March 25, 2023

Newsletter Leaf Journal CXXVIII 〜 Spring moonlight 〜

The 128th edition of The Newsletter Journal marks 100 consecutive weekly top-five appearances by my history of tsuki ga kirei.

Welcome to the 128th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. This newsletter comes to you as always from the waterproof keyboard of the editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. Today’s newsletter features links to our latest articles, links from around the web, and an interesting New Leaf Journal historical note about the moon that always waxes (in our rankings, at least).

Without further ado, let’s get to the content.

Table of contents

1. Leaves from the week that was
2. Leaves from around the web
3. The Old Leaf Journal
4. Most-turned leaves of the week
5. News leaf journal
6. Notable leaf journal
7. Taking leaf

Leaves from the week that was

I published four regular articles since mailing newsletter 127:

• If you can’t trust GLBSUNION and CUZMAK…
  N.A. Ferrell. March 18.

  Justin, one half of our fictional Justin and Justina dialogue duo, is distressed by news that trustworthy brands GLBSUNION and CUZMAK are not actually trustworthy.

• Inflatable St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun
  N.A. Ferrell. March 20.

  Holiday decoration article inflation continues with our first (late) St. Patrick’s Day post.

• Feeds and Read-It-Later for Online Reading
  N.A. Ferrell. March 21.

  The feature essay of the week makes the case for combining a feed reader and read-it-later solution for all of your online non-book reading.

• Height differences in anime romances
  N.A. Ferrell. March 22.

  This stream of consciousness essay also covers the rare anime office rom-coms.

In addition to our regular articles, I also published several short Leaflets and Leaf Buds.

• Knock-off anime figures on AliExpress (A humorous post from another causes me to wonder whether there are non-knock off anime figures on AliExpress)
• CCP opposes US bans on property purchases (Published entirely to deliver a punchline)
• Yoshi’s Story at 25 (Technically 25 and a few months now…)
• TikTok says it never shared data with CCP (I wonder whether it needed approval from the CCP to share this)

Leaves from around the web

Let’s see what is, or was, going on around the world wide web…

• Check out this atago pear from Shimane Prefecture, weighing in at 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds)
  Master Blaster for SoraNews24. January 26, 2023.

  I have nothing to add to the descriptive headline.

• Sweet time in D.C., with cherry blossoms in full bloom
  Brad Matthews for the Washington Times. March 24, 2023.

  Spring springs again (even in a swamp).

• Inside JFK’s Secret Doomsday Bunker
  Jenn Morson for Smithsonian Magazine. February 6, 2023.

  Not really a “secret” anymore now is it?

• Professor Xiao Wang in the Minnesota Law Review Refues A Position I Do Not Hold
  Josh Blackman for the Volokh Conspiracy. February 8, 2023.

  Perhaps Professor Wang missed the mark by mischaracterizing Mr. Blackman while conveniently neglecting to quote the latter, but he gave that straw man a good thrashing.

• An ‘Open Pay Wall’, has Medium lost its mind?
  Lionel Dricot at Ploum.net. November 12, 2017.

  I don’t understand Medium. By that I do not mean that I don’t understand what it is for (we have a little-used account), I mean that I don’t understand why it exists.

• 14 Warning Signs That You Are Living in a Society Without a Counterculture
  Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker. May 28, 2022.

  Speaking for myself, I would say one sign is when the elite monoculture thinks that it is the counterculture. But Mr. Gioia has a much longer, more detailed take.

• The Violin Doctor
  Elly Fishman for Chicago Magazine. January 17, 2023.

  Genuinely excellent article worth your time. I featured it in a Leaflet post several weeks ago.

• Don’t force child care workers to get college degrees
  Timothy B Lee at Full Stack Economics. February 9, 2023.

  The case against credentialism run amok.

• Originalist Blasphemy
  Anonymous for Ius & Iustitium. January 3, 2023.

  An interesting perspective on the history and constitutional background of blasphemy laws in the United States.

• Shepherds Shafted by the Ninth Circuit
  David North for Center for Immigration Studies. February 1, 2023.

  “These workers, virtually all H-2A aliens, who may not see another human being for months at a time, live in tents or trailers, are paid poorly, but stay with their flocks 24/7/365 as they, in a medieval pattern, accompany the sheep from the lowland valleys in the winter to mountain passes in the summer and back again.”

The Old Leaf Journal

Let’s review our spring collection…

• “The Blind Girl and the Spring” 〜 A Poem by Sydney Grey
  N.A. Ferrell. May 21, 2021.

  One of my favorites of the many poems we reprinted in The New Leaf Journal.

• The Plum Tree Blossoms Always in the Springtime
  N.A. Ferrell. March 20, 2022.

  Covering classical Japanese spring art and poetry.

• Blue Violets – An 1880 Children’s Poem
  N.A. Ferrell. May 18, 2022.

  A poem on those gentle messengers of spring.

• An 1882 Poem on Apple Blossoms
  N.A. Ferrell. May 23, 2022.

  The “best charm” of spring.

• Anime Recommendations of the Decade (2011-20)
  N.A. Ferrell. December 29, 2020.

  A list led by March Comes in like a Lion – just in time before March exits stage right.

• Capo vs Capo, a TikTok Debacle
  Victor V. Gurbo. July 21, 2020.

  Victor V. Gurbo on a different kind of TikTok debacle than what we saw before Congress a few days ago.

Most-turned leaves of the newsletter week

I list our most-read articles from the previous newsletter week (Friday to Saturday) in each edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. These statistics come courtesy of Koko Analytics, our local, privacy friendly page-counting solution (see my review). Below, I present the 5 most-visited articles of the 11th newsletter week of 2023.

1. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (NAF: 2.3.23)
   2023 appearances: 7
   Top placements: 6.
2. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (NAF: 3.14.21)
   2023 placements: 12.
   Top placements: 5.
3. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis (NAF: 1.18.22)
   2023 placements: 9.
4. Peekier Search Engine Review (NAF: 2.26.22)
   2023 placements: 5.
5. Review of /e/ - An Android Alternative For Mobile Phones (NAF: 11.21.21)
   2023 placements: 2.

The moon always waxes: 100 consecutive top fives for tsuki ga kirei

With this week’s runner up finish, my 2021 article on the history of the phrase tsuki ga kirei made its 100th consecutive weekly top-five appearance, dating back to the end of April in 2021. In so doing, it had one of its weaker weeks in its long run, but so did many other articles in our Bing-blacklisted era. To commemorate the accomplishment, some I offer visitor stats on The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei:

• Originally published: March 14, 2021
• First weekly top-five: 2021 Newsletter Week #17
• Total top-five appearances: 100
• Consecutive top-five appearances: 100
• First-place finishes: 60
• Top-monthly finish: May 21, June 21, September 21, October 21, November 21, December 21, January 22, February 22, March 22, June 22, September 22, October 22, December 22, January 23 (14 times)
• Year-end finish: 2021 (#2), 2022 (#2)

That is a solid New Leaf Journal resume. In terms of visitors, the tsuki ga kirei post peaked in March 2022 and never returned to that level. But even though it is well-off its early 2022 highs, it continues, regardless of circumstances, to be one of our two-three most-visited articles on a weekly basis. One notable stat is that over the last 100 weeks, it has only finished fifth in our weekly top-five on one occasion – that being a strange Hacker News addled week last August. Hacker News is also, notably, why the tsuki ga kirei post finished second overall in both 2021 and 2022, coming in behind RSS as a Facebook Alternative in 2021 and my review of /e/ OS, which came in fifth place this last week, in 2022.

I do think my tsuki ga kirei post’s streak will end at some point in 2023, especially if Bing ever allows people to find our site again (it has always been much stronger on Google than the Bing-based search tools), but there is no sign that its streak will end imminently. What more does it have left to accomplish? It has never led our view rankings in April, July, or August, so doing so could give it a first-place finish in each month. It has also never led a year-end ranking, but it has a shot to do so this year so long as we do not have any big-sharing events (namely Hacker News).

(Of course, what would happen if someone shared the tsuki ga kirei post somewhere?)

The rest of the top five

While the story of this week is the 100th consecutive top five for my tsuki ga kirei article, the story of 2023 has been the continued dominance of my Fire Emblem Engage “strategy guide”, which became only the third article to notch six consecutive weekly top fives. While I have to imagine that it will run out of steam, its weekly visitor totals have been fairly consistent and it is having a stronger March than February. At its current pace, it could (at least briefly) take over as the most visited article of 2023, but it still has a bit of ground to make up on the tsuki ga kirei review which has held the honor since early January.

The other three top five spots feature no surprises. Taken together, the top five almost exactly represents the current five most-viewed articles of March (swap Peekier and Pokémon for the exact ranking).

News leaf journal

I did not make any notable New Leaf Journal changes last week. In fact, I was busy after a flurry of publishing early in the week. I did send a sixth inquiry to Bing about our blacklisting issue and I look forward to again not receiving any response.

Notable leaf journal

I am letting one domain that I had been using for emails expire because the renewal price on it spiked. I have a second spare domain that I will use to take over some of those emails. However, I need to transition by the 27th and, while I do not have too many accounts tied to the expiring domain, it will nevertheless be more than a bit annoying. Also on the 27th is the end of the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U online shops. There are a few games I want to buy, so I should probably charge my Wii U controller and 3DS so I can work on that before the expiration date.

I also have a work assignment this weekend.

Suffice it to say, things may be a bit slow at The New Leaf Journal at the start of the week.

Taking leaf

Thank you as always for reading The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed the content, you can sign up to receive this Saturday newsletter by email or, in the alternative, add the newsletter’s RSS feed to your favorite feed reader with no sign-up required. See our sign-up options. I also syndicate the newsletter to The New Leaf Journal on Mondays, but I am sometimes a bit late.

I hope everyone is enjoying the start of string and seeing some nice spring flowers. I look forward to sending the next newsletter on (checks calendar) April Fools? Well that is something…

Until April Fools,

Cura ut valeas.