Category: Newley’s Notes

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:

💪 Keep on hustling, Hong Kong! (Thanks, Kinan T!)

My WSJ latest:

I had an exclusive out Thursday with my colleague Neil Western. The headline: A British Businessman Worked in China for Decades. Then, He Vanished.<– 🎁 Gift link

It began:

HONG KONG—Ian J. Stones, a British business executive, worked in China for four decades, including with big U.S. firms such as General Motors and Pfizer before setting up his own consulting firm. Then, in 2018, he disappeared from public view.

Stones has been detained in China since then with no public mention of the case from Chinese or U.K. authorities.

The quiet detention of a foreign businessman who is well known within China’s business community underscores the risks of operating in the country, which has an opaque legal system that is controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal that Stones had been sentenced to five years in prison for illegally selling intelligence to overseas parties. The ministry said he appealed his conviction but the appeal was rejected in September last year.

Informed of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s response, Stones’s daughter, Laura Stones, said neither the family nor British embassy staff had been permitted to see any of the legal documents related to the case, and therefore she couldn’t comment on the details.

“There has been no confession to the alleged crime, however my father has stoically accepted and respects that under Chinese law he must serve out the remainder of his sentence,” she said.

The story was picked up by BBC News, various UK tabloids, the AP, the Financial Times, and the New York Times, among others.

My latest at Newley.com:

📸 Earlier this month I posted My 12 Favorite Photos of 2023. They feature images I captured in Bangkok, Washington, D.C., Macau and, of course, Hong Kong.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🍿 The Oscar nominations are out and include all of the year's best-known films, though “Barbie” director director Greta Gerwig and actress Margot Robbie missed out.

2) 🤖 Japanese author Rie Kudan says she used ChatGPT to write her recently released, award-winning sci-fi novel.

3) 🧠 Members of Gen Z around the world appear to splitting along ideological lines, with women much more liberal than men.

4) ✈️ Has a Charleston, S.C. real-estate investor located Amelia Earhart's long-lost plane deep in the Pacific Ocean? 🎁 <– WSJ gift link

5) 🇪🇨 Archaeologists have uncovered details about a huge settlement that existed in Ecuador's Amazon some 2,500 years ago.

6) 🚀 Trailer of the week: “Spaceman,” an apparently trippy, very serious sci-fi film from the director of “Chernobyl” – and starring Adam Sandler.

7) 🌋 Here are some surreal photos of lava flowing into a town in Iceland.

8) 🏀 There is now a full-length basketball court in a terminal at the Indianapolis International Airport.

9) 🐶 Was Bobbi, the Rafeiro do Alentejo dog who died in October in Portugal, really 31 years old?

10) 🐀 Two words: rat selfies.

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“If I fits, I sits”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.” –Nadine Gordimer

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

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

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

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

Sent as a newsletter September 12, 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:

😴 Spotted on a red Ferrari here in Hong Kong: NO SLEEP. (Thanks, Anasuya!)

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇭🇰 Hong Kong was hit last week by mammoth downpours that seeped into subway stations and submerged cars.

2) 🤖 Artificial intelligence tool ChatGPP outperformed Wharton M.B.A. students in creating new business ideas, two professors write in the WSJ <– 🎁 Free link

3) 🎥 The inside story, from the New York Times’s Jim Stewart, of how Mattel hit it big with its blockbuster “Barbie” film.

4) 🇪🇬 Reverse-engineering Egyptian mummifying balms.

5) ⛵ The wreck of a schooner that went down in 1881 has been found in Lake Michigan.

6) 💬 A look at words that are the same, or nearly so, in every language.

7) ☕ A pean to home espresso machines.

8) 📺 The utterly wild docu-series “How To With John Wilson” has come to an end after three seasons.

9) 🎧 Podcast episode of the week, touching on ambition, happiness, and indie rock: “Does anyone actually like their job?”

10) 🐹 A Florida man was arrested while attempting to “sail” to London – in a floating hamster wheel. (Thanks, Mike S.!)

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Leaving work on Friday…”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut

•••

🤗 What’s new with you? Hit reply to send me tips, queries, random comments, and videos of fearless canines bounding into the unknown.

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as a newsletter September 4, 2023. Not on my list? Join 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:

🙃 A license plate spotted here in Hong Kong. (Thanks, Anasuya!)

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🐦 The WSJ has an exclusive excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s new autobiography of Elon Musk featuring the inside story of Musk’s purchase of Twitter. <– 🎁 free link

2) 🍹 RIP Jimmy Buffett, who died Friday at the age of 76, leaving behind not just a musical legacy but a business empire that made him a billionaire. <– 🎁 free link

3) 🧬 Early humans in Africa nearly went extinct some 900,000 years ago, dwindling in number to only about 1,280.

4) 🔭 So…we might need to rethink some of our basic assumptions about the universe.

5) 💤 Longread of the week, in The New Yorker: Do we misunderstand the reason we dream?

6) ❓ A masterwork of obsession: “The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge.”

7) 🌏 Here are some gorgeous 360-degree views of sights around the world.

8) 📺 The 25 best TV episodes from the past 25 years.

9) 🛍️ Photo essay: the world’s longest yard sale, running from Georgia to Michigan.

10) 🗣️ Fun video: changing English accents on the fly.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Bebe Backpack.”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” – Eric Hoffer

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as a newsletter August 28, 2023. Not on my list? Join 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:

Spotted on the MTR here in steamy Hong Kong: a guy wearing what appears to be a Japanese fan jacket to keep cool.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 📸 Trump’s mug shot has triggered a merchandising boom, from (yes) mugs to shot glasses to tee shirts, my WSJ colleagues report. <— free link

2) 🇷🇺 On the downfall of Yevgeny Prigozhin: “a killer on the make, hired by other, more powerful killers to commit more of the same, at larger scale, is ultimately offed by those same killers.“

3) 🛒 How product review site Wirecutter has changed: "The internet of 2023 is not the internet of 2011, nor are the products, nor are the consumers.”

4) 🎤 RIP Bob Barker, host of “The Price is Right.” He was 99.

5) 🛸 A profile of Avi Loeb, the controversial Harvard astrophysicist and proponent of searching for extraterrestrial life.

6) 💻 LinkedIn is cool now. (Follow me here!)

7) 🗣️ A new accent is emerging among workers in Antarctica.

8) 🪐 Trigger warning: may be angst-inducing: The Sounds of Space.

9) ✨ A New York City park for retired playground animals contains dolphins, an elephant, an aardvark, a camel and a frog.

10) 🇺🇸 Best 4th of July ever: Launching beat-up cars off a 300-foot cliff in Alaska.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“He's diggin his career in irrigation…“

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that's what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.” — Steve Jobs

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as a newsletter August 21, 2023. Not on my list? Join 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:

Don Juan out and about here in Hong Kong. (Thanks, Anasuya!)

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇨🇳 An important story by my WSJ colleagues Lingling Wei and Stella Yifan Xie: Is China’s economic model broken? <— free link

2) 🖌️ A win for (human) artists: AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted, a U.S. district court judge ruled.

3) 😑 Americans are sad and mean due to a lack of “moral education,” David Brooks writes.

4) 🦄 Newly created tech unicorns are more and more scarce.

5) 🔨️ Reddit thread: “What’s your best advice from your profession?”

6) 🍔 “Casual restaurant chains, like Olive Garden and Applebee’s, have the largest positive impact on cross-class encounters through both scale and their diversity of visitors.”

7) 👓 Those popular blue-light blocking glasses…might not do anything.

8) 🎤 “The Most Iconic Hip-Hop Sample of Every Year (1973-2023).”

9) 📆 Timeguessr: see an image, try to guess the location and time.

10) 🔥 Please enjoy the kids top 25 in the USA Mullet Championship.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Dashing Doxie”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.” — Abraham Maslow

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as a newsletter August 14, 2023. Not on my list? Join 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:

🌅 A recent sunset here in Hong Kong.

My WSJ latest:

I had a story out Wednesday with my colleague Tripti Lahiri. The headline: Meta, Alphabet and Other Tech Firms Face New Data Rules in India. <— free link

And the lede:

India’s Parliament on Wednesday passed a data-protection bill years in the making that the government says is needed to regulate tech companies and protect citizens, but that rights groups say gives New Delhi too much power.

🎧 I discussed on the story on Wednesday’s WSJ What’s News podcast.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇪🇨 In Ecuador, presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated — and now his friend, a prominent investigative journalist, is running in his stead. <— free link

2) ☢️ Scientists at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are making gains in achieving nuclear fusion.

3) 🏠 How two Canadian men discovered they’d been switched at birth 67 years ago.

4) ⛽️ For the first time since 1951, Oregonians can pump their own gas.

5) 🇩🇪 “This is an embarrassment, it is a cultural crisis for the German people”: Germany can’t make its trains run on time. <– free link

6) 📕 The 50 best book covers of the year.

7) 🧮 Here’s a gallery of gorgeous vintage calculators.

8) 📞 Adding to my “to watch” list: “Telemarketers,” a new HBO docu-series.

9) 🔊 This website lets you listen to Wikipedia edits as they’re being made.

10) 🐾 In which a man pays $14,000 to transform himself into a Collie.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Run.”

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“With all the tribulations and evils of life, if you could see them in a large perspective, you’d probably find some reason or excuse for them. You’d adjust yourself to them, and you’d learn to be happy even in this world.” — Will Durant

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley