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👋 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:
Another excellent vanity plate, spotted here in Hong Kong. If you work hard, as the saying goes, you gotta…
My WSJ latest:
🇮🇳 My latest, out Wednesday: Facebook Parent Meta Sees Executive Exodus in India
It begins:
Three of Meta Platforms Inc.’s top executives in India have departed the company in recent weeks, with the Facebook parent changing the country’s reporting structure amid its first broad global restructuring, according to people familiar with the matter.
They were: India head Ajit Mohan; the head of WhatsApp in India, Abhijit Bose; and Rajiv Aggarwal, Meta India’s public policy director.
The story included the exclusive tidbit that India’s office, which long reported to HQ in Menlo Park, California, will now report to Meta’s Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore. (That was later confirmed in a statement from Meta announcing the new India head, Sandhya Devanathan.)
Here are 10 items worth your time this week:
1) ⚽ The World Cup is here! Ecuador defeated hosts Qatar 2–0 in the opening match yesterday. And England just demolished Iran 6–2.
2) 🍺 More on the World Cup: My WSJ colleagues have the inside story of how (chaotically) and why (a late decision by the Qatari royal family) the tournament’s last-minute beer ban came to be.
3) 📺 And finally: Qatar are a controversial World Cup host. England footballing great turned TV presenter Gary Lineker kicked off the BBC’s coverage of the event with a sober rundown of some of the issues.
4) 🐦 The latest on Twitter: Elon Musk has reinstated Former President Trump’s account, but it’s unclear if Trump will return, given his commitment to his own social media platform, Truth Social.
5) 💸 The FTX débâcle, simplified, by economist Alex Tabarrok.
6) 🇹🇭 Here’s a New York Times travel piece on the revitalization of Bangkok’s Charoen Krung Road, which runs along the Chao Phraya River.
7) 💔 How “Love Is Blind,” over the course of three seasons, went from a “sociological fairy tale to a reality TV nightmare.”
8) 🔉 Soundprint is “like Yelp, but for noise” – an app that helps you find quiet bars, restaurants, and other places.
9) 🎧 Podcast of the week: Ken Burns talks to Tyler Cowen about making documentaries, why he’s lived in the same small New Hampshire town for decades, and why he loves quilts.
10) 🐼 This is the best 12-second compilation of panda fails you will see this week. (Thanks, Anasuya!)
•••
🦴 Dog-related video of the week:
“There are some Wonderful people in this world”
•••
💡 Quote of the week:
“It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley