Sent as a newsletter November 13, 2022. Not on my list? Sign up 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.
Image of the week, above:
🐶 I passed by a restaurant here in Hong Kong the other day and had to snap a pic of this King Charles Spaniel birthday party. The one in the middle was turning four!
My WSJ latest:
My latest, a story out Thursday with my colleague Sam Schechner: Facebook Parent Meta Announces Layoffs of 11,000 Staff.
It begins:
Meta Platforms Inc. said it would cut more than 11,000 workers, or 13% of staff, embarking on the company’s first broad restructuring as it copes with a slumping digital-ad market and plunging stock price.
The layoffs add to a wave of job cuts that are roiling Silicon Valley, where tech giants that added employees by the tens of thousands through the pandemic are now retrenching.
In a message to staff on Wednesday morning, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, would cut staff across all of its businesses, with its recruiting and business teams disproportionately affected.
Indeed, what a few days it’s been in the world of big tech. Read on…
Here are 10 items worth your time this week:
1) 🐦 A week after billionaire Elon Musk acquired Twitter, the company began mass layoffs – thousands are estimated to have been fired – and now advertisers are fleeing the platform.
2) 👉 More: My WSJ colleagues have the story of what Musk’s first week was like inside the company.
3) 👀 Bonus link: examples of how mischief makers took advantage of Twitter’s new verification rules to impersonate companies.
4) 🛍️ Elsewhere, Amazon’s CEO is conducing a cost-cutting review, with special attention on the company’s Alexa business, my WSJ colleagues reported in a Thursday exclusive.
5) 💸 And then there’s FTX, the cryptocurrency platform, valued at $32 billion earlier this year, which declared bankruptcy on Friday. My colleagues have a look at how founder Sam Bankman-Fried has gone from “crypto hero to villain.”
6) 🇺🇸 On to politics! Shot: A predicted “red wave” in Congressional midterms has not materialized; Democrats are maintaining control of the Senate, and the House is still up for grabs.
7) ⭐ Chaser: “The single most important result of this election was the triumph of the normies,” says David Brooks. “Establishmentarian, practical leaders who are not always screaming angrily at you did phenomenally well, on right and left…”
8) 🇷🇺 Russia withdrew from the Ukrainian city of Kherson, another major setback for Putin.
9) 🐙 Octopuses apparently get grouchy and throw stuff at one another.
10) ⚽ The World Cup in Qatar starts on November 21 – a week from tomorrow! (Yes, it’s weird to have the tournament in the winter, but playing there in the summer was a non-starter.) Here’s a PDF of the match schedule. I will, of course, be pulling for the recently finalized U.S. squad.
💯 Also, here’s bonus footballing video: A player for Poland’s Warta Poznan amputee team, Marcin Oleksy, recently scored a beautiful goal (Thanks, Randy P.!).
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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:
“this adorable puppy trying to bark away the hiccups will make your day”
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💡 Quote of the week:
“True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.” – Edith Wharton
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🤗 What’s new with you? Hit reply to send me tips, queries, random comments, and videos of hiccuping pups.
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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley