Newley Purnell

Sent as an email newsletter September 12, 2021. Want in? Join my email list.

👋 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’m proud to say that my colleagues Jeff Horwitz, Rajesh Roy and I are finalists for a Loeb award for our stories on hate speech and Facebook in India.

Here are more details on the awards. Winners will be announced September 30.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week, all related to the 20th anniversary of 9/11:

1) 👉 A WSJ piece on Saturday’s events: U.S. Marks 20th Anniversary of 9/11 With a Day of Memorials.

2) 📸 Separately, another moving WSJ piece: Photos That Defined 9/11, and the People in Them – 20 Years Later.

3) 📺 PBS Frontline documentary: America After 9/11.

4) 🎧 Podcast: interview with Lawrence Wright, author of “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.”

5) 🔍 Related, from Wright in The New Yorker: Did the C.I.A. stop an F.B.I. detective from preventing 9/11?

6) 📰 How The Wall Street Journal Published on 9/11.

7) 📆 9/11 in Realtime is a collection of video and audio media from the day, designed for educational purposes.

8) 🇺🇸 Spencer Ackerman: How Sept. 11 Gave Us Jan. 6.

9) 🗞 A collection of local newspaper front pages across the U.S. on the anniversary.

10) ✈️ Remembering what air travel in the U.S. was like before 9/11.

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Having a luck dragon with you is the only way to go on a quest. –Falcore ”

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💡 Quote of the week:

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier

👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

👋 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.

If you like NN, please share this link so others can subscribe.

Image of the week, above: Out and about with Ginger.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🦠 On Covid and parenting.

2) ✈️ RIP business travel.

3) 🇦🇺 Given that Australia won’t let citizens leave the country during the pandemic, can it still be considered a liberal democracy?

4) 🏖️ I was unaware that there is a Margaritaville Resort – a Jimmy Buffet-themed hotel, bar, and restaurant – in Times Square.

5) 👉 As the 20th anniversary of September 11th approaches, and given the U.S. withdraw from Afghanistan, Netflix has a timely five-part documentary I’ve been watching: “Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror.”

6) ⭐ Related: “The Children of 9/11: Lessons in Resilience” is a moving WSJ feature by my colleague Leslie Brody.

7) 🐦 Here are the year’s best photos of birds.

8) 🎃 Bud Light pumpkin spice hard selzer? You better believe it. (Via the sharp-eyed PB)

9) 🎧 Podcast of the week: Elizabeth Holmes’s trial is beginning; don’t miss “Bad Blood: The Final Chapter,” hosted by John Carreyrou, who broke the Theranos story for the WSJ.

10) 🐀 Capybaras are running wild in Buenos Aires. Video is here.

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

Not new, but new to me: “Hilarious Jack Russell Goes Crazy with Excitement at Crufts 2017!”

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📖 What I’ve been reading

After finishing the superb “Blood and Oil,” I’ve turned to some World War II history. I’d been searching for some time for a single volume that encapsulates the conflict, and think I have found it in Max Hastings’ “All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939–45.”

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💡 Quote of the week:

“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another." – Ernest Hemingway

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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

👋 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.

If you like NN, please share this link so others can subscribe.

☀️ Image of the week, above: A recent sunset here in Hong Kong, seen from a ferry.

I’m happy to resume weekly delivery of Newley’s Notes after a brief break. If you’ve taken time off this summer, I hope your getaway was restful. If you haven’t yet, I hope you’re able to get some downtime. Onward!

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🧪 A remarkable development yesterday in the trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes: she may argue she was being abused psychologically, emotionally and sexually by then Theranos President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.

2) 😔 RIP Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts.

3) 👉 As the twentieth anniversary of September 11th approaches, a moving longread: “What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind.”

4) 🚶‍♀️Why great thinkers are serious about walking.

5) 💬 A look at why Google has failed to build a successful messaging app.

6) 🧬 A list of the 50 best sci-fi and fantasy books of the last decade.

7) ❓Did mega-bestselling thriller author Dan Brown write, under a pen name, a humorous 1995 dating guide called “187 Men to Avoid”?

8) 🇨🇷 What’s the secret to Costa Ricans’ longevity?

9) 🎧 Podcast of the week: sociologist Stephanie Jaros on the always-excellent Cool Tools.

10) 💯 I love this gallery of beautiful old cassette tapes.

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

“Hopping into the weekend”

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📖 What I’ve been reading

I’m nearly finished with the riveting “Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman’s Ruthless Quest for Global Power,” the 2020 book by Bradley Hope (co-author of the smash hit “Billion Dollar Whale”) and my WSJ colleague Justin Scheck. If you care about the Middle East, geopolitics, oil and energy, or just how power is wielded, you have to read this book.

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💡 Quote of the week:

“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding.” – Cheryl Strayed

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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

👋 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.

If you like NN, please share this link so others can subscribe.

👉 Image of the week, above: a personalized license plate spotted here in Hong Kong. (Thanks, A!)

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🆕 My latest: an exclusive out Monday. The lede:

Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have privately warned the Hong Kong government that they could stop offering their services in the city if authorities proceed with planned changes to data-protection laws that could make them liable for the malicious sharing of individuals’ information online.

The story was followed by The New York Times, Reuters, The Guardian, the South China Morning Post, and others. It was also mentioned in newsletters like Axios AM and CNN’s Reliable Sources.

And for the latest, see a follow-up I wrote on Tuesday: Hong Kong Tries to Ease Big Tech’s Concerns Over Data Law.

2) 💰 An important investigation by my WSJ colleagues Melissa Korn and Andrea Fuller: ‘Financially Hobbled for Life’: The Elite Master’s Degrees That Don’t Pay Off.

3) 👉 A statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee has been taken down in Charlottesville, Virginia.

4) ⚖️ Longread of the week: On Britney Spears’s life under a conservatorship.

5) ☕ Michael Pollan: Should we quit caffeine?

6) ⭐ Why Houston, Texas is better than Austin.

7) 📖 Fourteen-year-old Zaila Avant-garde became the first Black American to triumph in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

8) 👖 Jorts – jean shorts – are cool now.

9) 💬 On Twitter addiction.

10) 🐶 Elmo is adopting a puppy named Tango. (Thanks, PB)

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

🐕 Happiness.

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💡 Quote of the week:

“My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing." – Ernest Hemingway

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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

👋 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.

If you like NN, please share this link so others can subscribe.

👉 Image of the week, above: yours truly on an epic hike – up to Kowloon Peak – with friends recently.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 🇺🇸 Happy Fourth of July! Here is an oral history of “Independence Day,” released 25 years ago this weekend. [Hollywood Reporter]

2) 💰 The Trump Organization and its chief financial officer were charged with tax-related crimes. [WSJ]

3) ✉️ Facebook launched a newsletter service (think Substack) called Bulletin. [The Verge]

4) 🪑 Want something nicer than Ikea, but don’t want to pay for designer furniture? “Ikea hacking” may be for you. [The Hustle]

5) 📺 The long tail is for real: big TV hits are going away. [Washington Post]

6) 🍴 QR code menus are the worst. [Slate]

7) 💻 “The Internet is rotting” [The Atlantic]

8) 🌏 Maps of countries’ colors, based on satellite images. [Data Stuff]

9) 🧨 Enjoy these English-language advertisements for Japanese fireworks from the 19th century. [Public Domain Review]

10) 🤖 AI-generated art is getting super interesting. [Charlie Snell]

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

🐶 “Nice and easy now” [Imgur]

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💡 Quote of the week:

“Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear…When a sage sees this great Unity and his Self has become all beings, what delusion and what sorry can ever be near him?” – Upanishads

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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley

Sent as a newsletter on June 13, 2021. Want in? Join my email list.

👋 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 watercolor, done from a photo I took on a recent trip to Hong Kong’s Lamma Island.

Here are 10 items worth your time this week:

1) 💰 “ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth – sometimes, even nothing.” [ProPublica]

2) 🦠 A Covid–19 report from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California says the Chinese lableak hypothesis is plausable. [WSJ]

3) 🚀 Jeff Bezos will be on his space company Blue Origin’s first flight carrying people to the edge of space. [TechCrunch]

4) 🍎 New Apple updates are coming this fall: FaceTime gets Zoom-like features, Macs get a low-power mode, Safari gets tab grouping, and more. [WSJ]

5) 💬 Authorities around the world busted hundreds of suspected criminals by secretly gaining access to an encrypted messaging platform used on mobile devices. [WSJ]

6) ⚽ Euro 2020 – that is, the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship, being played a year late due to Covid – has kicked off! Favorites include Belgium, Italy, Portugal and – my pick to win – France. [Wikipedia]

7) 👀 End-times-related video of the week: a tour of a survivalist community living in underground bunkers in South Dakota. [Laughing Squid]

8) 🌲 Now out: winners of the BigPicture natural world photography contest; my favorite is number five, “Facing Reality.” [The Atlantic]

9) 💊 Longread of the week, by Erika Fry: “How Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway took on America’s health care system – and lost.” [Fortune]

10) 😢 Dog-related tearjerker of the week: An eight-year-old-boy in Virginia set up a stand to sell his Pokemon cards to fund treatment for his sick puppy, Bruce. Once word got out, people all over the country pitched in – and Bruce is now on the mend. [Washington Post]

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🦴 Dog-related video of the week:

🏀 “This dog can dunk.” [Reddit]

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💡 Quote of the week:

“No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbor, if you would live for yourself.” – Seneca

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👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,

Newley