Sent as an email newsletter (sign up here) Thurs., July 9.
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.
This week’s NN is late. I’d meant to send it Monday evening, but then this happened. See image above.
I got the exclusive that WhatsApp – quickly followed by Facebook, then Twitter and Google – was suspending its processing of requests for user data from Hong Kong.
WhatsApp and its tech peers were prompted to do so by China’s imposition here in the city of a wide-ranging new national security law.
I’m proud to say we had the news for our subscribers before anyone else, and it was followed by outlets around the world.
The story also ran on the front page of Tuesday’s WSJ:
I was on our The Journal podcast to talk about the story (listen here), and I was also on our Tech News Briefing show (listen here).
For more on China, Hong Kong, and the new law, read on…
Here are ten items worth your time this week:
1) What’s Hong Kong’s new national security law all about? “Experts say its provisions fundamentally alter the legal landscape in Hong Kong, carving out space within the city’s Western-style rule-of-law system for mainland Chinese methods of enforcing Communist Party control,” my colleague Chun Han Wong reports.
2) Things are happening fast here in HK, my colleague Dan Strumpf wrote in a story out Wednesday about the inauguration of a new home for China’s security agents:
“First the construction signs went up, then a flagpole appeared and police officers started to swarm the streets. Within hours, a skyscraper hotel in a cozy neighborhood of bars, apartments and boutiques was transformed into something new: the headquarters of Beijing’s powerful new security agency for the city.”
3) And in non-China/Hong Kong news: “How J. K. Rowling Became Voldemort”:
“Younger Millennials – those born around 1990, the same time as Harry Potter’s lead actors Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson – feel just as strongly about transgender rights. To many of them, it is the social-justice cause, their generation’s revolutionary idea.”
4) “In an era that fetishizes form,” Joyce Carol Oates “has become America’s preëminent fiction writer by doing everything you’re not supposed to do.”
5) A Japanese city has passed a draft ordinance aimed at stopping people from using their smartphones while walking.
6) Social media first brought about “context collapse” (people talk to everyone all at once, rather than distinct people or groups), and now, writes Nicolas Carr, it has created something more serious: “content collapse.” “A presidential candidate’s policy announcement is given equal weight to a snapshot of your niece’s hamster and a video of the latest Kardashian contouring,” he says.
7) Shot: “Back to the Future” was released 35 years ago last week. Here are 30 facts about the great film, one of which – you’re telling me they started filming with Eric Stoltz instead of Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly?! – I find mind-blowing.
8) Chaser: The Nostalgia Machine is a website where you enter a year, click a button, and jam to some sweet tunes from yesteryear.
9) Gary Larson, creator of “The Far Side,” has started cartooning again (this time on a tablet).
10) Dog-related video of the week: You rang? (Thanks, Anasuya!)
•••
Quote of the week:
“If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.” – Epictetus
•••
What’s new with you? Hit reply to send me tips, queries, random comments, and videos of adorably attentive pups.
Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley
1) Covid–19 cases are surging in the U.S. “Across the South and large parts of the West, cases are soaring, hospitalizations are spiking, and a greater portion of tests is coming back positive,” Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal 
2) The New York Times has an interactive showing 
3) The last state flag in the U.S. to feature a Confederate emblem – Mississippi’s – 
5) Facebook has an 
6) Republican politicians are increasingly joining a 
7) Why can geese fly so high – as in, over Mt. Everest? They have 
8) There’s more to the area around Stonehenge than meets the eye. As in, 
9) The 
10) Dog-related video of the week: it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, as the saying goes. It’s the size of fight in the dog. 
Image of the week: ↑ Anasuya and I recently took the tram up to Victoria Peak, which offers this majestic view of Victoria Harbor and the city’s skyscrapers below.
I’ve been to the place a couple times before over the years. Some tourist sites get old after a while. This one never does. 
2) “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations.” That’s just one of many memorable passages in an essay adapted from former U.S. ambassador to the U.N 
3) PespiCo is retiring the Aunt Jemima brand, while Mars is changing Uncle Ben’s, examples of companies 
4) Jelani Cobb, writing in the New Yorker, on 
6) What if, instead of using Google – which is free, but makes money by selling ads based on data about you – you could pay for access to a search engine that runs no ads and 
7) In 1992, as readers of Jon Krakauer’s excellent book “Into The Wild” will recall, a young man named Chris McCandless died inside an abandoned bus in rural Alaska. This week 
8) Covid–19 shows why suburbs make good places to live, 
9) Barcelona’s Liceu opera house can’t open for humans yet, so it’s playing a concert tomorrow (Monday) – 
10) Dog-related video of the week – Question: What do you call a Golden Retriever doing a 
2) Here’s a comprehensive interactive feature from The New York Times showing how 
3) An unexpectedly popular online tool for organizing George Floyd protests and sharing resources: not Twitter or Facebook, 
4) Peter Weinberg, a 49 year old living in Bethesda, Maryland, was misidentified as the guy who assaulted children putting up posters supporting the George Floyd protests. An 
5) The International Air Transport Association has a clickable world map showing the 
6) Kathy Sullivan, who in 1984 became the first American woman to walk in space, has achieved a new milestone. She’s now the first woman to 
7) Proof that there is virtually no content too niche to find an audience online: Musicians are posting on Instagram videos of themselves 
8) The Golden Gate bridge, thanks to wind passing through new railings, 
9) Here’s a fun 
Now they are not just a national phenomenon. They’ve gone global, stretching from Europe to Australia.
If the election were held today, 50% of those surveyed said they’d vote for Former Vice President Joe Biden, compared to 43% for Trump. 
Speaking of Hong Kong: I had a story out Wednesday about a survey showing the 
1) How, exactly, did George Floyd die at the hands of Derek Chauvin? The New York Times has a chilling, illuminating recreation based on security camera footage and other sources. 
3) Journalists are getting hit by police violence. Online investigations outfit Bellingcat has noted more than 140 incidents so far. (My WSJ colleague Tyler Blint-Welsh 
4) Additional criticism of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook for not taking action against Pres. Trump’s “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” post: more than 140 scientists who have received funds from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative sent Zuckerberg a letter saying misinformation and “divisive language” conflicts with their goal to improve the world. 
5) Former defense secretary Jim Mattis said President Trump is fanning the flames of division. "Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try,” Mattis said in a statement. 
7) The last person receiving a Civil War pension passed away at the age of 90 in Wilkesboro, N.C. 
8) Legendary German electronic band Kraftwerk played a show featuring a special guest: an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. 
9) As they move from forests into the cities, rural red foxes in the U.K. appear to be…turning themselves into dog-like creatures (aka “self domesticating”). 
That’s the headline on 
The secret to their success, our reporting showed: wide testing, aggressive quarantining, and keeping infections away from older, more vulnerable people. Possible lessons for the future considering the pandemic could come back in waves.
4) Discovery of the week: No big deal, just a Roman mosaic under a vineyard in Northern Italy that dates to around the 4th century. 
5) Will U.S. government experts overseeing dietary guidelines finally recognize the mountains of evidence showing the benefits of a low-carb diet? A committee will soon issue an advisory report on recommendations for the next five years. 
6) Longread of the week: GQ on the brilliant actor Steve Buscemi, who among other travails lost his wife of more than three decades last year. (And yes, you’re saying his name wrong.) 
7) Soviet-era control rooms: Who knew those analog dials and switches could be so beautiful? 
9) Dog-related science story of the week: Specially trained pooches in Finland learned to detect the “previously unknown odor signature” of Covid–19 in urine samples from patients.