November 22, 2025

Newsletter Leaf Journal CCLV 〜 Net catch rating

Issue 255 of The Newsletter Leaf Journal features links to four new NLJ articles including on classic Pokémon, NBA statistics, and WordPress plugins, links from ECS and 21 links from around the web, and other news and notes as we look forward to Thanksgiving.

Welcome to the 255th 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.

We had a busy week with four new New Leaf Journal articles, two of which erred on the long side. Below, I share the newest articles from NLJ and ECS, 21 links from around the web, and other news and notes from the week that was as we (at least in the United States) look forward to Thanksgiving.

Leaves from the week that was

I published four new New Leaf Journal articles since mailing Newsletter 254.

First, I published Dragonair’s Catch Rate in Pokémon Yellow, which is the successor to one of our most-visited articles of the last two years, Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow. In the original article, I wrote about my unnecessary and difficult quest to capture a Dragonair in the Pokémon Yellow Safari Zone (I did that in 2019, about one year before launching NLJ). I supported my story with research. Subsequent to publishing that article, I came across interesting information about Dragonair in Pokémon Yellow that I was not aware of when I wrote the original article. That information, which goes into some peculiar mechanics from the first two generations of Pokémon games, is the subject of the new article.

My three newest articles of the previous week were all published in part due to things I published (or didn't publish) on the same day in prior years. One reason I knew what I published in prior years was because of the "Years Ago Today" WordPress plugin. Because the plugin gave me some new article ideas, I gave it a "review" of sorts in Using Years Ago Today WordPress Plugin.

Speaking of returning to past popular article subjects, we have Norton Browser Search Referral. Our second most-visited article of 2024 was An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search. That article was inspired by an unusual referrer I spotted in my Koko Analytics logs. My new Norton search article was inspired by an unusual referrer in my Statify logs.

Finally, my flagship article of the week was Best and Worst NBA Title Defenses Since 1983-84. I read an article examining whether this year's Oklahoma City Thunder may be on pace to have the best championship defense season in NBA history. That inspired me to look at all the championship defenses, successful and unsuccessful, since 1983-84 (I started with 1983-84 because that is the first season with the modern 16-team playoff format). The article includes a big chart, so big that I included it as an attachment instead of creating a table in the article proper.

I also published six new posts on The Emu Café Social. In Re; Why I Don’t Need a Steam Machine, I responded to an article about the new Steam Machine (I will slightly amend my take this week). In Bike Lanes and D’Amico, I cover local news involving my favorite place to buy coffee beans. While working on my new Norton Search article, I discovered a site with a similar name to NLJ and covered it in Another NLJ[s]. ECS readers will know that I am in the midst of a play-through of Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE: Encore. While I did not publish a full chapter review, I did write White Album Vibes in Tokyo Mirage Sessions, wherein I somewhat speciously compared the JRPG to a visual novel called White Album (maybe I should review White Album...). Finally, Helping the Little Websites is a short piece on the inspiration for my newest NBA statistics survey. There was one additional ECS article, but let us get to that in the next section...

Leaves from around the web

Now for our customary 21 links from around the web.

Referencing my new posts

Do Not Put Your Site Behind Cloudflare if You Don't Need To (HT HN)
Rik Huijzer. November 20, 2025.

In line with my new ECS post, Unaffected By Cloudflare Outage.

The 2025-26 NBA Is Warped Beyond Recognition
Neil Paine. November 17, 2025.

The pros use Net Rating just like I do.

Preparing for Thanksgiving

Who needs turkey? Thanksgiving tables fill with new favorites
Sarah Jenkins for AP (via The Washington Times). November 21, 2025.

I'm pro turkey but some of the "alternatives" sound good too.

The great American chili debate boils over this fall
Bella Bucchiotti for AP (via The Washington Times). November 18, 2025.

I wasn't aware of the chili debate but put me down in the pro-bean camp.

Pumpkin or apple? The face off for America's favorite holiday pie
Anne Jolly for AP (via The Washington Times). November 11, 2025.

I'd go with pumpkin given the choices.

On the ground in Grenada, 40 years after Urgent Fury
Joshua Skovlund for Task & Purpose. October 25, 2023.

Related to Grenada's Thanksgiving, although that falls on October 25.

KPop Demon Hunters, Labubu highlight Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Mark Kennedy for AP (via The Washington Times). November 18, 2025.

I don't know anything about these "KPop Demon Hunters" but if they're going to eliminate the "Labubu menace" with "extreme prejudice," they have "my approval."

And clearing out our Halloween backlog...

Syria’s Jihadi Rulers Allow Halloween Rave — But With Curfew
John Hayward for Breitbart. November 3, 2025.

When you get the former Al Qaeda guy as your new leader and he doesn't even stop Halloween noise pollution.

Burger King Japan to be bought by America’s Goldman-Sachs
Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. November 18, 2025.

I knew that Burger King is a thing in Japan thanks to my research on Halloween in Japan.

Very bad jobs

Exclusive: Assad government secretly moved mass grave to cover up killings, Reuters investigation finds
Maggie Michael, Feras Delatey, Ryan McNeill, and Khalil Ashawl for Reuters. October 15, 2025.

And you thought your job was bad.

“I am going to Saudi Arabia, or my grave”: The exodus of Ethiopia’s frustrated youth
The New Humanitarian. April 23, 2025.

I'm starting to think Ethiopia's 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winning Prime Minister hasn't yet delivered all the peace and prosperity.

Russian Firms Rapidly Falling Behind in Paying Workers
Paul Goble for The Jamestown Foundation. November 20, 2025.

Glass half-full: There are worse employment positions to find yourself in Russia than missing paychecks at your job in Russia (or so say half of the asylum cases I work on for my day job).

Popular Park Slope restaurant faces $3 million tab in unpaid wages case - Gothamist (HT Brownstoner)
Arun Venugopal for Gothamist. November 20, 2025.

The "perks" of hiring workers who lack legal employment authorization.

Project Pigeon
Ben Naddaff-Hafrey at From the Archive. October 8, 2025.

This scheme was a bit feather-brained.

Caring for animals

Visitors to a New Jersey zoo get to watch veterinarians treat the animals
Jennifer Peltz for AP (via The Washington Times). November 17, 2025.

Here you can learn how to listen to a turtle's heart-beet.

Owl partially covered in concrete is cleaned up and recovering after Utah rescue
Sejal Govindarao for AP (via The Washington Times). November 19, 2025.

This owl really went through the mixer.

We once loved pigeons. We might not remember that, but they do (HT Caroline Crampton)
Joseph Earp for The Guardian. August 4, 2025.

I wonder how the pigeon Victor V. Gurbo rescued a couple of years ago remembers us...

Fraud concerns

Minnesota Welfare Fraud: Some Funds Went to Al-Shabaab
Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo for City Journal. November 19, 2025.

Back in April I referenced an "explosion of autism diagnoses in the real world" in the introduction to an article on Diagnosing Fictional Characters. While I mostly set aside "the real world" to focus on author intent in fiction, I submit for the record that the implication of my introduction was consistent with the circumstances which led to, as the Minnesota welfare fraud indictment asserts: "[O]ne in 16 Somali four-year-olds in the state had reportedly been diagnosed with autism—a rate more than triple the state average"

Chinese Woman Who Faked Philippine Nationality to Become Mayor Given Life Sentence for Human Trafficking
Christian K. Caruzo for Breitbart. November 20, 2025.

The fact a non-citizen could become an elected official in the Philippines despite there being a citizenship requirement would tend to raise questions about the elections.

Cuban Air Force Pilot Indicted for Immigration Fraud
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. November 14, 2025.

Are we sure that the 29-year veteran of the Cuban Air Force was lying when he said he never received weapons or military training and never served in a military unit? What if his claim was accurate commentary on the Cuban military?

Things to be thankful for

Eurovision Song Contest voting rules change after Israeli success
Carl Deconinck for Brussels Signal. November 21, 2025.

Reading about Eurovision makes me grateful to the American Founding Fathers for successfully fighting a war to ensure we would never have to be a part of it.

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 XLVIII (November 15-21) 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: 22 appearances and 16 top placements.

2. Amazon "Cargo Bikes" in Brooklyn
   Nicholas A. Ferrell. April 9, 2025.
   2025: 30 appearances and 8 top placements.

3. Enabling Charging Optimization on GrapheneOS
   Nicholas A. Ferrell. January 12, 2025.
   2025: 5 appearances.

4. Kazuya’s Hair Color in Rent-A-Girlfriend
   Nicholas A. Ferrell. August 9, 2025.
   2025: 2 appearances.

5. Japanese Environment in PoL, Lutris, and Bottles
   Nicholas A. Ferrell. July 16, 2022.
   2025: 2 appearances.
   Cumulative: 3 appearances.

Analysis

Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search ran away with the top spot, continuing its domination of the weekly-ranking charts. It has a chance to become the second article to notch 20 top-placements in a single year if it can lead the final four full weeks of 2025 (The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei had 25 top-placements in 2021 and 30 in 2022). Amazon "Cargo Bikes" in Brooklyn became the first, and possibly will be the only, article to make 30 weekly ranking appearances this year (Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships, which missed this week's ranking by one spot, is the only other article with a chance, sitting at 27 appearances thus far).

The Old Leaf Journal

With Thanksgiving approaching, I thought it would be a good time to remind readers that I have 15 articles with the Thanksgiving tag. I encourage everyone who is interested in some seasonal reading to thumb through them. They include articles on recipes, decorations seen around Brooklyn, Thanksgiving proclamations, and Thanksgiving around the world. I will single out a special mention for my 2023 History of New York's Evacuation Day essay, which covers, as the name suggests, New York City's Evacuation Day. Evacuation Day was largely superseded by Thanksgiving over time, but it falls in November 2025 and commemorates the British evacuation of New York City at the end of the American Revolutionary War.

News Leaf Journal

I looked at our little-used Guestbook that the comment form was buried under the Guestbook entries. I wondered if it is possible that some humans (maybe 1 out of 100 Guestbook "visitors") see the entries and miss the form. I added a second comment form above the entries. Will we get more comments now?

Taking leaf

I had a late start on the newsletter this week, so I will cut it off here so I can go outside and finish working on some NLJ articles.

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.

Wishing you a happy and restful Thanksgiving and NY Evacuation Day,
Cura ut valeas -- Nicholas A. Ferrell.