Newley Purnell

Sent as an email newsletter on May 9,2021. Didn’t arrive in your inbox? Join my email list to get future editions delivered directly.

👋 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.

Tweet of the week, above: from my colleague Anthony DeRosa on Friday.

✍️ I’m proud to say that my colleague Jeff Horwitz and I won a “Best in Business” award from SABEW (the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing) for our coverage of Facebook in India.

You can find more info on the SABEW website here, and judges’ comments here.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 👉 Reuters has the latest from what is “the worst outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence in years”: Israel bombs Hamas Gaza chief’s home as fighting enters seventh day. [Reuters]

2) 💻 A fuel pipeline operator paid hackers approximately $5 million in ransom, according to people familiar with the matter, after being shut down in a cyberattack. [WSJ]

3) 🙅‍♂️ Dozens of state attorneys general want Facebook to stop its plans for a version of Instagram for kids. [CNN]

4) 🦠 Axios: “The COVID lab-leak theory goes mainstream.” [Axios]

5) 🇨🇳 China Lands on Mars in Crowning Moment for Space Program [WSJ].

6) 🛸 Ezra Klein: “Even if You Think Discussing Aliens Is Ridiculous, Just Hear Me Out.” (Separately, look for a new “60 Minutes” report on UFOs airing today.)

7) 🏙 “While the ‘15-minute city’ model promotes neighborhood-level urban planning, Sweden is pursuing a hyper-local twist: a scheme to redesign every street in the nation.” [Bloomberg CityLab]

8) 🦑 “A seaside town in Japan has raised eyebrows after it used funding from an emergency Covid–19 relief grant to build a giant statue of a squid.” [BBC News]

9) 🤓 Digital tool of the week: Push to Kindle lets you send “news stories, blog posts and other web articles to your Kindle for a better reading experience​.” [Five Filters]

10) Highly clickable: a Map of Reddit, by Andrei Kashcha [Github]

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“An Extremely Rare Triple Snoot Boop.” [Reddit]

💡 Quote of the week:

“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our own mind." — Buddha

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as an email newsletter on May 9,2021. Didn’t arrive in your inbox? Join my email list to get future editions delivered directly.

👋 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 I spotted recently here in Hong Kong that says “good” in Thai. That’s “dee” (ดี), “good,” followed by “krup” (คฺรับ), a word often used by male speakers for added politeness.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 👉 🎧 I was on our “The Journal” podcast Tuesday talking about my recent story on India, Covid–19, and accusations that the government is censoring social media. You can listen online here, or find the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other services. [WSJ]

2) 🦠 Is “herd immunity” in the U.S. a pipe dream? Experts say the answer is yes. The consensus is that “the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.” [New York Times]

3) 😷 “Progressive communities have been home to some of the fiercest battles over COVID–19 policies, and some liberal policy makers have left scientific evidence behind.” [The Atlantic]

4) 💔 Bill and Melinda Gates are divorcing after 27 years. What will happen to their $49.8 billion foundation? What about their 66,000-square-foot, $131 million Seattle mansion? [WSJ, New York Times]

5) 🔍 How Google, which like many firms has long used open office plans, is redesigning its workspaces for a post-pandemic world. [New York Times]

6) 🛸 “For decades, flying saucers were a punch line. Then the U.S. government got over the taboo.” [New Yorker]

7) 💅 Aesthetics Wiki is a compendium of personal styles ranging from the more well-known (preppy, brocore, normcore) to many I’d never heard of (dark academic, cottagecore). Who knew? [aesthetics dot fandom dot com]

8) 🚙 A state senator in Ohio participated in a Zoom meeting while driving, apparently adjusting his background to make it look like he was at home. [Gizmodo]

9) 🔦 Lights at Sea is a clickable map of the world’s lighthouses. More info here. (Github, Big Think)

10) 👏 Epic: “A 4-year-old cartoon fanatic from Brooklyn went a little overboard by buying nearly $3,000 worth of nonrefundable SpongeBob SquarePants Popsicles on Amazon.” [New York Post]

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

🐶 President of Ireland’s Dog Steals the Show [YouTube]

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“I can’t tell you how to get rich quickly; I can only tell you how to get poor quickly: by trying to get rich quickly.” – André Kostolany

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as an email newsletter April 18, 2021. Join my email list to get future editions.

👋 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: Covid–19 cases in India, sadly, are exploding. More on that below…

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🏥 India is suffering from a Covid–19 crisis, registering more than 349,000 new infections today – the fourth straight day it’s set a global record. Many hospitals are stretched thin, oxygen supplies are reportedly running low, and crematoriums are overburdened. [AP]

2) ⚖️ A jury found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on murder charges in the death of George Floyd. [WSJ]

3) 📱 Related: “By bearing witness — and hitting ‘record’ — 17-year-old Darnella Frazier may have changed the world.” [Washington Post]

4) 🍎 Apple announced several new products, including: AirTags (a new tracking device), a new iPad Pro (notably, featuring Thunderbolt support), new iMacs in seven colors, and – crucially – a release date for season two of Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso” (July 23). [WSJ]

5) ⚽ Twelve top teams from England, Spain and Italy said they were forming a new European Super League, proposing to continue playing in their domestic leagues but creating a new midweek competition akin to the Champions League. But within days, amid an outcry from fans, many clubs pulled out; now the league isn’t happening. [BBC News]

6) ✈️ “Inside Passenger Shaming, the notorious Instagram of bad travel behavior.” (Washington Post)

7) 🗣 All about the online “Slander Industry”: “The people facilitating slander and the self-proclaimed good guys who help remove it are often one and the same.” [New York Times]

8) 💊 Some good news in what sometimes seems like a world full of bad news: “We have word of the most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered.” [In the Pipeline]

9) 🎥 Movie of the Night is a new-to-me website that lets you search Netflix by genre, year of release, runtime and more. [MovieOfTheNight dot com]

10) 🥾 On hiking and friendship: The Atlantic’s Julie Beck speaks with four pals who have gone on monthly hikes for 25 years.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week: “Doggo gives emotional performance about being a dog.” [Reddit]

•••

What I’ve Been Reading:

I recently read “The 48 Laws of Power,” Robert Greene’s bestseller from 2000 about how individuals have cultivated and wield force through the ages. You certainly don’t need to read it as a moral guide – I haven’t read anything that Machiavellian since perhaps reading Machiavelli himself in college! – but it’s full of compelling historical anecdotes, dating back to ancient times.

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“Space we can recover, time never.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as an email newsletter April 18, 2021. Join my email list to get future editions.

👋 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 watercolor.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🛸 Photos and video of “unidentified aerial phenomena” from 2019 were, in fact, taken by Navy personnel, the Pentagon said. [CNN]

👉 One perspective on the ongoing sightings: “Adversary Drones Are Spying On The U.S. And The Pentagon Acts Like They’re UFOs.” [The Drive]

2) 🗣 Microsoft is paying $16 billion to acquire speech recognition and artificial intelligence firm Nuance Communications, “extending Chief Executive Satya Nadella’s run of big acquisitions to accelerate growth in everything from healthcare to videogaming.” [WSJ]

3) 🚙 Singapore-based Grab, which offers services such as ride-hailing and food delivery across Southeast Asia, is going public on the Nasdaq in a $39.6 billion special-purpose acquisition company merger – the biggest such deal deal to date. [WSJ]

4) 💰 A milestone for cryptocurrencies: Coinbase, a crypto exchange founded in 2012, went public on the Nasdaq at a valuation of $85 billion. [WSJ]

5) 🤳 “Beauty filters are changing the way young girls see themselves.” [MIT Technology Review]

6) 📷 The winners of the 2021 World Press Photos contests have been announced. See the works here. [World Press Photo]

7) 👀 Insane video of the week: “Oh my god, it’s a bobcat!” NSFW: language. Here’s the apparent back story. [Twitter, ABC 11]

8) ✍️ New-to-me website, art edition: Old Book Illustrations contains a catalog of images ranging from animals, buildings, landscapes, people, plants and more, all in the public domain. [OldBookIllustrations dot com]

9) 🎧 New to me website, music edition: Lofi Cafe, which features chill beats and mesmerizing background images. [Lofi dot cafe]

10) 🎸 Hero of the week: Anthony Coscia, an architect in Connecticut, has created a one-sixth scale model of the Grateful Dead’s famed Wall of Sound speaker array – in his basement. [WSJ]

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week: “have u ever seen a dog this dramatic” [Twitter]

•••

📺 What I’ve been watching:

I recently watched for the first time Martin Scorsese’s 2019 Netflix documentary “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story,” about Dylan’s 1975 tour. It’s full of great performances and behind the scenes footage. Just beware: some parts of the film are…well, made up!

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page.” – Ian Fleming

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as an email newsletter April 11, 2021. Join my email list to get future editions.

👋 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 personalized license plate spotted here in Hong Kong.

😔 Insert “mood: 2021” joke here.

(Once again, kudos to Anasuya for the snapshot!) Pair with: “No drama,” spotted last year.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 📦 “Amazon employees in Alabama voted not to unionize, handing the tech giant a victory in its biggest battle yet against labor-organizing efforts that fueled national debate over working conditions at one of the nation’s largest employers,” my colleague Sebastian Herrera reports.

2) 🧠 How will we remember the pandemic? Through anecdotes and stories, writes Melissa Fay Greene at The Atlantic. “The process of crafting these stories will help determine our resilience and well-being. How we tell our stories can transform how we move forward from hard times.”

3) 🇬🇧 Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, died at age 99. They were married for 73 years.

4) 💰 China has created its own digital currency, a “a re-imagination of money that could shake a pillar of American power.” Fascinating story by my colleague James T. Areddy.

5) 🌏 The U.S. National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2040 report, released every four years, is out. Institutions may face “cascading global challenges,” such as “climate change, disease, financial crises and ever-advancing technology,” VOA reports.

6) 🧰 Data-driven WSJ deep dive: “Where Can You Find a New Job? Try These U.S. Cities.” Hint: Think “Silicon Slopes…”

7) 🧙‍♂️ A made-for-TV film based on Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring,” released in the Soviet Union in 1991, was long forgotten. Now it’s enjoying a new life on YouTube.

8) 🎧 Podcast of the week: Economist Tyler Cowen speaks with poet – and former General Foods executive – Dana Gioia on topics ranging from Jell-O marketing techniques to poetry, art, literature, Catholicism – and that sandbox in Brian Wilson’s house.

9) 🤑 Longread of the week, in Bloomberg Businessweek: “Bill Hwang Had $20 Billion, Then Lost It All in Two Days.”

10) 🌋 Mesmerizing timelapse video of the week: 18 days of Icelandic volcano eruptions packed into 5 minutes.

•••

🦴 Dog-related video of the week: “This Is Called Trust.”

•••

📖 What I’ve been reading:

After reading Steven Pressfield’s excellent “The War of Art,” I turned to a journalistic classic: Janet Malcolm’s 1990 book “The Journalist and the Murderer,” which was originally serialized in the New Yorker.

It’s about a fraud lawsuit Jeffrey MacDonald – who was convicted of murdering his wife and children – brought against Joe McGinniss, who wrote a bestselling book about the case, “Fatal Vision.” Malcolm – who was herself sued by the subject of a profile – explores topics such as journalistic ethics, psychology, and truth. Highly recommended.

•••

💡 Quote of the week:

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde

•••

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley