Sent as a newsletter on May 23,2021. Didn’t arrive in your inbox? Join my email list.
👋 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.
🤨 Image of the week, above: Oregone? Probably not. See link number three, below, for more. Image via KTVB.
Here are 10 items worth your time this week:
1) 🆕 My latest, out Saturday: India’s Covid–19 Crisis Tests the World’s Back Offices. It begins:
India’s giant outsourcing firms are facing a two-front challenge: protecting the health of millions of employees as the nation suffers the world’s worst Covid–19 crisis, and ensuring that their work continues as usual for the big Western companies on their client lists.
Click through to read the rest.
2) 🏠 Home prices are climbing in the U.S., leaving would-be buyers scrambling – and not just in big cities, but in towns like Bethlehem, Pa., Martin, Tenn. and Kendallville, Ind. [WSJ]
3) 🇺🇸 The majority of residents in five counties in largely conservative Eastern Oregon – Grant, Baker, Lake, Sherman and Malheur – voted to secede from the state and join Idaho. See map above. It’s unlikely to happen. [New York Times]
4) 🏛️ New York Times Magazine profile of Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a prominent historian at Princeton: “He Wants to Save Classics From Whiteness. Can the Field Survive?” [NY Times Magazine]
5) 💀 RIP, IE: Microsoft is shutting down Internet Explorer, its long-running but little used web browser, after more than two and a half decades. [The Verge]
6) 😯 Related: Eight years after killing off Google Reader, is Google re-embracing RSS in their mobile Chrome browser? [Tech Crunch]
7) 📖 …And yet more on the theme of aging tech: “Welcome to My Rare and Antiquarian eBook Shop.” [McSweeney’s Internet Tendency]
8) ⚡ Ford is releasing an electric version of its popular F–150 pickup truck. It starts at under $40,000 and has a large front trunk it calls…the “Mega Power Frunk.”
9) 🎧 Podcast of the week: Sarah Hallberg, a doctor specializing in obesity and diabetes, talks to Peter Attia about carbohydrates and metabolic disease – and shares her own moving story about being diagnosed with lung cancer. Inspirational.
10) 🎸 Monday is Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday. Amazing.
•••
🦴 Dog-related video of the week:
“This made me realize that I may, in fact, be a Golden Retriever.” [Imgur]
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📚 What I’ve Been Reading:
🪁 I want to learn more about early U.S. history, so have been digging into Walter Isaacson’s 2003 biography of a founding father: “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.” I’m liking it. To wit…
💡 Quote of the week:
“What you seem to be, be really.” – Benjamin Franklin
•••
👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley