Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXVII 〜 Squash hat
Issue 217 of The Newsletter Leaf Journal features links to new New Leaf Journal articles on decorative pumpkins and presidential election stats, 21 links from around the web, and news and notes about what readers can look forward to in the last few days of January.
Welcome to the 217th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal and its short-form sister publication, The Emu Café Social. This newsletter comes you as always from the administrator of both publications, Nicholas A. Ferrell. I did not publish much in the last week, but I am winding down three big projects that will go up in the coming week. Below, I review the week that was and what you can expect for the rest of January.
Leaves from the week that was
I published three new articles in The New Leaf Journal. My showcase article of the week was Trump 2024 vs Bush 2004: State-by-State. I was inspired to undertake this study after noting that although Presidents Trump and G.W. Bush winning their respective terms 20 years apart under different circumstances and with different electoral coalitions, they had the same win-loss result in 44 out of 50 states and very similar top-line outcomes under various other metrics.
Before my newest election survey, I wrote two new pumpkin articles. First, in a change from my rotting pumpkin series, Putting Pumkins Out to Pasture praises some Carroll Gardens/Boerum Hill residents and/or businesses for preempting the rotting decorative pumpkin problem. In Brave Pumpkin in a Hat, I admire a pumpkin well-decorated with a knit cap in Carroll Gardens, but wonder how much longer it can, or should, stand athwart the winter elements. Relatedly, I created a new collection hub for pumpkin posts.
I only published twice on The Emu Café Social. First, I wrote about learning about a visual novel called A Summer's End and being inspired to share it because its name is very similar to a very different visual novel I reviewed, At Summer's End. I also promised an inauguration thing I learned, but I have yet to deliver. I will try to catch up on things I learned posts this week.
Leaves from around the web
Let's check in on what's happening around the world wide web.
Smelly flowers
Visitors flock to see the stinky corpse flower bloom this week
Matty Merritt for Morning Brew. January 24, 2025.
"Putricia" is a great name. I am good with appreciating Putricia from a different continent.
Blooming corpse flower unleashes foul 'rotten flesh' stench at Brooklyn Botanical Garden in historical first
Katherine Donlevy and Desheania Andrews for the New York Post. January 24, 2025.
This is a little close to home. I will appreciate from afar and stick to documenting non-corpse flowers at the BBG.
Lonely animals
Japanese aquarium installs fake people to keep apparently lonely sunfish company
Casey Bassel for SoraNews24. January 22, 2025.
I'm torn. Do I go with an allegory of the cave joke or ask when the sunfish will start to think there's something fishy about the whole situation?
This Japanese aquarium wants you to FaceTime its shy eels
Emiko Jozuka for CNN. May 1, 2020.
I do not accept "FaceTime" in the verb club.
A question of addiction
Hochul administration pitches woke alternative way to refer to drug abusers instead of 'addicts'
Carl Campanile for the New York Post. January 22, 2025.
Problem solved!
TikTok-loaded phones going for thousands on eBay, Facebook
Associated Press (via The Washington Times). January 24, 2025.
I would say this makes sense if you think of the TikTok "users" as being addicted to certain budget controlled substances, but perish the thought since New York has solved that problem.
Two NY men die after using bat poop — described as ‘natural superfood’ for weed — to grow pot: study
Patrick Reilly for the New York Post. December 17, 2024.
The danger of using what you grow while you are growing it.
In-flight issues
Why United Does Not Allow You To Use In-Flight Screen As Extended Display
Josh Blackman for The Volokh Conspiracy. January 23, 2025.
Business class problems.
Spirit Airlines Bans 'Lewd or Offensive' Clothing, Tattoos
James Morley III for Newsmax. January 24, 2025.
I never flew Spirit but I saw enough on my recent Southwest flights to come down in favor of dress codes for flying.
Taking responsibility for your proxies
The Chechen factor complicates efforts to ease Azerbaijani-Russian tension
Eurasianet. January 10, 2025.
Wherein Russia finds itself between a rock and a hard place as a result of outsourcing control over a large region of the country to a provincial warlord with anti-air systems.
Iran criticizes Donald Trump's redesignation of the Houthis as a terror group
Mike Glenn for The Washington Times. January 24, 2025.
Iran is taking this oddly personally. Do they have some stake in the Houthis?
US Withdrawal from World Health Organization Has Health Funds Scrambling for New Cash
Sean Crain for The Daily Upside. January 22, 2025.
You'd have thought for how much influence the Chinese government has demonstrated it has in WHO that it was footing more of the bill.
Vampiric TikTok
Why a personal site rather than social media presence?
Juha-Matti Santala. June 30, 2024.
This would be good reading for certain content creators on a certain CCP-controlled social media app that may or may not exist for much longer.
Is the TikTok Ban a Chance to Rethink the Whole Internet? (archived)
Claire Malone for The New Yorker. January 17, 2025.
Should probably ban TikTok first and deal with the rest of the internet later.
Connected by my comments
United Nations announces new plan to counter the surge in antisemitism
Edith M. Lederer for the Associated Press. January 18, 2025.
Next up the Taliban will announce a new plan to counter the alarming number of girls not going to school.
Jan Egeland warns that funding cuts to Afghanistan are the biggest threat to helping women
The Associated Press. January 19, 2025.
This makes sense if you substitute either "the Taliban and a significant number of citizens and nationals of Afghanistan" for "funding cuts" or "NGOs" for "women." You can't do a double-substitution, but either one gets the job done.
Belarus's exciting Middle East adventures
How Belarus Supported Assad – While Helping the Pentagon Arm His Opponents - The Moscow Times
The Moscow Times. December 14, 2024.
Ineffectually, for the most part.
Inside Belarus’ secret program to undermine the EU
Tatsiana Ashurkevich for Politico. January 23, 2025.
This is a good report but I quibble with the headline. This program was much less "secret" than the salary of Belarusian President Lukashenko's hairstylist.
Good essays to compensate for my low output
If You’re Breathing, There’s Still Time.
Robert F. Graboyes. January 12, 2025.
A story of starting over multiple times.
Fly Away
Theodore Dalrymple for Taki's Magazine. December 20, 2024.
Eloquent, melancholic thoughts on stinkbugs, flies drawn to fly paper, and the phenomenon of influencers.
Emotional Intelligence Is Overrated
Adam Grant. September 30, 2014.
True but would definitely be considered fighting words among the staff at my some of my old schools.
Most-turned leaves of the newsletter week
I use a privacy-friendly and entirely local tool called Koko Analytics (see my 2022 review) 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, I present the five most-visited articles of 2025 Newsletter Week 4 (Jan 18-24) with 2025 and historic (going back to 2021) ranking information for each of the five articles.
(1.) An Early Review of Pixelfed – Instagram Alternative
N.A. Ferrell. November 13, 2020.
2025: 2 appearance and 2 top placement.
Historic: 37 appearances and 4 top placements.
(2.) Kaori After Story - Visual Novel Review
N.A. Ferrell. December 31, 2022.
2025: 4 appearances and 2 top placements.
Historic: 5 appearances and 2 top placements.
(3.) Calvin Coolidge Describes His Mother, Victoria
N.A. Ferrell. March 13, 2021.
2025: 2 appearances.
Historic: 4 appearances.
(4.) Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships
N.A. Ferrell. July 9, 2024.
2025: 2 appearances.
Historic: 6 appearances and 1 top placement.
(5.) An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search
N.A. Ferrell. October 18, 2022.
2025: 4 appearances.
Historic: 50 appearances and 18 top placements.
Analysis
My 2020 Pixelfed review easily took its second consecutive top placement, followed for the second week in a row by my review of Kaori After Story. Both articles fell off from Newsletter Week 3, so I dare say we are close to seeing our third weekly winner of 2025, most likely in Newsletter Week 6 if not 5. My piece on Calvin Coolidge's recollections of his mother returned to the top five after narrowly missing the week 4 ranking, showing that it promises to continue being a factor in the early stages of 2025. My Norton Safe Search review had its first weekly ranking close call in some time, but it hung on to make it 24 consecutive appearances. In so doing, it crossed the 50 appearance milestone, which becoming the fifth article to join that exclusive club.
Most Top-5 Appearances 2021-2025
- The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei - 153
- Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013) - 97
- Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021) - 85
- The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis - 55
- An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search - 50
If my Pixelfed review's revival proves to be sustainable, 13 more appearances in the remaining 48 weeks of 2025 seems possible. Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2 has made two appearances in 2025 and needs 20 more to reach 50 all time. While I would not rate that as likely to happen at this stage, it still could. But beyond those two, I do not see any other likely candidates to hit 50 all-time top-fives this year, highlighting that it remains an exclusive club. (I will submit that I do think my Ubuntu Touch article will find the three appearances it needs in 2025 to reach 100, but it has not been a threat in the first four weeks of the year.)
News leaf journal
Our next newsletter will be mailed on February 1, so I will preview what you can expect for the rest of January.
I am continuing to work on one 2024 anime review and two articles recapping the year that was in anime. I had planned to publish those in early January, but circumstances intervened. I will publish them in January. I am also more than half-way through drafting a new, second look at Pixelfed, inspired by seeing how well my 2020 review has done in recent weeks. Those are my major priorities for the next week, but I may sneak an additional short article in there, especially since two of the anime articles will go up on the same day.
Taking leaf
Thank you as always for reading The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you are not already a regular reader, you can sign up for our Saturday email, add our Newsletter's RSS feed to your favorite feed reader, or simply check in on our archive page at your leisure. You can see your options here.
While we have fallen just off our pace in the first two months, January will still be -- save for our site melting down or something -- our busiest non-Hacker News month on record, surpassing December 2024. While I need some new attention-grabbing articles to keep up the pace (we started strong in 2023 before having a soft stretch from April-August), I dare say things are looking up as of late.
Until February 2025,
Cura ut valeas -- Nicholas A. Ferrell.