Sent as an email newsletter Sunday, October 17, 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: Hong Kong’s skyline, seen from a recent outing on Victoria Harbour.
Here are 10 items worth your time this week:
1) 👉 Last Saturday my colleague Jeff Horwitz and I had a new story out as part of The WSJ’s Facebook Files series.
The headline: Facebook Services Are Used to Spread Religious Hatred in India, Internal Documents Show
It begins:
Mark Zuckerberg praised India in December as a special and important country for Facebook Inc., saying that millions of people there use its platforms every day to stay in touch with family and friends. Internally, researchers were painting a different picture: Facebook’s products in India were awash with inflammatory content that one report linked to deadly religious riots.
Click through to read the rest (no WSJ subscription required for the link above)…
2) 🗞 …Then on Friday, a follow-up, with my colleague Rajesh Roy, after our story ran: Facebook Faces Official Questions in India Over Policing of Hate Speech.
3) 💻 Meanwhile, Facebook has rebranded as Meta, a decision that in part “reflects the company’s perceived growth opportunities beyond its namesake social-media platform,” my colleague Steven Russolillo writes.
4) 📹 On license plate scanners and American neighborhoods.
5) ✒️ New Yorkers are embracing ephemeral tattoos that last about a year and cost a few hundred dollars.
6) 🎨 Lee Me Kyeoung creates beautiful paintings of Korean corner stores.
7) 📖 Amazon lets authors go directly to readers via its Kindle Direct Publishing wing. Is that changing how novels are written?
8) 📺 Interesting data visualization: Ratings for the longest-running TV shows over time.
9) 🧘♂️ Here is eight hours of deep space video footage set to ambient music.
10) 🐕 When dogs tilt their heads, they’re not just being cute. They might also be thinking hard.
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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:
🐶 “This is Luna. In her defense, that is her bed. 14/10 she did nothing wrong.”
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💡 Quote of the week:
“Hate is a lack of imagination." — Graham Greene
👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley