Author: Newley

Sent as an email newsletter Sunday, October 4. Not a subscriber yet? Get it 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.

🐕 Photo of the week, above: Out and about in rainy Hong Kong.

Yes, that’s what appeared to be a shiba inu clad in a red raincoat and boots. (Unclear if it was one of the two I spotted a few weeks back, dining with their owners.)

Hashtag: #ShibaLife.

✍️ In other news: The headline on my latest story, out Thursday with my colleague Natasha Khan: Hong Kong’s Leader Says Stability Has Been Restored, With City Under Heavy Police Presence.

The lede:

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said stability had been restored in Hong Kong three months after Beijing imposed national-security legislation, as thousands of police officers fanned out to pre-empt any protests that might disrupt Thursday’s celebration of China’s National Day.

And:

“Stable and happy is what the Hong Kong government imagines us to be,” said a man in his 20s who identified himself as Mr. Wong, standing near police officers in a shopping district where some demonstrators had appeared. “But we are still so angry.” He said Mrs. Lam only wants what China’s Communist Party wants, not the city’s people.

🚨 Administrative note: There will be no NN next week. I’ll be back the week of October 18.

Here are ten items worth your time this week:

🇺🇸 1) What a week for news. First up, there’s one story dominating headlines these last few days: President Trump has Covid–19.

The latest from my WSJ colleagues Catherine Lucey and Rebecca Ballhaus yesterday (Saturday):

“President Trump had a fever and rapidly dropping blood-oxygen levels on Friday morning, but his condition has since improved, the White House chief of staff said late Saturday…”

Related reads:

👉 My colleague Andrew Restuccia reports on what working conditions have been like inside the White House:

“The president’s attitude about the virus is reflected in the culture at the White House and his re-election campaign, where few staffers regularly wear masks and there is little social distancing, according to people familiar with the matter.”

⏳ And the Washington Post has the ticktock, beginning last weekend with a White House Rose Garden ceremony for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee:

"Spirits were high. Finally, Trump was steering the national discussion away from the coronavirus pandemic — which had already killed more than 200,000 people in the United States and was still raging — to more favorable terrain, a possible conservative realignment of the Supreme Court.

Attendees were so confident that the contagion would not invade their seemingly safe space at the White House that, according to Jenkins, after guests tested negative that day they were instructed they no longer needed to cover their faces."

💰 2) And another big news item this week: The New York Times reported that in 2016 and 2017 Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes. “His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes,” wrote Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire.

🗣 3) And there’s been more news this week, of course: the Trump-Biden debate. “This was maybe the worst presidential debate in American history,” NPR’s Domenico Montanaro wrote. “Trump doesn’t play by anyone’s rules, even those he’s agreed to beforehand. He’s prided himself on that. But even by his standards, what Trump did Tuesday night crossed many lines.”

📺 PBS has a video re-cap of the event.

🇮🇹 4) Meanwhile, outside the Beltway: Italians have long been resistant to e-commerce, opting to pay cash and shop in actual stores. Then the pandemic hit. Amazon is capitalizing. Not everyone is happy about it.

☢ 5) Researchers are MIT and a sister company may be just three our four years away from completing the construction of what scientists have long dreamed of: a small nuclear fusion reactor. Testing would then be needed, but this kind of reactor, unlike a conventional fission one, could – repeat: could – produce electricity without as much radioactive waste.

👟 6) The latest trend in casual footwear is…the Grateful Dead. Recent collaborations include officially licensed tie-dyed Crocs and fake fur Nikes, my colleague Jacob Gallagher writes. Some are selling for more than $700 on resale websites.

🇪🇬 7) Egypt has just put on display 59 wooden sarcophagi – many painted, bearing hieroglyphics, and containing mummies – that are more than 2,500 years old.

🏃‍♂️ 8) 2020 has been a tough year, Hong Kong resident Iain Marlow writes for Bloomberg CityLab, but the place offers a special benefit even amid a pandemic: a vast network of trails for running and hiking. Marlowe has been putting them to good use, as have I.

🧠 9) Author Ryan Holiday shares a useful roundup of tips, tricks and advice: “33 Things I Stole From People Smarter Than Me.”

🐶 10) Dog-related video of the week: “I think I’ll just – plop”

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📕 What I’m Reading

I finished Evan Osnos’s excellent “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China” – a Book Notes blog post is coming soon – and have moved on to something yet closer to home. I’ve just started Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s “Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink,” about the city’s protest movement.

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💡 Quote of the week:

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Philip K. Dick

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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as an email newsletter Sunday, September 27. Not a subscriber yet? Get it 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.

🥭 Photo of the week, above: a snack for the ages. Yes, that’s mango mochi – you read that right – a specialty on Cheung Chau, a small outlying island here in Hong Kong. And the answer is yes: mango mochi is every bit as tasty as it sounds.

Cheung Chau makes for a fun day trip or weekend getaway if you live, as we do, in a more bustling part of HK. (With the pandemic making travel difficult, I feel fortunate to be here, a city with many sights to see and countless hiking trails to explore, especially as we’re still new to the place.)

The island was once a simple fishing village but is now a popular tourist destination thanks to its beaches, seafood and street food (did I mention the mango mochi?), and growing numbers of boutiques. Its narrow streets can’t accommodate cars, so people get around on foot or bike.

📸 See my Instagram feed for a few images from a recent visit – there are short, easy hikes, beautifully maintained houses, a Taoist temple built in the 18th century, and the most diminutive ambulances you will ever see.

Here are ten items worth your time this week:

🦠 1) My colleagues Tim Martin and Dasl Yoon had a story out Friday about Covid–19 that’s worth a read. “South Korea appears to have cracked the code for managing the coronavirus,” they write. The country has blended “technology and testing like no other country, centralized control and communication—and a constant fear of failure.”

🇺🇸 2) Shot: Joe Biden leads President Trump 53 percent to 43 percent among registered voters in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll. Among likely voters, Biden leads 49 percent to 43 percent.

❓ 3) Chaser: Longread of the week. What happens if President Trump loses – or it’s a standoff like Bush vs. Gore in 2000 – and Trump doesn’t concede? The prospects are grim, Barton Gellman writes in The Atlantic. “We are not prepared for this at all,” Julian Zelizer, a historian at Prince­ton, is quoted as saying. “We talk about it, some worry about it, and we imagine what it would be. But few people have actual answers to what happens if the machinery of democracy is used to prevent a legitimate resolution to the election.”

📕 4) A lot of people, apparently, can’t stand Goodreads but its ubiquity makes it hard to escape. Can a new service called The Story Graph succeed where Goodreads has failed?

👷‍♂️ 5) Ask Reddit: “What’s an industry secret in the field you work in?”

🐕 6) Researchers in Finland have trained dogs to sniff out Covid–19, and the canines are now being deployed in a trial run at Helsinki airport to identify passengers who might be infected.

🔉 7) The BBC has released a collection of 16,000 sound effects, ranging from acetylene torches to yacht sounds, that are available for personal or educational purposes.

🔍 8) Newspaper Navigator is a cool new project that lets you search more that 1.5 million historic newspaper photos from 1900 through 1963. You can search by state, year, and keyword.

👏 9) The finalists for this year’s Comedy Wildlife Photography awards have been announced.

🐶 10) Dog-related video of the week: “A water dog and a herding dog run into a lake…”

•••

📺 What I’m watching

The Cohen Brothers’ movies are some of my favorite films of all time, but I had never seen their first, 1984’s “Blood Simple.” I recently decided it was time to give it a watch.

Right the beginning you can see in it what would become their hallmarks: Hitchcockian plot twists, dark humor, the themes of right and wrong, loyalty and betrayal, and the sense that in this world – or in Texas, in the case of this film – it’s everyone for himself or herself. Also features Frances McDormand in her cinematic debut, and it was Barry Sonnenfeld’s first cinematographic effort.

•••

💡 Quote of the week:
“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley