Sent as an email newsletter Sunday, May 17.
👋 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.
A setback in Hong Kong’s Covid–19 Battle
🇭🇰 Hong Kong almost made it to the 28-day milestone of two full quarantine periods without a new local Covid–19 case. But as my colleague Joyu Wang and I wrote Wednesday:
After 23 days without a locally transmitted coronavirus case and with much of the city returning to normal life, health officials here are investigating how a 66-year-old woman and her granddaughter tested positive.
The test results, announced Wednesday, illustrate the continuing challenges for authorities world-wide in eliminating the disease even in places that were successful with containment earlier on.
Still, of course, Hong Kong has recorded just over 1,000 Covid–19 infections and four deaths deaths. It remains a model for many places.
14 photos from our first few months here in HK
📷 This city, as I wrote in a recent blog post, is a photographer’s dream. I’ve had my iPhone out, snapping away like crazy, during our first few months here. Yesterday I posted a round up of 14 of my favorite photos so far. Click through to check ’em out.
On to this week’s NN.
Here are ten items worth your time this week:
🎓 1) After years of talk about online education “disrupting” in-person universities, will Covid–19 hasten the end of such institutions? Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, thinks so. “There’s this horrific awakening being delivered via Zoom of just how substandard and overpriced education is at every level,” he says. He sees name brand universities partnering with big tech firms to expand their reach. MIT + Google? Microsoft + Berkeley? Link
🌁 2) Bay Area tech titans like Facebook, Twitter and Google have told much of their staff they no longer need to come in to the office amid the pandemic. Faced with sky-high rents, some techies are considering leaving San Francisco altogether, Sarah Frier reports in Bloomberg Businessweeek. “It makes no sense paying Bay Area rent if we can earn our salary living elsewhere,” one worker told her. I’m fascinated to see how this all plays out, in SF and in other metropolises where living costs are astronomically high. Link
🔍 3) Google is increasingly in the spotlight. There were two important WSJ stories out Friday about Google. First, on antitrust: the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are “likely to file antitrust lawsuits” and “well into planning for litigation,” says one scoop. The second is an in-depth investigation showing how people and firms are using dubious copyright complaints to scrub Google of unflattering but lawful material. Link 1 + Link 2
🛸 4) New details continue to emerge about Navy pilots reporting seeing unidentified aerial vehicles. The backstory: a December 2017 New York Times piece revealed a secret Defense Department program studying UFOs, while other subsequent stories have featured aviators speaking about their experiences. The Department of Defense has even officially released videos of the encounters. Link
🤳 5) Depressing story of the week: “mumfluencers” – Instagram micro-celebrities whose online personas revolve around their seemingly perfect families – and their meltdowns. Link
🥡 6) Art critic Jerry Saltz has a thought provoking essay about about food and coping mechanisms amid Covid–19. Link
🏎️ 7) With U.S. highways mostly empty as people stay at home, people are setting new records for the Cannonball Run, shaving hours off the drive from New York to California to make it in about 26 hours. File under: unexpected Covid–19 outcomes. Link
🤙 8) Nightclubs in Germany are closed, but party-goers created a unique solution: a drive-in rave. Video
🌈 🌈 9) RIP “Double Rainbow Guy,” aka Yosemitebear. Paul L. Vasquez, whose 2010 video became a viral hit, died at age 57. Link + Video
💕 10) Dog-related video of the week: “When a dog loves a woman.” Video
💡 Quote of the week:
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal
👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,