Sent as an email newsletter January 24, 2021. Not a Newley’s Notes subscriber yet? Get it here.
👋 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.
Photo of the week, above: “Steal Like an Artist,” stolen like an artist. Spotted recently in the Hong Kong MTR.
On to this week’s NN…
Here are ten items worth your time this week:
1) 🇺🇸 President Joe Biden was inaugurated on Wednesday. "We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue,” he said. “Or rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.” And…
2) 👏 Twenty-two-year-old Amanda Gorman – the youngest ever inaugural poet – stole the show. (Watch the video, if you missed it.) And…
3) ❄️ Bernie Sanders launched a million memes.
4) ⚾ RIP Hank Aaron.
5) 🎙 RIP Larry King.
6) 🥽 iVR? iHeadset? Apple is working on a virtual reality headset, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports.
7) 🛸 Longread of the week: “Have We Already Been Visited by Aliens?,” by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker.
8) 💪 MuscleWiki is a useful new website that lets you click any muscle on an illustration of the human body to find corresponding exercises and stretches.
9) ⚽ 🧤 Goalkeeper-related video of the week: Tom King, who plays for Newport County, in England’s League Two, scored – from a goal kick!
10) 🍺 The pandemic + the elections + the Capitol Hill attack = a tough time for “dry January.”
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🐕 Dog-related video of the week: “Yes… this is me in the video!”
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📕 What I’m Reading
I’m enjoying Steven Levy’s richly detailed, deeply reported “Facebook: The Inside Story."
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💡 Quote of the week:
Steven Soderbergh, on not waiting for permission:
“If you have an impulse to create something, go create it. Stop sitting around thinking, ‘Oh I can’t because I don’t have X or I don’t know Y.”
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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley