01/04/2021: Weekly Newsletter

First newsletter of the new year. Huzzah! I hope you all had a nice New Years.

For this edition, I’ve added a short 2020 retrospective at the end. Fun themes I picked up on:

1. You really liked articles that talked about top book picks

2. You like looking at pictures

3. The “Etc.” section beat out the “Money” and “Tech” sections for frequently clicked articles (Could it be, dear reader, that you are like me and enjoy procrastinating with more fun pop-culture type articles too? )

Money & Crypto

• Sectors that gained (delivery aggregators, online grocers, video streaming ) and lost (fine dining, salons & spas, professional & dress attire, ), relative to the year before and bankruptcies from 2020

• And a great round up of business trends in 2020 by The Economist

• How Brexit changes UK relations with Europe before vs after January 1st 2021

• Review of trends and events in crypto in 2020

• Bitcoin hits $34k

• Amazon buys podcast company Wondery for $300M

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Tech

• Best inventions of 2020

• The first micro-processor and the F-14 fighter jet

• Facebook shuts down FarmVille

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Etc.

• In 2019, 2 polar explorers made an unbelievable 90-day journey through the Artic on skis

• How much do you remember about the past decade? Take The New Yorker’s quiz (Apparently there’s a lot I don’t remember from this past decade…I got 13/34 right)

• Alabama and Ohio State to fight it out in the annual BCS Championship

• ♫ Unspooled reviews the classic Home Alone

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2020 Retrospective

Most clicked links overall:

1. Hold Still is the British National Portrait Gallery's selection of 100 photos that citizens submitted they felt represented this year. I find a lot of them very moving and it provides quite a time capsule for 2020.

2. ♫ My friend and I put together our top 3 favorite books we read in 2020

3. WaPo narrows down to top 10 books of 2020

Top book recommendations from readers:

1. The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

2. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

3. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

4. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

5. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

♫ The podcasts I urged my family/friends to listen to the most:

1. Bill Gates on Armchair Expert

2. Vicky Tsai, founder of Tatcha, on How I Built This

3. RuPaul on Fresh Air

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