increasingly it has become clear that, no, you need someone looking out for you.”
🔱 7) Exclusive: This 7,000-year-old woman was among Sweden’s last hunter-gatherers [National Geographic]
“Her real name was likely last uttered some 7,000 years ago in the fertile marshes and forests of what is now southwest Sweden. But while that name is forgotten to history, a team led by archaeologist and artist Oscar Nilsson was able to breathe life into her remarkable burial with a reconstruction that will be unveiled at Sweden’s Trelleborg Museum on November 17.”
🎧 8) An Oral History of LimeWire: The Little App That Changed the Music Industry Forever [Mel Magazine]
“LimeWire was by no means an overnight success. But with a team of dedicated engineers, the software slowly grew into a file-sharing behemoth.”
🐎 9) A thread of rating every horse emoji: [Jelena Woehr/Horse Girl Autumn on Twitter]
🏃♂️ 10) Dog-related video of the week: run for ur lives! [Reddit/aww]
💡 Quote of the week:
“The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
What’s new with you? Hit reply to share your news or just say hi.
👊 Fist bump from New Delhi,
Newley