Newsletter Leaf Journal CLXXXIV 〜 NL-J Birth-day
Welcome to the 184th 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, April 27, 2024, marks the fourth birthday of The New Leaf Journal. This gives us something to talk about in today's newsletter. That is a good thing because I was pressed for time last week and as a result only published one new article (to be fair, I drafted a few articles that I have not published yet). I am a legal research specialist for an immigration law firm as my day job and I will have you know that Russian President Vladimir Putin is responsible for the slow week at The New Leaf Journal last week (it turns out that many Russian men were less than enthusiastic about receiving their mobilization orders back in 2022). But nothing can stop the newsletter -- at least since a brief ER adventure back in October. Let's jump into our special birthday issue.
Single leaf from the week that was
I published one new article. On Charging for Google Translate Translations addresses the story of a Japanese manga publisher making its manga streaming app available to English-speaking audiences. As you may guess from the headline – there is a catch. The publisher opted to use Google Translate to turn the Japanese into English and, according to the report, the publisher clearly did not subject the Google translations to human review. This great service can be yours for $4.50 per month. It should go without saying that this is a terrible service, so I instead approached the issue from the angle of how releasing this tire fire ultimately cuts against one of the main reasons why a Japanese manga publisher would go through the effort of making an English-language manga streaming service.
Leaves from around the web
Just because it is The New Leaf Journal's birthday does not mean we must forego our regular trip around the web. In fact, because I did not give you much to read this week, I will send you 24 links from around the web instead of the usual 21.
90s Nostalgia
Saudi Arabian prince wants SNK to grow as a Japanese company, rather than relocate
Verity Townsend for Automation West. April 22, 2024.
Try explaining this story to someone 30 years ago.
Now you can play Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on a TI-84 Plus CE graphing calculator
Brad Linder for Lilputing. April 19, 2024.
Back in my day we had to play it on a Sega Genesis. Let me go with that joke even though the TI-84 can only run the Sega Master System version (I have a Master System but not its version of Sonic 2).
Memories of Pokétour 1999
Johto Times. March 28, 2024.
While I would have liked a Mew back in 1999 I think I would have sooner knowingly fallen for a convoluted Pokémon April Fools joke than attended one of these events to get one.
Underground
Rare 100-Year-Old Train Carriage Found Buried in Belgium
Sonja Anderson for Smithsonian Magazine. April 15, 2024.
We call that the "Subway" here in New York City.
Bottles of 250-Year-Old Cherries Discovered Beneath George Washington's Home
Aaron Boorstein for Smithsonian Magazine. April 24, 2024.
Knowing that General Washington forgot about the cherries he buried makes it easier for us to accept our own occasional moments of forgetfulness.
Underground toilets? NYC subways should promote the fact they have bathrooms, borough president says
Ronny Reyes and Haley Brown for New York Post. April 23, 2024.
Has the Manhattan Borough President ever been to New York City?
Exports from the far East
Chinese government linked to illicit fentanyl trade
Bill Gertz for The Washington Times. April 16, 2024.
While I am clearly on record as being on the ban TikTok side of things, I will concede that it ranks no higher than third on the list of worst CCP exports.
Anime studio addresses reports of North Korean involvement in production
Verity Townsend for Automation West. April 23, 2024.
Idea: Maybe they can outsource all the anime series about someone being reincarnated in another world and gaining cheat powers to North Korea.
TikTok is deemed harmful to kids’ health in Kyrgyzstan
Ayzirek Imanaliyeva for Eurasianet. April 19, 2024.
The article's featured image supports Kyrgyzstan's conclusion.
Chips
ACEMAGIC S1 is now available with choice of Intel N95, N97, or N100 chips (mini PC with an LED status display)
Brad Linder for Liliputing. February 9, 2024.
The mini PC I use with my TV has an N100 and it works very well but this article suggests that the N97 would be the optimal choice for my low-price/low-power use-case.
Half of Russian-made chips are defective: Baikal struggles to meet Russia's Demand
Anton Shilov for Tom's Hardware. March 28, 2024.
I thought of a joke my friend once told me. He said the Soviet Union had the biggest everything. He then lists a few things before concluding with microchips.
Sega Saturn Architecture – A practical analysis
Rodrigo Copetti. August 3, 2019.
"Practical" touches on the problems.
Why?
Why do some people always get lost?
Bob Holmes for Knowable Magazine. April 10, 2024.
I hope this newsletter has a good sense of direction.
Why African tech companies are ditching Google for a small Indian competitor
Damilare Dosunmu and Ananya Battacharya for Rest of World. April 22, 2024.
While Zoho is much smaller than Google, to call it "small" in the abstract is a stretch.
Why are there so many beetle species?
Lesley Evans Ogden for Knowable Magazine. April 3, 2024.
Why not?
Big animals
Kansas man sets world record for heaviest paddlefish caught in his first effort
Brad Matthews for The Washington Times. March 19, 2024.
Dude waltzed in there and made it look easy.
I rescued a tiger from an NYC apartment — and other animal tales from Bronx Zoo honcho’s 50 years on the job
Alex Mitchell for New York Post. April 19, 2024.
Talk about a descriptive headline.
Video shows Florida authorities wrangle alligator that wandered onto Air Force Base tarmac
Gren Wehner for Fox News. April 22, 2024.
No one told him that he was on the secret No Fly List.
The wonderful world of education
Analysis: Islamic State’s current da’wah campaign across Africa
Caleb Weiss for Long War Journal. April 5, 2024.
Islamic State lectures sound like a joy.
VIEWS OF SPORT; HOW ILLITERACY MAKES ATHLETES RUN
Diana Nyad for The New York Times. May 28, 1989.
As colleges now support open gambling on their sports teams, I am sure the situation for promoting athlete literacy has greatly improved in the intervening 35 years.
Waste of the Day: U.S. Sent $1.2 Billion to Hamas-Backed UN agency
Adam Andrzejewski for RealCleaer Investigations. March 1, 2024.
My tax money at work.
I'll let myself out
Canada is the most sinister of nations. And hockey seems to be to blame
Colby Cosh for National Post. September 6, 2019.
I knew there was something suspect about Canada.
Family Accidentally Ends Up With 50 Baby Octopuses After Their Pet—Thought to Be Male—Laid Dozens of Eggs
Will Sullivan for Smithsonian Magazine. April 16, 2024.
Here's a story with legs.
No more kissin' cousins: Tennessee bill would ban marriage between close relatives
Brad Matthews for The Washington Times. April 13, 2024.
Too close for comfort.
Most-turned leaves of newsletter week 17
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-hit counting solution (see my review).
Below, you will find the five most-visited articles of 2024 newsletter week 17 (April 20-April 26) along with their 2024 statistics and all-time statistics, which go back to the first week of 2021.
[1] The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei
Author: N.A. Ferrell. Published: March 14, 2021.
2024: 3 top five appearances and 2 top placements.
History: 135 appearances and 71 top placements.
[2] Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)
Author: N.A. Ferrell. Published: November 28, 2021.
2024: 13 appearances and 1 top placement.
History: 70 appearances and 9 top placements.
[3] Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013)
Author: N.A. Ferrell. Published: July 5, 2021.
2024: 6 appearances and 1 top placement.
History: 83 appearances and 3 top placements.
[4] Installing LineageOS on a 2013 Nexus 7 (Wi-Fi)
Author: N.A. Ferrell. Published: July 28, 2021.
2024: 3 appearances.
History: 4 appearances.
[5] Yuki's Hair Color in A Sign of Affection
Author: N.A. Ferrell. Published: February 2, 2024.
2024: 12 appearances and 6 top placements.
Analysis
I suppose that it is fitting that we ended up with a nostalgic weekly ranking leading into our site's birthday. The top three trio held the top three spots for most of the first half of 2021, most often in the order presented in 2024 Newsletter Week 17. The week was similar to our last few with a weak top five and views distributed across the site. Our strongest article of the last three months, my recent post on Yuki Itose's hair color in A Sign of Affection, scrambled on Thursday and Friday to secure its 12th consecutive top-five appearance in its 12 full weeks online.
The Old Leaf Birthday Journal
I do not have any special birthday articles planned this year -- I will instead focus on publishing my less self-referential drafts. But since this very newsletter happens to land on our site's birthday, I thought it would be fun to turn our regular Old Leaf Journal section into a birthday celebration.
On April 27, 2021, I published The New Leaf Journal Celebrates Its First Birthday, marking our one-year anniversary with a bullet point history of the year that was.
I did not produce a similar birthday run-down in 2022, but I did write a special Justin and Justina dialogue for the occasion titled Justin, Justina, and the Eraser's Birthday.
I celebrated our birthday last year with an article titled New Leaf Journal Third Birthday Reader. Here, I listed our 36 all-time most-read articles along with notes and curated related articles that had received less visitor attention. This stands as one of the better resources to get to know some of the best work at The New Leaf Journal.
I have published some birthday-themed articles that do not directly concern The New Leaf Journal's own birthday. See some examples with brief descriptions below.
- Some U.S. President Birthday Facts (6.14.20): A selection of U.S. president birthday facts. Also see my more complicated study of presidential birthdays titled Biden, Lincoln, and Counting Back From the President's Birth (4.29.22).
- “Washington’s Birthday” Poem by Sangster (2.18.21): A dash of wholesome patriotism to celebrate the birthday of George Washington. Also see my post on another charming children's poem about General Washington.
- Justin & Justina 〜 An Abyssinian Guinea Pig Birthday Present (5.4.21): A Justin and Justina dialogue that has been referenced often in later dialogues.
- Thomas Sowell on Hard-Core Troublemakers (6.30.20): I celebrated the 90th birthday of Thomas Sowell (who is still going strong as he approaches 94) with a discussion of one of his characteristically keen insights.
- Calvin Coolidge On Why We Celebrate Independence Day (7.2.21): While this article about Calvin Coolidge's July 4, 1924 Independence Day speech does involve America's birthday, that is not why I included it here. You find it here because Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States, was born on July 4, 1872.
- On March 3, 2022, I reviewed a doujin freeware visual novel titled Shooting Star Hill, which I ended up placing 3rd out of 31 on my ranking of al|together visual novel localizations. It should go without saying that I recommend reading it for yourself, but I wrote a spoiler-filled analysis post on the same day as my review which discussed the significance of two birthdays to the novel's plot.
- I conclude with two short leaflet posts. Back in 2022, I took a quick look at a nice web app called Birthday Maker (it does not seem to be working at the moment). Earlier this year, I responded to a blog post birthday present request by the founder of WordPress -- which powers The New Leaf Journal -- Matt Mullenweg.
After having posted all of these links, I will claim that I only published one article last week to ensure that you have time to enjoy our birthday archives.
Taking leaf
Thank you as always for reading and following The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed the newsletter and are not already a regular reader, you can sign up for our weekly email, add or RSS feed to your favorite feed reader, or simply check in on our newsletter archive page (see options).
While our birthday technically falls in April, The New Leaf Journal began in earnest in May 2020. I look forward to publishing some fun projects in May after bringing April to a close this week.
Until May 4 -- Cura ut valeas,
Nicholas A. Ferrell