April 15, 2023

Newsletter Leaf Journal CXXXI 〜 Resplendent

The 131st Newsletter Leaf Journal features our usual assortment of article links from the NLJ and around the web, but with a dash of breaking NLJ news.

Welcome to the 131st 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. In addition to our usual assortment of links from the week that was at the NLJ and links from around the web, I will introduce a new addition to the site, not previously discussed on The New Leaf Journal, in our News Leaf Journal section.

Table of contents

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

Leaves from the week that was

I published three regular articles since mailing newsletter 130.

• Inflatable colorful Easter egg bunny thing
  N.A. Ferrell. April 8, 2023.

  I can report here that it was still inflated as of April 13.

• Aime Review: Endo and Kobayashi Live!
  N.A. Ferrell. April 12, 2023.

  I review a recently completed winter 2023 anime series with an interesting concept.

• Midjourney Exports CCP Censorship
  N.A. Ferrell. April 13, 2023.

  When purportedly American tech companies import Chinese Communist Party censorship to the United States under the pretense of exporting their tech for the greater good of humanity.

I also published eight new Leaflets and Leaf Buds during the past week...

• Hyacinth is an uncommon name these days (Thoughts after coming across a note about a 19th century man named Hyacinth)
• Rent-a-Girlfriend S3 to introduce new character… (I had scheduled this to go live a month ago but failed to notice that it did not, in fact, go live)
• Mickelson finishes second in Masters at 52 (A follow-up to my 2021 article on older golfers contending for majors (see The Old Leaf Journal below). That article, of course, was prompted by Mr. Mickelson winning the 2021 PGA just one month shy of 51.)
• Hyacinth as a name in Fire Emblem Engage (Good week for Hyacinth-name posts)
• How the Finnish get by without small talk (A 2018 BBC article inspires my quip)
• Motion controls in Mario Kart Wii (I wasn't a fan)
• Odd email to my @newleafjournal address (Something about my name)
• Rapid-Fire My Clueless First Friend Anime (This new, currently airing anime series is almost as hyperactive as its "clueless" co-protagonist)

Leaves from around the web

Back into my backlog...

• Planetarian: Snow Globe -- Reflections and a Professional's Remarks on The Rise of Artificial Intelligence
  The Infinite Zenith. February 20, 2023.

  I should play Planetarian again and write about it (Planetarian is a visual novel, these days available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and other platforms).

• My New Seven-Monitor Office Workstation
  Josh Blackman at The Volokh Conspiracy. February 14, 2023.

  I see a big weakness at the heart of this otherwise impressive set-up (typed on computer running the EndeavourOS Linux distribution).

• Creating a Plain Text Schedule
  Scott Nesbitt at The Plain Text Project. January 5, 2021.

  Showing off the potential of plain text.

• Panasonic says to stop wearing socks while you sleep
  Master Blaster for SoraNews24. February 2, 2023.

  Another big corporation trying to tell us what to do.

• Archaeologists Find 2,000-Year-Old Gemstones in Drain Beneath a Roman Bathhouse
  Molly Enking for Smithsonian Magazine. February 2, 2023.

  This may be too late for "better late than never."

• Dusting off Dreamcast Linux
  Cameron Kaiser at Vintage Computing Research. February 19, 2023.

  Why does this exist? Because some people ask: Why not?

• My Lifelong Quest for Silence
  Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker. February 21, 2023.

  ...

• Washington Newsletters Place Ads from TikTok
  Eric Lendrum for American Greatness. February 22, 2023.

  I guessed that Axios was among them before opening the article on the morning of February 22, 2023. Take as you will.

• Holy See and the Sultanate of Oman Establish diplomatic ties
  Andrea Gagliarducci for Catholic News Agency. February 23, 2023.

  Interesting diplomacy news.

• On walking
  Apurva Chitnis at Mindful Musings. January 16, 2023.

  A sound, pro-walking take about life in New York City.

• In Search of the Impossible Machine, the Artificial Heart
  Sian E. Harding for The MIT Press Reader. February 14, 2023.

  Progress is slow and halting.

• Meet the woman who helped rescue an alligator from Prospect Park
  Kerry Shaw for Gothamist. March 2, 2023.

  I tip my hat to Sergeant Judith Velosky of the New York City Urban Park Rangers.

The Old Leaf Journal

Let's check in on our backlog...

• Oldest Golfers to Contend for Majors Between the 1968 and 2021 PGAs
  N.A. Ferrell. May 30, 2021.

  I wrote this article in 2021 after Phil Mickelson, at 50 years and 11 months, became the oldest golfer to win one of golf's four major championships, breaking the record of 48 years and 4 months set by Julius Boros in 1968. I examined the 16 best runs at Boros's record from 1968 to Mr. Mickelson's triumph in 2021. Last weekend, Mr. Mickelson became the first to challenge his own record with his runner-up finish at the 2023 Masters.

• The Great Chelsea Fire of 1908 - 114 Years Later
  N.A. Ferrell. April 12, 2022.

  Now 115 years later...

• The Enigmatic Life and Death of Emperor Otho
  N.A. Ferrell. April 18, 2021.

  I examined in detail four historical accounts of the short reign and perplexing death of the Roman Emperor Otho, who became Emperor on January 15, 69 AD with the murder of his predecessor and existed the stage by his own hand on April 16, 69. This remains the longest article at The New Leaf Journal by a wide margin (and so it shall remain...).

• Bird in Review 〜 The Red Bird of Paradise
  N.A. Ferrell. February 10, 2021.

  This bird didn't have a big week (see next section), but the article comes with some eloquent bird writing.

• Covering “You Win Again” and the Life of Hank Williams
  Victor V. Gurbo. April 21, 2021.

  Victor V. Gurbo writes about, and covers, Hank Williams' You Win Again.

• TI-89 Haiku: Boerum Blue Jay and Black Squirrel
  N.A. Ferrell. May 7, 2020.

  I saw a few cardinals while out walking and one blue jay from my window. All I need is a black squirrel to recapture the magic of this article.

Most-turned leaves of the 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 15th newsletter week of 2023.

1. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (NAF: 2.3.23)
   2023 appearances: 10.
   Top placements: 9.
2. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (NAF: 3.14.21)
   2023 appearances: 15.
   Top placements: 5.
3. Bird in Review 〜 Resplendent Trogon (NAF: 1.13.21)
   2023 appearances: NEW.
4. Peekier Search Engine Review (NAF: 2.26.22)
   2023 appearances: 8.
5. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 – Statistics and Analysis (NAF: 1.18.22)
   2023 appearances: 12.

We would have had a very ordinary top five this week save for the random appearance of my early 2021 review of an 1897 bird magazine article about the resplendent trogon (see the article, the name fits). That article is part of a series of articles which seldom make much of an impression in our visitor counts. The last bird review post to make a weekly top five was my golden pheasant article, which did so in early 2021 thanks to Hacker News (naturally...). But out of the blue, my trogon article began the week with three big days before returning to Earth. What happened? I have no idea, but I could tell that (1) the hits came from Google and (2) many were from Google UK.

Other than the resplendent trogon surprise, my Fire Emblem post captured the top spot for the ninth week in a row, and is one weekly top-five away from tying Victor V. Gurbo's mask review (a former weekly top-five fixture last seen in the ranking in January 2022), for having the second-most top placements behind my tsuki ga kirei article's 60 (still a ways to go for the all-time record...).

News leaf journal

I introduce a new part of The New Leaf Journal family: New Leaf Journal Feeds. This is a new website available at https://nafnlj.github.io/nljfeeds/.

I thought that it would be neat to have one place where we collect all New Leaf Journal content and works by New Leaf Journal authors from outside the New Leaf Journal. There is a free and open source project called Osmofeed. This project allows one to create a feed reader website and host it for free on GitHub Pages (or similar). I do have a GitHub account and I was not previously using Pages to host a project, so I decided to remedy that and set up a site with all New Leaf Journal feeds. (See the project repository).

At the moment (as of April 15, 2023), New Leaf Journal Feeds has four New Leaf Journal feeds (main, Leaflets, Leaf Buds, and Letters), the feed for this newsletter, my Bearblog, Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Hypothes.is feeds, and Victor V. Gurbo's YouTube music channel feed. If you go to the site, you will find new posts from all of these feeds as you scroll. This is a great way to, for example, see that I followed up my Mickelson Leaflet with a Bearblog post on April 10 (see post). You could also keep up with all of Victor's music video uploads on YouTube without an account (he has been busy lately).

As an RSS feed proponent, I generally recommend adding all of our feeds to your favorite feed reader. However, if you do not have a feed reader or simply like seeing all of our posts in one place on a static site, New Leaf Journal Feeds is for you and ready to bookmark. I have it set to automatically poll our feeds three times per day, but I will reassess that going forward.

I look forward to writing about it in more detail in The New Leaf Journal after I complete a companion project later this month...

Notable Leaf Journal

Preview:

Review coming soon...

(Probably.)

Taking leaf

Thank you as always for reading The Newsletter Leaf Journal. While things may be slow to start the new week (taxes, legal briefs, etc.), I am working on several big projects simultaneously, and look forward to sharing them with you soon along with another external New Leaf Journal site.

If you enjoyed the newsletter and are not already a follower, you can sign up via email, add the newsletter's rss feed to your feed reader, or wait for the syndicated version to appear on The New Leaf Journal on Monday (I recommend option A or B). (I suppose you can also check in at NLJ Feeds on Saturdays.) See all of our options here

Until Saturday the 22nd,

Cura ut valeas.