November 11, 2023

Newsletter Leaf Journal CLX 〜 Upgrading from 59 to 60 〜

The 160th Newsletter Leaf Journal includes links to our five newest articles, 18 links from around the web covering many topics, archive links with a distinct Veterans/Armistice Day theme, and other news and notes from The New Leaf Journal.

Welcome to the 60th 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 from the waterproof keyboard of the editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. After a brief unplanned hiatus, we returned to our ordinary publishing pace last week. Below, I share our newest articles, links from around the web, and news and notes about The New Leaf Journal.

Leaves from the week that was

I published five new articles since mailing the previous newsletter.

• October 2023 at The New Leaf Journal
  N.A. Ferrell. November 5.

  No one said these months in review had to be published in the month of review.

• Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2
  N.A. Ferrell. November 5.

  The anticipated results of good article planning.

• Upgrading Pixel 3a XL from LineageOS 19 to 20
  N.A. Ferrell. November 6.

  As advertised.

• Carroll Gardens Halloween Snake Skeleton
  N.A. Ferrell. November 7.

  While it was not a real skeleton, it was protecting real flowers.

• Brooklyn Heights Halloween Scarecrow
  N.A. Ferrell. November 8.

  Are crows scared of ghosts?

Leaves from around the web

Let's check in around the world wide web...

Bird abodes

• The Ornate Bird Palaces of Ottoman-Era Turkey
  Kate Sierzputowski for Colossal. July 28, 2017.

  Those are very fancy birdhouses.

• Bird nests made from anti-bird spikes
  Auke-Florian Himstra, Cornelis W. Moelicker, Barbara Gravendeel, and Menno Schilthuizen at Deinsea. July 11, 2023.

  All according to plan.

Blogging

• A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox
  Heinrik Karlsson. October 5, 2023.

  I'm glad someone sees what I was trying to do with the article about the fake snake skeleton.

• Building and maintaining a minimalistic website
  Erik Johannes Husom. January 29, 2021.

  A guide and example.

Returning to tradition

• Feds hit 10 alleged mobsters from the Gambino crime family with racketeering charges
  Priscilla DeGregory and Steve Janoski for the New York Post. November 8, 2023.

  Refreshing to see the Gambino crime family return to its roots instead of fighting for the dominant position in the heroin market.

• In Nordic Countries, Pine Foods Have Evergreen Appeal
  Kristin Fawcett for Atlas Obscura. May 31, 2023.

  I see what they did there in the headline.

Some people aren't the best

• Inside a Gaza bedroom, soldiers searching for tunnels find how low Hamas can go
  Emanuel Fabian for The Times of Israel. November 10, 2023.

  Monsters under the bed...

• Forgotten tragedy of Italian war detainees
  Masuda Tsuyoshi for NHK World. January 20, 2020.

  "In World War Two, the Japanese army detained more than 32,000 prisoners of war. The grim conditions inside the camps have been documented in photographs and interviews by the occupying forces after the war. But one part of the story has received less attention: the plight of those who became overnight enemies mid-way through the war."

Over-shadowed Middle East stories

• Yemen: Saudi and UAE Ambitions Threaten Fragile Truce With Houthis
  Sam Dagher for Bloomberg. September 13, 2023.

  In the end, nothing will threaten peace with the Houthis like the Houthis.

• Recentralization Imperils Iraq's Stability and Fuels Regional Tensions
  Mohammed A. Salih for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. October 26, 2023.

  On one hand, Iraq is a train-wreck. On the other hand, it is surpassed only by Israel among Middle Eastern countries for its passion for genuine elections. The essay contains some fair recommendations but I am confident that they will go unheeded.

A+ headlines

• The Battle for the Soul of the Dalai Lama
  Lobsang Sangay for Foreign Affairs. November 6, 2023.

  This is an all-time headline in context.

• Border bust nets $4.3 million of meth hidden in a truckload of Brussels sprouts
  Brad Matthews for The Washington Times. June 9, 2023.

  Well... that's one way to hide it I suppose.

Party time

• Science of nightclub bouncing studied
  Steve Sailer for UPI National. July 4, 2001.

  A 2001 look into the mind of a bouncers working at fancy night clubs in Australia and Germany.

• Late-night vending machine find in Japan leads to a midnight party Oona McGee for SoraNews24. September 23, 2023.

  Should have cooked the tuna.

Tall stuff

• The History of the World's Tallest Buildings
  Sonja Anderson for Smithsonian Magazine. October 26, 2023.

  I respect the Empire State Building for not cheating.

• A South American mouse is the world’s highest-dwelling mammal
  Jack J. Lee for Science News. July 29, 2020.

  "The mouse (Phyllotis xanthopygus rupestris) was found 6,739 meters, or 22,110 feet, above sea level on the summit of Volcán Llullaillaco, a dormant volcano on the border of Chile and Argentina."

The power of persuasion

• Why Game Consoles Are Left Out of Right to Repair Laws
  Lauren Greenlee for IFIXIT. November 6, 2023.

  You'll never guess.

• The Tax Preparation Industry Deserves to Die
  Josiah Lippincott for American Greatness. April 17, 2023.

  Yes, but before you kill it, it will have its lobbying firms talk to your elected representatives about how terrific the current tax landscape is.

The Old Leaf Journal

Let's check in on our archive...

• Eisenhower's 1954 Veternas Day Proclamation
  N.A. Ferrell. November 11, 2022.

  Re-printing the first U.S. Veterans Day Proclamation.

• Veterans Day and World War I Double Quarantines
  N.A. Ferrell. November 11, 2020.

  An American soldier's account of what it was like to fall ill in France in World War I.

• Lincoln’s Telegram after first day of Battle of Nashville
  N.A. Ferrell. December 16, 2022.

  Lincoln's telegram to Major-General George Henry Thomas after a successful day.

• The Inspiring Political Comebacks of Byron Brown and Vito Fossella
  N.A. Ferrell. November 7, 2021.

  The 2023 elections did not produce similarly inspirational stories.

• The Poetry of Charlotte Becker – Early Twentieth Century Poet from Buffalo
  N.A. Ferrell. July 12, 2021.

  Pierrot Goes makes for fitting reading today.

• Experiences in the Yandex Webmaster Portal
  N.A. Ferrell. October 21, 2020.

  We are getting a respectable number of Yandex referrals lately. I suppose my small effort paid off.

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 for 2023 newsletter week 45 (November 4-10). Note: All stats are for 2023 only.

1. An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search
   N.A. Ferrell. October 18, 2022.
   5th appearance. First top placement.
2. Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)
   N.A. Ferrell. November 28, 2021.
   5th appearance. 1 top placement.
3. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis
   N.A. Ferrell. January 18, 2022.
   35th appearance. 4 top placements.
4. Installing GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel 6a
   N.A. Ferrell. May 15, 2023.
   3rd appearance.
5. Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013)
   N.A. Ferrell. July 5, 2021.
   17th appearance. 2 top placements.

We had another solid week by recent standards. While our Google numbers are still down from earlier in the year, they have rebounded a little bit the last three weeks. The Google short-fall is being made up for in part by continued improvement with DuckDuckGo and Bing and unusually consistent referral numbers from Yandex. As I noted last week, the Google decline combined with strength from DuckDuckGo seems to have favored our tech articles...

My 2022 review of Norton Safe Search -- a search engine that I have not looked at since writing the review -- became 10th article to top a weekly ranking in 2023, relying on a strong Friday performance to narrowly take the honor over my out-dated F-Droid app review. The other notable this week is what is missing from the ranking. My 2021 article on the phrase tsuki ga kirei missed the ranking for only the second time this year and the second time 133 weeks. It did not have its weakest week in terms of visitors but it did in terms of finish -- coming in at 7th (my Peekier search engine review was 6th). However, while the tsuki ga kirei piece is down on its luck of late, it is on pace to easily claim the title of most-visited article of the year for the first time -- barring an unexpected social media sharing event.

News leaf journal

I have no special New Leaf Journal news to report, but I encourage you to see some of my writing at our short-form sister-publication, The Emu Café Social. I covered wi-fi access point lights, Russian foreign policy statements, idiosyncratic blogging interests, Kodi on Fedora 40, and Disney's ambition to buy a video game company.

Notable leaf journal

I have referenced in prior articles that I use a mini PC as a TV box. While my main workstation is also connected to my TV, it is just noisy enough (not to mention power-hungry enough) that I prefer using a smaller PC for the task (I would still use my workstation for certain games as my mini PC is short on capability in certain areas). As I noted in my Kodi-Fedora Emu Café Social short post (referenced above), I had been running Fedora. My issues with Kodi (which were not entirely fixed by the solution I outlined in the short post) prompted me to switch from Fedora to EndeavourOS (which I also run on my workstation) and try KDE Plasma instead of GNOME (I run XFCE on my workstation). It took a bit of tinkering since I have not meaningfully used KDE Plasma since July 2021, but I found a solid set-up and everything is working well so far. This will be an article at some point (perhaps before the end of the year...).

Taking leaf

Thank you as always for reading and following The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you have not done so already, you can sign up to receive our Saturday emails or simply add our newsletter's RSS feed to your favorite feed reader (see options). While we did return to publishing last week, I will concede that the new articles were on the shorter side. I hope to have a couple longer form posts ready in the week ahead.

Before continuing, I note that today -- November 11, 2023 -- marks Veterans Day in the United States and Armistice Day in the United Kingdom, Commonwealth countries, and others who fought with the allies in the First World War. Being an American publication, we thank our nation's veterans for their service and also take the occasion to remember those who fought in the trenches of Western Europe just over one century ago, including my grandfather -- Bruce R. Ferrell Sr.

Until November 18,
Cura ut valeas.