👋 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.
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👉 Image of the week, above: a personalized license plate spotted here in Hong Kong. (Thanks, A!)
Here are 10 items worth your time this week:
1) 🆕 My latest: an exclusive out Monday. The lede:
Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have privately warned the Hong Kong government that they could stop offering their services in the city if authorities proceed with planned changes to data-protection laws that could make them liable for the malicious sharing of individuals’ information online.
The story was followed by The New York Times, Reuters, The Guardian, the South China Morning Post, and others. It was also mentioned in newsletters like Axios AM and CNN’s Reliable Sources.
And for the latest, see a follow-up I wrote on Tuesday: Hong Kong Tries to Ease Big Tech’s Concerns Over Data Law.
2) 💰 An important investigation by my WSJ colleagues Melissa Korn and Andrea Fuller: ‘Financially Hobbled for Life’: The Elite Master’s Degrees That Don’t Pay Off.
3) 👉 A statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee has been taken down in Charlottesville, Virginia.
4) ⚖️ Longread of the week: On Britney Spears’s life under a conservatorship.
5) ☕ Michael Pollan: Should we quit caffeine?
6) ⭐ Why Houston, Texas is better than Austin.
7) 📖 Fourteen-year-old Zaila Avant-garde became the first Black American to triumph in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
8) 👖 Jorts – jean shorts – are cool now.
9) 💬 On Twitter addiction.
10) 🐶 Elmo is adopting a puppy named Tango. (Thanks, PB)
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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:
🐕 Happiness.
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💡 Quote of the week:
“My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing." – Ernest Hemingway
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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley