Author: Newley

Hi. I'm Newley Purnell. I cover technology and business for The Wall Street Journal, based in Hong Kong. I use this site to share my stories and often blog about the books I'm reading, tech trends, sports, travel, and our dog Ginger. For updates, get my weekly email newsletter.

Categories
Life Movies TV

My favorite TV shows, movies, and music* of 2023

Hong Kong sunset
My favorite sunset of 2023

*Also: favorite goal and save! Read on…

Following my post on the standout books I read this year, here’s the best of what I watched and listened to in 2023:

📺 TV

— “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street” (Netflix) This documentary series reinforced for me not just how shocking his crimes were, but how much his victims suffered.

— “Wham!” (Netflix) George Michael, Andrew Ridgeley, 80s pop music. What more do you need to know?

— “Beckham” (Netflix) An entertaining recap of David Beckham’s career, including the meme-spawning scene (YouTube link) with wife Victoria in which he presses her to admit that she enjoyed an advantaged upbringing.

— “Better Call Saul.” (AMC/Netflix) Though this series ended in 2022, I’m including it here since I finished it this year. A superb show that rivals even the great “Breaking Bad,” from which it was spun off.

🎥 Movies

“Oppenheimer.” Of course. Sprawling, ambitious, polished. Incredible soundscapes. Moves along crisply despite its three-hour length.

🎸 Music

The Hold Steady, “The Price of Progress.” Soaring rock anthems. (YouTube link)

Runner up: Buck Meek, “Haunted Mountain.” I’m in love with the title track (YouTube link).

⚽️ BONUS 1: Best Goal of the Year

As an Arsenal fan, I have to pick Bukayo Saka’s long-range stunner in a 3-2 win against Manchester United in January. (YouTube link)

🧤BONUS 2: And as a (gracefully aging) goalkeeper, I admired Aaron Ramsdale’s dive high to his right to save a deflected Mohamed Salah shot in a 2-2 Arsenal draw against Liverpool. (YouTube link) (Amazingly, Ramsdale’s now out of the side, but that’s a story for another time. Did I mention I’m an Arsenal fan?)

Categories
Books

The Best Books I Read in 2023

Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas

Here's my annual rundown of the standout books I read this year.

Like in previous roundups, I’m not confining myself to books published in the last 12 months.

My nonfiction picks span the global semiconductor industry, equitable parenting, and – thanks to Netflix – the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

For fiction, I completed a trilogy by my new favorite spy thriller author and took in a sprawling Jonathan Franzen family saga.

As ever, I prefer physical books over e-books. I like the sensory experience of holding books in my hands. I like gazing at the cover art. I like tracking my progress through the pages and flipping forward and backward. And most of all, I like the ability to mark up the pages for future reference.

My reading wasn't as focused on particular topics as it's been in previous years. But I've tried to keep in mind what the great Charlie Munger once said: “As long as I have a book in my hand, I don’t feel like I’m wasting time.”

Here goes:

Nonfiction

  • Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology – This acclaimed 2022 book provides a timely, accessible introduction to the global semiconductor industry. Miller, a history professor at Tufts University, describes how scientists developed the staggeringly complex technology over the decades.

    He also shows why semiconductors are crucial for everything from missiles to smartphones and kitchen appliances. And the book hammers home just how vulnerable global semiconductor supply chains are to geopolitical tensions, and makes clear why Beijing is pouring resources into bolstering China's domestic chip-making capabilities.

  • Russell King, Rajneeshpuram: Inside the Cult of Baghwan and Its Failed American Utopia – Like many others, I enjoyed the 2018 Netflix documentary series “Wild, Wild Country.” I found the series fascinating given my roots in Eastern Oregon and our time in India, so I decided to do some reading on the movement.

    In this book, out last year, Russell King puts his skill as an attorney to work in reconstructing a timeline of Baghwan's life in India. King documents the growth of Baghwan's ashram in Pune, and then his migration to rural Oregon in the early 1980s, where the documentary picks up.

    While the Netflix series is sympathetic to many members of the group interviewed, including the memorable Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneeshpuram includes a fuller account of the group's many alleged crimes and misdeeds in Oregon. They include the poisoning of more than 700 people in a town near the Rajneeshees' ranch that still ranks as the U.S.'s largest biological terror attack, plans to assassinate public officials, the disregard for homeless people brought to the ranch, and the forced isolation of Rajneeshees who contracted HIV.

  • Subhuti Anand Waight, Wild Wild Guru: An insider's account of his life with Bhagwan, the world's most controversial guru – Next up was this 2019 account by a Bhagwan devotee who left a job in journalism in the UK to live in the guru's Pune ashram, then later traveled westward to the U.S.

    The book provides a sense of Baghwan's appeal to hippies at the time: You can strive to reach enlightenment, he preached, but rather than sacrifice earthly delights as an ascetic would, you can still indulge in all manner of corporeal pleasures.

    Perhaps most instructive for me was to see how a devotee can, after all these years, appear to gloss over the great damage the Rajneeshees inflicted on neighbors and various vulnerable people. The author's message seems to be: We were a religious movement persecuted for being different; sure, there were a few bad apples, but no one knew about their shenanigans; ultimately those uptight Americans just couldn't accept us for being different.

  • George Friedman, The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond. Geopolitical forecaster Friedman in his well-known The Next 100 Years looked at global trends. In this 2020 book he projects what's in store for the U.S.

    Friedman says this decade will continue to prove tumultuous because a historical cycle that governs institutional change is converging with a similar socio-economical cycle. He's bullish on the U.S. over the long term, though, because the country is blessed with a favorable geography, a powerful economy, and an inherent dynamism. We'll weather the storm, he argues.

  • Eve Rodsky, Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live). My wife, who is brilliant and well-read, suggested this 2019 book. I'm glad she did.

    Rodsky, trained as a lawyer, provides a template for couples that encourages men to own their share of work that goes into running a household and raising kids. That way, “shefault” parents — women — can do less of the cognitive, invisible labor that make homes function.

Fiction

  • Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads: a Novel I didn't expect to find a nearly 600-page-long family saga set in 1970s Illinois and focusing on a minister and his family to be so absorbing, but I did.

    Perhaps that's a testament to Franzen's storytelling skills, or simply my tastes, as I've read nearly everything he's written. In this 2021 work, I loved the characters (particularly the memorable Marion Hildebrandt), I loved the dialogue, I loved the vivid scenes. Apparently the first in a trilogy. I'll be reading the titles that follow.

  • Jason Matthews, The Palace of Treason and The Kremlin's Candidate. Thanks to my friend Stuart H. for suggesting, since I love spy fiction, that I check out 2013's Red Sparrow trilogy.

    The first in the series, called Red Sparrow: a Novel, introduces us to Russian spy Dominika Egorova and her handler, Nathanial Nash. This year I enjoyed the final two books, which came out in 2015 and 2018.

    Matthews spent more than three decades as a CIA officer, mostly stationed abroad and involved in clandestine work, before trying his hand at fiction. The books contain detailed depictions of modern spy-craft, are well-paced, and are imbued with Matthews's take on modern-day Russia. Among the characters, for example, is one Vladimir Putin.

    Matthews also no doubt drew upon his years of experience to portray idealistic but imperfect CIA staff who fight for America's interests. Sadly, he died a few years ago at the age of 69, leaving just the three books behind.

  • Ernest Cline, Ready Player One Some works of fiction are so frequently discussed that you have to read them to know what everyone's talking about. This 2011 book is one.

    Set in a dystopian 2045, it is popular for its focus on 1980s pop culture, such as video games and music, which are of course ancient history for the book's characters. Viewed today, with Mark Zuckerberg and other believers touting the metaverse it's interesting to see how Cline viewed the possibility of future virtual realms taking shape.

My previous annual best books lists: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016.

Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas. Antwerp, Belgium: Interior of Museum Plantin-Moretus, via Wikimedia Commons

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN324: Pink’s Pacy Performance

Food in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Sent as a newsletter on November 30, 2023. 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:

🇹🇭 Work recently took me to Chiang Mai, Thailand. I caught up with an old buddy. And we ate some deliciously spicy food. Is there anything better in this world?

My WSJ latest:

🤖 I helped last week with a story about OpenAI's new board. (More on the OpenAI saga below.) The headline: Larry Summers Is OpenAI’s Surprise Pick to Mend Fences <– 🎁 Gift link

🇨🇳 And earlier this month I had a page one story with my colleagues Stella Yifan Xie and Rachel Liang. The headline: Big Western Brands Are Getting Squeezed by Chinese Belt-Tightening <– 🎁 Gift link

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🌎 Henry Kissinger died at the age of 100, “bringing to a close one of the most polarizing and influential diplomatic lives in U.S. history,” reads his WSJ obituary by Alan Cullison.

2) 📈 Also passing away in recent days: investing billionaire Charlie Munger. “Few people have ever been wealthier, in all the senses of the word, than Munger was,” writes WSJ Intelligent Investor columnist Jason Zweig.

3) 🤖 Elsewhere, WSJ tech columnist Christopher Mims on the recent turmoil that shook the AI world: “Sam Altman’s triumph in remaining OpenAI’s CEO was also a win for those seeking the swift development of artificial intelligence.”

4) 💻 Related longread of the week, by Stephen Witt in the New Yorker: “How Jensen Huang’s Nvidia Is Powering the A.I. Revolution.”

5) 🚂 Trains.fyi is a “live, real-time map of passenger train locations in North America.”

6) 🇧🇹 Is Bhutan secretly mining Bitcoin?

7) 🩳 Comedian Matt Ruby: “We’re still coming to terms with all the different ways pandemic broke us. Perhaps the most unsightly: It normalized employed men dressing like trash.”

8) 🐕 A new drug that could help large dogs live longer is moving toward FDA approval.

9) 🎧 Podcast of the week: Harvard professor and author Arthur Brooks speaks with Peter Attia about happiness and building a life of meaning.

10) 📚 One hundred notable books of 2023, from the New York Times.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

🐶 “Don't blink or you'll miss it.”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“There is another world, but it is in this one.” – William Butler Yeats

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN322: WFH Wonderdogs

Run for Evan

Sent as a newsletter on October 30, 2023. 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:

🏃‍♂️ Members of our WSJ Hong Kong bureau participated in #IRunForEvan on Thursday – a jog to mark our colleague Evan Gershkovich’s 32nd birthday. It’s now been more than 30 weeks since he was wrongly detained in Russia for doing his job.

My WSJ latest:

🗞 My latest, an Oct. 21 scoop with my colleagues Sam Schechner and Jeff Horwitz.

The headline: Inside Meta, Debate Over What’s Fair in Suppressing Comments in the Palestinian Territories. <– 🎁 Gift link

It began:

After Hamas stormed Israel and murdered civilians on Oct. 7, hateful comments from the region surged through Instagram. Meta Platforms managers cranked up automatic filters meant to slow the flood of violent and harassing content.

But still the comments kept appearing—especially from the Palestinian territories, according to a Meta manager. So Meta turned up its filters again, but only there.

In an internal forum for Muslim employees, objections poured in.

“What we’re saying and what we’re doing seem completely opposed at the moment,” one employee posted internally, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Meta has publicly pledged to apply its policies equally around the world.

The social media giant has been wrestling with how best to enforce its content rules in the midst of the brutal and chaotic war. Meta relies heavily on automation to police Instagram and Facebook, but those tools can stumble: They have struggled to parse the Palestinian Arabic dialect and in some cases they don’t have enough Hebrew-language data to work effectively.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇨🇳 Longread of the week: The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos on “China’s age of malaise.”

2) 📹 A new component of war and terrorist attacks in 2023: ubiquitous videos of violence.

3) 🔥 Charlottesville, Virginia’s divisive statue of Robert E. Lee has been melted down and will be made into a new piece of public art.

4) 🐦 One year after Elon Musk took over Twitter, daily active users, downloads, and ad revenues are all down – though engagement with his account is at all time high. <– 🎁 WSJ gift link

5) 🔨 Shot: While slick influencers dominate Instagram, some of TikTok’s biggest global stars are blue collar workers…

6) 🏍 Chaser: …And gig workers in Latin America are creating viral pop hits.

7) 🧠 The 12 problems that influence author Ted Gioia’s work and thinking.

8) 🎧 Vinyl fans are revolting after the popular Discogs website raised fees.

9) ⚽ Lionel Messi’s pink Inter Miami jersey cannot be made fast enough to keep up with demand (Thanks, Anasuya!).

10) 🐕 Canine-related music story of the week: the Danish Chamber Orchestra brought in three dogs to participate in a recent symphony. (Thanks, Beth D-B!)

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“I work from home so they’re with me all day. This is still the reaction I get when I finish for the day.”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

•••

🤗 What’s new with you? Hit reply to send me tips, queries, random comments, and videos of pups that are so stoked their owners have clocked off.

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Journalism Tech

Inside Meta, Debate Over What’s Fair in Suppressing Comments in the Palestinian Territories

Meta Israel Hamas

That’s the headline on my latest story, an October 21 exclusive with my colleagues Sam Schechner and Jeff Horwitz.

It begins <– free link 🎁

After Hamas stormed Israel and murdered civilians on Oct. 7, hateful comments from the region surged through Instagram. Meta Platforms managers cranked up automatic filters meant to slow the flood of violent and harassing content.

But still the comments kept appearing—especially from the Palestinian territories, according to a Meta manager. So Meta turned up its filters again, but only there.

In an internal forum for Muslim employees, objections poured in.

“What we’re saying and what we’re doing seem completely opposed at the moment,” one employee posted internally, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Meta has publicly pledged to apply its policies equally around the world.

The social media giant has been wrestling with how best to enforce its content rules in the midst of the brutal and chaotic war. Meta relies heavily on automation to police Instagram and Facebook META 2.91%increase; green up pointing triangle, but those tools can stumble: They have struggled to parse the Palestinian Arabic dialect and in some cases they don’t have enough Hebrew-language data to work effectively.

In one recent glitch, Instagram’s automatic translations of users’ profiles started rendering the word “Palestinian” along with an emoji and an innocuous Arabic phrase as “Palestinian terrorists.”

And when Meta turns to human employees to fill the gaps, some teams have different views on how the rules should be applied, and to whom.

Click through to read the rest.

Categories
India Journalism Tech

Billionaire Bets That a $12 Mobile Phone Can Get More of the World’s Most Populous Country Online

Jio phone 4G

That’s the title of my latest story, out Thursday. It begins: 🎁 <-- free link

Even as 5G mobile networks begin to expand in India, about half of the country’s 1.4 billion people remain disconnected from the Internet.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is betting a new web-enabled mobile phone that costs about $12 can change that and win yet more customers for his dominant wireless-network provider.

The device, launched in July by Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm, resembles the simple, durable Nokia phones from decades past. It has a physical keyboard, a small screen and a camera, and comes in basic colors like blue, black, gray and red.

While the device isn’t 5G-capable, it offers 4G speeds, meaning it can stream music and video via pre-installed apps from Reliance Jio’s services, which include content such as Bollywood films, cricket matches and pop music. The phone can also be used to make digital payments, a practice that has boomed in India in recent years.

Many Indians who are online access the Internet via smartphones. But a smartphone in India typically costs more than $250, far out of reach for millions of people who make just a few dollars a day.

“There are still 250 million mobile-phone users in India who remain trapped in the 2G era, unable to tap into basic features of the internet,” Akash Ambani, Mukesh Ambani’s son and the chairman of Reliance Jio, said when launching the phone. He was referring to people using basic mobile devices, which often lack web connections.

Click through to read the rest.

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN321: Paddling Pups

Futuristic Hong Kong Stable Diffusion X

Sent as a newsletter on October 9, 2023. 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 queried the Stable Diffusion XL text to image generator to see what a futuristic Hong Kong might look like. What do you think?

My WSJ latest:

A story out Friday with my colleagues Chip Cutter and Elaine Yu: China Is Becoming a No-Go Zone for Executives. <– 🎁 Free link

It begins:

Foreign executives are scared to go to China. Their main concern: They might not be allowed to leave.

Beijing’s tough treatment of foreign companies this year, and its use of exit bans targeting bankers and executives, has intensified concerns about business travel to mainland China. Some companies are canceling or postponing trips. Others are maintaining travel plans but adding new safeguards, including telling staff they can enter the country in groups but not alone.

“There is a very significant cautionary attitude toward travel to China,” said Tammy Krings, chief executive of ATG Travel Worldwide, which works with large employers around the world. “I would advise mission-critical travel only.”

Krings said she has seen a roughly 25% increase in cancellations or delays of business trips to China by U.S. companies in recent weeks. A U.S. government-linked survey, published in September and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, found that nearly a fifth of respondents are reducing business travel to China.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇮🇱 The latest from Israel: the country’s defense minister has ordered a total siege of the Gaza Strip following Saturday’s surprise attack by Hamas. This WSJ page has live updates.

2) 👉 More from Reuters: how Hamas planned its assault using a “careful campaign of deception.”

3) 🇪🇨 A sad story by my WSJ colleague Ryan Dubé about how Ecuador is being shaken by violence from drug gangs.

4) 🏃‍♂️ Kenyan Kelvin Kiptum broke the men’s world’s record for the marathon with a 2 hour, 35 second run – wearing “supershoes.”

5) 🥬 Being vegetarian might be in one’s genes.

6) 📸 A detailed review of the iPhone Pro Max’s camera. (Spoiler alert: It’s superb.)

7) 🧶 On knitting, domain names, and the power of online communities.

8) 📺 The 50 best TV shows of this century so far, according to Hollywood Reporter critics.

9) 🇵🇱 Headline of the week: “Poles rally to support dog accused of eating 100 cabbages in neighbouring farm.”

10) 🗣 A woman named Siri has changed her name due to the incessant triggering of Apple’s voice assistant.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

Otto’s just doing his laps with everyone else.

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Newley's Notes

NN320: Bounding Border Collies

Sent as a newsletter September 25, 2023. 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.

HK license plate: I know

Image of the week, above:

🇭🇰 Tell me about it: Another excellent Hong Kong license plate.

My WSJ latest:

Just out, with my colleague Yang Jie: Huawei’s New Gadgets Reveal Hidden Teeth in China Tech Resistance <– 🎁 Free link

It begins:

TOKYO—Huawei, China’s rival to Apple in smartphones and the world’s leading provider of telecoms infrastructure, is out to prove it isn’t just surviving Washington’s campaign to crush it, but is in the vanguard of Beijing’s drive for self-reliance in technology.

After the buzz around Huawei’s new high-speed smartphones, which appeared to show that China can swerve around U.S. efforts to block its access to cutting-edge technology, the company on Monday unveiled its latest tablets, smartwatches and earphones—supported by a homegrown challenger to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, global standards in wireless communication.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 👴 Here are 13 peaks we reach in life after the age of 40.

2) 👉 Longread of the week: On Hasan Minaj, comedy, and the truth.

3) 🔬 We may not realize that we’re living through a scientific revolution.

4) 📚 Author Ryan Holiday’s 38 rules for reading.

5) 🐳 Whales, photographed from above.

6) 🎥 Rocumentaries is an index of excellent documentaries.

7) 🪄 Fun video of a perpetual motion ~~machine~~ simulator.

8) 🍂 A map showing when fall foliage will be at its most colorful in the U.S. this year.

9) 🍜 RamenHaus is a website devoted to images of gorgeous, rotating bowls of ramen.

10) 💤 “Lull yourself to sleep with the soothing white noise of your favorite tech giant’s terms of service.”

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Parkour – Barkour Dog.”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.” – Hunter S. Thompson

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Categories
Journalism Tech

Huawei’s New Gadgets Show How China Aims to Move Forward Without Foreign Tech

WSJ Huawei

That’s the headline on my latest story, out Monday with my colleague Yang Jie.

It begins:

TOKYO—Huawei, China’s rival to Apple in smartphones and the world’s leading provider of telecoms infrastructure, is out to prove it isn’t just surviving Washington’s campaign to crush it, but is in the vanguard of Beijing’s drive for self-reliance in technology.

After the buzz around Huawei’s new high-speed smartphones, which appeared to show that China can swerve around U.S. efforts to block its access to cutting-edge technology, the company on Monday unveiled its latest tablets, smartwatches and earphones—supported by a homegrown challenger to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, global standards in wireless communication.

Click through to read the rest.

Categories
Misc.

India Keeps Pulling the Plug on Its Digital Economy

India internet shutdowns WSJ

That’s the headline on my newest story, out Wednesday. It begins:

When Indian authorities shut down the internet across a remote northeast state in May, Amy Aribam said it wiped out the more than $9,000 in monthly revenue for her home business selling saris online.

Four months later, Aribam is back online but the internet remains down for many, and the women who weave her silk and cotton saris by hand are suffering. “We couldn’t communicate with our customers,” Aribam said. “Our business is completely online.”

Indian authorities said they pulled the plug to stop the spread of rumors as social unrest erupted in Manipur, a state governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. India’s government has increasingly shut down the internet to respond to a range of problems, including political upheaval, fugitives on the loose and even cheating on exams.

Nine years after Modi was elected, the world’s most populous democracy leads the world in internet shutdowns, according to tallies by digital-rights groups. Last year’s 84 cutoffs in various parts of the country exceeded the combined total for all other nations, including Iran, Libya and Sudan, New York-based digital rights group Access Now says. Since 2016, when the group began collecting data, India has accounted for more than half of all internet shutdowns globally.

The outages have disrupted the lives of tens of millions of people in a country where inexpensive mobile data and government efforts to facilitate mobile payments have catapulted vast numbers of consumers into the digital age in recent years. About half of India’s 1.4 billion people are now online, increasingly dependent on connectivity to communicate with friends and family, shop online, pay utility bills and more.

Digital-rights advocates say the shutdowns disproportionately affect the poor, often making it harder for them to collect food subsidies and wages through rural employment programs. They also lead to job losses, hamper online transactions and discourage foreign investment. That damps economic growth and disrupts startups and U.S. e-commerce companies, researchers say.

The prime minister’s office and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Click through to read the rest.