Newsletter Leaf Journal CLXX 〜 Newsletter Optimizer 〜
The 170th Newsletter Leaf Journal features links to our new articles about AI spam on Amazon and free image optimization tools, short posts, 21 links from around the web, and other news and notes.
Welcome to the 170th 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. It is highly likely that there will be a live New Leaf Journal article about said keyboard when you read this newsletter, but that is technically an article for next newsletter week. Below, we cover the events of January 13-19 in our typical Newsletter Leaf Journal manner.
Leaves from the week that was
I published three new articles since mailing Newsletter 169.
Shopping on AI (Sp)Amazon
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 14.
Justin and Justina discuss some interesting AI-generated product descriptions seen on Amazon (or Spamazon).
Provocative Out-Of-Context Headlines
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 18.
While my pro video game-ownership views are well-documented in the (web) pages of The New Leaf Journal, a provocatively titled Nintendo Life article summarizing interview comments pertaining to video game-ownership took the subject interview just a bit out of context.
Reviewing YOGA Image Optimizer
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 19.
Wherein I discuss and review the free and open source tool I use to optimize images for publication on The New Leaf Journal.
Short Posts
I published my first New Leaf Journal Leaf Bud post since September 2023. Just Blogging was my response to a request by Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, to ping his birthday blog post with blog posts. I sent a slightly different ping from our sister site, The Emu Café Social.
Speaking of The Emu Café Social, I published three other posts this week:
- Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki-kun and bullying (I expressed some concerns with the quality of the second episode of the second season of Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki-kun after having reviewed the first season and the first episode of the second season. Episode three did right the ship a bit, which I will discuss in the next few days.)
- Team Hamas “Protests” NYC Cancer Hospital (On news in my local New York City (sort of local... being from Brooklyn, I consider Manhattan to be its own thing).)
- Google vs HN at the NLJ (1) (On our being on pace to have more Google referrals than Hacker News referrals in January, despite our Hacker News page 1 triumph.)
Now for the next section...
Leaves from around the web
Let's check in on what's going on around the web outside The New Leaf Journal family of websites...
AI is our bright future
Lazy use of AI leads to Amazon products called “I cannot fulfill that request”
Kyle Orland for Ars Technica. January 12, 2024.
I preferred my own report in dialogue form but this is a more traditional take on the goings on at Spamazon.
Nintendo Switch “hentai” game influx shocks Japanese users
Amber V for Automation West. January 17, 2024.
Say what you will about the AI garbage on the Nintendo Switch store, but at least they have a naming scheme down.
GameShark Is Back From The Dead, But As AI
Damien McFerran for Time Extension. January 12, 2024.
Nice to see AI destroying more things from my childhood.
The dangers of alcoholism
Getting Pickled With Joseph Stalin
Chris Hall for JSTOR Daily. January 10, 2024.
Nothing sounds more fun that listening to a drunk Stalin wax poetic about the virtues of communism.
OnlyFans porn star 'who was spying for Belarus dictator Lukashenko's KGB secret service' is arrested 'after revealing her secret life to friends while drunk'
Will Stewart for Daily Mail. January 15, 2024.
What could I possibly add?
Absolutely not
Ready or not, Windows PC keyboards are getting a dedicated Copilot key for Microsoft’s AI assistant
Brad Linder for Liliputing. January 4, 2024.
I'll stick with my copilotless keyboard.
Japan to get first “metaverse high school,” students will attend using 3D anime avatars
Amber V for Automation West. January 11, 2024.
This is a crime against humanity.
Different responses to legal jeopardy
Mobster Catello Romano earns degree in prison with thesis confessing to murder
Jesse O'Neill for the New York Post. January 9, 2024.
Save something for your lectures, future professor.
Kyrgyzstan: Jumping MP's flight indicates new front in war on crime gangs
Ayzirek Imanaliyeva for Eurasianet. January 12, 2024.
"When investigators came looking for him, Kyrgyz lawmaker Emil Zhamgyrchiyev headed for a window."
Answering questions you didn't ask yet
What the Italians did for us
Ed West at The Wrong Side of History. December 25, 2023.
Fun historical anecdotes about Italy and what is now the United Kingdom
Why The War Hammer Was A Mighty Weapon
Chris McNab for Historynet. December 27, 2023.
Not a very classy weapon, however.
Endangered animals
Fighting for Wildlife in a Time of War
Adam Robertson Charlton for Hakai Magazine. December 5, 2023.
Wildlife preservation efforts in Ukraine.
The social impact of removing horns from wild rhinos to protect them from poachers
Bob Yirka for Phys.org. June 13, 2024.
Fair, but being negatively affected socially is a luxury of the un-poached.
Everything is about me
WebP is so great except it's not
Aurélien Pierre. October 2, 2021.
I briefly looked at WebP for New Leaf Journal back in 2022 and concluded that we should stick with JPEG.
Art under water: Grenada’s popular sculpture park draws tourists with a major expansion
Paul Knowles for The Star. November 25, 2023.
We're becoming a leading source for your Grenada coverage.
Interviews!
Henry Kissinger’s (Maybe) Last Interview: Drop the Two-State Solution
Rolf Dobelli for Politico. December 2, 2023.
From October 18. 2023.
Freshly Translated 1995 Interview Reveals Miyamoto's Indie Aspirations For The SNES Satellaview
Jack Yarwood for Time Extension. January 12, 2024.
The story of Satellaview, which was a now-defunct game streaming service for the Super Nintendo, highlights some of the ownership and preservation issues inherent in many game subscription services.
Working through my backlog of hybrid animal articles
First ever dog-fox hybrid discovered in the wild
Joe Pinkstone for The Telegraph. September 13, 2023.
Unexpected.
Borneo has a hybrid 'mystery monkey,' and researchers are concerned
Patrick Pester for LiveScience. May 4, 2022.
Are they now?
Pretend these headlines are (1) cause and (2) effect
Bill Gates’ Foundation Poured Millions Into Chinese Government Orgs In 2022
Robert Schmad for Daily Caller. January 7, 2024.
I appreciate that he went straight for Chinese Communist Party-run entities so we do not have to grasp for tenuous connections.
How TikTok Killed The Preteen Era
Evita Duffy-Alfonso for The Federalist. January 6, 2024.
The New Leaf Journal was on top of this phenomenon before it was cool.
The Old Leaf Journal
Let's dig into our archives...
If you can’t trust GLBSUNION and CUZMAK…
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 18, 2023.
Justin and Justina had a prior discussion about Chinese sellers on Spamazon.
A Fogy’s Take on New Video Game Accessories
Nicholas A. Ferrell. June 29, 2020.
This article contains what may well be my most inspired piece of New Leaf Journal photography.
Reviewing Buddy Simulator 1984 for Switch
Victor V. Gurbo. December 30, 2022.
Victor liked Buddy Simulator... but wished he had purchased the computer version instead of the Switch version.
The Story Behind a Miniature Painting of Abraham Lincoln
Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 6, 2021.
From photographs to painting.
The Misleading DRM E-Book Buy Button
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 15, 2022.
Does "buy" mean "buy" or "rent"?
Noramie Jasmin’s Inspiring Political Comeback Story
Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 17, 2021.
No newsletter is complete without an inspirational feel-good story.
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, you will find the five most-visited articles of 2024 newsletter week 2 (January 13-19) along with their 2024 statistics and all-time statistics, which go back to the first week of 2021.
Most-turned leaves for Jan 13-19
#1. Cycling Doping Fallacies
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 5, 2024.
3 appearances, 3 top placements.
#2. Heights in “The Dangers in My Heart” Anime
Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 2, 2023.
2024: 2 appearances.
All Time: 9 appearances.
#3. The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten - Anime Review
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 30, 2023.
2024: 3 appearances.
All Time: 7 appearances, 1 top placement.
#4. Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 27, 2021.
2024: 3 appearances.
All Time: 60 appearances, 8 top placements.
#5. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 18, 2022.
2024: NEW
All Time: 47 appearances, 4 top placements.
Analysis
Newsletter week 3 had no major surprises. Cycling Doping Fallacies has trailed off enough from its sharing high that newsletter week four may be competitive, but I expect it to complete a clean sweep of the Newsletter Weeks ending in January before potentially giving way to a new number one in February. My Dangers in the Heart Leaflet took its fifth second place and the first since summer 2023. I was happy to see that my more substantive review of the entire first season of Dangers is doing better of late. At fifth, my article The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 made its debut appearance of 2024 after appearing in 39 out of 52 weeks last year. It narrowly edged out my review of Norton Safe Search for the last spot in the top five.
News leaf journal
I made two changes to the site to highlight our feeds. First, I completely revamped our on-site page listing all of our feeds and explaining how to use them. The new NLJ RSS and ATOM Feeds page also includes our JSON feeds, TWTXT feeds, and even the feed for this newsletter.
Secondly, I added links to our Feed Directory, main RSS, ATOM, JSON, and TWTXT feeds, and our Newsletter sign-up page to the site footer.
I am nearly done with my drafts for my final ranking of al|together visual novels, so you can expect to (finally) see those before the end of January.
Notable leaf journal
I may have figured out why The New Leaf Journal site was crashing very occasionally. It looks like our mysql service was sometimes running out of memory. I tried increasing the memory limit so we will see how that goes.
If you follow our static feed aggregator site, which collects posts from many places including, but not limited to, this newsletter, The New Leaf Journal, and The Emu Café Social, you may have seen that my friend and New Leaf Journal colleague, Victor V. Gurbo, uploaded three videos from one of his recent live music performances to his YouTube channel. See his newest uploads below:
- Parchman Farm Revisited (Victor V. Gurbo & Co live at The Bowery Electric on November 11, 2023)
- Dreaming & Dancing (Victor V. Gurbo and Mark Caserta live at Organic Grill on January 12, 2024)
- Goodnight Irene (Victor V. Gurbo and Mark Caserta live at Organic Grill on January 12, 2024)
While you enjoy the new Goodnight Irene performance, I also recommend reading Victor's July 6, 2020 article about Goodnight Irene and Lead Belly. That article includes a video of another recording of the song by Victor and Mark Caserta.
Taking Leaf
Thank you as always for reading and following The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed the newsletter and have not done so already, you can sign up for our weekly email our add our newsletter's RSS feed to your favorite feed reader (see our options).
Until January 26,
Cura ut valeas.