June 14, 2025

Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXXXIV 〜 *Cough*

We have no new New Leaf Journal articles to share in Newsletter Leaf Journal 234, but this edition of the newsletter comes with 27 links from around the web and fun news and notes about the NLJ.

Welcome to the 234th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal and its short-form writingsister publication, The Emu Café Social. This newsletter comes to you as always from the administrator, editor, and writer of both publications, Nicholas A. Ferrell. One thing that did not come to you last week was new articles. My sickness from the previous week transmogrified into a persistent cough and I had work assignments to complete, so new articles will have to wait until the coming week. But The Newsletter Leaf Journal is its own project, so I decided to not only publish a new issue, but also syndicate this issue of the newsletter to The New Leaf Journal to make up for the lack of new articles.

Leaves from around the web

Due to the fact that I did not publish new articles and because my saved link backlog has grown the last few weeks, I present 27 links from around the web for your reading pleasure instead of the usual 21.

Birthday-adjacent

A guide to the shoulder tabs Army soldiers wear on their uniforms
Joshua Skovlund for Task & Purpose. September 13, 2024.

In case you were wondering.

The Coconuts Go Rolling Along?
Tony Vacha. June 5, 2025.

"In 1948, the U.S. Army faced a significant problem: it didn’t have an official song. Every service, including the newly created Air Force in 1947, had official songs. While this may seem trivial compared to the era's challenges, it posed a problem."

Some U.S. President Birthday Facts
Nicholas A. Ferrell. June 14, 2020.

Remember that no one said I can't call my own number.

Golf stories

Woods completes record run at Open
Associated Press (via ESPN). June 19, 2000.

We approach the 25-year anniversary of the most dominant major championship performance in golf history, wherein Tiger Woods won the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach by 15 strokes. In the 25 years since, the largest margin of victory at a major has been 8 -- so count this as a record that does not seem to be in great danger. Notably one of the 8-stroke winning margins of the majors came at the 2000 British Open, just a few short weeks after the U.S. Open, when Woods completed the career grand slam at age 24.

Should Medicare Cover Golf Fees?
Chris Pope for City Journal. May 5, 2025.

"Purchasing new golf clubs for Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes won’t reduce their risk of costly hospitalizations, while paying for their ski passes may actually increase it."

Osprey drops shark onto disc golf course after being harassed by crows
Brad Matthews for The Washington Times. June 10, 2025.

I wonder if the disc golfers recognized Greg Norman.

Speaking of birds and disks (see previous link)

Baby Birds Gallery—Fuzzy Photos You'll Love All About Birds. June 11, 2025.

I'm particularly partial to the third barn swallow (and sympathetic to the first two).

FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems - Windows 95 also being phased out
Joe Morales for Tom's Hardware. June 7, 2025.

The floppy disks say they're being retired not eliminated.

Using links to revisit my "classic" articles

Anime romance isn’t like reality. Why? Biomechanics
Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. November 13, 2025.

Here I thought that I was the only person to write extensively about height differences in anime romances.

Scopely officially closes $3.5 billion acquisition of Niantic's games business
Samuel Roberts for Games Industry Biz. June 3, 2025.

An earlier version of this story prompted my study of the history of Pokémon in Saudi Arabia.

Assassins’ bullets rip through golden elite of Tashkent (archived)
Polina Ivanova for Financial Times. February 23, 2025.

Political corruption in the family of the President of Uzbekistan (I covered himn in my second New Leaf Journal article), was relevant to at least one case I worked on for my day job -- so I found this article interesting.

Mystery pigeon lady is snatching sickly birds at NYC museum, leaving locals on edge: 'Some die'
Nicole Rosenthal for the New York Post. June 6, 2025.

At The New Leaf Journal, we only briefly detain pigeons to remove twine from their toes.

Please use the internet correctly

Meta and Yandex are de-anonymizing Android users’ web browsing identifiers
Dan Goodin for Ars Technica. June 3, 2025.

I agree this is bad but I am having trouble becoming too worked up about the Instagram app and Yandex spying on users.

An Ugly New Marketing Strategy Is Driving Me Nuts (and You Too)
Ted Gioia at The HOnest Broker. June 11, 2025.

I don't doubt this is all true but I don't experience the marketing strategy because I use the internet correctly.

Let's check in on how AI is making the world a better place

Japan starts selling smart salads in its new AI vending machine
Elliot Hale for SoraNews24. April 20, 2025.

"Getting to enjoy a salad when you’re out and about is nice, but nothing revolutionary. However, this is no ordinary vending machine: Kompeito have seen fit to incorporate AI into it. Built-in cameras track foot traffic and expiration dates, allowing the machine to dynamically adjust prices. So, the same salad you saw at lunch might cost less at dinner. Kompeito is on track to lift the curse of throwing away unwanted, short shelf-life salads once and for all."

Starbucks to roll out Microsoft Azure OpenAI assistant for baristas
Amelia Lucas for CNBC. June 10, 2025.

Have they considered just selling normal non-burnt coffee?

College grads shocked as names are read at commencement — by AI: 'What a beautiful personal touch!'
Marissa Matozzo for the New York Post.

Yes, this is bad. But at least the Pace University graduates from the lower Manhattan campus were able to enjoy one of the world's most aesthetically pleasing college campuses.

Snake violence

NYC cyclist tried to save venomous snake — and ended up with a gruesome injury
Zoe Hussain for the New York Post. May 23, 2025.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Florida Bobcat Kills 13-Foot Python for the First Time on Record. It's a Sign of Nature 'Fighting Back' Against the Invasive Snakes
Sarah Kuta for Smithsonian Magazine. June 3, 2025.

Bob the Florida Man is so yesterday. Florida Bob[cat] is in.

Video game consoles with design flaws

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Cassette Vision
Nicole Brantigan at Nicole Express. November 24, 2024.

My first thought when I saw the hard-wired controllers was "bad decision" -- that thought was in line with the author's hands-on experience.

'Sega's Switch' Lives On Thanks To This Absolutely Incredible Mod
Damien McFerran for Time Extension. June 3, 2025.

As someone who actually had a Sega Nomad, I always appreciate it when an article recognizes its battery-guzzling issue.

Where Google isn't the biggest problem

Google Attracts 1.6 Trillion Visitors Or 34x Compared To ChatGPT As It Dominates Search Engine Battle
Ramish Zatar for Wccf Tech. May 8, 2025.

I have my issues with Google Search but I approve of the headline.

Tired of Google and Apple taking a huge chunk of mobile game revenue, Japanese companies are thinking up ways to let players spend money “out of app”
Amber V for Automation West. January 24, 2025.

Meanwhile, some people would prefer to pay for games once.

Google Maps in India has been blamed for fatal accidents
Ananya Bhattacharya for Rest of World. February 5, 2025.

This seems more like an India problem than a Google problem.

Essays about writing

Turning Off the TV in Your Mind
Lincoln Michel. December 13, 2024.

A good essay on the dangers of writing while thinking in terms of a different medium.

How to Make a Living as a Writer
Gabrielle Drolet for The Walrus. May 20, 2025.

Step one: "I keep up with Horse News and Horse Laws." (Context is overrated.)

How to Write Like a Michelin Chef - by Vanessa Glau
Vanessa Glau at Occam's Lab. March 9, 2025.

Comes with recipes for writing but not writing recipes.

Most-turned leaves of the newsletter week

Although I did not publish new New Leaf Journal articles last week, people still read my old articles.

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, you will find the most-visited articles of 2025 Newsletter Week XXIV (June 7-13) along with their 2025 and historic (going back 2021) weekly ranking statistics.

1. Misleading ARRIS Modem Login Instructions
   Author/Published: N.A. Ferrell. June 12, 2024.
   Ranking History: 5 appearances and 1 top placement in 2025/overall.

2. Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013)
   Author/Published: N.A. Ferrell. July 5, 2021.
   Ranking History: 3 appearances in 2025; 100 appearances and 4 top placements overall.

3. Kaori After Story - Visual Novel Review
   Author/Published: N.A. Ferrell. December 31, 2022.
   Ranking History: 11 appearances and 2 top placements in 2025; 12 appearances and 2 top placements overall.

4. Amazon "Cargo Bikes" in Brooklyn
   Author/Published: N.A. Ferrell. April 9, 2025.
   Ranking History: 7 appearances and 3 top placements.

5. Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships
   Author/Published: N.A. Ferrell. July 9, 2024.
   Ranking History: 22 appearances and 10 top placements in 2025; 25 appearances and 11 top placements overall.

Analysis

This week's ranking comes with two asterisks. Firstly, on Saturday we had an unusual number of views, many of which were almost certainly attributable to bots or scrapers. However, no individual article had an unusual number of views, so I would ordinarily say it should not have affected the weekly ranking. However, on Thursday and Friday, we had a lengthy period when Koko Analytics was not recording page hits after an update (I resolved the issue by clearing our page cache -- it's always caching), so that in conjunction with Saturday may have affected spots 3-5 of the ranking. With that being said, my ARRIS modem story won the week by a good margin to become our eighth weekly winner of 2025. Also notable was my 2021 article on installing Ubuntu Touch on a now-unsupported tablet which notched its 100th weekly ranking appearance since being published almost four years ago. With that, it becomes the second article to reach the century mark, trailing well behind The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei and its 156 weekly ranking appearances. I do not expect to see a third member of the 100 club in 2025 since the only article in range of the milestone, Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021), has not made any ranking appearances this year. Moreover, it does not seem likely that we will have an article hit the milestone in 2026, but The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis (57) and An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search (55) still perform well enough that they could go on a run to put themselves within range of 100 by the end of 2025.

News leaf journal

I have some article projects in the works -- so you can look forward to my breaking my publishing drought this week (far be it for me to presume what you look forward to, however). I decided to skip writing a May 2025 review and consolidate May and June as one article in July since we are already in the middle of June and it does not look like the combined article count for May and June will be overwhelming. I also plan to start publishing more regularly on The Emu Café Social (I have a short article idea backlog to work through), so be sure to keep tabs on that site as well if you are so inclined.

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.

I think I managed to put together a solid newsletter despite my not having published new articles recently. With that being said, The Newsletter Leaf Journal is best when it includes links to new New Leaf Journal leaves, and I expect to resume that tradition with next week's newsletter.

Until June 20,
Cura ut valeas -- Nicholas A. Ferrell.