Sent as an email newsletter Sunday, May 31, 2020
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.
Coronavirus Doesn’t Have to Be So Deadly. Just Look at Hong Kong and Singapore.
That’s the headline on a story out earlier this week that I wrote with my colleague Feliz Solomon.
It begins:
Hong Kong and Singapore reported their first cases of the novel coronavirus in January. Four months later, the densely packed Asian metropolises, with a combined population of about 13 million, have seen 27 fatalities between them.
Just 0.4% of those with confirmed infections have died in Hong Kong. In Singapore – less than 0.1%. If the U.S. had a similar fatality rate as the average of the two, its death toll would now stand at about 4,100, rather than 98,000 and growing.
“When you overwhelm health systems a lot more people die,” one Hong Kong-based doctor told me. Hong and Singapore “didn’t let the epidemic run wild,” he said.
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.
On to this week’s NN.
Here are ten items worth your time this week:
1) Twitter shielded from public view a tweet from President Trump for violating its rules on glorifying violence. He called demonstrators clashing with police over the death of George Floyd “thugs” and said, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” By me and my colleague Andrew Restuccia: LINK
2) …Meanwhile unrest spread from Minneapolis to several cities: Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and many more. LINK
3) Facebook largely shelved research showing its service exacerbates polarization, my colleagues Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman reported in a page one story. LINK
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. VIDEO
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. LINK
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.) LINK
7) Soviet-era control rooms: Who knew those analog dials and switches could be so beautiful? LINK
8) Here are 150 educational podcasts, ranging from philosophy to art to history and more. LINK
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. LINK
10) Dog-related video of the week: “Decided to play a tune to welcome a new pup and well, we think he liked it.” LINK
Quote of the week:
“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.” — Epictetus
What’s new with you? Hit reply to send me tips, queries, random comments, and videos of dogs “singing” along with their violinist owners.
Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley
I’ve 
On Wednesday I had a story out with a deeper look at Mr. Ambani’s vision, and why companies are plowing funds into Jio. The hedline: 
1) China on Thursday indicated it will implement new national security laws here in Hong Kong, which in a story my colleagues describe as “a blow to the territory’s autonomy as Beijing seeks to stamp out widespread pro-democracy protests that have challenged leader Xi Jinping.” 
2) Francis Fukuyama, in an essay out last week about China, writes: “The starting point is to recognize that we are dealing with an aspiring totalitarian country like the mid–20th century Soviet Union, and not with some kind of generic ‘authoritarian capitalist’ regime.” 
3) Facebook acquired Giphy, the platform for making animated images, and will integrate the service into Instagram. Axios put the price at about $400 million. 
4) Big news in the world of podcasting: comedian Joe Rogan, whose podcast is one of the world’s most popular, is joining Spotify in an exclusive deal, meaning his episodes eventually will be available only on their service. 
5) Here’s an in-depth look at the cookbook author Alison Roman, her remarks about Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen, whiteness, and the popularization of “exotic” ingredients. 
6) Another good longread: On the legacy of Jim Fixx, who authored a mammoth 1977 bestseller that helped popularize recreational running – but who also battled inner demons before famously dying while out for a jog. 
7) How a graduate student solved a decades-old math problem in less than a week, helping gain a tenure track job offer at MIT just over a year after earning her doctorate. 
8) Twitter thread of funny images: “Angela Lansbury as teapots.” 
9) If you enjoyed the Bookcase Credibility Twitter account, you may also like @RateMySkypeRoom. 
10) Dog-related video of the week: 
This city, as I wrote in a recent blog post, is a photographer’s dream. I’ve had my iPhone out, snapping away like crazy, during our first few months here. Yesterday I posted a round up of 14 of my favorite photos so far. 
1) After years of talk about online education “disrupting” in-person universities, will Covid–19 hasten the end of such institutions? Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, thinks so. “There’s this horrific awakening being delivered via Zoom of just how substandard and overpriced education is at every level,” he says. He sees name brand universities partnering with big tech firms to expand their reach. MIT + Google? Microsoft + Berkeley? 
2) Bay Area tech titans like Facebook, Twitter and Google have told much of their staff they no longer need to come in to the office amid the pandemic. Faced with sky-high rents, some techies are considering leaving San Francisco altogether, Sarah Frier reports in Bloomberg Businessweeek. “It makes no sense paying Bay Area rent if we can earn our salary living elsewhere,” one worker told her. I’m fascinated to see how this all plays out, in SF and in other metropolises where living costs are astronomically high. 
3) Google is increasingly in the spotlight. There were two important WSJ stories out Friday about Google. First, on antitrust: the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are “likely to file antitrust lawsuits” and “well into planning for litigation,” says one scoop. The second is an in-depth investigation showing how people and firms are using dubious copyright complaints to scrub Google of unflattering but lawful material. 
4) New details continue to emerge about Navy pilots reporting seeing unidentified aerial vehicles. The backstory: a December 2017 New York Times piece revealed a secret Defense Department program studying UFOs, while other subsequent stories have featured aviators speaking about their experiences. The Department of Defense has even officially released videos of the encounters. 
5) Depressing story of the week: “mumfluencers” – Instagram micro-celebrities whose online personas revolve around their seemingly perfect families – and their meltdowns. 
6) Art critic Jerry Saltz has a thought provoking essay about about food and coping mechanisms amid Covid–19. 
7) With U.S. highways mostly empty as people stay at home, people are setting new records for the Cannonball Run, shaving hours off the drive from New York to California to make it in about 26 hours. File under: unexpected Covid–19 outcomes. 
8) Nightclubs in Germany are closed, but party-goers created a unique solution: a drive-in rave. 
10) Dog-related video of the week: “When a dog loves a woman.” 
