Sent as an email newsletter Sunday, June 14.
👋 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.
💯 The weather has been gorgeous – okay: steamy, but gorgeous! – here in Hong Kong these last few days. Above is a photo I took from Central, in the middle of the city’s business district. How about that blue sky?
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Here are ten items worth your time this week:
→ 1) Confederate monuments in the U.S., controversial for decades, are now starting to fall. “It feels to me, with Confederate symbols, a bit like the gay marriage debate, where it seemed impossible, impossible, impossible, and then all of a sudden there was a huge shift in public opinion on it,” Don Taylor, a Duke University professor of public policy, told my WSJ colleagues.
🇺🇸 2) Here’s a comprehensive interactive feature from The New York Times showing how Black Lives Matter protests have spread from big U.S. cities to smaller towns across the country.
📝 3) An unexpectedly popular online tool for organizing George Floyd protests and sharing resources: not Twitter or Facebook, but Google Docs.
🔍 4) Peter Weinberg, a 49 year old living in Bethesda, Maryland, was misidentified as the guy who assaulted children putting up posters supporting the George Floyd protests. An online mob quickly came after him.
✈️ 5) The International Air Transport Association has a clickable world map showing the status of countries’ travel regulations.
🌊 6) Kathy Sullivan, who in 1984 became the first American woman to walk in space, has achieved a new milestone. She’s now the first woman to visit the deepest known point in the ocean.
🎻 7) Proof that there is virtually no content too niche to find an audience online: Musicians are posting on Instagram videos of themselves practicing their orchestal instruments – and drawing big audiences. Bonus points: the headline contains the word “bassoonfluencers.”
🌉 8) The Golden Gate bridge, thanks to wind passing through new railings, now makes an eerie humming sound that can be heard from some distance. A 1000% San Francisco story.
🚘 9) Here’s a fun video review of a tiny, inexpensive Chinese electric car by an editor at car blog Jalopnik. Jason Torchinsky ordered (via Alibaba!) to his house in the U.S. what he says is the world’s cheapest EV. The Changli set him back around $1200, with batteries included, and includes a 1.1 horsepower motor. (Thanks, Mike S.!)
🐕 10) Dog-related video of the week: Two beautiful, howling huskies who would like to go for a walk. “Wait for the raras.”
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💡 Quote of the week:
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley