Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXXXII 〜 Return of the BLOB
Returning fron a one-week hiatus (and leading into another), Newsletter Leaf Journal 232 covers the newest NLJ posts from the previous two weeks, 21 links from around the web, and some fun facts about the most popular NLJ articles going back to 2021.
Welcome to the 232nd 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 Filco Majestitouch v3 keyboard of the administrator/editor/writer of The New Leaf Journal and its short-form writing sister site, The Emu Café Social, Nicholas A. Ferrell. I was too busy to publish a newsletter last week, so this newsletter will cover two weeks' worth of news and notes. Moreover, I will be away next week, so this will be our second and last newsletter of May. I suppose I ought to make this newsletter count in light of the foregoing.
New Leaves From the Weeks That Were
I have not published much since mailing Newsletter 231 (perhaps not surprising after I missed a weekly newsletter), but I do have some new articles to share.
I published my review of April 2025 on May 5, 2025. I followed my format from the March review and explained my thinking behind all of our new April articles.
My first post-Newsletter 231 article was Checking Our RSS Service Subscriber Counts in Server Logs. I noticed that several RSS/ATOM/JSON feed services list how many people are subscribed to the site in question when requesting our feed. This article inspired Guestbook comments from Chris and from FT talking about the feed readers that they use to subscribe to The New Leaf Journal (you can also visit their sites from their comments).
From May 6-8, I published three consecutive articles centered on photographs I took on May 4, 2025. I continued my BLOB DYLAN series with BLOB DYLAN Seen in Williamsburg (May 2025). Minutes after I saw my first Williamsburg BLOB Dylan tag, I took the photo which led to Williamsburg Christmas Tree in May 2025. This dry Christmas tree one-upped a discarded Christmas tree I happened across in April 2021. Later that day, I took the time to appreciate the fog in Foggy Manhattan Skyline (May 4, 2025).
I read an article about a supposed traffic cone shortage in New York City. One day after reading that article, I witnessed a truck at a roadwork site back over two traffic cones. I then combined my take on a local news story with my first-hand reporting in NYC Open Streets Traffic Cone Shortage.
On The Emu Café Social, I wrote “killer for hire” Leaves Two Spam Comments -- which more or less speaks for itself (less substantive than our New Leaf Journal comments but unique in its own way).
Leaves From Around the Web
Let's check in on what's happening around the world wide web...
Make it stop
Should a Killer's Victim Be Able to "Speak" at a Sentencing Through AI?
Paul Cassell for The Volokh Conspiracy. May 8, 2025.
While I appreciate this long, nuanced take, the answers are "no," "vacate the sentence and remand for re-sentencing," and "this is creepy."
Did the BBC make an Agatha Christie deepfake?
Timothy Beck Werth for Mashable. May 1, 2025.
BBC's effort to turn this into a debate over whether it created a "deepfake" is a smart way to draw more attention to its desperate cry for attention and social media virality.
ChatGPT will soon record, transcribe, and summarize your meetings
Mayank Parmar for Beeping Computer. May 15, 2025.
This could streamline the meetings if everyone in the meeting decides to tune out under the assumption that they can learn what happened from ChatGPT later.
Revisiting past newsletters
Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50,000 cash
Patrick McKenzie at Bits about Money. March 5, 2025.
Investigating an absurd essay I featured in our around the web section back in Newsletter 174.
Iran Shows Off Underground 'Missile City'
Howard Altman for The War Zone. March 25, 2025.
In so doing, it reveals similar flaws to the underground facility it showed off last year (discussed in Newsletter 180).
More yakuza members caught stealing huge haul of sea cucumbers from the ocean
Master Blaster for SoraNews24. May 16, 2025.
I haven't shared news about the Yakuza's sea cucumber harvesting and trafficking business since Newsletter 144. Good time for an update.
Japanese theme parks
Hello Kitty theme park to be overrun by zombies this summer, young children barred from entering
Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. May 15, 2025.
I am not 100% sure what the plot of Hello Kitty is but I am 95% sure the Hello Kitty theme park lost it here.
Shiori's PokéPark Memories
Johto Times. January 16, 2025.
Shiori shares her memories of her childhood visit to a Pokémon theme park in Nagoya, Japan, which existed only for six months in 2005.
ET phone home
The constant need for a source of entertainment
Joel Chrono. May 6, 2025.
At least he remembers the world before phones and can use that as a frame of reference.
Stop Treating Phone Numbers As A Digital ID
Not the Solution. January 12, 2025.
I second this take from our most recent Guestbook commenter.
The Alabama Landline That Keeps Ringing
Emily McCrary for Oxford American. April 23, 2025.
One line reminded me of one of my articles: "The students let me hover over their shoulders while they do their jobs. There’s a lot of “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” Students say they know which callers expect to be addressed that way. The thicker the southern accent, the greater the expectation."
What could go wrong? Answering the headline with a headline edition.
Level-5 CEO says games are now being made 80-90% by AI, making “aesthetic sense” a must for developers
Dorde P for Automation West. May 7, 2025.
That's one way to spin it.
AI in Kazuma Kaneko's new game seemingly outputs images similar to Disney characters and other copyrighted material, raising concerns
Amber V for Automation West. May 9, 2025.
I was open to giving the developers the benefit of the doubt before I saw some of the offending images.
Smart ways to violate the U.S. immigration laws
Airline employee accused of trying to get drugs, cash through customs at Dulles
Brad Matthews for The Washington Times. May 6, 2025.
On the list of things to not do when you're in the United States on a visa: Smuggling 4.4 pounds of cocaine into Dulles International Airport.
Jamaican Citizen Arrested for Making a False Claim of Citizenship to Register to Vote in the 2024 Presidential Primary Election
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. May 14, 2025.
Neither the Republican nor Democratic Presidential Primaries were competitive, and the latter was rendered nugatory after the fact, so this is a uniquely stupid illegal voting case. At least the one I wrote about a few months ago involved the general election in what was the second closest state in the 2024 Presidential election.
Dress codes
More than 1,000 Starbucks employees strike as dress code goes into effect
Ian Stark for UPI. May 15, 2025.
I have reviewed my open source intelligence sources and found the theater kids.
Defying the Sloppy “No Dress Code” Dress Code at the Start-up I Once Worked For
Buck Throckmorton at Ace of Spades. April 29, 2025.
I've covered restrictive dress codes, but not the soft tyranny of everyday casual Friday.
Turkmen internet
Internet In Turkmenistan, Already The World's Slowest, Faces Further Restrictions
RFE/RL. January 13, 2022.
The average internet speed in Turkmenistan in 2021 was slightly slower than my internet speed when I connected my current modem to the cable but my ISP did not yet recognize the new modem.
Internet life in Turkmenistan detected!
Eurasianet. April 21, 2025.
Imagine banning as many things as Turkmenistan does and not banning TikTok.
Knowing your audience
Russia-linked hacking campaign targets European diplomats with fake wine tasting events
Greg Norman for Fox News. April 16, 2025.
I chuckled when I saw the malware is called "GRAPELOADER"
Shameless Chinese firms advertise ‘inflatable boats for refugees’
Sophia Yan and Nick Gutteridge for The Telegraph. April 20, 2025.
I begrudgingly respect the SEO game.
Most-turned leaves of the newsletter weeks
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.
Of course, having failed to mail a newsletter last week, we have two newsletter week rankings to cover...
Most-turned leaves of newsletter week 19 (May 3-9)
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Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships
Author/Date: N.A. Ferrell. July 9, 2024.
Ranking History: 17 appearances and 10 top placements in 2025; 21 appearances and 11 top placements overall. -
How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name
Author/Date: N.A. Ferrell. March 11, 2021.
Ranking History: 4 appearances in 2025; 9 appearances overall. -
Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow
Author/Date: N.A. Ferrell. October 5, 2023.
Ranking History: 3 appearances in 2025; 5 appearances overall. -
Yuki's Hair Color in A Sign of Affection
Author/Date: N.A. Ferrell. February 2, 2024.
Ranking History: 1 appearance in 2025; 15 appearances and 6 top placements overall. -
Amazon "Cargo Bikes" in Brooklyn
Author/Date: N.A. Ferrell. April 9, 2025.
Ranking History: 2 appearances.
Most-turned leaves of newsletter week 20 (May 10-16)
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1997 Otis Thorpe trade and the 2003 NBA Draft
Author/Date: N.A. Ferrell. June 27, 2023.
Ranking History: First appearance and top placement in 2025 & overall. -
Amazon "Cargo Bikes" in Brooklyn
Author/Date: N.A. Ferrell. April 9, 2025.
Ranking History: 3 appearances. -
How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name
Author/Date: N.A. Ferrell. March 11, 2021.
Ranking History: 5 appearances in 2025; 10 appearances overall. -
Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships
Author/Date: N.A. Ferrell. July 9, 2024.
Ranking History: 18 appearances and 10 top placements in 2025; 22 appearances and 11 top placements overall. -
Misleading ARRIS Modem Login Instructions
Author/Date: N.A. Ferrell. June 12, 2024.
Ranking History: 3 appearances in 2025 & overall.
Analysis
We had a solid week 19 by recent standards followed by what was our weakest week of 2025 in week 20. While some of the relative weakness of week 20 may be on account from my limited publishing of late, I will note we saw similar softening trends in the spring and early summer in 2023 and 2024.
The only surprise in week 19 was the appearance of my article on the hair color of the heroine of A Sign of Affection. That article led the April and May rankings in 2024 and ended up finishing 9th overall for the year, but since June 2024 it had generally been out-performed by my review of A Sign of Affection and had not made weekly ranking appearance since 2024 Newsletter Week 16. Nevertheless, it is currently the 17th most-visited article of 2025 (surprisingly beating my review of A Sign of Affection, which sits in 19th), so its checking in for a weekly ranking appearance is only a mild surprise.
Newsletter week 20 was substantially more interesting than week 19. My article on an ill-fated 1997 NBA Trade wherein the then-Vancouver Grizzlies acquired 47 games of a 35-year old Otis Thorpe (for a team which went 15-67 that season) in exchange for what would turn into the second overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft made its first weekly ranking in first-place overall. It received much of its traffic on the days following the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery. My review of the forget-me-not flower continues a good run this spring, making its fifth appearance of the year and tenth overall -- a strong stretch considering it has been online since March 2021.
Extra Analysis -- The 10 Top-Placement Milestone
On Newslwetter Week 19, Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships became the first article of 2025 to reach double-digit weekly first-place finishes. With the way things are going, it may well be the only article to hit double digits it 2025. I thought it would be fun to see when articles hit the milestone in previous years.
| Week | Year | Article |
|---|---|---|
| 12 | 2022 | The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei |
| 16 | 2023 | Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage |
| 19 | 2025 | Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships |
| 31 | 2023 | The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei |
| 35 | 2021 | Reviewing the HALOmask and är Mask (2021) |
| 37 | 2021 | The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei |
| 41 | 2024 | Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2 |
| 46 | 2024 | An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search |
2025 comes in behind 2022 and 2023 for the earliest we have seen an article notch at least 10 weekly top-placements -- far out-pacing last year where it took until week 41 for an article to hit the milestone. One trend to watch will be whether we have a second article hit the number in 2025. At the moment only three articles have multiple first-place finishes and none of those three articles have made a weekly ranking since the second week of April. There is precedent for late-risers, however. Last year Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2 earned its first top placement in Newsletter Week 23 before making it to 10 in Week 41. This segues into another fun note. Save for 2022 when only one article had at least 10 first-place weekly finishes (30 in that case), the second artcile to hit the 10 first-place milestone was the article which ended the year with the most top placements.
Taking leaf
Thank you as always for reading The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you have not done so already, you can follow this newsletter by signing up for our weekly email, adding our RSS feed to your favorite feed reader, or checking in on our archive page.
As I noted at the top, there will be no newsletter next Saturday (May 24). I will be away. While I plan to publish some new New Leaf Journal and Emu Café Social posts during that stretch, dealing with the newsletter on my laptop would be irritating. Thus, the newsletter will return on May 31 with what promises to be another exciting recap of two weeks' worth of article news and notes.
Until May 31 for newsletter readers,
Cura ut valeas -- Nicholas A. Ferrell.