Newsletter Leaf Journal CXCVIII 〜 Newsletter Live 198
The 198th issue of The New Leaf Journal features links to 10 new posts from The New Leaf Journal and The Emu Café Social, 21 links from around the web, and other news and notes including about new design tweaks to NLJ and ECS.
Welcome to the 198th 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 administrator and editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. This last week was a little bit less busy than the prior three weeks, but I still published a good number of new articles and short posts while continuing to make technical tweaks to the site's design. You will find this along with 21 links from around the web and other news and notes below.
Leaves from the week that was
I published four new articles since mailing Newsletter 197.
I will lead off with the second of our four new articles -- my August 2024 review. In addition to linking to all of our new August articles, I discussed the aesthetic and technical changes to the site's design and structure over the last couple of weeks.
On September 4, I published my own 1,000th full article -- using a story about EA contemplating putting ads straight into its $70 video games as inspiration for a story about my memories of EA games from back in the day. They don't make them like they made NBA Live 98 for Sega Genesis or Madden NFL 2002 for Xbox. You can also see my companion site short post on 1000 articles.
One day later, I discussed my revival of our Guestbook. You can visit the actual Guestbook here and leave an entry. I discussed how I am combating Guestbook spam in an Emu Café Social post.
Finally, I wrote a new essay on RSS, ATOM, and JSON feeds. I had written about offering full-text feeds two weeks earlier. In my new essay, I considered full archive feeds and explained why we do not offer those (with one of my world-renowned artistic renderings). Over on The Emu Café Social, I wrote about finding the earliest capture of one of our RSS feeds in the Wayback Machine.
I had two additional full Emu Café Social entries on link shorteners and BuddyPress and adding thank you messages to RSS feed items. Finally, I also made several microposts on our sister site (see the Activity Stream). The highlight of those was a new overheard on the street entry.
Leaves from around the web
Let's check in on what's growing around the world wide web...
Diplomacy in Kazakhstan
Memoir: US-Kazakhstan diplomacy during the 9/11 crisis
Larry C. Napper for Eurasianet. September 3, 2024.
As advertised -- from the former U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan.
Memoir: Dethroning the “King of Kazakhstan”
Larry C. Napper for Eurasianet. September 4, 2024.
Part 2...
Problems and solution
The Houthis have defeated the US Navy
Tom Sharpe for The Telegraph. September 30, 2024.
But to be fair, Islamist terrorist organizations in Yemen are known for their great tradition of naval excellence.
Analysis: Al Qaeda kills hundreds in Burkina Faso attack
Caleb Weiss for Long War Journal. August 26, 2024.
I'd recommend getting a handle on that.
Ozempic weight loss: Jabs could slow ageing, researchers say
Sam Hancock for BBC News. August 30, 2024.
Maybe it also makes terrorists change their ways.
Bossy headlines
Got Fireflies? Try Talking To Them With A Green LED
Donald Papp for Hackaday. August 6, 2023.
First take the time to understand what you're saying with the green LED.
Don't Run A Marathon
Alexandra Sizemore at Overdistance. August 12, 2024.
OK.
Birds
Birds Aren't Real - How to Create Your Own "Bird"
Brad Lampere. August 19, 2024.
Why create your own when the fictions are free?
Eating the Birds of America: Audubon’s Culinary Reviews of America’s Birds - US Bird History
Robert Francis for US Bird History. August 11, 2024.
I could have told him that belted kingfishers would taste fishy.
Improve yourself first
Mammoth Cave National Park uses bad reviews to attract tourists
Morning Brew. August 29, 2024.
They'd attract even more visitors if they delivered on the "mammoth" promise.
The Psychology of the Psychic
Chris French for The MIT Press Reader. August 6, 2024.
Psychic powers would help finding the date of publication of MIT Press Reader articles.
Crows May Be Smarter Than We Thought
Kenna Hughes-Castleberry for Nautilus. August 28, 2024.
Underestimating something and writing about your own failure is the new method of content generation.
Difficulty giving stuff
Newborn rattlesnakes at a Colorado ‘mega den’ are making their live debut
Mead Gruver for the Associated Press (via The Washington Times). August 29, 2024.
I guess a rattle wouldn't be a good gift for the new parents.
Japanese government suspends plan to pay Tokyo women 600,000 to move away to get married
Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. August 30, 2024.
Looks less impressive after you do the monetary conversion.
Finding stuff
Random Tugs 425
tugster: a waterblog. August 31, 2024.
I discovered this fine photo blog while researching the Al Smith boat.
A Roman Road Was Hiding Beneath a Primary School Playing Field in England / Smithsonian
Sonja Anderson for Smithsonian Magazine. August 22, 2024.
Someday they'll tell their grandkids how they climbed the Roman road to school everyday.
Shhh! Don't tell anyone
Seoul investigating leak of secret military agents’ identities to North Korea
Jeongmin Kim and Joon Ha Park for NK News. July 29, 2024.
Not secret anymore, alas.
The “Secret” Advantage Of Chinese And Korean Game Companies Entering Japan
Serkan Toto for KantanGames. March 8, 2023.
Looks like America is being boxed out of the garbage money-grabbing mobile games market in Japan by South Korea and China.
NFL, then and now
Football analysis and NFL stats for the Moneyball era - Authors of Pro Football Prospectus 2006 and 2005
Mike Tanier for Football Outsiders. June 20, 2006.
"Timberlake’s 1-for-15 performance makes him look like a laughingstock. He’s better remembered as one of Michigan’s great quarterbacks, a Rose Bowl hero who might have had what it took to be a fine pro quarterback or running back. It’s a shame he was asked to do what he couldn’t."
NFL poised to welcome private equity ownership
Cassandra Cassidy for Morning Brew. August 27, 2024.
NFL teams became too expensive for most of the billionaires.
A fitting tribute
Tribute in Light testing begins, creating incredible beams to the sky seen across NYC – PHOTOS
Alex Mead for the New York Post. September 6, 2024.
I shared my own photo of the lights back in 2020 but I will leave it to the pros this year.
Most-turned leaves of the newsletter week
I use a privacy-friendly and entirely local tool called Koko Analytics to track page hits. In each issue of the newsletter, I list our five most-visited articles, according to Koko Analytics, for the one-week period beginning with Saturday and ending with Friday. Below, you will find the most-visited articles of 2024 Newsletter Week 36 (August 31 through September 6). I will include 2024 and historic (which runs through the first week of 2021) ranking information for each article.
(1) An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search
Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 18, 2022.
18 top fives and 5 top placements in 2024; 30 and 10 overall.
(2) Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)
Nicholas A. Ferrell. November 28, 2021.
26 top fives and 1 top placement in 2024; 83 and 9 overall.
(3) The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 14, 2021.
12 top fives and 4 top placements in 2024; 144 and 73 overall.
(4) Height differences in anime romances
Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 22, 2023.
2 top fives in 2024; 15 top fives and 7 top placements overall.
(5) My Logitech Washable Wired Keyboard K310
Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 20, 2024.
First appearance.
Analysis
My 2022 review of Norton Safe Search made a small bit of ranking history, becoming only the fourth article to have led 10 separate newsletter week rankings. See our all-time top five (stats go back to start of 2021):
| Rank | Article | Top Placements |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei | 73 |
| 2 | Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage | 11 |
| 3 | Reviewing the HALOmask and är Mask | 10 |
| 3 | An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search | 10 |
| 5 | Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices | 9 |
| 5 | Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2 | 9 |
One can immediately see why we have not had many articles hit the 10 weekly win mark: My study of the phrase tsuki ga kirei has hogged the spot 73 times since May 2021. It has even managed to steal four top placements in what has been a down 2024 for it. The two articles knocking on the door, F-Droid (which would likely have well more than 20 top placements but for tsuki ga kirei) and Angel Next Door, make up our three most-visited articles of the past three months along with the newest member of the 10 top placement club, and I would not be surprised to see them both break through before the calendar turns to 2025 (notwithstanding the Angel Next Door article just having had its 17-week top five streak snapped). Newer readers may not be familiar with the mask article. That was authored by Victor V. Gurbo back in December 2020 and notched 10 first-place marks in 2021, including one streak of five in a row. It secured what turned out to be its final top placement just over three years to the day in 2021 Newsletter Week 35. It has not been a factor in any of our rankings since February 2022. My Fire Emblem strategy guide secured its 11 top placements in its first 11 full weeks online in 2023, and remained a top-five regular throughout much of 2023, albeit without returning to the top spot. It is charting a different course in 2024 in being the highest ranked article in yearly views (19th) without having a weekly top five appearance.
On the whole, our search engine traffic returned to Earth after two strong weeks following a Google algorithm change, suggesting that our late August bump was something of an aberration. The top five was week but our views were well-distributed and on par with most weeks from April-early August.
News leaf journal
I made a few more minor tweaks to the site design of The New Leaf Journal -- mainly changing some colors and making adjustments to our theme author box, which you will now only see on our author archive pages. I reversed one change I made regarding featured images which was causing a display issue on mobile devices. More significant theming work happened over with The Emu Café Social, especially in its Activity Stream section.
I am continuing to work on the projects I had originally planned for late August (those are noted in my August review), so you will be able to read those articles and more in the near future.
Taking leaf
Thank you as always for reading The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you have not done so already, you can sign up to receive our weekly email, add our RSS feed to your favorite feed reader, or simply check in on our archive when you feel like reading a new issue (see our full list of options).
Until September 14,
Cura ut valeas -- N.A. Ferrell.