Sent as a newsletter on June 13, 2021. Want in? 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: a watercolor, done from a photo I took on a recent trip to Hong Kong’s Lamma Island.
Here are 10 items worth your time this week:
1) 💰 “ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth – sometimes, even nothing.” [ProPublica]
2) 🦠 A Covid–19 report from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California says the Chinese lableak hypothesis is plausable. [WSJ]
3) 🚀 Jeff Bezos will be on his space company Blue Origin’s first flight carrying people to the edge of space. [TechCrunch]
4) 🍎 New Apple updates are coming this fall: FaceTime gets Zoom-like features, Macs get a low-power mode, Safari gets tab grouping, and more. [WSJ]
5) 💬 Authorities around the world busted hundreds of suspected criminals by secretly gaining access to an encrypted messaging platform used on mobile devices. [WSJ]
6) ⚽ Euro 2020 – that is, the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship, being played a year late due to Covid – has kicked off! Favorites include Belgium, Italy, Portugal and – my pick to win – France. [Wikipedia]
7) 👀 End-times-related video of the week: a tour of a survivalist community living in underground bunkers in South Dakota. [Laughing Squid]
8) 🌲 Now out: winners of the BigPicture natural world photography contest; my favorite is number five, “Facing Reality.” [The Atlantic]
9) 💊 Longread of the week, by Erika Fry: “How Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway took on America’s health care system – and lost.” [Fortune]
10) 😢 Dog-related tearjerker of the week: An eight-year-old-boy in Virginia set up a stand to sell his Pokemon cards to fund treatment for his sick puppy, Bruce. Once word got out, people all over the country pitched in – and Bruce is now on the mend. [Washington Post]
•••
🦴 Dog-related video of the week:
🏀 “This dog can dunk.” [Reddit]
•••
💡 Quote of the week:
“No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbor, if you would live for yourself.” – Seneca
•••
👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley