November 15, 2025

Newsletter Leaf Journal CCLIV 〜 Blue light buyout

Issue 254 of The Newsletter Leaf Journal features links to NLJ articles on sports and glasses and 14 new posts from ECS. We also have our regular collection of 21 links from around the web and other news and notes from the week that was.

Welcome to the 253rd edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal and its short-form writing sister publication, The Emu Café Social. This newsletter comes to you as always from the administrator, editor, and writer of both publications, Nicholas A. Ferrell.

While we have had busier weeks, I put up a good word count between NLJ and ECS. Below, you will find links to my new posts, 21 links from around the web, and our regular assortment of news and notes.

Leaves from the week that was

I published three new New Leaf Journal articles since mailing Newsletter 253 (an improvement!).

I recently read an article about a podcast interview with former NBA player John Salley. Mr. Salley told the story of his first game back in Detroit in 1992 after having been traded from the Detroit Pistons to the Miami Heat. According to Mr. Salley, Dennis Rodman, who was still on the Pistons, promised Mr. Salley that he would not guard him, leading to a big scoring night for Mr. Salley. On a whim, I tried to find the box score for the game Mr. Salley referenced. What started as a whim turned into Investigating John Salley's Return to Detroit.

On November 14, 2023, I wrote about the most expensive college football coach buyout to date in On Coach Jimbo Fisher's Buyout. I was reminded of this thanks to the Years Ago Today plugin for WordPress. Instead of letting the anniversary pass without acknowledgment, I published a sequel article titled Kelly, Fisher, and College Football Coach Buyouts. The new article is prompted by the recent firing of LSU football coach Brian Kelly, who, according to his contract, is owed $54 million (assuming he gets the full $54 million, it would be the second biggest buyout behind Mr. Fisher's). As I explain in my article, there are notable links between the Fisher and Kelly stories.

I published another "Years Ago Today" follow-up article on November 13. Back on November 13, 2021, I published A Walker’s Review of BLUPOND’s Knight Vision Night Driving Glasses on using yellow driving glasses to blunt absurdly bright car headlights in Brooklyn. I still have my BLUPONDs, but I now have a new pair of glasses for protecting my eyes from headlights on evening walks. You can read about them in my November 13, 2025 post: Fighting Headlights With EBD Blue 360 Lenses.

I published 14 short posts on The Emu Café Social in the last week. I only realized how busy it was when I checked for this newsletter.

Last Saturday, I wrote about Ordering Copper Moon White Christmas Coffee after reading about it in one of my feed items. My Copper Moon White Christmas Coffee Arrive[d] a few days later, but I have not tried it yet.

I have been playing Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE: Encore for the Nintendo Switch. I published my prologue impressions a few weeks ago. After a bit of a hiatus, I finished chapter one and wrote my chapter one impressions and about what I did during the first intermission period. I am currently working on chapter 2.

I do not always agree with Amazon, but I found myself Agreeing With Amazon’s Perplexity Complaint. Speaking of AI, I agreed with a less-than-positive take on Mozilla's decision to allocate Firefox resources to so-called AI windows.

I wrote about minor troubleshooting after Upgrading OpenWrt on my NETGEAR WAX 202 AP. That was far easier than putting my KeyBar together. One thing I did not do was switch from Linux to BSD, but I made a joke about switching in Re; Linux Kernel Enabling Microsoft C Extensions.

I published two anime-related posts. I discussed a topic related to my 2024 TV anime series of the year in The Dangers in My Heart Movie PSA. I found a specious reason to question an objectively absurd localized anime title in My Gift Lvl 9999 Unlimited Gacha TV Anime Name Analysis.

I cannot tell you who the next New York City Schools Chancellor will be (only that it will not be good), but I predicted who it will not be in Chancellor Bowman?. Continuing the U.S. government action theme, I shared excerpts from the President's 2025 Veterans Day Proclamation.

I read that Detroit Pistons guard Cade Cunningham had 46 points on 45 field goal attempts (14-45 shooting from the floor). Perhaps inspired by my own John Salley research article, I dug up the box score for the game it reminded me of and shared the results of my archaeology in Cade Cunningham and Chris Webber.

If you enjoyed the posts, please give me a Re; The Thumbs Up Reaction.

Leaves from around the web

I may have given you enough to read this weekend between my two sites and all of the links within my posts. But I make no assumptions, so you also get 21 links from around the world wide web.

Ursine urgency

Japan deploys troops to combat deadly wave of bear attacks
Tim Kelly and Tom Bateman for Reuters. November 5, 2025.

The Self Defense Force lives up to its name.

Package delivery in Japan may be delayed due to bear risks
Master Blaster for SoraNews24. November 9, 2025.

Or maybe not. Sounds like the SDF is losing.

Bear attack shelters going on sale in Japan as country experiences record-high number of incidents
Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. November 14, 2025.

I'd say you could have yourself mailed somewhere if the bear doesn't leave, but the mail isn't happening because of the bears.

Infrastructure safety

Giant digital sumo wrestler now stopping trains at Tokyo station【Video】
Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. November 12, 2025.

The secret to Japan's train safety is revealed (that and no bears on trains, probably).

New Chinese bridge collapses in Sichuan Province near highway construction (HT Ace of Spades)
Greg Wehner for Fox News. November 11, 2025.

Has China considered holding its poorly built bridges up with virtual sumo wrestlers?

Problem and solutions?

The Ghosts in the Machine
Liz Pelly for Harper's Magazine. November 19, 2024.

I have never used Spotify and I don't think I'm missing out.

The algorithm failed music
Terrance O'Brien for The Verge. November 9, 2025.

I'm not an expert on the state of music streaming but it sounds like the algos have dones as much good for music as they have for writing and attention spans.

This Machine Flattens Your Old Warped Vinyl Records
Joe Fedewa for How To Geek. March 31, 2025.

I'm sure plenty of people wish this existed a long time ago.

Listening to Full Albums Again
Joel Chrono. October 21, 2025.

This post made me feel smart for quizzing my colleague Victor V. Gurbo about the song order in his album.

Legal issues in Iraq

Macron Occupies a Jewish Family Home in Baghdad
Alexander Kippen for Tablet Magazine. October 20, 2025.

This scenario comes courtesy of the late Saddam Hussein.

Lukoil Declares Force Majeure in Iraq Over US Sanctions
Reuters (via gCaptain). November 10, 2025.

The Iraqi government could have avoided this problem with a little foresight.

Bug news

The secret life of baobabs: how bats and moths keep Africa’s giant trees alive
Sarah Venter for The Conversation. November 6, 2025.

Something to think about when you're disappointed that the chrysalis you were nurturing turned out to be a cocoon. (PS: It was either a moth joke or noting that the headline combines bats with a word that is just two letters away from biolabs.)

Newly Discovered “Lucifer” Bee May Be the Only Hope for a Dying Australian Plant
Mihai Andrei for ZME Science. November 11, 2025.

This Australian plant must have really fallen.

Coach

Thank God I Suck at Golf (HT Neil Paine)
Ethan Strauss. November 5, 2025.

An article inspired by Auburn firing its college football coach (buyout $15.8 million)... reportedly in part because Coach was more passionate about golf than football.

The Prologue to the Patriot Dynasty
Robbie Marriage at Sports Passion Project. August 18, 2025.

A very long read on the history of the New England Patriots from the earliest days of football in Massachusetts to the odd circumstances surrounding the signing of Bill Belichick as coach in 1999. There are many high and low lights, but the story of how Robert Kraft maneuvered his way into buying the Patriots at a discount is the highlight for me.

Lost and found

Roman wood water pipe found in Belgium
The History Blog. May 8, 2025.

It looks like it has seen better days. Smithsonian Magazine has some additional details about the story.

Mei Mei the parakeet finally captured after weeks on the run in Central Park
Katherine Donlevy for the New York Post. October 29, 2025.

You may not think that I have a relevant NLJ link for an article about a found parakeet, but I do in fact have such a link.

Stay with me here

DeepSeek: A Tool Tuned for Social Governance
Alex Colville for The Jamestown Foundation. May 1, 2025.

"Some PRC journalists are treating DeepSeek as a safe source, offering a politically 'correct' commentary on issues that could generate social conflict if written about incorrectly."

Breitbart Business Digest: Time to Tariff Chinese AI
John Carney for Breitbart. November 10, 2025.

That's nice but what if we just ban it?

Driving news

EV pace car at Daytona sign of future, but one on starting line still under yellow flag
Kate Robertson for Just the News. February 24, 2025.

I am confident that NASCAR fans are not clamoring for electric stock cars.

Central Asia and Caucasus are some of the most hazardous places to drive in the world
Eurasianet. March 3, 2025.

Something to keep in mind when deciding whether to rent a car in Kazakhstan.

Most-turned leaves of the newsletter week

In each edition of the newsletter, I share our five most-visited articles of the week. This week's list comes courtesy of Statify, an entirely local and cookieless page visit counting solution for WordPress. Below, you will find the five most-visited articles of 2025 Newsletter Week XLVII (November 8-14) with their 2025 and historic (dating back to 2021) weekly ranking information.

1. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search
   Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 17, 2025.
   2025: 21 appearances and 15 top placements.

2. Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships
   Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 9, 2024.
   2025: 27 appearances and 10 top placements.
   Cumulative: 31 appearances and 11 top placements.

3. Amazon "Cargo Bikes" in Brooklyn
   Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 9, 2025.
   2025: 29 appearances and 8 top placements.

4. Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow
   Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 5, 2023.
   2025: 15 appearances.
   Cumulative: 17 appearances.

5. Umineko When They Cry Red Truth Guide
   Nicholas A. Ferrell. December 7, 2022.
   2025 & Cumulative: First appearance.

Analysis

Our top three from last week returned in the same order, but Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search won the week by a wide margin -- it had more views than articles 2-5 combined.

For the last two weeks, I have been rooting for my 2021 anime hair color study Futaba Igarashi’s Hair Is Naturally Green? to make its weekly ranking debut. It spent much of the previous two newsletter weeks in the top five and it finished sixth this week. Alas, it was left knocking on the door thanks to a 2022 article making a weekly ranking debut, Umineko When They Cry Red Truth Guide. This is not really an article, however, it is one of my old mini-sized Leaflet posts, and the first to score a weekly top-five in 2025. While I would not have had it marked as a likely weekly top-five candidate, it did not come entirely out of left field. It made the May, September, and October top-24s (I still need to publish September and October) and it was our 71st most-visited post last year.

I present one red truth for readers: We have now had 50 different articles (and posts) make at least one weekly top-five in 2025. We had 42 in 2024 and 34 in 2023, so 2025 continues to set a new standard for articles joining the weekly ranking party.

Notable Leaf Journal

As I discussed above, my leaflet post Umineko When They Cry Red Truth Guide was not the most likely post to make a weekly top five. I offer some additional context and reading below.

Umineko: When They Cry is an eight-part visual novel (a famous one by visual novel standards). I was reading one of the later chapters when I wrote this post in December 2022. I say reading instead of playing because the novel is not interactive save for a couple of meaningless choices in two of the eight chapters. In the post, I link to a guide written by someone else which I used to refresh myself on key events in earlier chapters, a useful tool given that I read Umineko over a long period. While I have not written about Umineko itself in great detail (maybe I should...), the novel came up in two real articles. First, I used it as an example to demonstrate how Syncthing can be used to keep game saves in sync without a cloud. Back in April of this year, I used one character in Umineko as an example of the tendency of some people to liberally diagnose fictional characters.

Taking leaf

This newsletter is running long, so I will leave things off here. I hope to publish a few new articles that I am already working on in the next week.

Thank you as always for reading The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed this issue and 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. You can also sign up for a separate newsletter which sends daily digests of our new posts here.

Until November 22,
Cura ut valeas -- Nicholas A. Ferrell.